Thirty years ago, almost to the day, I attended an interview that changed my life.  I had been Deputy Head at Battle Abbey School in East Sussex for a year and the interview was for the Headship.  I was successful, but I did not take up the post for a further twelve months giving me a whole academic year working alongside my predecessor to plan for the future.  It did not turn out to be the easiest year of my teaching career but it was extremely valuable as it gave me the time to reflect carefully upon what was good in the school and needed keeping, and what needed to be changed.

One of the greatest bones of contention amongst the pupils was this little green Rule Book.  It contained Rules on every aspect of school life, a few of which could rightly be called oppressive, a few more that were pointless but most of which were actually quite sensible.  Attempts by the School Council to negotiate changes had been rejected and, as a result, the book was reviled.  It had become the focus for discontent and, as a result, the very many sensible rules for successful community living that it contained were not given the respect they deserved.

I thought and prayed about the problem for many hours and finally came up with a plan.  At my very first assembly as Head I took a copy of the Rule Book and tore it up in front of the whole school to tumultuous applause.  I explained that in the future there would be only two School Rules:  Love the Lord your God and Love your neighbour as yourself.  There would still be a code of conduct, but every part of that code would be an example of one of the two School Rules put into practice.  I then went on to promise that if School Council could successfully argue that any part of the code of conduct was not an example of one of the two School Rules put into practice then I would remove it which, indeed, I did.  The result was a code of conduct that was understood and respected with a much greater appreciation of why it was necessary.

The two new School Rules were, of course, not new at all being no less than the two Great Commandments.  We hear them in our Order of Service for Holy Communion in the following form:

Our Lord Jesus Christ said:  The first commandment is this:  ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’  There is no other commandment greater than these.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

The words used in the service are taken from Mark 12: 28-34 in which Jesus is answering a question from a scribe.  They were not new even then, for Jesus was quoting from the Hebrew Bible.  The first commandment is taken from Deuteronomy 6: 4-5 and the second from Leviticus 19: 18.  Taken together they neatly summarise the Ten Commandments each one of which is an example of one of the two Great Commandments put into practice.

The importance of the first of the Great Commandments is in its exclusivity.  We are to worship the one God to the exclusion of all others and we are to worship Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength.  When this was first written in Deuteronomy there were regular problems caused by the worship of other Gods, often known as Baal, but we should not think that this is just a problem of the past.  To worship something as a God means to allow that thing to rule our lives.  In our modern 21^st century lives there are all too many candidates for this type of worship: money, personal possessions, fashion, drugs and alcohol to name but a few.  Not all of these are necessarily evil in themselves for few of us here, for example, could exist without money or personal possessions at all.  It is only when our love for these things starts to direct our decisions and so rule our lives that we have broken the first of the Great Commandments.

One of the great benefits that comes from recognising and worshipping God as our Father is that it helps us to know and to understand our place in his universe as one of his children.  Without this knowledge there is a danger that we might start to believe that we are masters of the universe and so become arrogant and self-centred.  Or, by contrast, we might look at the vastness of time and space and feel utterly insignificant and unimportant.  By recognising ourselves as one of God’s children, known by name and loved by him, we can avoid both of these pitfalls.  We are all children of the same God, equal in his sight and all with a rightful place here on earth to do his will: no more and no less.

Whereas the importance of the first of the Great Commandments is in its exclusivity, the importance of the second is in its inclusivity.  When we are commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves that command includes every one of our fellow human beings regardless of race, colour, creed, nationality or place of residence.  We cannot pick or choose those whom we love for everyone is our neighbour.

The word ‘love’ in both of the Great Commandments as written in Mark’s Gospel is translated from the Greek word agape.  Just as the Icelandic language has many different words for snow, in Greek there are several different words for love.  These include philia for friendship or brotherly love, eros for romantic or passionate love and agape for the love that God has for us.  It is with this unconditional, self-sacrificing love that we are commanded to love our neighbours.  What that means in practice is described with great poetic beauty in the reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13 that is so popular at both weddings and funerals and which we heard again today.  A reminder of four of the most important verses:

Love – agape love - is patient; love is kind and envies no one.   Love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence.  Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other’s sins, but delights in the truth.   There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, and its endurance.

You might be feeling that the command to love our neighbours with this type of love is demanding enough, but the second of the Great Commandments goes much further for it includes the phrase: ‘as ourselves.’  This means that whatever we might wish for ourselves we must wish for our neighbours.  Whatever we value for our own use we must be willing to share.  Whatever we might fight to protect ourselves from we must protect our neighbours from too.

So is any of this possible or is it just a theoretical exercise?  Are human beings ever able to show the agape form of love towards God and towards each other?  The answer to that is an emphatic Yes and is most clearly demonstrated by the Saints whom we rightly revere.  We also see demonstrations of agape love at times of disaster when people who would describe themselves as very ordinary often do quite extraordinary things so we know that it is possible.  But what can we do to help ourselves show this sort of love in our everyday lives?  The answer is to have faith, the effect of which was clearly shown in the second of the miracles in today’s Gospel reading.  The first, and most often quoted miracle, which is also included in the Gospels of Mark and John, is Jesus walking on water.  The second, and to me the most important miracle, appears only in Matthew: it is Peter walking on water.  He only managed it for a while before the going got tough and his faith wavered, but whilst that faith was strong he performed exactly the same miracle as Jesus himself.  With the same faith in Jesus, we too can perform miracles.  If we will walk with him, he will walk with us and together we can show his love to all we meet.  Amen.

There was a severe storm on 25 January 1990 that is sometimes known as the Burns Day Storm.  You may remember it as the day on which Gordon Kaye, the actor who played René in Allo Allo, suffered serious head injuries in a car accident when he was struck by a falling advertising hording.  For a while it was thought that he would not survive, but he did, and he went on to star in three more series of the programme.  His remarkable recovery was very appropriate for the name René means ‘born again’, the subject of today’s Gospel reading.

The reading is a report of a lengthy discussion between Jesus and Nicodemus, an interesting character with whom many people, including me, find it easy to relate.  He appears only in St John’s Gospel, and on only three occasions, of which this is the first.  We are told that he was a Pharisee and ‘a ruler of the Jews’.  This is taken by many commentators to mean that he was a member of the Sanhedrin, the legal Assembly consisting of the Chief Priests, The Elders and the Scribes.  He had clearly heard about Jesus and wanted to find out more about him so he made a night-time visit (possibly to avoid being seen by others) to ask him some questions.  It is clear by his responses that he was not immediately convinced by the answers Jesus gave.  He cross‑questioned Jesus on the concept of being ‘born again’ and, when Jesus explained further he answered: “ How can these things be?”

Nicodemus next appears after Jesus has been preaching in the Temple during the Festival of the Tabernacle, a week-long Harvest Festival celebrated in October.  There is consternation about some of the things that Jesus says and the police are sent to arrest him.  However, they return to the Pharisees empty handed saying: “never has anyone spoken like this.”  This angers the Pharisees except for Nicodemus who speaks up on behalf of Jesus arguing that they should at least listen to him first.

The final appearance of Nicodemus follows the crucifixion when he assists Joseph of Arimathea to prepare the body of Jesus for burial.  He brought with him 100 pounds of spices – a huge weight that would normally only be used for the burial of a King.  In contrast to his first night-time visit to see Jesus, this final act of homage and devotion was performed in broad daylight as it had to be completed before dusk and the start of the Sabbath.  The author of the Gospel has used this symbolism to show how Nicodemus finally came out of the darkness and into the light of Christ.

We heard the Gospel this morning read from the King James Bible, known by many as the Authorised Version.  If we had been in King’s Cliffe we would have heard it read from the New Revised Standard Version in which the phrase ‘born again’ does not appear.  In this more modern version the Greek word anothen is translated as ‘from above’ rather than ‘again.’  This translation makes nonsense of the follow-up question from Nicodemus: “can anyone enter a second time into his mother’s womb” and destroys the symbolism upon which the whole ‘born again Christian’ movement is based.  It really is remarkable just how much difference the translation of just one word can make.

You will be pleased to know that I am not about to launch into a long argument about the merits of this translation or that.  Rather, I would like to take a step back and look at the reading as a whole.  In so doing it is the final two verses that tell us what this reading is all about:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

‘That the world through him might be saved.’  Saving or Salvation – that is what this reading is all about – what we must do in order to obtain salvation.

To Jews like Nicodemus, a prime requisite for salvation was their birth – their biological birth as sons of Abraham.  We were reminded of this in our Old Testament reading:

The Lord said to Abram: ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.’

Jesus is saying very clearly that this is not enough.  To enter the new Kingdom it is necessary to be born a second time (the King James translation), this time from above (the NRSV translation). 

And, as if that were not radical enough:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:  That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Salvation, Jesus is saying, is now available to anyone, whether they be sons of Abraham or not, provided only that they believe in him.

This is all pretty heavy stuff as, indeed, is much of St John’s Gospel.  It is certainly not Level One Christianity.  So what are we to make of it all and how can it change the way in which we live our lives.  Fortunately, there is a simple example to follow woven through the story: the example of Nicodemus.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the ruling Sanhedrin who we must presume had studied ‘The Law’ for much of his life.  His journey to salvation started by listening to what people told him about what Jesus had to say.  Interested, he visited him in secret in order to find out more for himself.  Later, he defended him against unfair and baseless criticism determined to give him a proper hearing.  Finally, openly in front of his peers, he performed the intensely personal service of preparing his body for burial.  By this act his life was changed for ever: he was truly ‘born again.’

Being ‘born again’, ‘born from above’ or ‘born of the spirit’, or however you wish to describe it, is, of course, a spiritual experience.  However, it is not the experience itself that is important: it is how that experience is translated into action.  If we are to be truly ‘born again’ then, like Nicodemus, we must be prepared to turn our backs on the world we once knew and give our whole lives to the service of Christ.

Amen.

We don’t have readings from the Book of Ecclesiastes very often yet I suspect that many of you here know the words of Chapter 3 by heart.  They were turned into the folk song ‘Turn Turn Turn’ by Pete Seeger in 1939 and later became a number 1 hit for the Byrds.  Felicity will be singing the song during our communion this morning.

The Book of Ecclesiastes, or Qoheleth as it is called in the Hebrew Bible, begins one verse earlier than our set reading this morning.  The missing verse says: “The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.”  These words were traditionally taken to identify the author as Solomon but scholars are now agreed that the book was written by a later author who used this introduction as a literary device to claim the wisdom associated with Solomon.

To understand what The Teacher is trying to tell us we must first consider his use of the word ‘vanity’.  The literal meaning of the Hebrew word hebel from which this is translated is ‘a breath of wind’.  The Teacher uses this word as a metaphor to indicate transience, uselessness or deceptiveness.

Looking at our reading again with this in mind The Teacher does appear to be a bit of an old misery.  If he were going to appear on a television show today it could only be on Grumpy Old Men.  A few years ago maybe he could have taken the part of Private Frazer in Dad’s army:  “We’re all doomed - doomed!”  Or maybe, for those of you whose memories go back a little further, he could have been Senna the soothsayer In Frankie Howard’s Up Pompeii: “Woe, woe and thrice woe!”

The depressing outlook of the Teacher has, at times, caused some to question the place of Ecclesiastes in the Bible as a book of Holy Scripture.  However, careful reading of the whole book does reveal two important conclusions of the Teacher:

1.  We must accept our lot and enjoy the gifts that God has given us: our work, our food and our drink.
2. We must please God, fear him and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of everyone.

Moving on to our Gospel reading:  on first reading, the Rich Fool in Luke’s telling of the parable was being eminently sensible.  There had been a good harvest and, rather than let the food go to waste, he thought he would build some larger barns to keep it in.  Surely this was a praiseworthy thing to do?  Did not Joseph do much the same thing in Egypt fifteen hundred years or so earlier, and he was revered as a hero?

What is more, surely the Rich Fool was only doing what The Teacher in Ecclesiastes had recommended: he was accepting his lot (the good harvest) and resolving to enjoy the gifts that God had given him? 

So where did he go wrong?  Why, in the parable, did God round on him and call him a fool?  It was because he was seeking to take advantage of the first of The Teacher’s conclusions but to ignore the second:  “We must please God, fear him and keep his commandments, for that is the whole duty of everyone.”  There was no thought of God’s commandments in his proposal: it was entirely selfish.  He just wanted to put his feet up, eat, drink and be merry.

There was nothing intrinsically wrong with his proposal to build bigger barns: it was his reason for doing so that was wrong.   He wanted to do the right thing, but for the wrong reason and with no regard to God.   As Ella Fitzgerald and later Bananarama might have said if they were being more biblical:  “It ain’t what you do – it’s the reason that you do it.”

Ecclesiastes took 12 chapters and an awful lot of groaning and moaning to reach his conclusions.  Jesus summed them up in a sentence:  “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

“Rich toward God.”  That is the key to the lesson from these two readings, but what exactly does it mean?  That’s not an easy question to answer in just a few minutes, but I can give you a few pointers.  It is to do with the value we place upon God and upon our resolve to follow his commandments.  It is about what we can give to Him and what we will allow Him to give to us.  It is about what we are prepared to do to help build His Kingdom here on earth.  “Thy Kingdom come” we repeat every time we say the Lord’s Prayer but just what are we prepared to do to help to build it?  Being “Rich toward God” involves our whole life, our whole being.  It is about everything that we do and, as we have learnt from today’s parable, our motivation for doing it.

To return to our readings, and to link them together, the rich fool was chastised by God because he was seeking to take advantage of the first of The Teacher’s conclusions but to ignore the second.  He was happy to accept God’s gift of a bountiful harvest but he was not prepared to be Rich toward God.

To express that using two different words, one of which we hear a great deal of these days:  he wanted what he saw as his rights (what God had promised him) without his responsibilities (what he had promised God).  As Frank Sinatra once sang (and I promise this is my last song quote!) “You can’t have one without the other”.

Though the message is clear, we human beings are very slow learners indeed when it comes to this lesson.  We want the Government to provide more services but we don’t want to pay more tax.  Trades Unions want more money for their members without regard for the profitability of their company.  Citizens demand their Human Rights with no mention at all of their Human Responsibilities.  Without a doubt, if I could change just one law in this country, high on my list would be to sweep away the Bill of Human Rights and replace it with a Bill of Human Rights and Responsibilities.  For each ‘right’ I would like to see stated the ‘responsibilities’ that go with that right: you can’t have one without the other.  For example:

The Right of Free Expression imposes, both on the media and all of us as individuals, a responsibility to be polite and civil and to be absolutely certain of our facts before expressing our views. 

The Right to Free Assembly imposes upon us the responsibility to behave in a calm and peaceful way and not to use the might of the crowd to intimidate others who do not share our view.

The Right to own Property imposes upon us the responsibility to respect the property of others.

The Right to a School Education imposes upon the children who receive it the responsibility to respect their teachers, to behave well in class and to do the work they are set.

We often hear politicians condemning this country or that because of their ‘poor human rights record’.  I have no quarrel with that as far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough.  Whether they acknowledge it or not, what the politicians are judging is the extent to which the country in question has built, or is building God’s Kingdom here on earth.  As we have learnt from our readings today that can only be achieved by being ‘Rich toward God’ and all that that entails.

In our prayers today, and every day, let us ask God “How rich am I toward you?’ and be prepared to listen to the answer.   Amen