A love whose breadth causes offence

LUKE 4, 21 -30

In her short story, “Revelation” , Flannery O’Connor introduces us to a character named Ruby Turpin. Ruby who is a large lady enters her doctor’s waiting room and after ensuring that her husband has somewhere to sit and rest his injured leg, she looks around expecting someone to give up a seat for her. Nobody does so until a patient is called in to see the doctor.

By now, however, Ruby has become quite irritated. Still sat next to a rather stylish lady, she begins a conversation into which others are drawn. In that conversation, her worldview begins to come out. That world view is unpleasant and even racist for Ruby looks down on a lot of people. Her words and indeed her unspoken thoughts reveal an unpleasant snobbery which goes to the point of saying her pigs are “cleaner than some children.”

Thankfully, there is one person in the room who cannot bear this hate filled pap. Mary Grace who is a student, blames Ruby for the way that the conversation has developed. And she can take it no longer! In her anger she throws a book at Ruby, hitting her above the eye before leaping on her in an attempted strangulation. Subdued physically by the other patients, she lets out a fiery insult - “Go back to Hell where you came from you old warthog!”

I guess that Jesus’ audience in Nazareth were a little bit like Ruby Turpin. They had in their minds an understanding of who were the insiders and who were the outsiders. Oh yes, the believed in God’s love allright but for them just like Ruby Turpin, it was for them and those who were like them and certainly not for foreigners, peoples of other religious experiences or outsiders often termed as “sinners” which in their view included those with skin diseases that are loosely termed leprosy. You get it? It was like Mrs Turpin’s view, a view as to who was respectable in God’s sight and who wasn’t.

Now in confronting this misunderstanding of God’s love, Jesus may be seen as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. For whereas, when he read from the Book of Isaiah, words of deliverance as those who had been in exile in Babylon for half a century were beginning to return to their ancient homes in Jerusalem and the surrounding area, we are told all spoke well of him, now as he points to the wideness of God’s love, they are incensed. So angry are they that they plan to throw him over the cliff which is rather extreme! Whilst I may at times drive the good folk of Bideford Methodist Church mad, they have not plotted to throw me over Abbotsham Cliffs - yet at least!

In Holy Communion, we celebrate the amazing love which God has for each of us. We rejoice that we are loved, forgiven and accepted. And yet, it is too easy to narrow down the extent of that love. That is why my favourite hymn is the one that proclaims, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.”

For ultimately, as a result of our humanity, which we all owe to God, we are all connected with one another across races, creeds and social backgrounds as children of God. We are enriched and made more truly human by discovering the value in others, including those who might seem distant from us.

A story that illustrates this comes from the wars in what was Yugoslavia back in the 1990s. A journalist in Sarajevo saw a girl walking the street ahead of him, get hit by sniper fire. Before he could do anything, another man scooped up the injured girl and pleaded with the reporter to drive them to the hospital. The reporter got the man and girl into the back seat of his car and began to drive. As they went through the streets of Sarajevo, the man called out;

“ Please hurry; she is still alive.”

A few minutes later he called out;

“Hurry please, my little girl is still breathing.”

And a little later he cried out;

“Quick! My girl is still warm.”

Sadly by the time they arrived at the hospital, the little girl was dead. As the man and the reporter, went to wash their hands, the man turned to the reporter and said;

“Now comes the hardest part. I must find the little girl’s father and tell him what has happened.”

Stunned, the journalist stammered out;

“But I thought you was the Father! I thought she was you child!”

Back from the man came the reply;

“Aren’t they all our children?”

And in those words comes the message that whatever barriers we create, all are connected and precious to the God who is the source of all life.

Back to Ruby Turpin. Being called a warthog, an ugly smelly creature, really bugged her. Yet if you follow the story on, you find that it ultimately leads her to a vision in which she sees a procession in which those whom she had looked down on - the ignorant, the down and outs, those of other races - all have priority over her. And so her vision of the world is changed. The last have become first. And she knows that she like us can only come to God, as a result of God’s kindness.

And now, in kindness, God offers us bread and wine as signs of his life being poured into us. May we be grateful for God’s love and may we appreciate the this gift is for all.


Preached at Edgehill College Communion Service on Friday January 26th 2007

The Manifesto Launch - Epiphany 3

LUKE 4, 14-21

Yesterday, Hilary Clinton launched her bid to be the next President of the USA. Scanning the papers, I found no clue as to what exactly is the vision that she offers to the USA and indeed the world which will be affected by the outcome of the next Presidential election. Of course, she is not George W Bush which I guess is something which depending on your point of view, may well be or not be good news. Still, she has said, “Let’s talk. Let’s chat.” Call me a cynic if you will but I am one of those who feels that politicians asking for a two way chat before announcing policies is about as sincere as Attila the Hun turning up at a conference on pacifism.

With Jesus, the launch is much more dramatic. There is no biding of time. Certainly Jesus would be something of a spin doctor’s nightmare. For today, when later we will be looking at Christian Unity and seeking to build bridges with other Christians, we may well be shocked that Jesus seems happy to bring division to the max. Oh sure at the end of our reading, he seems to have somewhat mesmorised his Nazareth audience and had our reading gone on, we would have heard that they spoke well of him. But in the moment of seeming triumph, it is clear to Jesus that they have failed to understand the wideness of God’s love and mercy, and so in the dialogue that follows, those who had thought well of the local boy made good become incensed. So incensed that not only do they drive him out of the synagogue but seek to throw him over their equivalent of Abbotsham Cliffs. Clearly, Jesus is not a good example to follow if you want to be a popular preacher!

So what is the offensive message of Jesus? After all, he has begun by simply quoting Scripture, the venerable book of Isaiah no less. And yet in his reading and in the discussion that follows, it becomes clear that the good news of Isaiah is to be seen as much wider and much more encompassing than the compatriots of Jesus wished it to be. You see, they saw God as being for them and their likes but now God is revealed as being as much for the foreigner and the leper as for them. And in this, we see a challenge to the temptation to localise or tribalism God. For the message of Jesus is that God is for “them” just as much as God is for “us.” And sadly, all too often, religious people of all faiths have been tempted to put limits on the love of God and to erect great walls to keep those who are other, outside the love of God.

Luke’s portrayal of the ministry of Jesus is radically inclusive. As we remembered only a few weeks ago, Luke tells us of the baby Jesus being first visited by those rank outsiders, the stinking shepherds. Throughout his Gospel, he will show us Jesus dismantling barriers and going to outsiders be they lepers, foreigners, the poor or the morally flawed. He presents a picture of Jesus as truly being for all people with a special emphasis on those who are abused by the world and who accordingly need him all the more. His presentation of Jesus is a million miles removed from the hateful self righteous religion that existed then as now, which dares to tell people that they are not good enough for the love, the mercy and the acceptance of God. For in this new order, the first will be last and the last will be first.

And as Jesus declares the nature of his ministry, he gives a challenge to us to be drawn into it. For we who seek to follow Jesus, are called into his work of changing the world. Of course, dating back to the takeover of Christianity by Emperor Constantine, too often the Church has been incorporated into saving the existing order rather than being God’s agent of change. Even that great Protestant reformer Martin Luther, dependant on the patronage of Princes, responded to the revolt of a peasantry who now able to read the Gospel saw God as a friend of the poor, by intemperately, suggesting that their heads be filled with musket balls. Too often Karl Marx’s suggestion that religion as been used as the opium of the masses has been proven to be true.

And yet, it is by no means always true. Think back to some of the people of faith we thought about during the Autumn - Dietrich Bonhoeffer standing against tyranny an daring to suggest that the Nazi treatment of Jews was tantamount to the expulsion of Christ from Germany, or Oscar Romero standing for the poor in the face of the death squads of El Salvador. And the list goes on for I could speak of Martin Luther King standing for the dignity of all people in a time of segregation or even a slightly eccentric Lord Longford holding that no prisoner could be beyond God’s love and regularly taking those inmates he had befriended on the inside to dine with him at the House of Lords on their release. Do you get it? At times the witness of the church has been shocking but still there are the times when the light of Christ’s Gospel has shone through.

In our home, at 6pm, pressure mounts for the television to be turned to Channel 4. It’s that time when the most dysfunctional of families, “The Simpsons” comes on. Now I know that the show isn’t to everyone’s taste. It’s a touch crazy and I often think that there is a unique fusion of childrens’ and adult humour going on. And yet, it has a capacity to be thought provoking. I have a book at home which I occasionally look at. It’s by Mark Pinsky and is entitled, “The Gospel according to the Simpsons.” Within it we find how episodes contribute to our understanding of some of the issues which should matter to us as Christians. One chapter is entitled, “Does Lisa speak for Jesus?” Now Lisa is a bit of a shrimp who is much more thoughtful than her annoying brother, Bart. And what is so Christlike about Lisa is that she has the courage to question conventional wisdom, to care for the planet and to support the poor and downtrodden regardless of whether she is in a minority of one. As Tony Campolo puts it in the introduction;

“True religion for her is in the prophetic tradition that declares “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Yes, amidst the anarchy of the Simpsons, Lisa Simpson stands before us as one who sees the Manifesto of Jesus and lives it whatever the consequences.

Today, we see Christ beginning his ministry by declaring what it is to be all about. The signs of unlimited Divine grace are made visible. Human lives are to be valued and cruelty rolled back. And that cause goes on for darkness is still a far too common reality. And yet Jesus makes a difference.

Let me finish with a very contemporary example. In the past week, the news has been overtaken by events in the Celebrity Big Brother House. The unpleasant treatment of Shilpa Shetty the Bollywood actress, inspired by racism or more probably other factors such as ignorance, jealousy and cultural misunderstandings, has been in the news just about every day. Politicians have even jumped onto the bandwagon although at a time when we are as a nation deporting people to face great danger as a result of their failed asylum claims, such self righteousness frankly nauseates me. Now that she has been in my opinion rightly evicted, Jade Goody has become something of a hate figure. Search the newspapers, listen to talk radio or surf the internet and you will find that no abuse about her or even her appearance is deemed too great. The feeling is that she must be ground into the dust.

But wait! “What would Jesus do” bracelets were popular a while ago so what would Jesus do? Well of course, Jesus would have no truck with bullying or racism - such is clear from his life. But I put it to you that Jesus who went to those deemed sinners because their need of healing is greatest, would not ground Jade Goody into the dust. The Christ response would be to go to her, to help her to grow from the behaviour of the past week and to find the self worth which enables her not to need to engage in such antics.

Perhaps, the outworking of this story, will tell us whether our nation’s claim to be Christian is a fictionalised deception. Are we proud to make stars of people for no good reason and then destroy them? Or will we be seen to take Christ’s manifesto seriously and lift all people up to the value that Christ accords them?

Preached at Bideford on January 21st 2006

Wine, wine and yet more wine - Epiphany 2

John 2, 1-11

Oh dear! This miracle is hardly in keeping with Methodism. Where I was brought up in Cornwall, I think this turning water into wine would have been enough to prevent Jesus from getting a note to preach. Turning wine into water would have been much more likely to impress.

Oh yes, I’ve heard all the stuff about non alcoholic wine but rest assured that is merely Total Abstinence Society Dreamland. This was wine, the real stuff and not some counterfeit impersonation.

Of course, to many people Methodists are best known as the people who don’t drink the strong stuff. One wag at the Wesleyan Conference in the 1800s describes Cornish Methodists as being in a state of fermentation over the issue. And so it was even in my lifetime. So let’s get one matter straight. Methodism has not always been about total abstinence. If it were so, John Wesley might have had some difficulty in joining a Society for his primary concern was about the standards of tea as opposed to wine. Indeed, the concern about total abstinence seems to have taken off well after Mr Wesley was dead and safely buried, for it was largely a response to the problems experienced within the new industrial working class in the 1800s that gave rise to an emphasis on total abstinence. For all too many due to their dependence on alcohol left their families go short of the necessities of life and to cap it the violent effects of alcohol were all to often felt by wives and children.

Now I don’t want to fail to take the problems of alcohol seriously. Both my wife and myself have known grandparents whose early years were blighted by a parent who developed a drink problem. Such a problem still goes on and is not helped by our government taking a view that 24 hour drinking is acceptable, a line which like its similarly permissive attitude to gambling threatens to wreck lives and to store up problems fro the future. But we need to be clear that the primary concern regarding alcohol is social rather than scriptural. There are good reasons for people to consider total abstinence but for most people the choice is wider than between total abstinence and drunkenness which Paul certainly cautions the church in Ephesus about.

Now for just a few moments, I want us to see what we can get out of John’ s story about Cana. The first thing to note is that it is based around a wedding which would have been a time of great celebration. It would be a time of unbounded joy. And so it is worth noting Jesus’ presence at such a gathering. For all too often our understanding of Jesus has been subverted by the vision of him as a “pale faced Galilean.” And yet the reality is that Jesus far from being a bloodless man, is one who lives life with zest, who shares in dinner parties and who is all too happy to attend festivities such as those at Cana. Note that he is not a censorious figure but one who is at the heart of the joy of community life.

And that joy at an occasion such as a wedding would be expressed in wine. Indeed, there are a number of occasions in the Old Testament when wine and joy are linked. And given the Palestinian view of hospitality, there can be no surprise that the host of the wedding, would seek to ensure a good stock of wine. Anything less would surely mean social disgrace. And yet in the story we are considering, the wine runs out. It was a disaster! The host must have wished that the ground would swallow him up.

Yet it is at this moment that Jesus is brought into the narrative. The role of his mother suggests that this was a wedding of someone who was close to the family of Jesus. Assuming John’s order of events an dismissing some of the fanciful stories about Jesus found in writings that did not make it into the canon of scripture, Jesus had done no miraculous things. And yet Mary draws him into the situation and despite an initially unpromising response, Jesus brings about the transformation that saves the wedding. And of course, the six stone jars used for ceremonial washing. that could each hold from 20 to 30 gallons, having been filled with water, now hold the finest wine and so the celebration can continue.

But what does it all mean. We can portray this simply as a magic show but that simply relegates Jesus to the level of a freak performer. It certainly does not conform to what Jesus saw as the role of what we might describe as his mighty deeds. After all, he is not prepared to do them to play up to the fickle fantasies of sensation seekers. Instead, these deeds are works of compassion, signs that point to God’s Kingdom. And it is in that light that we need to consider this story.

This is a story that brings us to the Incarnation. God in Christ is at one with us on the varied situations of life. Yes, Christ is with us in our sufferings but he is also with us in our celebrations and our partying. And because he celebrates, we can see in joyous occasions that which Christ himself affirms.

This is a story which affirms hope. The practice at wedding feasts was to serve the best wines when the palate was at its most sensitive and then when alcohol had deadened the senses to bring on the dross in the knowledge that it would be barely noticed. Here we see that Christ treats us with much more respect. For truly when we feel that we have been blessed, his blessings are not exhausted. The best is yet to come.

And this is a story which points to Christ’s inexhaustible grace. For the abundant supply of joyful wine points to Christ’s grace which has no limits. In our story, we leave off at a time when there is a lot of wine still to be drunk - surely too much after three days of festivities. So it is no surprise that centuries later, St Jerome was asked the rather intriguing question as to whether the guests at Cana had drunk all the wine. His answer was ;

“No, we are still drinking it.”

For just like endless supplies of wine, so to is the grace of Christ truly endless. Too often, the church has acted like a bouncer, ruling people out on grounds such as race, creed, background, bad choices or sexuality. Too often we make it sound as if the grace of Christ is exhaustible. But the truth is that it has no limit. When we think that there is no more to be had, then Christ’s cup overflows with generosity, kindness and love.

So today let us celebrate his endless love even if it is with a good old Methodist cup of tea!


Preached at Alverdiscott on Sunday January 14th 2007

Responding to God's Grace - Covenant Service

Jeremiah 31, 31-34
Romans 12, 1-2
John 15, 1-10

I was at a gathering not so long ago when I heard someone speaking as if British Christians were a greatly persecuted people.

Stories abounded from the intellectual onslaught waged by Professor Richard Dawkins with his recent book, “The God Delusion” to the alleged war on Christmas with other issues thrown in including actions against Christian Unions taken by some Student Unions, the BA employee prohibited from wearing her cross and for good measure, “Jerry Springer the Opera.”

Now, I wouldn’t wish to minimise the concerns that people feel about these matters. In one case, that of the BA employee I fully share the sense of outrage even if the matter has more to do with stupidity than a desire to be oppressive. On two of the other matters whilst I may share in peoples’ frustration, I think we need to appreciate that in a free society there will be critics of Christianity. There has to be space for Dawkins and co although I wish that he would show more of his scientific objectivity in his approach to faith rather than constantly resorting to the creation of extreme unrepresentative straw men to make his points. As for “Jerry Springer - The Opera” having watched 15 minutes of it on television, I fail to understand how anyone can be bothered to pay good money to see it but unless we want the Christian equivalent of a Khomeini style social order, well we just have to put up with breaches of taste. The choice is to wallow in victimhood or to get over it and move on.

By all means let us talk about persecution ( and I know of stories of Christians in schools having a tough time) but let us save the language for real rather than illusory persecution and real rather than illusory oppression. After all, there is plenty of it in the world which makes the petty mockery and rejections of our cherished understanding seem rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

The trouble with self victimisation is that it can often lead to a bunker mentality which sees the world as hostile and refuses to engage with it. A better vision is that offered by Jeremiah. Living in tempestuous times, seeing that his native land and all the things his people held dear were under threat from the encroaching armies of Babylon, he dared to raise his eyes to see the biggest of pictures, the grace of God. As horror and destruction drew near, he offers a vision of a God who is deeply committed even to a disobedient people. For Jeremiah records this commitment not in dispassionate terms but in terms which speak of God having been like a husband to Israel and having been rejected in such a capacity now resolved not to pull up the drawbridge but to make the relationship closer. And of course at Christmas, we have seen how God does just that in becoming flesh and entering into the full range of human experiences, out of unending love. In the story of Christ, we see God revealed as the friend who sticks with us at great cost even when we are at our most undeserving.

This morning in our Covenant Service we have rightly begun with the sound of praise and trust in God. But the service also calls on us for response. Too often we see the Christian faith as being about rules. I, for a time, attended a church, where people lightheartedly collected what they called Pharisee points for doing the right thing. But this morning, I want to put it to you that our response is not intended to be about playing safe and remembering a few “Thou shalt nots.” It is much more radical than that. Paul writing to the Church in Rome speaks of “being transformed by the renewing of your mind.” One of the greatest sermons I have ever read was on this passage, preached by Martin Luther King and it was entitled “Transformed Nonconformist.” In that sermons talks about the need to see God’s Kingdom as the highest of callings and for it to be the centre of our way of seeing the world and living in the world. The calling is not to march to the drumbeat of conformity but instead to live in the world as the people of a dynamic God.

At the beginning of 2007 we gather seeking to be God’s people, putting that calling at the centre of our lives. How it works out in practice will be different for each of us. The challenges are many. The communities of faith upon which we have long relied to maintain the Christian presence are no longer secure, Methodism itself facing a major overhaul in the next 6 months. Certainly we will need to be exploring new ways of finding what it is to be church in our age. The world outside has many challenges. Violence is certainly prevalent in many forms and I for one cannot help wondering whether its visibility even in such forms as sniff videos of executions, will further desensitise us to it. Poverty continues to stalk our world and to claim victims particularly amongst those who are weakest due to youth or old age and whilst the Christian inspired Make Poverty History campaign has had its successes, we are far from final victory. And then there is the long litany of human cruelty. In the year in which we commemorate the 200th anniversary of Wilberforce’s bill to abolish the shipping of slaves to the plantations, slavery itself persists in many forms including the pernicious sex trafficking industry.

In the last couple of days, I have begun to read a book entitled “The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology” - might have helped one of my exams in training if I had done so three years earlier when I first bought it. A quote from it that has stood out for me is one by Gustavo Gutierrez regarding the challenges of Latin America;

He writes;

“The question in Latin America will not be how to speak of God in a world come of age, but rather how to proclaim God as Father in a world that is inhuman. What can it mean to tell a non-person that he or she is God’s child?"

And whilst our context is different from Latin America, in a real sense Gutierrez sums up our calling - to those who are oppressed by their experience of the world to demonstrate by words and action that God is Father and to enable those, often in my experience amongst ther very young who feel no sense of self worth, to know that they count for something for to God they are precious.


This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church Covenant Service on January 7th and for an ecumenical Covenant Service at Alwington Methodist Church on January 14th