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
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
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