The story goes on - Pentecost

Acts 2: 17 - 21

My all time favourite film is Dead Poet’s Society.” In this film, Robin Williams plays the part of John Keating who is an inspiring English teacher in a rather stuffy American private school for boys. Keating’s methods are unorthodox, never more so than when he takes the boys down to look at the pictures of students from the past. Rather spookily, he urges them to press close up against the pictures and asks them to listen to what those boys would tell them. Then he begins to whisper;

“Carpe Diem! Carpe Diem!”

“Seize the day! Have an extraordinary life!”

Not all the boys take the message in. And that is true at times in our Christian lives. We become content with what is rather than dreaming dreams of great possibilities. Sometimes, anyone would think that the first of the miracles of Jesus was to turn wine into water rather than the other way round.

Yet at Pentecost, Peter links the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with Old Testament prophecies in which people see visions and dream dreams.

I can’t help but wonder if we need visions and dreams today. We can look back at how Jesus enriched the lives of those at the bottom of the pile, smashed down walls of prejudice and proclaimed a Kingdom in which all are of value. Are there not dreams there for us to engage with. Martin Luther King in the face of racism proclaimed a dream of a world in which people would be judged by their characters rather than the colour of their skins. What I wonder are our modern dreams

- against war and the stench of the arms trade

- against the things that enslave people and cost them the fullness of life

- against torture and every form of cruelty

- for a kinder society in which all are valued.

None of these are new dreams. They are about a continuation of Christ’s proclamation of the Kingdom. And surely that matters.

I am reminded of how the Italian composer Puccini died whilst writing his opera “Turandot.” Friends eventually completed the work. In 1926, it was performed for the first time at La Scala Opera House in Milan. On the first night, it was conducted by Toscanini who reached the point where Puccini died where he dropped the baton and sadly said;

“At this point the maestro died!”

That was all for that night. But in subsequent performances, Turandot was perfomed as completed.

At Pentecost, the question before us is do we end the story of God’s love as revealed in Jesus at the point of Ascension or do we take it on to live in peoples’ lives and our world today. The gift of the Holy Spirit was linked to the call to take the message of Jesus into the world. So Pentecost is a time to remember that we are called into an ongoing story of God’s Kingdom in which we are all called to be signs of God’s grace.

Of course we cannot do it on our own. The task is just too big but we do not need to do it on our own. I cannot stand musicals and I like Liverpool football club even less. But a song from Carousel that is sung so regularly by the Kop puts it well;

“When you walk through a storm,
Hold your head up high,
And don't be afraid of the dark.
At the end of a storm,
There's a golden sky,
And the sweet silver song of a lark.
Walk on through the wind, Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown..

Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone.......
You'll never walk alone.”

And that’s the message of Pentecost. As you dream dreams and see visions of what can be in God’s world, you never walk alone. Because the Go between God that is the Holy Spirit is with you.


This sermon is being preached at a Churches Together service in Bideford on Sunday May 27th 2007

What a day! - Pentecost

Acts 2: 1-13

What a day it must have been. The Jewish festival of Pentecost was special - a sort of Harvest Festival with the religious spin of being a day to rejoice in the giving of the Law to Moses. It was a festival for which observant Jews would travel to Jerusalem. The streets would be full.

Unlike our often dull celebrations of Pentecost which seem to so lack the special foods or gifts of Christmas and Easter, the Jewish celebrations were very much alive and a celebration of the good things in life. People made bread from the first spring wheat and they drank wine made from the grapes of the last fall. Indeed this could be a celebration of excess with some rabbis of that time teaching that Jewish men should show their gratitude to God by drinking sufficiently to be intoxicated. I cannot help but wonder why with a background like this, Pentecost hasn’t taken off big time in binge drinking Britain! Still, perhaps it explains why Methodism tends to be a little shy of this particular Festival.

Indeed, I cannot help but wonder how having become intoxicated, people were able to stay awake all night reading the Torah in the hope that God would once again speak to Israel. It is certainly something beyond my capacity! And yet perhaps it explains why scoffers suggested that the followers of Jesus who became so transformed, were drunk rather than inspired.

So Pentecost was a time of excitement and religious enthusiasm. Yet, this particular Pentecost was like no other. Let us go for a moment to a room where the followers of Jesus are gathered. I assume that they were praying. These were a people who had been through a lot. They had seen Jesus betrayed and knew only too well of his crucifixion. Then they had encountered the good news of Resurrection. They had met a Risen Christ. But now he had gone from them once again. They were once more alone and vulnerable. But more than that, it was in such a state that they were wrestling with a farewell instruction from Jesus to be his witnesses in Jerusalem and more than that, in Judea, Samaria and even to the ends of the earth.

How could it be? After all, only weeks before that had failed the test when Jesus was taken to the cross. Oh sure, they had good intentions but good intentions are rarely enough. And yet, there was a possibility that it could happen for Jesus had made promises to them. Look back to the Last Supper where we find Jesus promising them;

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live you will also live.”

And as part that instruction to be witnesses, Jesus had made a promise:

“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”

Really, we need to relate the promise and the call for they are inextricably bound together. Without the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Great Commission merely sets the followers of Jesus up for a big time failure - nothing could be crueller. But the Great Commission becomes a possibility because the Gift of the Holy Spirit is to enable precisely that to happen. So Jesus promises the Holy Spirit not to simply make us feel good. He promiseds the Holy Spirit so that we might be useful, so that his work may continue not just in one locality but on a global scale.

And now it happens! The gift of the Holy Spirit which has in the past been for a select group of people , now comes upon the house and in great force. It is really hard to recreate exactly what happened. This is one of those times when the human descriptive capacity is limited. And yet in the drama of the description found in Acts there is incredible meaning that would have been understood by its earliest readers even if lost on us today. We hear of wind which reflects the word for Spirit in both Hebrew and Greek. We hear of fire which is traditionally understood as that which refines and purifies. And now comes a cacophony of sounds as those gathered begin to be able to communicate in a wide variety of languages. It is as if the divisions brought about at the Tower of Babel where language served to divide people, has been powerfully reversed. For here now, the followers of Jesus have a message that is for all people.

Well in little time it would seem that the followers of Jesus are out in the streets. Once timid in the face of power, now there is no holding them back. They have a message. They have a purpose. And nothing, absolutely nothing is going to hold them back. And all around there grows a sense of wonder as people gathered for the Festival begin to hear these people predominantly from a backwater, proclaiming boldly the good news of God.

Now of course the Gospel is not exactly accepted unanimously. It never is. And some knowing the reputation of the day suggest that they have got drunk a little bit earlier than the rest. I can empathise with how the disciples might feel at this unfair suggestion as some 20 years ago when staying with cousins (Steve was a Baptist minister in London at the time) I was taken ill just outside the Houses of Parliament in the middle of the morning and ended up having to lie down on the pavement. The first question that the policeman who was notified of my state asked me was whether I had been drinking. I remember distinctly failing to impress him by muttering, “If only! If only!” And yet in this case it is an understandable reaction. But soon, it will be answered. For Peter will preach that great sermon of Pentecost when he will link what is happening with Old Testament prophecies before in a challenging way telling the story of Jesus - affecting people in such a way that three thousand people will be baptised that very day.

And what of us? Pentecost belongs as much to today as to all those years ago. Listen to the words of Fred Pratt Green which we sang a little while ago;

The Spirit brought to birth
The Church of Christ on earth
To seek and save the lost;
Never has he withdrawn,
Since that tremendous dawn,
His gifts at Pentecost.”

Yes, the gift of the Holy Spirit is for today. For we like those early followers are not and cannot be up to the task in our own strength. We like them, need the enabling power of the Holy Spirit to fire us into action and to give us the discernment and all the other resources we need as we seek to continue the work of Christ. We need the third person of the Holy Trinity, what Bishop Taylor describes as “The Go Between God.”

For our faith is not just about a past. Yes, it is rooted in happenings in time and place. But it is also dynamic. Jesus has given us glimpses of the Kingdom of God. He has shown us a vision of the potential of God’s world. It is a vision that can thrill our very souls. And he invites us to dream dreams and to see visions. But not alone for these things are the product of his Spirit and can only become reality with the help of God’s Spirit.

So this morning, I invite you on a journey. It is a journey that involves are being connected with God and his being made flesh, in Jesus. Ask yourselves, how can the work of Jesus continue? How do we connect people with the Gospel in a comprehensible way with today’s world? How do we follow Jesus in bringing hope and dignity? How do we make a stand against the violence and prejudices that surround us to build a home for love? Big questions indeed! And yet questions we face in the company of God, the Holy Spirit.

What a day it must have been all those years ago. What days it makes possible in the here and now!



This sermon was preached at Parkham on Sunday May 27th 2007

A DNA to be proud of - Aldersgate Sunday

Mark 12: 28 - 34

And so we come once more to Aldersgate Sunday, that Sunday when Methodists traditionally remember an evening when the life of John Wesley was completely changed. Indeed, his journal account for May 24th is a sort of Methodist foundational document. Hear once more those words that have resounded down the years;

“In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street where one was reading Luther’s preface of the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Those are words which can as it were lead us to divide John Wesley’s life into two parts - Before Aldersgate and After Aldersgate.

Now I am not sure that John Wesley was not a Christian before Aldersgate. But I do know that what happened that evening transformed him from a man with a distinct aura of failure whose trip to the Americas had been a disaster largely of his own making, into a man who was God’s instrument in bringing Scriptural holiness to much of our land.

Think back a short while before Aldersgate and we find John Wesley writing;

“It is now two years and almost four months since I left my native country, in order to teach the Georgian Indians the nature of Christianity; but what have I learned myself in the meantime? Why (what I least of all expected) that I who went to America to convert others, was myself never converted to God.”

Now later John Wesley had second thoughts about what he had here written for some years later he added a footnote to this entry in his journal which read, “I am not sure of this.” But what can be said is that in the years following the experience of the warmed heart, John never again regressed into the troubled state that preceded it. And of course John was not alone. For when he, later that evening, went around to visit brother Charles, he found that Charles had had a similar experience just three days earlier. And so the two brothers were able to sing the hymn that Charles had written to celebrate his experience, “Where shall my wondering soul begin.”
And what a hymn that is. It literally throbs with the excitement of the realisation of the merciful and abundant love of God as expressed in Jesus. Listen to the words of but one verse;

“Outcasts of men to you I call,
Harlots and publicans and thieves!
He spreads his arms to embrace you all;
Sinners alone his grace receives:
No need of him the righteous have;
He came the lost to seek and save.”

And don’t those words just throb with passion and conviction. For in them we see the essential message of the Wesley brothers that human hope has to be rooted in the generous love of God which we see revealed in Christ, the love which is for all for as Charles Wesley puts it;

“For all my Lord was crucified,
For all, for all my saviour died.”

But fine as all this might sound, surely we need to ask ourselves why the Wesley brothers matter today. After all, talking about the Wesley brothers too much brings its problems. Is there not a danger of slipping into idolatry by reliving a past because we find the present too hard to face? I think that this is a real danger and yet I still find an encounter with the Wesley brothers to be helpful.

Let me explain it like this. Yesterday I attended the Speech Day at Edgehill College. The guest speaker was their former chaplain who happens to be the President Designate of the Methodist Conference, Rev Dr Martyn Atkins. He spoke about the DNA of organisations which provide their essential purpose. The means by which the purpose is met may change with the years but the purpose remains constant. Now I think that this is a useful way of seeing the influence of the Wesley brothers. Since their day, there have been advances in Biblical scholarship, science has progressed, theological research has been diligently undertaken and we now live in a world in which other faiths are not merely found in somewhat patronising books but are embodied in people we know and work with. This has to mean that the Wesleys can hardly be the last word to solve all our present day dilemmas. And yet, at the same time they are a real part of our DNA, our purpose and mission as the people of God. So this evening, I want us to tap into a little of that DNA which can inform our being.

Firstly, the Wesleyan DNA tells us of a God who can transform people. Thankfully in Methodism we do not have a neat theology which we have to follow without deviation. Not even Wesley’s 4 sermons fulfil that role for believe you me there is much in some of them that some of us might wish to argue about. But what the Wesleys leave us with are certain emphases. And to me the most important of these are the “Four Alls.” These proposition are quite simply;

All need to be saved

All can be saved

All can know that they are saved

All can be saved to the uttermost

Now to unpack these in details may not always be easy but the basic message contained within is fundamentally revolutionary. It is the message that God is fully aware of human failings and longs to do something about it. Through grace, we can experience God’s forgiveness and be lifted up to a new plane of life. And believe you me, if we look at the annals of the Great Evangelical Awakening, we truly find wonderful stories of the most depraved people becoming transformed into well adjusted and useful saints. Oh yea, the message of the Wesleys is to put no limit on what God can accomplish in peoples’ lives.

Secondly, the Wesleyan DNA calls on us to be creative in our mission of encouraging people to be open to God. Examples of this are John becoming “more vile” by taking up field preaching when pulpits of churches became closed to him or in his use of lay people and women. We know that without the ministry of local preachers today the whole edifice of Methodism would collapse and there is surely something to be treasured about well trained preachers bringing their experience from a wide range of vocations to bear within the ministry of the church. For surely, here is a much a precious resource as the club of back to front collars. The two are complimentary. And what of women? Even today there are those who throttle the Spirit by rejecting the gifting of half of our people in a stance every bit as shameful as apartheid! For John, this was not an easy one but the example of his mother Susannah was something he couldn‘t escape. And so whilst his approach was stuttering, John came to see women exercising all forms of leadership within Methodism, something sadly put into reverse in the years after his death.

So as we see John being creative, is there not there a measure of encouragement to us as we begin to explore “fresh expressions” of what it is to be church to meet the needs of our day.

Thirdly the Wesleyan DNA teaches us that we are a part of the church but not the whole. Sure there were times in which John does not come out very well in his attitudes towards Catholicism. He could be cut throat in polemic debate and yet his letter to a Catholic in 1749 following disturbances in Cork is seen by many as a model of ecumenism. Listen to these words;

“I think you desire the tenderest regard I can show, were it only because the same God hath raised you and me from the dust of the earth and has made us both capable of loving and enjoying him to eternity; were it only because the Son of God has bought you and me with his own blood. How much more, if you are a person fearing God (as without question many of you are) and studying to have a conscience void of offence towards God and towards man?”

We see such a generous attitude in how he came to see George Whitefield with whom he had sharp disagreements after Whitefield took a Calvinist view of God’s working. Yet amidst these disagreements when John was asked if he expected to see Whitefield in heaven, his reply was “I fear not for George will be so much nearer the throne of grace.”

By all means quibble with his sermon on the “Catholic Spirit” (I do!) but recognise the generous spirit to those who take a different view which has to be a vital part of the Wesleyan DNA.

An fourthy, the Wesleyan DNA suggests that Christianity can not be a solitary religion. For John, to be a follower of Christ meant being involved in the social issues of the day. John concerned himself with matters relevant to healthcare and education as well the poor and those needing capital to set up businesses. His very last act was to write to William Wilberforce to encourage him in his campaign against the slave trade. And why not? For to John the love of God and the love of neighbour could never be separated from each other. Indeed his involvement in social issues as well as his effect on the characters of people has long been given credit for there not being a revolution in Britain in the late eighteenth century - although I cannot help but feel that the prevalent social order probably deserved to be swept away!

And fifthly, Wesley took learning seriously. Perhaps fittingly for one who had been a Fellow of Lincoln College Oxford, John took seriously the business of learning. He wrote prolifically and published affordable abridged editions of theological works. He certainly expected his travelling preachers to put in time on study. For if the calling is real, it needs to be responded to with seriousness. And today, rightly, Methodism seeks to stretch the minds of its people to meet the tasks to which they are called.

Of course, this is only a part of the Wesleyan DNA. But it is a precious DNA. It doesn’t mean that we have to agree with all that Wesley taught. If her were here today, he probably wouldn’t accept all that he taught. But that is not the big issue. The big issue is that in the objectives of the Wesley brothers, we can get a feel of who we are and what we are about. In the emphases of two very fallible men, we get a glimpse of some of the potential of what it means to follow Christ. A response to God’s love which leads us into love of God and neighbour. And to that calling we can surely thrill.

Today, many of us are into researching our family trees to understand more fully who we truly are. In the story of the Wesley brothers, the sermons of John and the hymns of Charles (hymns described by Congregationalist Bernard Manning as Methodism’s “greatest contribution to the common heritage of Christendom”) we see an inspiration as we seek to respond to the command of Jesus to love God and neighbour. We see both a heritage and what we are called to be.

And you know, whilst we are not the only people with a DNA, I think the Wesleyan heritage is a DNA that Methodist people should cherish. My question is however, do we act as if embarrassed by it or do we see it as an inspiration for our continued pilgrimage. May it be the latter for this DNA is truly a wonderful gift of God to today’s church.


This sermon was preached at Alverdiscott Methodist Church on May 20th 2007

Jailhouse Rock - Easter 7

Acts 16: 16 - 34

“I’m free!”

Words that may conjure up different pictures here this morning. Some of you may be think of the song by that title recorded by “The Who” in their rock opera “Tommy.” Others may the thinking of the late John Inman’s creation, the delightfully camp Mr Humphries, in that comic classic of double entendre, “Are you being served?”

Frankly I love “The Who” and in my younger days greatly enjoyed watching the goings on at Grace Brothers which will hopefully soon be repeated on our screens. But the authors of the Acts of the Apostles, who were deprived of these offerings of the late 20th Century, also had a thing or two to say about freedom as well. Indeed freedom is at the very heart of our reading from Acts. For here is a Scripture that affirms the desire of God for all people to be free.

This year, we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Act of Parliament which abolished the transatlantic slave trade. It was a major step to abolishing a trade upon which much of our nations prosperity had been built, a trade that had been supported by most people in our country who could not see the problem with treating people from different lands as lesser people who did not merit a share in freedom. To challenge this reality and to challenge the vested interests which always lie at the heart of wrong, was to step out on a limb and even risk one’s life.

And it was no different for Paul and Silas nearly 2,000 years ago. We find them being pestered by a disturbed slave-girl who has been following them around for several days. Her disturbance is put down to the presence of an evil spirit and her disturbance was source of income for her owners through her capability in terms of fortune telling. Anyway a clearly exasperated Paul is recorded as ordering the spirit from the girl. And this brings problems for Paul. For his actions whilst freeing the girl from a form of possession have taken away from the girl that capacity for fortune telling. And with it her profitability for her owners.

You see, in those days, there were those who greatly prized an ability to tell what the future held for them. They were prepared, like some gullible people even today, to pay substantial sums of money to those whom they believed to be gifted in this way. And so by his actions, Paul has cost her owners serious money. And with it he has made them angry!

Now it is obvious that the girl’s owners have no concern for the wellbeing of this girl. She is little more than a cash machine to them. Their attitude, we would all agree is contemptible. But wait a moment! Are there not ways in today’s world in which we like them treat people as expendable, as being only of use for what we can get out of them. Yet here, Paul is by his deeds proclaiming a message that we are each and everyone of us of intrinsic worth.

But more than that, Paul is prepared to challenge the accepted norms of society just like those nineteenth century opponents of slavery. Because, a practice is accepted or because it is part of what makes the local economy go round, does not make it right. For surely, there needs to be a critique of those practices, however, beneficial they may be to some, which in their working are life denying rather than life enhancing.

Let me use two examples which occur to me. The first is the export of deadly weapons often to the most obnoxious of regimes. Real talents are used for an outcome that might well involve the denial of life. Quite frankly, we are looking at a prostitution of science. Or let’s look at the rapid expansion of the gambling industry in our country with already close on 400,000 problem gamblers, a country in which in the past fortnight a man with huge gambling debts was in court for seeking to sell a kidney. Now, assuming that these things are not a straight example of to borrow a phrase from a 1980s hit record, “The lunatics are running the asylum,” I guess that there could be economists and politicians who would say that these things are job creating and valuable for the good of the economy and even for national security.

To which a loud response of “Rubbish” or something less polite is needed. You see, sometimes a Gospel stand confronts the centres of power and as in this case self interest. So please, let’s get away from the myth that Christianity is meant to have a comfortable relationship with the status quo. No way! The reality is that to be authentic the Gospel needs to challenge the status quo where it is life denying just as we see it doing so through Paul and also more importantly through Jesus. To follow Christ and true freedom is to embrace the words of James Russell Lowell, the American poet;

“THEY are slaves who fear to speak
For the fallen and the weak;
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think;
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.”

Well for not conforming, for defending the weak, Paul and Silas join the litany of people who are treated callously by those who defend an oppressive status quo. The unthinking mob are incited into a rage and after the equivalent of a show trial, Paul and Silas are stripped, flogged and imprisoned by magistrates who are meant to administer justice but whose greater concern would seem to be to clampdown on those who challenge the way things are. Read the reports of Amnesty International and you find powerful echoes of such wrongdoing even today.

And so we find Paul and Silas denied of freedom in a dirty prison, recovering from the injuries inflicted upon them. But what are they doing? They are singing!

Now there are times when it is easy to sing. Back in 2,000 Robbie Williams produced an album entitled “Sing when you’re winning.” It reminds me of the taunt at football grounds across the country;

“You only sing when you’re winning.”

All of which means that as a Manchester United supporter I get to do quite a lot of singing despite yesterday - well certainly more than a Torquay United supporter! But singing when you are winning seems very distant from these two battered men recovering from the poisonous hatred of the mob. But sing they do. They are not going to allow brutality and injustice have the last word. No way! For here is a stance of defiance, a defiance that will later continue when they refuse their freedom and demand an apology from those who have treated them so badly. Now, instead of giving in or wallowing in self pity, they sing of and to a greater power than the morally bankrupt power of Rome. For arbitrary tyrants and their toys of violence are not the greatest authority. That position belongs to the unarmed God who works through love and faithfulness.

And now comes a twist, a moment of transformation. For the jailhouse begins to rock with the violence of one of the earthquakes that are so common in that part of the world. The doors open. The chains fall off. And suddenly, things are turned upside down. From being all powerful, the jailer is transformed into a desperate man. His authority has dissolved and with a sense of failure he is about to turn his sword upon himself. But relief is at hand in the shape of Paul and Silas. Rather than get their revenge served up, they instead urge him not to harm himself. And in what follows, they tell him of Jesus and of his need of Jesus. And so having begun the night placing Paul and Silas bound in chains with no relief from their physical pain, the jailer ends the night a changed person - now washing their wounds and in faith being baptised into the community of the followers of Jesus. Transformed not so much by the earthquake itself as by the desire of inmates not to wish him harm this jailer had met a new authority that;

- was everlasting rather than temporary as with Rome

-based on unending love rather than the imposition of fear

-rooted in truth rather than deception

-that valued him as a person rather than as a commodity

What a Jailhouse Rock! No, not in the sense of the classic Elvis Presley song about a group of gangsters. This was the Jailhouse Rock that set a man free to be all that he could be just as the same had happened to the slave girl.

And today! Are not we at times in chains? The chains of compulsion, of hurt, of prejudice and of rejection. Don’t we all need a touch of the Jailhouse Rock in our lives to set us free to know our value and that of others?

Today the God of love offers us each the embrace that tells us that we are allright, of value. The God of love, no control freak, offers each of us a blessing to make the most of our lives in this world and then commissions us to like Paul and Silas, go singing into the world with the news of a freedom train that is for all!


This sermon is being preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday May 20th 2007

Stand up! - Easter 6

John 5: 1 - 9

One of the greatest curses today is the view held by many that the status quo is for ever. The inability to believe that things can be different freezes many lives, acts as an obstacle to desirable social change and at present threatens the very survival of the church.

Thank God, God is in the business of change and the creation of new opportunities. After all this is the God who gives a message to a political prisoner on the island of Patmos, St John, saying;

“See, I am making al things new.”

The signs of God making all things new are clearly to be seen in the life and ministry of Jesus. And today’s episode from the life of Jesus is just such an example.

It is an episode based on a paralysed man. The scene is a pool called Bethesda which means “House of Mercy.” This pool seems to have been something of a healing shrine. What made it special was that it was fed by a spring which would from time to time bubble, disturbing the waters. Local tradition attributed such disturbances to the touch of an angel and from this came an understanding that when this happened the first person into the water would be healed.

Amongst the large number of people at what might be seen as a Palestinian equivalent in many ways to the likes of Lourdes today, were people who suffered from all types of infirmities. They were united by a simple longing to be healed of their ailments. And for some the wait must have seemed like an eternity. Amongst them was our paralysed man. He had been an invalid for thirty eight years. How much of that time he had been at the pool we do not know. But evidently, he was feeling somewhat discouraged. Others were continually beating him into the water and he lacked the necessary help. As he puts it to Jesus;

“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, somebody else steps down ahead of me.”

Words of a man who is beginning to feel somewhat trapped in his predicament. Words of a man who is beginning to lose hope. And of course, without hope, we can effectively be paralysed into the limitations of the present. We can all too easily accept a miserable status quo.

But Jesus challenges the status quo. His first action is to ask the man what might seem to some to be a strange question;

“Do you want to be made well?”

Our reaction to that question might be to shout back, “Of course!” And yet there is a serious point in the question. Are there not times when we cling to a flawed present rather than embrace change? After all, change however reasonable it might seem to be at a distance, brings an element of risk. We all know the saying;

“Always keep a hold on nurse for fear of finding something worse.”

And in a situation such as this, however much a part of the man longs to be healed that he might be mobile, surely there is also a note of apprehension to be sounded. If thirty eight years of paralysis will have taught the man one thing, it will have been how to beg. Knowing that people will respond to his need, will have provided him with a form of security. Be healed and that income will dry up! And what other means does he know to support himself financially?

Indeed, there is a touch of ambivalence about the man’s answer. A simple “Yes, I want to be mad well” is lacking. But this is an encounter in which the note of ambivalence in the paralysed man, does not stop Jesus from acting. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus will say;

“I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

And this man his going to have life to the full whether he wants it or not. He may be prepared to wallow in his misfortune. He may be prepared to live with a situation in which someone else always beats him to the waters. He may be well and truly resigned to the status quo. But Jesus is emphatically not resigned to the status quo. Indeed he challenges it:

“Stand up, take your mat and walk.”

Yes, Jesus is telling him that it is time to embrace a new reality. That new reality may well present its won difficulties. So what! Jesus doesn’t offer the easy way out. But the new reality to which Jesus calls this paralysed man is a reality that is infinitely more pregnant with possibilities than the stifling reality that preceded it. For he becomes well, takes up his mat and begins to walk. And with that off he goes on his new life, telling others what has happened to him but beyond that we do not know whether in later years he rejoiced at his healing or regretted it, whether he used it as a springboard fro new life or failed to adjust the all the possibilities of his new reality.

All of this episode in the ministry of Jesus goes back nearly two thousand years. And yet it remains relevant. We meet as an Easter people for we are the other side of the Resurrection, that decisive Yes to all the doings and teachings of Jesus. We are a community who celebrate the incredibly good news that this life giving Jesus is well and truly alive and unleashed within our world. And that Jesus challenges our life denying realities by offering new life enhancing realities.

This speaks deeply into our own lives. We may well feel battered and worthless. Yet Jesus speaks to us of our being the precious children of God. All the marks that threaten our sense of value are as nothing compared to the value given to us as those made in the Divine Image, as those for whom Jesus died in the full knowledge that we have marred the Image. We need to embrace the reality of being precious to God and of seeing the preciousness of others including those who are very much other than us and our preconceptions.

It speaks also into the life of our world. Too often, we are prepared to accept and live with the huge injustices around us as if there can be no other way. And yet with God we can embrace new realities. Think for a moment of the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. When William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and a number of others began their campaign, they were thought of as crazies. After all slavery had always been around. Most of the church supported it. The prosperity of the nation along with national security were held to depend on this trade. To oppose it was little short of treason. But thank God, a group of people including some who were inspired by their faith, dared to confront this monstrous trade. And the result was a new reality. So today, rather than accept life denying realities, we need to embrace new life enhancing possibilities. And if you want a couple of examples, here they are. The case made for the arms trade is almost a complete replica of that for the slave trade. If we don’t do it someone else will. Well, it is time to confront such a deathly realism and begin the work to create a new and healthier reality than a trade which is the commerce of death. And if that one isn’t for you, how about daring not just to oppose the proposed expansion of gambling which will wreck the lives of many a loser and devastate families but to roll back the frontiers of this vile exploitation of the weak, the gullible and the desperate.

And finally, it speaks to the church. I am as comfortable as anyone here with the current reality of what church is. I have grown up with it and to be honest I rather like it. Yet, if we do not look at new ways of doing church which engage with today’s world, church will be pushed to the margins and in the case of Methodism I might well live to see the last lights turned out. “Fresh Expressions” and “Emerging Church” are movements within our churches to create new realities. They involve risk and uncertainty but to play safe would be like a paralysed man by that pool, happy to just go on missing out on the waters that would change reality.

So today, in the season of Resurrection, may we be open to the living Christ who offers now as he did by that pool, the possibilities of new realities that offer so much rather than tired, stifling realities that we have grown used to. Rather than just accepting what is at most second best, may we respond the Gospel by embracing the new possibilities that God loving offers.

The choice is to meekly lie down or

“Stand up, take your mat and walk!”


This sermon is being preached at Alwington Methodist Church on Sunday May 13th 2007

Love spreads out - Easter 5

John 13: 31 - 35
Acts 11: 1-18

“Like a mighty tortoise
Moves the Church of God;
Brothers we are treading
Where we’ve always trod;
We are all divided,
Many bodies we;
Very strong on doctrine,
Weak on charity."

And uncomfortably, that parody of “Onward Christian Soldiers” is precisely how some people see the church of Christ. For too much of our history would seem to be a pale reflection of Christ. Too often the church has been divided - in my training in Cambridge I would pass on my way to lectures, the square where people were burnt in the sixteenth century for having an understanding of Christianity contrary to that of the prevailing religious authorities. And of course, the capacity of Christians to split and even to dechurch each other over some difference or other is a recurrent theme in our history. And of course if we treat each other badly, what is the chance of our treating others who in some way are different than us well?

And yet this temptation to exclude is challenged by our Scripture Readings this morning.

Let us first for a moment look at our reading from the Acts of the Apostles. We know that the early church had its stresses - after all the Apostle Paul spent a lot of time being angry. And no row was bigger than the ongoing row as to whether non Jews had to enter into a Jewish way of life in order to become real Christians. There were many in the church based in Jerusalem who thought they should do so and certainly Peter was one who thought this. Paul, on the other hand felt differently. His emphasis was on taking the Gospel to non Jews and in his letter to the Galatians he tells of a row with Peter over just this matter. Indeed, by the end of the letter, he completely loses it and suggests that it would be best if such Judaisers disembowelled themselves - the sort of language which makes our modern elections appear disappointingly tame.

And yet, we find Peter changing his understanding. Stood before the hostile church in Jerusalem, he recounts the events which brought about what might be seen as a second conversion experience in him. A conversion experience that led him to the home of a Roman centurion named Cornelius where he moves beyond a kosher lifestyle into sharing at the table of one whom previously he would have seen as ritually unclean.

Not that he had found it easy. By his own account he had to hear the command of God on three occasions before responding positively. Oh yes, even in those days when we imagine great things happening all the time, the followers of Christ could be like a tortoise. Even then, tradition and dogma could get in the way of seeing all people as equally precious in God’s sight. Just as still happens, people then could interpret the messages of God in a way that is a barrier to unconditional love and acceptance.
It is tempting to imagine Peter in this story as betraying something of the nervous uncertainty of Coronation Street’s Mavis Riley. But it doesn’t continue like that. For as Peter speaks to this non Jewish household, he becomes as much transformed as they are. His listeners receive the good news of salvation but more than that, they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Listen to Peter’s words;

“The Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning.”

In a way, we are seeing a Gentile Pentecost which is much like the Jewish Pentecost that we will be celebrating in three weeks time. And with this Gentile Pentecost comes a message that God has no partiality. God is for all peoples. And just as that ancient story of the Tower of Babel speaks of human ambition creating divisions, now the work of God’s Spirit breaks down the great walls that we have so often erected as barriers between peoples. For all peoples regardless of race, nationality, religion, sexuality, class or any other of the means by which we so often exercise judgement, are absolutely precious in the eyes of God. And that realisation which changed Peter, continues to challenge and change us today. Indeed, perhaps, here is a reminder that having accepted Christ, we have within us a need to go on getting converted time and time again that we might see the world more and more in a way that is in alignment with the love of Christ. And in that, we are a little like John Newton who in this 200th Anniversary Year from the abolition of the slave trade is especially in our minds. For after his conversion in a great storm, it would take him years to learn how properly to regard both women and Africans. Only through a process of continuous conversions would the blaspheming violent slaver become the saintly vicar of Olney who finally worked against the very wrongs that he had been complicit in.

So what is the heart of our Christian vision? Strange as it may seem in this Easter season but for a moment we need to go back in time to that upper room on Maundy Thursday. There under the shadow of the cross, Jesus is to be found earnestly speaking to his friends. And he offers them one final instruction;

“Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Now in these words, Jesus is not being gooey. He is not telling them that they should have the love that is shred within the nuclear family for each other. Still less is he saying that they should fancy one another. But he is saying that they should have the type of love which seeks the best possible wellbeing for each other. And the source of this is the love of God which we find in creation, in faithfulness and most especially in Christ who shows that love in its fullness in his Passion.

Of course, from the very beginning the church could not live up to such an ideal. But try it certainly did. And the way in which early Christian communities cared for the weak and vulnerable people led the third century caused the third century African Bishop Tertullion to comment that the pagans who were Christianity’s greatest foes, would comment;

“See how these Christians love one another.”

What a compliment! What a challenge for us to live up to! It’s a bit like the observation of Martin Luther King that the church is like a great extended family who receive a great bequest, a beautiful spacious, luxurious house to share with but one stipulation. All must live in it together.

And that isn’t always easy for the church is made up of such radically different people. But who said following Christ is meant to be easy?

But I can’t believe that this calling for love is just about within the church. You see, just like those Judaisers whom Paul confronted, we tend to place restrictions on the love of God. Yet in his letter to the Ephesians, we find Paul suggesting that God is the father of the whole human family, that we are all in relationship. And this fits so truly with the pattern of Jesus whose ministry seems to knock down barrier after barrier. In his life, we see Divine love being shown across racial and religious barriers. We see Divine love being shown across the barriers of gender and of lifestyle. Rubicon after rubicon is crossed by him.

And so the challenge of our scriptures today is to recognise that God does not practice favouritism. He is the God of all who loves all. This lies at the heart of the vision of John Wesley that Methodists should be the friend of all and the enemy of none. It is why against the background of conflict with the American colonies he asked;

“Are there no wise men among us? None that are able to judge between brethren? But brother goeth to war against brother, and that in the very sight of the heathen. Surely this is a sore evil among us? How is wisdom perished from the wise? What a flood of folly and madness has broken in upon us!”

Oh for a modern day Wesley to speak to authority!

Ultimately, this Biblical teaching is counter cultural. We live in an age in which we seem to need hate figures and those whom we can see as lesser. It feeds a sick pride.

In America, we recently saw that terrible massacre at Virginia Tech when a gunman killed thirty two people before turning his gun upon himself. He was clearly a deeply disturbed individuals whose actions have brought much suffering. Soon afterwards a thirty two stone memorial was set up for his victims. A student named Katelynn Johnson, then added a thirty third stone. Not surprisingly, it caused some controversy. But listen for a moment to what katelynn Johnson has said;

“My family did not raise me to do what is popular. They raised me to do what is morally right. We did not lose only 32 students and faculty members that day; we lost 33 lives.”

I do not know if this young woman is a Christian or anything else about her. But I believe that her actions are in accord with the scriptures we have heard today. For all are valuable to God, all being made in the Divine image however badly marred the image has become. And so this is no time to be tortoises in asserting the value of all. And frankly if our doctrine conflicts with charity, may charity win.

Meanwhile, may we celebrate our place of value with God by hastening to his table where we can celebrate his acceptance of us.


This sermon was preached at a Communion Service at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday May 6th 2007