Sermons from Bideford 2006/07

2007/08 Sermons

2007-12-03T01:08:00.000-08:00

Year A sermons from Bideford can be found here.

In your hearts enthrone him - Christ the King Sunday

2007-11-25T07:21:00.000-08:00

LUKE 23: 33-43

One of the first politicians I heard speaking at a public meeting was Tony Benn. He has always stimulated me even if on once occasion he firmly put me in my place after I asked a question on a subject we disagree with.

One of the areas in which I find him interesting is in the sphere of Christianity. You see, his great grandfather was a clergyman and his mother was a leading figure in the denomination to which he belonged. Benn’s thinking on such matters is as one might suspect highly independent. And one of the areas of concern I have heard him speaking on is his discomfort with language such as “Lord” and “King” in reference to Jesus. Indeed, Benn sees one of the themes of the Old Testament as being the heroic stand of the prophets against the Kings.

Now I have some sympathy with Benn on all of this. Today we live in a constitutional monarchy in which the Queen has the trappings of power but the real power in effect lies with the government which is sort of elected and occasionally with Parliament itself. In real terms it is Gordon Brown and company who decide the big issues whilst I suspect that at times the Queen’s family wish they had a bit of the old power when it comes to the likes of invasive tabloid journalism.

But of course, power can be exercised cruelly and in past generations this would normally be done through the King of the time. And of course, we know the stories of Henry V111 lopping off heads and the doings of for example the Russian despot Ivan the Terrible. And so the list could go on. Of course, in the 20th Century, the great tyrants were not Kings but commoners who rose thrugh the ranks , people such as Stalin, Mao tse tung, Hitler and Pol Pot. Not of royal blood but holders of a Kingly power that they wielded to deadly effect.

So how can we liken Jesus to those who have exercised great power?

Well for a moment let’s look back at how Christ the King Sunday originated. Its roots can be found in the Italy of 1925. Mussolini had been in power for some three years. The world was recovering for that monumental misuse of power that was the First World War. And in the Vatican as Pontiff named Pope Pius X1 wanted to assert that there was a different way to see the world. Rather than look at those who were manipulating the instruments of power, he sought to point to a greater loyalty, a loyalty to Jesus who was a King but so unlike the greedy power hungry leaders that were in abundance. And so Christ the King Sunday came into being, a Sunday that is now celebrated on an ecumenical basis.

But is Jesus a King? Well we certainly find him pointing to a Kingdom, the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom is at the heart of his words and deeds, a Kingdom that breaks into our world and which is pregnant with possibilities. And certainly in the account of his crucifixion, this is parodied by his opponents who sarcastically put a notice above him on the cross proclaiming;

“This is the King of the Jews.”

And yet you know whilst this was done in mockery it inadvertently pointed towards a profound truth. For when Pilate and Caiaphas breathed their last, their ability to influence the world came to an end. Yet Jesus has gone on influencing people through his message and the good news that we find embodied within him. After all as James Allen Francis puts it in a well known piece of prose;

“He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher.

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn't go to college. He never lived in a big city. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend.

Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned--put together--have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one, solitary life.”

But in affecting this earth, let us be clear that Jesus challenges our notions of power. There is no clunking fist telling us what we must believe in or do under threat or coercion. Far from it, Jesus turns our understanding of Kingship upside down for his Kingship is that which rejects the models of domination.

Let me use just a few examples.

The first is that most of the rulers attract a circle around them. In Britain we have harmless acolytes such as Silver Stick in Waiting and Grand Carver. I guess this is part of the decoration of life. But power attracts those who want something of its reflection upon themselves or those who in “Yes Minister” style wish to climb the greasy pole. And inevitably those with power seek to attract those who might be of help to them. Yet contrast this with Jesus who surrounds himself not with the “Good and Great” but with those devoid of status or wealth and even those who are branded outsiders. Yesterday, someone claiming to be a Christian implied that another person was an “undesirable.” Well let’s be clear that to Jesus whilst some of our actions may be undesirable, no human being is of themselves “undesirable.”

Secondly to those whose lives are in tatters Jesus gives priority. Far from pouring holy water upon the injustices of his time, Jesus challenges the wrongs of his day and it was for doing that that he attracted the hostility of the powerful elites of his day. His Kingship is that in which those who are least become first. It is that which opposes structures and actions that oppress. For here is a Kingship which brings a transformation in favour of those whose lives are in greatest need.

Thirdly, mercy is at the heart of this Kingship. Back in the days of capital punishment, the last hope for the condemned person was that the Home Secretary would recommend the Queen to exercise mercy. Mercy is very much an option in traditional understandings of power. But when it comes to the Kingship of Christ, mercy is at the heart of all things. Indeed when a condemned man on a cross next to Jesus recognises that his deeds have earned him his place on the cross and says to Jesus;

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom”

The reply of Jesus is;

“I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Do you see it? A man whose life has taken him to a place of public execution, becomes the first to share in paradise with Jesus. For mercy with Jesus is not just about letting us off. More than that it is an encounter with love and acceptance.

So the Kingship of Jesus is a liberating Kingship. We are not called to follow Jesus out of fear for the consequences if we do not. For this Kingship is not about armies or coercion but it is about being drawn into a new way of being by a Kingship that is deeply rooted in love. So we see before us in Jesus a total subversion of traditional ways of seeing Kingship. For the word that Tony Benn associates with the dominance of one poeron over others with Jesus becomes about servant hood and an assertion of the values of all. Drawn into a circle of love we are feed to do as the hymn writer encourages us to do;

“In your hearts enthrone him.”

Aaagh yes, here is no self serving Kingship but that which enables us to be truly free.

This sermon was preached at Alwington Methodist Church on Sunday November 25th 2007

Dragons or Dreams - 25th Sunday afterPentecost

2007-11-18T01:35:00.001-08:00

Isaiah 65: 17-25
Luke 21:5-19

Back in the 1960s Bob Dylan wrote a song entitled “The times they are a changing.” And certainly we are living in an age of unprecedented change be that change seen in economic, scientific or cultural terms. Truly, they times they are a changing.

Of course, change can be seen as beneficial. The only people who tend to disagree with that possibility are those who would wish to look back to some golden age or other. But of course all such golden ages when explored turn out to be mythical.

Look for a moment to an article from the American publication, “Harpers weekly.”

“It is a gloomy moment in the history of our country. Not in the lifetime of most men has there been so much grave and deep apprehension; never has the future seemed so incalculable as at this time. The domestic economic situation is in chaos. Our dollar is weak throughout the world. Prices are so high as to be utterly impossible. The political cauldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty. It is a solemn moment of our troubles. No man can see an end.”

It could be today when economies built on debt and inflated property markets such as both the American and British economies are, are facing a time of reckoning. But hold it! Those words were written 150 years ago back in 1857. So if things seem a bit worrying with all the talks of a banking credit crisis, such anxieties are not exactly new.

But sometimes there is good reason to be concerned at what is going on around us. There is no grounds for a facile optimism that buries its head in the sand and pretends that all is well when it patently isn’t. Certainly any form of religion that ignores dark realities isn’t worth the time of day. But thankfully, the revelation of God that we find in the scriptures in no way ignore dark realities.

There most certainly are dark realities lying behind our reading from Isaiah. Now the Book of Isaiah is probably the product of 3 Isaiahs or centres of such thought. This morning we have heard from the third and last of these Isaiahs. The first has warned of dark times coming. And come they most certainly have. The land of Judah where he was based, has been destroyed and whilst those left have faced the struggle to eke out a subsistence existence in a devastated economy, the movers and shakers have been taken far away into a distant land, traumatised by the loss of all that was familiar. And from this land comes the voice of the second Isaiah. But now with the exiles having returned to the land from which their ancestors were taken, we hear the voice of a third Isaiah who sees the immensity of the task before the people and who accordingly has words both of hope and at times of despair.

Now let us move on for a moment and we find Jesus speaking in the grounds of the Temple in Jerusalem. And in his words, we are powerfully reminded of the dark side of life. Not only does he speak of imminent destruction of the Temple but he also speaks of a future of wars, natural disasters and persecution. Now, sometimes, people do a great violence to these verses. They have become the happy hunting ground of cranks and extremists who are desperately seeking clues as the end of the world and sometimes even of a mind to give events a push in favour of such a direction. But let’s just pause for a moment. When Luke produces his meditation of the life of Jesus, he did so for a community who were no so much looking at these events in the future but living through them in the present. You see, by the time that Luke’s Gospel was written, Jerusalem had paid the price for lsitening to its false Messiahs who preached rebellion, for after a 4 year war Jerusalem with its Temple had been raised to the ground. Elsewhere, Vesuvius had erupted and Pompei was no more. And an emerging community of followers of Jesus were paying a heavy price in terms of persecuton both from their relatives and friends who had remained within Judaism and from Roman power which had no time for communities that were less than wholehearted in their commitment to Rome and the imperial cult. So the things that Jesus was speaking about belonged not to the realms of fortune telling but to the realities of life for Luke’s readers.

Given that life has its dark side, how are we to respond without going into denial? Well, I think there is a clue as to what should not be our approach that can be discerned by looking at Jesus’ words in so far as they imply the destruction of the Temple. Whilst we venerate great buildings today and part of the horror of September 11th 2001 was to see those seemingly indestructible towers crumble to the ground, we can still lose sight of the significance of Jerusalem’s Temple. For this Temple was the economic centre of Palestine as well as being the religious centre of the Jewish faith that even then had spread to many cities through the diaspora. But more than that, it was seen as the very place where God dwelled and where God could be encountered by the High Priest. But more than that it was a whiz of a building upon which great resources had been invested since the project was begun by the baby killing Herod the Great 40 years before Jesus stood there. It was in short one of the great marvels of the world. Listen for a moment to this description of the Temple offered by the contemporary historian Josephus;

“The outward face of the Temple … wanted for nothing that was likely to surprise either men’s minds or their eyes, for it was covered all over with plates of gold of great weight, and at the first rising of the sun, reflected back a fiery splendour, and made those who forced themselves to look upon it to turn their eyes away, just as they would have done at the sun’s own rays. But the temple appeared to strangers, when they were at a distance, like a mountain covered with snow for.. those parts… that were not gilt they were exceedingly white.”

No wonder that the religious establishment and many of the crowd would have been shocked at the words of Jesus for his words of destruction could only mean the end of the world as they knew it.

And here is a warning to us. It is too easy to think that we can keep the dragons at bay by relying on great institutions, building or traditional ways of doing things. For if the time are a changing, these things are but temporary. Long after these events, in 410 the unthinkable happened. The Visgoths invaded and ransacked the city of Rome that had dominated the world for many centuries. A story is told that across the sea in Africa, three scholars looked out on the Mediterranean Sea and saw a boat coming from Rome. With its arrival, a messenger ran to bring the earth shattering news,

“Rome has fallen.”

The three scholars stood in shocked silence. Then one of them said;

“If Rome has fallen, what will become of civilisation?”

The second said;

“If Rome has fallen what will become of the Christian faith?”

And the third scholar, the Bishop of Hippo, whom we know today as St Augustine, wisely observed;

“Brothers, perhaps we have loved Rome too much.”

And in those words our attachment to the familiar is challenged. It is this that lies at the heart of the emphasis on seeking fresh expressions of being church for the tools of a past age may not be those for the present. After all the symbols of God can never be a replacement for the reality of God. Rather than be a people who hold on to the familiar, perhaps we need to slay the dragons by daring to dream some dreams. After all, Isaiah looking at a need for a new beginning after over half a century of tears, cries out a God given message;

“Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered nor will they be brought to mind.”

And he dreams on about a time of being settled and finding the peace that is shalom where the wellbeing of all is promoted - a dream that needs indeed to echo into our age. Meanwhile Jesus, encourages his followers not to be distracted by the turmoil all around them and to hold on to their faith even when the going is at its hardest. How do we respond? Jesus' answer is found in later verses;

“Stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

In other words, we are to keep our eyes on the big picture that is to be found not so much in the temporary things but in the unending love and grace of God as revealed in Jesus.

Of course, there are many a dragon in this world but our calling is to confront the dragons that destroy life by being a people who dream dreams and see visions. We are called to be a people who see the possibilities that come from God to confront the dragons of our age be they;

Despair

Poverty

Warfare

Persecution

Denial of humanity.

In a fortnight, on the first Sunday of Advent we shall begin the journey that will take us to Christmas. At Christmas we shall be reminded again that in Christ light has come into the world that darkness can never put out. And Christmas wil reveal that ultimately it is the dreams and not the dragons that will prevail.

This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on November 18th 2007

Different family values here - Twenty fourth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-11-13T11:02:00.001-08:00

LUKE 20: 27-40

I wonder how many of you watched "The Vicar of Dibley." It was a great series even if being told by a former District Chairman that I was fast on the path to becoming a Father Jack sort of character, made me more of a "Father Ted" fan. Anyhow Anglican priest, Joy Carroll Wallis is reputedly the inspiration for Dawn French’s wonderful creation, Geraldine Grainger in “The Vicar of Dibley.” She tells a story of how back in the days when she was serving in Brixton, a woman in her congregation underwent surgery that was life threatening. Fortunately the woman survived. Coming round, she saw the blurred image of her doctor dressed in the typical doctor’s white coat. With a contented smile, she spoke to the apparition saying;

“Hello God! My name is Mary!”

Clearly Mary was a woman with a real faith that she would meet with God after her death.

This evening, however, we have met with a group of people who had no such belief in resurrection. These people were the Sadducees, a party with influence amongst the wealthy elite. Well represented amongst the Sanhedrin who would condemn Jesus at a show trial, they were greatly influenced by Greek culture and all too aware when it came to the Romans that accommodation was in their interests. Yes, these Sadducees were at the top of the pile. And Jesus certainly had a rocky relationship with them, his parable about Dives (who had all the hallmarks of a Sadducee) and Lazarus showing just what Jesus made of these people.

Now the issue of the Resurrection was one which emphasised their distance from those other antagonists of Jesus, the Pharisees. The Pharisees were strong believers in the concept of the resurrection of the dead. To them, it was a reason for hope. After all life would seem to be full of injustices. Only resurrection accompanied by judgement would seem to put wrongs right. Whilst those who perpetuated injustice would be brought to account, those who had lived righteously would be rewarded. It all made sense and could be reconciled with their understanding of a God who offers a hope that is just.

But for the Sadducees, things looked different. From their perspective, a belief in resurrection was linked to a belief that the present age was in the grip of dark powers which necessitated a vindication of the righteous who suffered in this world. But this would imply that the present age was corrupted and in the view of Sadducees would put the continued existence of the covenant between God and Israel in question. So this group of society’s winners rejected the resurrection, suggesting that Jews were free to influence their own destiny by right actions. To paraphrase Many Rice Davies;

“They would say that wouldn’t they?”

Anyhow, the Sadducees ridiculed both the idea of resurrection and those who propagated it. And so it is that we find in our Gospel Reading an approach to Jesus in which they sought to expose what they saw as the absurdity of resurrection.

In the scenario which the Sadducees put to Jesus, a man who is married to a woman from whom he has had no children, dies. In accordance with what was known as the levirate rule, she was married to the next brother whop die. And so the story goes on until all seven of the brothers have died leaving the woman with no children. It is as if marrying this woman is the kiss of death. Anyhow at this point, they come to the big moment, the question that they have been building up to;

“Whose wife will she be since the seven were married to her?”

Can’t you imagine the self satisfied smile son their faces? Can’t you imagine their joy that they have just asked the unanswerable question? Surely the trick question will silence the Galilean!

But the tables are about to be turned. And they are turned in two ways. Firstly, Jesus makes a contrast between this age and that age. Let’s look at it in terms of the levirate rule. The rule which dates back to the time of Moses had reason behind it. It certainly protected widows to a degree but more than that, it also fitted in with the ancient Israelite’s understanding of eternal life as being about producing heirs who would continue the family’s ownership of the land through sons. It may have had validity in its time but I suggest that it is not quite what we mean today when we speak of “family values.” And in this we find a good reference point in how we should do our theology today. Just quoting scriptures is an unsatisfactory way of addressing God’s revelation. That is precisely what we find the Sadducees doing here. Surely, if we are to take Scripture seriously rather than doing violence to it, we need to seek the reason for the revelation in question. This means the context of its time needs to be considered and how the principles might best be applied to the in many ways different world in which we live today - for otherwise whilst being true to the literal word we may depart from the spirit of a given scripture.

But when Jesus talks in terms of different ages, he means more than that. We can like the Sadducees only see things in the light of this world but there are the times when we need to see things in the light of eternity. That which is beyond this world is hardly to be seen as a mere continuance of what we know in this life. And in this encounter we find that in the suggestion that marriage as we know it may not be for the age that is to come.

If for a moment I may stop here on this one, there will be some of us who are uncomfortable with this scripture. Many of us have happy attitudes to marriage and we want to see it in the beyond. Certainly, I have to confess that I am less than enamoured with the last Pope’s suggestion of a celibate Heaven. Of course we do not fully know the picture on these things. After all, marriage as known at the time of Jesus was less about love than it was about an exchange of two rights - the rights of a man to a woman and a woman’s right to a man’s support. How different is marriage at its best in today’s world even though today in our country marriage is all too often about control. That there is love in the beyond is not in question. How it is, is something that belongs to the realm of speculation. For us to try to know all the answers is an arrogance that is best avoided.

But finally, Jesus uses Scripture to make his second response. He reminds them that Moses has spoken of God as the God of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Long dead were these men yet God reveals himself to Moses as their God. Surely God can not be the God of what is no more. They must surely still be for God to speak of being their God. As Jesus puts it;

“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

Do you get it? God goes on being our God when our earthly life comes to an end. As Paul recognised in his letter to the church in Rome, no extremity separates us from the love of God, not even death itself. God goes on being committed to us and so we continue to have life.

Tonight, we have encountered the world of speculation and petty points scoring. We need to move from that place. Like the woman from Joy Carroll Wallis’ church we do well to simply trust that God’s purpose of love is unending. And as for the details, let us not waste time in the here and now. After all we have all eternity for that.

This sermon was preached at Alverdiscott Methodist Church on Sunday November 11th 2007

We will remember them - A sermon for Remembrance Day

2007-11-10T15:15:00.001-08:00

Micah 4: 1-5
Matthew 5:43-48

My father has never been one to talk much about the Second World War in which he fought from 1943. I know that he was wounded on two occasions. And whilst he always attended Remembrance Day services, he chose not to claim those medals to which he was entitled.

Now with Parkinsons Disease, his memory and communication skills are diminished. And so it is too late to ask the questions which I wish that I had asked. So it is that yesterday morning I found myself looking on the internet for information about a battle that I know he was involved in - actually wounded in. It was the Battle over Hill 112, known by some as Cornwall Hill, a battle that was seen by many as of great significance in the struggle for Normandy. It was a battle that had a dreadful level of casualties with one regiment about which I read coming out of the battle with only 75 survivors from an original 900 combatants.

Certainly the BBC has put together an impressive collection of the memories of people who were involved in the Second World War. For surely history is best discovered not so much through official documents or sanitised versions but through the testimony of people who lived through momentous events, telling of what they witnessed, felt and did.

In one of these accounts, a survivor of Hill 112 named Frank Sumsion tells of a book written by a John Stirling who was a tank commander of the 4th/7th Hussars. Sumsion suggests that Stirling expresses his feelings with the following words;

“In company with millions of other young men I have spent five of what they say are the best years of my life learning and practising a profession which has destruction for its raison d’ etre

I do not doubt for one moment that we were right to do this or that our cause was just and true; of that I am convinced, and without that neither I nor the others could have ever seen this thing through.

But equally I am convinced that should this situation ever arise again, it will represent our failure to fight for peace with those same magnificent qualities which have shone through the dross of war, and it will spell the doom of all civilised existence and progress on this earth.”

Words of a man who was committed to the conflict in which he was involved but who believes that the honourable way to honour those who have died is to direct the same level of commitment that is used in war to ensure that it is not repeated. For let there be no doubt that those who have been through the mill of war, know that it is to be dreaded rather than glorified. Listen to the words of the Canadian war hero Brigadier General Dollard Menard who in his younger years had been wounded 5 times at Dieppe and who had won the DSO for his efforts. Responding to an article about Dieppe, he responded;

“War is Hell. In war there are no winners. They have produced nothing but misery. I hate war.”

And if those who have been through the fires of warfare know its inherent evil, they find echoes in the Scriptures. One of the uncomfortable realities in the Hebrew Bible is the occasions when writers seek to identify God with the violence of their time. Doubtless, you know the stories where God is portrayed as approving of the most shocking cruelties. The question is all too often put as being about whether God is on our side when it should be a matter of whether we are on God’s side. But thankfully, there are the moments when God is discovered as being on the side of peace. We see this in our Scripture Reading from Micah. Prophesying at a time of darkness when Israel has been overrun by the armies of Assyria, he dares to suggest that this is not how it must always be. And in so doing he offers a vision of a time when under the guidance of God, people will follow the ways of peace;

“They will beat their swords into ploughshares
And their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
Nor will they train for war any more.”

A dream you may say but if humanity has lost the capacity to dream, then we are greatly impoverished.

In Jerusalem at the Yad Vashem Holocasut Museum ther is an inscription that proclaims;

“In remembrance lies the secret of deliverance.”

These words are true regarding the possibility of moving on from the dreadful crimes of the Holocaust, concerning which Jews were the largest victims numerically. These words are also true for us on Remembrance Day for if we are not prepared to take time to honour those whom we remember today, we are unlikely to attain deliverance from the scourge of war. Indeed the haunting words at the Dachau Concentration Camp memorial speak to us;

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

But how can the dream of Micah find fulfilment? After all, does not history suggest an inevitability of war? Well, it may not surprise you but I see the hope coming in the message of Jesus. In the sermon on the mount he makes the astounding proposition;

“Love your enemies.”

What? Surely he can’t be serious! Well, yes, he is. But take note. This is not about the love which is rooted in our feeling. Still less is it about the sort of love that we feel for members of our family. On the contrary, the Greek word that we find in the early copies of Matthew’s Gospel is the word “agape.” And this word has been translated as being “an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being.” Still a tough call yet a clear call to be a people who break the tendency to ever increasing circles of hatred, bitterness and violence by instead embracing ever increasing circles of reconciliation, understanding and the peace that promoted well being. And this is surely a counter cultural way which offers hope to a world that at times seems to be heading at great pace on a one way journey into destruction and ultimately oblivion.

And you know there are examples of this happening. Let me for a moment say just a few words about three such examples.

Look first to New York, a city that suffered so grievously on September 11th 2001 when the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers took place with the loss of nearly 3,000 lives. Soon afterwards, there came the military attack on Afghanistan with once more considerable damage. Amongst the buildings damaged was a mosque some 40 miles from Kabul, the Afghan capital. It had been occupied by Taliban fighters against the will of local villagers. But hope was at hand in the form of the Episcopalian Bishop of New York Mark Sisk who promoted a scheme costing $37,000 dollars to help repair the mosque.

Then let us travel to South Africa, a land where many predicted civil war with the fall of apartheid. And here we can see Desmond Tutu with his Truth and Reconciliation Commission, not ignoring the past as happened with the amnesty given to the Pinochet regime in Chile but instead facing up to the wrongs of the past in Tutu’s words;

“getting victims and perpetrators to talk together to seek to find the truth, forgiveness and reconciliation as the basis for an amnesty and a new start.”

And finally, let us look to Northern Ireland where far to many service people and civilians alike lost their lives in the troubles. And here we can see a Methodist minister called Harold Good who only last month won the 2007 World Methodist Peace Award. A Methodist minister in the Shankhill Road at the beginning of the troubles, Harold Good became a calming influence who went on to be a director of the Corrymeela centre for Reconciliation before pressing for the recent Peace process and even serving as a Protestant witness alongside a Roman Catholic priest in verifying the decommissioning of IRA arms.

And of course the list could go on. And today, more than anything we need peacemakers to build understanding between those whose worldview is Christian and those whose worldview is Muslim.

A story is told of the Prophet Muhammad standing in respect of a dead person as a funeral procession passed through the streets of Medina. A companion said to him;

“Oh Prophet, that was the funeral of a Jew not a Muslim and yet you stood up in respect.”

The Prophet answered;

“Was he not a human being.”

Today, we remember so many human beings, all children of God as well as precious to their families, who had their lives cut short in the conflicts of the last century. Many of them were amongst the finest of their generation, seeking to respond to the call of their nation. Today, we honour them and resolve that they will not be forgotten. And as we do so, we resolve to be true to the debt of honour that is owed to them. For as we remember those who have given their all, we seek the deliverance that can only come through the Peace that seeks the well being of all.

We will remember them!

This sermon is being preached at an Ecumenical Remembrance Day service in Littleham on Sunday November 11th 2007.

Oh for trumpet voice! - Non lectionary sermon to commemorate 300th anniversary of birth of Charles Wesley

2007-11-04T05:06:00.000-08:00

1 John 4: 7-12

Matthew 6: 28-34

Just three miles from where I was born there is a hole in the ground which has been shaped into a great amphitheatre. It is Gwennap Pit. Now with neatly layered rows of seats, it is a venue held in great regard in Cornish Methodism. There in the 1740s both John and Charles Wesley were to preach, the former returning many times.

My ancestors , it seems from family history research, were followers of the Methodist movement at quite an early stage of that movement. And so like many other Cornish miners, they would have travelled to the Pit to hear John Wesley. But more importantly they would have sung the hymns of Charles Wesley that would have enabled them to learn so much of their understanding of their faith.

Of course, Charles Wesley was not just a hymn writer. He was a very capable preacher although his greater leaning for family life than shown by brother John ( not difficult), meant that subsequent to his marriage he did not travel as widely as his brother or as he had done previously. He was at the centre of many of the debates within early Methodism and certainly was less than happy at the course of action taken by John when it seemed to make a break with the Church of England inevitable. He was at the heart of the social vision of Methodism having been disgusted by the practices of slavery that he had witnessed in America, as well as being a consummate visitor of prisoners right up to the moment of their executions, seeking to bring comfort in the darkest of situations. But, for all of that, it is as a hymn writer that Charles Wesley is best remembered. And as a hymn writer, Charles left quite a legacy. Indeed such was his legacy that the congregationalist scholar, Bernard Manning no not the Bernard Manning you’re thinking of), had these words to offer to Methodists;

“Your greatest - incomparably your greatest - contribution to the common heritage of Christendom is in Wesley’s hymns. All the other things which you do, others have done and can do as well, better or less well. But in Wesley’s hymns you have something unique, no one else could have done it, and unless you preserve it for the use of the faithful, till that day when we are all one, we shall all lose some of the best gifts of God.”

Amen to that! For at a time when Methodists are sometimes apologetic about their emphasis on these hymns, it is worth noting that growing evangelical and charismatic movements are discovering these treasures for themselves and putting them to good use.

Now, this morning I don’t want to be particularly nostalgic - I’m no good at that! The message that I want to share with you is that the hymns of Charles Wesley are a powerful spiritual force for today just as they were a powerful spiritual force in ages past. Why? Because rooted in Scripture, they bear witness to the incomparable love of God in Christ for all humanity. And with that emphasis comes the challenge to be a people who live for God.

From his experience of God at Pentecost 1738, Charles’s hymn writing displays a great excitement at the wonder of God’s love. We see this in the hymn that he wrote to celebrate the first anniversary of that Pentecost experience “O for a thousand tongues” when he writes of the change that God brings into our lives in the verse that proclaims;

“In Christ our Head, you then shall know,
Shall feel your sins forgiven,
Anticipate your heaven below
And own that love is heaven.”

What a transformation! But Charles is not one to wallow in a “Me, Me, Me” religion. Far from it! His conviction from the very beginning is that what he has experienced of God is something that is available to the great ocean of humanity. Think back for a moment to that great Conversion hymn, written but 3 days after his Pentecost experience. Already, he is fired with the vision that the grace of God which has touched his life is something that can be for all. No religious priority for the respectable can be found in his thinking for Charles is already grasping the principle that God can save those who might be seen as the furthest away from him. Hear it in these words;

“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 for him the righteous have;
He came the lost, to seek and save.”

Wow! Here is a message of good news and it is good news for all. Thoroughly based in the love of God, it is the love that makes somebodies out of nobodies. It is the love that brings hope to the very darkest places of despair. And it is a love that calls in turn for a response. It is a love that we need to respond to in loyalty. The hymn, “Love Divine” both takes us into the immensity of God’s love for us and cries out for that love to be at work within us. Yet it is based on a patriotic poem by John Dryden found in Henry Purcell’s seventeenth century opera, “King Arthur.” But Charles transforms Dryden’s “Fairest Isle, all isles excelling” into “Love divine, all loves excelling.” This doesn’t mean that the Wesley’s were anti patriotism - far from it in fact! But it does mean that the highest loyalty for the Christian is God rather than nation - something that I wish those telling Muslims to put Britain before their faith would take notice of for the Christian is called not to my country right or wrong but to the God who is the God of all nations.

Back to Gwennap Pit. Historical records suggest that people were greatly moved there as they sang the hymns of Charles Wesley. Some wept . Some even fainted. For Charles Wesley (unlike brother John) was never afraid to touch the emotions. One of Charles’ greatest hymns was “Jesus, lover of my soul.” Its level of intimate language was such that it earned the disapproval of John Wesley to such a level that he excluded it from his 1780 Collection of hymns. It has within it the language of the great mystics with that beautiful last verse about “plenteous grace.”

Let me tell you a story about the effects of this hymn. It come against the backdrop of the American Civil War. A group of former soldiers from the once opposing Union and Confederate armies were reminiscing. A former Confederate told the story of how one night he had been ordered to shoot an exposed sentry. He had crept near the target and had taken aim when he heard the sentry singing “Jesus lover of my soul.” As he heard the words;

“Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of Thy wing.”

The confederate said to himself ;

“I can’t kill that man.”

And so he slinked away.

Listening to this was an old Union soldier who asked;

“Was that in the Atlanta campaign of 64?”

“Yes.”

“Then I was that Union sentry."

And the Union sentry went on to say how knowing of the danger of his post that night, he had been greatly depressed and had sung that hymn to keep his spirits up.

Would that in more battles “Jesus, lover of my soul” was sung with similar results!

The wonder of Charles Wesley is that his hymns speak through different times of year and to differing situations. Yet always the message is of God’s love. In one of his hymns he cries out ;

“O for a trumpet voice
On all the world to call.”

Well Charles Wesley was that trumpet voice and for what a message! Hear him as he continues regarding the message of that trumpet voice;

“To bid their hearts rejoice
In him who died for all.
For all my Lord was crucified
For all, for all my saviour died!”

And that is the essential message of Charles Wesley. An emphatic - “For all!” For all are loved by Christ to the point of self giving sacrificial death. And in a world of outcasts and directionless people, a world of people who have all too often lost the capacity to hope, the “For all” of Christ proclaimed by Charles Wesley needs to be heard loudly as if from a trumpet voice.

So, as we look back on All Saints Day, giving thanks for that great cloud of witnesses, we remember with thanksgiving Charles Wesley’s life, his example and his hymns.

This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday November 4th 2007

"Perfect in every way?" - Twenty second Sunday after Pentecost

2007-11-03T05:02:00.000-07:00

LUKE 18: 9-14

Several years ago, a novelty song got close to the top of the charts. . It chorus proudly proclaimed;

“O Lord it’s hard to be humble
When you’re perfect in every way.
I can’t wait to look in the mirror
‘Cause I get better looking’ each day.

Well on first reading we have a character who fits into that song’s lyrics in the story of Jesus that we have heard this morning. So let’s take a look at the two characters that Jesus provides us with.

The first character was a Pharisee. Pharisees don’t get the best of presses in the Gospels - you can’t help but feel that they are people in need of spin doctors. And yet in the time of Jesus, they were greatly respected. After all, they took the Law that had been given to Moses very seriously indeed and they made every effort both to live by it themselves and to help others to do so. Certainly Jesus spent time with them and not of all of that time was spent adversarially. Later Paul defending his Christian faith would speak of his being a Pharisee in the present rather than the past tense. So whilst today, we too easily ridicule these people, they were at the time of Jesus generally respected for the devout lives that they led.

The other character was toll collector. They were certainly not well though of in Jewish society. Oh, they may at times have been rather well off. But the problem was how they had amassed their fortunes. And this was not a pretty story. For they were the traiors of their day who raised money from their localities on behalf of the hated Roman occupying forces. And in so doing, they were given the powers to extort extra funds on their own behalf . Traitorous fraudsters was in essence what they were - Quisling and Robert Maxwell made one!

Certainly Jesus’ audience would have seen the Pharisees as being much closer to God than these toll collectors.

But wait, Luke recounts this story to a divided church. Luke’s church was made of followers of the Galilean Jesus On that they were united. The problem is that they were also divided. And their division was between those who had a Judean worldview and those who were now being drawn into the church who has Gentile and Hellenistic worldviews. This was the controversy that rocked the early church and without doubt there were those on both sides who looked down on others. The vibrant Gentile Christian communities looked down on the Jewish communities from which the Gospel had come. Their demands for circumcision and the observance of ancient Jewish dietary rules, suggested to these people that the Jewish Christian communities were hung up on superfluous regulations rather than the grace of Christ. Equally, there were those amongst the Jewish Christians who held that the Gentile Christians were showing an arrogance by refusing to be grafted into the Israel from which the Gospel came.

I cannot help but wonder if Luke shapes this story around a need for both Gentile and Christian communities to place their emphasis upon being passionate about the things that really matter such as their prayer lives rather than by claiming a superior righteousness over those who thought and acted in a different way. If so, I suggest that there is a relevance to the diverse body that is the Christian church today.

Anyhow back to the story that Jesus told. In this story both have come to pray. The Pharisee prays;

“God, I thank you that I am not like other men - robbers, evildoers, adulterers - or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

It’s a pious prayer. Sure it contains an element of truth in it. After all what is wrong with thanking God for being at work in one’s life? The problem of the prayer is that in his thanksgiving to God, this Pharisee can be seen to be looking down on another person and denying the possibility of God’s grace being at work in that person’s life.

And in so doing, the Pharisee is denying a reality of God’s work. Sure, the toll collector has been no better than he ought to be. But his saving grace is that is aware of and acknowledges this reality. He knows that he is not all that he should be and so his prayer reflects his sense of need. Looking down out of shame and beating his breast, he prays;

“God have mercy on me, a sinner.”
He has understood something that the Pharisee has missed out on, the reality that in our relationship with God, none of us can come with entitlement but we can only come depending on God’s grace and mercy. We do not come before God on the basis of our attainments but as those who know that God is a debtor to no person.

And it is because the toll collector realises this as his situation and because he goes on to let the reality dwell within him, that Jesus ends this story with words which would have caused a sharp intake of breath from his listeners;

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Oh does not this turn our expectation of the world upside down? Does it not challenge so much of what we have been brought up on? Well, that is the wonder of grace, the word that is at the heart of hope for humanity.

But there is something more. I pointed out at the beginning that Luke’s community would have encountered this story at a time when the temptation within the church to exclude those who were different was at its strongest. We can understand that because the temptation to exclude continues to exist today. So here we see a picture of how religion can be distorted. For surely, the offence of the Pharisee was not that he lacked religion. He had plenty of it, enough to make him a man of virtue. And yet, in sense he had not enough. He lacked enough religion to be inclusive. And religion that makes us virtuous but not inclusive cab be a hateful thing which creates hurt to so many. For as we are all made in the image of God, we all marr the image in some way or other. Within ourselves we do not have it all. We are none of us perfect in every way. So each of us as we look into the mirror need to see that we as much as others need the gift of being included - a gift that comes through Christ’s grace.

So this morning, may we celebrate God’s gift in including us and may we live lives of radical inclusion of others.

This sermon was preached at Gammaton Methodist Church on October 28th 2007

Tale of a feisty widow - Twenty first Sunday after Pentecost

2007-10-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

LUKE 18: 1-8

You know, there are times when I get angry about the safe conformist Jesus to whom I was introduced in my childhood. Why? Because the more I learn about Jesus, the more I realise that I have learnt a picture of Jesus which needs to be unlearnt.

You see, the real Jesus is so much less tameable than the “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild” who infected my childhood. For the real Jesus far from explaining away the world as it is, boldly invites us to go to places where we have never been before.

We see this so clearly in the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge - a seemingly safe story which challenges our temptations to live lives of quiet acceptance.

First let’s look at the widow. She is a feisty sort, the sort who would seem to have hit on girl power long before the Spice Girls revealed both “girl power” as a slogan and a disturbing 20th Century reality that the lack of talent is no barrier to fame and fortune. Anyway, our widow had no pop moghals behind her and yet still she was able to make every bit as much noise as the inane sounds of “Tell me what you want” as Scarey, Ginger, Sporty, Baby and Posh, forced themselves upon our attention.

For a widow to create a rumpus ‘though would have been seen as quite a shock. You see, widows were the nobodies of their days. This was very much a world in which women were defined by their men. And this woman had no man anymore and so she was cast adrift upon the margins of society. We don’t know whether she was young or old for this was a time in which girls were married in their early teens. This was a time when life was brutish and far too many, both male and female had their lives cut tragically short. All we know of our widow was that life would have been painfully hard for her and any children that she had. And so she would need to seek her rights in terms of finance. After all, the alternative would be to go under, possibly even to be driven to a need to offer her body so that she might live.

Well, this widow is not prepared to be pushed around and so she determines to fight for her rights. And when she encounters a judge who refuses to address her needs, she does the girl power thing. She creates a lot of noise and pesters the judge night an day until he is driven into submission. Yes, this woman may be a highly irritating nag but I put it to you that today we could do with more of her type, people who are unwilling to be held off by the sort of officialdom which lacks a capacity to be passionate about the needs of the little people.

But what of the judge. He would seem to have been one of the Roman judges of his day. That Jesus castigates one of these representatives of Roman power offers us a sign of the political Jesus who is not afraid to rail against the injustices of the empire that dominated the world. This judge would seem to be the sort of character who has no redeeming features. He is not going to upset the powerful on behalf of a nobody - no way! As far as he is concerned, the widow can go on with suffering the hardships of life for this is a shameless judge who cares not for such a woman. He is not going to bother his sorry arse about a nobody.

Well that is until things get too much. The nagging and the threatening of the widow finally begins to get too much for him. Wearied he finally concedes;

“Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t continue wearing me out with her coming.”

Now of course, this judge bears no resemblance to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the face of human suffering, he is a remote figure - so totally different from our God who cares sufficiently about us to share in our sufferings and to weep as we weep. But the point is that this man who arbitrarily uses power on the basis of self interest, ultimately acts on behalf of justice for the widow. How much more does the God who is deeply committed to us, reach out to us in our times of need!

This doesn’t mean that we are called to a “name it, claim it” understanding of prayer. It doesn’t take us far in understanding the mystery of so much being cruel and unfair in the world. Nor does it suggest that we are able to manipulate or nag God into doing our will. Of course not! What we have here is a warrant to seek God amidst the unfairness of life. And if that means we end up shouting at God, so what! God can take our anger, have no fear. The real offence is not our being angry with God but the times in which we treat God with indifference.

But yet, there is another way of seeing the parable. Sure, Luke interprets it against a background of an argument to be persistent in prayer. But parables have always had the power to challenge us in unexpected ways. When we feel that we have worked them out, they come back and hit us again and again in new and unexpected ways for through his stories, Jesus is in the business of turning how we see the world upside down.

Too often we have seen prayer as about our speaking to God. All too often the prayer meeting is the home of a shopping list approach to faith. And yet surely, if prayer is about getting close to God, we need to be doing a good deal more listening than talking.

So just for a moment let us turn this parable upside down. Instead of seeing God as the judge, let us see God as the widow - a persistent voice devoid of power calling for justice. Let us see ourselves as the judge. We are challenged to follow the path of justice. Yet do we ignore the inconvenient voice that persistently challenges how we see our lives and the world. Now, might not this parable be not so much about our asking God to act but instead be about God asking us to act. Seen like this, the parable becomes a challenge to us to truly live as the people of God daring to turn the world upside down by responding to the call of God to support the weak and to be God’s agents for liberation and grace. Now the parable challenges us to our very core And the essential question becomes not so much as to when God will favour justice but when will we have the faith and obedience to do God’s will in our world.

There we have it - a fascinating parable with the power to be dynamite in our world.

This sermon was preached at Northam Methodist Church on Sunday October 21st 2007

Unpalatable lessons - 20th Sunday after Pentecost

2007-10-14T01:38:00.000-07:00

2 Kings 5: 1-14. Luke 17: 11-19

It was quite a beginning! Jesus had been baptised by John the Baptist and had gone on to that period of temptation in the desert. Now he returns to Galilee and having made an impression on the locals, he goes to the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth. At first all goes well until Jesus snatches disaster from the jaws of victory by reminding them of the wideness of God’s love as displayed in stories of old, culminating in a mention of the story of Elisha and Naaman which we have heard this morning. This story enraged them to such a degree that Luke describes its very mention as making the people furious, so much so that;

“They got up, drove him out of town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff.”

Not quite an advert for free speech!

But why should this story have such power to create such an extreme reaction?

Well let’s take a look at the story. But first let’s see who the two main characters are.

Firstly, let’s look at Naaman. He is introduced to us as a commander in the army of the King of Aram. Now Aram is basically the country which we know today as Syria. Today there is a difficult relationship between Israel and Syria. On a number of occasions during the past 60 years they have been at war with each other and when not so the peace has been uneasy. Well, some things never change. Our story which dates back about 2,800 years takes us back to another period in which there was seemingly unending conflict between the two countries. And when the Bible speaks of Naaman bringing great victories over Israel, those victories were in the main over Israel. Sure there were periods of what might be seen as armed peace but on at least one occasion after this story, the King whom Naaman served lay seige to Samaria causing a famine so bad that some people cannibalised their own children. So Naaman was a pagan who was complicit in bringing much suffering to Israel, a man who was well and truly an enemy of Israel and so in the eyes of the people of Israel, an enemy of God. A complete outsider!

Now let’s look at the other main character, Elisha. He is one of the great prophets that emerged in Israel. Following the fiery Elijah who challenged Israel to follow Yahweh rather than Baal, Elisha, other than in the story of the cursing of boys who mocked his baldness, connected positively with people performing miracles that pointed to the power of God. Indeed, Elisha would seemed to have performed more miracles than any other Old Testament prophet.

And so to our story. Naaman, despite his wealth and status, develops a skin condition that causes him much anxiety. It probably wasn’t Hansen’s Disease which we think of as being leprosy today. But it was still a social problem even if such conditions did not bring the outcast status that was the case in Israel. Certainly it was enough to greatly disturb his life. And so at this point, hope comes in the form of an unlikely person, an Israelite young girl who had been taken into slavery as a result of Naaman’s raids into Israel. The last person to offer help to Naaman you might think, this girl who had been taken away from all that she held dear. And yet, this girl goes to Naaman’s wife and tells her of the prophet Elisha who could offer a cure to Naaman’s condition. The girl begins a chain of unlikely agents of God’s grace. She, herself, is powerless both as a result of her gender in a sexist society and her status as a captive. But without her, there would be no healing. Next comes Naaman’s wife, the wife of a foreign general, once more an unlikely agent of God’s grace but it is this woman who persuades Naaman to explore the possibility of meeting the prophet of Israel. And later when Naaman doesn’t like the way that Elisha offers to heal him, it is servants who confront him and encourage him to do as the prophet has said. Do you get it? Here in this story we are finding that it is outsiders and nobodies who are emerging as the instruments of God’s grace. For God turns our expectations completely upside down. It is as Paul writes to the Corinthian church concerning the calling of God;

“He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are.”

I wonder if today, we place limits as to who might be an agent of God’s grace. Are we truly open to the possibilities that God’s grace might be brought to us through channels that might surprise us - the asylum seeker, the prisoner, the Muslim or the street person? It is a sad reflection on the poverty of our political system that many of those who lead us or would lead us put themselves in thrall to those whose wealth makes them potential large donors or whose media power makes them the makers and breakers of careers. In contrast to this how wonderful that God works through the least likely persons in effecting real change in peoples’ lives.

Back to the story of Naaman. He goes to the King and tells him what he has learnt from the slave girl. And because he is so valuable to the King, Naaman is sent to Israel with gifts and a letter for the King of Israel. But now comes a low in the story. Israel is going through a bad time and indeed it is a bad time that will only get worse and so the confidence of Israel’s King is low. Receiving a letter that requests the healing of Naaman, Israel’s King fears that it is a ruse in order to provoke a quarrel. After all the request for healing has been made to him personally and he hasn’t a clue how to cure Naaman. Fail and it will be yet another excuse for war!

Still the news reaches Elisha and he tells the King to send Naaman to his home. Naaman turns up with all his entourage and gets an almighty shock. There is to be no immediate cure. Instead he is to wash himself seven times in the River Jordan. This infuriates him. He thinks of the rivers back in his homeland. Surely, he protests, they are better than anything in Israel. And this nationalism almost prevents him from being cured. And it would have were it not for the intervention of his servants who dare to suggest that he would have been responsive were Elisha to ask a great thing of him rather than the seemingly mundane. And today, it remains a temptation to expect God to act in great drama rather than through the mundane. Arthur Benson, whose father whilst Bishop of Truro in the days when the only place one could go after such an appointment was Canterbury devised the Service of Nine Carols and Lessons, wrote the lyrics of “Land of hope and glory.” It contains the lines which enthuse many but frankly cause me to shiver;

“God who made thee mighty
Make thee mightier yet.”

This morning I invite you to consider the possibility that the God who resists models of domination, desires not that we become mightier but as was the need of Naaman more humble. Focusing on our power and our sense of being called above others, is but a step away from God on whom we depend.

Anyhow, ultimately, Naaman does what Elisha has told him to do and the consequence is that he is healed. His initial response suggests that he is a changed person;

“Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel.”

But we can not be too sure for the next two chapters of the second book of Kings are devoted to further military aggression from Syria. So, I will not bother to speculate.

Anyhow back to the offence caused by this story. If Englishmen are inclined to think of God as an English gent, the Israelites were even more inclined to identify God with their nation. This goes back to the calling of Abraham who was to be the father of a nation blessed by God. That special relationship is a feature of our Old Testament but always there are the hints that God’s love is not just for one people but for all peoples.

Back in my native Cornwall, there was a row a few years ago when the minister would not agree to the “Song of the Western Men” being sung in a Circuit service. Sons and daughters of Cornwall among you will know that it begins with the violent lines;

“A good sword and a trusty hand
A merry heart and true.
We’re going to show King James’s men
What Cornish lads can do.”

Why was it no permitted in an act of worship. The reason given was that God is the God of all people not of all things Cornish.

This story tells us that human built barriers cannot stand in the way of God’s love and grace. We may tolerate a society which designates some as outsiders but that is not the way of God. Indeed, when we seek to push others to the margins, the scriptures have a tendency to proclaim a message of role reversal. Later in this story, we find this with Gehazi, a servant of Elisha, who thinks that Naaman has got away lightly and so seeks to gain from him the money that Elisha turned down. Gehazi pays a heavy price for his actions as he ends the story with Naaman’s leprosy afflicting him.

So to the crowd that sought to throw Jesus over the cliff. Why were they so angry? Because Jesus had told how in an age of leprosy, the one case of Divine healing had been of not just an outsider but an enemy of Israel.

But before you condemn that angry crowd, answer me one question -------- how would you react if you heard that God had used a Christian to bring a miraculous healing to Osama Bin Laden?

This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday October 14th 2007

Hope amidst the ashes - Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-10-07T01:00:00.000-07:00

Lamentations 3: 19 - 26. Luke 17: 5 - 10

A story is told dating back to the nineteenth century. The army of the German Kaiser were burning Jewish villages in what is now Poland. After one such village had been destroyed a passer by was amazed to see that an old man had pounded some boards together in order to open up for business. Looking at the old man he asked;

“What are you selling among these ruins?”

With a smile the old man replied;

“I am selling hope. You can sell water in a dry desert so the place to sell hope is on the ash heap of destruction.”

The old man had a point. Today we often talk about hope in a comfortable way. When things go well and there is not a cloud in the sky, we talk of hope. Yet surely, the time when hope is truly valuable is in the dark times such as experienced by people such as a persecuted old man seeing only destruction around him.

Too often we talk of Christian hope as if it were about unending blue skies. And yet, we need to remember that old gospel truth that glory comes accompanied by a cross. People of faith as well as those without faith have down the years experienced the sheer unfairness of life. Any gospel appeal that ignores this is totally false. As Fred Pratt Green puts it in one his hymns;

“Father hear the prayer we offer,
Not for ease that prayer shall be
But for strength that we may ever
Live our lives courageously.”

So to be of use in a world threatened by nuclear weaponry, terrorism, environmental catastrophe and the AIDS pandemic amongst other things, hope has to be for the bad times, for the ash piles of destruction.

A somewhat surprising vision of hope comes from the book of Lamentations, a book that contains poetry from a time of devastation. Its background is the destruction of Jerusalem with its Temple, as well as the surrounding areas. The go getters who might have rebuilt something good on the ashes of the city, had been taken off to exile in Babylon. Left behind were the people held to be least useful by the Babylonians, people who were indeed despised by their fellow countrymen in exile. In Lamentations, we hear these voices from the devastation in Jerusalem. And these voices are heartbreaking to listen to, for they express the pain of people who have lost all that they hold dear and who know that they are not up to the challenge of putting things right. And in their pain, they convey at times a deep sense of feeling rejected by God. For in their sufferings, they see God’s wrath being visited upon them. In the verses before our reading, we find these words concerning God;

“He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
And made me cower in ashes;
My soul is bereft of peace;
I have forgotten what happiness is;
So I say, ‘Gone is my glory,
And all I had hoped for from the Lord.’”

But this is not the final word. For whilst the pain of the disaster has infected the very being of the poets, just like that Polish Jew these poets living in the poverty and lawlessness of the destroyed Jerusalem dare to hope. Hear the hope in these words;

“But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.”

What does the poet call to mind? Well, he is versed in the story of his people, a story of God’s goodness that has been passed down to him. And so, amidst the ashes of the city, he affirms a basis for hope in words that have resounded down the centuries;

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end;
They are new every morning;
Great is your faithfulness.”

Hope amidst the ashes! Hope that is rooted in something greater than the physical realities of Jerusalem. Hope that is based in the loving faithfulness of God that has been the experience of a people called into Covenant relationship with God. And that hope is greater than the dreadful reality of the destruction of all the things once held precious.
This idea that hope in God is greater than physical realities is powerfully demonstrated when the poet goes on to add;

“The Lord is my portion says my soul,
Therefore I will hope in him.”

For a long time I never understood the significance of this phrase. It made little sense to me. But its background is that when the Promised Land had been divided among the tribes of Israel, the portion granted to the priests and levites was God rather than the land. Now that the land has been devastated, the poet has been able like those priests and levites to place the whole of his hope in God’s goodness, a place of hope that is much more reliable than any land. For whilst land can be taken away or destroyed, God’s goodness is for all time and is much more powerful.
Jesus also has a message of hope. Living through a time when society was brutish, he talks of the people of God being a place where hope is located. This is very relevant for our service of Confirmation. It is not that there is some great power in the institution of the church. No way! But the path of faith which today is being embraced by those who are to be confirmed, does offer a way of hope even amidst the ashes. Jesus speaks of those who have faith the size of the barely visible mustard seed, being able to command a mulberry tree with its massive root system to uproot itself and adds on to that the even greater improbability of it rooting itself in the sea. Surely this is a grotesque expectation and taken literally it is nonsense. But the message that Jesus is seeking to communicate is that faith opens up boundless and even crazy new possibilities. But we find these possibilities in partnership with God. A parable about slavery will remind us that these new possibilities are not so much entitlements but gifts of a generous God.

We need hope for all too often our reality is in the ashes. In searching for that hope, I recommend you whether being confirmed this morning or not to set your eyes on the God who has been revealed as faithful and loving in the history of Israel and also especially in the life of Jesus Christ. He offers us a hope even amidst the ashes of life. And it becomes our responsibility to embrace the hope that comes from God. For hope, is at the very centre of what is a gospel of hope. It is even that which in the words of William Wordsworth is;

“the paramount duty that Heaven lays for its own honour on man’s suffering heart.”

Hope - that which is at the heart of the gospel. Hope - that is our greatest need even, especially amongst the ashes.

This sermon was preached at a Confirmation Service at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday October 7th 2007

A story of role reversal - Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-09-30T01:23:00.000-07:00

Luke 16: 19 - 31

When I conduct weddings, I am often asked for the hymn, “All things bright and beautiful.” Whenever this happens, I always request the couple to ensure that one of the original verses is not on the hymn sheet. It is a verse which thankfully is no longer in any of the hymn books that we use. It is the verse which goes like this;

“The rich man at his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high or lowly
And ordered their estate.”

What nonsense! And yet it was sung in churches not that long ago. And certainly, those words represent the orthodox religious beliefs at the time of Jesus.

And yet Jesus blows the idea that social class is ordained by God completely out of the water. And nowhere does he do this more powerfully than with the story of a rich man whom we often call Dives which is the Latin for “rich” and Lazarus.

The story that Jesus told was probably a reworking of similar stories which were told at his time. And yet amidst what would have been familiar to his listeners, Jesus provides his own rather unique spin. We are less familiar with the similar stories and so we can approach it with minds and hearts that are hopefully open to the insights that Jesus would wish to transmit to us.

And so to the characters. Let us first look at the rich man, Dives. And rich he most certainly was. After all he dressed in purple robes which were the most expensive garments, normally associated with the aristocratic elite from whom the Sadducces came. These were people who aside from religious beliefs to which I shall return later, devoted themselves to modelling their lifestyles on the Roman elite with whom they were all too willing collaborators. And more than that he wore busos which is the Hebrew for a particularly expensive underwear, that which today we would describe as designer underwear.

Not only did he dress to the nines every day but every day was a feast day for him. Each and every day he ate the finest foods and so each Sabbath Day his desires would find their gratification by requiring servants to miss out on the rest requirement of the Sabbath which was so important to the Jewish people.

So before us we have one of the idle rich living the life of Riley, enjoying an obscenely rich lifestyle.

Now let’s turn and look at the other character, Lazarus. His name means “God helps.” But God’s help seems to be far removed from his experience in life. After all, Lazarus is an impoverished beggar. He is totally dependent on others. And like many of those who suffer from poverty, he carried the evidence of his deprivations, in his case through the sores that covered him. But he had one reason for hope. The translation that we use misses that reason for hope but other translations especially from Arabic and Syrian versions of the gospels include it, namely that he didn’t simply lie at the gate of the Dives. Instead he was laid at the gate. This would imply that he had friends who would bring him to that gate day by day. Why? Because only this Dives had the necessary resources to adequately help Lazarus.

Now at this point we need to take care to avoid a dangerous and simplistic conclusion. Too often this story is used to back a view that poor people are good and rich people are bad. Of course, there may be cases that back such an interpretation but take care for such an interpretation can lead us on a road to despair. For on a global basis, we are the rich. Those of you who are on the internet can look up a site called Global Rich List and I suspect that most people here would be in the top 5% whether you feel rich or not. I go further and remind you that being affluent just as it is not a sign that you are favoured by God, is also not something that means you should be judged harshly. For if we had turned to today’s reading from the New Testament letters, we would have found that contrary to ignorant folklore, it is not said that money is the root of all evil but that;

“The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

Do you get the difference? It is a vital difference if we are to understand where our rich man goes wrong.

Back to the story that Jesus told and we find a shocking indifference to the sufferings of Lazarus on the part of Dives. From the conversation that he has with Abraham, he is aware of Lazarus having been at his gate. He even knows the name of Lazarus but he has been callously indifferent to the sufferings of a nearby man at the same times as he has indulged his own fanciful whims. Indeed such has been the level of his indifference to the sufferings of Lazarus that he compares unfavourably with his own dogs.

Let’s for a moment think of these dogs. Many of us today think of dogs as loveable creatures who are man’s best friend. But that is not how it was in Palestine at the time of Jesus. For the traditions of Palestine are that dogs were regarded as unclean, almost as unclean as pigs. A rich man keeping dogs would not have them to pamper and to walk as might be the case today. No, their purpose would have been to serve as guard dogs that protected his property. Today, we contemplate the problems caused by dangerous dogs but this was a society in which only dangerous dogs were of any use. And such dogs would only be safely approached by those who were their handlers.

It fascinates me that Dives allowed his dogs to wonder down to where Lazarus lay at the gate. It seems yet further evidence that this Dives felt no duty of care to the suffering man at the gate. And yet these attack dogs did so much more for Lazarus than was managed by their owner. They licked his wounds and of course given that the saliva from the dog is sterile, they probably helped to bring a soothing and a healing to the wounds of Lazarus.

What a scandal! A rich man outdone in compassion by wild attack dogs. But that is part of the problem. Our Dives fails to see the reality of shred humanity with Lazarus. He sees his prosperity as putting himself on a higher level than that of a down and out like Lazarus. Even as he look up to Abraham, he still cannot see Lazarus as an equal but as a skivvy who could bring refreshment to him and be sent with a message of warning to his brothers. Even though their fortunes have been reversed, he still sees Lazarus not as a an equal but as one who should still know his place at the bottom of the pile. Far from seeking the forgiveness of Lazarus for the ways in which he has failed him, this Dives remains stuck in his self centredness and indifference to suffering other than that which is now his lot. In contrast, is it not amazing that Lazarus, unlike similar characters in parallel stories that Jesus would have known, remains quiet and makes no demand for vengeance?

So what does Jesus seek to tell us through this story. Often I have heard this story used by preachers as a warning concerning the afterlife. I think that this is stretching things somewhat. Such an interpretation fails to adequately engage with the literary genre somewhat. Furthermore, it creates a blasphemous picture of a God presiding over a regime of torture. And yet, the question of judgement cannot be totally ignored. You see, Sadducees like Dives had no belief in an afterlife or any form of judgement. And so they display the outlook of those who feel that you can live for yourself without any degree of accountability. And because he felt unaccountable to God or indeed anyone else, Dives felt himself free to indulge himself while just a short distance away, a man lay suffering whose plight he could have considerably eased. What a warning of what we can become when we lose sight of our accountability to God.

So how do we live as those who are accountable to God?

Firstly, we need to avoid the cheap doctrines that see the unfairness of life as being about God’s judgement on others. This is so in the case of individual human suffering and it is so when nations suffer calamities. God does not inflict these things on people. On the contrary, God weeps with those in pain and urges us to respond with compassion.

Secondly, we are each called upon to exercise compassion. Possessions and the things we cling to in our lives should not get in the way. The sin of Dives was not his wealth but the ways in which he allowed it to dehumanise him. The late Pope John Paul 11 put it well in saying;

“The rich man was condemned because he did not pay attention to the other man, because he failed to take notice of Lazarus, the person who sat at his door and who longed to eat the scraps from his table. Nowhere does Christ condemn the mere possessions of earthly goods as such. Instead, he pronounces very harsh words against those who use their possessions in a selfish way, without paying attention to the needs of others.”

And thirdly, we are called to be sensitive to need that is close at hand. For within our own community, there is a number of people who have an impoverished experience of life. Jesus encourages us to avoid the sin of Dives in being desensitivised to such places of suffering. But now, because of the devoplment of communications media, we are able to be aware of suffering that is far away from us geographically and lie it or not, we become connected to every suffering person. Indeed, this is a parable that challenges indifference to suffering not just on an individual level but challenges us at the level of our fractured nation and indeed, it can be a parable that speaks into the division in our world between nations of wealth, however badly distributed that wealth might be, and the countries of the South whose path to development is burdened by debt. And as we dare to expand the scope of this parable, we begin to see that it is a parable which raises issues not just of charity but also of justice. For who can be other than shocked to learn that the nation which spends most on weaponry in our world is also a nation in which we have heard of a 12 year old boy dying because his mother lacked the insurance or financial resources to get treatment for what was at first a dental problem. And now an apology of a President is to veto the very measures that might save the lives of other such children.

You see, this parable tells us that Jesus sees us all as having responsibility for those who suffer. So much can be done by charity but policy of governments is also relevant.

It is likely that we shall soon be entering a General Election. No party broadcasts will ever come from this pulpit. But I encourage you to do but one thing. Look for the causes of suffering be they local or global. And then, don’t do a Dives and shut your eyes. Ask what you can personally do to help. And also ask and ask with persistence those who would seek to represent you, how they will seek policies that help those whose need is greatest.

This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday September 30th 2007

With gratitude to God - Harvest Thanksgiving

2007-09-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

John 6: 24 - 35

A while ago I read of a painting which is called “Look Up.” It apparently depicts a large city church. In front of the church people are milling around busily. But on the side of the church about ten feet off the pavement is a sign. It is one of those signs that has white on black letters that can be removed when appropriate. This sign tells the time of the services and the sermon title. In front of the church a priest is stood on the pavement whilst a church official is on a ladder next to the sign. Clearly he has just changed the sermon title. Now it proclaims “Sunday’s Sermon: ‘Look Up!”

Why should anyone bother to paint such a picture? The clue is that all the people seem to be doing the opposite of what is written. They are looking down, be they people getting on with the tasks of life or the official looking down at the priest in search of approval. Only the priest is looking up.

This evening, we come to the conclusion of our Harvest Thanksgiving celebrations. We have celebrated the wonder of the Harvest and around us we see an array of the good gifts in which we rejoice at this season. And yet is there not a danger that we will be as those in the painting, looking down rather than up, wondering at the gifts yet losing sight of the giver?

If so, we are hardly the first. It was so with those who were fed in that story of the feeding of the 5,000. Having filled their bellies, they give Jesus no rest. He has gone away in search of rest but rest is what he will not have for the crowd sets off in search of him. And ultimately they find him.

Jesus would seem to know that their motives are somewhat selfish;

“Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”

It’s the material gifts that have got them excited. But now Jesus seeks to point them to greater gifts still, the spiritual gifts that he himself embodies;

“Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

In this we are pointed to the importance of being in relationship with God. We owe our very beings to God. God offers to be a presence in the experiences of our lives and through the Spirit enables us to grow that we might realise more and more what it means to live as those privileged to have been created in the image of God.

And the spiritual gifts of God cannot be quantified visually as can the Harvest here this evening. God’s blessings, you see are not restricted to the times when we can see good things happening to us. Turn for a moment to that great Lutheran hymn, “Now thank we all our God.” Hear these words;

Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in Whom this world rejoices;
Who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.”

Words written against a background of material blessings and prosperity? Certainly not! For this hymn was written against the background of the 30 Years War. Its writer, Martin Rinkart was a Lutheran minister in the city of Eilenburg. As warfare raged, a steady stream of refugees seeking asylum entered its gates. But here was no safety for the Swedish army surrounded the city and famine and plague were rampant. Eight hundred homes were destroyed and people began to die. The stream of funerals put a constant strain upon the clergy and they too began to die. Eventually Rinkart was the only priest left, burying some fifty people a day.. Eventually the siege ended after Rinkart had pleaded for the Swedes to show mercy. At this time of deliverance, Rinkart write his great hymn.

Rinkart knew something of the treasures of God. He knew that God is not just for the good times but also for the bad times. Circumstances did not dictate to his understanding of God’s goodness. Not even the Harvest was necessary to convince him of God’s unfailing goodness.

This evening as we gaze at the fruits of the Harvest, they do indeed serve as a pointer to God’s goodness. But as the painting reminds us, gazing at the gift is not enough. We, too, need to lift up our heads to look up to the one who is the giver of all good things, whose gifts are beyond number or the ability of our eyes to appreciate. Rejoice in the gifts by all mean but then look up to the giver.

Look up!

This sermon was preached at the closing service of Harvest Thanksgiving at Alwington Methodist Church on Tuesday 25th September 2007

Opening illustration comes from a sermon by Alex Stevenson

An unjust steward and unconventional grace - Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-09-24T12:31:00.001-07:00

Luke 16: 1 - 13

What a story! A story in which Jesus seems to applaud what on the face of it was a very shady steward indeed. And not surprisingly we are left uncomfortable for we have associated Jesus with such sterling qualities as honesty and integrity.

We can easily identify with St Augustine in his observation;

“I can’t believe that this story came from the lips of our Lord.”

And so it is that down through the ages, this has become probably the most hotly debated of the parables of Jesus. Interpretations have included the idea that this is an example story. One version of this is that Jesus is suggesting that his disciples should imitate the actions of the dishonest manager. An easy conclusion to come to from a first reading of the parable yet a conclusion that is surely repugnant and inconsistent with all that we know of Jesus.

Another interpretation based on this parable as an example story is that Jesus is encouraging his followers to be shrewd like the steward was in his use of possessions even though the possessions are not his to control. Less repugnant for surely there is much virtue in shrewdness but still inadequate for such an interpretation could be used for example to defend Robert Maxwell’s raiding of the pension funds of his employees in a vain effort to hold his commercial empire together.

So it seems that we would do better to see this as a parable told by Jesus to explain something about the Kingdom of God. But first of all, we need to be clear as to how we seek to interpret parables. A real temptation is to see them as allegories in which each character represents someone or something. Please take care to discard that way of thinking because in the main the parables of Jesus were quite simply not allegories. To suggest that they are is to ignore the intentions of Jesus and accordingly to arrive at what can only be seen as distorted conclusions.

An example of this is the character of the landowner in this parable. He is an absentee landlord who lives in luxury whilst enjoying the fruits of the efforts of those who work on the land. Such landlords were well known in Palestine at the time of Jesus - cold grasping profiteers. The listeners to Jesus and the first reader of Luke’s Gospel would recognise the type at once.

Now an allegorical interpretation of this parable would see the landlord as representing God. And here, we encounter a massive problem. For God is absolutely nothing like the landlord whose only purpose in engagement is to punish. The sort of nonsense that sees God as rather like the big foot which comes down on little people in the old Monty Python introduction, is a total misrepresentation of God. God is not a distant ogre . On the contrary God has been lovingly involved with the struggles of humanity from the beginning of time. Far from being absent, we see God present in the journey of the people of Israel. And in Christ, we see not a departure but God entering into human experience in a way that shows us the very real loving and caring nature of God. No greater nonsense exists that that which views God as severe and harshly judgemental whilst somehow the Son is welcoming and loving. Jesus reveals to us the nature of the Father and to separate Jesus from God the Father is indefensible theology which serves only to deny the essential truth that God is three in one.

Anyhow let’s get back to our parable. News reaches the absentee landowner that the steward is making a right hash of his job. The landowner’s unearned income and his capital are being squandered and so the landowner decides to dismiss the steward. No longer can the steward act for his former boss. But things are even worse than we might at first appreciate. For this steward is short of friends to help him in his time of crisis. After all why should the nearby farmers help him when he has by working for the landowner allied himself with a system that was rooted in exploitation, a system which was at that time driving many farmers in the direction of poverty and dependence on the likes of the landowner.

And so, the steward begins to think creatively. He gathers together the farmers who owed the landlord money and he begins to reduce the debts that they owed to the landlord. In this, he rather keeps the farmers in the dark. He doesn’t tell them that he has been fired. Neither does he tell them that he has been given no authority to reduce these debts.

We are not told how the local farmers reacted but given the struggles that many of them would have endured to keep themselves and their families going on the land, we can only imagine that delight would have entered their souls. And possibly, very probably, there would have been something of a change in how they saw the landlord. I would think that they would be feeling very grateful, even grateful enough to give the landlord the mother of all greetings when next he came to visit to collect his debts..

And certainly, that would put the landlord in a qaundry. How could he not enjoy the change in how he was perceived - a case from zero to hero! What could he now do? He could say it was all a mistake in which case he would be lucky to get out with his life. Or he could take the applause and the credit for the actions of the steward. Well, as we know he takes the second option and as a result, we find him commending the steward whom any accountant would tell you, had done the landlord wrong.

So what are we to make of what has happened? Look at the steward. From a legal point of view, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on. He is guilty of a breach of trust against his employer. Oh sure, we might argue that his actions have had moral benefits. He has helped those whose need was greatest. And some of us would contend that there are times when an illegality can be defended on grounds of morality. But let’s be clear. This is no Mother Theresa. He may have done good through his illegality but his real motive has not been the welfare of needy farmers about whom he had not previously cared. His motive has been quite simply about his own self interest. The act of forcing generosity upon his former employer, has been about his plotting to get himself a place in society. He has been about self interest and the rest is to adapt a phrase from the US military “collateral benefit.”

And yet it has been argued by Robert Farrar Capon amongst others that the unjust steward is a Christ figure in this story. At first, this notion strikes us as distinctly blasphemous and there are of course dangers in taking this argument too far. But look and you will see that there are indeed some connections.

The first of these is that respectability is by no means everything. Nobody can say that the steward is respectable. After all he has been dismissed by his employer because of the poor quality of his stewardship. He has squandered the property. And now he has behaved in a somewhat squalid manner in order to protect his own interests. Now, while I wouldn’t wish to equate the conduct of Jesus with this man, it is undeniable that there were many amongst the religious leaders and possibly beyond, who felt that Jesus was anything but respectable. After all, the type of company he kept was anything but respectable. Time and again, he was criticised because he spent time with “”Sinners” and tax collectors, the very people whose company gave you a bad name. And then there were the times when he failed to keep the ritual law of Israel, the times when he behaved in a scandalous way on the Sabbath. No respectability there at all! And of course, this would be proven with his dying a criminal’s death upon the cross.

But just as Jesus and the unjust steward are short on respectability, is there not here a reminder that sometimes we place far too much emphasis upon respectability. Respectability does not liberate people as demonstrated by the unjust steward and Jesus. Life, status, success and winning are the things that matter to respectability. Oh we need more! We need grace and you won’t find a grace that liberates in respectability.

The second of these connections is that both offer a forgiveness. Poor as his motives would seem to have been, the unjust steward offers a forgiving of the debts that virtually enslaved many a farmer, debts that were rooted in a cruel economic system. With Jesus, the forgiveness that we are offered is the forgiveness of sins which facilitates a harmony with God. But for Jesus, forgiveness is about more than just the spiritual. It is also about the physical. Look to Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer and you find;

“And forgive us our sins,
For we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.”

And if you look to the Greek, you can clearly find that the words used of our forgiving clearly refer to monetary debt.

And is that not so contemporary to our world? For the supposed economic miracle of our country is built on the sinking sands of ever increasing levels of personal indebtedness whilst across so much of the world, debt levels serve not just to deny education and health care but to literally kill.

How relevant that Jesus like the unjust steward offers us a release from the past, a forgiveness, a writing off, that enables us to experience life with abundance.

And thirdly, like the unjust steward, Jesus experiences the very worst that there is and rebounds to the good of others. For the steward this is shown in experiencing the dole, except in those days there was no dole. He has experienced the real prospect of lonely penury and yet he rebounds and others share in the good news of his rebounding through the cancellation of debts.

Jesus experiences public torture and death on a cross yet his story also does not end. Resurrection bring him back to his followers and all who have followed on from the, And the consequence of God’s Yes to Jesus which is seen in resurrection, is to enable us to be able to have a closer relationship with god than we could have envisaged otherwise. As with the steward, the raising of Jesus brings a new hope into the world.

So “Unjust Steward Sunday” is a Sunday when we encounter the most perplexing of parables. But within that parable, we are able to see displayed something of the unconventional grace that God in Christ offers to the world.

This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday 23rd September 2007

What's wrong with being number two? A non lectionary sermon

2007-09-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

Mark 9: 30 - 37

It’s 1979 and a student basketball game is under away. Amongst those watching are Mitch Albom and sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz. As the crowd get excited, they begin to shout;

“We’re number one.”

Morrie looks puzzled before he rises and yells out;

“What’s wrong with being number two”

As astounded faces look in his direction, Morrie sits down with a triumphant smile upon his face.

Morrie Schwartz represents quite a contrast with my childhood hero, Muhammad Ali. Who can forget that boast which became so famous;

“I am the greatest.”

And I guess in those epic battles of the ring with the likes of Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman, he proved that he was the greatest in terms of heavy weight boxing.

The closest followers of Jesus seem to have been closer to Muhammad Ali’s way of seeing greatness than that of Morrie Schwartz. For having heard Jesus talking of his imminent suffering and death, they become embroiled in an argument as to which of them was the greatest of their number. It was a low moment for a group of men who saw in Jesus a path to power and privilege. Indeed even after Jesus here takes the opportunity to challenge this way of seeing things, James and John will approach him with a request to have the most important positions in Christ’s Kingdom. Oh no, climbing the greasy pole is no invention of "Yes Minister" or even of the 20th Century.

But of course, Christianity has throughout its history all too often been corrupted by those who see it as a mean of power. Within 300 years of Christ, a bloodstained Emperor of Rome named Constantine will have won a great battle at Milvian Bridge claiming that before the battle a Christian cross had been superimposed upon the Sun and that he had experienced the words which translated into English read;

“In this sign, Conquer!”

And with this came what was in effect a bloodless takeover of Christianity which brought a Christianity that was linked with political, military, economic and patriarchal power, a Christianity in which the priests of the church slipped further and further away from the vision of Jesus into becoming the soulless pourers of holy water upon the powerful, whose patronage now held them in an all too willing embrace. And today, we still struggle to shake that deadly embrace off.

Back to our Gospel reading. Jesus clearly has work to do. In the first place, he needs to give his disciples an understanding of what it is to be team players. Competitive individualism is hardly compatible with a vision of these men working together to change the world. Sports fans, if not Roman Abromovitch, will know that in team sports, what is needed is not so much a collection of people with outstanding talents as a collection of people who can gell together to maximum effect. The challenge is to make use of a diversity of talents and gifts.

But more than that, he needs to get across the value of all that exists, within the Kingdom of God. And it is with this intent that Jesus takes a child in his arms to make his point.

Nowadays, we like to think we are child friendly. We talk about ensuring a good childhood for our children. At times like Christmas, we are keen to put them at the centre of the festivities. Of course, the sentiment and the reality are often far apart but at least we talk the talk even if our toleration of child poverty or wars in which children lose their dreams if not their lives, suggest that we fail to walk the walk. But at the time of Jesus, children in many cultures were to all intents and purposes non persons, abandoned at birth if the parents lacked means or the child was a girl where girls were not wanted. And in Palestine itself, children were kept well and truly out of the public space.

So when Jesus chose to teach the disciples a lesson by picking up a child and saying;

“Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me”;

he was making no sentimental gesture. Instead he was scandalising his listeners by telling them that in his Kingdom, value is found by welcoming not those in fine array but those who are the most powerless people of all. And that is why there is no Christianity that can treat the poor, the marginalized,the disgraced, the asylum seeker or the woman who is battered and abused, as anything other than as the precious jewels of God. For here is the Gospel which turns our understanding of the world upside down by proclaiming a new order in which there are no “nobodies,” but only “somebodies.” And that is why authentic Christianity inevitably finds itself at loggerheads with the systems of power that seek to dominate and which all too often dehumanise those who are left at the bottom of the pile.

But as well as a new social order and way of seeing peoples’ value, Christianity points us to a new way of living and being. Hear these precious words from Jesus;

“Whoever wants to be first but be last of all and a servant of all.”

No space here for the desire to dominate others out of a perceived position of strength. No space here to dream of a Christian church regaining the dominant power of its distorted cousin, Christendom in which oppression was often sanctioned by a blasphemous use of the name of Christ. Instead all that is called for is a discipleship that is expressed in servanthood to others. For to follow the way of Jesus means to serve the needs of others rather than to subdue them.

And this we see demonstrated in the example of Jesus who continually sought to bring dignity to those he encountered, even those who were outsiders or whose lives were deeply tarnished. In Jesus, we see unleashed the power of unlimited, self giving love. This love holds no pretensions as we see when Jesus touches the ground in order to wash the feet of his friends who would soon show how little they had learnt when in his time of anguish they would flee out of a desire to maintain their own safety above all else. And in Jesus, we see this serving of others as Jesus shows the Divine love for us by allowing himself to be tortured and killed publicly upon a cross. Oh yes, Jesus goes to the greatest of extremes in order that we might know the reality of our being reconciled to God.

The power that at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry could have been used for self is ultimately poured out for you and me. And all that we can do is to wonder at this love and to ask God’s help that such an attitude of self giving might enter into the depth of our being. For now we know that God is not a fan of shallow nonsense like our celebrity culture but instead God turns nobodies into somebodies. God lifts all people up and never like the wretched red top taboids slams them back down.

Such love!

This sermon was preached at Torrington Methodist Church on Sunday September 23rd 2007

Crazy little thing called love - Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-09-16T00:59:00.000-07:00

Luke 15: 1 - 10

The American writer Max Lucado once wrote;

“If God had a refrigerator, your magnet picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it. Whenever you want to talk, he’ll listen. Face it, friend, he’s crazy about you.”

What a beautiful thought! However, badly we my feel about ourselves, however low we may have dropped in the esteem of others, God is absolutely crazy about us.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, we have seen something of that crazy love. Let’s just for a moment set the scene. Jesus is enjoying the company of those who Luke describes as “tax collectors” and “sinners.” These are the people who were most on the margins of society. In the case of tax collectors, the offence was that they raised money for an occupying power, Rome. More than that under the system by which this role was contracted out, they were people with considerable discretion as to how they raised the revenue and often this was done in ways that were ruthlessly exploitative. As for “sinners”, we are not told what exactly this means but most commentators suggest that at large meals, prostitutes would be amongst those present.

Now I don’t know about you but in my youth I was constantly told to be careful as to the people hose company I shared. That sort of parental advice has always been dished out and probably always will be. Warning as to company would certainly have been known by Jesus. After all the very first verse of the very first Psalm proclaims:

“Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.”

So it is no surprise that those guardians of holy living, the Pharisees begin to grumble. After all, this was a culture in which dining with a person involved a showing of acceptance of them. No wonder the moan went up;

“This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

No whilst I am sure that the Pharisees saw their emphasis upon living in accordance with the Law as being important as a means of pleasing God and thereby avoiding a calamity such as the destruction of the Temple and exile as had happened some 600 years earlier, leading to the emergence of the Pharisees. But is there not something desperately sad in their response? For here is the very worst type of religion which is alert to rules but totally blind as to people and their needs. All that they could see was the sin and that caused them to effectively write such people off. Hate filled religion which still rears its ugly head too often!

All of this leads Jesus into telling three stories. The most famous of these stories is that which we know as the “Parable of the Prodigal Son,” but it is the two stories that precede it that we turn to this morning.

The first of these stories is about a shepherd. He has a hundred sheep but loses one of them. And of course as those of you who know the Sankey hymn, “The Ninety and Nine” will know, the shepherd goes in search of the missing sheep and rejoices when he finds it.

I wonder if we always appreciate what Jesus is here saying. Whilst shepherding was very much a commercial practice, in Israel and the surrounding area the image of the shepherd had been used to speak of caring, especially in regards to a ruler’s responsibility to his subjects. You see, this is about caring. And the message here is of caring for those who have gone astray. Why? Because in the eyes of Jesus, all have value and worth.

The second story is about a woman who has ten silver coins and loses one. Now, it is possible that these coins would be those that were put on a headband during the marriage ceremony, ten being required so that a woman could be properly married at a time when being married was crucial to a woman’s identity. There may also be a play on words as the Hebrew word for coins “Zuzim” can also mean those who have moved away. Anyhow, the woman embarks on a careful search of the house until such time as she finds the coin. And then like the shepherd, she calls her friends and neighbours so that they might rejoice with her. And Christ finishes both parables by speaking of the rejoicing in heaven as one sinner repents.

So what is the essential message? I think that Jesus is here telling us that God truly is crazy about us. God will go to any extremity in love for us because to God, not one of us is disposable. Made in the image of God, however badly we marr the image, God goes on loving us, willing the best for us and rejoicing when things come right.

An American Roman Catholic named Vincent Donovan pioneered missionary work amongst the Masai people in Tanzania. In his book about his experiences, “Christianity Rediscovered” he tells of a Masai chief who argues that his notion of faith as intellectual assent is like a white hunter shooting an elephant from great distance, only the eyes and fingers being involved. Real belief the chief argues is like a lion going after its prey, using all its being to make the prey a part of itself. Then he adds these powerful words;

“You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even if we leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for him. He has searched for us. He has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God.”

Yes, our God is a God who searches us out. And the purpose is a love which is prepared to go to great lengths, even crazy lengths. It is a love which doesn’t condemn us but simply loves us to bits. That is what the stories told by Jesus are about. God never washes his hands of us but loves without limit, rejoicing when we respond the God’s embrace and take our place in the cycle of love. And in love, God can be seen in a despised shepherd or a marginalized woman. For God is the lion who will be all that is necessary to truly find us.

These stories are essentially God revealing. But they also demonstrate a healthy pattern for us to follow. Our calling is to love rather than to coldly sit in judgement of others. We are called to appreciate the value of fellow humans in all their variety.

Writer, Barbara Taylor Brown has written that these parables are a reminder that we are called to share in the work of Jesus as good shepherds in the world. She says;

“Repentance is not the issue, but rejoicing; the plot is not about mending our evil ways but about seeking, sweeping, finding and rejoicing. The invitation is not about being rescued by Jesus over and over but about joining him in recovering God’s treasure.”

And this can only be when we see the huge value that God sees in even the most difficult of people. For God does not dispose of people but goes on loving. And as followers of the Jesus way, we are called to share in such a love. For surely what the world needs today is to take the words of Queen recording, “A crazy little thing called love.”

This sermon was preached at Northam on Sunday September 16th 2007

Grateful hearts - Harvest Sermon

2007-09-09T02:30:00.000-07:00

Luke 17: 11 - 19

“I spent the best moments of my life in the arms of a woman who is not my wife.”

After members of the congregation had gasped with horror, the preacher had gone on to explain that he was talking of the care and love that he received in his childhood from his mother.

Anyhow, the listening Bishop had been impressed and thought that he would use this introduction when next he preached. But sadly he had not taken into account his increasing tendency to forgetfulness and so addressing a packed church in his diocese he proclaimed;

“I have spent the best moment of my life in the arms of a woman who is not my life. Oh dear, I can’t remember who she was!”.

It is quite a reminder than it is important to remember the punch line if a meaningless ramble is to be resisted. Our Gospel reading today can be seen as a healing story but its powerful punchline is when Jesus says;

“Was no-one else found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

But to appreciate that comment, we need to see how the story evolves to take us to that point.

Now the background is that Jesus is travelling to Jerusalem. He has reached the border between Samaria and Galilee. There he meets a community of need, a gathering of outsiders. These people have skin diseases. Our use of the term leprosy here may be a little misleading as leprosy seems to have sometimes been used as a catch all description for a range of skin diseases and not just Hansen’s disease which we know as leprosy today. This is not to belittle the sufferings of these people for in those days, sufferers of skin diseases were stigmatised as being unclean and this meant that they would be isolated from the rest of their community, forced to fend for themselves.

Most people would have preferred the likes of these people, who would be seen as the authors of their own misfortunes by the cruel theologies that held sway then and indeed too often today, to suffer in silence. But the ten afflicted men, see in Jesus a possible means of cure. So they shout to him;

“Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

And now the response of Jesus becomes surprising. He doesn’t touch these men or even say a blessing to them. He simply tells them;

“Go, show yourselves to the priests.”

But wait a moment! This was the procedure to be followed after a healing. Only the priest could certify that the person was clean and fit to once more take their place in polite society. Still, the lepers set off and according to Luke, as they made their way in obedience to Jesus, they were cleansed. Oh, I guess there’s a sermon in this. Doing as told by Jesus, brings a cleansing.

But what really matters for this morning is what follows. Nine of the men, it would seem, continued on their path. Nothing wrong with that. They were simply doing what Jesus had told them to do. It is a fair conclusion that they couldn’t wait to rejoin their families and communities.

But for one, it was different. He doesn’t do what Jesus has told him to do. Instead he comes back to Jesus, throws himself at the feet of Jesus, and loudly praises God and expresses his thanks. And for this he wins the approval of Jesus. Listen to the words of Jesus;

“Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?”

This man has done the right thing. He has both felt and demonstrated gratitude. Isn’t he a lesson to us who too often take the good things of life for granted. Surely, this man is a role model in his response to the receipt of blessings.

But there is another twist. The community of ten men with skin diseases was probably a rather precarious community. For a time, differences would have been suspended as a result of a shared need. But, the differences would have been there nonetheless. Still we only know an additional detail about the one man who came back to thank Jesus. And that detail was that he was a Samaritan.

Now, that may not be shocking for us. Few people get angry over the small Samaritan community that continues to live in Israel. But it would have disturbed the followers of Jesus and some of those who were the first readers of Luke. For there had been a long enmity between Jew and Samaritan going back half a millennium before the birth of Jesus. Its roots were in the Assyrian mingling with the once good Jews of Samaria. But now, it lived in a bitter divide on both racial and religious lines. All the prejudices we see today being heeped upon for example Muslims, travellers and asylum seekers were horrifyingly alive in the hatred directed at the Samaritans. Nothing was expected of such people and yet in this encounter, the outsider showed a much greater appreciation of the kindness of God than those who saw themselves as God’s people. Yes, the Samaritan is a reminder to us that those whom we are tempted to see as outside of God’s people, those who follow other spiritualities such as New age, may be more sensitively appreciative of God’s goodness than we who are inclined to feel that we are on the inside.

But there is one final twist to take notice of. And it is found in the final words of Jesus to this grateful Samaritan;

“Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

Strange words! After all, he had already been cured of his condition. But, Jesus would seem to be suggesting that gratitude is a condition for finding true wholeness. If we are not grateful for our blessings, then something is missing from our lives. And we can express our gratitude in our response to God who in love is continually blessing us in ways which we should not turn our eyes away from. We have a God to thank. G. K. Chesterton once commented;

“The worse moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.”

We do have God to thank. To thank for so many blessings both physical and spiritual. And today as we gaze at the display within this church, we thank God for the Harvest, a Harvest which is the gift of God in partnership with those whose labours enables the bounty before us to be glorious reality.

This sermon is being preached for Harvest Festival at Gammaton Methodist Church on Sunday September 9th 2007

Being Real for Christ - Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-09-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

Luke 14: 25 - 33

“The language of priorities is the religion of socialism.”

So said Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the National Health Service and later Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Whether socialist programmes and governments have lived up to those words is a matter for a debate which this morning is hardly the right time for. But a passion for right priorities is certainly at the heart of our Gospel reading.

But first prepare to be shocked!

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brother and sisters - yes, even his own life - he cannot be my disciple.”

Wow! Crazy words! Can Jesus be serious? After all we live in a society that claims to revere the family and even now as we seem to be going through something of a phoney election season, no politician seeking electoral success, would dare to be seen as other than pro family. Yet here is Jesus, not just showing equivocation but using the sort of language about hating that we would be quick to jump on if it came from another religion or from one of the cults.

And yet, it is a good thing that Jesus expresses himself so strongly. For in doing so, he communicates with us, the very vital importance of his call to follow him. Here is the message that following Christ is not like taking up yet another hobby. It is so much more. It is about embracing a whole new way of life which transforms how we see the world around us.

But still it shocks us! Bishop William Willimon of the United Methodist Church in the USA, referring to this scripture has this to say;

“Jesus clearly, at least in this text, has no interest in meeting our needs. Rather, he appears intent upon giving us needs we would not have had, had we not met him. He speaks of severance from some of our most cherished values - after all, who would be against parenthood, family and self-fulfillment? Jesus, that’s who!”

Oh yes, Jesus is hardly on a mission to win popularity. For rather than appease the crowds of his time and our time, he is decidedly counter cultural. No spin doctor here!

So what is his message? It certainly entails commitment. But commitment to what? Just before this teaching about the cost of discipleship, Jesus, at dinner at the home of a Pharisee, has suggested that we should move beyond a pre occupation with status and demonstrate hospitality to the lowest in society. Then he has told the Parable of the Great Banquet. That parable has told us so much about the Kingdom that Jesus has come to inaugarate. This Kingdom is a place of joy, a bit like a party. And it is for all people. And as those who might have been expected to be at the centre of it have turned in other directions, the Kingdom has been offered to those who were at the bottom of the pile, those who might be seen as the unloved and the unlovely. For Christ has come to draw all peoples into the ongoing dance of divine love. And how radical, that must have seemed in a society in which the power of the few was all to often used to dehumanise and degrade the many. For Jesus has come with the revolutionary offer of love and acceptance for all peoples.

And this is a call that demands our commitment.

Let’s just for a moment look at what Jesus has to say. And this brings us to the apparent rejection of families. But here, we need to encounter these words with caution. This means that we have to be careful with how we use language. You see, exaggeration was a common linguistic trait in Judaism. A true translation of the meaning of Jesus would be “love less” or be “less attached.” It is still an uncomfortable saying by Jesus but its real meaning is along the lines that we must dare to see our main source of security as being in Jesus rather than in our family or the preservation of our own lives. In a way this is a calling to a faith that trusts in Jesus for all things but it is also a pointer to the very inclusive love that lies at the heart of the Parable of the Great Banquet. For all too often, we have used the nuclear family as a means of keeping the needs of the world beyond at bay. We have too often retreated into a world of “Me and Mine.”

Now don’t get me wrong. Christians have responsibilities to their families. Jesus demonstrates this when on the cross, he shows concern for the wellbeing of his mother. There he makes provision for her as he calls out to her as she stands near the Beloved Disciple;

“Dear woman, here is your son.”

And then he calls out to the Beloved Disciple;

“Here is your mother.”

And of course the result is that his mother Mary is taken into the home of the Beloved Disciple.”

But this has to be balanced with the times when Jesus points to a wider vision of family. Think of the occasion when his mother and brothers turn up wanting to speak to him, only for Jesus to respond;

“Who is my mother and who are my brothers?”

Before pointing at his disciples and saying;

“Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Do you get it? This is exaggerated language through which Jesus tells us that we should not use family as an excuse to fail to bear witness to the generous, inclusive love that is at the heart of the new order that Jesus demonstrates in his own life and calls us to be a part of. Far from being an argument to retreat into solitary religion, this is Jesus’ call be a part of the revolution of all embracing love which serves to include those on the edges as has been demonstrated in the teaching of Jesus at the home of a Pharisee and in the subsequent Parable of the Great Banquet.

The second part of our reading speaks firstly of a tower. The question is whether a person who wishes to build a tower will not estimate the cost so that the tower might be brought to completion. For if this is not done and the tower is incomplete, Jesus suggests there will be an outcome of ridicule with people saying;

“This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.”

Now these comments had about them something of a contemporary edge. Herod’s reign was littered with building projects which were never completed. This was an astonishing waste of resources but more than that, they bore witness to Herod lacing the commitment to see things through to a proper conclusion. I think that Jesus is telling us in both this story and that about the King at war, that good intentions are not enough. He is making clear that following him and entering into his Kingdom is not something that is just for the moment. Far from it, discipleship is about entering thoughtfully into a commitment that is to be seen through. We often see those adverts that tells us that a dog is for life and not just for Christmas. The adverts are right for dog ownership is a real commitment. How much greater a commitment is the life changing commitment to be a follower of Christ. It is not simply about a prayer of commitment at a highly charged service. To think of becoming a follower of Jesus in those terms, is but cheap grace. Rather becoming a follower of Jesus entails a decision in full awareness of the commitment that will be required, to live for the Jesus way as much at times of inevitable trial as in times of mountain top experience. This is a serious commitment and we should never sell that commitment short. Jesus wants real followers and not fair weather friends.

A final part of our reading speaks to us about salt. It doesn’t really lose its taste although in Judaism it can become ritually unclean. A suggestion made in his lectionary notes by Chris Haslam, is perhaps helpful here. He suggests that Jesus in his comments about salt becoming useless, might be thinking about salt deposits around the dead sea which when heavily rained upon, look like salt but in fact no longer are salt. And surely in that suggestion, there is the salutary warning. For we can become so complacent and effectively lukewarm in commitment to the Jesus way, that ultimately we may have the appearance of followers of the Christ way whilst lacking the substance. And that is a warning we should take seriously.

So this morning, are reminded of the importance of commitment even to the point of suffering as Jesus himself did on the cross. The commitment called for is a commitment in which we are prepared to give all and is a commitment that is steadfast. But this is not the type of commitment that is expressed in hostility to others as is so often the case when religion goes bad. Jesus does not ask for the type of religious fanaticism that we see in Inquisitions and planes going into buildings. He does not ask for the type of fanaticism which sees those who think differently as the enemy or that which portrays God as the author of threats to the recalcitrant. No, Jesus calls for a wholehearted commitment to his path of all embracing, inclusive love. It is a commitment to a path that is by no means dour for the goal is an party to which all are invited. In a sense there is a calling to a path which embraces both Cavalier and Roundhead. For the invite is to share in a community which is bright and dynamic and yet the calling is serious in that the cost must surely be counted and the commitment must be great.

Years ago, Michael Foot in his “Debts of Honour” devoted a chapter to his local preacher father Isaac, entitled “A Cavalier for the Roundheads.” It was a reasonable description yet I suspect that if we hold the entirety of the fourteenth chapter of Luke in creative tension, we find a calling to both exhibit the joy and inclusiveness of the one and serious commitment of the other.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

This sermon is being preached at Northam Methodist Church on September 9th 2007

Party Invitations - Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-09-02T13:09:00.001-07:00

Luke 14: 1, 7 - 14

It was in the Methodist Church in Four Lanes. My great grandmother had arrived for the evening service with the young woman who was to be her daughter in law when disaster occurred. Moving to the row where she sat on a weekly basis, my great grandmother saw another woman in her seat. Ignoring the young woman’s suggestion that they should just sit in another seat, my great grandmother replied;

“I have paid for that seat.”

And with that, this woman who looked a bit like John Prescott in drag, placed herself on the other woman’s lap until the unfortunate woman agreed to move.

The days of pew rents when people paid to have the right to occupy what they deemed to be the best seats, are fortunately well behind us. I know of no Methodist Church where such a practice exists, thank God! Indeed, I would refuse to serve in such a church if it existed. And yet, I dare to suggest that the desire for status is far from belonging to the past.

Issues of status are certainly to be found in this morning’s Gospel reading. The background is that Jesus is sharing in a Sabbath meal at the home of a prominent Pharisee. That this should be the case, attracts our immediate attention. After all, we often think of the Pharisees as the great enemies of Jesus. Yet, such was by no means always the case. A Pharisee would only invite those who took the Torah seriously. And clearly this Pharisee felt that Jesus did precisely that. Of course, there were a number of conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees but these were the conflicts that take place between those who have much in common. How sad that too often today, we have a jaundiced view as to the Pharisees whose primary motive was to preserve the way of life that they felt to be God given. For such a view has too often led to the curse of ant Semitism which has been a blight on the history of the Christian church.

But of course there were conflicts even if they are recorded in the Gospels against a background of the subsequent divorce between Judaism and the Christianity which it spawned. Anyhow, today’s Gospel is rooted on a meal shared by Jesus with Pharisees. Within the meal , there has been a degree of disagreement concerning what is permissible on the Sabbath. But our reading takes us into the realms of a different matter - the matter of status!

In the first part of our Bible reading, we find Jesus suggesting that in the Kingdom of God, we are called upon to relinquish the desire to be seen as more important than others. For meals such as this, there would have been a correct order of seating. The nearest thing we get to it today would probably be at a wedding or at a State Banquet. As with a wedding banquet, the custom at such meals at the time of Jesus was for there to be a place for the most important people present, the least important people present as well as for those who came somewhere inbetween. This is why such importance is given to the beloved disciple at the Last Supper having his head next to the chest of Jesus as they reclined to eat.
We talk today of the greasy pole and such existed at the time of Jesus as well. People wished to rise and dreaded falling. In some ways, the advice of Jesus to take a lowly seat may be seen as advice to protect people from the indignity that would come if they had valued themselves to highly and now faced demotion. But, I think it is about more than this. I think that Jesus is suggesting that God is not concerned with our hierarchies and that within the Kingdom of God which Jesus has come to proclaim, our distinctions based on class, learning or race, have no place whatsoever. It is in abandoning the greasy pole that we embrace the path of Christ and find ourselves truly raised up as we become open to sharing in the life of God. For God is not the God whose love is confined to an elite but God is the God who is committed in love to and for all peoples.

And then, we come to the advice that Jesus offers to the host. His suggestion is that the host should offer hospitality not to those who can do the host good but to offer it to those who are utterly powerless to respond in kind. True blessing comes from inviting the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Today, we lose a sense of the radicalism of these words. For these were the days when the dominant theology held people as being responsible for their own misfortunes. It was a cruel theology and some of its roots can be found in the Deuteronomic writings within the Old Testament in which writers seek to explain the catastrophe of Israel’s exile in terms of its disobedience. And indeed sometimes today, a distorted religion turns God into some sort of hitman dealing out the cruellest of punishments to those who err. Oh beware of the sort of teaching that dares to misrepresent God as a monster.

This teaching was all around at the time of Jesus. If someone was a leper, this hateful religion suggested that such was a result of sin. And in nearby, Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, there was the Essene community which suggested that the very people whom Jesus suggested that the host should invite, were excluded from the much anticipated Messianic Banquet that lay at the heart of Jewish hope for the future.

What Jesus is suggesting is that there is no room for exclusion. The very people who we are tempted to shy away from, are to be welcomed into our community life. This is the Gospel that bids a hearty welcome to the stranger, the outcast and the person who cannot fit in. Why? Because the Gospel of Christ is for al!

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

All beloved of God, we are called into a community of solidarity which has no walls or barriers.

Let me tell you a story which comes from Canada and which relates to Fred Craddock, a well known American preacher.

Fred was in the city of Winnipeg. It was early October and a storm had paralysed the city. For his breakfast, Fred found himself in a café at the bus depot.. As he entered a big man with a greasy apron came over and asked him what he wanted. Not knowing what the café served, Fred asked for a menu. Grumpily the man said;

“What d’ya want with a menu? We have soup.”

“Then I’ll have soup” replied Fred.

Soon afterwards, the man brought Craddock his soup. It looked unusual, rather grey like a mouse. Nervously, he picked up his spoon and tasted it. It was ghastly. How can I eat that he said to himself.

At that the door opened and in came a woman. She was middle aged and had a coat on but no ead covering. Quickly she was ushered to a seat. Soon the man with the greasy apron came over and the whole café heard the following conversation;

“What d’ya want”

“Bring me a glass of water please.”

The man brought the water and repeated the question;

“What d’ya want?”

“Just the water.”

“Lady, you gotta order something.”

“Just the water.”

The man’s voice now began to rise;

“Lady I’ve got paying customers here waiting for a place, now order!”

“Just the water.”

“You order something or get out!”

“Can I stay and get warm?”

“Order or get out!”

And so the woman got up. But not only the woman. Others got up and the sight of people rising rippled around the café and Fred to got up. Next they all began to move towards the door.

At this the man with the greasy apron said;

“OK. She can stay.”

And so everyone sat down. The man even brought the woman a bowl of soup.

Fred turned to the man sat next to him and asked;

“Who is she?”

The man replied;

“I never saw her before but if she ain’t welcome, ain’t nobody welcome.”

Fred looked around and saw all around people eating the soup. And he thought to himself;

“Well, if they can eat it, I can eat it.”

With that, he picked up his spoon and began to eat. Later he recalled;

“It was a good soup. I ate all that soup. It was strange soup. I don’t remember ever having it. …. I remember eating something that tasted like that before.”

As he left the café, he remembered what it was. It had tasted to him like bread and wine. And Fred mused,

“I wish that had happened in a church.”

This morning, at the beginning of a Methodist New Year, we prepare to celebrate with bread and wine. It’s a party to which we are all invited by the host who is Jesus himself. We come celebrating that the invitation comes from his kindness. And as we come to receive bread and wine, we give thanks that as we receive we are brought into solidarity with diverse people who likewise are invited by Jesus. For Jesus issues the invites to all.

This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on September 2nd 2007

How much land does a man need? - Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-08-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

Luke 12: 13 - 21

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story entitled ‘How Much land does a Man Need?’ It tells the story of a peasant named Pakhom who sees his greatest need as being to remedy a lack of land. Should he have enough land, he comments that he would not even fear the Devil himself.

His opportunity arises when the landowner of a nearby estate decides to sell her property and so he decides to buy forty acres of this land. To finance this, he has to sell a colt, half of his bee colony, hire out one of his sons and to borrow the rest from his brother in law. The purchase works out well. Thanks to a good harvest he is able to pay of all his debts.

End of story you might think but No! Soon he feels cramped and develops problems with his neighbours and so hearing of land beyond the Volga which is available at a decent price, he sells his land and purchases more land than he could ever have dreamt of owning.

But once again he comes to the conclusion that he needs yet more land. Some years later he hears that another landowner is prepared to sell 1,300 acres for a good price. Pakhom is on the verge of buying this land when he hears from a passing dealer of some far away land which he could buy for next to nothing. And so off he sets again. There he meets a chief who offers to sell him all the land he could walk around by day for a mere 1,000 rubles. There is but one catch. If he has not returned to his starting point by sundown, he will lose both the 1,000 rubles and the land.

Pakhom spends the night before the walk in a state of total excitement about the riches that apparently lie ahead. In the morning he meets with the Chief who puts his hat on the starting point and with that Pakhom sets off to the rising Sun. And so Pakhom walks for mile after mile. Each time he thinks of turning, the land seems too good to lose and so he goes on and on until at breakfast he makes his first turn. The next turn, he puts off time and again until just after lunch. But by then he has gone so far that he is tiring and the walk back becomes ever more difficult. He realises that he has tried to cover too much ground. As he look up, he sees the Sun setting. Fearful that he is about to lose everything he runs, runs despite the pain in his legs and chest. But time is short, too short and so with the Sun nearly set, he makes a final surge towards the starting point where the Chief is waiting for him. And as he reaches the by now laughing Chief, his legs give way.

“Ah that’s a fine fellow, he has gained much land” says the Chief. But for what? Pakhom has died in the effort and now in Tolstoy’s immortal phrase, “Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”

A strange story! Like Jesus’ story of the rich fool a rather morbid story. But No! For the message of both of these stories is about how we chose to live our lives. Pakhom like the Rich Fool has been seduced into living for things. Like the rich fool, he has lost the capacity to be satisfied for both Pakhom and the fool are powerful warning of how materialism at its worst can distort our lives.

Now, at this point a brief cautionary note. This Parable reminds me of a much misquoted Scripture. How often we hear it said that ‘money is the root of all evil.’ Nowhere does the Bible say such a thing. The relevant Scripture is that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil.’ And so, the failing of the rich fool is not that he had money or even that he invested it for any economic system requires profits to be invested for future requirements. No, the sin of the rich fool is that he has allowed the acquisition of things to dominate his whole life. His view of life was a self centred view that emphasised Me and Mine above all other considerations.

In a sense the Rich Fool is an echo of the Rich Young Man who approached Jesus. In neither case are they condemned for their affluence. In both cases, their problem is that they put that affluence at the centre of their lives pushing God out to the edges. Here is where the conflict comes with the teachings of Christ who urges us to be open to God in our lives and to be aware and responsive to the needs of others.

But perhaps at this point we need to open ourselves to the message of Christ in this parable. For are not we all open to the same attitude as the Rich Fool. We live in a society where modern day marketing has immense power to create in us needs we never knew we had. Gadgets, bigger wardrobes and flashier cars nag away at all of us. We all know the need to do or achieve something different and in no time our focus can depart from God. Our parable this morning is a wake up call. It doesn’t call us to hair shirt living for such a call is not in the nature of Jesus but it reminds us that as creatures of God, we need to keep our focus on God and what God calls us to do.

As Mother Theresa put it;

“At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.

We will be judged by

“I was hungry and you gave me to eat.
I was naked and you clothed me.
I was homeless and you took me in.”

Hungry not only for bread
But hungry for love

Naked not only for clothing
But naked of human respect and dignity.

Homeless not only for want of a room of bricks
But homeless of rejection.

This is Christ in distressing surprise.”

Ultimately this is a story about priorities. I imagine that Jesus tells this story with all its exaggerations to remind us that we need to build our lives on sound foundations. This parable invited us to make God’s Kingdom the basis of our lives.

Back for a moment to Tolstoy’s story. Right at the beginning, the Devil has seen in Pakhom’s growing obsession with wanting more and more land, the means to get Pakhom into his power thinking;

“We will have a tussle. I’ll give you land enough; and by means of that land I will get you into my power.”

Contrast that with Jesus who doesn’t offer to meet all our wants but who instead wishes to journey with us through the changing scenes of life, not wanting to get us into his power but desiring to help us to make good use of our freedom.

It is a choice between undending craving and finding true satisfaction. Who can doubt which is the more beneficial in helping us to life with true abundance?

This sermon is to be preached at Alwington Methodist Church on Sunday August 5th 2007

Going down Sodom Way - A second sermon for ninth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-07-29T07:19:00.001-07:00

Genesis 18: 20 - 32

Sodom and Gomorrah - the stuff of legend in the annals of Hellfire preaching. After all this is the Biblical story of God’s ferocious judgement on homosexuals. Indeed, our words sodomy and sodomite come from this very story.

But is it possible that we have misunderstood this story. For a moment let’s look back at the story? Let’s go back before the Scripture that we have heard this evening. For at the beginning of the 18th Chapter of Genesis, we find Abraham sat by his ten beside the oaks of Mamre. He looks up and finds before him three men. He doesn’t know them but being a Middle Eastern man, Abraham welcomes them into his home and provides them with water whilst Sarah cooks up a feast. This is the hospitality which will be in the mind of the writer of Hebrews when writing;

“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

As hospitality is enjoyed by the three guests, Abraham and Sarah are rewarded with some good news. Old as they are, they will receive the blessing of a son from whom will come a mighty Kingdom. More than that, as a result of this

“All the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.”

But now comes an ominous turn. Two of the guests who are identified as angels, set off for the town of Sodom whilst the third guest who is revealed as the Lord tells Abraham that he too will go to Sodom to see if it is as wretched a place as it has been reported as being.

Abraham will seek to persuade god to show mercy on the city. In part this will be because, he has a nephew, Lot, there but for now we will leave Abraham’s protestations to go on and see what happens in Sodom when the angels arrive.

The first thing that happens is that they encounter Abraham’s nephew Lot who is sitting at the gateway. Clearly a well brought up man, Lot offers the sort of hospitality that Abraham had offered back in Mamre. Like Abraham, Lot waters and feeds them. He overrules their objections to offer them accommodation for the night. So far, so good. But now the story takes a sharp turn for the worse. Before the guests have gone to bed, a crowd of men surround the house. They have but one thing on their mind. They want to rape these guests. A gangbang is what they have on their minds. What a contrast to the hospitality which Lot has shown!

Lot’s resistance to this knows no bounds. He shuts the doors and somewhat inexplicably offers his virgin daughters to the mob. I find no way of excusing this part of Lot’s conduct and indeed later he will find that his daughters are far from sweet when whilst living in a cave, they get him drunk and so become pregnant by their own father. .

But back to Sodom. Lot is now the object of the fury of the crowd. Listen to their words;

“This man came here as an alien, and he would play the judge. Now we will deal worse with you than with them.”

Oh yes, the mood is now very nasty indeed. Lot is learning that because he is a migrant, there are those who will always see him as a second class person. He has no option but to get out and fast. And so, he calls his wife his daughters and the men who were intending to marry his daughters and tells them that they need to escape. The would be sons in law think he is jesting and so they stay put. But Lot, his wife and his daughters, escape the city with the help of the two guests, who warn them to flee and not to look back. As Lot’s family take flight, disaster overtakes Sodom and Gomorrah with sulphur raining on them. And of course, we all know the story of Lot’s wife looking back and being turned into a pillar of salt.

What exactly happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is a subject for speculation. We do know that by the time of the final editing of Genesis, the leaders of Israel were in exile in Babylon. There they speculated as to why their fortunes had reached such a low. And as they did so, one school of thought that acquired influence was what was known as the “Deuteronomic” school of thought. These people took the view that when people were obedient they were blessed by God whilst when they were disobedient they were cursed by God. We see this influence particularly in the Deuteronomistic histories but also in parts of the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. To such people who felt that the plight of their time was a consequence of disobedience by the people, it would be reasonable to assume that a city of sin would receive punishment at the hands of God.

But wait! The dialogue between Abraham and God does not seem to end on a note that suggests imminent destruction. And we know that the two cities lie on a geological rift which extends from Turkey to East Africa. This rift contains extensive sulphur, bitumen deposits and oil springs. An argument that cannot surely be dismissed suggests that an earthquake with associated fires might have ignited these deposits and created an explosion with deadly consequences on these cities. Of course, this is not an open and shut argument but it merits consideration. Certainly, the alternative of wholesale slaughter leaves us with serious problems regarding the nature of God.

So what was the sin of Sodom? Frankly, I believe that the Scripture before us, offers no help in the debate on sexuality which seems to be going on within the Christian churches. There is all the difference in the world between the violence of rape and consensual sexual relationships. The seemingly unending debate on homosexuality will need to be based on other Scriptures than the story of Sodom.

I suggest that the story of Sodom rather than being related to Gay News is more relevant to Express Newspapers, the Daily Mail Group and News International. For the real issue seems to be based on hospitality and how we treat strangers from other places. The real sin of Sodom is that their welcome of those who came from outside, was devoid of any compassion whatsoever. More than that, foreigners who had come from outside were judging by the hostility shown by the citizens towards Lot, deprived of a right to challenge life denying orthodoxies. I ask you, do you not see echoes of such xenophobia in the way in which East Europeans, Asians, African and travellers are at times portrayed and treated in our country? And that is before we start to talk about people of other religions.

But hold it! An I concluding as I am our of a perverse agenda? Well, I remember being told many years ago that we should let Scripture interpret Scripture. And so I want to draw your attention to the ways that other Scriptures interpret the story of Sodom. Isaiah refers to Sodom in both the first and third chapters but in both cases, the reference is against a background of condemnation of injustices. Jeremiah in the twenty third chapter refers to Sodom but here it is in the context of a condemnation of the abuses of the Court prophets. As for the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, Jerusalem is Sodom’s sister because of a similar disposition. Says Ezekiel, Sodom and her daughters “had pride, excess of food and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” Within the New Testament, the Second Letter of Peter speaks of Sodom as “an example of what is coming to the ungodly” without telling us what the sin of Sodom was. Meanwhile Jude makes mention of “sexual immorality” and going after other flesh, presumably that of angels. This text has reference to the misuse of sexuality but we have always known that rape is both sexually immoral and inhospitable. But to me the most convincing text is to be found in the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel where Jesus suggests that the places where the seventy two sent out on mission do not receive a welcome, face a future so bad that it “will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.”

In other words, the overriding Scriptural interpretation of the destruction of Sodom, is that the key issue is about welcoming of strangers. Oh, there are days when I wish that people would realise that the Bible has so much more to say about welcoming strangers and people from other lands than it has to say about our modern day obsession with sex. It really is time that we stopped using this story as an instrument of hatred and instead grab hold of the true message that we are called to be welcoming to those who are other than us. For in welcoming strangers we may be welcoming the very messengers of God.

And now having seen the liberating message of this story, just a moment on Abraham’s controversy with God. This dialogue is one which teaches us so much. Partly as a result of his nephew being in Sodom, Abraham urges God to save the city if a few righteous people can be found. As God acquiesces, Abraham keeps reducing the required number until eventually it goes down to a mere ten. I think there is a beauty in Abraham’s approach. He knows little of Sodom but he knows the value of human life and so he acts as a reminder to God to be merciful. In this, we are reminded that human lives matter so much. Today, we find it so easy to lump people into groups and so evade the issue of their humanity. Oh to rediscover the insight of Hannah Arendt who once said, “I don’t love groups. I can only love persons.” What a powerful corrective to our tendency to label people.

Not so long ago, I watched the occasional television programme, Sharia. On the panel was the Muslim gentleman who taught me about Islam for a year when we were in training. The issue of an Islamic nuclear bomb came up. He was dismissive of the notion. An Islamic bomb was he said, a contradiction in terms for such a weapon would be indiscriminate. After all the Quran says, “Anyone who kills a human being must be accounted to have killed all mankind.” It is as Mahatma Gandhi commented when asked for a reaction to the bomb that landed on Hiroshima, the atom bomb had “resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet to early to see.”

Abraham reminds us that for Christians, all human life is precious. Such an understanding impacts upon our attitude to weapons of mass destruction as well as upon a range of socio economic issues. But most importantly this evening, let us simply affirm the worth of all and the essential quality of mercy, a quality that we find honed to its fines level in Jesus Christ.

Going down Sodom Way offers us so many lessons as to what it means to be God’s people. They just aren’t the ones we might expect. But then, God’s love and way of inclusion has always surprised us.

May it go on doing so.

This sermon was preached on Sunday July 29th at Alverdiscott Methodist Church. The inspiration to tackle this subject was an infinitely superior sermon by Kim Fabricius.

Prayer as a means of change - Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-07-29T01:33:00.000-07:00

Luke 11: 1 - 13

A boy in a small village for some reason best known to himself took to attending the weekly Prayer Meeting at the local Methodist church. Each week, the regulars would welcome him warmly when he arrived, always a few minutes late. Each week, he would listen to the prayers but never contribute himself. That is until a few weeks before Christmas when to everyone’s amazement he prayed out loud;

“Dear God, please give me a bike for Christmas so that I can get things from the shops for Mum.”

And week after week, he repeated that same prayer.

Now Christmas was drawing close and the faithful men and women at the prayer meeting began to get concerned. What would be the affect on the boy’s faith if at Christmas, there was no bike. So they got together and each of them put some money into a jar. To their joy, they found that the money they had given would go half way towards the boy getting the type of bike that he had told them he wanted. So they put the money in an envelope and delivered it to the boy’s home just a week before Christmas.

Christmas came and went. The New Year arrived and at the first gathering of the Prayer Meeting in the New Year, the people wondered what the boy’s response would be. Sure enough, the boy arrived a few minutes into the meeting and in no time they got their answer as he prayed;

“Dear God, thank you for giving the money for me to have a new bike. Only, next time, please don’t give it to the Methodists as they nicked half of it.”

What do we expect from prayer. Some people I have met seem to expect miracles on demand. I knew someone who was convinced that a prayer for a parking space would be answered with just such a parking space. Oh, I had to bite my tongue a time or two on that one. For what sort of God would be fail to prevent cruelties such as ethnic cleansings yet come running into action to meet requests that can best be seen as trivial.

And yet, prayer matters. Oh, I confess I have attended some pretty depressing prayer meetings in my time. I know what my late uncle meant when he spoke of prayer meetings that seemed to be a competition in who can use the floweriest language and quote the most remote Scriptures.

But still, this morning, I want to put the case that prayer does matter and is a means of bringing change. Listen for a moment to the words of the greatest of Hindu’s Mahatma Gandhi;

“Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.”

We see such an appreciation of the importance of prayer in Jesus. There is not a lot of teaching on prayer within the Gospels but the clues are everywhere that Jesus, especially in the stormy passages of life, makes time even in the hours when we would be most inclined to be asleep, to be in prayer before God. And now, in our Gospel reading, he encourages them to pray and in the Lord’s Prayer offers them a pattern to follow in praying.

Sometimes, I fear that we are too familiar with the Lord’s Prayer. We can recite it without a second thought and it feels so very homely. And yet, we lose a sense that this is a prayer which boldly challenges how we are often inclined to see God, the world and life.

This morning, we can but scratch the surface. Yet it is a surface that is revealing.

Firstly, we see what the Lord’s Prayer tells us of our relationship with God. And here, there is good news. God is not a distant figure such as a remote king or a patriarchal father who holds his family at arms length. God is so much closer and accessible as is revealed in Jesus having a preference for the intimate term, “Abba” is his addressing God. For Jesus would know of the abuse of power within society and within families. And he goes to great lengths to communicate that god is so different from such destructive understandings. There is a hallowing, a respect directed to God but this should not be seen as a cringing before God. On the contrary, our relationship with God is rooted in a respect which is both given and received. We are called into a healthy relationship with God which will be reflected in our other relationships.

And yet it affects how we see the world. Take note of the petition;

“Your Kingdom come.”

Sometimes, we can be accepting of the way that our world is ordered. We fall into the trap of thinking that it can be no other way. And in so doing, we ignore the claims of the Kingdom of God which Jesus came to proclaim. For this Kingdom is so different from the expressions of empire which litter our history books. Here is a new vision of what can be, a vision in which force, oppression and the power of capital give way to the path of peace in which each is recognised as being of value and worthy of consideration. Unrealistic, some may say. And yet, here is a vision which we are called to for in it is the recognition that every man woman and child is precious to the God who has given life to all. The emphasis on Me gives way in this way of seeing the world to a recognition that in Christ, there is a We.

And it also affects us in our daily living. For we are called to be sensitive to the needs of others seeking that the needs of others be met and that we be willing to exercise forgiveness and reconciliation in our relationships. We know there are times when this is hard and yet we know from experience that bitterness tends to reap a harvest in ever increasing circles of hatred.

But how does all of this work? During the week before last, our family went to see the latest Harry Potter movie. Now please don’t ask me questions about it as I kept falling asleep during it. However, I do remember the power of the spells cast by the wizards. A wave of a wand and a shout of “Expelliarnus” seemed to create quite an impact. Well prayer is not like that. It is not a form of magic to be turned to when convenient. That is why Jesus goes on to talk about persistence in prayer.

Now I don’t want to rule out any possibilities in regards to the answering of prayer but I do want to suggest that prayer is primarily about our being connected to God who is always present. And that being connected with God is more about our being changed than it is about God being changed.

Let me use an example. “Shadowlands” is a film based on C.S. Lewis, the Oxford don who was quite a literary sensation years ago with his Narnia stories. In the film , he has fallen in love with Joy Gresham, an American woman. She has sadly developed a terminal illness and during her struggle for life, the love of Lewis and Joy has deepened. Now, at the hospital where she is being cared for, they have married.

Soon after, Lewis has arrived at the college where he taught and been met by his friend, Harry Harrington who is an Episcopalian priest. Harrington asks what news there is. Lewis replies speaking of the marriage rather than the illness;

“Ah, good news, I think, Harry. Yes, good news.”

Harrington who is unaware of the mariage thinks that Lewis is referring to Joy’s medical situation and so he says;

“I know how hard you’ve been praying. Now God is answering your prayer.”

To which Lewis responds;

“That’s not why I pray Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God; it changes me.”

And in those words we see the reasons why we pray. We pray because we need to be in relationship with God, something we especially appreciate in out times of weakness. Prayer is the opening up of the means of communication and just as we need to communicate with and not just grunt at our significant others, our relationship with God requires communication or it can soon be dormant.

But in that communication, the greatest need is for us to be open to what God communicates to us. That is why the Quakers are on to something with their emphasis on silence. For it is in silence that we are best able to hear what God is saying to us. It is silence that we become open to being changed.

But back for a moment to the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t suppose that God has a desperate need to hear us saying those words. God, as it were, has heard it all before. The need is with us. For our need is to be connected with the nature of God and the nature of our calling to be God’s people. And then, we find before us the invitation to reimagine the world, our relationships and the possibilities before us. Through this prayer we are invited to live in a way that brings the signs of Christ’s liberation for others.

I know I can be cynical but I don’t believe in prayer as a means to find parking spaces. It is so much more than that. What prayer does is to change people. And then people can change all that is around them.

This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday July 29th 2007

Sisters - Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-07-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

Luke 10: 38 - 42

There is an old story in which three women arrive at the Pearly Gates. One is a Roman Catholic, another is a Baptist and the third is a Methodist. Before deciding whether to let them in, St Peter says to them;

“I will need to see proof that you’re worthy of admission.”

The Roman Catholic holds up her rosary and is waved through. Next the Baptist holds up her Bible and is also waved through. The Methodist hands St Peter a dish and says;

“Don’t burn your tongue on the casserole.”

Yes, meeting the needs of our stomachs seems to be an important part of Methodist identity. Not for nothing does the Superintendent Minister of the Bideford Methodist Circuit, tell incoming ministers that the most important decision they will face is what to eat with their clotted cream. For Methodism is often like an army marching on its stomachs.

From our Bible reading, I guess that Martha would be inclined to identify with Methodism. We find her busy with the tasks that come from having a guest in the home. What these tasks were, we are not told but I can imagine her as being hard at work with whatever was the Palestinian equivalent of the casserole dish.

All well and good, we might think. But there is dissension within the house. Such is the level of Martha’s busyness, that she is described as being “distracted by her many tasks.” Meanwhile her sister Mary is failing to help Martha with those tasks, preferring instead to listen to the guest, Jesus.

Such is Martha’s irritation at the lack of help from her sister, that she asks Jesus to tell Mary to help out:

“Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”

And does not something within us sympathise with Martha’s complaint? After all is there not a degree of merit in the old adage;

“Many hands make light work.”

If Mary helped, Martha might also be free to spend some time with Jesus.

But now, Jesus takes the opportunity to surprise us. Instead of backing Martha’s complaint, he decides to take the side of the seemingly lazy Mary;

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

So what’s going on? Does Jesus really fail to understand and sympathise with Martha’s predicament? Surely, this is not fair!

But wait a moment! I think that what Jesus is doing here is not so much to chastise Martha as to help her. It is not that Martha is doing wrong things. Her problem is that she is becoming obsessed with her busyness. Everything has to be done immediately and properly. And it is stressing her out big time!

In this we begin to find that this story speaks very much to us today. We are part of a society that tends to honour doing rather than being. 24/7 activity is increasingly becoming the pattern in our cities so that we become more and more like New York, known as the “city that never sleeps.” And is that not a destructive road to walk down? No wonder, we are beginning to find people talking about our need to rediscover a proper work/life balance.

And this is not just the case in the world of commerce. Within the church, we can also be lured into a cult of busyness. Now of course, there are tasks within the church that need to be done. But is there not a danger that the demands of maintenance and meeting the bills are so overwhelming, that we are failing to adequately listen to God as well as failing to be about God’s mission?

Increasingly, it seems that we need to get away from the idea of doing things as we have always done them. Where our communities have got smaller, all this is doing is putting more and more pressures upon the willing so that like Martha, we become distracted and of little use.

Martha needs to learn to do things simply. She needs to appreciate that doing that which is good, can never be an adequate substitute for doing that which is best. Like us today, she needs to get a proper understanding of priorities.

How does this apply to us? There is a temptation to think of ourselves as being Marys or Marthas. That misses the whole point. You see, we are not being told that we must abandon the need to deal with the practicalities of life. Look at the history of the Jewish people and you find that hospitality quickly became a sacred responsibility. Even the famous story of Sodom and Gomorrah has far more to do with showing hospitality than with any debate about sex. Jesus himself was regularly involved in the receiving of hospitality and in the early days of the Christian church, we find seven deacons being set aside in order to attend to the needs of the poor. And throughout the two millennia that have followed, the practical provision of hospitality has been of great importance to Christians. And rightly so!

To have the right balance in our Christian lives, we need not so much to choose between Mary and Martha but to seek a healthy balance of both of them. For our calling is to be in communion with God and to serve God not so much as we have always done, but in response to the requirements of God’s Kingdom.

And there is something more of God’s Kingdom to note before we leave this story. Notice how Luke places this episode just after the Parable of the Good Samaritan. That parable has taught us that racial and religious barriers to God’s Kingdom are unacceptable. In today’s story, Jesus shows that gender barriers, are equally unacceptable. His own conduct in being alone with women who are not relatives, allowing a woman to serve him and teaching a woman in her own home, would have won him many a frown. More than that by allowing Mary to sit at his feet involved recognising her as a disciple. For here, another barrier is being dismantled. Whatever, the subsequent sins of the church against women, the message of Jesus is clear. Women no longer can be kept in the private spaces. They too can learn the good news of God and be followers every bit as much as men. Indeed part of the purpose for Jesus rebuking Martha is to draw her away from being the martyr who serves because if she doesn’t, nobody else will. The Kingdom is a place of gender equality! It is a place where fixed roles no longer exist and in which women are as free to find their calling as men. May God forgive the church when it fails to practice this!

This morning, let us embrace the good news that we are all called to play a part on God’s Kingdom. Amidst the practical services that are a part of discipleship, we need to remember that our spiritual life is rooted not so much in the frenzy of activity as it is in taking time to listen to God. And rather than being obsessed by busyness, we need to give God the chance to let us know when we need to change directions. For the journey upon which we have embarked is journey in which God shows us the way to connect with and to help others to connect with the wonder of Divine love.

Two sisters - Mary and Martha. Two sisters whose story shows us so much about fulfilling our desire to be God’s people today.

This sermon is being preached at Woolsery Methodist Church in the Bude Methodist Circuit on Sunday July 22nd 2007

Beyond traditionalism - Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

2007-07-16T01:04:00.000-07:00

Mark 7: 1 - 23

I do not know what the word “tradition” means to you. For me the word conjures up conflicting responses.

You see, tradition can be a good thing. It reminds us of things that have gone before us . We do not have to reinvent the wheel for we are the heirs to a lot that has hapened before we were born. We inherit a story of our community, our country and its institutions albeit often in a somewhat doctored form. We inherit values and customs which are thought to be helpful for right conduct and for harmony

It is similar within the church. We treasure a tradition which goes back to the Scriptures and which has developed through the Apostles and 2,000 years of church history. Within Methodism, at times it seems as of we have a cult of veneration of the Wesley brothers with even now candidates for the office of local preacher and the ordained ministry being examined on what are now rather dated sermons by John Wesley.

Now I don’t want to decry tradition. In a sense it reminds us of who we are and of our reason for being. As the President of the Methodist Conference, Martyn Atkins, would put it, there is great value in knowing our DNA. And yet when we become obsessed with tradition, it can become every bit as stifling as a hangman’s noose. For all too often the problem is not one of honouring tradition and learning from it but of being fossilised in one particular bit of tradition.

Back in the 1960s, Bob Dylan sang, “The times, they are a changing.” And in those words lie the problem with traditionalism. The problem of traditionalism is that it still seeks to impose yesterday’s answers on today’s questions. And this fails when we consider that we are living through a time of unparalleled social change.

Back for a moment to Martyn Atkins. I heard Martyn speaking a few weeks ago at Edgehill College’s Speech Day. There, he told us of an organisation in America that had run childrens’ orphanages. There came a time when these orphanages began to empty and it seemed as it was time to give up. That was until the archivist of the organisation told them of the story of how the organisation had begun. The orphanages had been a response to the problem of abandoned and neglected children. Responding to this need was their DNA. But now the old means of addressing the problem had come to an end. Yet, children were still facing problems and so the organisation dared to express its DNA in a new way by turning what had been orphanages into Day Centres where they were able put on a range of childrens’ activities and parenting classes. Had they abandoned their calling? No! What had happened was that they were implementing what John Prescott (even St John Prescott) has called “traditional values in a modern setting.”

So, where does this leave the church? Well whilst we should not think of ignoring or jettisoning our past, we do need to be also about the questioning of how we can remain true to our DNA in a modern setting? And traditionalism or seeking a return to past glories is not a viable option. For too often, the last words of the dying church have been;

“We’ve always done it this way.”

This doesn’t mean that there are not treasures from the past that we need to be reacquainted with. Indeed the “emerging church” movement has found value in revisiting traditions that have been long discarded. But it does mean that we need to explore the possibilities of “fresh expressions” of being church as we seek to envision what the church of Christ will be in the post modernity of the west.

And yet, we are not the first people to face the challenge of how we respond to tradition. The question of tradition is at the heart of the clash between the Pharisees and Jesus in our Gospel reading. You see, back in the desert days, the Israelites had developed a concern for purity. The law given to Moses includes what is known as the Purity Code. Some of this concerned hygiene. Some of it was commonsense and included the sorts of things which we gladly follow today. Much of it related to forming a people who would be very much a nation under God. However, by the time of Jesus, much of this Law would seem to have served its time. Indeed, too often, that which was the basis of the foundation of Israel, now served the purpose of nationalising God as Lord of but one people.

In our Gospel reading, a group of Pharisees (unrepresentative as research suggests that their view was more extreme than most Judaism or Pharisaism of that time) challenge Jesus over his disciples eating without carrying out ritual hand washing to guard against impurity. The consequence is that things kick off big time for Jesus immediately accuses them of hypocrisy quoting from Isaiah of a people who worship with their lips but with hearts that are far away. Then he adds the killer punch;

“You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

And to reinforce the point, he reminds them of the law of Corban, through which people were encouraged to dedicate their estates to the Temple which meant that they were frozen until death so that they could not be used to meet the needs of dependent parents. So much for honouring one’s mother and father!

But what is really at stake in this clash? I think the real problem is that ritual purity had become a means of keeping outsiders as precisely that. It was a means of maintaining a sort of holy huddle which kept so many out. The radical message of Jesus is that God’s love is for all. This means that our barriers need to be broken down. Listen for a moment to Garry Will as he writes of the inclusive love of God;

“No outcasts were cast out far enough in Jesus’ world to make him shun them - not Roman collaborators, not lepers, not prostitutes, not the crazed, not the possessed. Are there people now who could possibly be outside his encompassing love?”

And too often, the church has barred the doors on people. For long it was the Jews and there is a guilt that the Christian church must bear for the terrible events of the 1940s. Often today, the barriers are erected against gay people or the new enemy, Muslims. And others come to mind who have too often seemed to be rejected - the poor, those who have been married on a number of occasions, those who are mentally ill. And we could add others whom we might be tempted to think of as outsiders.

And yet, the message of Jesus is that true religion must hold on to the humanity of all peoples and encourage all to see that they are the recipients of Divine love. If the religious traditions to which we give our allegiances, serve to be an obstacle to love and compassion, then we need to revisit our theology.

We are the heirs and respecters of tradition. Yet the challenge that we face today is be constantly reinterpreting tradition in such a way that the God of love is accessible to all manner of peoples. It is not good enough to say that we will go on as we always have done. Our calling is to serve the present age. And if our traditions, be they how we worship or the message we share, are barriers, then such traditions need to be let go. And in these things there is little that is new. For the church at its best has always been prepared to question the place at which it is. Why should we be different?

May we respect what has been handed down to us whilst being prepared to move with God beyond traditionalism?

This sermon was preached at Torrington Methodist Church on Sunday July 15th 2007

The Good Samaritan - Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

2007-07-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Luke 10: 25 - 37

It’s a big question. One of the experts in the Law of Israel, asks Jesus;

“Teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Too often today, we interpret those words as a request for information as to how to have life beyond death. And indeed there is an element of that in the question. But what we too often miss out on in our “Me, me me” world, is that “eternal life” would have been understood as being not just about continued existence beyond the grave, but as being about a quality of life in the present - a quality of life that is about sharing in the life of God. It is about being all that God would have us be in this world as much as beyond.

So what does Jesus do? Well, firstly, he points the expert to the Law which he has studied.

“What is written in the Law? How do you read it?

At this, the expert replies by affirming the same pieces of Old Testament Law which Jesus is recorded in the other Gospels as affirming as the greatest of the commandments;

“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ ”

So far, so good. But the expert wants to delve further and to question Jesus as to who is his neighbour. And it is at this point that Jesus tells what we know as “The Parable of the Good Samaritan” - a story which would have challenged the expert’s worldview. A story which if we will but dare to release it from familiarity and being made safe, potentially completely change how we see the meaning of life.

Let’s for a moment consider the characters in this story.

Firstly, there is the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. We know nothing about him. His race and background are blank pages. All we know is that he would seem to have been foolish because the road from Jerusalem down to Jericho was a road that was very steep with plenty of twists and turns. It was the happy hunting ground of brigands, a place of danger. And it was on this road that the traveller received a mighty beating.

Yes, this traveller can be seen as any man or even as a nobody with all the markers as to his identity taken from him by his assailants And too often then as now, those without the trappings of status so often counted for precious little.

And yet there would seem to be hope. We are told of two men who see this injured man. Those listening would expect a happy outcome for both of these men were the religious professionals of that time - a priest and a levite. Why they didn’t help we are not told. It may be because they feared that the battered traveller was a decoy to enable further injuries to be visited upon them, something we know all too well in the stories of terror that we hear of today. But I think it is more likely that the reason for their failing to help the battered man is more likely to be religious. You see, the priests served in Jerusalem’s Temple. They had to be ritually pure to perform the services that were required of them in two week shifts. To return home as “unclean” would have been quite some embarrassment. Yet, this would have been the case if he had contact with a dead body.

And then what about the levite? Well, all priests were levites but not all levites were priests. Still, even those levites who were not priests tended to be men of high religious standing, often rabbis. They were part of Israel’s religious elite. And yet, following the priest, the levite goes a little closer but ultimately follows the example of the priest in not helping the traveller.

And here we find ourselves encountering a dilemma that has reverberated down the years. It is the dilemma when people feel that what God wants should have priority over human kindness and compassion. We all know of religious wars waged by earnest religious people down the centuries. We all know of cruelties meted out by devoutly religious people upon those who in some way especially in the field of sexuality, have not conformed to what these religious people see as truth. We all know of sincerely religious people who put the institution of the church or forms of observance ahead of basic humanity and compassion. Yes, the example of priest and levite is an example that has all too often been repeated.

But this is an example that is in no way applauded by Jesus in his story. At the end, priest and levite alike have failed to be good neighbours. For one of the messages of this parable is that loving the “neighbour” is not secondary to loving God. On the contrary, this parable reminds us that the most helpful picture of God is of a Being who is all loving and who is constantly engaged in pouring out such love. So love and compassion for others is not so much about an obligation as it is about our being invited to participate and share in the life and being of God.

But back to the parable. There now appears another passerby. This person is a Samaritan. Imagine for a moment, the horror that this would have struck in the mind of those who were listening to Jesus. It is as if the pantomime villain has arrived upon the stage. For there was a long history of enmity between Jews and Samaritans going back several hundreds of years to the time when Assyrian invaders deported the elite in Northern Israel leaving behind the less important people who eventually mingled with the foreigners who the Assyrians brought in to repopulate the land. Inevitably, there were wrongs on both sides. There were rival temples. There were wrongs done by both peoples and ultimately the conflict was in part religious and in part racial. Indeed, in John’s Gospel, when the enemies of Jesus wish to discredit him, they say;

“Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”

Whilst when a Samaritan village does not receive Jesus, his disciples, James and John ask;

“ Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them.”

Oh yes, it was a bitter conflict all right! But in this story, we find that the Samaritan does what priest and levite fail to do. He shows compassion and attends to the man’s needs. He, the outsider, fulfils the role of neighbour.

So what does this story say to us today? Like ancient Israel, we still erect barriers. Day after day, we see the reality of racial exclusion. Just look at what some of our newspapers spew up in terms of hatred of asylum seekers. Day after day, we see the reality of religious hatred. So often, we see attempts to increase divisions between different faiths - many increasingly becoming experts in an Alf Garnett sort of way regarding Muslims. And the list could go on! But Jesus in this parable defies our traditions of building walls between insiders and outsiders. For all the rainbow people of our planet are in the light of this parable to be seen as neighbours. We need to see, to appreciate and to embrace the whole human community which we are called to be in relationship with.

But finally, there is one more subversive twist in the story. Not only is the Samaritan a neighbour in our story. He is also the Christ figure in our story. See him bandaging the wounds and pouring oil and wine upon them. See the limitlessness of his compassion. And is that not a picture of Jesus. For when we feel battered, down and out, Jesus reaches out in loving kindness to us, to put us right and to fix us that we might once more embrace life and participate in the cycle of kindness of which he is the author.

In Christ we have the ultimate good neighbour. And in kindness, he invites us to share in his life.

This sermon was preached at Alwington on Sunday July 15th 2007

Keep your eyes on the road - Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-07-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

Luke 9: 51 - 62

Back seat drivers - don’t you love them! Well I am married to such a person. When I am in the driver’s seat, as my head begins to move around with my eyes looking at things to either side of the car, I am regularly given the abrupt message;

“Keep your eyes on the road!”

Now it goes without saying that I respond to this with a sharp retort followed by the moodiest silence that I can muster.

And yet (don’t let her know that I have admitted this) I have to concede that she is normally right. For the danger with my attention span being at a level of an under developed amoeba is that my drifting across the road may eventually put myself and others at mortal risk.

“Keep your eyes on the road!”

You know, it’s a bit like that with our following Jesus. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we are called on to give up our capacity for rational thinking or in any way to become Christian automatons. No way! But it does suggest that we have to develop a sense of focus as we live out our spiritual lives.

And such a need is by no means new. Indeed it is at the heart of the Gospel reading we have heard this evening. And I want for us to glimpse two ways in which we can be blown of course.

The first danger comes with a misplaced enthusiasm. The context we find offered to us by Luke is that Jesus has met with rejection in a Samaritan town. These Samaritans would be the descendants of a mixture of Jews whom the conquering Assyrian seven and a half centuries earlier had deemed too insignificant to deport to Babylon, and the Gentile people whom the Assyrians had settled in Palestine. Bitter rivalry between Jews and Samaritans had existed for half a millenia. And yet, in Luke’s Gospel, we normally see a good relationship between Jesus and Samaritans.

But here, that harmony comes to an end because Jesus was heading to Jerusalem where many a Samaritan grievance was directed. Now James and John, Sons of Thunder, live up to their reputations. They have seen Jesus rejected and so they seek payback time;

“Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy them.”

Chill at those words for those are the words of religious fanaticism, that belief that justifies violence in the name of that which is perceived as truth. It is the voice of twisted religion and yet sickeningly it is a voice that has been heeded by zealous followers of every religion at various points in history.

Too often today, we think of fanaticism merely in terms of Islam and whilst Islam has its fair share of problems to face, it is hardly alone. Christian anti Semitism has reared its head with devastating results down the years leading to a Holocaust. The crusader mentality has threatened particularly Muslims in the East. And in the founding of the Americas, conversion has all too often come with the threat of bloodshed. Indeed, we have barely scratched the surface of that particular tragedy.

But here, Jesus rejects such voices of fanatical violence. He is not in the business of coercion. For his way is to be the path of loving rather than of hating. He is in the business of building bridges rather than erecting walls. He rejects once and for all that darkest of myths, the myth of redemptive violence which sees violence as a means by which good is done.

One of the greatest dangers that faces Christianity today is the temptation to resort to a bunker mentality that sees threats all around. The mentality that sees as enemies all those who think differently or who adopt a different lifestyle, is a mentality which however devoutly held is in conflict with the way of Jesus.

May God deliver us from unthinking fanaticism that diverts us from the path of Christ.

But then there is a very different diversion. It is the diversion of half hearted discipleship. This may be the following of Jesus which is done with a good understanding but it fails to give following Jesus the priority that it demands. Here we find people with a good and proper desire to follow Jesus but they keep looking back. They have unfinished business before they can follow Jesus.
This is one of those scriptures in which Jesus seems to be upping the demands in a way that we find disconcerting. Let’s just see them one by one.

Firstly a man says to Jesus;

“I will follow you wherever you go.”

So far so good we might say. But Jesus replies by saying;

“Foxes have holes and birds have nests but the Son of God has nowhere to lay his head.”

What is Jesus playing at? Well perhaps he is drawing the man’s attention to the insecurities of being a follower of Jesus. For just as Jesus lived out his ministry in a state of radical dependence, so too will the follower be in a situation in which he may miss out on the things that attract the highly aspirational. To follow Jesus means being on a journey in which we put comforts and notions of success on the backburner for Jesus himself let these things go.

Next another man says to Jesus;

“Lord first let me go and bury my father.”

Fair enough, most of us would reply but Jesus responds;

“Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

And everyone of you knows that if I said this to someone recently bereaved, I would soon be looking for a new job and rightly so. After all, to bury one’s parents is the last act of honour that we can give them and is something that Jewish people certainly took seriously.

I can only conclude that there is an element of shock treatment here. Maybe we sometimes put family or religious duties ahead of the Kingdom of God. And to correct this excuse for not getting on with God’s Kingdom, Jesus throws out the hyperbole big time.

But he’s not finished yet. For there is another man who says to him;

“I will follow you Lord; but first let me go back and say good-bye to my family.”

Once more it sounds reasonable but Jesus is having none of it;

“No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the Kingdom of God.”

Wow! Even Elijah allowed Elisha to say farewell to his folks. This sounds unreasonable but is it?

Well in one sense it is but in another sense, Jesus is reminding them that to follow him means keeping our eyes on the road. If I drive with my eyes looking back through the mirror, I will never be fully committed to going forwards. And that is what this teaching is all about. To reduce it to literalism is as is so often the case, to do a violence to Scripture. We know that Jesus is committed to community and family - his own life shows this - but too often these things are used as excuses that act as barriers to the path of radical discipleship to which Jesus calls us. That discipleship will inevitably draw us into a wider circle than merely Me and Mine. It draws us into a communion with all the losers and sufferers in our world for it is with such people that Jesus is to be found.

Jesus calls on you and me to follow him unconditionally. If we place conditions, our discipleship is of no use. But as we give ourselves to Jesus and his Kingdom, we do so to a community that must be rooted in love even when such is contrary to our instincts. It is indeed a serious and demanding calling. No wonder we need the important warning;

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

In a few minutes we shall respond to the invitation of Jesus to come to his Table. There we once more are connected to his love and there we receive his help. For that help is absolutely necessary if we are to be the all loving ever faithful followers of Jesus that we are called to be. For we know that we need all the help we can get to;

“Keep our eyes on the road.”

This sermon was preached at Northam Methodist Church on Sunday July 1st 2007

Can't stop singing - Choir Sunday

2007-06-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

Psalm 98
Revelation 15

“Can’t stop singing!”

That is precisely how it has often been for many of the followers of Jesus Christ.

Think back to the Middle Ages with a richness of Gregorian chants in the monasteries and abbeys of our land, complimented by the songs of travelling troubadours.

Think on to the period of awakening of interest in true religion - first the hymns of Isaac Watts and then a new array of great hymn writers such as John Newton and of course Charles Wesley.

Look around today and we find that vital Christian life is so often accompanied by a urge to produce new hymnody. See it in charismatic revival. See it also in communities such as Taize and Iona. And of course, it is becoming clear to us today that this is a worldwide phenomena. For modern communications mean that we are increasingly being enriched by the hymnody of other continents.

Of course, there is nothing new in singing our faith. The ancient peoples of Israel did precisely that. The book of Psalms is often seen as the hymn book of ancient Israel. And within it, we find an emphasis on singing in praise to God. The 98th Psalm which we have heard this morning is full of exhortation to make music and to sing to God. Why? Because the Psalmist whose Psalm is the basis for our hymn “Joy to the World”, sees God as having done wonderful things, so wonderful that even creation itself is drawn into the great song of praise.

Such an emphasis on singing does not die out with the ancients. Look at the stories of the early church. Turn to that wonderful story of how Paul and Silas, having been unjustly flogged and imprisoned, still sing to God from their prison cell. Why? Because at the very moment when their earthly fortunes were at their lowest, they can not but still celebrate the greatness of God and express it in song.

And if we sing to God in this world, the Revelation granted to St John, suggests that there will also be singing in heaven. For as we have heard from the Scriptures this morning, John is granted a vision in which angels sing songs that celebrate the greatness and justness of God’s deeds in history whilst daring to see in them the glimpse of a wonderful future.

Oh yes, it is true that God’s people have always been singing. But why? This morning In want to put before you just 3 reasons.

The first reason is that to sing to God is a part of our being in relationship with God. Richard and Ivor Jones put it so well in the Preface to Hymns and Psalms when they write;

“George Herbert might have described hymns as he did prayer, as ‘God’s breath in man returning to its birth.’ “

A beautiful thought that sets the singing of hymns within the context of worship.

The second reason is the empowerment that singing hymns gives. Back in 1735, the Wesley brothers were caught in a dreadful storm off Georgia. They felt within themselves great terror but at the same time they were moved as they saw German Moravian Christians singing with confidence. They wanted some of that for themselves and it is no surprise that when they received just such an assurance three years later, their very first response was to sing of the joys of their new born faith

And the third reason is that the singing of hymns is a valuable aid to our learning the faith in which we are caught up. Two an a half centuries ago, ancestors of mine would have gathered at Gwennap Pit to hear John Wesley. But wonderful as his preaching doubtless was, I am convinced that they learnt far more about the Gospel from singing the hymns of brother, Charles. Learning through singing, the wonders of the Gospel, those same hymns would have given vent to their newly transformed emotions and understandings.

Of course, singing isn’t just about joy. The psalms contain the full range of emotions, some of them rather unworthy. The better and more mature hymn books are not just about joy but about the darker times of life as well. They bring the whole range of human experience into the very presence of God. And we should cherish them for that.

An old saying is that “you are what you eat.” There is some truth in that but there is even more truth that “you are what you sing.” As we travel through the varied experiences and awarenesses of life, we are brought into ever closer relationship with God as we sing the songs that bring us into relationship with God. And so it is that on mountain top as well as in valley, we reach out to the wonder that is God by singing through all things.

Can we as followers of Jesus stop singing? No! For it is a spiritual need as great as our need for the very air that we breath. Stop singing? We can’t and we won't even try!

This sermon is for Choir Sunday at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday July 1st 2007

A change of influence - Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

2007-06-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

In my teenage years, I attended a school whose headteacher was also a Methodist local preacher. During one of his lessons, he told us of the time when he arrived to take a service at a small country church. The service began with six people present in the congregation. Within five minutes, he had caused sufficient offence for that number to drop to three!

I guess he hadn’t imbibed the message of Dale Carnegie’s book, “How to win friends and influence people.” Perhaps like me, he was more in touch with the sort of attitudes that led, Guardian journlaist, Toby Young to recently write his cracking good book, “How to lose friends and alienate people.”

Well in today’s Scripture reading, Jesus turns out not to be exactly a model for pleasing the masses. He is somewhere in the area known as Decapolis which was a predominantly non Jewish area to the southeast of the Lake of Galilee. If he had gone there looking for a quiet time, he certainly did not find it. For on his arrival we find him meeting what is described as a “demon-possessed man.” Now as to what exactly was wrong with this man, we cannot be sure. Certainly he was in a highly disturbed state. We are told that he wandered naked around the tombs and what today we would see as brutal efforts to restrain him had failed. He was in quite a mess!

And now seeing Jesus, this out of control man living an out of control life, is straining at the leash for conflict. Hear that tormented cry:

“What do you want with me, Jesus Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!”

Words that give clues to a history of suffering and the denial of humanity.

But now there comes a change to his life. Long seen as one not worth spending the time of day with, he is spoken to by Jesus as a real person. Jesus asks him a simple question;

“What is your name?”

It’s such an ordinary question but the answer offered by this man is so revealing;

“Legion.”

But Legion is not a name. At that time it meant a unit of 6,000 Roman soldiers with four such legions being stationed in nearby Syrian to control the eastern frontier that included Palestine. So what does this mean? A real possibility is that this man has acquired a multitude of personalities. To me this brings back memories of being a support worker in Cornwall. One of the clients, I spent time with, had such a condition. Alone in a room, he would produce at times varying voices involved in heated arguments with each other. More than once, hearing the sound of argument, I rushed in so that I could help calm down the argument, only to find just this one man to all intents and purposes angrily shouting at himself. It is believe you me quite a disturbing condition to witness.

But “Legion” as a name could well tell us something as to what had produced the man’s condition. Roman military occupation was harsh. It had to be or they would have been overthrown. However at times it went way down the road of depravity as Josephus demonstrates in this account of the Romans putting down the Jewish rebellion less that 40 years later;

“Vesaspian sent Lucius Annius to Gerasa with a cavalry and a considerable number of foot soldiers. After taking the town by assault, he killed a thousand of the young men who had not escaped, took their families captive, and allowed his soldiers to plunder the property. Finally, he set fire to the houses and marched against the surrounding villages. Those who were able-bodied fled, the weak perished, and all that was left went up in flames.”

And so, one can not help wondering if the man’s condition was a result of things he had participated in, witnessed or been the victim of. For encounters with violence and its attendant cruelties and suffering, are things that can poison the human soul. Only in the past week, as the Falklands War has been commemorated, we have been reminded that more of our servicemen have died by their own hand since that war than were killed within it - surely something for leaders to recall before taking decisions for war!

Back to Luke’s narrative. We find Jesus bring healing to this man by sending the demons into the nearby pigs. Why it happened this way is not clear. Some commentators point out that the wild boar was the symbol of a nearby legion. And so as the swine go over the cliffs to destruction, there might be within this narrative a message that powerful as the Roman occupation was, ultimately, its power would dwindle to nothing in the encounter with God. A political reading you might suggest in this age in which we tend to separate religion from politics yet so often we find in the deeds and words of Jesus, powerful messages about the political matters of his day.

Still now we might expect a happy ending. The disturbed man is grateful and would like to go with Jesus. But all is not calm. The nearby community, once frightened of the disturbed man, now feel a fear at what Jesus has done and they demand that Jesus should go away. Why they fear we are not told. It may be that they see Jesus as a threat to the predictability of their lives. They do not want their world to be turned upside down. It may be because in the destruction of their pigs, they have suffered great financial and economic loss. Is it not often the case as those who fought two centuries ago against the transatlantic slave trade found, set yourself against the local economic base and you will face rejection. You know, today as in the past, we are prone to an idolatrous worship of all wealth creating activity. Maybe, we need to distinguish between the economic activity that is life enhancing and that which is destructive to life or to peoples’ wellbeing. Not a few sectors of the British economy could do with a culling!

Finally, what does this episode tell us about the ways of Jesus. Well, Jesus crosses boundaries. He steps outside of traditional Israel and goes here to man whose lifestyle amongst the tombs made him ritually unclean. He does this to show us that he is for all people and not just for some. His love is for all including those most tormented for whereas as to often we dehumanise people, Jesus sees the worth of humanity in all people and desires that this humanity might be fully treasured.

Jesus offers challenge. He is not prepared to accept a life denying status quo. Instead he calls people to follow him the restoration of lost and marred humanity. And in that goal, he seeks to draw each of to be a part of his ever increasing cycles of love and grace. For when our Scripture Reading comes to a close, who do we find telling people the good news of Jesus but “Legion” himself. For Legion has been liberated from the powers that had possessed him. But liberating someone from something is not enough. As political history reminds us, too often people are liberated from one oppression merely to be placed under another form of oppression. The liberation of Jesus is so much more than that. Like Legion, we are offered the liberation of Jesus for a purpose - to be free people with the potential to bring the hope of God’s new community of love and grace.

This sermon is being preached at Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday June 24th 2007 a

Peace in the storm - Sermon for Edgehill College Communion

2007-06-19T04:40:00.000-07:00

Mark 4: 35 - 41

It was near the end of a 4 hour ferry journey back to the Isle of Man where we then lived. The journey had been easy and we had as a family happily and greedily pigged out on a curry. Suddenly there was an almighty bang. The sound of cutlery crashing was clearly audible and the boat seemed to lurch on to its side. Screams from children broke out and a good few people were quickly parted from the meals for which they had paid good money - Yukh!

During our five years on the Isle of Man, there were a few other unpleasant journeys and on bad days that same place just a few miles off the island was a place where conditions often turned bad.

And so I can sympathise with the friends of Jesus. The Lake of Galilee is a lake known for storms that are brought on by sudden inrushes of wind. It is a place which can quickly bring terror to those who sail it. And in our story, the followers of Jesus are certainly terrified.

But they are also annoyed. I don’t know about you but when I am subject to extreme feelings I expect others to share in that experience. But here whilst experienced seamen are petrified, the landlubber Jesus sleeps through the storm. No wonder, they give him a good shaking to get him back to consciousness. If they are going to be petrified the least that he can do is to share in their fright.

But the response of the awakened Jesus is to speak words of peace in the storm and to gently suggest that his friends are suffering from a loss of nerve. And so part of an explanation of this encounter has to be about Jesus bringing peace to us at the times when we are troubled, the times when we are afraid and the times when our world is caving in. And that is valid. Jesus does bring a peace to us that enables people to come through the most trying of circumstances. And yet, we need to add the cautionary note that Jesus is not a pain killer who removes all of our difficulties, turmoils and uncertainties. These same followers of Jesus will experience plenty more of these things not just in times when their eyes are off Jesus but as in this case when they are doing precisely what Jesus asks of them. What we need to hang on to is that Jesus is a loving presence who offers a real help to us in both good times and bad times.

But do you notice something else? After the winds have dropped and calm has been restored, the friends of Jesus remain afraid. Why should this be? Perhaps it is because they see more such days. Jesus has already confronted demonic forces. Now he is confronting the destructive powers of the elements. Surely, this is a foretaste of how Jesus is going to go on confronting all the powers that are life destroying. And if they are to be loyal to Jesus, these followers are going to be called into this struggle. Such expectation will be found to be true as Jesus’ authority confronts the wrongs of prejudice, divisions and violence.

Today, Christ continues to cross boundaries through his followers. At times, following the Gospel is like going into a storm but this story serves to remind us that when we are about the good news of Jesus, like his early followers we have his presence with us. This doesn’t mean that discipleship is easy. It certainly isn’t just about the myth of being escapism for elderly ladies, some of whom can teach us lessons in living courageously. For it following Jesus far from being akin to taking a painkilling drug is something that calls for courage and determination - and yet we are not left alone!

So the big question as we come to the table is, are you and me up to the challenge?

This sermon was preached at Edgehill College's Communion Service on Tuesday June 19th 2007

Gate crashing the party! - Third Sunday after Pentecost

2007-06-16T14:34:00.001-07:00

Luke 7: 36 - 50

It’s another party for Jesus. Only this time, he isn’t with the dregs of society. This time he is eating and drinking at the home of a Pharisee. Nothing wrong with that. For once the partying isn’t go to lead to his name being dragged through the mud.

After all the Pharisees are good, respectable, devout people. They are religious people who take the things of God very seriously indeed. Indeed they are people who want to obey the law in the right way so as to be pure.

It may well have been this desire which led Simon, the Pharisee, to invite Jesus to his home. He may have wanted to hear the insights of Jesus as a means of developing his own spiritual life. We shall never know. For as Simon, Jesus and other guests reclined at the table, another guest certainly not invited by Simon, made a dramatic entrance.

Now this guest was a woman. Big deal you may think! But that is not how those who first heard this story would have responded. For in the Palestine of Jesus, women were not invited to such public banquets. Respectable men would not publicly eat with women outside of their family. Indeed a rabbi such as Jesus would not be expected to enter into public conversation with a woman. Quite simply women did not really belong in the public space.

But the scandal doesn’t end at this. This woman was a woman with a reputation, a woman who Simon saw as a “sinner.” Yes, this was a woman to avoid. But equally this was a woman who had no intention of being ignored! Her emotions were running into over drive as she wept so profusely that her tears wetted the feet of Jesus. But this was not enough for now this same woman gets down to dry the feet of Jesus with her hair before kissing those feet and then pouring perfume upon them. What a show!

For even today, such an act of affection would be seen by many as somewhat embarrassing. You don’t need to have been reading too many top shelf books to sense the intimacy and even eroticism in the actions of this woman. Surely she has overstepped the mark.

And that is precisely what Simon is thinking. Why he wonders is Jesus letting this sinful woman behave in such a way towards him. I guess that Simon can be seen as judging this woman by her past actions and her current actions on the night of this dinner party. And if that is how we should see people, there is nothing in Luke’s account to suggest that Simon is in any way wrong.

But it can surely not be the full picture. Yes, historical accounts suggest that accompanied women carrying such oils tended to live disreputably. Perfumes were a sign that they had acquired a minor degree of prospering through the sale of their services. But even so, prostitution was rarely an easy option to take but often a result of women especially those without proper support, having precious few options. And so it is today. Think back for a moment to the stories we heard concerning the women who were killed in Ipswich several months ago. For too often, now as then, there are those who are left behind economically and those who find that in a society of distorted sexuality, they are effectively defined by men and the wants of men.

Now Jesus emerges as a counter to the worldview of Simon. He does not see the woman in terms of her means of employment or her past deeds. Throughout, he sees this woman as a real person. What a contrast to that nasty tendency in religion to reject people on the basis of a stereotype without bothering to know them.

This is illustrated by a story of the American Christian sociologist, Tony Campolo. Campolo was teaching a class when one of his students commented;

“Jesus never met a prostitute.”

Campolo’s instinct was to see this as a chance to teach the young man a thing or two about Jesus and so he replied;

“Yes he did. I’ll show you in my Bible where.”

But once again the young man interrupted him;

“You didn’t hear me Doctor Campolo. I said Jesus never met a prostitute.”

Once more Campolo went for his Bible searching for the very story we have heard this evening only for the young man to speak out again, this time with anger in his voice;

“You are not listening to me. You aren’t listening to what I am saying. I am saying that Jesus never met a prostitute. Do you think that when he looked at the woman at his feet that he saw a prostitute? No, Doctor, he saw a woman in need of forgiveness. Jesus never met a prostitute.”

And may I say that if we take nothing else from this particular scripture, we can take the message that Jesus sees each of us as people and not as members of a stereotypical group. And in that, there is a mighty challenge to us. I think that Jesus would tell us;

-Don’t dismissively see followers of Islam, Judaism or other religions. See people created in God‘s image!

-Don’t dismissively see people in terms of their racial grouping. See people created in God’s image!

When it comes to distinctions based on past conduct, sexual morality or sexuality, don’t divide people into those “like us” and a less regarded "them" but see people created in God’s image!

For here, we have seen that Jesus saw not a prostitute but a woman sharing with the rest of humankind in needing the love, acceptance and forgiveness of God. For Jesus sees in all of us not just the all too often tawdry present but multi coloured possibilities of what we might become.

Back to Luke’s story and we find that Jesus is now contrasting this woman at the bottom of the pile with Simon, the Pharisee. And Simon isn’t coming out of the comparison too well. For he has failed in that sacred Jewish responsibility of hospitality. Sure, he deserves credit for inviting Jesus but he does not have a clue when it comes to properly welcoming Jesus. Indeed, Jesus suggests that this woman in kissing him and washing his feet, has been much more of a host to Jesus than Simon himself. The women castigated as a “sinner” has outdone the Pharisee in welcoming Jesus.

And that continues to happen. Too often in the church we have erected walls and excluded those who are other than us from the narrative of the ongoing story of Jesus. And yet, we find the things that point to Jesus in the places and through the people that we least expect to find them. So this story acts as a challenge to each of us to be a people of radical inclusion.

But what is it that makes this woman show so much love to Jesus in contrast to the greater formalism of Simon. Well, let’s look to the short parable that Jesus told to Simon, a parable in which one man is forgiven a much greater debt than the other man. With the approval of Jesus, Simon responds that the one who is forgiven the greater amount is likely to love the money-lender the most.

What is this telling us today? I believe that it tells us that when we realise the immensity of grace through which God forgives us and offers us love and acceptance, then we begin to truly love God. Simon’s problem was that he didn’t realise the extent of his need for forgiveness whereas the woman who wept at the feet of Jesus, knew very well of her need. As we come to God, we find that we are already forgiven for forgiveness comes from the very nature of God and not from any arm twisting on our part. Like this woman who discovers that she has been forgiven and finds that forgiveness creating love within her towards God and presumably towards others, so to as we meet the reality of God’s grace, then a well of love springs up within us towards God and towards others. And so, as we realise our need and find God meeting that need, we find also that God transforms us deep within. For this is the God of transformation.

And now, I invite you to look once more at the picture you have been given of Rubens’ painting, “Christ in the House of Simon.” Look once more at the woman as she kisses the feet of Jesus. Feel its uncomfortable level of intimacy. And then look at the faces around the table. There you see hostility with some turning away their faces in disgust. Think of the question of Jesus, put to Simon;

“Do you see this woman?”

As you look at the picture, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the last thing they want to really look at is this woman.

“Do you see this woman?”

It’s also a question for us and if we are to carry on the loving purposes of Jesus, the answer needs to be an emphatic Yes! Anything less makes us guilty of living out a hateful religion. It can also mean that like Simon, we are harsh because we fail to appreciate the wonder of Divine forgiveness. We have failed to appreciate grace and so the deep wells of love have not sprung up in our hearts.

But the ultimate question has to be a slightly different one;

“Do you see this man?”

This evening, I urge you to see this man for this man is the one who offers unlimited reserves of forgiveness, love and acceptance to each of us. This man wants to travel with each of us, rejoicing in our successes and picking us up when we fall crashing down. This man is “Immanuel, God with us.” And he is the one who can turn our midnights to dawns and help us to leave the deep and barren valleys that we might glimpse the wonder of mountain tops.

“Do you see this man?”

May our answer be an emphatic Yes!

This sermon is being preached at Torrington Methodist Church on Sunday June 17th 2007

Life meets death - 2nd Sunday after Pentecost

2007-06-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

LUKE 7: 11 - 17

What kind of God do you believe in?

I think that question is as important as the question of whether you believe in God at all. For the type of God we believe in, will shape how we live our lives. If we believe in a wrathful dictatorial God, we are likely to mirror that in our living. Equally if we believe in a loving God who gives to us freedom to make choices, then that too will pattern our lives.

In my life I have known people who have believed in and patterned their lives on both these Gods. And to be honest I have little doubt as to which God and which people I am most comfortable with.

But of course, it is not for me to invent God. Having come to accept the reality of God, I have to seek to understand the nature of God and then whether in view of that which I learn, whether I really wish to follow that God.

My understanding of God is based primarily upon a view that God is best made visible to me through Jesus who is God living a human life. And so the example of Jesus is to me absolutely vital in understanding what God is about. I go as far as to say that if our view of God is in conflict with what we see in Jesus, then we are not worshipping the Christian God at all.

So does this episode tell us anything of God. Well, the background to our story is that Jesus has just healed the servant of a Roman centurion. Radical stuff indeed given that the Romans were the enemies of Jesus’ people, the Jews. And now, he is on his travels accompanied by a large crowd. But as he approaches the village of Nain, he and his crowd meet another crowd. But whereas the crowd with Jesus were celebrating a great healing, the crowd that they met had a very different emotion for they were a crowd marking a death. And a particularly sad one at that for they were carrying the body of a young man out of the village to the place of his burial.

Within this crowd was a woman. Already a widow, she had now lost her only son. No wonder she wept. For not only was she suffering great grief at the loss of another loved one but she was also all too aware of her vulnerability. No longer had she anyone to care for her. As a childless widow, she was without means of support, right at the bottom of the pile.

This was an age in which some of the hard hearted religious establishment would have sneeringly seen God’s judgement in the suffering of this woman. Oh yes, even then there were those who thought that good things happen to the good and bad things to the bad. But Jesus shows not time for such Hellish lies. He simply sees a woman whose live has fallen apart and whose future looks to be full of woe.

And Jesus feels compassion for this woman who he had never met before. I like that because it is a reminder that compassion is the way of Jesus. Yes the exalted Jesus feels compassion for the like of me and you when our worlds cave in on us, when our futures look to be full of storm clouds. And to me, that is one of the wonderful things about this story - when all looks lost God is on our side because whatever the circumstances God feels only love for us.

In our story, there is a happy ending. The young man is restored to life and to his mother. And that takes us back to the two crowds. From the crowd celebrating life has come Jesus to transform the crowd who have gathered to mark death. The result of the meeting has been decisive. And therein lies our hope. God who has come to us in Jesus is able to meet the worst that can be offered against him - hatred, violence and death. And as he meets these things he not merely defeats them but he transforms them to the greater realities that are love, peace and life.

So today, this miracle gives us a chance to see how Jesus shows us the true nature of God which is all good and all loving. It also gives us a chance to once more identify ourselves with the crowd that celebrates God’s ways of life - and in them see the clues to our victorious living.

This sermon was preached at Glebe Court sheltered housing complex in Northam on Thursday June 7th 2007

More than a numeracy hour -- Trinity Sunday

2007-06-03T01:38:00.000-07:00

Psalm 8

John 16: 12 - 15

“Show me a worm that can comprehend a human being, and then I will show you a human being that can comprehend the Triune God.”

So said John Wesley. With such a comment by our glorious founder, I have to confess that I have felt more than a little tempted to follow the advice of Colin Morris who not so long ago was the minister at Mr Wesley’s church in City Road, London who once observed;

“Any preacher with good sense will call in sick on Trinity Sunday.”

Well being of something less that good sense, I will at least make an effort this morning to grapple with the importance of Trinity Sunday.

Why you may ask should I bother with a doctrine that does not explicitly appear in the Scriptures, a doctrine which today is as likely as not to met in many a British church with a deep yawn?

Well, in part my reason is that it mattered greatly to those who in the early centuries after Jesus, faced the challenge of working out how Jesus should be understood. As they reflected on Jesus, they found themselves becoming convinced that Jesus was not just another man. They began to talk of Jesus as being God. But of course given their Jewish background, they could not believe in there being more than one God. And so, a series of controversies took place within the church. The African theologian Tertullion by the early third century began to use the term “Trinity” as he spoke of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit being “one in essence - not one in person.”

But it was in the early fourth century that the matter exploded. The converted Roman Emperor Constantine had no time for divisions within the church. It didn’t suit his political needs and so he began to press the church to resolve its differences. But this was a time when there was developing the mother of all bust ups. Its central figure was a priest named Arius who lived in Alexandria. Arius took the view that whilst Jesus was Divine, he was created by and possibly inferior to the Father.

Now Arius was by no means the first to take this view but he raised it at a time when the pressure was on to resolve the matter. And so there was quite a flare up. People came to blows over the matter and for a time it was every bit as divisive a matter as for example are views on the Iraq War in our society today. Oh yes, this doctrine was very much the stuff of street fights - those were the days!

Ultimately, Arius did not win. At a great council of bishops held in Niceae, Arius and his beliefs were roundly condemned. A few years later, they would have a brief resurgence but it is the dominant view of the Council of Niceae that has dominated ever since within the Christian Church.

And what is that view. Put simply, it is that God is One, but three distinct persons constitute that One God - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And this is the view held by what might be termed the mainstream churches of Christianity.

Now, of course, none of this makes it easy to understand. I recall that when I was in training doing a course relating to the Trinity, I discovered how easy it was to slip into some sort of heresy or other. I can certainly appreciate the second of not the first part of Martin Luther’s terse summary of the struggle to respond properly to the doctrine of the Trinity. Here is what he said;

“To try to deny the Trinity endangers your salvation. To try to comprehend the Trinity endangers your sanity.”

Well, this morning, I wouldn’t wish to endanger anyone’s sanity, least of all my own. But I want to argue that it is not just for historical reasons that the Trinity matters. For it matters also as a response to the big question that has been asked down the ages;

“What is God like?”

And that is a vital question. For many experts in religion tell us that people try to be like the God they worship. If your vision of God is violent, domineering and materialistic, then that is what you are likely to become. If your vision of God is peaceful, domination free and self giving, then that is what you are likely to become.

And so here, the Trinity becomes revealed as more than a mere game with numbers. For the doctrine of the Holy Trinity tells us that God essentially lives in community. And that unity is a relationship that is fundamentally equal. Contrary to what Arius thought, there is no pecking order in the Godhead. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are equally God. And here, we find that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit far from being an abstract doctrine, is a living doctrine which challenges fundamentally some of the norms of our age. For too often we think in terms of individualism yet the doctrine of the Trinity tells us that the God example is one of community where we think of our being interrelated across barriers. The world is not just about Me and Mine but about a sense of sharedness. And more than that, too often when we think of hierarchical structures be they based on race, gender or class yet the doctrine of the Holy Trinity tells us that the God example is rooted in equality of worth and status. For the climbing the greasy pole of personal advantage has absolutely no warrant in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

And finally the doctrine of the Holy Trinity tells us that the unity of the Holy trinity is rooted in love. Here there is no competition but a harmony that reaches out into the whole world. We see it in many ways. The eight Psalm has reminded us of that love in creation. The life and death of Jesus has shown us that love in a life lived to bring value to others and a sacrificial death to bring us to a true experience of what it is to live. And in the promise of Jesus to his disciples, the promise of the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the guidance into truth that we need in our journey of life.

In these things, we find that the Holy Trinity far from being a subject for yawns, is the sign of the reality of a God who is all that we dream of and need - and yet more beside. We find revealed a God who is both for us and a pattern that should be a guide as to how we live our lives and see the world. For here, we encounter the absolute wonder that is God.

Back for the moment to the world of the ancients. A legend is told of that great fifth century saint, Augustine of Hippo. In it he was walking by the sea meditating on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. He longed to explain it logically. As he walked he saw a small child all on her own. Time and again the little girl filled a cup with sea water and then poured it into a hole that she had made in the sand. After some time Augustine approached her to ask what she was doing.

“I am trying to empty the sea into this hole,” the girl replied.

“But how do you think that you can empty this immense sea into this tiny hole and with such a tiny cup.” asked the Saint.

Only for the girl to respond;

And how do you suppose that with your small head you can comprehend the immensity of God?”

And that is a fair question. We can never adequately comprehend the mystery of the Holy Trinity. It is beyond us. But it still calls on us to take it seriously for in the mystery we see God being gloriously revealed to us. So this morning I encourage you to behold the mystery. I encourage you to see the God who is involved intimately in all things throughout all the markers of time and into eternity. I encourage you to see the God who is beyond your dreams and who meets you in all points of need. I encourage you to see the God whose being in community offers a pattern to each of us.

But don’t worry if like me you find it so desperately hard to write an essay on the Holy Trinity. Much more important is to wonder at it and to bask in the sheer glory of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

This sermon was preached in Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday June 3td 2007

The story goes on - Pentecost

2007-05-27T05:55:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-27T02:20:00.001-07:00

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

2007-05-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-20T01:10:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-11T01:37:00.001-07:00

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

2007-05-07T02:42:00.000-07:00

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

Hope in the Cesspit - Easter 4

2007-04-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

Revelation 7: 9 - 17

I cannot claim to be a regular preacher on the Revelation to John. I have often thought of this book which concludes the Bible as being something of a happy hunting ground for cranks, the sort of people who see it as telling us exactly what the future holds - those who see it as some see the writings of Nostradamus.

I am not helped by the fact that it is a type of literature which is somewhat alien to me. It is part of a type of literature that is often described as “apocalyptic.” Such is a type of literature that was popular a couple of centuries either side of Jesus amongst Jewish people - a type of literature that is full of visions, beasts and symbols. It is not the sort of communication with which I am familiar although I have to confess that when several years ago at the time of the 1992 General Election, my wife and myself were staying at my in law’s home whilst I was doing teacher training, Revelation provided me with a moment of joy. You see, my mother in law’s polling card number was 666 which is the anti Christ in Revelation. Needless to say, as we arrived at the polling station, I ensured that the matter caused her maximum embarassment. What a rotter I was!

Anyhow, these things tend to cause me to draw back from Revelation. And in that I am not alone. For even Martin Luther with his emphasis of Scripture alone, made an exception for Revelation about which he wrote;

“My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. I stick to the books which present Christ to me clearly and purely.”

And yet, I think Luther was wrong. My reason is one of the things concerning which Revelation is often criticised, namely its allegedly excessively negative view of the world. Now please don’t get me wrong. There is much that is good in the world and sometimes Christians are far to slow to recognise the many good things in life. But at the same time, I shiver when I hear that hymn which proclaims;

“And now I am happy all the day.”

Every time I hear it, I want to ask what those singing it are on. For the reality is that there is a shadow side of life, a side of life in which there is great suffering. Only a few weeks ago, I did a google search on a woman who had been a fellow student with me at Southampton University over a quarter of a century ago. I remember as a vibrant personality whose friendship was very precious to me. She had gone on to have a distinguished academic career. Yet as I looked her up on the internet wondering how she was doing, I met a story that shocked me. For having reached great pinnacles in her career, she had struggled to cope with certain things, had got stressed out. And so this woman, beautiful on both the inside and outside had hanged herself. And I don’t suppose that story is particularly unique for our country and doubtless many others has an epidemic of people who struggle to cope with forces they feel to be beyond their control. And I suspect that much of the increasing dependencies on addictive substances is about trying to cope, to hold on to a sense of worth.

And then if we look to a bigger scale, we see in our world so many places where life is revealed in allits tragic reality. Look to the ethnic cleansing of Darfur, or the wretched violence that continues to afflict Iraq turning lives upside down so that one young woman who writes from that land says of her families decision to leave;

“It's difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain”

And then there is Zimbabwe where a tyrant’s rule has savagely reduced life expectancy and ensure that life is lived against a backdrop of fear.

Such stories could go on and on. All manner of human rights abuses and the continued toleration of extreme poverty in so many corners of the world can draw our attention. So much so that ultimately, we find ourselves crying out;

“When will God do something about it? When will God put an end to the night of wrong?”

And that is precisely the sort of questions that were being asked in the world which first saw the Revelation of John. For this was a world of cruel emperors who were devoid of justice, who practised cruelty as routine and who were terrorising the early Christian communities. No wonder John’s Revelation is filled with anger towards the powers of Rome whom he describes as “Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations” - language stronger than this preacher would dare to use in the pulpit!

And yet despite the dark and deathly terrors around him, John’s Revelation is a message of hope. Because scandalous as it would have seemed to many of his contemporaries, John dares to offer a vision of a Kingdom that is much greater than the decadent Empire that had and expected to go on dominating the world. John points instead to the Kingdom of God and for him just as for Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, this Kingdom transforms that which we see in our world. For here he sees those who have suffered now experiencing a joy in the presence of God. God is healing the sores and humiliations that have been heaped upon people in this world.

And the extent of this change is absolutely breathtaking Oh what a change! Hunger and thirst shall be no more. The extremities of climate will no more destroy. For after the great sufferings, there is the great healing in which;

“God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

And the scale of it! John, the Jew, sees that the presence of God is on such a wide scale. It is for the outsiders, those who have not grown up with Israel’s history. For here in the multitude are people of every nation, tribe and language. And their numbers - so great! For here is a number so great that it cannot be counted. So often we have tended to put limitations on the scope of God’s grace but here comes the message to prepare to be blown away in wonder at the sheer scale of God’s amazing grace.

And does not the transformation fill you with wonder. For now the rejects, the nobodies, the victims of cruelty are caught up in the incredible dynamic of God’s unending circle of love. And now all their pains real as they have been, are diminished by the breathtaking of wonder of the presence of God. And for John at the heart of the transformation is the blood of the lamb. For whilst, we can quibble about theories of how the death of Jesus brings us to God, we can rejoice that bring us to God it most certainly does.

Several years ago I visited Coventry for a wedding. It turned into a pretty miserable weekend for reasons that have long ceased to matter. Yet I do regret that I failed to visit the inside of its beautiful modern cathedral. Built in the aftermath of the bombing by the German luftwaffe in 1940 which devastated the cathedral, the new cathedral emphasised the message of “resurrection through sacrifice.” In it is a glass wall with happy pictures of Saints and angels upon it having quite a party time. The joy is unmistakable. And at first it might seem quite unrealistic. And yet if one looks through the glass, one can see the sad ruins of the old cathedral. So in a moment, the visitor encounters a vision of the sorrows that are all too prevalent in the world and at the same time, the glorious hope for the future which we owe to the sacrifice of Christ.

But as we look at this vision of hope, a vision that reminds us that this world is not all that there is, we need to beware of a temptation to speak only of, to borrow a trite phrase, pie in the sky. The awareness of the greatness of God and the offer of grace in a sense helps to set us free from being dragged down by the happenings of this world. But our learning of these things surely tells us of a higher vision that offers “abundance of life” so that we can not be content with the violence and injustices of this world. For surely as we gaze at the loving wonder that is God, we can be content with nothing less than the signs of God’s Kingdom. And so we dare to look and to participate in the signs of God’s city being built upon the ruins of our present day Babylons.

This sermons was preached at Gammaton on Sunday April 29th 2007

God hates the world - not! Easter 3

2007-04-19T15:20:00.001-07:00

LUKE 21: 1-19

A few weeks ago, I watched a documentary entitled “The most hated family in America.” In the documentary, Louis Theroux spent some time living with the Westboro Baptist Church, a one church denomination, who are dominated by the Phelps family, especially the ageing patriarch, Pastor Fred Phelps.

This church had for some time been infamous for its militant anti gay position and this has led it to a position of stating that the US is under God’s judgement which they see being exercised in events such as 9/11 and the quagmire of Iraq.

Not surprisingly, the have attracted considerable detestation for their picketing the firstly the funerals of gay people and more recently servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and they have just revealed their intention to picket the funerals of students killed in the Virginia Tech massacre.

Now, they have put a video on the net in which they parody Band Aid USA’s song, “We are the world” which was aimed at helping a humanitarian disaster in East Africa with their own warped religious understanding, “God hates the world”

So it is no big surprise to see them described as “the most hated family in America.” And just as they are swift to condemn and picket other churches, I am relieved to be able to say that I have never heard a word in support of this cult by any of my American Christian friends.

Now of course, these people are an easy target. Nobody with intelligence or compassion could conceivably endorse their stuff of nonsense. And yet, I have a concern that dates back into my childhood that sometimes Christians can give the impression not so much that God hates the world but that God sees the world with some reservations.

A more optimistic understanding of our relationship with God comes from Desmond Tutu who continues to radiate joy despite a battle with prostate cancer. Not so long ago, a book was written to celebrate his seventy fifth birthday. In it there were essays by quite a range of mostly distinguished people. But possibly, the most interesting of these essays is one written by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In it he refers to an evening when he was at birthday party of a mutual friend at which Tutu was speaking. Reflecting on how his mind couldn’t wander in Tutu’s company, Williams goes on to write of “an unprompted insight that Desmond Tutu enjoys being Desmond Tutu.”

Now, I guess that this might seem like something of a barbed compliment for people who enjoy being themselves can be egotists who lack feeling for others and all too often manipulate them. But Rowan Williams is not making such an accusation against Desmond Tutu but is instead suggesting that Tutu being glad actually makes space for other people to enjoy being themselves.

But how is Desmond Tutu so delighted to be Desmond Tutu. I like what Rowan Williams suggests as to how we can be delighted to be ourselves. Listen to this gem.

“ I suspect Desmond’s answer would be that you have to be utterly convinced that you exist because God wanted you to exist. And that because God wanted you to exist and God wanted you to exist at your creation God liked the thought of you. In which case there is not much alternative really but to go along with what God wanted - to give thanks for being yourself and to rejoice in it. When we delight in ourselves we are not passing an uncritical approving judgement on all we do suggesting that we need no improvement and that we need not face any radical challenge in life to stretch us. We are acknowledging with joy the fact of our unique existence, a delightful unique existence willed by God.”

Ain’t that great? Does it not make us want to shout out Hallelujah? For what Rowan Williams is telling us is that we are just so incredibly special in the sight of God. We are each as it were the apple of God’s eye. And if we’re special to God, then surely it follows that so are others and it is our task to help enable others to be delighted to be themselves because they too are so so special to God!

Now some of you may by now have picked up that I haven’t as yet mentioned the Bible. And so, I turn to our Gospel Reading. Jesus has been raised from the dead, God’s Yes to all that Jesus has said and done, God’s Yes to a ministry that has given value to those who were on the margins.

But those disciples who had been closest to Jesus are not sure what the future holds. And so they go back to old ways, to the trade that had sustained them before they met Jesus and quite possibly they revisited from time to time during the time they were with Jesus. They quite simply go fishing. And at first it goes all wrong. That is until, Jesus turns up with some advice. And John tells us that in a mighty catch, they land one hundred and fifty three large fish. One hundred and fifty three! But why should we be interested in a precise number? Well this has long had the scholars speculating. The two most interesting theories are the one that dates back to St Jerome that suggests that there were one hundred and fifty three different types of fish in the sea and another theory that at this time there were thought to be one hundred and fifty three ethnic groups in the world. Either of these understandings would suggest an understanding that Christ if for all the people of the world. He does not belong to one nation, one race, one type of person. No! He is the One who delights in all of us. Sure, Jesus may want each of us to grow in grace but ultimately in him we see God, far from hating the world, loving the world and all peoples with a passionate love.

But then, we see the essential good news of the Gospel, that God who we see in Jesus, loves us when we are least deserving. We saw it on the cross when in the face of torture and abuse, Jesus cried out:

“Father, forgive them: for they do not know what they are doing.”

And now, just as he forgave those guilty of violence, he offers forgiveness and restoration to the one who had been so close to him but who had let him down at the crucial time. You see, Peter had always thought he was up to the challenge. Even at the Last Supper, he had said to Jesus;

“Though all become deserters because of you, I will never desert you.”

And yet as Jesus endured the agony of the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter fell asleep. And soon afterwards in a courtyard, out of fear he denied knowing Jesus on three occasions. He had failed. He had fallen short. And he knew the pain of this all too well. His sense of worth was now in tatters. No wonder he is uncomfortable when on three occasions, Jesus asks him that penetrating question;

“Simon son of John, do you love me?”

And yet as struggles to answer, on three occasions comes the call to be one who feeds the people of God. For where so often, people are discarded at their points of failure, the way of Christ is to lift up the life that has been shattered for failure and to equip that life to move on and to learn from past errors. What a contrast to the culture of shame that so often permeates our society.

And please take note of how this Christ calls us to be in communion with others. As our lives are mended, so are we called to be the means by which other lives are put together, that all Gods children might delight in being who they are.
And this means that wherever people are marginalized, demeaned or intimidated, the voice of Christ says and bids us to shout out loud;

“Enough!”

When men, women and children fear a visitation of the scars of warfare, the voice of Christ says and bids us to shout out loud;

“Enough!”

When people are treated cruelly on grounds of race, faith or sexuality, the voice of Christ says and bids us to shout out loud;

“Enough!”

When people run from one land to another in search of safety and find not a welcome but a deportation to a place of danger, the voice of Christ says and bids us to shout out loud;

“Enough!”

When people are cynically exploited by those who would use their weakness to hoist the means of addiction upon them the voice of Christ says and bids us to shout out loud;

“Enough!”

And when gang culture stalks the streets creating fear, and when the medication that would save life or give life a new quality is denied, the voice of Christ says and bids us to shout out loud;

“Enough!”

For the Risen Christ bids us to see all people as somebodies. The Risen Christ bids us to see in each person the presence of the image of God that all may be drawn into the Divine circle of love and celebration, each delighting in being precious to the God who is the author of our very lives. Who we are and what we have been, cannot block this Divine miracle of grace

Oh Yes, Easter is a time when we celebrate something that the folk at Westboro have missed out on, that God has loved the world so much that he has sent his Son not to condemn the world but to save it. As we celebrate
The good news that Christ is alive and unleashed on our world, we rejoice in our share of that love and our delight at sharing with others in such delight.

For as Desmond Tutu so beautifully puts it;

“All belong. All, all are meant to be held in that incredible embrace that will not let us go. All!”

This sermon is for Bideford Methodist Church on Sunday April 22nd 2007

From doubt to Easter faith Easter 2

2007-04-14T14:52:00.001-07:00

Luke 20: 19 - 31

Happy Easter!

I don’t think too many of you are convinced. You may well be thinking that I have my dates mixed up. Surely even a preacher who comes from Cornwall would know that Easter has come and gone.

But, I am not sure that I am wrong. To Christians, every Sunday is an Easter Day in which we celebrate that Christ is raised from the dead and is a living Lord. After all, surely that is why we gather on Sundays as the people of God.

But of course, this Sunday is often referred to as Low Sunday. The excitement of last week - when re responded to the good news that “Christ is risen” with a thunderous, “He is risen indeed!” - all seems so far away. In a sense, we may feel that the world is as it was before and nothing has changed.

Still before we go on a Guilt Trip, I want to put it to you that we are in good company if that is how we feel. You see, those disciples who were closest to Jesus are not what we would call a shining example. Oh, I know that we have those great stories of how the women had gone to the tomb and there has their world transformed. But it was not quite the same for that motley group of men whom we remember as “The Disciples.” Look at Luke’s Gospel and we find that their immediate response to the message that Christ was alive, was to dismiss it as “an idle tale.”

And things are not that much better later in the day when they meet face to face the risen Christ. Despite the witness of the women, their immediate reaction according to Luke’s Gospel was that they were seeing ghost. It is ultimately only through both hearing him and seeing him that their hearts began to fill with joy.

Now on this occasion, we learn from John’s Gospel that they were one person short. Thomas was for some reason or other absent. And like the other disciples, he feels a need to have physical proof of the resurrection before he can believe. Now, all of this has caused him to go down in the annals of history as Doubting Thomas. But before we castigate Thomas too strongly, we need to arrive at a balanced understanding of this man. Not only was his need to be convinced in line with that of the other disciples, but this was a man who felt deeply his loyalty to Jesus. After all in the narrative of Jesus going to Bethany to restore the life of Lazarus, Thomas possibly as a man who sees a glass half empty rather than half full, is overcome by foreboding that Jesus is on the path to death. But whilst his foreboding reminds be of Godfrey in Dad’s Army who forever warned that all were doomed, it brings out something heroic in Thomas who turns to his fellow disciples and says;

“Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

I hope you get the picture. This Thomas is a man who is deeply devoted to Jesus. On Good Friday, his world has fallen in. His hopes have been smashed to smithereens. No wonder, he finds it hard to take the risk of daring to believe again. Hurt so deeply once, he is not a man in a hurry to carelessly embrace good news. After all, how would he recover if he turned out to have got it wrong. A future of heartbreak with all around him pointing at his gullibility, would hardly be a prospect to delight him.

But for a moment, let’s just pause to consider the matter of doubt. I guess that many of us have experienced something of the “dark night of the soul.” As one who has a deeply pessimistic depressive streak, I have on occasions been there. Never more so than when a quarter of a century ago, my father had to undergo two operations for cancer. I needed to know if what I had before that believed with some comfort, was true. Was I deluded? It was a painful period, make no mistake. But what was happening to my family and all our lives, was of such magnitude that a faith which could not connect with such matters, could only be escapism, utterly useless!

On that occasion, although I am not sure it has always been the case, a time of struggling with doubt became ultimately a fruitful experience. For me there was some truth in the observation of one nineteenth century writer who observed;

“Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.”

Now, I know from experience of people of faith who seem to have rarely been troubled with doubt. Good for them! However, I ask you this morning to also appreciate that for some of us faith has been forged in the very struggle with doubts.

But what is healthy doubt? We have all met people who wallow in doubt and never move beyond it. Such doubt is paralysing to the individual. But the doubt which we find exhibited by Thomas is very different. This is the healthy doubt which seeks to find answers and is prepared to move on when those answers are found. And boy does Thomas move on. For as he meets with the risen Christ, the need to see and touch cease to matter. Thomas has his answers. He knows the truth of the Resurrection and through it he sees the significance of Jesus more profoundly than any of his colleagues. For this Thomas whom we have fossilised as a Mavis Riley type figure of twittering doubts, brings the Gospel narratives to a great climax as he speaks those words that have resounded down through two millennia;

“ My Lord and my God.”

Now we see that this is far from being a man of indecision. For these words tells us that Jesus is not simply a great teacher or example although he is these things. He is more than that. He stands revealed as the Godman, the one who is as truly Divine as he is human. And as Lord, this Jesus stands before us with a mighty claim upon our lives and our world. For as the Kingship of Roman Emperors will dissolve with a few centuries, here is a Lordship for all eternity.

But that Lordship is so very different to what the world has known before. On Palm Sunday, we recalled the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey. Such was a symbol that he came to that city on a message of peace. And in the appearances of which we have heard this morning, peace is still at the heart of his coming. That peace is God’s will for nations. It is also God’s will for troubled hearts. It is the peace that will enable us to cope through the most difficult of storms, that which we talk of as the peace which passeth understanding.

How can it be explained. It is like a story of two painters who were invited to paint pictures illustrating peace. One painted a picture of an idyllic evening scene with lakes, trees, cattle and a little cottage. With a setting sun, it spoke of perfect tranquillity.

The second painter produced a stormy scene with heavy black clouds and a ferocious waterfall pouring out great volumes of foam. But amidst the dark oppressive conditions could be found a small bird perched in a cleft of a huge rock, sheltered from all danger singing its song.

And it is that latter picture which reflected what Christ meant by peace. For make no mistake about it, Christ does not offer us an exemption from the storms of life. But what he does offer is his living presence to enable us confidently sail the stormy sees.

You see, we come to the Risen Christ in a manner of different ways. As diverse people, we come through diverse journeys. Ultimately the story of Thomas reminds us that we like him are invited into God’s dance of life. He offers us peace. He still breathes his life upon us. And so today, by like Thomas being in his presence, we too can be set free from fear and enabled to share in his Resurrection life. And from the story of Thomas, we can see that the presence of the risen Christ is for even we who have not seen or touched.

Back at the end of the Second World War, allied soldiers found in a house in which Jews had been hidden, written on the walls of a cellar;

“I believe,
I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when feeling it not.
I believe in God even when God is silent.”

Though we may doubt for a season, may we be open to the good news that Christ is alive even at the times when such belief is hardest to sustain.

This sermon is being preached at Appledore and Alwington Methodist Churches on April 15th 2007

Easter comes with a calling - Easter Day

2007-04-08T09:07:00.000-07:00

Mark 16: 1-8

“Behind the monastery, down by the road,
There is a cemetery of worn out things,
There lie smashed china, rusty metal,
Cracked pipes and rusty bits of wire,
Empty cigarette packets, sawdust,
Corrugated iron, old plastics, tyres beyond repair:
All waiting for the Resurrection like ourselves.”

Those words by Ernesto Cardenal Martinez the Nicaraguan poet/priest who served in the Sandinista government of the 1980s, witness powerfully to the power of resurrection to change lives. For Resurrection is not just an event of two millenia ago but it is a reality that contains the power to bring hope to smashed up lives in the here and now. It is the message of Christ in his risen power, reaching out with an unending passion that however marred the Divine image might be in peoples’ lives, they might once more be enabled to shine with the image of his likeness.

Certainly, the women who came to the tomb, knew what it was to have smashed up lives. They had loved Jesus. They had placed great hopes in him. But now it was all gone! Destroyed! For they had witnessed his violent, humiliating death. Their hopes and dreams lay ruined in the ignominious death of Jesus. And all that was left to them was a dream that they might pay a final debt of honour. After all his burial had been rushed and so the women took upon themselves to undertake the gruesome task of anointing a body that had been dead for some 36 hours, a risky enough undertaking given that the authorities would hardly feel kindly to those who chose to demonstrate solidarity with such a dissident.

But even that awful task seemed to be beyond them. The tomb was closed. It was too late. Bursting into closed tombs was and is the stuff of ghouls. And more than that, how could they physically achieve their ill thought through objective? Here is a picture of tragedy and impotence. What more is there to do but to despair and to weep?

And yet, the story does not end on this despondent note. For Mark goes on to tell us that suddenly the sealing of the tomb becomes reversed. Through Divine action, the women find that they are granted access to the tomb. Reality has been completely transformed. And as the women enter, they find that the purpose for which they have come is now unnecessary. For inside the tomb, they meet a young man who has for them a message that reverberates down through the years;

“Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here.”

And in those words, we grasp the essential truth about Jesus. He is not just another of the ten a penny jumped up characters with Messianic claims who can be silenced by the power of the state. On the contrary, he is the one that they cannot silence. For whips and crosses cannot silence him. For this is the Godman, the one who God favours, the one who will go on troubling the centres of power for generation after generation. Oh I know that within three centuries a bloodstained Emperor of Rome will co opt Jesus. At times, it will seem as if the men of power and violence have subverted his message with their perverted doctrines of domination. BUT, time and again when it seems that the authentic Jesus has been silenced, he will break out again and again with a liberating power.

But by now, you must be noticing that Mark’s Gospel is unique. Given that the verses after verse 8 are later add ons, Mark is unique in that we do not here from the risen Christ. Instead, the women are given a message, a message to tell the disciples to get themselves to Galilee where they will see Jesus. This is no calling to a place of ecstasy. It is not a calling to a great place of worship or even a mountain top. It is a calling to go back to the place where they first began to Jesus so that they might once more begin the path of discipleship. For this is not to be a story with an ending but a story that will go on. For Resurrection is not something to wallow in but instead it is a serious calling to continue the path of discipleship from our respective Galilees. Note, that for Mark, the story does not end with triumphal but with the news that Christ being alive and accessible, means that we are called to get on with the unromantic reality of being his followers, living out the path of discipleship.

And it is in the living out of discipleship by the people of God that the story continues. Oscar Romero, the great Archbishop of San Salvador, heroically fought for justice for the impoverished poor of his country in the face of the Government’s death squads which were tolerated by the USA. His martyrdom became inevitable. Just days before he was gunned down whilst celebrating the Mass, he told a journalist;

“You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me,
that I forgive and bless those who do it.
Hopefully, they will realise that they are wasting their time.
A bishop will die, but the church of God
which is the people, will never perish.”

Back to Mark’s Gospel. Not surprisingly, the women fled the tomb with terror. They had encountered a new reality and needed time to adjust to that which they had witnessed. After all, we all struggle when taken beyond the parameters of life with which we are familiar. Did they tell the disciples? The short ending, the other Gospels and the subsequent activities of the community of faith, all suggest that they did.

But today, what matters most is our response. Christ’s call to follow him in proclaiming a message of peace and reconciliation are still highly important especially in our world in which too often we effectively become that to which we say we are opposed to. Christ’s call to affirm the value and dignity of each human life are so important in a world of gross inequalities, in which we tolerate torture and prejudice against people simply for being other than us. Today, we need to live out the message of radical inclusion and grace which values us beyond our deserts. It is an ongoing story but a story in which the good news of Jesus of Nazareth, goes on through those who live out the Easter faith by following the path of discipleship, our Galilees.

So, Easter bids us to embrace Resurrection that the story may go on, the story which is “The Gospel According to You and You and You!

This sermon is to be preached at a Circuit Service on Easter Day April 8th 2007 at Torrington Methodist Church

Alive! Easter Day

2007-04-07T14:38:00.001-07:00

Luke 24: 1-12
1 Cor 12: 19 - 26

In that most gloomy of poems, “Funeral Blues”, WH Auden concludes with a dark note of despair;

“The stars are not wanted now, put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”

The closest friends of Jesus must have felt just like that on Good Friday. Their friend and leader had been well and truly killed. The hopes that they had invested in him, had been completely destroyed. The world as they knew it had caved in. Surely, nothing now would ever come to any good.

Too often, we see the inbetween Saturday as a time of waiting for the resurrection of Easter Day. But too those who were closest to Jesus, there was no expectation or anticipation - only desolation!

And so, the events of Easter Day were to them, absolutely astounding. The women had come to the tomb in order to complete the rites of burial. It was with heavy hearts that they came to that tomb. Yet what happened there, was to turn their lives upside down. Now there are variation of the story in the various Gospels. This is hardly surprising as often we have different memories of earth shattering events in our lives. We know that where there is no variations in the accounts of witnesses, our courts often suspect a degree of collusion between them.

Now in Luke’s account, we find the women ( please note that it women who are consistently the first witnesses to the resurrection) encounter two dazzling figures. Such figures would to Luke’s readers have been seen as angels. But most significant is the message that they offer. It is the message that the Jesus whom they have seen killed, has been raised from the dead. The impossible had happened.

Hear again those words:

“ Why do you look for the living among the dead. He is not here, but he has risen.”

Yes, that is the message of Easter. The Jesus who had been killed is not a dead leader who belongs to the pages of history but he is a living Lord who is as relevant to the present and the future as he is to the past.

Now the disciples seem to have struggled to believe the good news from the women. I can’t help wondering if the church instead of debating whether women are Biblically entitled to share in church leadership, might be seen as being more in touch with the resurrection accounts by questioning whether men are so entitled. But perhaps one of the important things about the resurrection is that if we at times struggle to understand and believe in it, we are following the path of those closest to Christ. For them it was at first too good to be true. Yet ultimately, they came to experience for themselves that it was quite simply the best news ever!

In the next few weeks, we will be seeking to discover something of the meaning of the resurrection. Today is primarily a day for celebration. The reflection can wait. Still here is just a quick taster.

The resurrection is God’s Yes to everything that Jesus said and did. Think of the Jesus who gave hope and meaning to the nobodies. Well, by raising Jesus from the dead, God has declared a thunderous YES to all of that.

The resurrection speaks of a God who can change things. It speaks of a God who can change our sorrow into dancing. It tells of a God who can lift us up from despair and give us hope.

The resurrection tells us that whilst death is very real and not to be trivialised, it is not the final word. The Apostle Paul sees the resurrection as a first fruit. Christ being raised from the dead is a prelude to the resurrection of the dead. His resurrection gives us a confident faith that in love God will raise us to new life when our time in this world is up.

And finally, the resurrection tells us that set free from the fear of death, we are set free to work for God’s loving purposes in this world. We are called to follow the loving path set for us by the living Christ.

Years ago, there was an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to destroy Christianity and other religions in the Soviet Union. An Atheist League was even formed by the ruling Communist party. On one occasion in the 1930s, one of the leaders named Nikolai Bukharin lectured a large crowd on why they should reject Christianity. At great length, he used his formidable oratorical skills to make his case. At the end he invited questions. Amidst the silence, one man stepped forward. Surveying the crowd before him, he shouted out;

“Christ is risen!”

And back as loud as thunder came the response;

“He is risen indeed!”

And that is why the despair of Auden’s poem cannot be the last word.

This sermon is an Easter Day sermon for Bideford Methodist Church preached on April 8th 2007.

Serving to the last - Maundy Thursday

2007-04-05T14:33:00.001-07:00

John 13: 1-17, 31-35

And so this afternoon we draw ever closer to the Passion of our Lord. As the time of his death draws near, Jesus shares in one last meal with his followers. One more time, they will experience his acceptance in the sharing of table fellowship.

Yet first there is something else to be done. Jesus and his friends have been on the road in a land in which the roads would have been muddy in wet times and dusty in dry times. The normal footwear gave precious little protection against either of these possibilities. And so, at the door of any house there would be waterpots with a servant to attend to the washing and drying of feet - not the sort of job you dream of at school!

Within a group in which nobody was assigned the role of servant, one might expect this task to be shared. But this night, there are no volunteers amongst the 12. Perhaps, they have become so competitive that they all feel such a role to be beneath them. And yet, a volunteer emerges. But in a radical role reversal, the volunteer is the Rabbi, the leader of the pack, Jesus. Jesus takes on the role of servant. But why?

Well, I guess one reason is that it reveals something about his relationship with humanity. Too often we talk of god in terms of domination. However, Jesus is in this world not to dominate us but to be alongside us, even sharing in the lowliest of acts of service. And as he washes the feet of the disciples, on his knees unable to see their faces, he shows us his commitment to every single person whether we be high and mighty or the down and out. In washing feet, he is in effect whispering a message of acceptance and value to each of us. Truly, he is our Immanuel, God with us. And as he serves us, he institutes a new order of the world in which we are called to share in the path of service.

But this is not any meal it is a last one. Soon, the path of love that Jesus has trod will take him to a cross. For there are those who cannot accept a message of unconditional love for all. After all, it threatens their man made barriers. But Jesus cannot compromise that love and for that love he is prepared to share in the worst of human suffering and pain even to the point of sharing our death, so that he can bring us through death to life in him. It is not about a vengeful God demanding a price to be paid but it is about a God who is so loving that he gives all that we might live.

So this Jesus is the One who draws alongside us in our sufferings. He is God who is truly for us.

And yet, he leaves one more instruction. He, who has loved to the ultimate, tells us to love as he has loved. This means to love without reserve, to love all manner of peoples and to love in a way that tears down walls rather than erect them. What a difference such love can make to our world today! And yet, we have seen such love in the Christ who for us was faithful, even unto death on a cross.

So as we share in the Holy Communion, we encounter the mystery of Divine love shown in he who emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s race. We cannot explain it but this Easter we can experience it.

This sermon was preached on Maundy Thursday 2007 at Bideford

Palm Sunday - a day of subversion

2007-04-01T06:49:00.000-07:00

Luke 19: 28 - 40

It is time to be honest. I am absolutely fed up with the sentimental donkey processions that in a sickly sweet way, are dragged out on Palm Sunday. I am fed up with Palm Sunday being constantly turned into a day for nice safe religious thoughts. Why? Because there is nothing safe about Palm Sunday for it is a day when sharply opposing worldviews clash, a day that makes the eventual outcome of a torture, a show trial and public execution become inevitable.

For a moment let us imagine Jerusalem on that day. Passover is drawing near. Over three million pilgrims are to be found within the walled city, packed tightly together. Religious and nationalistic passions are running high for this is occupied land, occupied by a power that cares little for the practices and religious sensitivities of these peoples.

And now into that city comes the latest of a long line of prophets. Many of these prophets have been the cause of great trouble to Rome. For long, a fractious people have hoped for, even longed for an anointed one who would deliver them from their oppressors and set them free.

And what a reception. The crowd goes crazy. They sing their Hosannas. They cry out;

“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord.”

And they wave the palm branches that St John tells us that they have taken from the trees.

Now, we often look upon this as well meaning, even if in view of later events shallow, enthusiasm for Jesus. An ever so slightly enthusiastic Praise Service!

Of course there may have been elements of that. But there is so much more! When the people shouted “Hosanna” which means “Save us” they were not looking for a Billy Graham style mission. No, these were words rooted in rebellion. To Rome, the message that they gave was a message that these people longed to be led into destroying the very presence of Rome. These were people who had been the losers under Roman rule and every fibre within them just longed to drive the infidels out. And Rome knew this. For that is why the great religious festivals such as Passover would be accompanied by Roman demonstrations of power with the bodies of the crucified being made all too visible to the visiting pilgrims.

But then the palms referred to in John’s Gospel. Here, the message could not be starker. You see, nearly 200 years before Jesus rode into Jerusalem, there had been a great war of liberation in Palestine. The then occupiers of Palestine, Greeks, had sought to destroy the Jewish way of life. The Temple had been defiled with the erection of a statue of Zeus. Those who would not conform to pagan ways such as those who continued to circumcise their baby boys faced execution. Eventually, a Jewish priest named Mattathias along with his family decided to resist. Many of them were killed but the survivors under Mattathias’ son Simon Maccabeus, formed a guerilla army. Their resistance was bloody but ultimately successful with them regaining the Temple which they repaired, cleansed and reconsecrated, an event celebrated by the annual feast of Hannukah. Even today part of the celebration of Hannukah involves the waving of palm branches for when Simon Maccabeus had entered Jerusalem in triumph, we are told in 1 Maccabees, he was greeted with praise and palm branches. And this was part of the collective Jewish memory and so the crowd that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem knowingly acted as they did in the hope that Jesus would fulfil the hopes of liberation.

So rebellion and insurrection are in the air and we can sense a tension within the city. John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg point us to that in their book, “The last Week” in which they offer us a picture of two processions. One is mad up of Jesus and his noisy followers who they suggest were the poor and landless, those desperately wanting and needing hope. The other procession is Pilate on his stallion accompanied by the economic elite and the Temple establishment who owed their power to Rome.

An unequal match you may think, but the scene now takes a comic and ridiculous turn. For this King, Jesus, comes not on a charger but on a donkey. What a mismatch! Where is the power in this? Kings are meant to be powerful but this, this is but a parody. And yet, there is a scriptural warrant for a King riding a donkey. Back in Zechariah, there is a verse which proclaims;

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!
Lo your King comes to you;
Triumphant and victorious is he,
Humble and riding on a donkey,
On a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

This verse comes against a background of restoration of Israel but more important is what follows it for it is this which points to the true nature of the Kingship of Jesus.

“He will cut off the chariots from Ephraim
And the war horse from Jerusalem;
And the battle bow shall be cut off,
And he shall command peace to the nations.”

Do you get the picture? On Palm Sunday, Jesus stands before us with a transformed picture of Kingship and power. Rather than oppress as is so often the practice of Kings, he will confront injustice as when he turns over the tables in the Temple, the economic and religious centre of Jerusalem, where the powerless are being kept from God. Rather than dominate, he will reveal himself as the servant of all. Rather than fill his boots with the blood of others as was the case with Simon Maccabeus, he will allow his own blood to be shed.

But now, we need to follow him through this most holy of weeks. Time and again, he will amaze us with his passionate inclusive love and his compassion to those who had hitherto been nobodies. And as love is revealed, so to will we see an opposition that brims with hatred. And disappointed that he has failed to meet their aspirations, many of those who rejoiced at his entry into Jerusalem, will have in despair moved from the one procession to the other and now they will be manipulated to a cry of;

“Crucify him! Crucify him!”

And what of today? Will we let this unusual King transform us and our world. Will we allow him to guide us to a new reality in which the forces of domination are broken? Will we seek to institute the sort of community in which all are valued?

And in our own lives, will we recognise what this King offers. For whilst in holy Week we see Jesus wronged by humankind, we see him offering love at precisely those moments when humankind is at its worst. For this Jesus confronts the cycles of hatred and violence with unlimited love for the likes of you and me. Rather than a Kingship that destroys its enemies, Jesus offers to us his Kingship which reconciles us to God and gives to us the Divine forgiveness and acceptance that we so need.

So today, wave your palms with joy! Shout your Hosannas! And most of all rejoice at how Jesus saves us and gives meaning to our lives.

This sermon was preached at Bideford Methodist Church and Lavington URC on Sunday April 1st 2007

More than a father - Lent 4 Mothering Sunday

2007-03-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

Luke 15: 11 - 32

“As truly as God is our father, so truly is he our mother.”

Words from a radical feminist? Not really! Words from a trendy liberal? Not quite!

No these are words from the 14th century anchoress Julian of Norwich, probably the greatest theological thinker produced by the England of the Middle Ages.

These are words that might seem appropriate for Mothering Sunday. However, on first examination, the same cannot be said of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. After all the three central characters were all male with only the fatted calf possibly being female but there again the fatted calf ends up as the biggest loser in the story.

Sometimes, I think that we are over familiar with this story. We have tamed it. And now we see God as like a good father as a result. The trouble is that this parable is so much more radical than that.

Its background is that Jesus has offended the religious establishment by his socialising and partying with what they considered the wrong sort of people, the sort of people who were not exactly a good advert for Israel. In response, Jesus tells a series of three parables. Of these, the Parable of the Prodigal Son has become the best known.

The story begins with an impertinent request. You see, there is a wealthy landowner who has two sons. The younger of them approaches him with a request - a request to inherit his share of the inheritance now. To us, this might seem a little insensitive but in the Middle eastern culture of that day, it was positively outrageous. In effect the message it gave was, “Dad, I am eager for you to die.” In response, a traditional father would be expected to strike the son across the face and to drive him from the house.

But this father is no traditional patriarch. Far from it! So he gives this son the freedom to own and to sell his portion. In effect, he allows the son the freedom to do what would not normally happen until after the father’s death.

And the son does not hesitate. The sale is done in days. This might imply a need to hurry for once the neighbouring villagers found out about his conduct, he would be a pariah. So he cannot wait. He has to hurry for shocked neighbours would surely turn him into an outcast.

Gone from home, he takes little time in wasting the inheritance. How he does so, we are not told and certainly the older brother’s insinuations must be treated with great suspicion. But the result is destitution and desperation. Now he needs to get his life back into order again. But how?

Well a real problem is that at that time, according to the Jerusalem Talmud, Jews had a way of dealing with any Jewish boy who lost the family inheritance to gentiles. It was called the “qetsatsah ceremony.” In this ceremony a jar filled with burned nuts and burned corn would be brought before the guilty person. It would be smashed and the community would proclaim that the guilty person was cut off from his community. The offender would henceforth be what we would describe as “being sent to Coventry.”

And this would be the just outcome in this story. The younger son has lost the family inheritance to gentiles, pig keepers. So now he is in big trouble. He has no future where he is but if he goes home he faces the prospect of the “qetsatsah ceremony.” The only way out is to make some money and so he swallows his pride and gets a job looking after pigs. But it doesn’t solve the problem. He might be fed but he isn’t paid. And those who hear Jesus know all too well what this means. Yes the “qetsatsah ceremony” is getting nearer should he return home.

But now he is so desperate that he is prepared to take a big gamble. He will return in the hope not of resumed sonship but of employment training so that he might earn his way. Who knows? One day he might be able to pay of what he has lost.

And so he begins his journey back to the home that he had so despised. Now let’s not pretend for a moment that this young man is remorseful. His return is all about self interest and it certainly is not about thoughts for his father. But still he has to steel himself for his return. After all, normally one who had been away would be expected to return with gifts but all that this young man has to bring back is his own record of failure. And those he might meet on his way back, may well be of the opinion that failure is all he deserves for his disgraceful conduct.

But let’s move on to the Father. He’s been looking out as if he always knew that his son would fail. He knows that his son will receive many a bad reception for having left in such an arrogant manner. And he wants to save his son from the indignity of the “qetsatsah ceremony.” So he looks. And when he sees the son, far away, he runs. But oh dear! To run in that culture is seen as unmanly. His ankles will be exposed. But as if that is not enough when he sees his son, he embraces him and showers him with kisses. Why on earth couldn’t he leave such antics to a mother? Why couldn’t he patiently wait as a patriarchal man of honour should do?

And you know, the unmanly behaviour is not finished yet. Having received the wretched younger son in peace, he calls a banquet. But now the problem is the older son. This son refuses to take his proper place at the banquet. And once more the father behaves in an unmanly manner. Rather than leave the process of placating the older son to a mother as would be the normal course of action, he allows himself to be humiliated by having to leave the banquet in order to reason with the son. And now, a new challenge confronts the father for this son is not to be reasoned with but chooses to launch a full frontal attack on both the younger son and the father. Surely now, the father will act like a man and order the older son to be thrashed but No. The father just goes on reasoning in the manner of love.

So what we have here is a most unusual father. It is not that he acts as a good father as we are often told. The truth is that he breaks all the rules and conventions of fatherhood. And in so doing reveals something of God. Henry Nouwen, reflecting on the father observes;

“This is the portrayal of God whose goodness, love,, forgiveness, care, joy and compassion have no limits at all. Jesus presents God’s generosity by using all the imagery his culture provides, while constantly transforming it.”

I wonder if at times, we do not grievously misrepresent God. We portray God in a patriarchal manner and as a result the Church has down through the centuries colluded in crimes against women. We have to often portrayed God as a stern forbidding judge who rules through might and power and some would say abuse. Yet how far such perceptions are from this parable.

God is revealed to us as Spirit and so is neither male or female. In this parable, we see a re emphasis of an Old Testament tradition in which God is called father and yet is partially described in female terms. In this parable, God is seen with the compassion of a mother. But why be surprised? After all if we journey back to Genesis, we find that male and female alike, are made in the image of God.

And now to Rembrandt’s great painting, “The Return of the Prodigal Son” which is in front of you. There you see the Prodigal Son on his knees before his father. Look carefully and see the contrast in the father’s hands. The left hand is well muscled and seem to have a firm grip on the young man. But look to the right hand. Here, there is less evidence of muscle. There is an elegance and gentleness about the fingers and they seem to stroke rather than grip. Listen for a moment to Henry Nouwen’s writing about this;

“As soon as I recognised the difference between the two hands of the father, a new world of meaning opened up for me. The Father is not simply a great patriarch. He is mother as well as father. He touches the son with a masculine hand and a feminine hand. He holds and she caresses. He confirms and she consoles. He is, indeed, God in whom both manhood and womanhood, fatherhood and motherhood, are fully present. That gentle and caressing right hand echoes for me the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Can a woman forget her baby at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne? Even if these were to forget, I shall not forget you. Look, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.”

So today, let’s move on from patriarchal domination or even a clash of genders. Let us on the Mothering Sunday, cherish the good news of the wonderful parenthood of God.

This sermon was preached at Alverdiscott on Sunday March 18th 2007. It owes much to writing of Kenneth Bailey and Henry Nouwen on this parable.

Does God push old ladies down church steps? Lent 3

2007-03-11T14:22:00.001-07:00

Luke 13: 1 - 9

It was a Sunday morning during Lent when leaving her church, a woman fell and broke her hip. She was rushed to hospital where she failed to recover from surgery and died a few days later.

The night before the funeral, people came to the family home where they offered sympathy to the bereaved husband who was accompanied by the minister. As he stood there, the minister became concerned at some of the things he heard;

“God must have had a plan for this so accept it.”

“It was God’s will and we must live by it.”

“God planned this to test your faith so be strong.”

“There’ll be a greater good come out of this so look for it.”

The minister went home that night with a great sense of anger at what he described as “babbling.” So he went to his study and rewrote the beginning of his funeral sermon. The next day that sermon began with the words;

“My God does not push old ladies down church steps!” before explaining that God cannot be blamed for all the brokenness of the world.

And to that I say a loud “Amen!” In the next fortnight, Bideford Methodist Church will be the venue of two of the saddest funerals in its history. If I believed that either had anything to do with the will of God, I would chuck this dog collar away and join the likes of Richard Dawkins in the world of atheism.

Our Gospel Reading this morning takes us very much into the theodicy question - namely if God is all powerful and good, why on earth do bad things happen to innocent people. This was the question which was asked 300 years ago after the Lisbon earthquake and again after the Holocaust. In face of tregedy it continues to be posed by all sensitive people. It is a huge question and for many has led to a suggestion that God in some ways limits God’s power. I think that such is a feasible view although it is not always satisfactory.

The Deuteronomic view which developed during the time of the Babylonian exile seemed at least from a national angle to point to a view that history showed God rewarding faithfulness whilst punishing rebellion. It goes without saying that such a view as an explanation of suffering, can lead to seeing God in a very harsh manner. And precisely this was at the heart of the dialogue into which Jesus was drawn.

The background is that there had been two disturbing events. One of these was a killing of worshippers by Pilate with the compromising of their Jewish identity by the mixing of their blood with that of the animals sacrificed. Such would have been an insult to their Jewish identity. We do not know for sure the historicity of this event but we know that such an action was taken by Pilate against the nearby but hated Samaritans so it would be in Pilate’s character if it was not a direct reference to that event. As for the building at Siloam. Here sympathy may have been muted towards the victims. A likely explanation is that this Tower was part of Pilate’s aqueduct project, a project which was financed by the seizing of money from the Temple treasury. These victims may have been seen a somewhat traitorous. And so the question of whether this was God’s judgement arose.

Now Jesus does not provide an answer to the theodicy question. But he makes it clear that their deaths had noting to do with them being outside the favour of God. No worse than others, their deaths could not be laid as the responsibility of God. For God is truly misrepresented when we talk of God as if God were the forerunner of Arnold Schwarzengger’s “The Terminator.”

And to see God in such a manner is truly to be resisted for not only does it give rise to immense pastoral insensitivity but it dents the message that is at the heart of the Gospel that God is love, that God is love for all!

And because God is love for all, God far from being the author of our tragedies, is the God who is present in the places of suffering. Elie Wiesel in his book "Night" which tells of his experiences as a Jew held at Auschwitz tells the stort of how the Germans carried out a reprisal hanging of three people including a young lad who had theface of an angel. As the lad struggled for breath, a voice asked the question "Where is God?" The answer offered was that God was present on the gallows. For when tragedies arise, God far from being absent without leave is present in the suffering and God’s heart is amongst the first to break. Far from pushing old ladies down church steps, God shares in our weeping.

So when youngsters say in that time honoured way, “It ain’t fair” they hit the nail well and truly on the head. Life is not fair and to say otherwise is to enter a self delusional state. Our responsibility as followers of Christ is to be a healing presence in an unfair world. That is what Jesus is reminding us when he moves the dialogue on to the illustration of the fig tree. Here, we are reminded of the need to produce fruit in our lives. Recognising that our very lives are the consequence of the gifting nature of God, we have a responsibility to use them well. This is a calling not to exercise judgement over others but to demonstrate in our relating to others, something of the gentle, loving qualities that we find in Jesus. We are to be life affirmers rather than life destroyers following the lead of Jesus who constantly builds up those who had need.

And finally, it needs to be noted that just as the landlord persists with the fig tree, so God persists with us. On the basis of justice, we like the fig tree might well be cut down but instead we see a patience with the fig tree even when it is failing in its purpose to bear fruit. What is deserved becomes of no relevance for the picture set before us is a picture of Divine patience and grace. And that grace is the very centre of our hope today.

Our world is far from fair yet this does not mean that God is disconnected. God’s love is very real and is without ending. It is the love that works through people and which through the Spirit sustains us at the very hour of midnight. It is the love that no extremity, even death itself, can separate us from. And in the darkest of hours, this ever patient love far from pushing old ladies down church steps, alone keeps us from total abyss, even as a bridge over troubled waters.

This sermon was preached at Alwington Methodist Church on March 11th 2007 at the end of a week of bad news. Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge over Troubled Waters" was played in a time of reflection after this sermon

Love in the ruins - Lent 2

2007-03-03T17:12:00.000-08:00

Luke 13: 31 - 35
Philippians 3:17 - 4:1

“Ten measures of beauty gave God to the world: nine to Jerusalem and one to the remainder Ten measures of sorrow gave God to the world: nine to Jerusalem and one to the remainder.”

So records the Talmud which is the compendium of the Jewish oral law. And indeed there is much beauty in Jerusalem. In that ancient city are to be found the places held to be holy by the followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Yet also, in Jerusalem the signs of hatred and conflict between those who are described as “Blood Brothers” by the Palestinian priest Elias Chacour. This is the city in which three faiths engage in conflict both with each other and even amongst themselves. For this is the place where God has been too often betrayed by those who speak of One God and claim a lineage that goes back to Abraham.

And all of us are affected by the highs and lows of that great city. For as the American spiritual leader, Barbara Brown Taylor puts it;

“Nothing that happens in Jerusalem is insignificant. When Jerusalem obeys God, the world spins peacefully on its axis. When Jerusalem ignores God, the whole planet wobbles.”

And too often as we look at Jerusalem, we sense a planet wheeling out of control.

But conflict in Jerusalem is hardly new. We find Luke telling us that the Pharisees gave a warning to Jesus that Herod was seeking to kill him. Now we cannot be sure quite what was happening. It is possible that these Pharisees were seeking to silence Jesus. Yet, it seems reasonable to take things at face value. After all, Jesus was not in conflict with all Pharisees and there seem to have been Pharisees who found their way into the early church.

Certainly, Herod may well have wanted to kill Jesus. This was after all a man who was only too prepared to shed blood if he felt his self preservation was at stake. He had imprisoned John the Baptist when his teachings became unpalatable, and later had him killed. If Jesus became a threat either directly or as a result of the responses of the crowds, Herod would have no qualms about killing him.

And certainly Jesus could be seen as dangerous. After all, one of his closest followers was a Zealot militant, a sworn enemy of the existing order. Yet he defied normal logic by also calling a collaborator with that order to follow him. Inclusiveness - Yes! But an inclusiveness opened to suspicion. And that suspicion could only be made worse by his giving a hitherto unknown value to those who had hitherto been marginalized as sinners and the unclean. Jesus had become a danger to the established way of life. The man was clearly a subversive type!

And with Passover coming, Herod would be at his most vigilant. This was the time when religious feelings would be at their most passionate. And Herod’s masters in Rome could be relied upon to take a firm line with dissent at such a time.

And yet, we find that despite the warnings Jesus presses on resolutely to Jerusalem in full knowledge that he would be going very much into the lions’ den!

And in this we get a clear picture of a courageous Jesus who in no way flinches from a situation of great danger to himself. For here is no “Gentle Jesus” or “Pale faced Galilean” but a Jesus who is resolute and full of courage.

But for what is he so full of courage? This courage can only be seen as a courage whose ends are to express love. As he contemplates the city of Jerusalem, he is fully aware of the wrongs that have been done their by the very people of Jerusalem. The city has not come up to scratch. And yet, he feels a deep and tender love for this city;

“How I have longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings , but you were not willing.”

Oh, this is a tender love, a love that is that of a mother for her children. They may have messed up but the feelings of love run so deep. It is reminiscent of the story of a farm which is devastated by a fire. The farmer comes to survey the destruction. As he look around, he sees the charred remains of a hen and he touches it with a stick only for the chicks that have been unharmed to come running out. Only a mother could do that. Yet it is precisely such maternal feelings that we now find Jesus expressing for the people of this errant city. He loves them and longs to protect them and ultimately he will sacrifice himself that people might come to know the extent of that love.

And do not make the mistake of thinking that this love is earned in any way. For soon, the people of this city will be shouting out;

“Crucify him!”

Only for Jesus as he is being tortured upon the cross to cry out for their forgiveness.

In this we see the purpose of the courage of Jesus. It is all for love. Here is no sentimental or easy love but a love that goes all the way. Confronted by rejection, Jesus responds with an embrace. Faced with hatred and violence, Jesus responds with love and shalom. And where people descend to their worst badness, the response of Jesus is to exceed that badness with the goodness of his response. For the greatest wonder of the love of Jesus is that it is not dependent on the recipient being deserving. Indeed the very point of what Christians call grace is that it is a gift of benefit that can never be deserved.

This is illustrated by a story concerning the late William Sloane Coffin. Whilst training for the ministry, he was working in a tough area. One day he met a gambler whom he tried to dissuade from continuing that lifestyle. After a while, the gambler said to him;

“You’re going to be a preacher some day, aren’t you son?Coffin replied;

“That’s right, why?”The man continued;

“So you believe in grace right?”And Coffin replied;

“Yes, why?”

Only for the gambler to explain himself;

“I’ll tell you why. You believe in grace and I believe in gambling, and that means that both of us believe life is good when it is something for nothing.”

And you know, grace is in a sense about something for nothing. It is pure gift and it comes to us when we deserve it least. But there is cost - only Jesus bears that cost. And it for today as well as then. For just as Jesus courageously reaches out to the undeserving Jerusalem of 2,000 years ago, the same passionate maternal love is also for you and me. For such love to be made known, Jesus sacrifices all so that Isaac Watts writes in those memorable lines of his;

“Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

Oh yes! Amidst the ruins that we erect in our lives and in our world, the love of Jesus reaches out. He does not give up on us but resolutely and courageously offers himself in love for us. And because of the touch of that incredible grace, we can be transformed to be the means through which the story of grace goes on.

This sermon to be preached at Bideford Methodist Church on March 4th 2007

But which way is the Gospel? Lent 1

2007-03-02T07:25:00.001-08:00

Luke 4: 1-13

About 20 years ago, I for a time often attended what would probably be described as a rather fundamentalist church. The reason to be honest was that this church had a few rather enticing women even though any mission to corrupt them, was an abysmal failure on my part.

One of the practices of some within this church was to occasionally give a verse of scripture to others. Generally, the motive was to encourage friends in their Christian walk. Only once did someone offer me a verse. It was Isaiah 1 verse 6;

“From the sole of your foot to the top of your head
There is no soundness ---
Only wounds and bruises and open sores,
Not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil.”

Mmm. I guess it was his way of telling me that I was a heretic. Whether he was right or wrong, in the immortal words of the late Ian Richardson’s “House of Cards” creation, the scheming Frances Urquhart, “I could not possibly comment.”

Recently I found myself reading an article from the Independent about Sir Ian McKellen the great actor who is also a veritable campaigner against discrimination on grounds of sexuality. In his one man show in Edinburgh some years ago, he took to removing a page from the Book of Leviticus. It was the page that contained a the twenty second verse of the eighteenth chapter;

“Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman.”

Sir Ian went on to say that he removes the same page from hotel Bibles on his travels.

Now I have to confess that the thought of Gandalf the wizard (McKellen’s famous part in Lord of the Rings) arriving at hotels armed with scissors to remove the offending page, is a thought that brings a wry smile to me. But at the same time, knowing the hurt that some have felt from hostile use of that verse, I can understand his reaction even if I am not exactly into book destruction myself.

But wait a moment! None of us can exactly be smug about some of the verses to be found in the Bible, least of all me. After all the black pudding that I love is condemned in the Holiness Code. By the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, tattoos are condemned before in the twenty first chapter, those with disabilities or any defects are barred from the priesthood.

And then let’s turn to capital punishment as permitted by the first five books of the Bible.

According to Exodus and Numbers, violating the Sabbath is a capital offence. And yet I freely confess that by driving to this service, even before I admit to having bought a Sunday paper, I have done precisely that today.

According to Leviticus and Deuteronomy, pre marital sex is not just disapproved of, but is an offence that calls for the death penalty.

And according to Deuteronomy, a rebellious son should be taken to the gate of the town and there stoned by all the men of the town.

Now don’t get me wrong, I can’t see too many church leaders or members of this congregation who will be defending my qualities of godliness should I seek to impose such a punishment on my ever so rebellious son, James. And to be honest I’d be more than worried if you would defend me in such.

And this brings me to my problem. For I am finding myself moving swiftly to a policy of picking which scriptures I like and discarding the others. And I suspect that you are also for taken literally, these verses would have the gallows busy 24/7 and in the process make Saddam Hussein appear like a lily livered liberal. And so the question needs to be asked as to what is the true message of God. How do I decide which scriptures I must adhere to and which I can evade whilst remaining one who takes a high view of scripture?

In a way, Luke’s Gospel we meet the temptations. These are the challenges that Jesus faces in working out what his Mesiahship They have a logic in them. Turning stones into bread is what might be expected from the God who provided the exiles from Egypt with manna. Indeed on the second temptation you almost get the feeling of Jesus and Satan playing scriptural ping pong. Who has the better scriptural quote? And that is how it has often been in the pages of church history. Let’s take a particularly relevant example at a time when we are preparing to celebrate the Wilberforce law which in 1807 brought an end to the transportation of slaves by Britain. We rightly remember the role of a Christian named Wilberforce, encouraged by other Christians such as John Wesley and John Newton. These people felt that the slave trade was in conflict with scripture. And yet, there were others who equally claimed to treat scripture seriously who were in favour of the slave trade and defended it rigorously. Even the churches of Bideford were not of one mind!

And this pattern has been replicated since. We see it in the German Church Struggle during the 1930s and 1940s. And more recently, there was a major Christian voice on both sides in the struggle that led to the ending of apartheid in South Africa. And as way of aside, some of the Christian voices around the current US President certainly leave me with very deep concerns.

Now we here may be of one view on all of these matters. I suspect that we are all against slavery, saddened that much of the German Christian Church collaborated with Nazism and with no time for apartheid. We may share a disturbance at how the religious forces around the US President have represented our faith. But the really important matter is that these things remind us that there is a very real temptation to simply pick the verses from scripture which fit our particular leaning and ignore the problem. And frankly this far from treating scripture seriously, trivialises it

So if we are going to move away from the pursuit of clincher verses, how are we to seek to use scripture. Let me recommend an approach offered by Professor Keith Ward who was the Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. In his book “What the Bible really teaches” he gives the following suggestions.

Firstly we should read scripture in context. This means taking the background seriously and seeking to explore the nature of the text. An example is that Genesis 1 may not be meant as literal history or science but another means of communicating profound truths.

The second principle is consistency. An example of this is that if you take some verses from a chapter of Leviticus literally, then you cannot take the next verse metaphorically just because it doesn’t suit you.

The third principle is comprehensiveness. Passages should not be taken in isolation. An example is Paul’s teaching about the role of women. Hard as they may seem, they still represent an advance on some of the Old Testament teaching with concubines and even the compulsory divorce of foreign wives. Does progress come to a halt?

Fourthly, some teachings supercede others. The Psalms have within them on a number of occasions, justifications for the hatred of enemies. Yet Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” And surely, this means that whilst we may hate the wrongs done by others, we are no longer free to hate the people themselves.

Fifthly, sometimes scripture is more faithfully read spiritually than literally. An example is where in Habbakuk, God is seen as “trampling the sea with your horses.” and where Sun and moon are caused to stand still at the sight of God’s flying arrows and flashing spear. But does God seriously ride a horse? I think not. I think that what we have here is inspired poetry that points to the greatness of God.

And finally and in my opinion most importantly, Ward argues that we must read the Bible in a way that is Christ centred. For the Christian, the Bible must point to the living Jesus and to the unlimited, liberating love of God that is revealed in Jesus. It is incumbent on all our interpretations of scripture that they point to the God who is as John puts it “love,” love for all. Anything less is a parody.

Now none of this makes understanding scripture easy. Indeed, in rejecting clincher verses, it reminds us that none of us can claim to have the whole truth and that is a good thing for the Bible needs rescuing from being used as a plaything for those so disposed.

So finally back to these temptations. What are they about? Well in way they reveal the counter cultural nature of Jesus. All three of the temptations involve the use of power to take short cuts. In a way the strength of these temptations is that inkling within all of us that if only we had the power, the world would be a better place. After all we are pretty decent chaps.

But is not this merely like shifting deckchairs upon the Titanic? You see, the way of Jesus is revealed to be more radical. Jesus does not seek power as we understand it. On the contrary, he confronts power with powerlessness. He takes on prejudice by being inclusive. And he opposes hatred and violence by the explosive power of love. And it is this counter cultural approach, sabotaged as it was by Constantine’s incorporation of the church into the state, which is our hope and it is this counter cultural approach which has given hope to generations when the legacies of Pilate and Augustus Caesar are forgotten.

And this counter cultural approach needs to inform our discipleship. We are called on to follow a way that is not motivated by climbing the greasy pole or excusing the us of power over others. The path of discipleship is not about the exercise of domination or quick fixes but is about a path of servanthood and non violence. It involves a path not of judging others but of affirming the value of all God’s children.

As we travel through this season of Lent, we follow the Christ who goes on a path of self giving that leads to Calvary. May we travel not as those who would turn the scriptures into a weapon that denigrates but may we see in them and in Christ, God raising people up out of love.

This sermon was preached at Gammaton and Torrington on Sunday February 25th 2007

"Jesus loves Osama" - "Are you having a laugh?" Epiphany 7

2007-02-18T01:41:00.001-08:00

Genesis 45: 3 - 11, 15
Luke 6: 27 - 38

Out in Australia, for once the churches are eclipsing the cricketers in the media. The reason is not just that the Poms aided by the New Zealanders have dented Australia’s sense of invincibility. It is as much about a controversy that currently surrounds some Baptist churches.

You see, a number of Baptist churches have recently displayed billboards that proclaim the message, “Jesus loves Osama.” Not surprisingly, there has been a reaction. For some there has been disbelief that churches should erect such billboards. They cannot be so crazy. Or to borrow my son’s favourite phrase when unconvinced by something his father says, “You’re having a laugh aren’t you.”

But now even the politicians are getting drawn in. Prime Minister John Howard who is even less qualified as a theologian than he is as a would be statesman, has suggested that the church could have “chosen a less offensive way of spreading its message.”

Now on the one hand I get his point. There are not too many people less deserving of Divine or human love than Osama Bin Laden. According to most Islamic scholars he is a heretic and his Al Qaeda is to all intents and purposes nothing other than a death cult. The man deals in death and destruction and offers no vision of society that could seriously be considered enlightened. In short, his life is far removed from Jesus as it is possible to imagine.

But wait a moment! By using the offensive example of Osama Bin Laden as being loved by Jesus, those Australian Baptists are revealing something of the scandalous truth concerning the love of Jesus. You see, if Jesus loves Osama Bin Laden, then surely Jesus loves every person no matter how dysfunctional or tawdry their lives might be. If Jesus loves Osama Bin Laden, then surely no person is beyond the love of Jesus. However low we might have sunk, surely this means that Jesus never gives up on us.

And certainly if we look at the life of Jesus, we find precisely that. He took a terrorist zealot into the community of his twelve closest followers. But he also called a tax collector who was to all intents and purposes a collaborator with the hated occupying Roman army. He brought a dignity to a woman who came from the ranks of the longstanding enemies of his people, the Samaritans, and did so even though her love life was a matter of some scandal. And time and again, he shared table fellowship with a motley crew of sinners and outsiders to the horror of the religious establishment who knew that such table fellowship involved a statement of acceptance of such reprobates.

But more than that, even when he was being personally wronged, he never stopped giving value to those whose evil was directed at himself. His patience towards those members of the religious establishment who sought to trap him, seems to have known no limit. And when evil did its worst in the Garden of Gethsemane, he tells Peter to put his sword away and even brings healing to one of those who had come to bring about his destruction. And then, and then on the Cross, his cry was not a curse but;

“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

None of this means that Jesus is not concerned about right and wrong - he clearly is- but it means that Jesus is committed in love to all of humanity, as much when at our worst as when at our best. And that is the wonder of grace which should be the unending hymn of the church of God.

But now we meet another twist. For not only is Jesus the one who loves all but here he seems to be calling on those of us who seek to follow him to embody such love even to those who are our enemies.

“Are you having a laugh?” we respond. For all of us know that there are those who do great evils to others. Are there not we ask times, when evil of such magnitude is performed, that to ask the victim to love is but an act of cruelty?

Well, I think there is a sense in which Jesus is here using hyperbole, an exaggerated language to make a case for a different way of seeing the world. Yes, there are those who seem to rise to the challenge but for most of us, well we are not like Joseph able to show love to those who wreck our lives. And anyway, by the time Joseph is reconciled with his brothers, his fortunes have been transformed and from being reduced to slavery and jailbird, he is now raised to the highest office in the land along with the prestige that goes with it. He may see it as God’s plan but for many who suffer, mention of God’s plan can only give rise to hollow laughter.

More and more I am convinced that these words are addressed to for the situations in which we have power to effect a change for the good that we be prepared to use our power for good. For certainly, Jesus is here changing the ways in which we see our world.

Now just for a moment, we need to face the major objection to the teaching of Jesus. That objection is rooted in the violence of our world which in the face of wrong sees but two responses. The first of these responses is the cowardly option of “flight“, running away. This solves nothing. The other option is to “fight” but this takes the risk that we become the very thing that we are opposed to.

Jesus, on the other hand offers us the possibility of a creative way of confronting evil. For just a moment or two let’s look at his seemingly passive suggestions of how to relate to those who wrong us.

Firstly we see him suggesting turning the other cheek which on the face of it seems like the actions of a doormat. But it is not! The reason is that the only way you could hit someone on the right handed cheek would be with a backhanded action of the right hand as in those days the left hand was for cultural reasons kept for unclean tasks. The purpose of using the backhand would have been not so much to injure as to humiliate. Turning the other cheek would have meant the aggressor had to hit in the normal way but to do so would be to recognise that the victim was an equal rather than a subordinate. So Jesus is suggesting a stand that refuses to accept further humiliation.

Secondly we see Jesus suggesting that where a person is forced to give up their outer garment in order to pay off a debt in a society in which many were forced into indebtedness, that they should also remove their undergarment and give that also. Now given that poor people had only two garments to wear in the first place, this would mean nakedness. But the shame of nakedness in that culture would not be so much upon the naked person as on the person who witnessed it or the person who caused it. For here is Jesus suggesting a means by which the downtrodden should rise above their shame. The world is turned upside down.

Yes in all of this, Jesus is suggesting ways of resisting evil without the destruction of enemies. And that is at the heart of this teaching. By all means challenge evil! By all means do not be a doormat! But whilst there is no obligation to like those who do wrong, Jesus cautions us against willing their destruction and succumbing to hatred.

Desmond Tutu who chaired the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in South Africa after the painful years of apartheid puts it well;

“To be human, we live in community, we have to restore community and in the end only forgiveness will achieve that. A person is a person through other persons. Your humanity is caught up in my humanity.

If you are dehumanised, then inexorably I am dehumanised. For me to be whole, you have to be whole. If you are a perpetrator, a torn and broken human being who has lost your humanity, then I too am less than whole.”

Too right! For us to be truly human means living in community and we are all damaged when that breaks down. Of course, society must protect itself from those who bring destruction to it. Nowhere does Jesus dispute that. But the challenge is that we protect society often through the rule of law whilst not seeking to obliterate the possibilities of growth in even the most depraved.

At times, all of us struggle with this teaching yet within it we see a reminder that all are children of God made in the image of God, however much the image has been marred. And it is that we are called to remember in our local community hard as it may sometimes be, and in our national life. For if we heeded the call to follow the ways of Christ, we might be less ambivalent as a nation to torture, less inclined to send asylum seekers back to face death and less inclined to entice people into the indebtedness of problem gambling.

But now, we are on the edge of Lent. Now we prepare to follow Jesus on the road to Calvary. Now we prepare to see the wonder of a love which ultimately shows our pale imitations up for the pathetic efforts they are. Soon we will hear once more that cry upon the cross, the cry that has resounded through two thousand years of human violence and cruelty;

“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

And we will recall again that those words are not just for the torturing killers of two millenia ago but for us today even for the Osama Bin Ladens. For the love of Jesus is so immense that it pleads for all and in so doing speaks to us to dare to be a people of reconciliation and peace.

You lift me up Epiphany 6

2007-02-11T02:07:00.001-08:00

Jeremiah 17: 5 - 10
Luke 6: 17-26

Several years ago, I went with my wife to see my cousin Keith play the part of Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady.” Based on George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion”, one of its endearing characters is Alfred P. Doolittle. This father of the central figure Eliza, admits to being one of the “undeserving poor.” As he puts it;

“I ask you, what am I? I’, one of the undeserving poor; that’s what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he’s up against middle class morality all the time. If there’s anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it’s the same story: “You’re undeserving; so you can’t have it.”

His view is also neatly put in a line from the play which never quite made it into the musical;

“What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.”

Now, let me put my cards on the table. I am deeply uncomfortable with talk of the undeserving poor. My family history includes a great grandmother who began her days in the workhouse and who would have ended there if she had not been so badly broken that her last weeks of life in 1914 were instead spent in the beautifully named “lunatic asylum.”

Now I do not deny that there are some people who seem to be undeserving but such people are to be found in all areas of society and include both rich and poor. But, the sort of venom that I found directed at some of those at the bottom of the pile particularly from some of the media in the late 70s and early 80s, was positively dehumanising. It was born in arrogance and treated other people with contempt. And it has its equivalent manifestations today with the dismissal of sections of society as “chavs.”

Clearly we live in a world in which there winners and losers. They make our newspapers all the time. It is not just about wealth as the sad story of the death in the past week of Anna Nicole Smith reminds us. Here was a woman who climbed up the greasy pole of materialism using her body as her prime asset. Married to an aged billionaire with motives that were certainly challenged by her family, in the years that followed his death, her dignity became pealed away and with only her sexuality to live on, she died alone, a thoroughly tortured soul. If only, if only, her life could have been rooted in a trust in the Lord as Jeremiah encourages us to have, rather than in those who used her, abused her and ultimately deserted her.

And on the subject of losers, in the last fortnight we have had the news of the forthcoming expansion of gambling in our country. I can’t for the life of me understand it. We have already over 300,000 problem gamblers in Britain. Indeed one of the women who has been so criticised in the aftermath of Celebrity Big Brother, went onto the show simply to save her house from repossession, a situation she faced due to such a gambling problem. And yet, we stand on the edge of a deliberately induced gambling expansion. The immorality of such an act astounds me and reminds me of Jesus words that for those who cause the little ones to stumble, it would be better that a millstone were fastened around the neck and they be drowned in the depth of the sea. But sadly, those with addictive personalities who are the casualties of this wretched innovation, will doubtless be labelled as feckless and the undeserving poor.

But, Jesus offers us another way. At a time when affluence and success were seen as marks of the approval of God with their absence being seen as a sign of Divine disapproval, Jesus turns the world upside down in what has become known as the Sermon on the Plain. For here in his teachings about blessings and woes, Jesus addresses the world of winners and losers in a material sense as opposed to the spiritual basis of the Beautitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. With echoes of Mary’s Magnificat which Luke has also recorded, Luke records Jesus as specifically offering a blessing who are poor, hungry and who weep. This blessing we can see in part expressed through Jesus being particularly present with those at the bottom but it should also be seen as representing a message that the Kingdom of God offers the prospect of change, the prospect of role reversal. And in his ministry we see Jesus time and again offering a liberation and a dignity to those whose experience of life is akin to a kick in the head.

But alongside blessings, Jesus also speaks of woe, woe to the rich, the full and the laughing. And before we look to the local squire or those who salt away their gains in the Bahamas and the likes, we need to pause. Or in global terms, I suspect that each of us here is very much in the top 10%. By simply being British, even if we are well down the order within our country, we are still the rich in global terms. And few of us show signs of being other than well fed. Woe to us?

Now the immediate problem we find here is that we know that some of those with whom Jesus spent time, were people of some wealth. After all, how else could Jesus and his disciples have financed themselves in their mission. An upper room for a Passover meal would have cost money and we know that Jesus was buried in the tomb of a wealthy man.

Now whilst I guess that Jesus would have a critique of some ostentatious wealth, I think that the key point of the Woes is to remind us that material wellbeing can be very much a matter that is temporary rather than permanent. To build one’s life on material gain is to build on sand as the parable of the rich fool reminds us all to clearly. What matters is that the rich should have a true solidarity with the poor.

Oscar Romero, the great Archbishop of El Salvador, preaching shortly before his martyrdom put it like this;

“Do you want to know if your Christianity is genuine? Here is the touchstone: Whom do you get along with? Who are those who criticise you? Who are those who do not accept you? Who are those who flatter you? Know that Christ once said, ‘I have come not to bring peace but division.1 Some of you want to live more comfortably, by the world’s principles of power and money, but others have embraced the call of Christ.”

And the call of Christ is about an affirmation of the value of all. We see it demonstrated in the story of Desmond Tutu. Brought up in a society that treated black people such as himself as less than white people, he was stunned one day when walking with his mother, he met a priest. The priest addressed young Desmond’s mother as Mrs Tutu, he doffed his cap and he moved to the side so that she might have priority in passing. Desmond had seen nothing like it before and so the example of that priest, Trevor Huddlestone, was of significance in leading Desmond Tutu to himself becoming a priest. Why? The actions of a man of God had shown him that in God’s sight he was truly a somebody.

And in Jesus, we see one who used his every teaching, his every work of power to turn those who were thought of as nobodies into somebodies. Time and again he lifted people up. Those who were at the bottom of the pile, those who had made wrong choices, those who had seemingly little to offer, he lifted them up!

And still today, he lifts people up out of his inexhaustible grace. With him there are no Nobodies, only Sombodies! If we today feel battered, he lovingly lifts us up. With him there is no Poor Law distinction between the deserving and undeserving. For his grace is so generous that it goes beyond what any of us can rightly claim to deserve. So today, I invite you to be about his work of lifting people up but as you do so, do not neglect to allow yourselves to be lifted up by him or his messengers who just may be the last people you can imagine yourself being lifted up by.

Preached at Alwington on Sunday February 11th 2007

Called to Serve Epiphany 5

2007-02-03T06:19:00.001-08:00

Isaiah 6; 1-8
Luke 5; 1-11

Several years ago after being accredited as a Methodist local preacher, along with others who had recently been accredited or who were nearing that point, I was invited to visit the then Chair of the Cornwall District. I cannot deny that I went somewhat reluctantly. After all I expected a sort of talk on how to be good Methodists. Surely there would be warnings about conducting ourselves in a responsible fashion, keeping our distance from strong drink and wild women, and of course the warning to be careful not to teach anything contrary to our doctrines or at least to beware of the paths that might lead us into heresy.

Well to my relief, we got none of that stuff. Instead we were challenged to become the awkward squad. We were told that as the younger preachers in the District we should be those who saw it as our duty to challenge the status quo. Where we had a vision of what might be, we were told to state it and if ignored to state it louder. And where we felt concern at the realities we encountered, we were told to challenge them and if ignored to challenge them all the louder.

I went home quite joyful. I never knew that Methodism could be such fun although on at least one occasion I was to get myself close to being disciplined as a preacher for taking the advice a little too enthusiastically.

The point of this is that we sell the call to follow Christ short if we portray it as being about rules. This morning, I want to offer three aspect of the call to follow the God who reveals himself in Christ.

The first aspect to consider is that the call to follow God is rooted in revelation as to the otherness of God. This is particularly powerfully revealed in the call of Isaiah. At a time when Uzziah who had led Judah through a period of stability and prosperity is dying, Isaiah receives a vision of the majesty of God, a vision that leaves him all too aware of his own inadequacies. For now he has had a vision of the glory of God which exceeds all the superlatives that we can envisage in our human discourse. God’s greatness is revealed and as God overcomes Isaiah’s resistance, he is left to ultimately cry out;

“Here am I. Send me!”

For fishermen at Lake Gennesaret, the revelation of God comes in a very different way. Experienced fishermen, frustrated from a fruitless night going about their trade, by following the advice of the carpenter Jesus at an hour when fishing offered little prospect of success, they get a catch of such a magnitude that even with the help of other fishermen, the nets that had been untroubled at night begin to burst. And so Simon Peter filled with wonder at an encounter with the Divine, like Isaiah utters words concerning his own inadequacy, before like that great Prophet responding to the call.

In a real way, the path of discipleship has to begin with an encounter with God which reveals to us the unlimited and inexhaustible wonder of God. It can be summed up in the title of an old book written by J.B Philips entitled, “Your God is too small.” It is as we begin to see that too often we have squeezed God into a box that is incapable of confining God that we begin to glimpse that God is altogether “Other”, greater than we can imagine and so is worthy of our devoting our lives to seeking glimpses of the Divine mystery.

Secondly, the calling is as much about our being as our doing. Just as God far from being passionless and removed as demanded by the Greek philosophers, is passionate about our well being as is shown in his grace which showers value and love upon each of us, we are called to be transformed people. Perhaps this is best summed up by Kate Wilkinson’s well known hymn;

“May the mind of Christ my Saviour
Live in me from day to day,
By his love and power controlling
All I do or say.”

The great hymn writer, Isaac Watts gets hold of this idea of sharing in the passion for vulnerable humanity that is seen in Christ. One of his neglected hymns, “Blest is the man whose bowels move” expresses this rather well - although I guess with a title like that, it would be hard to expect any congregation to sing it with a straight face. Nevertheless, I shall try to read its first two verses as reverently as possible because of the valued points that Watts makes;

“Blest is the man whose bowels move,
And melt with pity to the poor;
Whose soul by sympathising love,
Feels what his fellow saints endure.

His heart contrives for their relief
More good that his own hands can do;
He, in the time of general grief,
Shall find the Lord has bowels too.”

Now leaving aside jokes about irregular Christians, mention of bowels at the time of Watts referred to deep feelings. And is not part of following Christ about having deep feelings for those who are seen as losers in our competitive society? Is not part of following Christ about having deep feelings for those who are hurt and devastated for as Watts reminds us, such is the way of our Lord. And following the way of that Lord unleashes great potential for God alongside us empowers us well beyond our natural strengths and abilities.

And certainly, we see this passion in Isaiah’s support for the poor and his denunciation of the injustices around him. And we can find it to in the life of the early Christian communities when the likes of Simon Peter ensured that life’s casualties were very much a part of the early Christian communities, helped as much as possible, for they were following the Lord who time and again raised the standing of the lowly, the poor and the dispossessed and in so doing confronted the powerful.

And finally, the calling of God is a calling that makes us not spectators but participants. Isaiah becomes a voice that reflects God in tempestuous times whilst Simon Peter becomes a fisher of men whose efforts for the rest of his life are used to connect people with God and to form communities of faith. In these things, God does not reject human creativity and individuality but is the One who empowers the people of God.

It does not necessarily mean abandoning all that went before. Isaiah remained at the Court in Jerusalem although he could never be the same. Simon Peter probably carried on with fishing. After all he had a mother in law and so probably a family to support and certainly soon after the resurrection, Christ finds him back in Galilee fishing according to John’s Gospel. But whilst much may have been as before, the calling to be participants in God’s work is unending.

And what of us today? We too are called by God. We need to have a big picture of the wonder that is God. We too need to have our world vision transformed by God that we care about things that matter to God. And we, even we, are need the Epiphany of seeing that we are called to participate in God’s mission helped by the enabling God. Our age, health, family responsibilities, places of work, all impact on how we are to participate. But the God who in love has redeemed us and calls us, wants each of us to be a part of God’s mission. It may be that we are called on to be involved in some activity or other for we are the hands, the feet and the voice of God in our world today. It may be to encourage others in their tasks or it may well be to be those before God in prayer. This morning I encourage each of you to contemplate how to respond to your particular calling in the knowledge that we are all called to be a part of God’s team.

Preached at Bideford and Clovelly on February 4th 2007

A love whose breadth causes offence

2007-01-25T15:57:00.001-08:00

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

2007-01-21T06:15:00.001-08:00

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