Wednesday June 20, 2011 - Great is Thy Faithfulness

The context for this sermon is an ecumenical Christian service of the word in the chapel of a large, high-acuity teaching hospital.

The Scripture is: Genesis 12:1-9

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Risk-taking faith

Today’s reading from Genesis is the story of the call of Abram and Sarai But, in pulling the story out of the bible as we do when we use passages for worship, we’re missing something important in this story. And that important thing is the context.

And I want to begin today’s reflection by reminding you of the context. Because this story of Abram’s and Sarai’s calling starts very abruptly with the words “God said to Abram, Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your parents’ house to a land that I will show you.” In the narrative as it’s presented in Genesis, there isn’t any preliminary build-up to this story.

Directly before God calls Abram and Sarai, we have the story of the Tower of Babel, Then a list of the descendents of Shem, of whom Abram is one of those descendents.

We have no other background information about Abram other than this genealogy. And, of course, we have no information about Sarai other than that she is Abram’s wife. And we have no previous information about Abram’s relationship with God, either. All we know is that, suddenly, God appears and tells Abram to get up and go from his parents’ house to an unknown land.

And I think that, because we are so used to hearing the story of Abram and his relationship with God and we know the end of the story…and because this verse is written poetically, it all sounds great and good and positive.

“Wow! God is going to make Abram and Sarai the Patriarch and Matriarch of God’s chosen people! Fantastic! Lucky Abram! Lucky Sarai”

But what would happen if we heard the story of today’s reading something like this: (Please excuse a bit of literary license)

"Suddenly, Abram heard a voice that he had never heard before claiming to be the God of all creation. He was afraid and thought he might be going crazy.

And the voice said to him, “You and your wife have got a pretty nice life here among your people, don’t you? You know everyone, your parents are here and life is pretty good, except that you have no children.

But if you and Sarai want to have children, if you want to leave behind your state of barrenness, you both are going to have to leave this land and this comfortable life and go to an unknown place that I’m going to direct you to.

I will give you descendents who will eventually become a great people. But you will also eventually despair of having an heir and you’re going to have to trust me on this one.

I will make your name great and your descendents will be a blessing to the world, but you personally won’t see any of the greatest blessings that I’m going to give them and you’re going to have to trust me on this one.

I will curse those who curse you, but the vindication you desire isn’t going to come in your lifetime and you’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

If we read the text in this way, it takes on a whole different slant. We see Abram and Sarai not as some lucky lottery winners who were unexpectedly and inexplicably given a jackpot. Rather, we see them as risk-takers who trusted in God. And we also see that some might call them fools. Maybe we would call someone a fool who behaves as Abram and Sarai did.

Call and Response

There is an ironic twist to this story because if Abram and Sarai stay in the safety of all that is familiar they will remain barren. In order to bear children and become the parents of God’s Chosen People, they have to step outside their comfort zone and take a risk in their old age.

If you wanted to translate this story into 21st century America, I could see one rendition of it where there is a con-artist somewhere in the background hoping to take advantage of a couple of senior citizens who she hopes might be befuddled.

After all, who ever heard of a couple starting a great dynasty when the woman is 65 and the man 75? And those who are familiar with Scripture know that Sarah (as she will then be known) won’t get pregnant until her 90th year.

Abram and Sarai are being called to abandon their families of origin, to renounce their former way of life and to set out on a journey that will be physically dangerous and to aim for a future that is logically impossible. But unless they take a risk and step out in faith, they will not bear fruit. God initiates the promise that God makes to them, but the choice as to whether or not to act on God’s promise is up to them.

And for me as a Methodist, that’s a great metaphor for what a life of faith is all about: God initiates and human beings respond to God’s plan. The life of faith, although initiated by God, is always a two-way street that requires the participation of both parties. True faith is not a matter of “cheap grace” where we accuse anyone who responds to God’s plan and calling as trying to earn God’s favor by human works.

Rather, faith acknowledges that everything in life is a gift from God, and that these gifts are given to us out of love in order that we might respond to them.

At the end of the day, faith is call-and-response. God calls and we respond.

God is Faithful

So - the story tells us - Abram and Sarai set out for the land of Canaan.

They set out in order that their descendents should become God’s chosen people……so that all nations and races and peoples would be blessed by them, and would be blessed as they were blessed.

But, for me, the most amazing and difficult part of this faith-journey was that neither Abram nor Sarai were going to live to see the fulfilling of the promise that God made to them. They were not going to see their descendents become a great nation. They were not going to see Isaac give birth to Jacob who was to become Israel and the father of God’s Chosen People through whom all peoples of the earth would be blessed.

At the end of the journey, at the end of their lives, Abraham and Sarah were still walking by faith rather than by sight. By rights, each of them could have gone to their grave saying something like: “God gave us something but God didn’t give us what we had been promised.”

But those of us who know the entire story know that God did, in fact, fulfill the promise made to Abram and Sarai. God remained faithful to Abraham and Sarah (as they would become), and through them to the people of Israel and through them, God remained faithful to all of humanity.

Even though Abraham and Sarah didn’t live to perceive the fulfillment of the blessing, it doesn’t diminish the fact that God came through as promised.

By responding to God’s call, Abram and Sarai stepped out of their barrenness and into a new future. And I find that both an inspiration and a challenge. Because it’s not always easy to have that kind of faith. It’s not always easy to trust in God’s faithfulness when events do not unfold as we expect and maybe when it even looks like God didn’t fulfill the promises that were made. It’s easy enough to say the words “God has the situation mapped out” but it’s not always easy to walk into the future when you feel that God has not given you a glimpse of that map.

And so, to encourage one another, we tell stories like this one of God’s faithfulness in the past and we remind each other that God continues to be faithful to us today. As people of faith, we remember that – as the author of Hebrews said – “we desire a better country”. Not just in “heaven” but also in the here and now.

Conclusion

For me, it is Good News that God is faithful and keeps God’s promises, even if I can’t perceive right now that those promises are being kept.

For me, it is Good News that other people of faith struggle with difficulties along their journey with God.

And for me, it is Good News that, as we step out in faith, that we are in a very real sense co-creators with God in the divine unfolding of history.

As we go from this place, I pray that the God of Abram and Sarai will bless each one of us as we take those initial steps out of our barren places into the unfolding of God’s creative endeavor.

I pray that we will be able to encourage other people of faith and to be encouraged by them.

And I pray that, whether or not we see the final result of God’s blessing on our lives that we will nevertheless be able to embrace God’s mysterious peace which surpasses all of our own human understanding. May the peace of God be with us always. Amen

Sunday 5 July 2009 - Being Prophetic

Today's sermon is based on Ezekiel 2:1-7 and Mark 6:1-13

There are some similarities with last week's sermon as these two were preached to different congregations.

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Introduction

In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus has just come back from doing great deeds of power in Galilee. He is now in his hometown and it would seem from this morning’s reading that the people are not amused.

I wonder if Jesus would have been better received if he had come into town as a healer? After all, he has just exorcised a demon-possessed man, healed a sick woman and raised a dead girl. And all of these people have not only been healed of their aliments, but possibly more importantly, they have been restored into their communities.

The occupation of ‘healer’ would have been a recognized occupation in first century Palestine. And the healing work that Jesus has just done in Galilee would most likely have been of great value to any community. Jesus wasn’t just dealing in home remedies for everyday complaints (and let’s not minimize their value in a pre-scientific culture); he’d just healed some pretty tough cases.

Ironically, the raising of the young girl might be the easiest of Jesus’ recent healings to explain away.But Jesus has also shown power over something which looks to us like schizophrenia and he’s healed a woman who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years. Jesus’ healing power works on the tough cases.

Jesus the Teacher

But Jesus didn’t come into his hometown as a healer. He came into his hometown as a teacher. And in today’s story Mark, unlike Luke, doesn’t even give us a hint what it was that Jesus was teaching in his hometown. But we are told of the effect of the teaching: the hearers recognize it as a powerful message and they reject it angrily.

Carpenters weren’t supposed to teach; who did Jesus think he was? The people of Jesus’ village knew all about him; I’ll bet some of them were pretty convinced that they actually knew Jesus better than he knew himself. These people knew that Jesus wasn’t a teacher and they knew that he wasn’t a healer either. It was almost inevitable that they would reject his message.

And, we are told, that Jesus wasn’t able to perform miracles because the people of Nazareth (I’m assuming) didn’t have faith in him and his teaching.

Faith in Jesus’ Teaching

I wonder what that means - Faith in Jesus and his teaching? From what Mark has to say, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that Jesus’ message might have been one of healing. And Luke’s account of the same story suggests a ‘healing’ message as well: the message that God is not just the God of Israel but of all people.

This is a message that has the power to heal not just individuals, but the world. But, of course, it is also a dangerous message.

Because if we open our worldview to others, if we open our minds to the idea that God might love other people as much as he loves us – that he is on their side as well as ours - then we lose a good deal of human-made security. We will have to give up the idea of building fences to keep other people out of our lives; be those fences literal ones of chain or stone or wood or even – dare I say it – of national borders. And we will have to be open to the possibility that God also works in the lives of people who we view as frightening or as our enemies.

Learning Healing

But if we simply hear this teaching and we don’t apply it in practice because we don’t believe it or because it is too hard, then there isn’t going to be any healing in the world.

If countries continue to operate on the basis of Realpolitik – of deterrent force - then the world will not escape ongoing cycles of warfare. If communities do not seek forgiveness and understanding then strife between people of different ethnic groups will continue in many parts of the world – not least in Northern Ireland. If individuals do not forgive one another and treat one another as precious gifts of God, then families and communities will continue to be torn apart. Children & elders will continue to be abused, and family members will continue to suffer from mental illness, addiction and all manner of stress-related physical symptoms.

Healing is possible, but only if we believe in it enough to ask God for the grace to change.

Embracing Healing

Now that I think about it, maybe the people of Jesus’ hometown wouldn’t have embraced him if he had come to them as a healer. Because healing and repentance have always been linked together. And repentance means to turn around and go in a different direction. Repentance means to walk in God’s direction rather than to walk along the path of prevailing social values.

And going against the grain of the values of wider society is difficult. It requires us to give up a good deal of perceived safety and security. To embrace forgiveness rather than revenge requires us to give up safety and security. To risk relating to those who we find frightening requires us to give up safety and security. And – dare I say it - to risk believing that God loves people outside the church or outside of Christianity as much as he loves us requires us to give up safety and security.

If we think about ‘having faith in God’ in terms of repentance and in terms of seeing life in a way that is different from prevailing social values, it’s easy to see why faith can be difficult. It’s easy to see why living prophetically can be difficult. It’s easy to see why Ezekiel found it difficult to tell the people of Israel that God had allowed the exile to happen because of Israel’s unfaithfulness.

And it’s easy to see why Jesus warned the disciples that their message would be rejected by some people in the community. Nevertheless, Jesus called his disciples to go out into the community and to depend for their well-being on the very group of people who were liable to reject them.

Conclusion

At first glance, it might seem that there isn’t a lot of good news in today’s Gospel reading. But it wouldn’t be correct to take this portion of Mark’s gospel and look at it in isolation from the rest of the Gospel.

It is good news that God is a God of healing. This is not just a God who is a common garden-variety healer; this is also a Creator God whose desire is to heal everything that he has made.

As always, the good news is that Jesus is Lord and that Caesar is not Lord. Peace of body, mind and spirit – the Shalom of wholeness – comes from loving God and loving our neighbour as ourself. God’s peace is not the peace of Rome; it is not the peace that comes from might making right. God’s peace is the peace that comes from seeking to obey the law of God but also by living out that law in a loving way that takes account of circumstances and individual situations.

Because the good news is that God loves all of his creation and there is no one from whom he withholds the offer of his salvation.

Jesus showed us the way; as the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, Jesus showed us the character of God. But he didn’t just show us God’s character, he died and rose again so that we could enter into relationship with God.

And that, of course, is the very best news of all.

I pray that as we go from this place, that the Spirit will fill us with the courage to dare to get out into the community and tell those who do not know about the love of God. I pray we will be passionate about proclaiming this message even when it means that the message will not be gladly received. And I pray that, as we continue our journey as Christ’s disciples that we may continue to be amazed by hope, love and the peace that passes all understanding. Amen

Sunday 7 December 2008 - Zechariah's Meditation

This is a partly-narrative sermon based on Luke 1:5-20 for Advent 1.   There is a great deal of influence here from Trevor Dennis' book The Christmas Stories.

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God Will Come Out of Hiding

'We are on the brink of a new era and God will come out of hiding.' I'll never forget those words. A brother priest said them to me just before I was one of the five chosen to enter the Temple sanctuary.

We were talking about the Empire - the Roman Empire - and about our hopes for the future of the Jewish people.  Hopes that seemed rather far-fetched given the rule of Herod-the-Great and his son over the last 35 years or so.

Oh the two Herods were Jews alright. But they were in bed with the occupying Roman Empire, doing the will of Rome rather than of God. It was hard to see how God would have anything to do with the Jewish people when our leaders were colluding with the enemy. After all, as priests we knew that the prophets taught that we needed to be pure as a people before the Messiah would come to us.

Anyway, we were talking about these things, my brothers and I. Our section had been called to Temple duty. But you have to understand that there were so many priests that each section served the Temple for one week at a time twice a year. And most of us had a lot of waiting around to do. The chances of actually serving in the sanctuary were pretty low. There were so many of us in the section and we were chosen by lot so that God could make the decision himself.

I myself had never been chosen before. That was somewhat unusual, but not completely. There were others who had never been chosen. Some had been chosen two, or even three times.

Anyway, we were sitting there talking about the fate of the Jewish people and my brother priest had just uttered those words: 'We are on the brink of a new era and God will come out of hiding.' I confess that part of me thought 'As if!' and the other part of me thought 'Please, God!' And then we drew lots.

To my utter astonishment, amazement and complete disbelief, God chose me to serve in the sanctuary that day.

It all seems rather understated now, that statement: 'God will come out of hiding'. Neither one of us knew that God was going to come out of hiding that very day. And my wildest dreams could not have imagined what waited for me in the Sanctuary.

You know all about the events that happened next. You just heard the story.

Is it any wonder that I was struck dumb after seeing Gabriel and hearing everything that he said? I mean, I went into the Sanctuary expecting to offer incense to God. I didn't expect a messenger of God to come out from behind the curtain of the Holy of Holies and talk to me!

And I certainly didn't expect to be told that my wife and I would have a son in our old age who would be a prophet - 'great in the spirit of God'. Like Sarah in the Torah, I laughed in my heart and I doubted a great deal. I mean, wouldn't you? I'd not exactly had any time to get used to such a preposterous idea.

My great regret was that, when I left the sanctuary and came out into the Court of Israel, I was not able to bless the people with the other priests. This was a duty that I could not perform and a privilege that I had looked forward to all my life. As far as I knew, this would be my only opportunity to exercise my priestly office, and the opportunity was denied me.

A Son is Born

To tell you the truth, at the beginning of the whole thing, I expected to get my voice back in a couple of days. I thought it was just shock. Then, as the days and weeks drew on, I became more and more resigned to the fact that I might never speak again. I prayed that I might one day regain my speech, but I wondered if my dumbness was the payment exacted by God for lifting his curse of barrenness upon Elizabeth.

Despite the sadness of losing my voice, Elizabeth's pregnancy was a time of great rejoicing. We both come from the priestly clan and all through our lives we had been blameless in keeping all of God's commandments. For many years, we suffered from the belief that God was displeased with Elizabeth; why else would he not bless her with sons and daughters? And, of course, there had to be a son to carry on the priestly tradition of our family.

Sometimes it seemed to us that our condition mirrored that of the Jewish people: God was silent and his blessing was withheld. But now, Elizabeth was able to hold her head high: her righteousness was vindicated. God had blessed her and was working his purposes through her. And the proof was there for all to see.

Family and neighbours all rejoiced with us. Elizabeth and I were chosen by God to be the parents of the first prophet that Israel has seen for generations. Some say that he is the reincarnation of Elijah.

We named him John, just like the angel Gabriel told us to do. That went against tradition, of course. But it seemed to us that God is about to do a new thing. We are on the brink of a new era and it seems that God has finally come out of hiding.

Faithfulness

Zechariah and Elizabeth were unique people.  Not only were they the parents of John the Baptist, but their story of childlessness and subsequent fruitfulness is one of a handful in the bible.  In Scripture, every time a child (a son!) is born of a barren woman, the child is a child of very special significance in the purposes of God.

The birth of John the Baptist ends a period of many centuries when God did not speak to his people.  John the Baptist will be the prophet of a new era, the prophet a new testament. Although he began a new prophetic age, there was nonetheless continuity with the former prophetic age.  

Zechariah and Elizabeth were undoubtedly unique but they embodied many human concerns about God:  Where is God in all of this? Where is God in my life? Where is God in history?
God did not act in their lives as they expected him to act, and possibly not as they thought he 'ought' to have acted.  However, they remained faithful and the were used by God in a most unexpected way.

God has promised to his faithful people that he will remain faithful to us.  And the security of that promise rests in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the one we await during Advent.  We are living in a new era, and God has come out of hiding.

I pray that we may we be given the grace and fortitude to persist in our faith even when we cannot see God working as we might want him to do.  May we be given a change of perspective so that we can see God's activity in the world where we least expected it.  And may we have the wisdom and courage to follow in the direction of God's leading, even if it means changing our expectations. Amen

Sunday 20 January 2008 - Persistent Prayer

This is a non-lectionary sermon that was inspired by the readings from the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity whose theme this year is 'pray without ceasing'. It's loosely based on Luke 18:1-14

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Prayer in Luke

This evening’s Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Luke. And one of the recurring themes in Luke is the theme of prayer.

In the bible-reading scheme that we use on Sunday mornings, the two stories that we heard earlier are normally divided up. And so on one Sunday we hear the story of the widow and the unjust judge. And on the next Sunday we hear the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector. And we’re used to concentrating on the meaning of each one of these stories separately.

However, I think that Luke also put them together for a reason. Together, the two stories tell us: on the one hand, be persistent in prayer and; on the other hand, don’t be prideful in your prayer either.

I think that this balance between persistence and pride is actually a very difficult balance to strike. Speaking for myself, I know that I swing back and forth between these two extremes of praying persistently and pridefully and I expect that many of us do.

In any case, this difficult balance is one reason that preaching about trying to achieve a balance is also difficult. For what they are worth, here are some thoughts.

Dogged Persistence

First of all, I want to talk about dogged persistence. The kind of dogged persistence that the widow showed in asking for justice against her opponent.

But I don’t want to think about this story in the very literal way of ‘If you pester God long enough for want, your prayer will eventually be granted.’ I simply want to think for a bit about the value of dogged persistence when it comes to the very act of praying itself.

There is a phrase that has been used in child-rearing that I hope society is now beginning to understand the folly of. That phrase is ‘Quality time.’ The implication is that as long as we spend quality time with our children, we don’t need to worry about the quantity of time that we spend with them.

What’s wrong with this picture is that children do need quantity-time with their parents. Quantity-time is how children bond with their parents, how they learn by imitation and how they learn to relax and be themselves in their parents’ presence. An intense, short period of time spent with his mother or father is just going to make the child anxious to ‘get it right’. The child may learn the value of performing in front of his parent, but it’s not a real, long-term relationship.

And I think it’s the same thing with prayer. I think that regular time before God – regular prayer time – is a very important practice to try to cultivate. Sure, it’s wonderful when our prayers seem to flow out of us spontaneously. And, yes, it’s difficult, or boring or a struggle, to sit down to pray when we’re angry with God, when we don’t perceive his presence or when we simply don’t have anything to say to him.

And I suspect that we’ve all been in one of those situations – if not others – in the course of our Christian lives. But I actually think it’s important to have a regular time of prayer even in times – maybe especially in times – when we can’t pray.

Pray as You Can, not as you Can’t

But what is a person to do in these instances? How do you pray when you can’t pray? Well, everyone is different, and my second point this evening is ‘Pray as you Can, not as you Can’t’.

Particularly when we feel like we don’t have anything to say to God, prayer-time can be a real struggle. In this instance, I think it’s helpful to have a range things that you know you can ‘do’ even when you feel that you can’t talk to God.

And I think that this something that is often personal and sometimes it’s a matter of trial and error. Sometimes we have to try approaches and see if they work or we can ask others what they do and see if these approaches work for us.

Personally speaking, I’ve found that using written devotions is helpful; I can read through these and let my prayer be in the words. Also, simply reading the bible can be helpful when I feel I can’t talk to God.

I was hoping that perhaps we could share some prayer practices that we find helpful ourselves?

When we regularly spend time with God in prayer we are like a child who gets to spend ‘quantity time’ with his or her parents. This persistence – this quantity time – is how a real, everyday relationship with God comes to be established.

Our relationship with God is not just based on coming to him in the good times, but – if we’re persistent in prayer – we know what our relationship with him is like in the difficult times too. I think that every experience we have of praying through a difficult time gives us a better foundation for the next time of difficulty. Each experience gives us tools, and the knowledge of how we find it helpful to pray in times of crisis.

Pray without Pride

Our Gospel reading also suggests that when we pray, we should pray without pride. And that’s what makes preaching about prayer a difficult thing to do. As a preacher, I risk setting myself up as some kind of expert on prayer, which I’m not.

The irony of the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector, of course, is that it’s the person who is supposedly the ‘bad pray-er’ who is actually the one who is making the authentic prayer. Perhaps part of the point of preaching on prayer is for me to lay my cards on the table and say that I don’t have all the answers. That I sometimes find prayer difficult too.

The other risk in preaching about prayer is that someone hears that there is some kind of ‘right’ style or methodology of praying. Sometimes we succumb to the temptation of thinking ‘my way of praying is better than your way of praying’.

And that’s why I think the message ‘pray as you can and not as you can’t’ is important. We are all different people, created unique by God. Some of us find practices helpful that are of no use to others. That is part of God’s rich variety in creation.

That said, this Gospel reading does tell us that there is a wrong attitude toward prayer – an attitude of pride. As one wag once said, if your God hates all the same people you hate, you had better start suspecting that you’ve created God in your own image rather than the other way around. It’s somewhat amusing as a saying, but there is a lot of truth in it, as illustrated by the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

Conclusion

Where is the Good News in all of this? Well, I hope that there is something like ‘good news’ in knowing that prayer is something that most Christians struggle with at one time or another. And I hope that there is Good News in the fact that scripture encourages us to be persistent in our prayers to God. And I think that there is Good News in Scripture’s promise that God hears our prayers, even if we feel that they are not be answered in the way we might like.

As we approach the Lord’s Table this evening, let us remember that God’s hospitality is open to everyone who will accept it and let us come into his presence.

The celebration of the Lord’s Table is also a prayer. It’s a prayer that we make together as a community. It’s a prayer that we make with real, physical things taken from our every day lives. And it’s a prayer where we have Jesus’ promise in scripture that he will be with us when we do it.

So when we come in a few minutes, I invite each of us to draw near to the Lord’s Table as a physical act of prayer. As your feet bring you to the Lord ’s Table and as you eat and drink, may these actions be acceptable to God as a prayer of intention to be in communion with him and with his church. Amen

Sunday 18 November 2007 - Faith and False Temples

This sermon is based on Luke 21:5-19

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Introduction

This morning’s Gospel reading paints a stark image of destruction: the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Herod’s Temple, the most grandiose of all the Temples and the focus of Jewish national identity during the Roman occupation of Israel.

This is a Temple which Jesus has opposed consistently throughout the Gospel of Luke, probably not least because the motivation for its construction was not devotion to the God of Israel, but rather devotion to the nation of Israel – a subtle, but very important difference. Nevertheless, the Temple had always been associated with the physical presence of God among his chosen people.

For the Jewish people, the destruction of the Temple symbolised the destruction of life as they knew it. The destruction of the Temple meant God’s physical and real absence from their lives and it meant the collapse of their nation, their way of life and everything that they held dear.

What's Your Temple?

This morning, I want to ask you ‘What is your Temple? And what is our Temple?’

Because I suspect that when we talk about this kind of symbolic Temple that there are more than one and that some are individual Temples and others are collective Temples.

I want to invite us not to pass this reading off as an academic reading that only has some historical interest, because I think it actually has some profound things to say to us today. It’s easy for all of us to get caught up in the mindset that ‘We’ve always done it that way.’ Sometimes we always do it that way because it’s the path of least resistance. Sometimes we always do it that way because we believe that there is only one way to do ‘it’ – whatever ‘it’ might be. Sometimes always doing it that way is a source of security for us: a reliable, unchanging point of reference in an uncertain world that seems to be changing all too quickly for our liking.

The church is also particularly guilty of one variation on this theme: the idea that because God and his love is eternal and unchanging, so too must everything we do in church be eternally unchanging.

And many of our hymns reinforce this idea that not changing is A Good Thing: Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, There is no shadow of turning with thee; Thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not As thou hast been thou for ever wilt be. Now I suspect that the hymn writer intends to say that God’s compassion does not change, but I wonder how many of us associate God’s never-ending compassion with the idea that there is going to be no change in our relationship with God? Or with the idea that nothing in church ever will or should change?

Change

The problem is that, if we want to grow, then change has to happen. The other problem is that, within the course of human life, change sometimes happens and not always for the better.

If you think that today’s society has problems – if you think you have problems – think about Luke’s readers. Because most scholars agree that Luke wrote his Gospel some time between 70 and 90 AD; and you will remember that the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. In other words, Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Temple that is recorded in this Gospel had already happened.

And so I think that Luke’s readers would not read this passage in fear and trepidation, but they would immediately recognise their own situation in it. The Temple has been destroyed. Society as we knew it and the values, people and places we held dear have been destroyed. But Jesus predicted this! Jesus foresaw it! Let’s keep listening and see what we can learn from Jesus about how we are to go forward!

I don’t think that Luke wrote this passage to instil fear and caution into his readers. I think that he wrote it to give his readers guidance and hope.

Yet today in 2007, we can still recognise the signs of the times that Luke’s Jesus talks about. Sadly, none of this is ancient history, but it’s all too contemporary and real.

Nation rises up against nation and so we have the West fighting Islamic terrorism, Palestine fighting Israel and North and South Korea at loggerheads, to name but a few. We’ve had not just earthquakes but also tsunamis; not just dreadful portents but dreadful cyclones; human-created famines in Darfur and Zimbabwe and recent plagues that farmers have had to endure.

We are not arrested and persecuted in this country because we confess Christ as our Lord and Saviour but many of our Christian brothers and sisters in other countries are. And some lament the fact that the UK is no longer a ‘Christian country’ (whatever that means) and Christians are surprised by and reeling under the realisation that not everyone thinks that being a Christian is a good thing; and some people even think we are dangerous: just as the Roman Empire thought in the early days of Christianity.

When Life Gets Difficult

What is the meaning of all this? Well, as one popular phrase puts it, I think it means ‘No one ever said that life is easy’.

Jesus never said that our lives as Christians would be easy. In fact, as today’s reading demonstrates, he said quite the opposite time and time again. Jesus never said that life was going to be easy. What he did say was that, when life is difficult, when we are really up against it in life, that he will give us ‘words and wisdom’.

When life gets difficult Jesus has promised that he will ‘be there’ for us. He’ll be right here in the mess with us giving us what we need, what our souls will need. Jesus didn’t promise us a magic solution to all our problems and I’d like to point out that what we need might not actually be what we want or what we think we need – and that’s the rub.

It’s tempting to give in to the idea that because things are not going as we want them to or expect them to that Jesus isn’t with us. It’s tempting to think that because things are changing in a way that’s not to our liking that Jesus is no longer with us. I suspect that at least some of Luke’s Jewish readers must have been tempted to despair as the world as they knew it collapsed around them and as they saw their Christian brothers and sisters persecuted for their faith.

It’s also incredibly tempting to try to turn faith into some kind of formula. It’s really tempting to say with the disciples, ‘Give us a sign’. They were probably talking about what we would call astrology: a tangible, observable sign in the night sky that would tell them that Jesus’ reign on earth was about to start. We ask for other kinds of tangible signs that God is with us: happiness, health, prosperity. Or perhaps an emotional feeling of God being with us or a timely word from another Christian. Sometimes God gives us these things, but even if he doesn’t, Jesus’ promise to be with us is utterly reliable.

Jesus didn’t just predict the destruction of the Temple. Jesus promised to replace the Temple with his own Self. Just as Luke is telling his readers ‘Don’t rely on the Temple as a sign and symbol of God’s fulfilled promise’, so he might be saying to us, 'Don’t rely on your own Temples – on your ideas about how the world or your life ‘should’ be – as a sign and symbol of God’s fulfilled promise. Like the early Christians, we too are being exhorted to look to Jesus as a replacement for The Temple and as a replacement for our own personal Temples.

But this passage is more than an exhortation. It is also a promise. A promise that Christ is always with us, in the power of his Spirit, no matter how dire our circumstances might seem. It’s not a promise to make our lives rosy, but it is a promise to be there in the mess with us.

Conclusion

In a few minutes, we will come together as the body of Christ around the Lord’s table. Christ has promised us that he will be in the midst of us whenever we gather around the table in remembrance of him.

As Advent approaches, we remember that Jesus was God incarnate. God come down to be physically present with his people. The God who felt the physical and emotional pains that all human beings feel also felt the pangs of hunger and the joy of a full belly. He felt the joy of companionship and the agony of loneliness. Here at his table is a physical sign and symbol that God in Christ feeds us and nourishes us with his presence.

And so my prayer today is that each one of us may be strengthened and encouraged by Christ who has promised always to be with us. Amen

Sunday 17 June - Storm at Sea

This sermon is based on: Mark 4:35-41

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Introduction

Mark 4:37: ‘Suddenly a strong wind blew up, and the waves began to spill over into the boat, so that it was about to fill with water.’

A couple of years ago a friend of mine became pregnant. Sarah – which is not her real name – was a convert to Judaism. And so, as a baby-gift I gave her a book called ‘How to be a Jewish Parent’

Some time later Sarah remarked to me that the book had revealed to her something she didn’t know. That was the three things that Rabbinic law (4th century) requires a Jewish parent to teach their child.

The first thing is religious, it’s something we share with the Jewish people and it’s pretty easy to guess. The Torah – the first five books of the Old Testament

The second thing is quite a bit more difficult to guess. It’s not religious. It’s very practical. And it’s something people need in order to make a living. Under Rabbinic law, Jewish parents have to teach their children a trade

The third thing is very difficult to guess. And, indeed, you might even think it’s a very odd thing. Jewish parents have to teach their children how to swim.

Here is what a modern rabbi had to say about the requirement to teach one’s children to swim:

Learning how to swim is about basic life skills. It is parents' obligation to teach their children how to recognize danger and how to avoid or overcome it. This may include conversations about not putting your hand on the stove, and continues with how to have a successful and respectful argument. "Learning to swim" is teaching about vision and limits and risk taking. It also includes lessons on knowing where the shore is and how to return to a place of safety in order to venture out again on another day.*

What I think is interesting about this requirement to teach your children to swim is the fact that, in the tradition of the early Jewish people, the sea represented unrestrained chaos. The sea represented the powers of evil and the powers of darkness.

This would have been the way that the Evangelist Mark and the Jewish readers of his Gospel would have regarded the sea – as something dangerous, as the home territory of the forces of evil and destruction. But Mark’s Jewish readers would most likely have pictured hell as the sea at night: cold, dark, unpredictably dangerous and able to overwhelm a small fishing boat at a moment’s notice.

So when we consider the story of Jesus calming the storm, we can begin to see that this scene is very troubling. First, it is troubling from the point of view of what happens in the story. Second, it is troubling from the point of view of the disciples’ faith.

The Trouble with the Story

So what is troubling about the story itself? Remember first of all that some of the disciples were fishermen who were used to handling boats. They knew the Sea of Galilee intimately and they could handle an every-day rough sea.

But the storm in this story is no every-day rough sea. The disciples who were experienced boatmen were afraid for their lives. They were more than afraid, they were in a panic.

We also know that it was no every-day rough sea because it was a storm at night. Night-time storms are highly unusual on the Sea of Galilee – dare we say unnatural. Because it is the wind conditions that are caused by the heating of the atmosphere during the day time that are the usual causes of a storm on Galilee.

So, this unnatural storm whips up out of no-where, in the middle of the night when a storm should not be happening and professional sailors are terrified for their very lives

Since we now know that the sea represents the forces of evil and the forces of darkness to Mark and his readers, we can see that this is a situation where Jesus and the disciples are being viciously attacked by the forces of evil and the disciples are pretty convinced that the forces of evil are about to win!

‘Have you still no faith?’

And then, miracle of miracles, Jesus wakes and with one word – it’s one word in the Greek text – the storm ceases at his command. And how do the disciples react? Now they are scared of Jesus!

‘Have you still no faith?’

So, I think the story line itself is very troubling: First, the forces of chaos have reared their ugly heads with full force. Secondly, when Jesus shows that even the forces of chaos bow to his command, the disciples regard him as an object of fear.

The Trouble with the Disciples’ Faith

So what’s the trouble with the disciples’ faith?

That seems to be the theme of Mark’s Gospel, where the question ‘Have you still no faith?’ happens over and over again throughout the Gospel. No matter how long they have walked with Jesus as his disciples, no matter what Jesus has said to them, no matter what manner of miracle he performs, Mark portrays the disciples as never quite ‘getting it’ about Jesus.

And, truth be told, that’s one of the things I actually like about Mark’s Gospel – that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime never quite ‘got it’ until – as Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles – they received the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ ascension.

Because being a Christian – having Christian faith – isn’t primarily about ‘getting it’ about Jesus. Being a Christian – Christian faith – is primarily about trust in God. It’s about trust in the Father, trust in the Son and trust in the Holy Spirit.

I often say that Christian faith is the faith to throw yourself out of the window of a burning building knowing that your beloved will catch you. But you could also say that Christian faith is the faith to remain in the fishing boat with your beloved asleep whilst the forces of death and evil rage around you.

Once you throw yourself out of a burning building, once you are in the middle of a stormy sea in a small fishing boat – you are committed. There ain’t gonna be no changing your mind in either of those situations. This is a faith where your actions speak for themselves – louder than words. This is real trust.

But the disciples’ faith is still in the beginning stages – and that’s OK, by the way – because everyone has to start at the beginning. The disciples, who are professionals with respect to the sea, want Jesus to display the same sense of urgency that they have about the sea.

In our story, the Mark says that a great wind blew up and then later, when Jesus calmed the storm that there was a great calm. The disciples wanted Jesus to have great urgency, but Jesus was actually inviting them to have great calm. Through faith, the Triune God who created the sea out of chaos, invites us to have a great calm, he invites us to have a peace that passes all human understanding through faith in his power and his purposes

But many times, we don’t want to have God’s great peace. Many times, we want God to have our great urgency.

It seems to me that this was what the disciples were doing: Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth. Jesus, as he demonstrates in this story, has authority over the very fabric of creation and he has authority over the forces of evil. But the disciples were not content with Jesus’ mere presence among them. The disciples were in a great panic and they wanted Jesus up and panicking too. Instead, they could have traded their great panic for the great peace that deep faith can offer.

The disciples accuse Jesus of not caring about their fate. I wonder if you recognise this attitude too. I know I do: ‘God, I’m beginning to wonder if you care about the problems I have because I think if you did that you’d do things my way.’

Sigh. ‘Have you still no faith?’

Conclusion

This story is difficult. I think it presents us with questions and hard challenges.

The story doesn’t even attempt to give an answer as to why God permits the forces of evil and chaos to rise up in our lives, the story only assures us that, through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, that the Triune God has dominion over the forces of evil.

The story challenges us to trust deeply in God, even if he doesn’t seem to be acting in a way that we would like him to act. The story gives us no reasons for the storm, it only gives us the assurance that God is in control.

The story also tells us that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime faced the same challenges of faith that we do. So it’s OK to come into God’s presence with our doubts and it’s OK to pray loudly to God when we are in a panic.

But if we are looking for an answer, don’t expect God’s answer to be ‘OK, I’ll join you in your great fear.’ Expect God’s answer to be ‘I offer you my great peace’.

Have faith in God, have Faith in God’s peace.

Let us pray:

O living Christ, rescue us from foolish passion and still the storms of our self-will; and, as you are our anchor in this life, so bring us to the haven you have prepared for us; for your mercy’s sake. Amen **

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* From InterfaithFamily.com. http://www.interfaithfamily.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ekLSK5MLIrG&b=297381&ct=2010081.
** From Common Worship Daily Prayer: http://cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/daily/psalter/psalms101to118.html

Sunday 17 June - Law, Faith and Grace

This sermon is based on: Galatians 2:15-21 and Luke 7:36 – 50.

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Introduction

I once met a woman named Grace. We didn't spend a lot of time together, only a few hours. But even after those few hours, I could tell that she had been well named.

For one thing, Grace was a good listener. She wasn't the kind of person who, when listening to you, appears to be thinking about what they are going to say next. Furthermore she listened with goodwill. She wasn't the sort of person who assumed the worst motivations in what you said, but rather she seemed to be assuming the best motivations.

Grace was the sort of person who you could immediately warm to. You just instinctively knew that you were safe - that she wouldn’t gossip or try to make you look bad in the eyes of others. You felt that you could admit to not being perfect and she would be patient rather than petulant.

I wonder if you know anyone like that? I wonder how many of us think that God is like that?

Grace versus Law

In Galatians 2:16, the apostle Paul writes: ' And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by works of the law.'

The letter to the Galatians is a letter about grace versus the law, or at least this is one legitimate interpretation of it and this interpretation has certainly been important to Protestants since the reformation. But as a friend of mine once admitted 'I'm not always certain that I know what justification by grace through faith means.' Alleluia! Someone else has finally admitted that this idea is not actually a very easy teaching to understand.

I want to think, first of all this morning, about the idea of getting right with God through the law. In today’s Gospel story, Simon the Pharisee was a person who was trying to get right with God by obeying God’s law.

We might look at Simon and say to ourselves 'Poor deluded fellow, he had Jesus right in front of him, and he had a fantastic witness of thankfulness right in front of him, and all he could think about was his purity codes, instead of learning from this woman's testimony of extravagant thankfulness, all he could think about was his disapproval that Jesus had had anything to do with her in the first place.'

But I think that we need to be careful about criticising Simon too harshly. We might be tempted to view him as the antagonist in a pantomime, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we may very well have acted the same way in the same situation.

The Negotiator god

Why do we react this way? When we invoke the law and when we label people as sinners in the eyes of the law, we are seeing God in the image of what one theologian calls ‘the negotiator god’.

‘The negotiator god’ is a god of rules and regulations, in other words, the god of law. The negotiator god can seem comfortable to us on the one hand precisely because we can negotiate with him: ‘Look god, here’s the deal. I’ll say my prayers, go to church every Sunday, keep your commandments and, in return, I ask that you bless my life to be reasonably healthy and happy.’

Of course, this is the god who we also often think has let us down when we think that he hasn’t fulfilled his end of the bargain; ‘the bargain’ being the conditions that we set when we told him what it was that we were prepared to do in exchange for his favour.

But there is an even scarier side to this negotiator god. Because when I break my side of the bargain – when I break one of his laws – the negotiator god must punish me. As Paul writes in the 3rd Chapter of Galatians: ‘For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the things written in the book of the law”’.

The negotiator god is a god to be afraid of. Because anyone who is the least bit honest with themself, knows that they cannot keep all of God’s laws. So if we think that the God of the bible is a negotiator god, then we do need to be afraid of him. And I think that this is the image of God that Simon had in his head. Because with a negotiator god, we dare not make a mistake, break the law or get things wrong.

The God of Grace

But what’s the alternative to a god of Law? The biblical alternative to a god of Law is the God of grace.

The God of grace is not a permissive god who simply looks the other way when we sin and pretends that sin didn’t happen. If that were the case, there would be no way of knowing right from wrong.

No, the God of grace is a God who names our wrong-doings, who asks us to repent and asks us not to do wrong again, but who has promised us through his Son that his forgiveness is always available and will never be withdrawn.

So, unlike the negotiator god, we do not need to be afraid to approach the Triune God in an attitude of repentance. In our Gospel story, Jesus personifies the God of grace. The woman has been forgiven her sins. No-one in the story is pretending that she didn’t sin. Jesus forgave her sins and her gratitude at being forgiven is wildly extravagant. She is so thankful that she weeps, she humbles and debases herself by washing Jesus’ feet with her hair. And the ointment she uses is outrageously expensive.

But Simon, in his fear, doesn’t understand the difference between forgiveness and permissiveness. He simply sees Jesus’ forgiveness as overlooking the woman’s sins.

But the character of the God who we are shown by Jesus is a lot like the woman named Grace who I mentioned at the beginning of my sermon. We can go to God knowing that, because of the life, death and resurrection of his Son, that God offers us forgiveness even before we ask for it.

We can go to God in repentance knowing that he will treat us kindly and with mercy. We can go to him in repentance knowing that he will never refuse our request to be forgiven. We can have faith – indeed, we depend on the fact – that God will never say to us: ‘That was the last straw. You’ve asked for forgiveness too many times and this time I refuse you forgiveness.’

Faith in the God of Grace

But how can we know that God is like this? How can we know that God is gracious? This is where faith comes in. Despite the witness of scripture and tradition, it does take faith to believe that God is gracious and merciful and forgives us our sins.

As CS Lewis famously said, ‘grace’ is the doctrine that is unique to Christianity. Grace – this message that we are free to repent because our sins are already forgiven – is a scandal in the eyes of the world. And, if we are being honest with ourselves, Christians too often act as if grace is a scandal.

I said earlier that my friend finds it had to understand precisely what is meant by ‘being saved by grace through faith’. She acknowledges Jesus as her Lord and Saviour and she acknowledges that she cannot save herself, but I think that she also points out a truth when she says that the doctrine of salvation by faith is not always easy to understand.

I’d like to read a quotation from a commentary on Galatians about the nature of saving faith.

Faith in Christ is the offering of a glad word of thanksgiving for God's goodness focussed in the gift of his Son. It is the standing ovation we give when we have caught only a fleeting glimpse of or have been thoroughly gripped by the drama of Good Friday and Easter. With people crowded row on row in front and behind we find ourselves a part of an audience on its feet with applause, whistles, and shouts of 'Bravo!' Then, in a strange way, almost as if in a dream, we are transformed from isolated spectators into a company of participants, no longer looking on but actually on stage. A moment comes when, moving about from scene to scene, we realize that we are not intruders in someone else's play. We belong here, this is our place, our part. The cross and the resurrection are not only Jesus' but ours. Faith becomes obedience - not the superficial, formalised adherence to the demands of the law, but conformity to the prime figure in the drama, following him about as he moves among the mass of humanity declaring good news to the poor and release to the captives, binding the brokenhearted, giving garlands instead of ashes, and above all announcing the year of the Lord's favour.*

Conclusion

The image of God as revealed to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the image of a God of who never stops offering us his forgiveness.

The Triune God is the God life, of new creation and new beginnings. The Triune God is not to be feared, but is to be trusted with our repentance and with our secret and not-so-secret sins. The Gospel is a message of good news to the poor, release to the captives and healing of the brokenhearted.

The biblical God is the God of outrageous generosity and grace. In God we can have faith. In God there is forgiveness and salvation.

And so it is my prayer this morning that we may each grow in the knowledge and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may each be set free into grace and forgiveness and that, like the woman who washed Jesus’ feet, our hearts may be filled with inexpressible thanksgiving to the God who richly pardons us all.
Amen

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* Galatians: Interpretation, a bible commentary for teaching and preaching by Charles B. Cousar. John Knox Press, Louisville, 1982. p. 55.