Sunday 30 May 2010 - The Servant King

I was asked to supply-preach this morning on the general subject of "Memorial Day". I chose to use the assigned Epistle reading from the lectionary, Romans 5:1-11 but I departed from the lectionary for the Gospel reading and chose the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet from John: John 13:1-9

Introduction

I’d like you to imagine with me a screenplay for a television movie.

The main character in my imaginary movie is a CIA agent who I’ll call Josh. Josh has spent the last three years working on a case that is very important to the security of the United States. He’s been hot on the trail of a terrorist cell and he’s just managed to uncover a major attack that is about to go down in one of the biggest cities in the US. Josh has just found out the time and the place for this attack and he’s even found out who is responsible for its planning. Furthermore, Josh knows that the terrorist group is on to him and that they are sending operatives to kill him.

And then, the movie switches scenes. Josh is at home. Knowing that a group of thugs has been sent to assassinate him in the next few hours before the CIA can put effective protection into place, Josh has chosen to go home to his family of twelve sons.

And what does he do? Does he pack his bags quickly and tell his sons that their lives are in danger and that they should leave immediately? No.

Instead, he prepares and shares a lavish meal with them. He tells them to remember him and to always do what is right and that, if they do, they will find that he is always with them. All of this takes hours. It’s not even a rushed meal before a quick get-away. It’s a proper, lavish, sit-down meal. Then he tells each son that, before he goes, he’s going to spend some time with each one of them, leaving each son with a with a personal memory of him because they will probably never see him again. As Josh speaks first to one son and then another, he also washes that son’s feet.

And while each one-on-one conversation is going on, Josh’s sons get more and more panic stricken. “The terrorists are after him! It’s been something like six hours now since he found out they were coming for him! Why doesn’t he leave the house? Does he want to get killed?”

In the final scene of my screen-play, the terrorists burst into the house, take Josh away, try him and execute him. Josh dies and the movie ends.

I wonder if anyone here thinks I’d have a chance of selling this screenplay to a network? Don’t worry, I don’t think that I’d have much of a chance, either.

The story is weird.

Normally, we expect our heroes to get the bad-guy. Or, if they don’t get the bad-guy, we expect the failure in the story to point to some kind of deeper meaning. Even if the meaning is something like the futility of trying to do what’s right or the difficulty of human existence, we want some kind of meaning.

But this story seems, frankly, stupid. If I submitted it as a screen-play to a Hollywood producer, I suspect that the reaction would be “Another illiterate wannabe writer who can’t even tell a coherent story.”

So why did I tell you this story this morning? Because I wanted to try to replicate how stupid and incoherent the story of Jesus’ death would have sounded to most people in his time. For them, as for us - when we are not hearing a story that has already been interpreted for us by 2000 years of Christian tradition - saviors are heroes. Saviors are people who win battles, they are not people who lose. Saviors are people who wield power for good, not people who intentionally give up power and who try to win their battles by serving others. And most of all, savior-heroes do not walk willingly to their deaths.

There are numerous examples in the various Gospels of Jesus demonstrating an approach to power that is very different from the “worldly” view of power. When the disciples argued amongst themselves about who would be the greatest, Jesus told them that it was the least of this world who would be first in his Kingdom. When Jesus, Peter, James and John met Moses and Elijah on the mountain at the Transfiguration, Peter wanted to stay in that powerful and exalted place, but Jesus sent the disciples back down the mountain to serve his people. When the Roman soldiers were coming to get him, Jesus chose service over his own life. Not just the service of the Last Supper or the foot washing or his teaching, but the service of crucifixion.

From God’s perspective, there is something about service that is important to the story of salvation.

God Serves Us

The title of this sermon is “The Servant King” so you might have expected a sermon about how Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, how he served them in the hours before his crucifixion and how we should serve others too. Those are good ideas and I agree with all of them!

And tomorrow is Memorial Day, when we remember those who died in service to their country. So you could also have expected a sermon calling to mind our gratitude for the very real sacrifices made by everyone who has ever given up their life in service to their country. That’s also a good idea, which I agree with wholeheartedly, too!

But it seems to me that if Jesus the Messiah, King of King and Lord of Lords, was willing to be the Servant King, that there must be something in the idea of “service” that is central to who God is. There must be something in the concept of “service” that is central to the Gospel and to his Kingdom.

This morning’s reading from Romans brings home this idea when it says, in effect, that most people would find it difficult at crunch-time to die for someone within their own family or their own circle but that God was willing to die even for those who are outside his circle, for those who don’t know him, in order to give them the possibility of reconciliation with him.

So the first thing I want to do is to remind you that, in Christ the Servant King, God has served us. Hopefully, this isn’t a new piece of information for any of us. But sometimes we need to stop and meditate on the things we already know in order to carry the benefits forward into our daily lives.

In Christ the Servant King, God served us. When you stop to think about that, that’s really an awesome and amazing thing!

Martin Luther said that Jesus ultimate service to us was to gain victory over sin, death and the power of evil. Jesus conquered death not by destroying it with force, but rather by facing death. He conquered death by going through it and coming out the other side. In doing this, Jesus trusted that the character of God the Father was a character of Resurrection and Creation rather than a character of death and destruction and that resurrection would be the ultimate outcome of his death.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews uses the analogy of Jesus as a pioneer of salvation: Jesus forged the way through death to resurrection and, by making a path for us, made resurrection, salvation and reconciliation with God possible for us too.

Jesus served us. God serves us. The One who existed before the beginning of time who created everything out of nothing. the one who knew us in our mother’s womb who intentionally created me, who intentionally created you…He serves us.

For me, what is even more mind-boggling about the fact that Jesus died and rose again for me is that God wanted to do this. And if the Gospel of John is to be believed (John 1), God wanted to do this before the beginning of time.

So my first piece of good news this morning is: “God serves us”.

Service is Costly

But the thing about service is that it is costly.

Those who know me know that, for the last ten years or so, I’ve enjoyed discussing Christian theology on the internet. One of my internet acquaintances is a man who just retired this year after many years serving as a Chaplain in the British army. He told me that currently those people who are serving in the British armed forces are the most decorated soldiers since the Second World War.
And he was quick to emphasize that the British army has not “dumbed down” its service metals: these men and women are the most decorated soldiers since the second world war because they have faced the most harrowing combat situations since that time.

Now obviously, the US experience since WWII is somewhat different than Britain’s but I doubt that the combat conditions for current American soldiers is significantly different than for the British forces. I suspect that many of us may know of at least one person who has been deployed to a combat zone at least two or three times. And while many of us probably have a vague idea of what kind of a sacrifice this sort of experience must be, I suspect that those of us who haven’t had it probably can’t even begin to appreciate the enormity of it.

In the same way, I doubt that we can truly appreciate the enormity of God’s suffering as he reached out to reconcile us to him through Jesus.

And I also doubt that we appreciate how costly the sins of humanity continue to be to God as works through his faithful people to bring his Kingdom to fruition.
I believe that God works continually to bring justice and truth into the world, and that when God focuses on justice, his focus is restorative rather than punitive. God is not interested in bringing about the Kingdom by punishment, but rather in bringing about the Kingdom through restoration of those people and situations that have gone wrong.

But justice through restoration is far more costly than justice through punishment. Restorative justice requires forgiveness on the part of the one who is wronged and it requires the one who is wronged to let go.

The cost of restorative justice is borne by the one who is wronged, which is why many people will object that restorative justice is not justice at all.

And, believe me, I do not say this glibly or lightly. My purpose here is not to lightly tell you to forgive someone who has done a gross injustice to you or to suggest that it is an easy thing to do. My purpose here is rather to underline the pain, the difficulty and the costliness of coming to the point of being able to extend such enormous forgiveness. And when you can extend that forgiveness – IF you can – it is the ultimate service to the one who has wronged you as well as to others around you. It is the ultimate act of grace. And the person who you forgive is free and so are you.

That kind of difficult and costly forgiveness is what God does for us. As individual human beings and as societies, it often seems that we humans are engaged in an all-out effort to mess up God’s efforts to bring about his Kingdom. (That effort we put into messing up the coming of God’s Kingdom is called “sin”)

But, because of the service that Christ rendered on the cross, God forgives us over and over. Over and over, God takes us back into relationship with him.

And all of that is costly. My second point: Service is costly

Service builds Relationships

But it is ultimately the costly service that Christ rendered to humanity that makes a relationship between us and God possible. And it’s Christ’s service that also makes it possible for us to build relationships with each other.

That’s my third point for this morning: service builds relationships and so service is ultimately redemptive and restorative.

In serving us by dying and rising again, Jesus made it possible for all human beings to have a relationship with God. In ways that we don’t fully understand and never will this side of eternity, Jesus’ death reconciled us with God. His death forged the existence of forgiveness, reconciliation and a deep peace (Shalom) into the very fabric of creation.

As Christians, we believe that having a relationship with God in Christ is fundamental to being a Christian. And we also proclaim the Good News that God wants to have a relationship with every person who he ever created. And I think it is also logical to assume that God wants us to be connected in relationship to each other – to other human beings - as well as to him.

And service, I think it might be argued, is the ultimate expression of relationship. Because when we do acts of service, we are not asking the question “What can this relationship do for me?” but rather “What can I do for this relationship?” When we serve, we are looking outside ourselves. We are putting the needs of others before our own wants.

Service is an expression of the kind of self-giving love that Christians have always claimed is at the heart of the Gospel.

Those who have died for the sake of their country rendered a very real service to their country. But, ultimately, the Kingdom of God will not be built through war; rather it will be built through peace – God’s deep peace of Shalom that makes everything whole. The Kingdom of God will be built not through service to one group of human beings as it wages war against another group. Rather the Kingdom will be built through the Gospel understanding that Christians are called to serve all people just as Christ died that all might be saved.

Memorial Day originally began as a commemoration of the lives of those who died in the Civil War. About 617,000 individuals, which is about the same number of dead as all other American wars combined. And the date for the celebration of this holiday was originally set near the date of the reunification of the Union.

Whether or not it was intended to be a Christian gesture, I think that such a date indicates some understanding that God does not take sides in our human games of unforgiveness and non-reconciliation. If we are ever tempted to believe that God does not weep for the death of our enemies, we might ask ourselves the question “Which American lives did God fail to weep for in the Civil War?”

From God’s perspective, true service is not the kind of service that prefers one side over another. The foot-washing was more than just service to Jesus disciples, it was also an act of service to the entire world. Jesus served all of humanity because he trusted in God enough to understand that the way to conquer death was to be crucified and walk through death to resurrection.

Conclusion

As we celebrate Memorial Day this weekend, I pray that we will remember all those who gave up their lives in service to their countries. For those of us who have never had the experience of combat, I hope that we take its dangers and sacrifices seriously enough to be thankful to God for people who put their lives on the line in this way.

Although Memorial Day was originally supposed to be a holiday that commemorated those who have died, I think it is nonetheless also appropriate to also say “thank you” those who are currently serving their country; say thank you to them as well as saying “thank you” to God for them.

But I also pray this morning for peace and for the coming of the Kingdom of God. I pray that, as Christian people, we remember that peace (Shalom) rather than war will be a feature of God’s Kingdom. And service, self-giving and forgiveness are the hallmarks of God’s great Shalom.

And I pray that the peace that passes all understanding will keep our hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of Christ. Amen.

Sunday 15 June 2008 - A Dangerous Gospel

This sermon is a thematic sermon loosely based around the day's Gospel reading: Matthew 9:35-10:23

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Introduction

I suspect that you are probably familiar with the 1930s American comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are a couple of friends who go through life together lurching from one disaster to another. These are usually disasters that are often caused by their failure to grasp the consequence of a particular situation. Except that Oliver Hardy always has someone to blame for his own incompetence: his friend Stan Laurel. One of Ollie’s (as he is known) oft-repeated phrases is ‘Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.’

In this morning’s reading, Jesus tells the twelve – and by extension us – that being his disciple is going to get us into one fine mess after another if we decide to follow him. In Matthew 10, verse 16, Jesus tells his disciples: ‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves’.

Now like all good Jewish rabbis, Jesus sometimes exaggerates to make a point, but I’m not sure that he’s exaggerating here. At this point in the story of Jesus’ ministry, he is beginning to encounter opposition and I suspect that he is beginning to get an understanding of the very real dangers of proclaiming his counter-cultural message. And I believe that Jesus is very plainly telling the disciples that they will be in the same danger if they follow him: That when they proclaim the message of the Kingdom of God that they too will be like sheep in the midst of wolves.

A dangerous Gospel?

The question I’d like to ask this morning is ‘What is it about the Gospel, what is it about the proclamation of the Kingdom of God that makes the message dangerous?’ ‘What is it that makes the proclamation of the Kingdom of God that makes the message foolish?’ As Christians in the 21st century, should our message be a dangerous message or was the danger only for Jesus in his time?

This morning, I’d like to point two of the primary ways that I think that the Christian Gospel is both foolish and dangerous. You are, of course, free to make up your own mind and perhaps to think of your own dangers of the Gospel.

Forgiveness

The first ‘way of the Kingdom of God’ that I believe is foolishness is that the Kingdom is based on forgiveness. This is a topic that could be the subject of several sermons and I’m not going to pretend that the practice of forgiveness is easy.

Nonetheless, this is a patently foolish message in all sorts of ways if you start thinking about the practical applications of forgiveness.

Think of all the people in our lives who it would be difficult or impractical to forgive. Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the person who bullied us in school and whose bullying handicapped us in so many ways as we grew into adult life? Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the drunk driver who killed or maimed a member of our family? Certainly God does not mean for us to forgive the individuals who bombed a public square on mothering Sunday or the London tube system during morning rush hour?

It may seem obvious to us that Jesus wanted his followers in his day to forgive their Christian bothers and sisters seventy times seven, but it is equally obvious to us that God understands that some people have hurt us so badly that it is simply not possible for us to forgive them.

As I said earlier, forgiveness is something that can often seem impossible, or at least extremely difficult. I do believe that God understands that it can seem impossible to forgive and I do believe that he will have compassion on those who struggle to forgive and find it difficult.

However, God’s compassion for those who have been hurt does not mean that he lifts the standard. He does not say ‘OK, I understand that it is difficult for you to forgive, so in the Kingdom of God, forgiveness will just be an optional extra’. And I suspect that the disciples were just as challenged as we are at the commandment to forgive seventy times seven and that they felt is was just as impossible as we do.

To proclaim forgiveness in the 21st century is as foolish as it was in the 1st century. Those who proclaim these values wholeheartedly will be like sheep amongst wolves.

Peace & the Rule of God

Another foolish characteristic of God’s rule in the Kingdom is that it is characterised by peace.

Once again, the direct application of Jesus’ teachings on peace seem highly dangerous in our own context today. To make Christ and the Kingdom of God the centre of our political values as well as the centre of our own personal morality would be dangerous as well as stupid.

We can easily accept that Jesus really meant that Rome was an illegitimate government in the eyes of God. We can understand that Jesus thought that the accommodation of the Temple to the prevailing Roman values of the time made the Temple illegitimate. And we can easily agree with Jesus’ opposition to the Zealots’ plan to raise an army of resistance against Rome.

But when we try to apply Jesus’ teaching directly to our own situation, we can see the dangers and complexities very clearly.

We look at our world and feel threatened by terrorism; and we see our precious sons and daughters being killed in foreign lands. We look at our own complicated world, our threatened and threatening world and we think ‘God can’t possibly be asking us to behave as if peace were already upon us; its too difficult.’

The way of peace is not only foolish, it’s downright dangerous. Couple the message of peace with the commandment to forgive others and with the message that the last shall be first and you might end up getting yourself killed just like Jesus. The ways of peace and forgiveness are not practical. They are naïve and idealistic and ‘everyone knows’ that the world does not work this way.

The Good News

But Jesus never said that being his disciple was going to be easy. Jesus tells us that we are going to be sent out on mission without any of the usual resources that the world thinks necessary to do a good job. And he tells us that we are going to be like sheep: targets for all the wolves who think that the way of Jesus is foolish and impractical.

But he also tells us that the world is in need of our mission. We, his followers, may be like sheep amongst the wolves, but at least we have a shepherd: the world does not have a shepherd and it is crying out for guidance. Jesus’ mission of spiritual and physical healing is our mission too. It’s the mission of the Church in the same way that it was the mission of the disciples. God’s determination to bring about the Kingdom of God begins with the twelve tribes of Israel, and it reaches fulfilment in the death and resurrection of Christ.

This is the Good News and it’s the Good News that we as a Church are sent out to proclaim. Just like the twelve disciples who Christ commissions here, Jesus’ mission is carried forward by us – the Church of Christ in every age. In this reading, we understand that our mission will not be easy but we are promised that it will be worthwhile; the healing of body, mind and spirit are always worthwhile.

Faith in Jesus will make our mission possible, but it won’t make it easy and it certainly will not earn us the world’s stamp of approval. Nonetheless, just like each one of the disciples, each of us has been called personally into our discipleship.

My prayer this morning/evening is that we may each be given the grace to follow where God leads us. I pray that we may be faithful messengers of his Good News and that our lives reflect God’s love, forgiveness and peace. Amen

Sunday 4 November 2007 - Church Anniversary

This is a sermon for a church anniversary, based on a very specific context. The readings are: 2 Chronicles 7:11-16 and Matthew 12:1-8

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Introduction

This morning, we celebrate our Church Anniversary at XYZ Methodist Church. As we talked about earlier, one of the things that we’re celebrating is the community of people who meet here.

Today we are celebrating everyone who worships here on Sunday, whether they are young or old; and we’re also celebrating the groups that use the church building during the week: some groups for worship and prayer, some for singing and making music as well as some community groups and associations.

God has created each individual uniquely in his own image and everyone has different gifts and talents. And - just like the ingredients in a recipe - we all bring different things into the community.

In today’s Old Testament reading, we heard how Solomon built the First Temple but the bit we didn’t hear about was the fact that King David, Solomon’s father, had prepared the way for Solomon to build the temple. According to stories in both the books of Kings and Chronicles, David planned and provided for the construction of the Temple and Solomon carried it out.

And so, in addition to celebrating all the different groups and people who are part of our community in 2007, we also remember the people who came before us. We remember the people who founded this fellowship 122 years ago and we remember the people who built this building forty four years ago.

The purpose of this remembering is not to dream nostalgically about the past, but to thank God for the life, the work and the witness of those people. We remember how they lived and the love and the concern they showed to us, and we acknowledge all of that before God.

Remembering our mothers and fathers in faith can also help us to have a touchstone, an example of Christian living.

Relationships Can be Difficult

Of course, human relationships are not always sweetness and light, and the difficulties we have are part of being human and part of the risk of being a member of a community.

In addition to telling us the story of Solomon’s building of the Temple, The Old Testament also tells us that God did not allow King David to build the Temple, because David had too much blood on his hands. In fact, as we read the stories of both David and Solomon, we realise that they were very human in the mistakes that they made.

David, as we know, used his power and authority to kill one of his most loyal supporters for his own selfish interests, Yet, because of David’s later and genuine repentance, God forgave him.

Relationships are at the heart of what it means to be human. Some relationships are easy and some are difficult. Some take a lot of effort and some very little effort.

And I think that our relationship with God can be like that too: sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s difficult. Sometimes, our relationship with God seems to go along swimmingly for weeks, months, or years And other times we struggle: either with faith, with closeness, or with perceiving the presence of God.

But to acknowledge the difficulties as well as the goodness in our relationships is a truthful thing, and an authentic thing. And the best relationships are the ones in which we are free to be truthful and authentic. Because, when we acknowledge our differences, our disagreements and even our faults, we can make amends and start to move forward constructively.

We can learn to forgive and we can learn to be forgiven.

Forgiving and Being Forgiven

Forgiving and being forgiven are both difficult activities. For some people and in some circumstances, being forgiven can be just as difficult as forgiving.

That’s because many of us – and I include myself in this category – don’t like making mistakes. We don’t like doing the wrong thing and we don’t like hurting others. And that can make it just as hard to be forgiven as it is to forgive. Because being forgiven means acknowledging that we have done something wrong. Which is what repentance is.

It is this ongoing process of repentance and forgiveness that makes for good relationships between people And it’s that process of repentance and forgiveness that makes for a good relationship between a person and God.

God’s Good News is, because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, that being wrong can be forgiven. We never have to worry that one day there will come a time when we’ve messed up one time too many and God will no longer forgive us. God has promised that he will always forgive us.

Conclusion

So what’s all this got to do with Church Anniversary?

Well, there is one group of people we’ve not mentioned yet. We’ve mentioned the people who are part of our community today. And we’ve mentioned the people who have come before us. But we’ve not mentioned the people who will come after us.

Over the next few months, we’re going to be doing a review of our church life and we’re going thinking about who we are as a Christian community and what we have to offer the community outside these walls and to the generations who will come after us.

As we do that review, I’d like to call us to make sure it is done in the light of Christ. What do I mean by that?

I mean that we would do well to remember that a loving relationship between us and God is at the heart of being a Christian community. This relationship is one based on forgiveness, on honesty and on the commitment to the truth. It’s a relationship where being wrong can be forgiven. It’s a relationship where God has committed to always forgive us.

As we think about who we are now and who we want to be in the future, some of us will have different ideas; I’d be surprised if there wasn’t some disagreement, but all of that is OK.

My prayer is that as we go forward into what is for us a new year, that the Spirit of Christ will go with us and give us strength to continue to be a community who are forgiving and forgiven.

May the Spirit open our eyes and our ears to the work of God in our lives and in the world and help us to respond as we are called. I make this prayer in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Sunday 21 October 2007 - One World Sunday

This is a thematic sermon for One World Sunday. We had a speaker who had spent two months working on a project in Kenya which is being sponsored by churches in our circuit. The speaker showed us photographs of people working, shopping, learning, building homes, etc. The scripture used in our service was Galatians 3:23-29 and Mark 10:13-16.

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Introduction

I was 9 years old in 1966. Cleveland, the city in which I was living, was at the time the tenth largest city in the United States. During the summer of that year, Cleveland, like many cities in the United States endured five days of race riots.

The riot itself was sparked off by an incident when an African-American man was told to leave a pub because they did not serve blacks. But like many an incident when social tension erupts into violence, there was almost certainly not one single cause.

I’m equally certain in my own mind that the main cause was the gross inequality in living conditions between African-Americans and white Americans at that time.

I’m not claiming that all inequality has gone in my lifetime, but I do want to testify as a witness to what I observed back then. Even as a child, I understood that people with different coloured skins had two different sets of living conditions. If I sometimes wondered why this should be so, adults would tell me that ‘They don’t need as much to live on as we do.’

The 'brotherhood of man'

This morning, Sue has talked to us about the people of Omwabini and the similarities of our lives.

Once you get to know people, we all have the same basic needs and desires. We all need a roof over our heads, we all need food in our stomachs, we all need basic hygiene and we all need healthcare. We all need to earn a living and many of us have the hope and aspiration that our children will be educated so that they can live productive lives.

One of the most important things we can do if we want to live out the great commandment to love our neighbour as ourself is to put ourselves in their shoes and really understand that every single person is like us. In other words, the most important thing we can do is to try to empathise with another person. To understand that just because a person falls into a category that we consider as being ‘other’ that it’s not true that their needs are less than ours.

If we’re reminiscing back to the 1960s, another favourite phrase of the era was the phrase ‘The brotherhood of man’. As corny as the phrase may sound today, and even though it was not a phrase invented by or used by the Christian church, the phrase communicates a central Christian truth: That all people equally precious and beloved in the eyes of God.

There are some Christians who think that the idea of the equality of all people before God is a ‘worldy’ idea and that the primary duty of the Christian church isn’t to try to break down categories of ‘us and them’ but to try build them up in order to maintain the purity of the church. If we believe this, then I think we’ve missed the significance of Jesus’ life, mission and teaching.

God’s universal offer of love

In the ancient world, there were three ideas about how the heavenly realms operated.

The first idea was that there were many gods in heaven and that each tribe or nation had its own god. The gods, just like the people they ruled over, might fight each other. This was basically humans bringing the human idea of ‘us and them’ into the divine realm.

Another option – held in a number of cultures and not just by ancient Israel – was to believe in one Supreme God who loves only my nation. So, for instance, the Masai believe that there is only one God and that He protects the Masai and that he aids them in battle against their enemies.

Many Jewish people invoked this idea of God during Jesus’ time and we even get this idea today – witness George Bush’s suggestion that America is engaged in a war against Islam and that God is on America’s side.

The third option is the belief that there is one God who is the God of all peoples, all tribes and nations. This isn’t a modern picture of God as some people might claim. Along with the two other views, we see it already in the Old Testament. The covenant with Noah and then with Abraham is viewed by both Jews and Christians as being indications of God’s universal offer of his love to all people.

And Jesus models this picture of God’s universal love by deliberately violating all the established codes designed to designate who was an ‘outsider’. He violated the ‘us and them’ codes when he ate with tax-collectors, when he talked with and touched women and when he healed lepers.

Jesus taught that there is no person to whom God will not extend his love. There is no tribe or skin-colour or age that puts us beyond the possibility of being blessed by God. There is no gender or disability that puts us beyond the possibility of being gifted by God. There is no life situation, no past sin that put us beyond the possibility of being forgiven by God.

The Gospel makes here-and-now demands

If we are true disciples of Jesus, it won’t do to proclaim the message of a ‘spiritual’ Gospel and then ignore the consequence of the Gospel message in the here and now. As Christians, we are called to proclaim the good news of God’s offer of forgiveness to all people. We are called to make disciples for Christ.

But, equally importantly, we are also called to show the love of God in a practical way. The practical consequence of believing that God offers his love to all people is that our offers of help are not to be restricted only to those who are Christians or who we expect might become Christians. Nor is our charity to be restricted to people like us.

We are called to offer our prayers, our time and our talents for the good of all people.

As we celebrate One World Week, let’s remember Sue’s talk this morning and reflect on the fact that all people everywhere have the same basic needs and the same God-given humanity.

Let’s remember that there is no category of people who needs less than we do, no category of people who is inferior to anyone else and no category of people who is beyond the love of God. And let’s keep in our prayers all those who suffer because someone believes that their lives are less valuable than other lives.

Let’s pray for the peace of God and for his Kingdom to come quickly. Let’s pray for everlasting life for all people and for life before death for those who do not yet have it.

Sunday 29 July, 2007 - Judgement and the Light of Christ

Today's sermon is based on the lectionary readings for the second service: Matthew 13:24-43

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Introduction

The sermon this morning is, I think, a sermon for adults only.

Some of you might be wondering whether you should be thinking about ringing the Superintendent after the service. Others may be having the opposite reaction and thinking ‘Finally! My sort of church!’ But I’m afraid there won’t be any sex, drugs or rock-n-roll today, so no-one will have to ring the Super.

The reason that this sermon is for adults only is that I think the reading is for adults only; it requires some complex thinking and reflection. This is not a straight-forward Sunday School lesson with a simple message.

This reading is an exercise in reflection and response on a complex message, and some of us may have different responses.

This is one reading where I really don’t think the preacher can go to the commentaries and then come back and say ‘This is the message that God is trying to tell us in this passage.’ For one thing, the commentaries themselves say that this passage is complex and multi-layered.

This sermon is my personal attempt to reflect on the reading. I suspect that in hearing my reflection, you may very well think ‘But hold on a minute, the text also says this!’. I suspect you’ll react that way because I think that’s precisely what the text is meant to do! And, so with that warning, let’s have a look at the text.

Back to the Text

I’d like to first observe that the reading is topped and tailed by two passages that deal with who is and who is not a genuine disciple of Christ.

The section entitled The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat talks about letting the wheat and the tares grow together until the final harvest. Christians are told to leave judgement of other individuals in the church to God.

We’re told that although the tares have been planted in the church, that God will deal with ‘fake’ disciples at the last judgement. And it’s made clear in verse 28 that the tares have been planted by the enemy.

At the end of this reading, the section entitled Jesus Explains the Parable of the Weeds gives what we could almost call ‘an assurance of damnation’. At the end of time, God will deal with the impostors who have been masquerading as faithful Christians and they will be burned up with the fire.

In the middle of these somewhat dark passages, we have two parables that are more hopeful: The Parable of the Mustard Seed and The Parable of the Yeast. These two parables are not just ‘hopeful’: they actually seem be arguing for belief in fragile hope in the most dire of circumstances.

So, one small mustard seed will be deliberately planted and it will grow to be a great plant that shelters living creatures. Normally, one would not carefully and deliberately plant a mustard seed, one would scatter the seeds by the handful, in the knowledge that a small minority of seed will yield fruit. But here there seems to be an image of God’s deliberate cultivation of something fragile.

In the Parable of the Yeast, a tiny quantity of yeast – probably enough to leaven a few loaves of bread – is being put into about 50 pounds of flour. The tiny amount of yeast will leaven the bread dough, and it will make enough bread to feed about 100 people. This is an image reminiscent of God’s offering of the wedding feast to those in the highways and byways. It’s reminiscent of the feeding of the 4000 and the feeding of the 5000.

So, in this morning’s one passage of scripture, I see two narratives which seem to have very different messages.

On the one hand we have a difficult message about the eternal consequence of being a fake disciple of Christ. On the other hand, there is a message of God’s generosity and hope.

The Tares and the Wheat

In thinking about the Parable of the Tares and the Wheat, I have to say that I find this parable both troubling and encouraging.

The troubling bit, to me, lies not just in the fact that the church is given a very stern warning about the eventual fate of ‘impostor disciples’, but we are also not given any way for the church on earth to determine who is an impostor. Now, I guess that’s hardly surprising given that we are also told quite plainly – and, this message is about the only plain message in today’s reading – that it is not we who are to pass judgement on the spiritual state of impostor disciples. We are told quite categorically that we are to leave these individuals to God’s judgement.

So on the one hand, we can rest assured that God will ultimately deal with false disciples. On the other hand, we don’t have a clue who these people might be! What if I am a false disciple? What if someone I care about is a false disciple? In that instance, wouldn’t it be good to know what the criteria were for being a wheat or a tare?

So what do we do? Do we avoid judging others at the expense of not knowing what it means to be a genuine disciple of Christ?

You can see why find this passage troubling! I feel I’m left with something of a stale-mate here.

In the Light of Hope And Grace

In order to break the apparent stale-mate of the parable of the wheat and the tares, I want to turn first to the other parables in this reading and then secondly to the wider Gospel message.

As I said earlier, the Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Parable of the Yeast are both parables of hope. They are parables of God’s abundant provision in difficult circumstances.

These pictures are not those of a God who is miserly with his kindness and who is sitting up in heaven just waiting for us to do wrong so that he can judge us for everlasting condemnation. They are pictures of a God who takes particular care to make sure that the smallest form of life is nurtured and the greatest number of people are fed.

At the heart of the Gospel message that Christians proclaim is the glorious truth that God desires the salvation of everyone who ever lived.

In order to save us, God came down to earth in the person of Jesus. Jesus taught us God’s message of peace and forgiveness. Jesus was crucified because of our sins and he rose from the dead so that everyone who believes in him can claim his resurrection and have eternal life.

The message that we proclaim as Christians is the message of an outrageously generous God who forgiveness knows no end. Indeed, as this morning’s Call to Worship from Isaiah demonstrates, this message of forgiveness is not exclusive to the New Testament. Isaiah quotes God as telling humanity: ‘For I will not continually accuse, nor will I always be angry; for then the spirits would grow faint before me, even the souls that I have made.’

Rather than being a compulsive accuser, God is a compulsive forgiver; Jesus was a compulsive healer. That is at the heart of the good news of Jesus.

When we read bible passages about God’s judgement, we need to always read them in the light of the good news of the Gospel and in the light of the cross of Christ.

This doesn’t mean ignoring passages about judgement, but I do think that it does mean remembering that God’s judgement is always carried out in the overall context of his desire that all people should be saved.

Judgement is the Lord's

I suspect that this is why God reserves final judgement for himself and why he forbids us to be the judge of our fellow Christians.

When human beings judge others, very often we do it in the certainty that we are right and that the other person is wrong. When human beings judge others we often do it with an attitude of self-righteousness and superiority. At last I know that I do.

How many tiny shoots of life have I killed off with my self-righteousness, how many small mustard plants just bursting out of seed? How many loaves of bread have I ruined, loaves that are never to rise, never to feed people hungry for the good news of the gospel?

God judges people with an attitude of kindness, an offer of forgiveness and with a perfect knowledge of the person’s thoughts and motivation. This is why God reserves the act of pronouncing judgement for himself.

Conclusion

This morning, as we reflect on this difficult passage together, let us remember together God’s generous love and his offer of forgiveness. Let us remember that God went to the ends of the earth to reach us with his love. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus bridges the gap between God’s perfection and sinful humanity.

Let us remember the words we sang earlier:

For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

And let all God’s people say Amen!

Wednesday 4 April 2007 - Wednesday of Holy Week

This is a very short meditation for based on the lectionary reading John 13:21-32. The context is a communion service with an afternoon fellowship group.

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The one who is to hand Jesus over to the authorities is the one to whom Jesus gives the bread that he dipped in the dish.

Why did Judas hand Jesus over the authorities? Well, nowhere in the Gospel do we have any information about why Judas did what he did. There is some hint in scripture that perhaps he did it for money. Other people speculate that Judas wanted to force Jesus’ hand to become the political Messiah that so many people wanted. But the Gospels don’t give us any kind of a definitive answer as to Judas’ motivation.

I don’t know, but I am of the school that thinks that the reason that Judas handed Jesus over to the authorities was because he thought that he would force Jesus’ hand. I reckon that Judas thought that Jesus was being ineffectual and that Jesus’ mission needed to take on some kind of meaning. And I reckon that Judas thought that, through his action, the meaning of Jesus’ mission would be revealed.

Of course, the meaning of Jesus’ mission was revealed, but not in the way that I think Judas hoped.

I think that Judas understood that Jesus’ choice was either to stand up to the Romans or to die. The one thing that he didn’t reckon on was that Jesus would choose to die.

To see Judas as some kind of super-villain is to misunderstand who he was. Judas was nothing more than one of the group.

It’s easy to misunderstand who Judas was when we read that ‘Satan’ entered into him. It’s easy to cast Judas in the role of super-villain when we read words like that. But ‘Satan’ means ‘the accuser’. I don’t think that we are to understand here that Judas suddenly became demon-possessed and filled with some kind of extraordinary evil. I think that this was simply a man who had his own ideas and ambitions about what Jesus’ Messiahship was about. This was simply a man who thought that he knew better than God how God’s purposes were to be fulfilled.

I say ‘simply’ because, of course, we all do this.

The one who is to hand Jesus over to the authorities is the one to whom Jesus gives the bread that he dipped in the dish. But, of course, Judas was not the only disciple to whom Jesus gave the bread of friendship that night. Judas was not the only disciple whose feet Jesus washed that night.

Who is going to betray Jesus? One of us. Each of us. We are each guilty of thinking that we know better than God how his purposes are to be fulfilled. We can’t help it – this is part of our human condition. Judas is not a super-villain, he is an ordinary human being. One of us.

So where is the good news?

The good news is that Jesus chose the cross. He chose the path of forgiveness rather than the path of vengeance. And in doing so, he brought salvation into the world. In choosing the cross, he also demonstrated to us that even while we were still sinners, he died for us.

I believe firmly that Jesus’ forgiveness was available to Judas, although Judas could not see it. The good news is that no matter what we do, God’s forgiveness is always available to us. The good news is that we are forgiven sinners.

Amen

Sunday 1 April 2007 - Palm Sunday

This is a sermon for Palm Sunday for a congregation that is observing both Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. It is based on Luke 19:28-40.

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Introduction

“Hosanna” is a rude word. It’s not a word like “Alleluia!” It doesn’t mean anything like “Praise the Lord!” or “Thanks be to God!” even though we often seem to use it that way. It means something more like “Down with the United Kingdom! Death to the Queen! Destroy the Government!”

If I’d been in Jerusalem on that day when Jesus rode into the city gates and I’d heard the crowd shouting “Hosanna!”, I would have got my children out of there as quickly as I could in the almost certain knowledge that something terrible was going to happen. “Hosanna!” was a call to arms on the part of a restless crowd who was looking for their world to change, even if it had to change by violence.

I want to try to help us picture the scene a bit better.

I don’t how many of you have seen the Old City in Jerusalem - the walled city which would have constituted the city in Jesus’ time? I don’t know for certain how big it is, but my guess would be that maybe the old city is about as big as Weaver’s Wharf plus the pedestrianised shopping area around the Town Hall and Swan Centre.

Now, just to give you an idea of how many people were at Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday, the entire town of Kidderminster - inside and outside the centre of town - has a population of just over 55,000 people. We think that on the day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem that there were between 3 million and 5 million people in Jerusalem who had come to celebrate the Passover. Three million people is just over 54 times as many people as live in Kidderminster today and 5 million people is 91 times our current population.

So imagine 91 times the current population of Kidderminster today all jammed into the area around Weaver’s Wharf and the Town Hall. Imagine that they are all as angry and excited as stirred-up football hooligans and that they are all shouting “Down with the United Kingdom! Death to the Queen! Destroy the Government!” Is there anyone here who thinks that they wouldn’t want to get their children and other vulnerable loved-ones out of town as quickly as possible?

And, as if all of this weren’t bad enough, what if I told you that Jerusalem had survived over 6 political riots every year for the last five years?

Are you beginning to get an idea as to why Pilate was worried about what was going to happen?

The Crowd

We can imagine that the crowd would have seen things somewhat differently from Pilate. With so many people and such an apparent groundswell of support for Jesus as a political leader, I wonder if they felt the same way that the crowd at the Berlin Wall felt on the day that the wall finally came down?

From their point of view, there was a real possibility that morning that the whole miserable existence that the Jewish people had endured for the last sixty years would finally break apart. They expected Jesus to be their saviour. Their political saviour. Had Jesus wanted political power, it would seem that this was a sure-fire opportunity for taking it.

This is Satan’s temptation to become an earthly king being presented to Jesus once more, But this time the temptation comes with all the bells and whistles. This time, the temptation comes complete with adoring crowds ready to worship Jesus and follow him right there and then. As long as he conformed to the model of leadership that they were demanding.

From the point of view of inside the crowd, the adrenaline is flowing, and the opportunity is there to turn the tables on the Romans - to be the rulers at the top of the heap and to obtain vengeance for three generations of Roman occupation and humiliation.

Inside the crowd, there must have been a most extraordinary buzz. Here’s the opportunity to be finally and fully alive. To have a freedom and abundant life that the crowd’s grandparents could only have dreamt about. The Jews could be fully alive and the Romans and their supporters could be dead in slavery as a conquered and subjected people.

Jesus and the Donkey

But Jesus chose to ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. Or as one American preacher puts it - Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a jackass. I like the double-meaning of this word because everything that Jesus does from this point on is totally nonsensical and idiotic from the point of view of worldly values.

From this point onwards the scandal of Jesus’ mission on earth can be seen in all its stark reality. Because the whole meaning of this story - the march to the cross, and Jesus’ death and resurrection - lies in the way that it scandalises human values. The story goes against everything that “the world” wants and hopes for. This is a story that will give us a new desires and new hopes - the desires and hopes of God.

What is the scandal? Jesus had the ability to choose to wage a violent revolution against the enemies of the people of Israel and, unique amongst humans, he had a sure and certain hope of a military victory. But instead of choosing a military victory, he chose the way to the cross.

He chose to forgive those who saw him as an enemy and who were about to put him to death. And the consequence of his forgiveness was that he was crucified.

Jesus had the choice of certain victory on the one hand or certain death on the other hand and he chose certain death. Because to choose to forgive his enemies meant to choose death.

Forgiveness is costly. And as human beings we know only too well that forgiveness is costly. It might not cost us much to forgive the small sins done against us. With some cost to us, we might even be able to forgive the ‘medium sized’ sins that are done against us. But how do we forgive the really big sins done against us? To forgive the really big sins done against us, something has to die inside us. And this death is costly.

It’s the same thing with God. In order to forgive the way that human sin destroys God’s plan for creation, God had to die. The death of God – the death of Jesus Christ – was the only way that forgiveness could be achieved. If Jesus had chosen to smash his enemies, then there would have been naked justice, but there would have been no forgiveness.

If Jesus had acted in the way that the crowd wanted him to act, there would have been no redemption for the world. By the death of Jesus, forgiveness became a part of the cosmic reality.

Jesus understood that the purposes of God are for life in all its fullness. And so, Jesus chose the sure and certain hope of the victory of resurrection rather than the sure and certain hope of an earthly victory. The cross leads to death, but it also leads to forgiveness and to reconciliation between God and humanity. Jesus was free to choose death because he had faith in the resurrection.

Conclusion

In a few minutes, we will come before the Lord’s table. As we do so, I invite you to think about God’s forgiveness for you and for the whole world. I invite you to meditate on the sacrifice that God made on your behalf. And, I invite you to lay your burdens down as you come into the Lord’s presence.

Prepare to come as a guest to the table of the Lord who forgives us, no matter how costly the forgiveness. Prepare to rejoice in this forgiveness – whether you have already accepted God’s forgiveness or whether you wish to accept it for the first time today.

Prepare to come into the presence of the Lord who loves us so much that he was willing to die for us.

Sunday 18 March 2007 - The Prodigal Son

The text for this sermon is Luke 15:1-3; 11b-32

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Introduction

Today is Mothering Sunday. No one is absolutely certain exactly how the idea of Mothering Sunday began, but we know that on this day, about four hundred years ago, people who lived in little villages made a point of going not to their local church but to the nearest big church - to what was called the Mother Church. And some would go to the nearest city to worship in the cathedral.

In the past, mothering Sunday was also known as 'Refreshment Sunday' or 'Mid-Lent Sunday'. It was often called Refreshment Sunday because the fasting rules for Lent were relaxed, in honour of the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

But today is also the fourth Sunday in Lent and our Gospel reading for this morning is the story of The Prodigal Son – not a mother to be seen anywhere in the story!

Now the really useful thing about parables is that, because they are stories, different people can get different things out of them.

Traditionally this story is interpreted as being about God’s generous grace towards sinners. And I think that there is good evidence to suggest that this is undoubtedly the parable’s primary meaning. The story is told in response to the grumbling of the Pharisees and Scribes that Jesus welcomes sinners and eats with them. It follows directly after the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. And it’s in a section of Luke that is concerned with the question of who is going to participate in God’s Kingdom.

The Two Brothers

But because it is a story, we can let our imaginations wander a bit, each individual hearing different things in the story. Let’s think for a moment about the two brothers. Can we identify with one of them or possibly with both of them?

First we have the ‘prodigal son’ of the title. The younger brother who is eager to explore foreign lands beyond the confines of his family. Perhaps originally he has nothing more in mind than having a bit of an adventure, making a name for himself, getting out from under the shadow of his older brother and his father. In this respect, we might be able to identify with him. Even people who were not arrogant or overconfident in their youth can probably understand the desire of a young person to spread his or her wings.

Then there is the older son. A paragon of virtue and duty – or so he would have us think. Now I don’t know if the following is an important omission or not – it’s part of me reading the story in my own way, but did you notice that the older son didn’t make a peep when the younger son asked for his inheritance?

Giving the younger son his inheritance would have involved a great deal of effort in terms of selling property and turning it into cash. But no-where in the story does the older brother raise any sort of protest. The older son sees himself as dutiful and loyal, but he hasn’t actually tried to stop such an outrageous event. Maybe he’s thinking that if his brother gets a £100 inheritance for this outrageous behaviour, that he’ll eventually get a £200 inheritance for his own loyalty.

Duty, Grudges and the Kingdom of God

Now, the approach to this parable in recent years is to point out how easy it is to identify with the older brother’s outrage when his wayward sibling is brought back into the fold. And, of course, it is easy to understand how he feels.

I don’t know about you, but I honestly can’t stand here and say that I wouldn’t feel hurt and cheated if I felt that my loyalty and good deeds had been in vain. And then, let’s admit it; there is a darker part of me that would have been waiting to see what my brothers’ punishment would be.

This is the religion of the Pharisees. But the Pharisees are you and me. Not always, of course, but sometimes.

The thing we need to understand about the Pharisees’ approach to God is that it was not all bad and it was not all hypocritical. Some of it may have been about useless purity laws but a good deal of it was about doing the right thing – the same way that Christians believe in doing the right thing. Where some of the scribes and Pharisees may have gone wrong, however, was in seeing reconciliation with God as a reward for their own good works.

Some of the religious establishment seemed to think that it was their own observance of the law that had earned them a place as a child of God. And they felt it was important to make a religious distinction between those people who kept God’s law and those who did not. Their ‘fences’ were not just about right and wrong actions, but they were also about who they considered to be the right and wrong people. Their fences were about who could be included in the people of God and who could not.

We do this too. I think that it is part of human nature to sometimes think our status as children of God comes from what we do. It’s human nature to sometimes think that we have been reconciled with God because we go to church, pray, give money and time to people in need and keep the ten commandments. Even though church-goers know that this is not true, sometimes we act as if it is.

Some will maintain that the dilemma of this parable is that if we worship a God who is like the Father in the story, then aren’t we saying that there is no need for anyone to bear the consequences of their own sin? Aren’t we saying that the canniest thing to do would be to go out and sin as much as possible and then return to God’s unconditional embrace on our deathbed?

I think that the answer to this lies in what the father says to his oldest son near the end: The obedient child has been with the Father all along. With perfect hindsight, and with the perspective of a reader of the story rather than a character within it, we can see that what the oldest son has failed to do is to rejoice in the fact that he’s been a part of his Father’s household all along.

All these years, he could have been celebrating his fellowship with his Father, but instead he’s borne a grudge against his brother. When the brother returns home, the elder brother’s desire is not for celebration and reconciliation but for some form of penalty.

So did the younger brother play the system? Did he have his cake and eat it too? Well, I don’t think so. Not only did he squander the resources he had at his disposal, but he ended up in starvation and degradation. True, he was eventually restored to his Father’s house, but unlike his obedient older brother, he wasted many years when he didn’t even the opportunity to celebrate his fellowship with his Father.

It’s ironic. The younger son did not have the opportunity to celebrate the fact that he was his Father’s child because he had put himself outside of his Father’s household. The older son did not celebrate because he focused on his resentment and desire for his brother’s comeuppance rather than on his own good fortune in being his Father’s child.

Conclusion

I said earlier that, besides being Mothering Sunday, this fourth Sunday in Lent is also called “Refreshment Sunday”.

I don’t know for sure, of course, but I suspect that this parable might be the favourite of a lot of people here today. It’s certainly one of my favourites and I think it is certainly a “refreshing” message in the middle of Lent.

The refreshing news – the wonderful, amazing, unbelievable news is that God really is like the Father in the parable. And loving parenthood is, I think, a good metaphor for God’s character. As one theologian puts it, ‘God delights in his creatures in the same way that a parent delights in his children.’ God loves everything that God has made, and therefore we and all creation are held in being by God’s love.

Just like the Father’s household in the story, the Kingdom of God is open and available for every single person: God runs with joy and celebration to meet each person who decides to come home. God also delights in the presence of each one of his children who is already home and he asks us to celebrate with him.

God’s love for us is ever-present His love doesn’t come into existence because of our repentance. Rather, it is our love for God that comes into existence because of our repentance.

This morning, we share in Holy Communion and partake in the celebration that is the Lord’s Table. This is a table that has been set for all and to which all are invited. During this season of Lent, we remember the faith of Jesus in his Father as he set his sights toward Jerusalem

And we remember Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, a Passover meal that celebrated God’s deliverance of his people from slavery. Together as brothers and sisters in God’s Kingdom, we come round this table to be with Christ and to celebrate the love of a God who runs to meet us.

Sunday 11 March 2007 - Repentance and Forgiveness

This sermon was prepared for a pulpit swap with a local Anglican church. The texts are: Isaiah 55:1-13 and Luke 13:1-9

Introduction

Luke 13:5 reads "...unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did." I think that you can imagine that this is not exactly the sort of Gospel reading that preacher wishes for when asked to be a guest preacher at a neighbouring church for the first time!

Our Old Testament reading for this morning is more like the kind of lesson that I wished for: "Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear and come to me; listen, so that you may live." (Isaiah 55:2b-3a)

So, had you been me, which text would you have chosen to preach on? What do you think that being a Christian disciple is all about? Is it about repentance? Is it about God's determination to bring each one of us into his kingdom? Or is it about both of these things?

Well, I guess you won't be surprised to hear that I think that Christian discipleship is about both of these things. Most importantly, to be a Christian is to accept and rejoice in God's determination to bring each of us into his Kingdom. But Christian discipleship is also about repentance. Repentance is an important tool in our partnership with God that helps us to grow in our Christian faith.

Unless you Repent

I'd like to address the Gospel reading first, because there are no two ways about it - this reading is calling for repentance and it's not a particularly comfortable reading.

First of all, I think that it's helpful to understand where this lesson is placed within the Gospel of Luke. Just before this particular passage, all sorts of people have been asking the question "When will the day of judgement come?" And Jesus has been saying "No one knows the day or the hour, so be prepared at all times." I think that in today's lesson the reader is also being warned that it is not just the end of time that we need to worry about but also about the end of our own time here on earth.

In this morning's passage, people seem to be asking Jesus whether tragic deaths are to be seen as the hand of God's judgement. There are places in the New Testament where Jesus clearly says that illness and tragedy are not signs of having been cursed by God. In this reading, however, Jesus doesn't answer the question directly but rather, he turns the question on its head.

Jesus says that the Galilean pilgrims didn't die because they were cursed by God. They died because of the wilful and evil act of Pilate. (This was a grotesque and ruthless act of mixing their own blood with that of their sacrifices in order to ensure that, under Jewish law, they would be seen as damned.) And Jesus says that the people killed by the fall of the tower of Siloam died in an unfortunate accident.

The big question that we are to focus on is not "Did these people die because they were sinners and had earned God's judgment?" The big question is rather "Did these people live their lives in an on-going attitude of repentance before they died?"

Come to the Waters

The Old Testament Reading is an altogether more encouraging passage. Prior to coming to Kidderminster, I served in a church in North London where 2/3rds of the congregation were African immigrants and 1/3rd were African-Caribbean immigrants. The choir of this church sang a Gospel song that I'd never heard before. The entire lyrics were comprised of 2 sentences and the song went like this: "All will be included in the feast of life! Good News!"

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that the lyrics for this song might have come from Isaiah 55, from this morning's Old Testament reading. If they didn't, they are nonetheless a good summary of the meaning of this passage.

This passage is an invitation to the feast of God's amazing banquet. And this is an invitation to everyone. It doesn't matter who you are. The covenant that God made with David has been extended to absolutely anyone regardless of nationality, status or any other characteristics that human beings use to define other people as being not quite acceptable to God. The good news is that all shall be included in the feast of life.

Isaiah is telling us that God's intention is that people be fed - and I think that means physically, emotionally and spiritually - and that joy and hope flourish. Here we see a God who is generous, joyful and open-handed. A God who wants every living being to enjoy life and live in peace and harmony with his creation.

Conflicting Ideas?

But how do we reconcile these two passages? In the Luke passage, there is an urgent call for individuals to repent before they perish. In the Isaiah passage, there is an open-handed invitation for anyone who desires to come and dine at God's feast. Aren't these two ideas contradictory?

Notice, though, that each of our readings contains echoes of the other.
Although the Luke passage makes an urgent call for repentance before it's too late, yet we are also given hope in the form of the parable of the fig tree which is offered one last chance to bear fruit. Although the Isaiah passage is an exuberant expression of God's open-handed offer of his Kingdom to all people, the passage also contains the instruction to "seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near."

Forgiveness and Repentance

I said earlier that to be a Christian is to accept and rejoice in God's determination to bring each of us into his Kingdom and to recognise that repentance is an important tool that helps us to grow in our partnership with God.

And I think that the order of these two statements is actually important: God's love and his forgiveness in reaching out to us come first. And our repentance comes second. Our repentance is a response to God's love and forgiveness, not vice versa.

"God forgives you. Therefore you are free to repent." God's forgiveness comes first and our repentance is a response to that.

Illustration

Alan and Ray are father and son. Ray is grown up and is married with two teenage children of his own. Alan loves Ray and although they don't live very far apart, when it comes to keeping in contact with each other, Alan makes all the effort.

Then, one day, Ray asks his father to borrow a substantial sum of money. Ray's having a hard time meeting all his financial obligations. Teenage children, you know what it's like. They have to have the latest clothes and the latest computer gizmos. Not to mention the fact that Ray's oldest seems to have a hollow leg and can eat for England.

It's only a few months later when Alan learns the truth from his daughter-in-law, Ray's wife: Ray has a gambling problem, he's borrowed everything he possibly can on his credit cards, the couple can't make the payments and there is no way that Alan is going to get his money back.

Alan decides to confront Ray. Alan says: "I know about your gambling problem and your debt. I know you can't pay me back. I want you to know that I forgive you and I'm still your father and I want to help you kick your gambling habit." Ray might respond in one of two ways.

Ray can say: "Thank you. I don't deserve your forgiveness. It's such a relief to have everything out in the open. I could really use your support as I try to stop gambling." Or Ray could say: "Forgiveness! What do you mean, you forgive me! How dare you! I don't need your forgiveness and I don't need you or your pity!"

"God forgives you. Therefore you are free to repent." God's forgiveness comes first and our repentance is a response to that.

Come to the Banquet

In the book of Isaiah, the prophet calls to us: "Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." Or, in the words of the Gospel song that my friends in North London sing: "All will be included in the feast of life! Good news!"

As far as God is concerned, we are all invited to his feast of life. Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, slave or free, male or female. No matter who we are or what we have done, God is constantly inviting us to share in the banquet of his forgiveness. But in order to feast on God's forgiveness, we have turn in God's direction and walk toward that feast. In other words, repentance is necessary.

In a few minutes, we will share together in Holy Communion. We will come together as brothers and sisters united in the community of Christ. But we will also come to the table which Christ has prepared for us and to which he has invited us. We come in response to his invitation. It is my prayer that we will come with repentance and in the faith, hope and joy that God's forgiveness inspires.

26 November - Christ King of Heaven and Earth

Sermon for the festival of Christ the King. Readings are: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 and John 18. 33 – 37

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Introduction

It seems to me that this morning’s Gospel reading could be potentially interpreted as a scene in a Greek tragedy. Here we have acted out in front of us the story of the greatest of all men whose apparent downfall is brought about by conflict with society.

In our reading, Jesus and Pilate are discussing matters of kingship, power and truth. At the surface level of this scene, Pilate is apparently the person with the power because he possesses the power of the Roman emperor

But it’s not just Pilate and Jesus in this particular Act of our Greek drama. Lurking offstage, in a scene that has just happened onstage although we did not read about it today, are the religious authorities Annas and Caiaphas. They too have just pronounced Jesus guilty before sending him off to Pilate.

And so we have an intriguing triangle: Jesus in the first corner, the religious authorities in another and the secular authority in a third.

As Christians, we are already anticipating the punch-line to this well-known story: For those familiar with John’s Gospel, it is of course Jesus who is the true King, and Jesus who is the Truth. John’s Jesus tells us quite clearly: “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

In the actual economy of God’s universe, the perceived power of Pilate, Annas and Caiaphas cannot compare to the authority of Jesus. Jesus is the true King.

As we celebrate the Festival of Christ the King this morning, I’d like to think a bit about whether these three sides of the triangle have anything to say to the world in its present situation and to us as the Church.

Annas & Caiaphas

I’m going to take the risky beginning and start with Annas & Caiaphas – representatives of the prevailing religious establishment - an establishment that Jesus spent his ministry opposing.

Now, there have been times in the history of the Christian church when the stories of Jesus’ opposition to the religious leaders have been used as a justification for engaging in the exact same behaviour that Jesus’ opposed during his lifetime. This is the behaviour that turns religion into a system of in-groups and out-groups.

Rather than seeing the religious authorities in the bible as examples of our universal human tendency to divide into groups of “them and us”, the Church herself has engaged in this sort of “them and us” behaviour.

The worst example of this has been the long history of Christian persecution of the Jewish people, sometimes using these very stories of Jesus’ trial as a justification for doing so.

But there are many bad examples of the Church creating these sorts of “them and us” situations – with particular Christians casting themselves in the role of righteous hero and those whom they oppose in the role of “deserving victim”.

*In the 16th century, so-called good Christians drowned the Anabaptist heretics.

*Catholics and Protestants have waged war on each other for centuries.

*In my own childhood, Protestants of different denominations were suspicious of each other, viewing Protestants of a different denomination as heretics.

*And today we have suspicion in the Church along party lines with different flavours of Christians suspicious that other flavours are not as pure, as faithful, as modern or as enlightened as “our group” is.

* And, finally, over the last several years, especially since “9/11”, sections of the wider Christian Church seem to be flirting dangerously with scape-goatting the Muslim community as God’s enemies.

Speaking Out

As disciples of Christ, we are called to speak out when we see Christian brothers and sisters expressing prejudice against other religious communities. We are called to speak out in the name of justice when we see any group expressing prejudice against another We speak out not just because Christian prejudice is bad for our witness, but because such behaviour is contrary to everything that Jesus taught.

At the heart of the Kingdom of God is the Great Commandment, a commandment that is also at the heart of Judaism: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbour as yourself.

Christian love is not defined by a feeling of warm affection (although we may have that in many instances); Christian love is based on doing the right thing; it is based on doing what Jesus commanded us to do. Jesus commanded us to leave the ultimate judgement of individuals to him and he commanded us to respect each other.

This doesn’t mean we can’t say that we believe that certain actions are wrong; it doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree with another’s opinions. But it most certainly does mean that we are not permitted to name other people or groups of people as “enemies of God” and use this as an excuse to shun them or do harm to them.

Pilate

But of course, the Church isn’t the only group who get things wrong from God’s perspective.

The next character in our play is Pilate. Pilate, the Roman functionary who recognised the truth of Jesus’ innocence under Roman law but who sentenced Jesus to death nonetheless because it was politically convenient.

There is a testimony that Jesus could have given to Pilate in order to walk free. Jesus could have stated clearly that he was a spiritual leader and that his only interest was in spiritual matters. He could have uttered the words that many secular leaders seem to want to hear: “I am a religious leader; I do not get involved in politics.”

But Jesus did not do that. He did not explain himself in such a way as to assure Pilate that he was not a threat. He made what could be seen as a grandiose claim: that he is the embodiment of truth and that everyone who belongs to the truth listens to his voice.

It seems that Jesus may very well be a “spiritual” King, but he is also a here-and-now King. As the old hymn lyrics state, he is Master of Everything: King of both heaven and earth.

The Kingdom of God is not just about pie in the sky by and by. It is also about the here and now. It is about truth. It is about loving our neighbour as ourselves. It is about justice: food for the hungry and freedom for the oppressed.

Those who utter the cliché: “Christians should not meddle in the affairs of the world” are taking the worldly view of Christianity. They are taking Pilate’s view, not Jesus’ view.

At her best, when the Church is listening clearly to the voice of her King, we can bring the standards of truth, justice and fairness to bear on matters of this world. Indeed, as disciples of Christ we are called to do so. This is part of the Church’s mission and vocation on earth.

Christ the King

Next Sunday, as you may remember, we begin a new church season, the season of Advent.

But today is the festival of Christ the King. And today, we end a long cycle of meditation on the theme of Christian discipleship that began on the 11th of June with Trinity Sunday – the Sunday when the church and the minister put on the colour green.

And it is fitting that we end the season dedicated to discipleship with the affirmation that for us as Christians, our first loyalties lie with Jesus Christ as our sovereign and Lord.

For Christians, Jesus is not simply a prophet who knew and taught the truth, Jesus embodies the truth. Jesus is truth. And, as Jesus’ disciples, we are followers of truth.

We are not to be misled by the universal human tendency to form in-groups and out-groups.

Where we hear calls to name as God’s enemies people of a different religion, a different race, a different flavour of Christianity, we are to name such behaviour as wrong and to resist these movements in word and deed.

Christians are called to stand up to anti-Semitism and we are called to stand up to the current cultural mood of scape-goatting Muslim people.

We are not be misled by claims that Christianity has nothing to do with the here and now and that being a Christian is only about our private spirituality. Having accepted God’s love and forgiveness into our own hearts, we are called to bring that love to others. This is not just a call to witness to the Gospel doctrines. It is also a call to demonstrate God’s unconditional grace and mercy in very practical ways.

The Kingdom is to come, but the Kingdom is also here. Christ will be our King in Eternity, but Christ is also our King in the here and now.

As we come to Christ’s table in a few minutes to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion, I pray that we may all be fed with food for our journey. May we come to his table invited by our crucified, risen and ascended King and rise from his table to take his invitation of forgiveness and reconciliation to all the world. Amen