Sunday Nov 1 2009 - Radical Hospitality

This was another "supply preaching sermon" and I was asked to speak on the topic of "Radical Hospitality". This was one in a series of five sermons preached on the five areas covered in UMC Bishop Robert Schnase's book Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.

This sermon is not a precis of the chapter in Bishop Schnase's book although it draws from Schnase's work. This is a thematic sermon and I chose the following texts: Deuteronomy 10:17-21 and Matthew 25:31-40.

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Introduction

Good morning everyone and thank you for your hospitality this morning in inviting me to join in your worship and share Scripture with you today.

And I guess it’s appropriate to thank you for your hospitality this morning because “Radical Hospitality” is the subject that I’ve been asked to speak on this morning. As I understand it, today is the second in a series of sermons on the subject of “the five practices of faithful congregations”.

But I expect that some of you may be wondering “What has hospitality got to do with the Good News of Jesus Christ?” It might seem somewhat obvious how being a hospitable congregation could help a congregation to grow and thrive, but you might not see a direct connection between hospitality and the message of the gospel.

God & Hospitality

So the first question I want to think about this morning is “What has hospitality to do with the good news that we proclaim as Christians?”

I don’t know what sort of images the word “hospitality” conjures up for you, but I expect that for most people, it conjures up images of dinner parties or maybe weekends away at a friend’s house.

But stop and think for a minute what hospitality meant to the people of the ancient near East. For a person from a nomadic desert culture, traveling from nomad settlement to nomad settlement, a question of hospitality might very well mean the difference between life and death.

It was usually the custom to allow a passing stranger to spend a night in your town or settlement, but then the expectation was that the person would move on. However, permission to camp overnight was by no means assured.

It was the normal social custom to view strangers with suspicion and as a potential threat to the community. (I wonder if that sounds familiar to us today?)

But remember our passage that we heard from Deuteronomy this morning: The reader is told that God himself loves the stranger and provides the stranger with food and clothing. And then God’s people are commanded to love the stranger because they themselves were strangers in Egypt.

“Loving” the stranger certainly goes beyond what we normally think of as hospitality in our society. The biblical concept of “loving” someone, as you probably know, is not just about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you; it’s about going further than that and actually putting their needs and welfare before your own.

And this is actually what the ancient custom of hospitality was all about. In the ancient near East, “hospitality” was an elaborate custom that included both testing and obligations on the part of the host and guest. Once the tests had been passed, the host and the guest were bound in a formal and permanent relationship that required both to look after each other in the same way that they would look after a member of their own family.

The guest was required to offer hospitality to the host if the need arose in the future and the host was always responsible for the safety of the guest. The host was required to do anything to secure the safety of the guest, even giving up his life in defense of the guest, if necessary.

I wonder if you hear an echo of any kind of familiar themes here?

I think that there is a very real sense in which we can say that God invites us as strangers and sinners into his Kingdom. In order to fully benefit from this Kingdom, we are invited to repent, just as the stranger is tested. And, as the host who is responsible for the welfare of his guest even if it means dying, God died in order to save us from the ravages of sin, death and the power of evil.

So, rather than having nothing to do with the message of the Gospel, I think that hospitality has much to do with it. God gives us undeserved and unimaginable hospitality and we are called as his children to give hospitality to others.

God welcomes the sinner and the stranger and calls us also to welcome the sinner and the stranger in response to his welcome.

In fact, we are called to love the stranger. We are called to extend a welcome that is not only friendly and hospitable but also to give a welcome that is risky, possibly dangerous, and which puts the needs of the visitor before our own needs.

I wonder how many church congregations actually manage to do this?

Radical Hospitality

I said earlier, that the title of this sermon is radical hospitality.

Why radical hospitality? Why not friendly hospitality? Or pleasant hospitality? Or nice hospitality?

I hope you are beginning to see that the nature of true biblical hospitality is radical; extreme, even. God’s hospitality in welcoming us into his Kingdom and offering salvation to us was costly. It wasn’t easy or “nice” and it wasn’t just friendly and pleasant.

And if we are going to communicate the height and depth and breadth of God’s love to other people in our own congregations, we too will have to engage in some costly hospitality.

A story is told of a Lutheran pastor in the former East Germany named Uwe Holmer.

Now, those of you who remember the East German regime know that to be a Christian in Eastern Germany was a risky business, let alone to be a Christian pastor. The regime discriminated against Christians and one of its policies was to make it impossible for the children of Christian parents to attend university or enter any of the professions which required a university degree.

Pastor Holmer and his wife had ten children, all of whom were denied university places and who had to make a living through manual labor. The person who was responsible for East Germany’s educational policy for 26 years was Margot Honecker the wife of East Germany's premier, Erich Honecker.

And then the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and the East German regime was toppled. Erich and Margot Honecker were seen by many people in East Germany as their enemies. They were indicted for criminal activities and evicted from their home. The Honeckers suddenly found themselves friendless, without resources, and with no place to go. No one wanted to have anything to do with the Honeckers.

It was at that point that Pastor Holmer’s family invited the Honeckers to live with them.

However, their fellow citizens were not terribly pleased with the Holmers’ hospitality. The pastor’s family received hate mail from the German public and many members of his church threatened to leave in protest.

The hospitality offered by Pastor Holmer was not just nice or even just noble. This was a radical hospitality. A risky hospitality. A dangerous hospitality that put him and his family at risk. This is an example of truly radical hospitality.

Wat on earth could cause a person to give shelter to people whose life’s work and ideals had directly hurt his children's futures? And what on earth could cause someone to continue to give shelter to them in the face of threats and abuse from fellow citizens? Nothing on earth. Only the peace and love of God that passes all human understanding could cause someone to do such a thing.

Radically Hospitable Churches

Are we capable of this kind of radical hospitality?

I’ve got to be honest with you. Part of me hopes that I could behave this way in the same circumstances and part of me hopes that I will never be tested in such a way. But yet, I am inspired by Pastor Holmer. His actions draw from me the highest form of admiration.

And I believe that if we think about this story as a sort of benchmark for “radical hospitality” then some ideas that we regularly throw around about “being a hospitable congregation” begin to pale in comparison.

In his book “Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations”, UMC Bishop Robert Schnase defines radical hospitality like this:

“An active desire to invite, welcome, receive and care for those who are strangers so that they find a spiritual home and discover for themselves the unending richness of life in Christ.”

Hospitality isn’t just about smiling at visitors who walk into the doors of our church. It’s about an active desire to welcome and care for new people.

I wonder how many congregations consider themselves to be friendly churches but whose caring and friendship is based on the fact that the members of the congregation have known each other for many years?

Sometimes being a new person in such a group can be like going out to dinner with a newly-married couple as they sit there staring into each other’s all evening. They may be friendly between themselves and they probably genuinely want to be friendly with other people, but they are too wrapped up in each other to think that their friends might be feeling excluded.

As a cradle Christian who has spent most of my life going to church, my bet is that many if not most congregations are like this. We feel certain that we are prepared to be friendly to new people but, really, we want them to fit in with what we’re already doing and conform to the established group behavior.

In the UK, a poll was taken recently which – among other things – determined that it took the average person about two years after beginning to attend a new congregation to feel that they really belonged. Two years! That means the new people have to make an incredible commitment. They have to attend church for two years feeling like they are strangers before they can begin to feel comfortable.

That’s certainly not radical hospitality. I’ll leave you to decide whether you think its “hospitality” at all. If it takes someone two years to feel that they belong in a congregation then that congregation is not living out any kind of active desire to welcome and care for new people.

Looking Outward

So what does it take to be a radically hospitable church? In his book, Bishop Schnase lists some practical ideas that I will mention briefly this morning since I want this to remain and sermon rather than a lecture on strategic change management.

But there is one thing that the Bishop’s suggestions all have in common and that is that every single suggestion is about looking outside of the congregation to the needs of those who are not members of the congregation.

And when we focus on people outside our group, we are focusing on serving others rather than on being served ourselves. Or, to put it another way, we are focusing on the biblical concept of love. We are focusing on what is good for other people rather than on what is good for ourselves.

So very briefly, what are some practical suggestions?

Bishop Schnase suggests that every group that meets in church, every committee, and every activity should be constantly thinking “How can we reach out to those outside our church? How can we make our activities more welcoming?” Even those individuals concerned with maintaining the building can reach out.

Are there facilities for young families to feel comfortable? Is the building accessible to those with mobility problems? A really simple thing like are all the rooms correctly labeled? Are Vacation Bible School or Sunday School classes run for the benefit of church members or for the benefit of children whose parents don’t come to church? Can the choir put on an activity that makes young families feel welcome? Does the congregation keep in touch with families who visit the church at Christmas and Easter and invite them to other events? At the most basic level, will people from outside the church be able to understand your bulletin if they read it?

The Bishop suggests that every group in church should think about one thing that they can do that focuses on reaching people outside the current members. And this attitude of reaching out should become an on-going habit. He notes that “Institutions produce what they are designed to produce.” And he is challenging us as Christians – because I don’t think that this is just a problem of the UMC – to design our “institutions” to be places where change and outreach are built into the fabric of how we do things.

Before I conclude this morning, I want to briefly tell you a story about a part of my training for the ministry. I was required by the British Methodist Church to attend weekend seminars on a monthly basis. These seminars were designed to teach us by example how to nurture the spiritual lives of our congregations.

Most participants attended for two years but every six months a group of people would leave the group and a new group of people would arrive. The whole system was designed to accommodate this change.

And I promise you that we didn’t really do anything differently than many good prayer groups or Sunday School or bible study groups do. We didn’t really do any strange activities that you might imagine when you hear the word “radical”. All we did was expect the group to change. We expected new people to arrive and we expected to make room for new people in the group and to offer them genuine hospitality. We expected that people we’d come to know and trust would leave and we expected to “let them go”.

We didn’t spend a lot of emotional energy resisting change and we didn’t invoke the silent mantra of many a congregation “Because God doesn’t change, the church must not change either.” All we did was look outward and welcome the new people instead of seeing them as threats or as individuals who upset our existing group dynamics.

Bishop Schnase suggests a relatively “simple” solution that each individual in a church and each group simply think about how they can welcome new-comers and my experience would suggest that it really is as simple as that. When we really begin to live lives that genuinely seek the welfare of others, our lives begin to bubble over with joy and freedom and we become very effective witnesses to the Good News of the Gospel.

Conclusion

The good news of Jesus Christ, Paul tells us, is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Or, to look at it another way, God offered us hospitality when we were still strangers.

In sending Jesus to die and rise again for our salvation, God was looking outside of himself to our needs. God said “These people need saving and I’m the only one who can rescue them.” He didn’t say “Oy! These people are messing up the beautiful order of my good creation! What is a Creator God to do?”

God doesn’t ask us to become holy before he invites us into his Kingdom. He doesn’t demand that we cease to be strangers and sinners before he offers us hospitality. Rather, he goes out into the highways and byways and invites strangers and sinners into his Kingdom and then he invites us to repent so that we can grow in holiness.

The good news is that God is eternally looking outside of himself to the welfare of others; we learn this when we practice the love of God in exuberant worship. The good news is that God gives us an exciting purpose to our lives: to look outside ourselves to the welfare of others; we learn this as we practice the love of our neighbor.

My prayer is that the reality of God’s hospitality for us will fill our hearts anew this morning. And I also pray that, filled with joy at the salvation we have been given and filled with thanksgiving at God’s hospitality we will go from this place determined to spread Christian hospitality to everyone we meet.

May God bless this congregation as you continue on your journey to be an evermore fruitful congregation. Amen

Sunday Oct 11 2009 - On the Road to the New Jerusalem

In August 2009, I returned to the United States for family reasons after 20 years of living in the UK. I left the Northeast Ohio / Cleveland area in 1975 when I went to university, and I never expected either to leave the UK or to return to Northeast Ohio. But life brings us unexpected twists and turns along the way.

I am not currently employed as a pastor although I'm currently doing s small amount of supply preaching. Below is the first sermon I preached as a "supply preacher" in the US. I am switching to US dating and spelling conventions. The sermon is longer than many of the previous sermons on this blog due to different custom.

I was asked to preach this sermon in a series of sermons on the broad topic of "return from exile". (Ironic, isn't it?)

This is a thematic sermon and the texts used were Zechariah 8:1-8 and Revelation 21:1-7.

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Introduction

Good morning everyone, and thank you for your hospitality here this morning and for inviting me to share in your worship and your meditation on Holy Scripture this morning.

Today is one of those instances that demonstrates what I believe is God’s sense of humor. As you heard earlier, I’m an ordained minister (“Elder”) in the Methodist Church of Great Britain and I lived in England for just over 20 years from 1989 until August of this year.

But I was born in East Cleveland and raised in Euclid. I left Northeast Ohio in 1975 to go to college and, as the years went on, I began to assume that I would never return to live in this area of the world. But my British husband and I moved to Hudson this past August to be nearer to my parents who are aging and need family near them.

And this morning is not only the first sermon that I have preached in American Methodism; it is also the first sermon that I have ever preached in the United States.

So you can see that today is something of a milestone for me, but I have to tell you that I do think it’s indicative of God’s sense of humor that the broad topic that I was asked to preach on is the topic of the Return from Exile.

Being From Somewhere – What Does it Mean?

Because a big question in my life recently has been: After 34 years away from Northeast Ohio, have I returned home or have I left home?

What, exactly does it mean to “be from” somewhere and how does “being from” a place shape our lives and who we are?

As I was preparing for this sermon, I immediately thought of Mr. Singh. Mr. Singh works at my local gas station just up the road. The first time I went into the gas station, he asked me if I was British and I explained my story to him.

Now it turns out that Mr. Singh was born in the Punjab, in India. I’m not sure, but I think he’s about my age. Mr. Singh came to this area of the world when he was ten years old. So he’s actually lived here longer that I have!

It starts you thinking: What does it mean to be “be from” somewhere? Especially in this day and age when people can move around very freely.

And I imagine that the Judeans who were returning to Jerusalem from Babylon might have understood this question of identity and “being from a place”. Because it took about a generation and a half for the Judeans to be able to leave Babylon and to make the journey back to Jerusalem.

So we can suppose that the vast majority of people who “returned” to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple had never lived in Jerusalem and they had never lived in a free Judea.

And I think that there is a parallel with us, as Christians. We are asked, as part of our Christian discipleship, to be part of God’s plan in building a New Jerusalem, but none of us have ever lived there.

So today, I just want to stop and take our bearings and ask the question: Are we still on course for our trip to the New Jerusalem? Do we, in fact, know where we are going?

Where is the New Jerusalem and what does it look like?

The New Jerusalem, of course, is a metaphor. And, like all good metaphors, it needs unpacking. Also, like all good metaphors, there are probably no Right Answers either. So I’m going to try to unpack it now with the caveat that this is my perspective. If you disagree with me, so much the better because it will get you thinking about what it is you believe.

The New Jerusalem

So, “The New Jerusalem”: Where is it? What is it? What does it look like?

Of course, the City of Jerusalem itself meant something important to those people who had been in Exile in Babylon.

Jerusalem – Zion – was the City of God. The place where the Temple was located and therefore the place where Judah believed their God physically dwelled. The dream of the Judeans (Southern Kingdom) in Exile was that they would return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple, and once more Yahweh would dwell with them and he would be their God and they would be his people.

But, the thing is that, although you can go back to where you came from, you can’t go back to when you came from.

I can come back to Northeast Ohio, but I can’t come back to Northeast Ohio in 1975 and I can’t come back to Northeast Ohio as a 17 year old girl.

During the generation that Judah has been in Exile, Judah has begun to understand its God in a different light.

Judah’s original understanding of its God was that God was on their side; and we see this idea reflected in a lot of the earlier Old Testament literature. Judah thought that God was for Judah and against other people. Their God would defend them from other nations and he would smash their enemies, when necessary.

But then came the Exile. And what was previously unthinkable happened: Jerusalem was defeated and the people of Judah were suddenly confronted with a new reality.

And so, in much of the biblical literature dealing with the story of the Exile, we begin see the development of ideas like God using foreign powers and kings to carry out his will – something that was previously unthinkable. And we also see the development of the idea that God cares about righteousness and justice and – something that was really unthinkable before – that even foreign Kings can be viewed by God as righteous and just.

Slowly, in the post-Exilic and prophetic tradition, the idea developed that God was not just the God of Judah, but God was the God of all the world. Judah came to understand that God’s sovereignty was not limited to Judah but that his sovereignty was universal.

So here comes our first piece of Good News this morning: The City of God, the New Jerusalem, is a place to which everyone is invited.

Unlike Judah’s earlier understanding, God is not a tribal god. God is not against anyone; he is not against any sort of person. God is for everyone.

No matter who you are or where you are from God wants you to be a citizen of his New Jerusalem. No matter what language you speak, no matter what the color of your skin, no matter what your gender, your marital status, whether or not you are a respected member of your community, God wants you to be a citizen of his New Jerusalem.

God is not just the God of Judah or of the UMC or the Presbyterian Church. God is not just the God of men or women or white people or Native Americans or African-Americans. God is the God of all people.

Ad I don’t know about you, but I think this is really good news! This is the stuff that makes me excited. The gates of the City of God are always open. No one needs a visa to get in. As long as we live, God will never, ever stop inviting us into his New Jerusalem.

The New Jerusalem – a Place of Justice

Now I’m thinking that there might be some people in the congregation who are starting to squirm right about now.

I’m betting that some people might be thinking “Hold on a minute, here! If God invites everyone into the City of God, does that mean that God doesn’t care about right and wrong? Does that mean that God doesn’t care about justice?”

I’m thinking you’re thinking “Pam, if you start telling me that everyone is invited into the New Jerusalem, then what does that say about the existence of right and wrong? Are you trying to tell me that, in the New Jerusalem, anything goes?”

And this is our second piece of good news this morning: that God cares about justice and righteousness. God cares about right and wrong.

No, I’m not trying to tell you that anything goes in the New Jerusalem. I’m trying to tell you that the New Jerusalem is a place where victims can find justice and where the discriminated-against can find opportunity. The City of God is a place where power is not used for personal gain but for the good of the entire community.

This, by the way, is what much of Old Testament tradition tells us is the function of a righteous King: to pursue the good of the entire community and to make sure that the powerful don’t exploit those with less power.

This idea of a Just King is why the prophet Samuel warned ancient Israel not to replace God as its king with a human king, like the other peoples. Samuel warned that human kings would misuse power, send Israel’s sons to war and grab power and wealth for themselves. Which is precisely what happened.

But in the New Jerusalem, God’s people dream of a reign of perfect justice and righteousness where God is once again King.

And no doubt, this is also what the Judean people dreamed of as they returned to Jerusalem from Exile to rebuild the Temple and the City of God.

So the second piece of good news this morning is that the New Jerusalem is a place where God’s justice is the order of the day.

The Church’s Mission

You may, however, have noticed that God’s justice might not seem quite like our human notions of justice. Human justice often majors on punishing the wrong-doer. Human justice relies on the threat of punishment to keep society in order.

In the New Jerusalem, however, justice and righteousness are the order of the day because people’s hearts have been changed by God.

Because of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, the Spirit of God changes the hearts of human beings so that we can accept God’s love and forgiveness, return that love to God and then pass it on to others. The reason that the New Jerusalem is a place where death will be no more and where mourning and crying and pain will be no more is because the hearts of its inhabitants have been converted to the love and service of God.

Now, you might be thinking “Hold on a minute here. You’re talking about the day when Christ will come again; you’re talking about the next life. And all this is fine and good and hunkey-dorey for the next life, but what about this life?”

ell, the thing is that I *am* talking about the day when Christ will come and I *am* talking about the eternal New Jerusalem. But I’m also talking about life here on earth. Because the New Jerusalem, the New Creation, the City of God is something that was inaugurated after the death and resurrection of Christ.

New Jerusalem may be “not yet”, but it is also now. It is both now and not yet.

The reason that there will be justice and righteousness in the New Jerusalem is because the hearts of its inhabitants have been converted to the love of service of God and humanity. And we – the universal church of Christ, those people of all denominations whose lives have been changed and transformed by the love of Christ – we are inhabitants of the New Jerusalem in the here and now as much as in the there and not yet.

As I think Pastor Jim is going to talk to you about next week, it is the job of the church – it is our mission - to build the Temple in the New Jerusalem. It is our job as the church to make the worship and love of God central to our lives. And, in consequence, it is our job to make love and service to our fellow human beings central to our lives.

We have been chosen to proclaim and witness to God’s love and forgiveness in both word and in deed. We are called to tell people of the love and forgiveness of God. And we are called to live as an example to others: to lives of righteousness, justice and truth.

And, for me, this is the third and final piece of Good News for this morning: That the church has an awesome, worthwhile and exciting mission; and that when we are empowered and used by the Holy Spirit, that God can change the world that we live in; God can change the lives of people around us.

And, I don’t know about you, but *I* find it exciting that the God-given purpose of my life is something so worthwhile. The God-given purpose of my life is to let God use me to transform the world. I think that’s awesome.

Conclusion

As we go from this place today, I’d like to remember what this New Jerusalem that we are traveling to looks like and to remember the Good News that we heard this morning.

So our first piece of good news is that citizenship in the New Jerusalem is open to everyone, no matter who you are, where you come from or what you have done in the past.God does not discriminate. Or, as they said in the old days, God is no respecter of persons.

The second piece of Good News that we heard this morning is that the New Jerusalem is a place where human lives are transformed and where God’s values of righteousness and justice reign. The New Jerusalem is a place where human hearts are converted to God’s standards and converted away from the standards of the world.

And the final piece of Good News that we heard this morning is that, as members of God’s Church universal, our lives not only have purpose, but they have purposes of eternal significance. When God entrusted us with the mission of being citizens of the New Jerusalem, he entrusted us with a mission that is both awesome and exciting.

And he promised us his Holy Spirit to help us in our task. The Church is not God; we are only God’s servants. We are God’s hands on earth. It is God who will finally build the New Jerusalem.

As we go forward into a new week, let’s remember where we are going. Let’s contemplate the awe and beauty of the New Jerusalem, but let’s also think and pray about how God might want to use us to build that City.

I pray that God will give each of us wisdom and insight as we contemplate our calling and I pray for that same insight for this congregation. And may the Spirit of God give you strength and courage to be his hands and heart in the world. Amen

Sunday 12 July 2009 - Sow Love, Reap Hope

This sermon is based on Ephesians 1:1-14 and Mark 6:14-29. This was also the last sermon that I preached at one of my four churches.

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Introduction

What a contrast we have in the two different readings assigned for today.

The first reading we heard was from the letter to the Ephesians: a letter that is dedicated to explaining the covenant relationship between Christ and his Church universal.

The particular reading that we heard this morning/evening from the beginning of the letter was written in a style that would have been familiar to people in the Greek and Roman world. It’s a eulogy of praise that people might have heard given at a banquet in honour of a wealthy patron. Except that here the words of praise are not directed at a human being but toward God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

The second reading we heard this morning/evening was from the Gospel of Mark as the assigned readings continue through the 6th chapter of Mark. This reading is quite a contrast from the glorious opening verses of the letter to the Ephesians. Here we have a dark story: a powerful man (Herod) who recognizes the prophetic calling of a man of God, but who nonetheless allows the forces of jealousy, anger and hatred to have their way. And John the Baptist is killed because of the evil intentions that Herodias has been harbouring in her heart toward John the Baptist.

It occurred to me that there is a contrast in these two readings between different attitudes of the heart:

The first reading expresses all sorts of Godly and constructive perspectives: the praise of God, gratefulness, unity with God and with fellow Christians, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, goodness, hope, abundant life, truth, redemption and good news.

But the second reading is a lesson in evil. We see that evil arises from wrong-doing and from anger and vindictiveness.

We also see illustrated in this story the fact that evil is given free reign when good people do nothing to stop it.

So my thought for today is ‘Be careful what you wish for’. Or maybe more accurately, ‘Be careful what you think’

Keep your Eye on the Goal

Many moons ago, my husband and I decided that we were going to take golfing lessons together. I still can’t really play golf because I never learned how to use a driver, but that’s a different story.

As those of you who do play golf know (and pardon me if I’m teaching my grandfathers to suck eggs but) this is a game that is not just physical, but it is also mental.

And one of the things that our golfing instructor taught us was that we should visualize where we wanted the ball to go before we took a shot. If we wanted to get the ball on the green, we should visualize not only the green but also the hole that we were aiming for. He also pointed out that the worst possible thing that we could do would be to think ‘Don’t go into the sand trap, don’t go into the sand trap.’

Guess why? Because our brains would be thinking about the sand-trap and visualizing the sand-trap and that’s exactly where the ball would end up going. The combination of the physics of golf and the leverage involved in the game somehow manage to transmit your thoughts into physical action and to have a real effect on the direction of the ball.

As you think, so shall you reap.

Herodias’ thoughts were apparently on revenge. We are not given any details about what Herodias, Herod’s wife, thought and felt prior to asking her daughter for the head of John the Baptist, but we can well imagine the strength of emotion behind this request. How long had Herodias been rehearsing this day in her head? How long had she been wishing for John to get his comeuppance? She certainly seized the opportunity to initiate his death the minute the opportunity presented itself.

In a foreshadowing of Pilate’s role in Jesus’ crucifixion, we get the impression that Herod would rather let John the Baptist go all things being equal. But events seem to have taken on their own momentum and ordering the death of this holy man is now Herod’s safest option.

Herodias’ evil thoughts led to evil being unleashed in to the world.

A World of Grace and Hope

But look at the contrast with this morning’s Epistle reading.

We move from a world of evil to a world of grace and of hope. We move from a world ruled by the forces of chaotic, incoherent evil to a world ruled by mercy, by grace and by hope. We’ve moved from the Kingdom of Evil to the Kingdom of God on earth.

I suppose that one lesson you could take from what our golf teacher taught Trevor and me is the ‘power of positive thinking’.

But the power of God’s Kingdom isn’t just the power of positive thinking. All the positive thinking in the world isn’t going to do anyone any good if hope isn’t real, if the Kingdom of God isn’t real. The words that the author of the letter to the Ephesians uses are powerful words precisely because they are expressions of the underlying truth of God’s rule.

It is certainly true that there is evil in the world. Today’s Gospel story reminds us of its power. But the Good News that Christians proclaim is that, in Christ, the powers of evil and chaos and confusion have been conquered.

That means that we do have real choices, under God, about the influence we have on the world around us. It is not futile to hope. It is not futile to seek to do what is right. It is not futile to forgive.

The choices made by God’s people can and do help to further the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

And it is by being careful to tune our hearts and minds in to the will of God that we can be used, as God’s church, for agents of good in the world.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the task of a Christian preacher is both very easy and very difficult. The easy bit is the Gospel message.

The Gospel of Christ is that creation has been set free from the powers of evil and that human beings have real power to choose good. The Gospel of Christ is about the fact that God loves each and every individual and wants to draw each person to him.

The difficult bit for the preacher is that we need to find 50 or more different ways to say this every year!

But, I think that, most of us understand intuitively what is important in life and that is love in all its various aspects and relationship in all its various aspects: with God and with other people.

By turning both our thoughts and our deeds in God’s direction, we gain practice in all those things described in the introduction to Ephesians: The praise of God, gratefulness, unity with God and with our fellow human beings, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, goodness, hope, abundant life, truth, redemption and good news.

My prayer this morning is that, as we prepare for our ways to part from one another on this stage of our journey, we may all grow in the grace and knowledge of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ.

To him be all the glory for ever and ever. Amen

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!

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.

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.