Today, Foley Park Methodist Church worshipped together with the Kidderminster West Team Ministry at Holy Innocents' Anglican Church. I preached and the Gospel reading was not exactly one that you might wish for at an ecumenical event: Luke 12:49-59.
There are strong Girardian overtones in this sermon. For Girard fans, it's a sermon and not a lecture on Girard; I'm not trying to set out Girard's anthropology, but I believe from the commentaries that it explains this reading well.
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Introduction
It was just about a year ago that I came to my first Sunday worship service at Holy Innocents. Just like today, it was a service for all the churches in the Kidderminster West team ministry and it was my first Sunday in Kidderminster after moving house. I wasn’t supposed to worship at Foley Park Methodist until the first Sunday in September and so I thought I’d come to worship here with my Anglican brothers and sisters.
In the year that has passed, I have got to know the people who attend the Wednesday morning communion services quite well. And I’ve been very pleased to find that both the members of the Kidderminster West Team Ministry and the members of Foley Park Methodist Church are eager to get to know each other better. I’m very keen on ecumenical cooperation and I hope that, as time grows on, our relationship will build and that we’ll be able to cooperate together in our Christian witness in this part of Kidderminster.
So I think it’s slightly ironic that as we worship together this morning in unity as Christian brothers and sisters that we are given a Gospel reading like the one we have this morning: ‘Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!’
At first glance, this seems like a rather jarring thing for Jesus to say, particularly in the Gospel of Luke where ‘peace’ is one of Luke’s central themes. Early in Luke’s Gospel, Zechariah proclaims that Jesus will guide humanity in the way of peace; the angels sing of the peace that the baby Jesus will bring; and the 72 are sent out in front of Jesus to proclaim peace to all they visit. The word ‘peace’ is used in Luke’s Gospel more times than in any of the other Gospels, yet apparently in today’s reading Jesus is now saying that he comes to bring division even amongst the closest of relations.
The Gospel reading this morning is an urgent call to repentance as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem to be crucified. Jesus, the Son of God, has come into the world and it is time for all of Luke’s readers – including us – to decide which direction they will take. Will we continue to walk in the direction away from the Kingdom of God or will we repent, turn to Christ and walk in God’s direction?
To choose repentance is to choose to be separated from what ‘the world’ holds to be true. To choose repentance is to choose God’s way and God’s Kingdom.
Peace is a Divisive Issue
What I’d like to suggest this morning is that ‘peace’ – God’s peace in God’s manner and in God’s Kingdom – is a divisive issue. I believe that division amongst people, including close family members is a consequence of Jesus’ call to the Kingdom of God, not the desired end-product.
Peace is a divisive issue because, in our sinful world, it’s not safe. God’s peace is particularly dangerous because he calls us not only to reconciliation with himself but also with other people.
What is safe in a sinful world is power. Specifically, in order to be safe, we need to be the person or the group who wields sufficient power to silence those who threaten us or disagree with us.
We can see very directly how this works at the national and international level. Human history consists of a long litany of wars: of one nation or society looking to conquer another. Historically, human society has not put its faith in peace through reconciliation but in the idea that if we can gain enough power over our enemies, we can keep them in perfect submission and thus ensure our own peace.
This was exactly the philosophy of the Roman Empire. It was prepared to be tolerant up to a point but ultimately, the Pax Romana, the Roman Peace, rested on the might of the sword.
Of course, when it comes to relationships between individuals, power plays are a lot more subtle. Gone are the days when personal disputes were settled by battles and duels.
But often in our relationships we still jockey for the position of power. Sometimes we try to achieve the status of being the most successful, the most attractive or the most intelligent person in our peer group. ‘Peace’ is maintained as long as our friends don’t challenge our self-perception.
There are also times when we need to think that we are absolutely in the right and that others are absolutely in the wrong and we are therefore loathe to seek or grant reconciliation. The tenuous stability that results between people in this kind of situation is not what God means by peace. This is a stand-off. It’s a stand-off rooted in the ‘worldly’ belief that we hold so dear: that ultimately I will be proven right and will be vindicated, so I don’t need to seek reconciliation.
But time is short. Whenever we live and whoever we are, if we are human, the time that we have to share in relationship with other people and with God is short. The wisdom of the Kingdom of God cries out to us: what is more important to us, to be right, or to reconcile with those we love before it is too late?
The Way of the Cross
As I said earlier, in Luke’s Gospel, this teaching happens as Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem to be crucified.
In Jerusalem, Jesus will lay down his life willingly in order to reconcile us to God. For our sake, Jesus – God incarnate – did what we are incapable of doing: he put himself in a position of powerlessness for the sole purpose of achieving reconciliation with us. God became powerless and humble not because he was in the wrong but because there was no other way for humanity to be reconciled with God.
The self-sacrifice, humility and willing powerlessness of Jesus on the cross for our sake is the good news of the Gospel but it is also the scandal of the Gospel. Jesus Christ was vindicated not by gaining coercive power over his enemies but in laying down his life and, importantly, in rising from the dead.
This is a vindication – a declaration of Jesus’ Lordship – that the world does not and cannot recognise. In worldly terms, the resurrection is unbelievable and Jesus’ willing sacrifice on the cross is both dangerous and absurd.
‘Peace’ – God’s peace in God’s manner and in God’s Kingdom – is a divisive issue. The Gospel is a divisive issue. Reconciliation is, ironically, a divisive issue. The world believes that peace through reconciliation is a nice idea but one that ultimately does not work. The world believes that peace can only be won through power.
The world believes in the Peace of Rome but not the Peace of Christ.
Conclusion
In a few minutes, we will come together at the Lord’s Table. The celebration table of the Kingdom of God, a celebration that is physically present with us here and now.
My prayer is that, in coming together with our Lord and with each other, we will recognise our essential unity in the body of Christ and look for ways to cooperate and grow ever closer together. And I make my prayer in the name of Jesus, our risen and ascended Lord. Amen
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Sunday 12 August 2007 - The Authority of Jesus
Today's sermon is a narrative sermon based on Matthew 21:23-32
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If you ask me, the really big trouble started when Jesus entered into Jerusalem in the manner of the Messiah and then proceeded to knock over the tables of the money-changers in the Temple. Both of these activities were a direct slap in the face to the Chief Priests, the servants of that traitor Herod.
Of course, no one is going to ask me, seeing as I’m a woman…
I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced. My name is Esther; I was – still am – a disciple of Jesus. Oh, not one of The Twelve, you understand, but I spent a great deal of time following Jesus around and listening to his teachings during his lifetime.
I was a young widow, you see. My husband had been killed in an accident just weeks after we were married. No-one wanted me after that. I was bad luck, they said. Cursed. My choice was to rely on charity or, well…I don’t even want to think about the other alternative.
When I was at my lowest, I met Jesus and the crowd of disciples following him. They willingly made me part of their community, took care of me and even encouraged me to contribute to their work.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Jesus and the crowd of his disciples saved me, and I don’t just mean in a literal, physical way, although they did that too. I didn’t become a disciple of Jesus just for the charity, you see. Jesus touched my heart. He was talking of renewal: of the renewal of the people of God and of individuals. A New Creation.
And, as his followers during his lifetime, we were living that renewal, proclaiming the good news of God’s love and regard for people like me: the poor, the captives and the outcast. We were actually changing peoples’ lives as we told them the good news that they matter to God and that God has a plan for them.
Anyway, enough about me. I was talking about that day in the Temple.
Jesus had knocked over the tables of the money-changers, which enraged the Chief Priests and Elders. You see, the High Priest is the ultimate authority in the Temple and no one has the right to challenge the way things are done in the Temple except the Messiah. Jesus even quoted Isaiah, implying that the Temple was his house.
So, it wasn’t surprising that the Chief Priests wanted to know how it was that Jesus thought he had the right to do these things.
Did Jesus think that he was doing these things by God’s authority? That’s the question I think that they really wanted to ask him. Of course, they didn’t think that Jesus had God’s authority; they seemed to think that Jesus was fooling himself, or maybe even that his authority came from Satan.
So Jesus said to them: I was baptised by John. Where do you think that John got his authority?
Well, obviously, the Chief Priests didn’t think that John’s baptism was from God, but they could hardly say that in front of all of us and in front of the crowd in the Temple! On the other hand, if they acknowledged that John’s baptism of Jesus had been blessed by God’s Spirit, then they would have been acknowledging Jesus’ authority as Messiah. So they were caught between a rock and a hard place.
You could tell that Jesus’ answer made them angry. This upstart rabbi from Galilee, standing against the rightfully appointed Priests of the Lord, claiming in deed if not in word to be the Messiah. This country bumpkin had got the upper hand by answering them – the sophisticated Jerusalem experts – in a superb, probing, rabbinic form.
There was tension in the air. You could cut it with a knife. We all wondered at the time whether Jesus wanted to get himself killed.
But Jesus didn’t stop there! In for a penny, in for a pound, he began to tell a parable about two brothers. For everyone who knew Jesus – whether his supporters or his enemies – it was obvious who the two brothers represented. It’s people like me – and worse, tax collectors and prostitutes, Samaritans and thieves – who are like the first brother. The one who actually went out and worked for the father even though he said that he would not.
Why was it obvious, you ask? Well, because Jesus had spent so much of his time associating with those of us who the religious authorities didn’t consider worthy enough to worship God.
It’s not that Jesus didn’t have time for the so-called holy people. He talked with them, debated with them and he accepted their hospitality. If the authorities had repented, Jesus would have willingly taken them into his Kingdom too. It wasn’t a simple role-reversal that Jesus was after. He wasn’t trying to exclude the priests and elders from the Kingdom of God the way that they excluded us.
It’s just that Jesus also did have time for the rest of us – the discarded people of society. Jesus showed us that we matter too. He’s demonstrated to us that God has faith in us and that God values us. Jesus told us that we too are beloved children of God and that God wants us to be part of his Kingdom too!
Jesus showed us that repentance really is possible for everyone. That a person can never fall so low that God won’t forgive him.
Of course, the second son represented the Chief Priests and Elders. The one who gives every appearance of being his father’s faithful servant but who then doesn’t act on his promise. That was another big slap in the face to the religious authorities. You can see why they began to think about getting Jesus out of the way.
Of course, all that was many years ago. And as the years have gone by, Jesus’ parable about the two brothers comes back to me every now and then.
At the time that Jesus told it, I saw myself clearly as the first brother. I was, after all, a widow, a discarded woman, someone branded cursed and unlucky but Jesus’ disciples took me in and made me part of their family.
As I’ve grown in the Lord, though, I’ve sometimes found myself acting or thinking like the second brother – the one who acted righteous but didn’t actually do his father’s will. I suspect that all people of faith have found themselves in the same position at one time or another.
I’ve also come to see that sometimes the church itself acts like this.
It’s not a comfortable thing to see, of course. But I think that this is the way that the Lord helps both the church and his individual disciples to grow.
God wants us to proclaim his good news both as individual believers and as a church. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, all of humankind is offered the kind of second chance that I was offered. When the church lives and functions at its best, it can offer to the world a tiny glimpse of God’s New Creation.
God’s good news is that, in the New Creation, all people are to be invited to his wedding feast; not just invited guests but also those in the highways and the byways. The rich and the powerful, the poor and the vulnerable, all are invited to the table of the Lord.
Sisters and brothers, I see that you will soon come before the table of the Lord. Before you do, I invite you to give thanks to the Lord that you have been included in his celebration feast. I also invite you to think about how you as a church can proclaim the good news to the world in which you live…the good news of the Lordship of Christ and of God’s extravagant generosity toward all of humankind.
Amen
===
If you ask me, the really big trouble started when Jesus entered into Jerusalem in the manner of the Messiah and then proceeded to knock over the tables of the money-changers in the Temple. Both of these activities were a direct slap in the face to the Chief Priests, the servants of that traitor Herod.
Of course, no one is going to ask me, seeing as I’m a woman…
I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced. My name is Esther; I was – still am – a disciple of Jesus. Oh, not one of The Twelve, you understand, but I spent a great deal of time following Jesus around and listening to his teachings during his lifetime.
I was a young widow, you see. My husband had been killed in an accident just weeks after we were married. No-one wanted me after that. I was bad luck, they said. Cursed. My choice was to rely on charity or, well…I don’t even want to think about the other alternative.
When I was at my lowest, I met Jesus and the crowd of disciples following him. They willingly made me part of their community, took care of me and even encouraged me to contribute to their work.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Jesus and the crowd of his disciples saved me, and I don’t just mean in a literal, physical way, although they did that too. I didn’t become a disciple of Jesus just for the charity, you see. Jesus touched my heart. He was talking of renewal: of the renewal of the people of God and of individuals. A New Creation.
And, as his followers during his lifetime, we were living that renewal, proclaiming the good news of God’s love and regard for people like me: the poor, the captives and the outcast. We were actually changing peoples’ lives as we told them the good news that they matter to God and that God has a plan for them.
Anyway, enough about me. I was talking about that day in the Temple.
Jesus had knocked over the tables of the money-changers, which enraged the Chief Priests and Elders. You see, the High Priest is the ultimate authority in the Temple and no one has the right to challenge the way things are done in the Temple except the Messiah. Jesus even quoted Isaiah, implying that the Temple was his house.
So, it wasn’t surprising that the Chief Priests wanted to know how it was that Jesus thought he had the right to do these things.
Did Jesus think that he was doing these things by God’s authority? That’s the question I think that they really wanted to ask him. Of course, they didn’t think that Jesus had God’s authority; they seemed to think that Jesus was fooling himself, or maybe even that his authority came from Satan.
So Jesus said to them: I was baptised by John. Where do you think that John got his authority?
Well, obviously, the Chief Priests didn’t think that John’s baptism was from God, but they could hardly say that in front of all of us and in front of the crowd in the Temple! On the other hand, if they acknowledged that John’s baptism of Jesus had been blessed by God’s Spirit, then they would have been acknowledging Jesus’ authority as Messiah. So they were caught between a rock and a hard place.
You could tell that Jesus’ answer made them angry. This upstart rabbi from Galilee, standing against the rightfully appointed Priests of the Lord, claiming in deed if not in word to be the Messiah. This country bumpkin had got the upper hand by answering them – the sophisticated Jerusalem experts – in a superb, probing, rabbinic form.
There was tension in the air. You could cut it with a knife. We all wondered at the time whether Jesus wanted to get himself killed.
But Jesus didn’t stop there! In for a penny, in for a pound, he began to tell a parable about two brothers. For everyone who knew Jesus – whether his supporters or his enemies – it was obvious who the two brothers represented. It’s people like me – and worse, tax collectors and prostitutes, Samaritans and thieves – who are like the first brother. The one who actually went out and worked for the father even though he said that he would not.
Why was it obvious, you ask? Well, because Jesus had spent so much of his time associating with those of us who the religious authorities didn’t consider worthy enough to worship God.
It’s not that Jesus didn’t have time for the so-called holy people. He talked with them, debated with them and he accepted their hospitality. If the authorities had repented, Jesus would have willingly taken them into his Kingdom too. It wasn’t a simple role-reversal that Jesus was after. He wasn’t trying to exclude the priests and elders from the Kingdom of God the way that they excluded us.
It’s just that Jesus also did have time for the rest of us – the discarded people of society. Jesus showed us that we matter too. He’s demonstrated to us that God has faith in us and that God values us. Jesus told us that we too are beloved children of God and that God wants us to be part of his Kingdom too!
Jesus showed us that repentance really is possible for everyone. That a person can never fall so low that God won’t forgive him.
Of course, the second son represented the Chief Priests and Elders. The one who gives every appearance of being his father’s faithful servant but who then doesn’t act on his promise. That was another big slap in the face to the religious authorities. You can see why they began to think about getting Jesus out of the way.
Of course, all that was many years ago. And as the years have gone by, Jesus’ parable about the two brothers comes back to me every now and then.
At the time that Jesus told it, I saw myself clearly as the first brother. I was, after all, a widow, a discarded woman, someone branded cursed and unlucky but Jesus’ disciples took me in and made me part of their family.
As I’ve grown in the Lord, though, I’ve sometimes found myself acting or thinking like the second brother – the one who acted righteous but didn’t actually do his father’s will. I suspect that all people of faith have found themselves in the same position at one time or another.
I’ve also come to see that sometimes the church itself acts like this.
It’s not a comfortable thing to see, of course. But I think that this is the way that the Lord helps both the church and his individual disciples to grow.
God wants us to proclaim his good news both as individual believers and as a church. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, all of humankind is offered the kind of second chance that I was offered. When the church lives and functions at its best, it can offer to the world a tiny glimpse of God’s New Creation.
God’s good news is that, in the New Creation, all people are to be invited to his wedding feast; not just invited guests but also those in the highways and the byways. The rich and the powerful, the poor and the vulnerable, all are invited to the table of the Lord.
Sisters and brothers, I see that you will soon come before the table of the Lord. Before you do, I invite you to give thanks to the Lord that you have been included in his celebration feast. I also invite you to think about how you as a church can proclaim the good news to the world in which you live…the good news of the Lordship of Christ and of God’s extravagant generosity toward all of humankind.
Amen
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Sunday 5 August 2007 - Greed
This sermon is based on Luke 12:13-21
Introduction
(Luke 12: 15) Take care! Be on your guard again all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
This morning’s Gospel reading is often called ‘the Parable of the Rich fool.’ But don’t be fooled by the title; because the parable is not so much a parable against wealth as it is a parable against greed. And, I think, hand-in-hand with greed, we are also being taught some lessons about the sin of self-centredness, the sin of making our own lives and our own welfare the be-all and end-all of our focus.
This reading from Luke 12 speaks right to the heart of our society and our personal lives. Because greed and self-centeredness are not just modern problems. Sinful human nature has ordered ‘worldly’ values around greed since ancient times. The underlying problem is that the world does not always recognise greed as being a bad thing. In fact, worldly society often orders itself around the assumption that greed is either good or amoral.
The Heir
Before we even begin to look at Jesus’ parable, let’s consider the interaction between Jesus and the man who came asking him to settle an inheritance dispute. This problem is hardly unique to the ancient world.
I’ll bet that if I opened up the floor right now, each of us could tell a story about wills and inheritance. Maybe a story like today’s story: where one child or beneficiary is worried that he or she isn’t getting their fair share of the inheritance and they take other beneficiaries to court. Or maybe you’ve heard a story of bitter parents, convinced (rightly or wrongly) that their children were only looking after them because they were worried about getting the inheritance.
This is a story with which we are intimately familiar in our everyday lives. Furthermore, in Jesus’ time as in our own time, there were clear procedures for deciding fairly who gets what. These laws were interpreted and applied by rabbis and that was the capacity in which Jesus was being asked to act. He was being asked to interpret the law – presumably in the man’s favour – so that the man’s interests would be looked after.
But Jesus refuses to do so. He doesn’t want to play the part of the rabbi-judge in this instance. Some of us may wonder why?
Doesn’t God care about fairness and justice? Doesn’t God care about the law? The law that the man wants Jesus to uphold is the law written in the Torah; why would God be indifferent to his own laws? How can God be a God of truth and justice if Jesus is refusing to rule in this man’s favour?
I think that the answer to these questions lies in Jesus’ statement ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’
I suspect that if this man had come to Jesus saying that he’d got more inheritance than his brother and he wanted Jesus to command his brother to take his fair share as the law required, that Jesus would have willingly played the part of a Rabbi-judge.
I think that Jesus declined to play judge in this situation because he knew that the man was motivated by greed and self-interest. Although the man appeared to be invoking justice, the man was not actually motivated by fairness, he was motivated by self-interest.
The Parable
But in this particular story Jesus doesn’t confront the man with a direct judgement of his sin. Instead of admonishing him directly, Jesus provides both him (and us) with the opportunity to change our ways.
The parable that Jesus tells is also quite applicable to the 21st century.
Here is a farmer who has been suddenly blessed with an excellent crop. God has sent a harvest that is far more than he himself can use.
So what does the farmer say to himself? Does he say ‘God has sent me a harvest that far exceeds my needs. Let me see who is hungry and who can use my excess.’? No, he doesn’t.
Rather, he congratulates himself on his talents and ability as a farmer. The harvest is no longer a wonderful blessing with which to bless others. It’s become a storage problem – which, of course, it is if the farmer intends to keep it all to himself.
But, as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. The man’s life is required of him unexpectedly. Not only was the farmer not able to benefit from God’s blessing, he also missed the opportunity to shower blessings on others.
One can only hope that his heirs did not act like the man who asked Jesus to judge between him and his brother!
Challenges: for Christians and Society
I think that there are challenges for individual Christians in this parable as well as challenges for society in general.
At the individual level, it could be too easy for a preacher to sound like he or she is saying that everyone here needs to give more money, time or talents to church. I’m not saying that and I hope it won’t be understood that way.
But here are some pointers to where individual challenges or invitations may lie:
God might be inviting some of us to become increasingly concerned about the rights, interests or welfare of other people around us.
God might be challenging someone else to deepen their awareness that everything – absolutely everything – we have is from God, including our very lives.
God might be inviting some people to be more free with their time or money and to give it away more cheerfully.
God will challenge each of us differently, and I don’t know where he is challenging you.
But I think that greed and self-interest are not just individual issues; they are social issues as well. Of course, these are a lot harder to change!
Here are some thoughts about how this parable applies to our society; you may or may not agree with me.
First, as a society do we question the idea that corporate profits must grow every year? If the population stays roughly the same, where do extra profits come from? Often they profits must come from exploiting the poor, the vulnerable, the gullible or encouraging us to consume things we don’t need.
This parable suggests that perhaps a Godly society would share its profits with those in need.
A second observation. Our whole system of national and international government is still based on the idea that each country looks after its own economic and political interests. This may strike many of us as the safest and most realistic way to govern in a hostile world, but it’s hardly in line with the Great Commandment. This is not the way the Kingdom of God is to be governed.
If we are hoping and praying for the Kingdom of God to come on earth as it is in heaven, then we need to understand that obeying God is not just a matter of individual morality. We need to understand that God wants us to do more than say ‘I’m only responsible for what I do, I can’t have an influence on the rest of society.’
Equally, we are not free to say that sin is mainly a social problem that has nothing to do with individuals changing their hearts and behaviour patterns. God calls the world and its people to repentance and conversion at both an individual level and a social level.
The Good News
So where is the good news in this stew of human greed and self-interest which has not improved at all since Jesus told his parable?
(1) Well, for a start, the good news is that God is not a human being! The good news is that God is not greedy or self-interested in the human sense of the concept. All of God’s actions toward his creation are generous and life-giving and are concerned with the well-being of his creation. When we use our free will to sin against God, against other people or against God’s creation, God works to restore and repair what our sin has destroyed.
(2) The good news is that God blesses us every day with many blessings. We know as a fact that God blesses us daily and we also grow in our ability to become conscious of these blessings on a daily basis as we come to know the Lord better.
(3) The good news is that God has created each one of us to be agents and messengers of his blessings in this world we inhabit. The Greek word for ‘angels’ means ‘messengers’; so, in a very real sense, we are called to be angels to other people. The more expansive and generous our spirits become and the more we give God’s gifts away, the more we become the people that God created us to be and the more we grow in holiness.
(4) And finally, the good news is that God’s table is always laid for us. His door is always open for us; the door is never shut and it’s never locked. Repentance is always possible, conversion is always possible, forgiveness is always possible. We are always invited to the table of the Lord and God wants us to invite as many guests as we can.
As we come to the Lord’s Table in a few minutes, may our hearts expand to embrace all the love that God wants to give us and may we find freedom and joy as we learn to give that love away to others. Amen
Introduction
(Luke 12: 15) Take care! Be on your guard again all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
This morning’s Gospel reading is often called ‘the Parable of the Rich fool.’ But don’t be fooled by the title; because the parable is not so much a parable against wealth as it is a parable against greed. And, I think, hand-in-hand with greed, we are also being taught some lessons about the sin of self-centredness, the sin of making our own lives and our own welfare the be-all and end-all of our focus.
This reading from Luke 12 speaks right to the heart of our society and our personal lives. Because greed and self-centeredness are not just modern problems. Sinful human nature has ordered ‘worldly’ values around greed since ancient times. The underlying problem is that the world does not always recognise greed as being a bad thing. In fact, worldly society often orders itself around the assumption that greed is either good or amoral.
The Heir
Before we even begin to look at Jesus’ parable, let’s consider the interaction between Jesus and the man who came asking him to settle an inheritance dispute. This problem is hardly unique to the ancient world.
I’ll bet that if I opened up the floor right now, each of us could tell a story about wills and inheritance. Maybe a story like today’s story: where one child or beneficiary is worried that he or she isn’t getting their fair share of the inheritance and they take other beneficiaries to court. Or maybe you’ve heard a story of bitter parents, convinced (rightly or wrongly) that their children were only looking after them because they were worried about getting the inheritance.
This is a story with which we are intimately familiar in our everyday lives. Furthermore, in Jesus’ time as in our own time, there were clear procedures for deciding fairly who gets what. These laws were interpreted and applied by rabbis and that was the capacity in which Jesus was being asked to act. He was being asked to interpret the law – presumably in the man’s favour – so that the man’s interests would be looked after.
But Jesus refuses to do so. He doesn’t want to play the part of the rabbi-judge in this instance. Some of us may wonder why?
Doesn’t God care about fairness and justice? Doesn’t God care about the law? The law that the man wants Jesus to uphold is the law written in the Torah; why would God be indifferent to his own laws? How can God be a God of truth and justice if Jesus is refusing to rule in this man’s favour?
I think that the answer to these questions lies in Jesus’ statement ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’
I suspect that if this man had come to Jesus saying that he’d got more inheritance than his brother and he wanted Jesus to command his brother to take his fair share as the law required, that Jesus would have willingly played the part of a Rabbi-judge.
I think that Jesus declined to play judge in this situation because he knew that the man was motivated by greed and self-interest. Although the man appeared to be invoking justice, the man was not actually motivated by fairness, he was motivated by self-interest.
The Parable
But in this particular story Jesus doesn’t confront the man with a direct judgement of his sin. Instead of admonishing him directly, Jesus provides both him (and us) with the opportunity to change our ways.
The parable that Jesus tells is also quite applicable to the 21st century.
Here is a farmer who has been suddenly blessed with an excellent crop. God has sent a harvest that is far more than he himself can use.
So what does the farmer say to himself? Does he say ‘God has sent me a harvest that far exceeds my needs. Let me see who is hungry and who can use my excess.’? No, he doesn’t.
Rather, he congratulates himself on his talents and ability as a farmer. The harvest is no longer a wonderful blessing with which to bless others. It’s become a storage problem – which, of course, it is if the farmer intends to keep it all to himself.
But, as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. The man’s life is required of him unexpectedly. Not only was the farmer not able to benefit from God’s blessing, he also missed the opportunity to shower blessings on others.
One can only hope that his heirs did not act like the man who asked Jesus to judge between him and his brother!
Challenges: for Christians and Society
I think that there are challenges for individual Christians in this parable as well as challenges for society in general.
At the individual level, it could be too easy for a preacher to sound like he or she is saying that everyone here needs to give more money, time or talents to church. I’m not saying that and I hope it won’t be understood that way.
But here are some pointers to where individual challenges or invitations may lie:
God might be inviting some of us to become increasingly concerned about the rights, interests or welfare of other people around us.
God might be challenging someone else to deepen their awareness that everything – absolutely everything – we have is from God, including our very lives.
God might be inviting some people to be more free with their time or money and to give it away more cheerfully.
God will challenge each of us differently, and I don’t know where he is challenging you.
But I think that greed and self-interest are not just individual issues; they are social issues as well. Of course, these are a lot harder to change!
Here are some thoughts about how this parable applies to our society; you may or may not agree with me.
First, as a society do we question the idea that corporate profits must grow every year? If the population stays roughly the same, where do extra profits come from? Often they profits must come from exploiting the poor, the vulnerable, the gullible or encouraging us to consume things we don’t need.
This parable suggests that perhaps a Godly society would share its profits with those in need.
A second observation. Our whole system of national and international government is still based on the idea that each country looks after its own economic and political interests. This may strike many of us as the safest and most realistic way to govern in a hostile world, but it’s hardly in line with the Great Commandment. This is not the way the Kingdom of God is to be governed.
If we are hoping and praying for the Kingdom of God to come on earth as it is in heaven, then we need to understand that obeying God is not just a matter of individual morality. We need to understand that God wants us to do more than say ‘I’m only responsible for what I do, I can’t have an influence on the rest of society.’
Equally, we are not free to say that sin is mainly a social problem that has nothing to do with individuals changing their hearts and behaviour patterns. God calls the world and its people to repentance and conversion at both an individual level and a social level.
The Good News
So where is the good news in this stew of human greed and self-interest which has not improved at all since Jesus told his parable?
(1) Well, for a start, the good news is that God is not a human being! The good news is that God is not greedy or self-interested in the human sense of the concept. All of God’s actions toward his creation are generous and life-giving and are concerned with the well-being of his creation. When we use our free will to sin against God, against other people or against God’s creation, God works to restore and repair what our sin has destroyed.
(2) The good news is that God blesses us every day with many blessings. We know as a fact that God blesses us daily and we also grow in our ability to become conscious of these blessings on a daily basis as we come to know the Lord better.
(3) The good news is that God has created each one of us to be agents and messengers of his blessings in this world we inhabit. The Greek word for ‘angels’ means ‘messengers’; so, in a very real sense, we are called to be angels to other people. The more expansive and generous our spirits become and the more we give God’s gifts away, the more we become the people that God created us to be and the more we grow in holiness.
(4) And finally, the good news is that God’s table is always laid for us. His door is always open for us; the door is never shut and it’s never locked. Repentance is always possible, conversion is always possible, forgiveness is always possible. We are always invited to the table of the Lord and God wants us to invite as many guests as we can.
As we come to the Lord’s Table in a few minutes, may our hearts expand to embrace all the love that God wants to give us and may we find freedom and joy as we learn to give that love away to others. Amen
Sunday, July 29, 2007
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
===
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!
===
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!
Monday, June 18, 2007
Sunday 17 June - Storm at Sea
This sermon is based on: Mark 4:35-41
==
Introduction
Mark 4:37: ‘Suddenly a strong wind blew up, and the waves began to spill over into the boat, so that it was about to fill with water.’
A couple of years ago a friend of mine became pregnant. Sarah – which is not her real name – was a convert to Judaism. And so, as a baby-gift I gave her a book called ‘How to be a Jewish Parent’
Some time later Sarah remarked to me that the book had revealed to her something she didn’t know. That was the three things that Rabbinic law (4th century) requires a Jewish parent to teach their child.
The first thing is religious, it’s something we share with the Jewish people and it’s pretty easy to guess. The Torah – the first five books of the Old Testament
The second thing is quite a bit more difficult to guess. It’s not religious. It’s very practical. And it’s something people need in order to make a living. Under Rabbinic law, Jewish parents have to teach their children a trade
The third thing is very difficult to guess. And, indeed, you might even think it’s a very odd thing. Jewish parents have to teach their children how to swim.
Here is what a modern rabbi had to say about the requirement to teach one’s children to swim:
What I think is interesting about this requirement to teach your children to swim is the fact that, in the tradition of the early Jewish people, the sea represented unrestrained chaos. The sea represented the powers of evil and the powers of darkness.
This would have been the way that the Evangelist Mark and the Jewish readers of his Gospel would have regarded the sea – as something dangerous, as the home territory of the forces of evil and destruction. But Mark’s Jewish readers would most likely have pictured hell as the sea at night: cold, dark, unpredictably dangerous and able to overwhelm a small fishing boat at a moment’s notice.
So when we consider the story of Jesus calming the storm, we can begin to see that this scene is very troubling. First, it is troubling from the point of view of what happens in the story. Second, it is troubling from the point of view of the disciples’ faith.
The Trouble with the Story
So what is troubling about the story itself? Remember first of all that some of the disciples were fishermen who were used to handling boats. They knew the Sea of Galilee intimately and they could handle an every-day rough sea.
But the storm in this story is no every-day rough sea. The disciples who were experienced boatmen were afraid for their lives. They were more than afraid, they were in a panic.
We also know that it was no every-day rough sea because it was a storm at night. Night-time storms are highly unusual on the Sea of Galilee – dare we say unnatural. Because it is the wind conditions that are caused by the heating of the atmosphere during the day time that are the usual causes of a storm on Galilee.
So, this unnatural storm whips up out of no-where, in the middle of the night when a storm should not be happening and professional sailors are terrified for their very lives
Since we now know that the sea represents the forces of evil and the forces of darkness to Mark and his readers, we can see that this is a situation where Jesus and the disciples are being viciously attacked by the forces of evil and the disciples are pretty convinced that the forces of evil are about to win!
‘Have you still no faith?’
And then, miracle of miracles, Jesus wakes and with one word – it’s one word in the Greek text – the storm ceases at his command. And how do the disciples react? Now they are scared of Jesus!
‘Have you still no faith?’
So, I think the story line itself is very troubling: First, the forces of chaos have reared their ugly heads with full force. Secondly, when Jesus shows that even the forces of chaos bow to his command, the disciples regard him as an object of fear.
The Trouble with the Disciples’ Faith
So what’s the trouble with the disciples’ faith?
That seems to be the theme of Mark’s Gospel, where the question ‘Have you still no faith?’ happens over and over again throughout the Gospel. No matter how long they have walked with Jesus as his disciples, no matter what Jesus has said to them, no matter what manner of miracle he performs, Mark portrays the disciples as never quite ‘getting it’ about Jesus.
And, truth be told, that’s one of the things I actually like about Mark’s Gospel – that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime never quite ‘got it’ until – as Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles – they received the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ ascension.
Because being a Christian – having Christian faith – isn’t primarily about ‘getting it’ about Jesus. Being a Christian – Christian faith – is primarily about trust in God. It’s about trust in the Father, trust in the Son and trust in the Holy Spirit.
I often say that Christian faith is the faith to throw yourself out of the window of a burning building knowing that your beloved will catch you. But you could also say that Christian faith is the faith to remain in the fishing boat with your beloved asleep whilst the forces of death and evil rage around you.
Once you throw yourself out of a burning building, once you are in the middle of a stormy sea in a small fishing boat – you are committed. There ain’t gonna be no changing your mind in either of those situations. This is a faith where your actions speak for themselves – louder than words. This is real trust.
But the disciples’ faith is still in the beginning stages – and that’s OK, by the way – because everyone has to start at the beginning. The disciples, who are professionals with respect to the sea, want Jesus to display the same sense of urgency that they have about the sea.
In our story, the Mark says that a great wind blew up and then later, when Jesus calmed the storm that there was a great calm. The disciples wanted Jesus to have great urgency, but Jesus was actually inviting them to have great calm. Through faith, the Triune God who created the sea out of chaos, invites us to have a great calm, he invites us to have a peace that passes all human understanding through faith in his power and his purposes
But many times, we don’t want to have God’s great peace. Many times, we want God to have our great urgency.
It seems to me that this was what the disciples were doing: Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth. Jesus, as he demonstrates in this story, has authority over the very fabric of creation and he has authority over the forces of evil. But the disciples were not content with Jesus’ mere presence among them. The disciples were in a great panic and they wanted Jesus up and panicking too. Instead, they could have traded their great panic for the great peace that deep faith can offer.
The disciples accuse Jesus of not caring about their fate. I wonder if you recognise this attitude too. I know I do: ‘God, I’m beginning to wonder if you care about the problems I have because I think if you did that you’d do things my way.’
Sigh. ‘Have you still no faith?’
Conclusion
This story is difficult. I think it presents us with questions and hard challenges.
The story doesn’t even attempt to give an answer as to why God permits the forces of evil and chaos to rise up in our lives, the story only assures us that, through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, that the Triune God has dominion over the forces of evil.
The story challenges us to trust deeply in God, even if he doesn’t seem to be acting in a way that we would like him to act. The story gives us no reasons for the storm, it only gives us the assurance that God is in control.
The story also tells us that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime faced the same challenges of faith that we do. So it’s OK to come into God’s presence with our doubts and it’s OK to pray loudly to God when we are in a panic.
But if we are looking for an answer, don’t expect God’s answer to be ‘OK, I’ll join you in your great fear.’ Expect God’s answer to be ‘I offer you my great peace’.
Have faith in God, have Faith in God’s peace.
Let us pray:
* From InterfaithFamily.com. http://www.interfaithfamily.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ekLSK5MLIrG&b=297381&ct=2010081.
** From Common Worship Daily Prayer: http://cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/daily/psalter/psalms101to118.html
==
Introduction
Mark 4:37: ‘Suddenly a strong wind blew up, and the waves began to spill over into the boat, so that it was about to fill with water.’
A couple of years ago a friend of mine became pregnant. Sarah – which is not her real name – was a convert to Judaism. And so, as a baby-gift I gave her a book called ‘How to be a Jewish Parent’
Some time later Sarah remarked to me that the book had revealed to her something she didn’t know. That was the three things that Rabbinic law (4th century) requires a Jewish parent to teach their child.
The first thing is religious, it’s something we share with the Jewish people and it’s pretty easy to guess. The Torah – the first five books of the Old Testament
The second thing is quite a bit more difficult to guess. It’s not religious. It’s very practical. And it’s something people need in order to make a living. Under Rabbinic law, Jewish parents have to teach their children a trade
The third thing is very difficult to guess. And, indeed, you might even think it’s a very odd thing. Jewish parents have to teach their children how to swim.
Here is what a modern rabbi had to say about the requirement to teach one’s children to swim:
Learning how to swim is about basic life skills. It is parents' obligation to teach their children how to recognize danger and how to avoid or overcome it. This may include conversations about not putting your hand on the stove, and continues with how to have a successful and respectful argument. "Learning to swim" is teaching about vision and limits and risk taking. It also includes lessons on knowing where the shore is and how to return to a place of safety in order to venture out again on another day.*
What I think is interesting about this requirement to teach your children to swim is the fact that, in the tradition of the early Jewish people, the sea represented unrestrained chaos. The sea represented the powers of evil and the powers of darkness.
This would have been the way that the Evangelist Mark and the Jewish readers of his Gospel would have regarded the sea – as something dangerous, as the home territory of the forces of evil and destruction. But Mark’s Jewish readers would most likely have pictured hell as the sea at night: cold, dark, unpredictably dangerous and able to overwhelm a small fishing boat at a moment’s notice.
So when we consider the story of Jesus calming the storm, we can begin to see that this scene is very troubling. First, it is troubling from the point of view of what happens in the story. Second, it is troubling from the point of view of the disciples’ faith.
The Trouble with the Story
So what is troubling about the story itself? Remember first of all that some of the disciples were fishermen who were used to handling boats. They knew the Sea of Galilee intimately and they could handle an every-day rough sea.
But the storm in this story is no every-day rough sea. The disciples who were experienced boatmen were afraid for their lives. They were more than afraid, they were in a panic.
We also know that it was no every-day rough sea because it was a storm at night. Night-time storms are highly unusual on the Sea of Galilee – dare we say unnatural. Because it is the wind conditions that are caused by the heating of the atmosphere during the day time that are the usual causes of a storm on Galilee.
So, this unnatural storm whips up out of no-where, in the middle of the night when a storm should not be happening and professional sailors are terrified for their very lives
Since we now know that the sea represents the forces of evil and the forces of darkness to Mark and his readers, we can see that this is a situation where Jesus and the disciples are being viciously attacked by the forces of evil and the disciples are pretty convinced that the forces of evil are about to win!
‘Have you still no faith?’
And then, miracle of miracles, Jesus wakes and with one word – it’s one word in the Greek text – the storm ceases at his command. And how do the disciples react? Now they are scared of Jesus!
‘Have you still no faith?’
So, I think the story line itself is very troubling: First, the forces of chaos have reared their ugly heads with full force. Secondly, when Jesus shows that even the forces of chaos bow to his command, the disciples regard him as an object of fear.
The Trouble with the Disciples’ Faith
So what’s the trouble with the disciples’ faith?
That seems to be the theme of Mark’s Gospel, where the question ‘Have you still no faith?’ happens over and over again throughout the Gospel. No matter how long they have walked with Jesus as his disciples, no matter what Jesus has said to them, no matter what manner of miracle he performs, Mark portrays the disciples as never quite ‘getting it’ about Jesus.
And, truth be told, that’s one of the things I actually like about Mark’s Gospel – that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime never quite ‘got it’ until – as Luke tells us in the Acts of the Apostles – they received the Holy Spirit after Jesus’ ascension.
Because being a Christian – having Christian faith – isn’t primarily about ‘getting it’ about Jesus. Being a Christian – Christian faith – is primarily about trust in God. It’s about trust in the Father, trust in the Son and trust in the Holy Spirit.
I often say that Christian faith is the faith to throw yourself out of the window of a burning building knowing that your beloved will catch you. But you could also say that Christian faith is the faith to remain in the fishing boat with your beloved asleep whilst the forces of death and evil rage around you.
Once you throw yourself out of a burning building, once you are in the middle of a stormy sea in a small fishing boat – you are committed. There ain’t gonna be no changing your mind in either of those situations. This is a faith where your actions speak for themselves – louder than words. This is real trust.
But the disciples’ faith is still in the beginning stages – and that’s OK, by the way – because everyone has to start at the beginning. The disciples, who are professionals with respect to the sea, want Jesus to display the same sense of urgency that they have about the sea.
In our story, the Mark says that a great wind blew up and then later, when Jesus calmed the storm that there was a great calm. The disciples wanted Jesus to have great urgency, but Jesus was actually inviting them to have great calm. Through faith, the Triune God who created the sea out of chaos, invites us to have a great calm, he invites us to have a peace that passes all human understanding through faith in his power and his purposes
But many times, we don’t want to have God’s great peace. Many times, we want God to have our great urgency.
It seems to me that this was what the disciples were doing: Jesus is the Lord of heaven and earth. Jesus, as he demonstrates in this story, has authority over the very fabric of creation and he has authority over the forces of evil. But the disciples were not content with Jesus’ mere presence among them. The disciples were in a great panic and they wanted Jesus up and panicking too. Instead, they could have traded their great panic for the great peace that deep faith can offer.
The disciples accuse Jesus of not caring about their fate. I wonder if you recognise this attitude too. I know I do: ‘God, I’m beginning to wonder if you care about the problems I have because I think if you did that you’d do things my way.’
Sigh. ‘Have you still no faith?’
Conclusion
This story is difficult. I think it presents us with questions and hard challenges.
The story doesn’t even attempt to give an answer as to why God permits the forces of evil and chaos to rise up in our lives, the story only assures us that, through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, that the Triune God has dominion over the forces of evil.
The story challenges us to trust deeply in God, even if he doesn’t seem to be acting in a way that we would like him to act. The story gives us no reasons for the storm, it only gives us the assurance that God is in control.
The story also tells us that the twelve men who were closest to Jesus during his lifetime faced the same challenges of faith that we do. So it’s OK to come into God’s presence with our doubts and it’s OK to pray loudly to God when we are in a panic.
But if we are looking for an answer, don’t expect God’s answer to be ‘OK, I’ll join you in your great fear.’ Expect God’s answer to be ‘I offer you my great peace’.
Have faith in God, have Faith in God’s peace.
Let us pray:
O living Christ, rescue us from foolish passion and still the storms of our self-will; and, as you are our anchor in this life, so bring us to the haven you have prepared for us; for your mercy’s sake. Amen **---
* From InterfaithFamily.com. http://www.interfaithfamily.com/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=ekLSK5MLIrG&b=297381&ct=2010081.
** From Common Worship Daily Prayer: http://cofe.anglican.org/worship/liturgy/commonworship/texts/daily/psalter/psalms101to118.html
Sunday 17 June - Law, Faith and Grace
This sermon is based on: Galatians 2:15-21 and Luke 7:36 – 50.
===
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.
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
---
* Galatians: Interpretation, a bible commentary for teaching and preaching by Charles B. Cousar. John Knox Press, Louisville, 1982. p. 55.
===
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
---
* Galatians: Interpretation, a bible commentary for teaching and preaching by Charles B. Cousar. John Knox Press, Louisville, 1982. p. 55.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Sunday 3 June 2007 - Trinity Sunday
The sermon below is a mediation on how Christians experience a Trinitarian God. We read the assigned lectionary readings for the day, but this sermon is thematic.
===
Introduction
Today is Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday is an unusual celebration in the life of the Church because it is the only celebration that we have which observes a doctrine rather than an event.
The concept of God as ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ is in the bible, but no-where does the bible actually use the word ‘Trinity’ or ‘Triune’. In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity – this whole idea of God being three persons in one divine being – wasn’t ratified as an official belief of the Christian Church until the Council of Nicea in 325. To make matters worse, it’s a doctrine that’s not terribly easy to understand or to express. Almost any attempt to talk about the Trinity results some sort of technical heresy.
Here’s a quotation, from John Wesley speaking about The Trinity: ‘Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man that can comprehend the triune God!’
Wesley says something that I suspect that most of us agree with: that no matter what scripture tells us, what the church tells us or even what our own experience of God tells us, we are aware that, as human beings, we will never fully grasp all that God is until we meet with him face to face.
So this morning, rather than talking about doctrines and ideas, I simply want to meditate on how God’s faithful people experience him. And I want to suggest that the doctrine of the Trinity has something to do with relationships being at the very core of who God is.
God the Creator
First of all, I want to think about the fact that God the Creator, the first person of the Trinity, created us to be in relationship with him and with other people.
If you go back to Genesis, the biblical stories of human creation tell us that the first human beings lived not only in relationship with each other, but also in direct relationship with God and with the natural world.
We are told that God made human beings in his own image. What does this mean? We have the ability to think, to reason, to tell right from wrong as well as the ability to choose to do what is right.
As part of our ability to choose to do what is right, we have been given the ability to love other people. This is how God the Creator, the first person of the Trinity, made us: to be creatures who are in relationship with each other and with God.
I don’t think it’s surprising that we call the first person of the Trinity ‘Father’, and there are even a handful of maternal images of God as mother in the bible. In the same way that the parents give life to a new-born baby, so too are we dependant on God for our very existence. In a very real sense, God is our Father and our Mother.
And parental love is most often experienced as a love that is both determined and unconditional. Like a good parent, the love of God our Father and creator is offered to us no matter what we do. We have the freedom to reject God’s love but, like the Father of the prodigal, God will never withdraw his offer of love from us.
The first person of the Trinity will never stop being our Father or our Mother. As the relational creator God, the Father may correct us, the Father may let us experience the consequences of our actions, but he will always seek to guide us so that we learn from our mistakes and grow into more mature human beings.
God the Redeemer
Of course, it’s not always easy being a human being. And the God who Christians worship is not just a God who is ‘out there’ and who is completely unknowable.
Indeed, God’s desire for us to know him and what he is like was such that he came to live among us. The second person of the Trinity became human and as Christians we have heard all the stories: the stories of his birth, his mission and his death.
Jesus Christ came among us. He trusted himself as a helpless baby to two young inexperienced parents. He placed himself in human hands and made himself vulnerable in relationship with human beings in many ways.
Jesus also said that if we have seen him, we have seen the Father. Jesus showed us God’s way to live, but he taught by example as well as by words.
Jesus didn’t just call us to be agents of healing in our relationships, he went around healing people. He didn’t just tell us that the last shall be first, he went into the homes of prostitutes and extortionists and he accepted their hospitality. He didn’t just say ‘blessed are the peacemakers’, he refused to be the revolutionary, conquering hero Messiah that the people wanted.
Jesus didn’t just command us to forgive. He forgave those who he encountered during his ministry and he forgave all of those who nailed him to the cross. He didn’t just proclaim the resurrection, he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples after his resurrection.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of people who come to the Lord come to know him because of a relationship they form with other Christians. The Apostles and Jesus’ wider group of followers and disciples were privileged to know him first hand, and the universal Church of believers passes down the knowledge of the love of God to other people through their relationships and by the example of the way they live.
God the Sustainer
But, important as relationships are with our fellow Christians, human interaction is not the only way in which we are born in faith and by which we grow in faith.
The Spirit of God, the Third person of the Trinity, lives in the lives of all who are born again. Jesus himself said that he had to go away in order for the Holy Spirit to come among us. If the Father is ‘God beyond us’ and the Jesus ‘God among us’, the Spirit is ‘God within us’.
We are told that the Holy Spirit dwells inside us as believers. The Spirit dwells within individuals believers, but is also active and present in the universal Church of God.
I don’t know about you, but I think the Holy Spirit is probably the most difficult person of the Trinity to describe in words, yet the Spirit is also the person of the Trinity who we most directly experience. The Holy Spirit is not an abstract thing like the prevailing mood or atmosphere of a party or gathering. For those of us who did not have the opportunity to know Jesus personally, the Spirit is God’s real and ongoing relationship with humankind.
God promises that the Spirit dwells within all of us who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and this is a trustworthy fact, a promise that we can hold on to even during the times of our lives when we don’t think we can feel the Spirit. But the working of Spirit, like all that God does, is not confined to believers. Because of our own ongoing relationship with God through prayer and study enabled by Spirit, we can learn to recognise God’s movements in the world and discern where he is working.
Conclusion
Today is Trinity Sunday. A Sunday that is devoted to the celebration of a doctrine.
But, properly speaking, I think it’s a Sunday devoted to mediation on our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us.
It is not doctrine that brings to us faith but relationship and experience, with God and with other Christians.
I’d like to close my meditation this morning by reading to you from Ephesians, Chapter 3:14-21. Close your eyes, if you’d like to, and listen to these words from Holy Scripture.
Ephesians 3:14-21
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
===
Introduction
Today is Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday is an unusual celebration in the life of the Church because it is the only celebration that we have which observes a doctrine rather than an event.
The concept of God as ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ is in the bible, but no-where does the bible actually use the word ‘Trinity’ or ‘Triune’. In fact, the doctrine of the Trinity – this whole idea of God being three persons in one divine being – wasn’t ratified as an official belief of the Christian Church until the Council of Nicea in 325. To make matters worse, it’s a doctrine that’s not terribly easy to understand or to express. Almost any attempt to talk about the Trinity results some sort of technical heresy.
Here’s a quotation, from John Wesley speaking about The Trinity: ‘Bring me a worm that can comprehend a man, and then I will show you a man that can comprehend the triune God!’
Wesley says something that I suspect that most of us agree with: that no matter what scripture tells us, what the church tells us or even what our own experience of God tells us, we are aware that, as human beings, we will never fully grasp all that God is until we meet with him face to face.
So this morning, rather than talking about doctrines and ideas, I simply want to meditate on how God’s faithful people experience him. And I want to suggest that the doctrine of the Trinity has something to do with relationships being at the very core of who God is.
God the Creator
First of all, I want to think about the fact that God the Creator, the first person of the Trinity, created us to be in relationship with him and with other people.
If you go back to Genesis, the biblical stories of human creation tell us that the first human beings lived not only in relationship with each other, but also in direct relationship with God and with the natural world.
We are told that God made human beings in his own image. What does this mean? We have the ability to think, to reason, to tell right from wrong as well as the ability to choose to do what is right.
As part of our ability to choose to do what is right, we have been given the ability to love other people. This is how God the Creator, the first person of the Trinity, made us: to be creatures who are in relationship with each other and with God.
I don’t think it’s surprising that we call the first person of the Trinity ‘Father’, and there are even a handful of maternal images of God as mother in the bible. In the same way that the parents give life to a new-born baby, so too are we dependant on God for our very existence. In a very real sense, God is our Father and our Mother.
And parental love is most often experienced as a love that is both determined and unconditional. Like a good parent, the love of God our Father and creator is offered to us no matter what we do. We have the freedom to reject God’s love but, like the Father of the prodigal, God will never withdraw his offer of love from us.
The first person of the Trinity will never stop being our Father or our Mother. As the relational creator God, the Father may correct us, the Father may let us experience the consequences of our actions, but he will always seek to guide us so that we learn from our mistakes and grow into more mature human beings.
God the Redeemer
Of course, it’s not always easy being a human being. And the God who Christians worship is not just a God who is ‘out there’ and who is completely unknowable.
Indeed, God’s desire for us to know him and what he is like was such that he came to live among us. The second person of the Trinity became human and as Christians we have heard all the stories: the stories of his birth, his mission and his death.
Jesus Christ came among us. He trusted himself as a helpless baby to two young inexperienced parents. He placed himself in human hands and made himself vulnerable in relationship with human beings in many ways.
Jesus also said that if we have seen him, we have seen the Father. Jesus showed us God’s way to live, but he taught by example as well as by words.
Jesus didn’t just call us to be agents of healing in our relationships, he went around healing people. He didn’t just tell us that the last shall be first, he went into the homes of prostitutes and extortionists and he accepted their hospitality. He didn’t just say ‘blessed are the peacemakers’, he refused to be the revolutionary, conquering hero Messiah that the people wanted.
Jesus didn’t just command us to forgive. He forgave those who he encountered during his ministry and he forgave all of those who nailed him to the cross. He didn’t just proclaim the resurrection, he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples after his resurrection.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of people who come to the Lord come to know him because of a relationship they form with other Christians. The Apostles and Jesus’ wider group of followers and disciples were privileged to know him first hand, and the universal Church of believers passes down the knowledge of the love of God to other people through their relationships and by the example of the way they live.
God the Sustainer
But, important as relationships are with our fellow Christians, human interaction is not the only way in which we are born in faith and by which we grow in faith.
The Spirit of God, the Third person of the Trinity, lives in the lives of all who are born again. Jesus himself said that he had to go away in order for the Holy Spirit to come among us. If the Father is ‘God beyond us’ and the Jesus ‘God among us’, the Spirit is ‘God within us’.
We are told that the Holy Spirit dwells inside us as believers. The Spirit dwells within individuals believers, but is also active and present in the universal Church of God.
I don’t know about you, but I think the Holy Spirit is probably the most difficult person of the Trinity to describe in words, yet the Spirit is also the person of the Trinity who we most directly experience. The Holy Spirit is not an abstract thing like the prevailing mood or atmosphere of a party or gathering. For those of us who did not have the opportunity to know Jesus personally, the Spirit is God’s real and ongoing relationship with humankind.
God promises that the Spirit dwells within all of us who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and this is a trustworthy fact, a promise that we can hold on to even during the times of our lives when we don’t think we can feel the Spirit. But the working of Spirit, like all that God does, is not confined to believers. Because of our own ongoing relationship with God through prayer and study enabled by Spirit, we can learn to recognise God’s movements in the world and discern where he is working.
Conclusion
Today is Trinity Sunday. A Sunday that is devoted to the celebration of a doctrine.
But, properly speaking, I think it’s a Sunday devoted to mediation on our relationship with God and God’s relationship with us.
It is not doctrine that brings to us faith but relationship and experience, with God and with other Christians.
I’d like to close my meditation this morning by reading to you from Ephesians, Chapter 3:14-21. Close your eyes, if you’d like to, and listen to these words from Holy Scripture.
Ephesians 3:14-21
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sunday 27 Mary 2007 - Baptismal Sermon for Pentecost
This sermon is based on Acts 2:1:21. It is a sermon for an infant baptism delivered on Pentecost Sunday to a mixed group of Christians and non-Christians.
During the sermon, I referred to the child, her parents and the godparents by name. Here in the sermon, I have used initials except for the baby's mother and father as the baby and her father have the same initial.
===
Introduction
It’s a real joy and a pleasure to celebrate with E and her family on the occasion of her baptism.
The church family here at B Methodist church is pleased that E and her mum have been worshipping with us. (You can see that E has already made her mark on our church, as she’s been showing rather too much interest in the pulpit for her mum’s liking. We’ve decided that she’ll need to learn to talk – and walk! – first before we allow her up there.)
I said earlier that E’s baptism is about two things. It’s about E being baptised into the Church of Christ. And it’s about God’s love for E. So I would like to talk about these two things this morning.
Relationships
First of all, I want to talk about the Church of Christ, the universal Christian Church.
I also said earlier that today is a very special day for E to be received into the Christian Church. Because today is Pentecost and on Pentecost, we celebrate the birthday of the Church. You heard the birthday story earlier. It’s a strange story about tongues of flames descending on a crowd and about people speaking together in foreign languages that they had never learned.
But what’s this rather odd story got to do with the Church? I want to suggest one fairly simple idea for our consideration this morning: That relationships are very important to God. I want to suggest that relationships are so important to God that God breathed his holy breath of life into the Church by founding it in relationship. Relationship with God and relationship with our fellow human beings.
Now I don’t really think that I need to ‘preach’ about the importance of relationships. A good many of you are here today because you are in relationship with E and Mum and Dad. Whether by blood relationship or by friendship, your lives have touched them and been touched by them in some way. And there is also the Church community here at B Methodist Church; As a regular attender, E has also touched our lives.
Illustration
I’d like to you imagine that we had a very, very long piece of magical string. And imagine that this string could become as long or as short as we wanted it to be and that it was infinitely flexible and could divide as many times as it needed to. Like a virtual reality drawing tool.
Now imagine that we took one end of this string and gave it to E and then E gave another end to each person here who she knows. Each of those people, in turn, would extend their strings to those people here who know them, and so on, until everyone was connected by this magical string to every other person here who they know.
Think of how many people here today who you know and you can begin to understand why the string needs to be magical. I might be mistaken, but I think everyone would find that they were connected to this piece of string. And if someone decided to change their seat or to leave, then the shape of our magical string would change, and that change would be felt in some way by everyone here.
That’s how it is with relationships: everything we do has an effect on others, either directly or indirectly.
But the Christian Church is not just about relationships between human beings, it’s also about relationships between individual human beings and God. And it’s also about God’s relationship with the community of Christians. Imagine that each one of us also has a string that connects us with God.
When we deliberately gather together as Christians to pray and to worship, we are gathering together in acknowledgment of our connection to God. In these deliberate acts of prayer and worship, the Christian Church calls upon the power of the Spirit of the Triune God to help us to grow to become the people who God calls us to be: a people who are rooted and grounded in love.
This is the church into which E has been welcomed and baptised this morning.
The Church which was founded in the Holy Spirit of the Triune God and which strives to be faithful to that Spirit. Although today E is not old enough to intellectually work out what being part of a Christian Community means for her, she is nonetheless part of that community.
Because baptism was never about just me and God. Baptism – by water and by the Holy Spirit – was always about community.
As the old song goes: ‘love isn’t love until you give it away’. Love is about relating to other people; you can’t give love to yourself.
Love
And so that brings us to ‘love’. We said that, in addition to making E part of the Christian Church, that her baptism proclaims God’s love for her.
The bible talks about a God who loves us like children. It often refers to God as our Father but there are also images of God as a mother. It is in these parental images that we can get a hint of God’s love for each one of us.
Mum and Dad have very literally committed the rest of their lives to being in relationship with E and seeking the very best for her. They will devote all of their waking hours to her during her first years, and a considerable amount of emotion, attention, time, money and devotion after that. No matter what she does, they will always be her parents and always seek what is best for her.
This is with this parental tenacity that God loves each one of us. Although we do have the freedom to decide not to speak to God, there is nothing that we can do that will make God stop offering us his parental love. God’s love will always seek to bring us into right relationship with him and into right relationship with other people. God will always seek to do right by us.
In baptising E, we did not bring her into this love of God for the first time, we simply acknowledged together as a Christian family the love of God which already existed for her before she was even born.
Conclusion
Today is Pentecost, the Church’s birthday. It is the day when the Church celebrates her relationship with God. And it is the day when Christians celebrate their relationship with each other.
Today of all days, we remember these invisible strings that connect us, in love, with God, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and with all of humankind. We remember that relationships are fundamental to our humanity and to our spirituality. And we remember that love, the commitment to the well-being of others, is the stuff by which good relationships are made.
Today we also celebrate the fact that Mum and Dad have brought E to be baptised and to acknowledge God’s love for their daughter. We rejoice with them that J, D, T and R have pledged to support Mum and Dad in nurturing E in her Christian faith. And we give thanks that E has been baptised into the Christian Church.
I pray this morning that E and her family and Godparents may grow in the knowledge and the love of God, and that the Spirit blesses each one of us here today with God’s love.
And I make my prayer in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen
During the sermon, I referred to the child, her parents and the godparents by name. Here in the sermon, I have used initials except for the baby's mother and father as the baby and her father have the same initial.
===
Introduction
It’s a real joy and a pleasure to celebrate with E and her family on the occasion of her baptism.
The church family here at B Methodist church is pleased that E and her mum have been worshipping with us. (You can see that E has already made her mark on our church, as she’s been showing rather too much interest in the pulpit for her mum’s liking. We’ve decided that she’ll need to learn to talk – and walk! – first before we allow her up there.)
I said earlier that E’s baptism is about two things. It’s about E being baptised into the Church of Christ. And it’s about God’s love for E. So I would like to talk about these two things this morning.
Relationships
First of all, I want to talk about the Church of Christ, the universal Christian Church.
I also said earlier that today is a very special day for E to be received into the Christian Church. Because today is Pentecost and on Pentecost, we celebrate the birthday of the Church. You heard the birthday story earlier. It’s a strange story about tongues of flames descending on a crowd and about people speaking together in foreign languages that they had never learned.
But what’s this rather odd story got to do with the Church? I want to suggest one fairly simple idea for our consideration this morning: That relationships are very important to God. I want to suggest that relationships are so important to God that God breathed his holy breath of life into the Church by founding it in relationship. Relationship with God and relationship with our fellow human beings.
Now I don’t really think that I need to ‘preach’ about the importance of relationships. A good many of you are here today because you are in relationship with E and Mum and Dad. Whether by blood relationship or by friendship, your lives have touched them and been touched by them in some way. And there is also the Church community here at B Methodist Church; As a regular attender, E has also touched our lives.
Illustration
I’d like to you imagine that we had a very, very long piece of magical string. And imagine that this string could become as long or as short as we wanted it to be and that it was infinitely flexible and could divide as many times as it needed to. Like a virtual reality drawing tool.
Now imagine that we took one end of this string and gave it to E and then E gave another end to each person here who she knows. Each of those people, in turn, would extend their strings to those people here who know them, and so on, until everyone was connected by this magical string to every other person here who they know.
Think of how many people here today who you know and you can begin to understand why the string needs to be magical. I might be mistaken, but I think everyone would find that they were connected to this piece of string. And if someone decided to change their seat or to leave, then the shape of our magical string would change, and that change would be felt in some way by everyone here.
That’s how it is with relationships: everything we do has an effect on others, either directly or indirectly.
But the Christian Church is not just about relationships between human beings, it’s also about relationships between individual human beings and God. And it’s also about God’s relationship with the community of Christians. Imagine that each one of us also has a string that connects us with God.
When we deliberately gather together as Christians to pray and to worship, we are gathering together in acknowledgment of our connection to God. In these deliberate acts of prayer and worship, the Christian Church calls upon the power of the Spirit of the Triune God to help us to grow to become the people who God calls us to be: a people who are rooted and grounded in love.
This is the church into which E has been welcomed and baptised this morning.
The Church which was founded in the Holy Spirit of the Triune God and which strives to be faithful to that Spirit. Although today E is not old enough to intellectually work out what being part of a Christian Community means for her, she is nonetheless part of that community.
Because baptism was never about just me and God. Baptism – by water and by the Holy Spirit – was always about community.
As the old song goes: ‘love isn’t love until you give it away’. Love is about relating to other people; you can’t give love to yourself.
Love
And so that brings us to ‘love’. We said that, in addition to making E part of the Christian Church, that her baptism proclaims God’s love for her.
The bible talks about a God who loves us like children. It often refers to God as our Father but there are also images of God as a mother. It is in these parental images that we can get a hint of God’s love for each one of us.
Mum and Dad have very literally committed the rest of their lives to being in relationship with E and seeking the very best for her. They will devote all of their waking hours to her during her first years, and a considerable amount of emotion, attention, time, money and devotion after that. No matter what she does, they will always be her parents and always seek what is best for her.
This is with this parental tenacity that God loves each one of us. Although we do have the freedom to decide not to speak to God, there is nothing that we can do that will make God stop offering us his parental love. God’s love will always seek to bring us into right relationship with him and into right relationship with other people. God will always seek to do right by us.
In baptising E, we did not bring her into this love of God for the first time, we simply acknowledged together as a Christian family the love of God which already existed for her before she was even born.
Conclusion
Today is Pentecost, the Church’s birthday. It is the day when the Church celebrates her relationship with God. And it is the day when Christians celebrate their relationship with each other.
Today of all days, we remember these invisible strings that connect us, in love, with God, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and with all of humankind. We remember that relationships are fundamental to our humanity and to our spirituality. And we remember that love, the commitment to the well-being of others, is the stuff by which good relationships are made.
Today we also celebrate the fact that Mum and Dad have brought E to be baptised and to acknowledge God’s love for their daughter. We rejoice with them that J, D, T and R have pledged to support Mum and Dad in nurturing E in her Christian faith. And we give thanks that E has been baptised into the Christian Church.
I pray this morning that E and her family and Godparents may grow in the knowledge and the love of God, and that the Spirit blesses each one of us here today with God’s love.
And I make my prayer in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Sunday 20 May 2007 - Slavery and Freedom
Today's sermon was based mainly on Acts 16:16-34 and a bit of the Gospel reading: John 13:20-26.
===
‘One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination.’ (Acts 16:16-34)
I like a challenging story and I was attracted to the reading from the Acts because I think it presents us with some good challenges.
At the very superficial level, as modern people we have the challenge of the supernatural: a spirit-possessed individual on the one hand and God’s arranging an earthquake to set Paul free on the other hand. But at a deeper level, we are challenged to ponder such questions as slavery and freedom, and despair and hope.
Who is it in this story who is free and who is enslaved? Who are the people who should be despairing and who is it who has hope?
The Slave Girl
First of all in this narrative, we have the story of the slave girl.
It might very well be that she is associated with the temple to the Greek god Apollo; some commentators think this because the spirit which possessed her was a spirit of ‘divination’, a quality associated with the god Apollo. Interestingly, Apollo was associated in Greek mythology with medicine, healing, light and truth but he was also supposed to be the bringer of the plague.
From a Christian perspective, everything in the story of the slave-girl is topsy-turvy.
She’s following Paul and Silas around declaring that they are slaves to the Most High God. But the girl herself is twice-enslaved. She’s enslaved by the spirit who possesses her (we know this because she does not continue to behave in the same way once the spirit is cast out); and she’s a literal slave to human owners who use her as a means of earning money for themselves.
The spirit that possesses her is supposed to be the spirit of truth and light and yet, it does not tell the full truth; it only tells a partial truth – that the disciples are proclaiming a way to salvation.
It seems to me that one of the central questions in this scene is: ‘whose disciples are free and whose disciples are slaves? The disciples of Christ or the disciple of Apollo?’ Which disciple tells the truth and which disciple tells a partial truth? Which disciple genuinely has the power of healing and which disciple needs to be healed?
Now the one thing I find odd about the story is this business about the spirit-possessed girl followed Paul and Silas around for ‘many days’.
It raises a couple of questions for me. First of all, why didn’t Paul use the girl’s testimony to his advantage? Secondly, if the Spirit recognised that Paul and Silas were followers of The Most High God, why didn’t it lay low in order to save itself? Why did it call attention to itself day after day and risk being cast out?
The story doesn’t give us an answer to this question, of course. But if this was the spirit of Apollo, you could say that, in the context of the story, this spirit might have been the spirit of the present age, the spirit of the majority culture. I wonder whether this spirit represents the battle for the hearts and minds of the people of that culture?
It’s as if the spirit of the prevailing culture is following the disciples of Jesus around saying ‘Jesus isn’t the way to health and happiness. Apollo is the way to health and happiness. Order your life to worship the values of our wonderful Greco-Roman culture and you will be healthy and happy.’ Possessed by the spirit of the prevailing culture, the spirit-possessed girl may have felt strangely compelled to insist on the superiority of Graeco-Roman culture over the Church of Christ.
The values of the prevailing culture are powerful. They present themselves as ‘the way things were, are and always will be’. They present themselves as being Reality (with a capital R).
So, filled with the confidence that these Christians were misguided and that the spirit of the age would certainly prevail over the Church of Christ, the Spirit followed Paul and the disciples for many days until the name of Christ vanquished it without much apparent effort.
The Culture Enraged
But challenging the prevailing cultural values can be a dangerous business, as the story attests. Immediately the spirit is cast out, the girl is free and the cultural values are challenged, a kangaroo court is assembled. Paul and Silas are charged with ‘advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe’
In other words, the charge is that they have gone against the cultural norms. The fact that they are Jewish probably just adds to the conviction of the magistrates and the crowd that Paul and Silas are guilty.
Paul freed the spirit-possessed girl from enslavement to the spirit which possessed her and from the enslavement and the exploitation of her owners. The reward for having done this is that Paul and Silas are dragged before an angry mob and fastened with stocks to the innermost jail cell – no escape possible.
The men’s reward for proclaiming The Way of Christ over and above the values of the culture is to be treated violently and unjustly and to be removed from the society at large. Or at least the prevailing culture attempted to remove them from society.
Hope and Despair
As we come to the last part of the story, Paul and Silas are in a rather serious mess. The reality of the situation is such that they have every reason to believe that they will likely die in prison. Yet the text tells us that they were praying and singing hymns to God.
I think it’s easy to trivialise this statement and say ‘Yes this is the way Christians should behave in times of trial’. But when we find ourselves in times of real and genuine danger or difficulty, it can be incredibly difficult to praise God and to have faith that he is present.
So I want to just pause and consider the depth of faith that was required to praise God in a dungeon whilst shackled with chains. I want to pause and consider that such hope is actually at the core of the counter-cultural message that Christianity proclaims. (It’s not the only message, but it’s at the core.)
The prevailing culture tells us that, in the final analysis, those who have power, resources, money and influence will determine the course of history and that they will determine what is right and what is wrong. In contrast, the Christian faith proclaims a place for the ill, the outcast, the poor and the powerless in the Kingdom of God. The Christian faith proclaims that God is in control of history, that the last shall be first in the Kingdom and that it is God in his justice who determines what is right and what is wrong, not the expediency of power or money or the prevailing culture.
When Paul and Silas are busy praising God in their prison cell, they did not know that God would bring hope into a hopeless situation. It would be wrong to say that this story teaches us that if we just pray and praise enough or that if we just have enough faith, God will always make a particular situation turn out the way we want it to. It would be more accurate to say that this story teaches us that God is present in even the most hopeless situations.
Even when we can see no hope, even if we can’t see a positive outcome like the story of the conversion of the jailer and his household, God has promised us that he is present in every situation. God can use even the most apparently dire circumstances to his purposes.
Conclusion
In closing, I just want to remind us all of the prayer that Jesus made in the Gospel reading this morning. He prayed for the strength and the unity of his Church and he bestowed on the Church his glory.
This prayer would be a simple and straightforward prayer if it came on the eve of Jesus’ ascension into heaven. The amazing thing about it, however, is that Jesus prays this prayer not on the eve of his ascension, but on the eve of his crucifixion.
Knowing the end of the story, you could argue that this is the prayer of a conquering hero. But, because it comes just before his crucifixion, it is also a prayer of tremendous faith in the purposes of God.
Today is the last Sunday of the Easter season and it’s also the Sunday after the Ascension of Jesus. In the resurrection we recall that God’s purposes are to draw all creation into genuine life and truth and light. In the ascension, we recall that Christ rules at God’s right hand and that the story of creation is shaped by Christ’s sacrifice for our sins and his triumph over death.
God is life and light and truth. Hope reigns even when we cannot see it. This is the faith of the Church. Amen
===
‘One day, as we were going to the place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination.’ (Acts 16:16-34)
I like a challenging story and I was attracted to the reading from the Acts because I think it presents us with some good challenges.
At the very superficial level, as modern people we have the challenge of the supernatural: a spirit-possessed individual on the one hand and God’s arranging an earthquake to set Paul free on the other hand. But at a deeper level, we are challenged to ponder such questions as slavery and freedom, and despair and hope.
Who is it in this story who is free and who is enslaved? Who are the people who should be despairing and who is it who has hope?
The Slave Girl
First of all in this narrative, we have the story of the slave girl.
It might very well be that she is associated with the temple to the Greek god Apollo; some commentators think this because the spirit which possessed her was a spirit of ‘divination’, a quality associated with the god Apollo. Interestingly, Apollo was associated in Greek mythology with medicine, healing, light and truth but he was also supposed to be the bringer of the plague.
From a Christian perspective, everything in the story of the slave-girl is topsy-turvy.
She’s following Paul and Silas around declaring that they are slaves to the Most High God. But the girl herself is twice-enslaved. She’s enslaved by the spirit who possesses her (we know this because she does not continue to behave in the same way once the spirit is cast out); and she’s a literal slave to human owners who use her as a means of earning money for themselves.
The spirit that possesses her is supposed to be the spirit of truth and light and yet, it does not tell the full truth; it only tells a partial truth – that the disciples are proclaiming a way to salvation.
It seems to me that one of the central questions in this scene is: ‘whose disciples are free and whose disciples are slaves? The disciples of Christ or the disciple of Apollo?’ Which disciple tells the truth and which disciple tells a partial truth? Which disciple genuinely has the power of healing and which disciple needs to be healed?
Now the one thing I find odd about the story is this business about the spirit-possessed girl followed Paul and Silas around for ‘many days’.
It raises a couple of questions for me. First of all, why didn’t Paul use the girl’s testimony to his advantage? Secondly, if the Spirit recognised that Paul and Silas were followers of The Most High God, why didn’t it lay low in order to save itself? Why did it call attention to itself day after day and risk being cast out?
The story doesn’t give us an answer to this question, of course. But if this was the spirit of Apollo, you could say that, in the context of the story, this spirit might have been the spirit of the present age, the spirit of the majority culture. I wonder whether this spirit represents the battle for the hearts and minds of the people of that culture?
It’s as if the spirit of the prevailing culture is following the disciples of Jesus around saying ‘Jesus isn’t the way to health and happiness. Apollo is the way to health and happiness. Order your life to worship the values of our wonderful Greco-Roman culture and you will be healthy and happy.’ Possessed by the spirit of the prevailing culture, the spirit-possessed girl may have felt strangely compelled to insist on the superiority of Graeco-Roman culture over the Church of Christ.
The values of the prevailing culture are powerful. They present themselves as ‘the way things were, are and always will be’. They present themselves as being Reality (with a capital R).
So, filled with the confidence that these Christians were misguided and that the spirit of the age would certainly prevail over the Church of Christ, the Spirit followed Paul and the disciples for many days until the name of Christ vanquished it without much apparent effort.
The Culture Enraged
But challenging the prevailing cultural values can be a dangerous business, as the story attests. Immediately the spirit is cast out, the girl is free and the cultural values are challenged, a kangaroo court is assembled. Paul and Silas are charged with ‘advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe’
In other words, the charge is that they have gone against the cultural norms. The fact that they are Jewish probably just adds to the conviction of the magistrates and the crowd that Paul and Silas are guilty.
Paul freed the spirit-possessed girl from enslavement to the spirit which possessed her and from the enslavement and the exploitation of her owners. The reward for having done this is that Paul and Silas are dragged before an angry mob and fastened with stocks to the innermost jail cell – no escape possible.
The men’s reward for proclaiming The Way of Christ over and above the values of the culture is to be treated violently and unjustly and to be removed from the society at large. Or at least the prevailing culture attempted to remove them from society.
Hope and Despair
As we come to the last part of the story, Paul and Silas are in a rather serious mess. The reality of the situation is such that they have every reason to believe that they will likely die in prison. Yet the text tells us that they were praying and singing hymns to God.
I think it’s easy to trivialise this statement and say ‘Yes this is the way Christians should behave in times of trial’. But when we find ourselves in times of real and genuine danger or difficulty, it can be incredibly difficult to praise God and to have faith that he is present.
So I want to just pause and consider the depth of faith that was required to praise God in a dungeon whilst shackled with chains. I want to pause and consider that such hope is actually at the core of the counter-cultural message that Christianity proclaims. (It’s not the only message, but it’s at the core.)
The prevailing culture tells us that, in the final analysis, those who have power, resources, money and influence will determine the course of history and that they will determine what is right and what is wrong. In contrast, the Christian faith proclaims a place for the ill, the outcast, the poor and the powerless in the Kingdom of God. The Christian faith proclaims that God is in control of history, that the last shall be first in the Kingdom and that it is God in his justice who determines what is right and what is wrong, not the expediency of power or money or the prevailing culture.
When Paul and Silas are busy praising God in their prison cell, they did not know that God would bring hope into a hopeless situation. It would be wrong to say that this story teaches us that if we just pray and praise enough or that if we just have enough faith, God will always make a particular situation turn out the way we want it to. It would be more accurate to say that this story teaches us that God is present in even the most hopeless situations.
Even when we can see no hope, even if we can’t see a positive outcome like the story of the conversion of the jailer and his household, God has promised us that he is present in every situation. God can use even the most apparently dire circumstances to his purposes.
Conclusion
In closing, I just want to remind us all of the prayer that Jesus made in the Gospel reading this morning. He prayed for the strength and the unity of his Church and he bestowed on the Church his glory.
This prayer would be a simple and straightforward prayer if it came on the eve of Jesus’ ascension into heaven. The amazing thing about it, however, is that Jesus prays this prayer not on the eve of his ascension, but on the eve of his crucifixion.
Knowing the end of the story, you could argue that this is the prayer of a conquering hero. But, because it comes just before his crucifixion, it is also a prayer of tremendous faith in the purposes of God.
Today is the last Sunday of the Easter season and it’s also the Sunday after the Ascension of Jesus. In the resurrection we recall that God’s purposes are to draw all creation into genuine life and truth and light. In the ascension, we recall that Christ rules at God’s right hand and that the story of creation is shaped by Christ’s sacrifice for our sins and his triumph over death.
God is life and light and truth. Hope reigns even when we cannot see it. This is the faith of the Church. Amen
Sunday 13 Mary 2007 - Inspired by Oscar Romero
Today we tried having a discussion rather than a whole sermon. It worked very well and we had a very interesting discussion as a congregation about 'what is sin'?
As you can see from the sermon, it was a sermon for the launching of Christian Aid Week. The discussion was inspired by the Gospel reading that Oscar Romero read on the day he was murdered: John 12:20-26.
====
Who knows who Oscar Romero was?
Oscar Romero was born in El Salvador in Central American in 1917. When he left school, he apprenticed to a carpenter but soon started thinking about becoming a Roman Catholic priest - against the wishes of his family. He trained for the priesthood in two cities in El Salvador and then went to study in Rome. He was ordained in Rome in 1942, during the Second World War.
Romero returned to El Salvador and worked as a parish priest and as the head of a theology college before becoming the Archbishop of the capital city of San Salvador in 1977. He was murdered, in his church by the army, on 24 March 1980 because he continually spoke out against the government’s murder of the poor people.
Does anyone remember why the government was killing its own poor?
The right-wing government said that it was trying to defeat communist guerrillas and the government’s murder of its people was funded by the United States.
Does anyone want to have a guess how many of its own people the government of El Salvador was killing every month during the late 1970s and early 1980s? 3000 people per month.
When he first became Archbishop, nobody expected Oscar Romero to speak out against the government and to take up the cause of the poor. He was actually elected to be bishop of the capital city San Salvador because he was seen as being a ‘conservative’ - as someone who wouldn’t rock the boat and give support to the poor (and to the guerrillas)
But all that changed when a priest in Romero’s diocese was killed by the army along with two of his parishioners. The priest was killed because he defended the peasant's rights to organize farm cooperatives. Romero went to see the body of the priest as well as the old man and seven year old child who were killed with him, and he was changed forever.
On the day before his murder by the army, Romero spoke out and said that it was a sin for the government to murder its own people and that, because of what the army was being used for, Christian men should not feel that they had to obey the draft. Romero said that Christians were free to disobey human laws which went against God’s law.
As I said earlier, Romero was shot down in church the following day, whilst leading worship. The Gospel reading that morning was the one we heard earlier: ‘…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’
I’d like us to listen to some quotations from Oscar Romero and I’d like to have a chat about whether or not we can see any connection between his thoughts and the Gospel of Christ. Before we start, I also want to say that you may disagree with some of the quotations and that’s perfectly OK. I’m not saying that Romero got everything right or that we can’t question him. I am not elevating what he said to the status of God’s word. I simply think that, in light of the witness of his deeds, that some of his thoughts might be worth us thinking about this morning.
1) ‘The Church, like Jesus, has to go on denouncing sin in our own day. It has to denounce the selfishness that is hidden in everyone's heart, the sin that dehumanizes persons, destroys families, and turns money, possessions, profit, and power into the ultimate ends for which persons strive. And the church has also to denounce what has rightly been called 'structural sin:' those social, economic, cultural, and political structures that drive people onto the margins of society. When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to the misery from which the cry arises.’ — Oscar Romero, 6 August 1977.
2) ‘To try to preach without referring to the history one preaches in is not to preach the gospel. Many would like a preaching so spiritualistic that it leaves sinners unbothered and does not term idolaters those who kneel before money and power. A preaching that says nothing of the sinful environment in which the gospel is reflected upon is not the gospel.’ Oscar Romero, 18 February 1979.
3) ‘The church is obliged to demand structural changes that favour the reign of God and a more just and comradely way of life. Unjust social structures are the roots of all violence and disturbances. How hard and conflicting are the results of duty! Those who benefit from obsolete structures react selfishly to any kind of change.’ Oscar Romero, November 1979.
[Reading of the Gospel again]
‘Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ, will live like the grain of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies… We know that every effort to improve society, above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses; that God wants; that God demands of us’. Oscar Romero, 24 March 1980
We are still in the Easter season and I think that the grain of wheat which dies is a fantastic picture of resurrection. The picture that Romero paints is also a very challenging picture of what the church is about. There is a very real sense in which Christ lives on in the world through the church. That’s why we’re called the body of Christ.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that Jesus’ resurrection or our future resurrection is only about planting seeds. I don’t think that the resurrection is a mythical morality tale. It’s not that we plant the seeds of God’s love or do what is right because these are the only ways for resurrection to happen. It’s that we plant the seeds of God’s love and we do what is right in the eyes of God because Jesus rose from the dead.
Conclusion
In Jesus, God became human. He lived with us, he experienced our joys and our sorrows and he taught us God’s ways. He taught us to love one another as he loves us, because our love is the way that other people experience God’s love on earth. Our love is also the way that others can hear, see and experience the good news of Jesus.
Today is Christian Aid Sunday, the beginning of Christian Aid Week. It is part of our discipleship to support the work of Christians who are called to work full time to bring relief to those in need – whether at home or in other parts of the world.
So, as we come to communion together in a few minutes, we remember that we are Christian brothers and sisters together with Christians in Latin America and in all parts of the world; and we thank God for groups such as Christian Aid. We remember that, at his table, we are united together with Christ who was crucified for our sins, rose triumphant from the grave and reigns with the Father through all eternity.
We ask that God will strengthen all people who suffer and that he will bring all creation into his Kingdom. And we pray this in the name of Jesus, our risen Lord and Saviour. Amen
As you can see from the sermon, it was a sermon for the launching of Christian Aid Week. The discussion was inspired by the Gospel reading that Oscar Romero read on the day he was murdered: John 12:20-26.
====
Who knows who Oscar Romero was?
Oscar Romero was born in El Salvador in Central American in 1917. When he left school, he apprenticed to a carpenter but soon started thinking about becoming a Roman Catholic priest - against the wishes of his family. He trained for the priesthood in two cities in El Salvador and then went to study in Rome. He was ordained in Rome in 1942, during the Second World War.
Romero returned to El Salvador and worked as a parish priest and as the head of a theology college before becoming the Archbishop of the capital city of San Salvador in 1977. He was murdered, in his church by the army, on 24 March 1980 because he continually spoke out against the government’s murder of the poor people.
Does anyone remember why the government was killing its own poor?
The right-wing government said that it was trying to defeat communist guerrillas and the government’s murder of its people was funded by the United States.
Does anyone want to have a guess how many of its own people the government of El Salvador was killing every month during the late 1970s and early 1980s? 3000 people per month.
When he first became Archbishop, nobody expected Oscar Romero to speak out against the government and to take up the cause of the poor. He was actually elected to be bishop of the capital city San Salvador because he was seen as being a ‘conservative’ - as someone who wouldn’t rock the boat and give support to the poor (and to the guerrillas)
But all that changed when a priest in Romero’s diocese was killed by the army along with two of his parishioners. The priest was killed because he defended the peasant's rights to organize farm cooperatives. Romero went to see the body of the priest as well as the old man and seven year old child who were killed with him, and he was changed forever.
On the day before his murder by the army, Romero spoke out and said that it was a sin for the government to murder its own people and that, because of what the army was being used for, Christian men should not feel that they had to obey the draft. Romero said that Christians were free to disobey human laws which went against God’s law.
As I said earlier, Romero was shot down in church the following day, whilst leading worship. The Gospel reading that morning was the one we heard earlier: ‘…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’
I’d like us to listen to some quotations from Oscar Romero and I’d like to have a chat about whether or not we can see any connection between his thoughts and the Gospel of Christ. Before we start, I also want to say that you may disagree with some of the quotations and that’s perfectly OK. I’m not saying that Romero got everything right or that we can’t question him. I am not elevating what he said to the status of God’s word. I simply think that, in light of the witness of his deeds, that some of his thoughts might be worth us thinking about this morning.
1) ‘The Church, like Jesus, has to go on denouncing sin in our own day. It has to denounce the selfishness that is hidden in everyone's heart, the sin that dehumanizes persons, destroys families, and turns money, possessions, profit, and power into the ultimate ends for which persons strive. And the church has also to denounce what has rightly been called 'structural sin:' those social, economic, cultural, and political structures that drive people onto the margins of society. When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to the misery from which the cry arises.’ — Oscar Romero, 6 August 1977.
2) ‘To try to preach without referring to the history one preaches in is not to preach the gospel. Many would like a preaching so spiritualistic that it leaves sinners unbothered and does not term idolaters those who kneel before money and power. A preaching that says nothing of the sinful environment in which the gospel is reflected upon is not the gospel.’ Oscar Romero, 18 February 1979.
3) ‘The church is obliged to demand structural changes that favour the reign of God and a more just and comradely way of life. Unjust social structures are the roots of all violence and disturbances. How hard and conflicting are the results of duty! Those who benefit from obsolete structures react selfishly to any kind of change.’ Oscar Romero, November 1979.
[Reading of the Gospel again]
‘Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ, will live like the grain of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies… We know that every effort to improve society, above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses; that God wants; that God demands of us’. Oscar Romero, 24 March 1980
We are still in the Easter season and I think that the grain of wheat which dies is a fantastic picture of resurrection. The picture that Romero paints is also a very challenging picture of what the church is about. There is a very real sense in which Christ lives on in the world through the church. That’s why we’re called the body of Christ.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that Jesus’ resurrection or our future resurrection is only about planting seeds. I don’t think that the resurrection is a mythical morality tale. It’s not that we plant the seeds of God’s love or do what is right because these are the only ways for resurrection to happen. It’s that we plant the seeds of God’s love and we do what is right in the eyes of God because Jesus rose from the dead.
Conclusion
In Jesus, God became human. He lived with us, he experienced our joys and our sorrows and he taught us God’s ways. He taught us to love one another as he loves us, because our love is the way that other people experience God’s love on earth. Our love is also the way that others can hear, see and experience the good news of Jesus.
Today is Christian Aid Sunday, the beginning of Christian Aid Week. It is part of our discipleship to support the work of Christians who are called to work full time to bring relief to those in need – whether at home or in other parts of the world.
So, as we come to communion together in a few minutes, we remember that we are Christian brothers and sisters together with Christians in Latin America and in all parts of the world; and we thank God for groups such as Christian Aid. We remember that, at his table, we are united together with Christ who was crucified for our sins, rose triumphant from the grave and reigns with the Father through all eternity.
We ask that God will strengthen all people who suffer and that he will bring all creation into his Kingdom. And we pray this in the name of Jesus, our risen Lord and Saviour. Amen
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Spirit Values
This sermon is based on Acts 11:1-18 and John 13::31-35.
Introduction: The Story of Peter and Cornelius
The story that we heard this morning in our reading from Acts Chapter 11 is a story that actually begins in Chapter 10. It’s the story of Peter and of the Roman centurion, Cornelius - the story of the conversion and baptism of Cornelius and his household.
Who knows whether Peter would have even gone to the house of Cornelius if he had not had the vision that we hear about in this morning’s reading? But because of his obedience to God’s command, Peter visits Cornelius and, in the process, he comes to understand the gospel in a new light.
Peter articulates his new understanding when he says in Chapter 10: ‘I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts people from every nation who fear him and do what is right.’ If Peter had any doubts about his new vision of the Gospel, they must have flown out of his mind when the Holy Spirit spontaneously descended upon the Gentiles – in exactly the same way that the Spirit had come upon Jesus’ close followers in the upper room.
And so we arrive at this morning’s reading at the beginning of Chapter 11. Peter has arrived back home in Jerusalem and the circumcised believers there want him to give an account of what he has done. They want an explanation. They are not simply upset that Peter ate with Cornelius; they are very likely more upset that Peter has baptised Cornelius’ household, thereby including Gentiles in the Church of Christ.
And so Peter explains the situation to them step-by-step until they too believe and proclaim that ‘God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life’.
Gentiles Shall be Included in the Kingdom
Let’s not underestimate the drama, the anguish and the outrage that including Gentiles in the church of Christ would have caused this new church of Jewish believers. The controversy over Gentiles in the church not only presents itself in Acts. It is an on-going issue throughout the letters of Paul, particularly of course, the letter to the Galatians – which is largely devoted to the question of the inclusion of Gentiles in the Church.
It’s my personal belief that Saul, the Pharisee and the persecutor of the Church, understood very well that the message of Jesus meant the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God. I think that this understanding was the reason for his zealous persecution of the Christian Church. And I think that it was also the reason for his equally zealous mission to the Gentiles after his conversion.
His conversion wasn’t so much about a sudden download of new information from God which he didn’t know about before. I think that his conversion was a turning around: from a fierce passion that Gentiles could not be included in the people of God to a fierce passion that they were already included in the people of God.
Like Paul, Peter also had to learn this lesson of inclusion, but for him, the lesson came through a vision and through personal experience. Already a disciple and apostle of Christ, Peter learned through his openness to the Spirit of God and from seeing with his own eyes the Spirit working in the lives of Gentiles. Although this remained an issue that Peter would apparently continue to wrestle with.
The Spirit's Working in the World
One thing that impresses me about the circumcised believers in Acts 11 is the way that they accepted the work of the Spirit of God with regard to Cornelius’ household. This particular working of the Spirit turned all their ideas about who is a child of God upside down, but they accepted this radical shift in the Church because they recognised the signs of the Spirit at work.
I wonder how willing any of us are to be so open to changes that the Spirit of God might be calling us to engage with?
In a fortnight, we’re going to celebrate the anniversary of this church and we’re going to spend some of our time together to think a bit about our congregation’s work and mission. Don’t worry, I don’t have any hidden agendas that I intend to spring on you about some great change that I think that God is calling us toward, but I do think that every Christian community could do well to ponder where the Spirit is at work.
How is the Spirit of God moving in our congregation? Where is the Spirit of God working in the community at large? Are we able to recognise the working of the Spirit if it doesn’t come with the usual labels that we would recognise as ‘Christian’ and if it doesn’t fit our usual categories?
But if we’re looking for a working of the Spirit of God that doesn’t fit our usual categories, how can we recognise it?
I want to briefly suggest three characteristics that might help us to recognise the working of the Spirit in our everyday lives. This is not an exhaustive list and neither am I saying that I have ‘the one right view’ on this matter. The following are simply my suggestions of ways that we might be able to recognise the work of the Spirit. Together, we might want to try to identify more ways in which we can recognise the fruit of the Spirit.
I think that, among other things, the Spirit of God brings
o inclusion
o restoration
o reconciliation
Inclusion
So, first of all: inclusion.
‘Inclusion’ is not only the main theme of this morning’s reading; I believe it’s also an essential ingredient of the Gospel.
The Gospel of Christ tells us that each and every human being has equal worth and equal dignity in the eyes of God. There is no individual who is beyond the pale in God’s eyes, no one who is outside the possibility of salvation; no matter what gender, race, colour, sexual orientation, nationality, ability, disability or status in life, each person is a beloved child of God.
So I would argue that activities which seek to include individuals who would otherwise be excluded from some aspect of society are under the influence of God’s Spirit even if those activities do not appear to be overtly ‘Christian’ or ‘religious’.
Activities such as human rights for asylum seekers, help for children with special educational needs, care which allows people to live in their own homes. Any activity which works to include individuals who might otherwise be excluded in full participation in society.
Restoration
A second Spirit value is restoration.
What I mean by the word ‘restoration’ is what the prophets call ‘justice’. But I’m using the word ‘restoration’ because I want to distinguish it from punitive justice. Exacting punitive or vengeful justice is not something for which we need the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; on the contrary, we are well able to take revenge without God’s help!
Restorative justice is a Spirit value because is the sort of justice that worries more about restoring well-being to the victim rather than punishment for the wrongdoer. It’s arguably mentioned in the 10th chapter of Acts when the angel says to Cornelius: ‘Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.’
Within our own justice system in the UK, restorative justice is something that is increasingly being used with young people. This is a form of justice which requires juvenile offenders to listen to the effects that their crimes had on their victims. It also asks young offenders to perform a community service that is related to the crime that they committed.
Other examples of restorative justice would be activities such as Fair Trade and the campaign to reduce Third World debt. These are activities which seek to redress the imbalances that have been created by the exploitation of the powerful.
Reconciliation
A third Spirit value is reconciliation: another value that is absolutely at the heart of the gospel.
As Christians, we believe that because of God’s forgiveness of us, that we are able to come into a new relationship with him. A relationship of love and friendship. In today’s gospel reading, we heard Jesus asking us pass on the love of God and to love one another as God loved us. In other words, we are called to be reconciled with our fellow human beings because God has reconciled himself with us.
And so I believe that any group engaging in activities of reconciliation is engaging in the work of the Spirit, whether that group has a ‘Christian’ label on it or not.
Some organisations seek to mediate between neighbours in a community, other organisations seek peaceable and workable solutions to family break-ups. Still other groups are seeking peace at national or international level. I believe that any individual or group that is genuinely seeking reconciliation between formerly hostile parties is doing the work of God.
Conclusion
In this morning’s reading from Acts, Peter had a life-changing experience with God’s Holy Spirit.
This encounter with the Spirit turned his world and his values upside down.
Peter and the church came to understand that it’s God’s intention that every category of human being should be included in his Kingdom. They were able to respond faithfully to the fruits of the Holy Spirit, even though the Spirit moved in ways that they did not expect.
As we come up to our Church anniversary and we look for signs of the Spirit in our own congregational life, I hope that we can rejoice and be thankful for the grace that we have been given to affirm the Spirit values of inclusivity, restoration and reconciliation. But I also hope that we can keep our eyes open to ways that the Spirit may be working in unexpected ways in our congregation and in the wider community.
And I hope that we can identify and use Spirit values as touchstones to help us find God in unexpected places.
I pray, as we go forward in our journey as Christian disciples, that we put God in Christ in the centre of all that we are and all that we do. And I pray that we may be able to see the Spirit of God at work in our community in surprising and unexpected places. And I pray this in the name of the risen Christ, Amen
Introduction: The Story of Peter and Cornelius
The story that we heard this morning in our reading from Acts Chapter 11 is a story that actually begins in Chapter 10. It’s the story of Peter and of the Roman centurion, Cornelius - the story of the conversion and baptism of Cornelius and his household.
Who knows whether Peter would have even gone to the house of Cornelius if he had not had the vision that we hear about in this morning’s reading? But because of his obedience to God’s command, Peter visits Cornelius and, in the process, he comes to understand the gospel in a new light.
Peter articulates his new understanding when he says in Chapter 10: ‘I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts people from every nation who fear him and do what is right.’ If Peter had any doubts about his new vision of the Gospel, they must have flown out of his mind when the Holy Spirit spontaneously descended upon the Gentiles – in exactly the same way that the Spirit had come upon Jesus’ close followers in the upper room.
And so we arrive at this morning’s reading at the beginning of Chapter 11. Peter has arrived back home in Jerusalem and the circumcised believers there want him to give an account of what he has done. They want an explanation. They are not simply upset that Peter ate with Cornelius; they are very likely more upset that Peter has baptised Cornelius’ household, thereby including Gentiles in the Church of Christ.
And so Peter explains the situation to them step-by-step until they too believe and proclaim that ‘God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life’.
Gentiles Shall be Included in the Kingdom
Let’s not underestimate the drama, the anguish and the outrage that including Gentiles in the church of Christ would have caused this new church of Jewish believers. The controversy over Gentiles in the church not only presents itself in Acts. It is an on-going issue throughout the letters of Paul, particularly of course, the letter to the Galatians – which is largely devoted to the question of the inclusion of Gentiles in the Church.
It’s my personal belief that Saul, the Pharisee and the persecutor of the Church, understood very well that the message of Jesus meant the inclusion of Gentiles in the people of God. I think that this understanding was the reason for his zealous persecution of the Christian Church. And I think that it was also the reason for his equally zealous mission to the Gentiles after his conversion.
His conversion wasn’t so much about a sudden download of new information from God which he didn’t know about before. I think that his conversion was a turning around: from a fierce passion that Gentiles could not be included in the people of God to a fierce passion that they were already included in the people of God.
Like Paul, Peter also had to learn this lesson of inclusion, but for him, the lesson came through a vision and through personal experience. Already a disciple and apostle of Christ, Peter learned through his openness to the Spirit of God and from seeing with his own eyes the Spirit working in the lives of Gentiles. Although this remained an issue that Peter would apparently continue to wrestle with.
The Spirit's Working in the World
One thing that impresses me about the circumcised believers in Acts 11 is the way that they accepted the work of the Spirit of God with regard to Cornelius’ household. This particular working of the Spirit turned all their ideas about who is a child of God upside down, but they accepted this radical shift in the Church because they recognised the signs of the Spirit at work.
I wonder how willing any of us are to be so open to changes that the Spirit of God might be calling us to engage with?
In a fortnight, we’re going to celebrate the anniversary of this church and we’re going to spend some of our time together to think a bit about our congregation’s work and mission. Don’t worry, I don’t have any hidden agendas that I intend to spring on you about some great change that I think that God is calling us toward, but I do think that every Christian community could do well to ponder where the Spirit is at work.
How is the Spirit of God moving in our congregation? Where is the Spirit of God working in the community at large? Are we able to recognise the working of the Spirit if it doesn’t come with the usual labels that we would recognise as ‘Christian’ and if it doesn’t fit our usual categories?
But if we’re looking for a working of the Spirit of God that doesn’t fit our usual categories, how can we recognise it?
I want to briefly suggest three characteristics that might help us to recognise the working of the Spirit in our everyday lives. This is not an exhaustive list and neither am I saying that I have ‘the one right view’ on this matter. The following are simply my suggestions of ways that we might be able to recognise the work of the Spirit. Together, we might want to try to identify more ways in which we can recognise the fruit of the Spirit.
I think that, among other things, the Spirit of God brings
o inclusion
o restoration
o reconciliation
Inclusion
So, first of all: inclusion.
‘Inclusion’ is not only the main theme of this morning’s reading; I believe it’s also an essential ingredient of the Gospel.
The Gospel of Christ tells us that each and every human being has equal worth and equal dignity in the eyes of God. There is no individual who is beyond the pale in God’s eyes, no one who is outside the possibility of salvation; no matter what gender, race, colour, sexual orientation, nationality, ability, disability or status in life, each person is a beloved child of God.
So I would argue that activities which seek to include individuals who would otherwise be excluded from some aspect of society are under the influence of God’s Spirit even if those activities do not appear to be overtly ‘Christian’ or ‘religious’.
Activities such as human rights for asylum seekers, help for children with special educational needs, care which allows people to live in their own homes. Any activity which works to include individuals who might otherwise be excluded in full participation in society.
Restoration
A second Spirit value is restoration.
What I mean by the word ‘restoration’ is what the prophets call ‘justice’. But I’m using the word ‘restoration’ because I want to distinguish it from punitive justice. Exacting punitive or vengeful justice is not something for which we need the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; on the contrary, we are well able to take revenge without God’s help!
Restorative justice is a Spirit value because is the sort of justice that worries more about restoring well-being to the victim rather than punishment for the wrongdoer. It’s arguably mentioned in the 10th chapter of Acts when the angel says to Cornelius: ‘Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God.’
Within our own justice system in the UK, restorative justice is something that is increasingly being used with young people. This is a form of justice which requires juvenile offenders to listen to the effects that their crimes had on their victims. It also asks young offenders to perform a community service that is related to the crime that they committed.
Other examples of restorative justice would be activities such as Fair Trade and the campaign to reduce Third World debt. These are activities which seek to redress the imbalances that have been created by the exploitation of the powerful.
Reconciliation
A third Spirit value is reconciliation: another value that is absolutely at the heart of the gospel.
As Christians, we believe that because of God’s forgiveness of us, that we are able to come into a new relationship with him. A relationship of love and friendship. In today’s gospel reading, we heard Jesus asking us pass on the love of God and to love one another as God loved us. In other words, we are called to be reconciled with our fellow human beings because God has reconciled himself with us.
And so I believe that any group engaging in activities of reconciliation is engaging in the work of the Spirit, whether that group has a ‘Christian’ label on it or not.
Some organisations seek to mediate between neighbours in a community, other organisations seek peaceable and workable solutions to family break-ups. Still other groups are seeking peace at national or international level. I believe that any individual or group that is genuinely seeking reconciliation between formerly hostile parties is doing the work of God.
Conclusion
In this morning’s reading from Acts, Peter had a life-changing experience with God’s Holy Spirit.
This encounter with the Spirit turned his world and his values upside down.
Peter and the church came to understand that it’s God’s intention that every category of human being should be included in his Kingdom. They were able to respond faithfully to the fruits of the Holy Spirit, even though the Spirit moved in ways that they did not expect.
As we come up to our Church anniversary and we look for signs of the Spirit in our own congregational life, I hope that we can rejoice and be thankful for the grace that we have been given to affirm the Spirit values of inclusivity, restoration and reconciliation. But I also hope that we can keep our eyes open to ways that the Spirit may be working in unexpected ways in our congregation and in the wider community.
And I hope that we can identify and use Spirit values as touchstones to help us find God in unexpected places.
I pray, as we go forward in our journey as Christian disciples, that we put God in Christ in the centre of all that we are and all that we do. And I pray that we may be able to see the Spirit of God at work in our community in surprising and unexpected places. And I pray this in the name of the risen Christ, Amen
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