MATTHEW 4: 12-23
The excitement is growing. Matthew can contain himself no longer. After all the times are now well and truly changing. And the world is beginning to look very different. Listen for a moment to those momentous words that he cribs from Isaiah;
“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.”
So rejoice! For here are the birth pangs of hope. Here is the greatest of transformations that can be hoped for.
And at the heart of it all is Jesus of Nazareth. Fresh from baptism and temptation, he is beginning his ministry, a ministry that calls for a change in how we live - a change rooted in his proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven!
But if you are one of those who see hope as coming from the centres of power, prepare yourself for a great surprise. For the light that is banishing darkness is based not in the places of wealth and pomp. On the contrary, the movement in which God brings hope is firmly located among the margins.
I guess that many would expect the Messiah to begin his work at the centre of religious, economic and political power that is Jerusalem. But No! Far from it! He begins his work among the agricultural and fishing community that is Capernaum a few miles away from Nazareth. That he begins in Galilee, which as a result of Assyrian settlement policy was a religious mishmash if ever there was one with about a half of the population being gentiles, is scandal enough. But the effect is compounded by his conscious decision to leave Nazareth not for one of the nearby cities where the power of the elite was maintained, but for the remoteness of life amongst the powerless.
And now Matthew looks back to Isaiah’s prophecy of the peoples of ancient Zebulun in which Nazareth is located and ancient Naphtali in which Capernaum is located, seeing a great light intrude upon their darkness. What a vision! And now says Matthew it is being fulfilled. The first provinces to have been overrun my Assyria some seven centuries earlier as a result of what was seen as the wrath of God, are now the first places to hear the good news of Jesus which is the dawning of hope for humankind. In the places of humiliation the places looked down on by the clever Jerusalem elite, light blazes forth.
And then there are his associates. Whereas most rabbinical students sought out their teachers, Jesus is seen here to take the initiative in choosing those who would be his companions. Later these followers will include political extremists on opposing sides of the divides of the day. But here, we see the first four followers to be called being two sets of fisherman brothers. No big deal, we might say. But people of such limited education as these, people according to one commentary who were part of a trade whose reputation for greed and sharp practice was on a par with money lenders - well they hardly seem to cut the mustard as those who would make any significant impact on their world.
And yet as Jesus rejects the temptation to be a one man show, it is very ordinary run of the mill working men, who are brought into the great enterprise. For the Jesus movement is a movement that will reject every commonly accepted means of acquiring power and influence.
But it will be a movement that will bring greater change than any of the armies that ever marched. Indeed, from its very beginning, the Jesus movement brings change. Armed with a message of the need for individuals and society to repent, to change direction, it comes as a harbinger of change that will leave nothing as it had hitherto been. For at the heart of message of Jesus is a Kingdom, the Kingdom of heaven, which will have a much greater claim to devotion and loyalty than any of the powers that swaggered around at that and any other time, past or present. Now was the pointer to a rule that enabled things to be very different, the rule of values of love which had lain at the heart of the Word becoming flesh. And this would be a Kingdom facilitated not by coercion but by love and grace embodied to perfection in Jesus of Nazareth. And this would be a Kingdom that would bring good news to those who were on the margins. For as Jesus teaches of Divine love for all peoples and as Jesus brings liberation through the healing of all manner of diseases and demonic possessions, people who had hitherto been Nobodies, come to find themselves valued and of worth.
This would include those fishermen. Their trade was not without economic rewards. But in many ways they knew what it was to be controlled by the powerful. Most fishermen were far from self employed entrepreneurs but people who worked for Roman interests who paid them according to the size of their catches. They may well have leased their rights from toll collectors. But now with Jesus, they no longer depend on the oppressive power of Rome. Sure, they will still do some fishing but they have by responding to the call of Jesus moved from dependence on the oppressive power of Rome and its acolytes to a dependence on the liberating grace of Jesus. Now they find themselves engaged as those who “fish for people.”
Now this idea of fishing for people is not without its problems. It sounds dangerously coercive and often we hear talk of looking for the bait that will hook our targets. Well the bait image doesn’t work as these were fishermen who relied on nets rather than bait. Still, we are left with the coercive image even if there is such a thing as being captured or grabbed by love. And perhaps we do well to note that in ancient times fishing could be used as a metaphor for judgement and teaching. I am not sure that we can easily translate this one into today’s world but suffice to say, Jesus is speaking of an involvement in a life changing experience. Our lives and our communities do not have to be stifling and dull. He has come to offer something much greater - a life that is truly with abundance! Never, should we portray following Jesus as something that is grey. Far from it, Jesus invites you and me into a multi coloured life and calls on us to be his instruments in enabling it to be experienced by others and by a wider community.
So Jesus begins a ministry that will be good news for all marginalized people. Lepers will rejoin community life. Sick people will be made well. Sinners will experience forgiveness and wondrous grace. And as Matthew’s Gospel draws to a close, we will learn that we meet Jesus in the hungry, the naked, the stranger and the imprisoned. For here is a good news that does not pour holy water on the structures of domination and injustice. It is instead a good news that will afflict the comfortable just as it comforts the afflicted. And for that reason, power structures will always seek to tame and domesticate the Gospel.
Yes, there is a Great Light shining in the Places of Darkness. But it is a light not just for the marginalized but coming from the places of marginalisation. Soon those followers of Jesus will be taking their hope to the world. But before that, at the tomb from whence Jesus has been raised, women will be told to send the disciples back to marginalized Galilee where they will see Jesus. Why Galilee? Why the place where it all started? Because it is among the marginalized that Jesus is at home. It is in such places that we too can meet with him. For, still today he is amongst the marginalized. Still today he enables those who have sat in darkness, the wonder of the great light that can never be put out.
ALVERDISCOTT METHODIST CHURCH SUNDAY JANUARY 27TH 2007
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Holocaust Sunday - Responding to the darkness
LUKE 10: 25-37
In “Night” which is surely one of the most haunting books ever written, Elie Wiesel tells of being forced at Auschwitz to watch the hanging of three people including a young boy. The boy takes a long time to die and amidst the horror, the young Wiesel hears a man ask;
“Where is God now?”
Within himself Wiesel hears a voice answer the man;
“Here he is - He is hanging on the gallows.”
The murder of God! Quite a thought especially for a devoutly religious Jew!
And of course the Holocaust with all its horrors remains a powerful presence in all of our thinking about God and seeking to live as God’s people. It challenges our temptation to offer facile answers to what are big questions.
Certainly it challenges our notions of God being in control over all things. After all, how can this be reconciled with children being thrown into flaming ovens? Instead the case for an emphasis on God’s vulnerability and dependence in place of omnipotence, surely needs to be taken on board. For God is not so much a controller of events as an often suffering participant.
This leaves the likes of you and me with freedom to make choices. We have responsibilities. A sad feature of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s is that amongst those who made life denying choices were Christians and Christian organisations in a land with a long Christian heritage. Yes, there are the Dietrich Bonhoeffers and Martin Niemoellers who resisted the regime at considerable cost to themselves but they were well and truly outnumbered by those who out of varying motives such as nationalism, anti Judaism and fear, collaborated with the Nazi regime, in some cases to the bitter end.
Now, none of this makes the Holocaust a Christian phenomenon. The Dabru Emet statement by Jewish scholars makes that quite clear. But it does not let Christianity of the hook, saying;
“Without the long history of Christian anti Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out.”
These words point to the dangerous tradition of falsely representing Jews as Christ killers - a tradition which along with other factors such as blood libels has left Jews subject to a long history of violence down through the centuries especially at Easter. Doubt not that bad theology can cost lives!
The Holocaust reminds us that we need to be accepting of those who are other. Eleven million people were murdered in the Holocaust. Six million were Jews with political and religious dissidents, Roma gypsies, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people and homosexuals also numbered among the victims - simply for not fitting in with Hitler’s plans for an Aryan master race.
Other genocides have taken place for similar reasons. Armenians murdered in vast numbers by the Ottoman Empire, Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers in Rwanda and even today the events in Darfur - all bearing testimony to a tendency to be unable to offer dignity in difference.
Of course, prejudice is often born of ignorance and the prejudiced mind does not normally will such horrific outcomes as the Holocaust. But our prejudices are surely potentially the midwife to the violent and destructive. Not long ago, I stood in a queue listening to a conversation between two people as to their hatred of Muslims. I am sure/well hopeful that these people, who seemed quite pleasant in the few moments when they were talking on other subjects, would not wish physical harm on Muslims. But as I stood feeling a powerful urge to jump in on the conversation, I wondered how many such equally ill informed and ignorant conversations about Jews and other groups of people targeted by the Holocaust, would have taken place in just such surroundings in Germany and indeed this country, in the first half of the last century.
Jesus has something to say about prejudice. He does it through the Parable of the Good Samaritan in which a battered Jew finds that the neighbour who helps him in his moment of need is a Samaritan. This is a story that would have drawn gasps from Jesus’ hearers for they knew and doubtless felt the shock of a story which challenged a poisonous prejudice between two peoples that had existed for over 500 years. For this story was not just Jesus telling his fellow Jews that they shouldn’t be unkind to those wretched Samaritans. No it was more! Jesus was telling them that those whom they had despised did not merely merit toleration but that they had resources of kindness and goodness to offer. They could benefit from and learn from their ancient enemies.
I cannot see another Holocaust happening in West Europe in my lifetime. Yet, there are the seeds of prejudice and exclusion all around us. Holocaust Memorial Day is a day in which we need to respond to the challenge to embrace humanity with all its diversity rather than to hold back from and to judge harshly those who may be other than we are. Nationality, race, religion and sexual orientation should not be the causes of distancing or failing to engage as neighbours with others. For to use such as these to deny the Divine Spark in others is to send God into exile from our lives.
But the pressures are around us. In particular, we find sections of the media who continually seem to seek to incite an anti Muslim reaction. Whilst accepting the reality that bad religion can and does exist within Islam as elsewhere, we need to protest at any incitement to exclude. Surely too much of that has already happened in history.
Our calling is to be radical disciples of Jesus in affirming the dignity of human differences. Our calling is to resist the drumbeat of conformity when it would dehumanise others. I am reminded of how when awaiting trial in a Berlin prison, Martin Niemoeller was greeted by a prison chaplain with the words;
“But Brother Martin! What brings you here? Why are you in prison?”
Pertinently, Niemoeller replied;
“And brother, why are you not in prison?”
This morning we look back and see humanity at its very worst in dehumanising those deemed to be other. In the teachings of Jesus we see an invitation to embrace diversity. It is a lesson we need to go on learning. Rightly, today we look back so that we may live better in the future. For in the words of the founder of Hasidism Bal Shem Tov, words found in the main hall of the Holocaust Memorial at Vad Yashem;
“Forgetting lengthens the period of exile! In remembrance lies the secret of deliverance.”
BIDEFORD METHODIST CHURCH SUNDAY JANUARY 27TH 2007
In “Night” which is surely one of the most haunting books ever written, Elie Wiesel tells of being forced at Auschwitz to watch the hanging of three people including a young boy. The boy takes a long time to die and amidst the horror, the young Wiesel hears a man ask;
“Where is God now?”
Within himself Wiesel hears a voice answer the man;
“Here he is - He is hanging on the gallows.”
The murder of God! Quite a thought especially for a devoutly religious Jew!
And of course the Holocaust with all its horrors remains a powerful presence in all of our thinking about God and seeking to live as God’s people. It challenges our temptation to offer facile answers to what are big questions.
Certainly it challenges our notions of God being in control over all things. After all, how can this be reconciled with children being thrown into flaming ovens? Instead the case for an emphasis on God’s vulnerability and dependence in place of omnipotence, surely needs to be taken on board. For God is not so much a controller of events as an often suffering participant.
This leaves the likes of you and me with freedom to make choices. We have responsibilities. A sad feature of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s is that amongst those who made life denying choices were Christians and Christian organisations in a land with a long Christian heritage. Yes, there are the Dietrich Bonhoeffers and Martin Niemoellers who resisted the regime at considerable cost to themselves but they were well and truly outnumbered by those who out of varying motives such as nationalism, anti Judaism and fear, collaborated with the Nazi regime, in some cases to the bitter end.
Now, none of this makes the Holocaust a Christian phenomenon. The Dabru Emet statement by Jewish scholars makes that quite clear. But it does not let Christianity of the hook, saying;
“Without the long history of Christian anti Judaism and Christian violence against Jews, Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been carried out.”
These words point to the dangerous tradition of falsely representing Jews as Christ killers - a tradition which along with other factors such as blood libels has left Jews subject to a long history of violence down through the centuries especially at Easter. Doubt not that bad theology can cost lives!
The Holocaust reminds us that we need to be accepting of those who are other. Eleven million people were murdered in the Holocaust. Six million were Jews with political and religious dissidents, Roma gypsies, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people and homosexuals also numbered among the victims - simply for not fitting in with Hitler’s plans for an Aryan master race.
Other genocides have taken place for similar reasons. Armenians murdered in vast numbers by the Ottoman Empire, Tutsis and Hutu sympathisers in Rwanda and even today the events in Darfur - all bearing testimony to a tendency to be unable to offer dignity in difference.
Of course, prejudice is often born of ignorance and the prejudiced mind does not normally will such horrific outcomes as the Holocaust. But our prejudices are surely potentially the midwife to the violent and destructive. Not long ago, I stood in a queue listening to a conversation between two people as to their hatred of Muslims. I am sure/well hopeful that these people, who seemed quite pleasant in the few moments when they were talking on other subjects, would not wish physical harm on Muslims. But as I stood feeling a powerful urge to jump in on the conversation, I wondered how many such equally ill informed and ignorant conversations about Jews and other groups of people targeted by the Holocaust, would have taken place in just such surroundings in Germany and indeed this country, in the first half of the last century.
Jesus has something to say about prejudice. He does it through the Parable of the Good Samaritan in which a battered Jew finds that the neighbour who helps him in his moment of need is a Samaritan. This is a story that would have drawn gasps from Jesus’ hearers for they knew and doubtless felt the shock of a story which challenged a poisonous prejudice between two peoples that had existed for over 500 years. For this story was not just Jesus telling his fellow Jews that they shouldn’t be unkind to those wretched Samaritans. No it was more! Jesus was telling them that those whom they had despised did not merely merit toleration but that they had resources of kindness and goodness to offer. They could benefit from and learn from their ancient enemies.
I cannot see another Holocaust happening in West Europe in my lifetime. Yet, there are the seeds of prejudice and exclusion all around us. Holocaust Memorial Day is a day in which we need to respond to the challenge to embrace humanity with all its diversity rather than to hold back from and to judge harshly those who may be other than we are. Nationality, race, religion and sexual orientation should not be the causes of distancing or failing to engage as neighbours with others. For to use such as these to deny the Divine Spark in others is to send God into exile from our lives.
But the pressures are around us. In particular, we find sections of the media who continually seem to seek to incite an anti Muslim reaction. Whilst accepting the reality that bad religion can and does exist within Islam as elsewhere, we need to protest at any incitement to exclude. Surely too much of that has already happened in history.
Our calling is to be radical disciples of Jesus in affirming the dignity of human differences. Our calling is to resist the drumbeat of conformity when it would dehumanise others. I am reminded of how when awaiting trial in a Berlin prison, Martin Niemoeller was greeted by a prison chaplain with the words;
“But Brother Martin! What brings you here? Why are you in prison?”
Pertinently, Niemoeller replied;
“And brother, why are you not in prison?”
This morning we look back and see humanity at its very worst in dehumanising those deemed to be other. In the teachings of Jesus we see an invitation to embrace diversity. It is a lesson we need to go on learning. Rightly, today we look back so that we may live better in the future. For in the words of the founder of Hasidism Bal Shem Tov, words found in the main hall of the Holocaust Memorial at Vad Yashem;
“Forgetting lengthens the period of exile! In remembrance lies the secret of deliverance.”
BIDEFORD METHODIST CHURCH SUNDAY JANUARY 27TH 2007
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Epiphany 2 - Disciples come to Jesus
JOHN 1: 35-42
I have long given up hope of finding a perfect church. The more time I spend around churches, the more convinced I become that the perfect church is but a fictional creation. And were there to be such a thing as a perfect church, I would suggest that you and me stay well clear of it because our presence would it soon cause it to cease being a perfect church.
More than that, I don’t think that there has ever been a perfect church. Oh, I know some people talk about the church in its earliest years, the New Testament church, as being perfect. But to be brutally frank, to talk in such a way is merely to parade one’s ignorance. Read Paul’s letters to the Corinthians if you believe in that particular fairy tale and as you see the vast array of problems in that particular community, you will soon be disabused of any such notions. And if you think that they were any more harmonious that the church of today, well try reading Paul’s letter to the Galatians where so het up is the Apostle that he suggests that it would be better for certain trouble makers to castrate themselves - not the sort of language normally directed in this church!
And our history ever since has had more than a few dark spots. Dan Brown in his “Da Vinci Code” makes great play over the complicity of the church in Europe in the slaughter of literally millions of women as witches. We have a terrible history of intolerance towards those who are other as instanced by the Crusades directed at the Islamic East, the persecution of Jews and colonial expansions that have claimed to be taking the Gospel to other lands in Africa and the Americas yet in which all too often there has been a cavalier insensitivity towards indigenous populations. And of course there are those times when cruelty has been visited on fellow Christians who dare to have a differing view on matters of faith. Read Foxe on the sufferings of English Protestants under Queen Mary or equally read of the cruelties carried out in the name of Reformation. Look to the theological barbarism of John Calvin with regards to dissidents such as Michael Servetus who was burned at the stake, or his opponent Jacques Cruet concerning whose execution Calvin wrote;
“With God and his Sacred authorities before our eyes we say, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen… We condemn you Jacques Gruet, to be taken to Champel and there have your body attached to a stake and burnt to ashes and so you shall finish your days to give an example to others who would commit the like.”
What bloodthirsty blasphemy to link intolerance and barbarity to a God of love!
And yet, I wonder if we have learnt the lessons. The American Christian academic Marcus Borg has written of the attitude of his university students to Christianity in these terms;
“When I ask them to write a short essay on their impression of Christianity, they consistently use five adjectives; Christians are literalistic, anti-intellectual, self-righteous, judgemental and bigoted.”
And if that were not enough, research published last year by the Barna Group into the attitudes of Americans between the ages of 16 and twenty nine, showed a real hostility to Christianity on a previously unknown scale with nine of the top twelve perceptions being negative with particularly high negatives being “homophobic”, “judgemental,” “too political” and “insensitive to others.” Only 16% of non Christians had a “good impression of Christianity.”
Now of course that is America and this is Britain. There are after all differences. On the one hand there is a much higher ratio of church attendance in America than is the case in Britain. On the other hand, in America there are powerful and increasingly alienating presences such as the religious right whose popularity especially post Iraq may well be on the wane. No clear equivalence can be found in Britain. Sure, talk to young people for long and you will quickly pick up on a measure of hostility to all forms of organised religion but here I suspect the greater problem is the dead hand of apathy. Either way, it is clear that there is considerable resistance to Christianity especially amongst younger people.
And so to today’s Gospel reading. Jesus has just been baptised by John in the Jordan. And what do we find? Well, contrary to those impressions found by the Barna Group, here we find a Jesus who is exceedingly attractive to his contemporaries. Two of those who had been followers of John the Baptist, hear John speak of Jesus as “the lamb of God.” And in a moment they are up and on the move, seeking to follow Jesus. And so impressed at what they find are they that one of them a man named Andrew wants to share the good news and so he finds his brother, Simon, and tells him the earth shattering news;
“We have found the Messiah.”
And so Simon benefiting from one to one evangelism, probably the most effective form of evangelism, comes to Jesus and becomes a follower. The pattern is repeated later within the same chapter. For Philip responds to the direct call of Jesus to be a follower and then invites his friend Nathaniel to join the fold which after overcoming something of a negative attitude to Nazareth, he does. Yes, quite a model of friendship evangelism. And also a pointer to Jesus as an attractive companionable person. And does that not speak to our sense of what it is to follow Jesus? Oh, as the poster in my cousins’ bathroom used to proclaim;
“From sour faced Saints, good Lord deliver us!”
Indeed if we look at the story of Jesus, we find someone who embraced life and all manner of peoples. Time and again, his opponents castigated him for enjoying the company of and enjoying dinner parties with what they considered the wrongs sort of peoples. But still he embraced needs be they to occur at a wedding where wine ran out or lepers exiled to the edges of communities, people who had been no better than they ought to be or women denied a full life as a result of menstrual bleeding. Nobody, absolutely nobody regardless of race or religion, was beyond his embrace of love and the granting of dignity. And it carried on with his followers who challenged taboos of gender, slavery, religious background and social class. And when they were at their best, such was their attractiveness that according to the Acts of the Apostles, they enjoyed “the goodwill of all the people.”
Are there not hints of what we should seek to be there? It is when we are at our most inclusive that we are closest to the spirit of Jesus. When we embrace those who hurt most without regard as to whether they have brought it on themselves, we are nearest to the gospel. And when we impose a judgementalism on those who are other or when we pour holy water on state violence, then we are furthest from Jesus. If we want to be followers of Jesus, we need to seek the good precisely where we are least inclined to find it. And if that seems crazy, well it is about bringing such a change that Jesus has come into the world, the Word made flesh. As William Coffin so beautifully puts it;
“The incarnation says as much about what we are to become as it does about what God has become.”
Anyhow, back to the Gospel narrative. Jesus is beginning to gather a group of people around him. They certainly will be a motley crew. Ranging from terrorist sympathisers to collaborators with Rome, they will be quite a collection. In the main they will be what we would consider to be working class men. They will be called to places and situations beyond their previous experiences or expectations. But such is the nature of being a follower of Jesus. It is as Bishop Spong puts it, a case of;
“Christ calls me beyond my boundaries.”
And for none of them will that be more true that for Peter. Impetuous but certainly not hypocritical, Peter is one who will call it as he sees it, even if he is going to have an awful lot of relearning to do. At times he will seem so close to Jesus yet there will be the times when he gets it wrong - questioning the way to the cross, denying that he knows Jesus on the night of betrayal and even later initially getting in the way of Paul’s outreach to the gentiles. But here, Jesus gives him the name “Cephas”, an Aramaic name that will translate into Peter meaning “Rock.”
Oh do tell me he’s having us on! Simon Peter as “Rock” - No way! Surely, the old blunderbuss is as far removed from “Rock” as one could imagine. But whilst Jesus may just have a wry smile at the irony of it all, I do not believe that he is having a laugh at Peter’s expense or indulging in sarcasm. Jesus is being real.
Now to some, this is about authority. Peter is seen as the first Bishop of Rome and so it’s about authority. And as I was saying earlier in this sermon, Christianity is at its worst when it becomes bound up in questions of authority and power. If you want an authentic Christianity, then for Pete’s sake don’t go praying for the restoration of Christendom. For the true Gospel gets lost when real power is in the hands of the church and the so called Princes of the Church play their Machiavellian games. When the Church has power to exclude and the temptation to be involved in military force and coercion, it is then that we squeeze Jesus out.
More likely, Jesus was talking about dependability. In the past week, the Diana Inquest has been hearing from former butler, Paul Burrell, who has often spoken of being her “Rock”, the one on whom we can depend. The validity of that claim has of course been debated in the media. But here Jesus is telling Simon Peter that he is going to be a “Rock.” In other words people are going to depend on him. And how true that turns out to be as we follow his story. But he has to grow to meet the challenge but surely here is a powerful example of how Jesus sees us not so much as we are now (frozen in our failings) but as what we can become with him.
And in that there is a picture for us all. Like Peter we need to learn what it is to have people depend upon us. We need to seek God’s help to grow that we are able to meet the challenge. For in an aver changing world in which there are great uncertainties, there is surely a need for more than a few “Rocks.”
Certainly today the church has a clear perception problem. We don’t come over nearly as attractive as Jesus - far from it! To retreat to the bunker and see enemies over every hill is no answer but a sure recipe for developing paranoia. To dream of a rebirth of Christendom is judging by experience to seek a path to that which brings out our very worst. Mission today requires a much simpler response - a response in which we become as dependable as a “rock” but a “rock” which has a smile, a “rock” which is all embracing reflecting the inclusive love of Jesus.
May we be honed to be that “Rock.”
TORRINGTON METHODIST CHURCH - SUNDAY JANUARY 20TH 2007
This sermon owes a debt to Mad Priest and Daniel Clendenin
I have long given up hope of finding a perfect church. The more time I spend around churches, the more convinced I become that the perfect church is but a fictional creation. And were there to be such a thing as a perfect church, I would suggest that you and me stay well clear of it because our presence would it soon cause it to cease being a perfect church.
More than that, I don’t think that there has ever been a perfect church. Oh, I know some people talk about the church in its earliest years, the New Testament church, as being perfect. But to be brutally frank, to talk in such a way is merely to parade one’s ignorance. Read Paul’s letters to the Corinthians if you believe in that particular fairy tale and as you see the vast array of problems in that particular community, you will soon be disabused of any such notions. And if you think that they were any more harmonious that the church of today, well try reading Paul’s letter to the Galatians where so het up is the Apostle that he suggests that it would be better for certain trouble makers to castrate themselves - not the sort of language normally directed in this church!
And our history ever since has had more than a few dark spots. Dan Brown in his “Da Vinci Code” makes great play over the complicity of the church in Europe in the slaughter of literally millions of women as witches. We have a terrible history of intolerance towards those who are other as instanced by the Crusades directed at the Islamic East, the persecution of Jews and colonial expansions that have claimed to be taking the Gospel to other lands in Africa and the Americas yet in which all too often there has been a cavalier insensitivity towards indigenous populations. And of course there are those times when cruelty has been visited on fellow Christians who dare to have a differing view on matters of faith. Read Foxe on the sufferings of English Protestants under Queen Mary or equally read of the cruelties carried out in the name of Reformation. Look to the theological barbarism of John Calvin with regards to dissidents such as Michael Servetus who was burned at the stake, or his opponent Jacques Cruet concerning whose execution Calvin wrote;
“With God and his Sacred authorities before our eyes we say, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen… We condemn you Jacques Gruet, to be taken to Champel and there have your body attached to a stake and burnt to ashes and so you shall finish your days to give an example to others who would commit the like.”
What bloodthirsty blasphemy to link intolerance and barbarity to a God of love!
And yet, I wonder if we have learnt the lessons. The American Christian academic Marcus Borg has written of the attitude of his university students to Christianity in these terms;
“When I ask them to write a short essay on their impression of Christianity, they consistently use five adjectives; Christians are literalistic, anti-intellectual, self-righteous, judgemental and bigoted.”
And if that were not enough, research published last year by the Barna Group into the attitudes of Americans between the ages of 16 and twenty nine, showed a real hostility to Christianity on a previously unknown scale with nine of the top twelve perceptions being negative with particularly high negatives being “homophobic”, “judgemental,” “too political” and “insensitive to others.” Only 16% of non Christians had a “good impression of Christianity.”
Now of course that is America and this is Britain. There are after all differences. On the one hand there is a much higher ratio of church attendance in America than is the case in Britain. On the other hand, in America there are powerful and increasingly alienating presences such as the religious right whose popularity especially post Iraq may well be on the wane. No clear equivalence can be found in Britain. Sure, talk to young people for long and you will quickly pick up on a measure of hostility to all forms of organised religion but here I suspect the greater problem is the dead hand of apathy. Either way, it is clear that there is considerable resistance to Christianity especially amongst younger people.
And so to today’s Gospel reading. Jesus has just been baptised by John in the Jordan. And what do we find? Well, contrary to those impressions found by the Barna Group, here we find a Jesus who is exceedingly attractive to his contemporaries. Two of those who had been followers of John the Baptist, hear John speak of Jesus as “the lamb of God.” And in a moment they are up and on the move, seeking to follow Jesus. And so impressed at what they find are they that one of them a man named Andrew wants to share the good news and so he finds his brother, Simon, and tells him the earth shattering news;
“We have found the Messiah.”
And so Simon benefiting from one to one evangelism, probably the most effective form of evangelism, comes to Jesus and becomes a follower. The pattern is repeated later within the same chapter. For Philip responds to the direct call of Jesus to be a follower and then invites his friend Nathaniel to join the fold which after overcoming something of a negative attitude to Nazareth, he does. Yes, quite a model of friendship evangelism. And also a pointer to Jesus as an attractive companionable person. And does that not speak to our sense of what it is to follow Jesus? Oh, as the poster in my cousins’ bathroom used to proclaim;
“From sour faced Saints, good Lord deliver us!”
Indeed if we look at the story of Jesus, we find someone who embraced life and all manner of peoples. Time and again, his opponents castigated him for enjoying the company of and enjoying dinner parties with what they considered the wrongs sort of peoples. But still he embraced needs be they to occur at a wedding where wine ran out or lepers exiled to the edges of communities, people who had been no better than they ought to be or women denied a full life as a result of menstrual bleeding. Nobody, absolutely nobody regardless of race or religion, was beyond his embrace of love and the granting of dignity. And it carried on with his followers who challenged taboos of gender, slavery, religious background and social class. And when they were at their best, such was their attractiveness that according to the Acts of the Apostles, they enjoyed “the goodwill of all the people.”
Are there not hints of what we should seek to be there? It is when we are at our most inclusive that we are closest to the spirit of Jesus. When we embrace those who hurt most without regard as to whether they have brought it on themselves, we are nearest to the gospel. And when we impose a judgementalism on those who are other or when we pour holy water on state violence, then we are furthest from Jesus. If we want to be followers of Jesus, we need to seek the good precisely where we are least inclined to find it. And if that seems crazy, well it is about bringing such a change that Jesus has come into the world, the Word made flesh. As William Coffin so beautifully puts it;
“The incarnation says as much about what we are to become as it does about what God has become.”
Anyhow, back to the Gospel narrative. Jesus is beginning to gather a group of people around him. They certainly will be a motley crew. Ranging from terrorist sympathisers to collaborators with Rome, they will be quite a collection. In the main they will be what we would consider to be working class men. They will be called to places and situations beyond their previous experiences or expectations. But such is the nature of being a follower of Jesus. It is as Bishop Spong puts it, a case of;
“Christ calls me beyond my boundaries.”
And for none of them will that be more true that for Peter. Impetuous but certainly not hypocritical, Peter is one who will call it as he sees it, even if he is going to have an awful lot of relearning to do. At times he will seem so close to Jesus yet there will be the times when he gets it wrong - questioning the way to the cross, denying that he knows Jesus on the night of betrayal and even later initially getting in the way of Paul’s outreach to the gentiles. But here, Jesus gives him the name “Cephas”, an Aramaic name that will translate into Peter meaning “Rock.”
Oh do tell me he’s having us on! Simon Peter as “Rock” - No way! Surely, the old blunderbuss is as far removed from “Rock” as one could imagine. But whilst Jesus may just have a wry smile at the irony of it all, I do not believe that he is having a laugh at Peter’s expense or indulging in sarcasm. Jesus is being real.
Now to some, this is about authority. Peter is seen as the first Bishop of Rome and so it’s about authority. And as I was saying earlier in this sermon, Christianity is at its worst when it becomes bound up in questions of authority and power. If you want an authentic Christianity, then for Pete’s sake don’t go praying for the restoration of Christendom. For the true Gospel gets lost when real power is in the hands of the church and the so called Princes of the Church play their Machiavellian games. When the Church has power to exclude and the temptation to be involved in military force and coercion, it is then that we squeeze Jesus out.
More likely, Jesus was talking about dependability. In the past week, the Diana Inquest has been hearing from former butler, Paul Burrell, who has often spoken of being her “Rock”, the one on whom we can depend. The validity of that claim has of course been debated in the media. But here Jesus is telling Simon Peter that he is going to be a “Rock.” In other words people are going to depend on him. And how true that turns out to be as we follow his story. But he has to grow to meet the challenge but surely here is a powerful example of how Jesus sees us not so much as we are now (frozen in our failings) but as what we can become with him.
And in that there is a picture for us all. Like Peter we need to learn what it is to have people depend upon us. We need to seek God’s help to grow that we are able to meet the challenge. For in an aver changing world in which there are great uncertainties, there is surely a need for more than a few “Rocks.”
Certainly today the church has a clear perception problem. We don’t come over nearly as attractive as Jesus - far from it! To retreat to the bunker and see enemies over every hill is no answer but a sure recipe for developing paranoia. To dream of a rebirth of Christendom is judging by experience to seek a path to that which brings out our very worst. Mission today requires a much simpler response - a response in which we become as dependable as a “rock” but a “rock” which has a smile, a “rock” which is all embracing reflecting the inclusive love of Jesus.
May we be honed to be that “Rock.”
TORRINGTON METHODIST CHURCH - SUNDAY JANUARY 20TH 2007
This sermon owes a debt to Mad Priest and Daniel Clendenin
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Covenant Sunday - Deal or No Deal?
JEREMIAH 31: 31-34 John 15: 1-10
Back in 2005, Noel Edmonds was finally forgiven for inflicting Mr Blobby upon the British public and allowed back on prime time television after a lengthy absence to be the presenter of a new show, “Deal or No Deal.” Despite my very best efforts I have at times had to endure this particular show. For those who do not watch it, the contestant is provided with a box with one of a number of sums of money attached to it. As the contestant gets rid of boxes held by future contestants, he or she is able to form a view as to the likelihood as to whether they are likely to win a sizeable sum. From time to time, the show is interrupted by a shady character called “The Banker” who makes an offer of a deal to the contestant. In effect the show is about a battle of wits between contestant and banker. Both seek a deal in which they get the better of the other.
The Old Testament contains deals or as it put it “Covenants.” They represent agreements between God and God’s people. Following the example of ancient agreements between powerful Kings and less powerful Kings, there is the warning of sanction should the covenant be broken. And certainly the Old Covenant was broken by Israel. And by the time of Jeremiah with destruction and the reality of exile all too obvious, there was a sense that Israel was paying the price for breaching the Old Covenant.
But Jeremiah does not see the death of hope. Instead he is granted a vision of the relationship between God and humanity that is rooted not in the legal but in the wonder of God’s grace. This New Covenant is seen by Christians as being brought about through the Jesus who freely gives of himself that we might experience his salvation. Through him we are offered an unconditional love that is for all time and forgiveness for the times in which we mess up.
It is a bit like the relationship between a parent and a child. Any half decent parent knows that they will love the child born to them no matter what. There will be times when the child needs correction but however, impossible and ungrateful the child might be, there is love, that whilst such things might impoverish the lives of parents and child, can still never be broken.
And that is how it is with this New Covenant. God takes the risk of loving you and me. In taking that risk, God invites you and me to come alongside God, to identify ourselves with God’s work. To respond to the torrent of Divine love with a response of love from our hearts that finds identification in our lives.
This morning we gather with the opportunity to renew our Covenant with God. But let us be clear about one thing - should we decline to do so, God who is the perfection of parenthood, will not stop loving us. God has not left Godself with the wriggle room of a get out clause. God will go on loving each and every one of us because that is how God is. Like the father in that story Jesus told about the Prodigal Son, God will go on waiting for us and loving us, longing that one day we might respond to love and make the relationship complete.
Oh, we know all to well about the deals accompanied by threats. We know about the deals in which one party seeks to get the better of another party. But this is so very different. Before us stands the God to whom we owe our very beings, the God who is the enabler of the beautiful world, the God who is revealed to us in the self giving Jesus, the God who offers us a future, the God who offers us total and absolute love. Is that love to be unrequited? Or are we so touched that we are so absolutely bowled over that we want our lives to be a loving response, lives which really count as a gift to God.
God is reaching out to us right now. How shall we respond? Deal or No deal?
BIDEFORD METHODIST CHURCH - Sunday January 13th 2008
ALWINGTON METHODIST CHURCH - Sunday January 20th 2008
Back in 2005, Noel Edmonds was finally forgiven for inflicting Mr Blobby upon the British public and allowed back on prime time television after a lengthy absence to be the presenter of a new show, “Deal or No Deal.” Despite my very best efforts I have at times had to endure this particular show. For those who do not watch it, the contestant is provided with a box with one of a number of sums of money attached to it. As the contestant gets rid of boxes held by future contestants, he or she is able to form a view as to the likelihood as to whether they are likely to win a sizeable sum. From time to time, the show is interrupted by a shady character called “The Banker” who makes an offer of a deal to the contestant. In effect the show is about a battle of wits between contestant and banker. Both seek a deal in which they get the better of the other.
The Old Testament contains deals or as it put it “Covenants.” They represent agreements between God and God’s people. Following the example of ancient agreements between powerful Kings and less powerful Kings, there is the warning of sanction should the covenant be broken. And certainly the Old Covenant was broken by Israel. And by the time of Jeremiah with destruction and the reality of exile all too obvious, there was a sense that Israel was paying the price for breaching the Old Covenant.
But Jeremiah does not see the death of hope. Instead he is granted a vision of the relationship between God and humanity that is rooted not in the legal but in the wonder of God’s grace. This New Covenant is seen by Christians as being brought about through the Jesus who freely gives of himself that we might experience his salvation. Through him we are offered an unconditional love that is for all time and forgiveness for the times in which we mess up.
It is a bit like the relationship between a parent and a child. Any half decent parent knows that they will love the child born to them no matter what. There will be times when the child needs correction but however, impossible and ungrateful the child might be, there is love, that whilst such things might impoverish the lives of parents and child, can still never be broken.
And that is how it is with this New Covenant. God takes the risk of loving you and me. In taking that risk, God invites you and me to come alongside God, to identify ourselves with God’s work. To respond to the torrent of Divine love with a response of love from our hearts that finds identification in our lives.
This morning we gather with the opportunity to renew our Covenant with God. But let us be clear about one thing - should we decline to do so, God who is the perfection of parenthood, will not stop loving us. God has not left Godself with the wriggle room of a get out clause. God will go on loving each and every one of us because that is how God is. Like the father in that story Jesus told about the Prodigal Son, God will go on waiting for us and loving us, longing that one day we might respond to love and make the relationship complete.
Oh, we know all to well about the deals accompanied by threats. We know about the deals in which one party seeks to get the better of another party. But this is so very different. Before us stands the God to whom we owe our very beings, the God who is the enabler of the beautiful world, the God who is revealed to us in the self giving Jesus, the God who offers us a future, the God who offers us total and absolute love. Is that love to be unrequited? Or are we so touched that we are so absolutely bowled over that we want our lives to be a loving response, lives which really count as a gift to God.
God is reaching out to us right now. How shall we respond? Deal or No deal?
BIDEFORD METHODIST CHURCH - Sunday January 13th 2008
ALWINGTON METHODIST CHURCH - Sunday January 20th 2008
Thursday, 10 January 2008
EPIPHANY 1 - The baptism of Jesus
MATTHEW 3: 13-17
Doesn’t time fly? Last week, we were contemplating those mysterious wise men from the east, the magi bringing their gifts to the infant Jesus. Now in the space of a mere week, he has become a grown man of some thirty or so years and he is once more down south - only this time he has come seeking baptism from Cousin John.
He’s what? Yes, he is seeking to be baptised. And if you feel uncomfortable about that, well you are in good company. For John himself is not exactly won over on the idea. And he only does so as a result of a bit of persuasion on the part of Jesus.
And call me a heretic if you will but I’m inclined to agree with John. After all, his mission is about preparing the way for the greater more powerful one, the one whose sandals he is unfit to carry - Jesus! So surely, he has a point when he is reticent about baptising Jesus. It is a sign of things being turned upside down.
And yet it happens. It is no accident or moment of madness. For as Matthew records it;
"Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John.”
That is putting it clearly as a very deliberate event, an event that serves as a springboard for Jesus as he prepares to be the very embodiment of good news. And more than that, it is a highly significant event in itself which tells us much about the Gospel that is about to unfold.
So why should this event be so important?
One reason is not so far removed from the message of Christmas. We heard that the baby of Bethlehem would be called “Immanuel” which means “God with us.” But now we see an expansion of this glorious truth for here we see Jesus sharing in our humanity. Seeing the deeply flawed gathering of people who have come to John, Jesus does not as some remote Deity condemn these people for their shortcomings. Far from it! He joins them. He gets down in the river with them. Yes, what we witness here is Jesus not giving it to them straight as some might wish but Jesus being alongside this motley gathering of humanity. For as One who is truly as human as he is divine, he associates and identifies himself totally with us. Truly, he comes as a brother and so it is that we are able to sing that much loved hymn of old;
“What a friend we have in Jesus.”
But more than this, there is the heralding in of something that is new. John has quite uniquely been baptising his fellow Jews and doing so with a baptism for repentance. He has been challenging people to change the direction of their lives. But with the baptism of Jesus we see the beginnings of Christian baptism that brings in new dimensions. Yes, it symbolises the washing away of sins but it also has so much more. In the baptism of Jesus, we witness the presence of the Holy Spirit and Jesus hears the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s beloved son. And both of these things lie at the heart of Christian baptism. Yes, there is the turning from evil by instead being guided by God. But in Christian baptism we welcome the presence of the Holy Spirit who is the greatest of enablers. And we rejoice in the parental love of God which is offered to all peoples. Oh yes, baptism marks our being grafted into God’s family in which rather than being set up to fail, we are loved deeply and strengthened by the very author of our lives.
Indeed, baptism tells us that we are both loved and given a task. Jesus was told by the heavenly voice that he was loved but the voice declaring pleasure in him, marks the fact that he also had work to do. Human resource specialists would tell us that being valued and having a purpose are significant motivating forces in our lives. An example of this is the Jewish psychologist Victor Frankl who was held in Nazi concentration camps in World War 2. After the war, he attributed his survival through those grim days to two factors. One was the knowledge of his wife’s love. The other was his desire to rewrite the book that he had written but which the Nazis had destroyed. Love and purpose! And there is plenty of both to be found in baptism - the unlimited love of God and the calling on each of us to play our part as signs of God’s Kingdom of grace.
And finally, there is assurance in the baptism of Christ. The humanity of Jesus means that like us he had a need to feel assured of God’s favour. And in the words of the voice there came that assurance. I suspect that this was truly sustaining in the darker moments of his life. And like Jesus we have the times when we need assurance especially during those dark nights of the soul. John Wesley knew this so very well after his long spiritual search. And so one of the emphases that he preached was;
“All can know that they are saved.”
It is not so much that baptism makes us the children of God or grants us the Holy Spirit but that it gives us assurance of these things. Looking at baptism gives us an assurance of these realities. Not for nothing did Martin Luther, that great German reformer who nonetheless was regularly afflicted by severe depression, in his darkest times walk around saying repeatedly the words;
“I am baptised.”
So today as we look to the baptism of Jesus, we can rejoice that his baptism points us to the message of our baptism - the good news that by God’s grace we are all SOMEBODIES who are divinely loved and divinely called.
NORTHAM METHODIST CHURCH JANUARY 13TH 2008
Doesn’t time fly? Last week, we were contemplating those mysterious wise men from the east, the magi bringing their gifts to the infant Jesus. Now in the space of a mere week, he has become a grown man of some thirty or so years and he is once more down south - only this time he has come seeking baptism from Cousin John.
He’s what? Yes, he is seeking to be baptised. And if you feel uncomfortable about that, well you are in good company. For John himself is not exactly won over on the idea. And he only does so as a result of a bit of persuasion on the part of Jesus.
And call me a heretic if you will but I’m inclined to agree with John. After all, his mission is about preparing the way for the greater more powerful one, the one whose sandals he is unfit to carry - Jesus! So surely, he has a point when he is reticent about baptising Jesus. It is a sign of things being turned upside down.
And yet it happens. It is no accident or moment of madness. For as Matthew records it;
"Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John.”
That is putting it clearly as a very deliberate event, an event that serves as a springboard for Jesus as he prepares to be the very embodiment of good news. And more than that, it is a highly significant event in itself which tells us much about the Gospel that is about to unfold.
So why should this event be so important?
One reason is not so far removed from the message of Christmas. We heard that the baby of Bethlehem would be called “Immanuel” which means “God with us.” But now we see an expansion of this glorious truth for here we see Jesus sharing in our humanity. Seeing the deeply flawed gathering of people who have come to John, Jesus does not as some remote Deity condemn these people for their shortcomings. Far from it! He joins them. He gets down in the river with them. Yes, what we witness here is Jesus not giving it to them straight as some might wish but Jesus being alongside this motley gathering of humanity. For as One who is truly as human as he is divine, he associates and identifies himself totally with us. Truly, he comes as a brother and so it is that we are able to sing that much loved hymn of old;
“What a friend we have in Jesus.”
But more than this, there is the heralding in of something that is new. John has quite uniquely been baptising his fellow Jews and doing so with a baptism for repentance. He has been challenging people to change the direction of their lives. But with the baptism of Jesus we see the beginnings of Christian baptism that brings in new dimensions. Yes, it symbolises the washing away of sins but it also has so much more. In the baptism of Jesus, we witness the presence of the Holy Spirit and Jesus hears the voice from heaven declaring him to be God’s beloved son. And both of these things lie at the heart of Christian baptism. Yes, there is the turning from evil by instead being guided by God. But in Christian baptism we welcome the presence of the Holy Spirit who is the greatest of enablers. And we rejoice in the parental love of God which is offered to all peoples. Oh yes, baptism marks our being grafted into God’s family in which rather than being set up to fail, we are loved deeply and strengthened by the very author of our lives.
Indeed, baptism tells us that we are both loved and given a task. Jesus was told by the heavenly voice that he was loved but the voice declaring pleasure in him, marks the fact that he also had work to do. Human resource specialists would tell us that being valued and having a purpose are significant motivating forces in our lives. An example of this is the Jewish psychologist Victor Frankl who was held in Nazi concentration camps in World War 2. After the war, he attributed his survival through those grim days to two factors. One was the knowledge of his wife’s love. The other was his desire to rewrite the book that he had written but which the Nazis had destroyed. Love and purpose! And there is plenty of both to be found in baptism - the unlimited love of God and the calling on each of us to play our part as signs of God’s Kingdom of grace.
And finally, there is assurance in the baptism of Christ. The humanity of Jesus means that like us he had a need to feel assured of God’s favour. And in the words of the voice there came that assurance. I suspect that this was truly sustaining in the darker moments of his life. And like Jesus we have the times when we need assurance especially during those dark nights of the soul. John Wesley knew this so very well after his long spiritual search. And so one of the emphases that he preached was;
“All can know that they are saved.”
It is not so much that baptism makes us the children of God or grants us the Holy Spirit but that it gives us assurance of these things. Looking at baptism gives us an assurance of these realities. Not for nothing did Martin Luther, that great German reformer who nonetheless was regularly afflicted by severe depression, in his darkest times walk around saying repeatedly the words;
“I am baptised.”
So today as we look to the baptism of Jesus, we can rejoice that his baptism points us to the message of our baptism - the good news that by God’s grace we are all SOMEBODIES who are divinely loved and divinely called.
NORTHAM METHODIST CHURCH JANUARY 13TH 2008
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