Lent 5 - Out of the depths

PSALM 130

“And now I am happy all the day.”

So ends the chorus of a popular hymn. And whenever I hear it I get the urge to throw up. Why? Because nothing is to me more alien than those words. They just don’t ring true with my experience of life.

I freely admit to having a very powerful depressive streak in my life. There are times when I find functioning very difficult indeed. I’ve been through some of that this week and even this evening I know that I am struggling. But hey I am not alone. And this evening I want to get across the message that Christians who are feeling down are as much a part of the body of Christ as those who are at the top of the mountain. Indeed some of us are in both situations at differing times.

Now don’t bother feeling sorry for me. I won’t have it. After all I am in some pretty good company. Winston Churchill used to tall of being plagued by the “black dog” - something I can identify with him in even if not in much else. Martin Luther was so affected by depression that on one occasion his wife dressed in black, explaining to him that from the way he had been behaving she assumed God had died. And dear Vincent Van Gogh, the artist who had once been a pastor, in an extreme attack of depression, cut off his ear. So you can see that the company, if not the experience, is pretty good.

Now I can offer no easy responses to the problem of feeling down. If I could you would be able to direct at me the call to heal myself. I simply want this evening to make the point that for some if not most of us, there are times when we can feel wretched. And if we are to be real then we should not have to hide it. Oh be gone cult of unending happiness. Instead let us embrace reality and banish artificiality.

Now any serious reading of the scriptures makes clear that following God is not about entering on an unending “Happy Clappy” convention. Indeed the thought of such a thing is to me at least nausea inducing. The scriptures are very honest in showing us quite a range of human feelings and experiences. So I find Psalm 130 to be a helpful piece of scripture. Indeed its first verse is so real;

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”

There is no posing here. The author recognises the situation in which the author is ensconced and knows that there is no benefit in trying to put on a front to God. The author feels wretched and is prepared to recognise it in the presence of God. And surely if there is a requirement on us when approaching God, it is to be real. That being real means a recognition of where we are and also an expression of desire as to what we might become.

Anyhow despite the pain, the Psalmist clearly longs to be in communication with God. This is good as communion with the God who is the source of our being, enables us to experience the deepest of realities. After all is it not an important desire that we should be in relationship with the one to whom we owe our being. Indeed many have argued that we only find true fulfilment in harmony with God - that this is a need within each of us. Man at war with God is hardly likely to be at peace with fellow man. And if our Being is the product of God then surely God understands us better than we can even understand ourselves.

Still within our Psalm there are two essential revelations about God which are of help to us in our desire for peace of mind.

The first of these is that God is forgiving by nature. The Psalmist grasps what we see in Christ - namely that God has deep wells of forgiveness. Too often, we find ourselves thinking that we can never be forgiven. Indeed we can become dominated by our failings. Yet despite the church too often portraying God as austere and remote, the truth is that God longs to forgive us. Like the father in Jesus’ story about a Prodigal Son, God’s nature is to be all forgiving without regard as to how far we have roamed. It is as demonstrated by Jesus upon the cross amidst mockery and abuse yet crying out;

“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Forgiveness without limit regardless of the extent of our offences! It is this that is the means by which we are put right with God rather than the special pleading of the Psalmist based upon hours of waiting on God.

Secondly, there is reconciliation with God made available. The Psalmist links this with God’s work in both past and future. We see God’s unfailing love in his dealings with Israel going back to ancient Covenants. We see it going forwards in the work of Christ which is able to bring us full redemption. The sins of the past can be as if they never happened. God has wiped them away. And this is surely life changing for here is God’s love breaking into our hearts enabling us to make new beginnings - all thanks to Christ who has entered into our world and suffered and died that we might embrace the peace with God to which Jesus points.

None of this makes life a bed of roses. Hard times and injustices continue in the world. At times we may feel rather rejected. At times our faces may have tears rather than smiles. Yet hope can not be obliterated because God is for us even when we are at our lowest - indeed maybe more so at such times. The Psalmist kindly points us to a love that will not let us go, a love that we witness in the Passion of Jesus Christ who journeys to a cross with all the pain and rejection that this entails, out of a courageous and passionate love for you and me. He is on our side amidst our vulnerability. For surely God is for us even when we feel furthest from that love.

Now we await his entry to Jerusalem. We await the witness to that love on Calvary. And we await its vindication through resurrection on Easter Day. And then we celebrate by accepting an invitation to his table where we find wonder of wonders, that not only are forgiven and loved but we are right royally accepted as we are. And so we find meaning in the amazing truth that the Maker of the Stars and Seas is for us - no more than that the Maker of the Stars and Seas invites us to be his friends.

Wow!


NORTHAM METHODIST CHURCH Sunday March 9th 2008

Lent 5 Hope in the darkest hour

EZEKIEL 37: 1-14 John 11: 1-45

I found a story that I liked only yesterday. It’s about a man who had just moved to a new city. Sat in a taxi, he was looking for somewhere that would be good for dinner. Leaning forward, he tapped the driver and said, “Hey mate!” - only for the driver to let out a blood curdling scream followed by his losing control of the vehicle which in the next few moment almost hit a bus, jumped the curb and stopped only inches from the window of a crowded restaurant. After a prolonged silence in which all that could be heard was two hearts beating like base drums, the driver turned around and said;

“Man you scared the living daylights out of me!”

The passenger who was still in a state of shock replied;

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise tapping you on the shoulder would scare you so badly.”

Quickly the driver explained;

“Well, it’s not your fault. This is my first day driving a taxi. For the past 25 years I’ve been driving a hearse.”


Today as approach Easter, we are reminded of the reality of the shadow side of life. Ant timely that is for our faith has to take seriously the dark realities of life if it is to be real. Sure we can rejoice as we shall do on Easter Day but many a time of rejoicing can only come after times of darkness and even despair.

Ezekiel certainly knew about the dark side of life. After all this priestly prophet was living through what many felt to be a time of calamity. Jerusalem had been destroyed and many of its more able people such as Ezekiel himself were living in distant exile in Babylon far from what they knew best and cherished most. All around him the temptation to give up was at its greatest. And yet this prophet sought to communicate a message that all was not lost. For God would never abandon his people and despite all that had happened could be trusted. Despite the past, and Ezekiel had plenty to say about that, there was still a future to look forward to.

Part of this vision of hope is to be found in the vision of the valley of dry bones. The valley envisaged may well have been an actual battle site from one of the battles that had reduces the people to such a sorry state. What matters from the vision is that these unburied bones are as dead as dead can possibly be. They are caput - finished! There is no reason to place any hope in them. And yet through the Spirit, these bones are enabled to rise up, find life and renewed purpose.

What is the vision all about? Quite simply Ezekiel is proclaiming the message that the shattered defeated people of Israel who are as finished as dry dead bones, may experience a new life - a new life not rooted in anything special about them but rooted in the purposes of God. The God who will raise Jesus from the dead, the God who will equip that motley group of Galilean followers of Jesus for mission, the God who today empowers the church of Christ - that God brings new hope and life to a people who have sunk into despair and who are to all intents and purposes dead. And perhaps we need to engage ourselves with that vision of Ezekiel when we are tempted to lose hope for our world.

And then from John’s Gospel we find that familiar story of the raising of Lazarus. Here we find a foretaste of the resurrection of Christ. Listen for a moment to those words of Jesus when Martha rebukes him for not coming quicker;

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.”

This, the sixth of John’s seven signs that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of God, shows Jesus possessing Divine power over the greatest of humankind’s enemies, death itself. Certainly John’s narrative points to Lazarus being very much dead. And one day he would be again. But Jesus is here revealed as the one who is able to bring new life from death in these sense here of bringing a man back to life just as in his hands as we die to what we have been he is able to make us into new creations that will reflect his love in a way that we could not have previously envisaged. For the time for being born from above is not at the moment of our physical death but here and now. As Lindy Black puts it so eloquently, it is a case of;

“From womb to tomb and vice versa!”

This morning we are reminded of the shadow side of life with all its pain. More of it we will see in the hatred and violence that leads to Good Friday. And if we are to be real, there is no way that we can ignore the darkness. And yet it cannot be the whole picture for in those moments of our greatest helplessness, God is weaving exciting possibilities of new beginnings. Today we see those new beginnings being dreamt of within a vanquished humiliated nation and in coming to fruition in a corpse that is especially mourned by two sisters. Why? It all boils down to the Divine love that wills only the best for us. We have seen it in Jesus of Nazareth bringing new life for all manner of people in Galilee through healings and the granting a new sense of their value. This is what the Kingdom of God is all about. As former Roman Catholic priest John Dominic Crossan puts it;

“Life out of death is how the people would have understood the Kingdom of God, in which Jesus helps them to take back control over their own bodies, hopes and their own destinies.”

Indeed! Life out of death! And that we shall see afresh as we enter into the Easter story and find once more of death being unable to hold back the new life embodied in Jesus - the new life that is the source of all our hope


GAMMATON METHODIST CHURCH Sunday March 9th 2008

Opening story comes from Billy Strayhorn

Lent 4 - Eyes opened to love

John 9: 1-13, 28 - 42

It is one of those less than endearing facts of life that those who get the worst deal in life tend to also have to put up with the sneers of those who are more fortunate suggesting that in some way they are to blame for the kicks in the teeth that they endure. An example is the Poor Laws which existed until some way into the 20th century. Sure they protected the poor from being unable to exist but surely I cannot be alone in finding something repugnant in the wealthy assessing who is deserving poor and who is undeserving poor. My own great grandmother was but one of many who ended her life being subjected to this onslaught on her human dignity. Thank God for the arrival of the welfare state which put an end to this nonsense. May it never return although recent pronouncements as to who may and who may not have local authority housing fills me with no small measure of alarm.

Or Gospel reading this evening tells us of man who was down on his luck and who suffered the same sort of pious sneers as to whether his sufferings were his own fault. He was a blind man who had to beg in order to exist. I don’t know about you but I shudder when I hear the question put to Jesus by his closest followers;

“Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

The theology behind the question is surely vile to us. It represents a theology that provides us with a repugnant view of God, a view of God that were it to be true would in all honesty make it impossible for me to worship God. And yet it was not seen as the view of crackpots. Far from it. This question came out of the orthodoxy of he time of Jesus. After all, a theology had come to prevail from the time of the exile which suggested that if a person or nation was faithful to God, then rewards and blessings would follow. As for a person of nation that was unfaithful, the opposite outcome would occur. And to be fair it was a theology that enabled people to make sense of the horrors of the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the elite. More than that it was a theology that enabled those who returned to create a nation that took faithfulness to God seriously.

But the problem was that it created an image of a thoroughly capricious and petty God. So it becomes a theology that is an abomination. And yet it had deep roots. We see it in the friends of Job who rebuke him amidst his sufferings - in love of course! We also see it in those who suggested that the victims of a collapsed tower at Siloam were necessarily particularly sinful. In that regard Jesus rejects this wretched perspective. And so he does in this case.

So let us be clear that a theology that suggests God is pleased with the rich or the healthy but displeased with the poor or the sick is a total abomination. It is no better than the vomit of Satan. And so it needs to be rejected and exposed wherever it rears its ugly head. Indeed, let any theology that denies the absolute love of God be confronted. Instead may we seek to always represent God as all loving as is seen in Jesus. For the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be in conflict with the loving, inclusive Jesus. Do you get it? Theology matters because it is important that we do not misrepresent the God to whom we point people towards. Be gone indeed, every life denying image of God!

So what does Jesus do? He sees an opportunity to work for good in a bad situation. Only the past week, I was at a meeting concerning the housing crisis in Bideford. The problem of people being unhoused or inadequately housed in Bideford or Anywhere else for that matter is nothing short of scandalous. I shiver at a system that leaves people uncertain of shelter or having to walk the streets for much of the day until they can return to temporary abodes whilst money can be found for weapons of mass destruction, gambling dens or appeasing the self interest of life’s greatest winners in a material sense. It is nothing short of a moral and spiritual disgrace. But sadly we cannot obtain the necessary changes to this shocking state of affairs. So rightly Christians and others are getting together to develop a scheme that will seek to bring hope to some of those whose needs is greatest. For suffering has surely to bring a challenge to engage with the problem.

And Jesus engages with this man. In John’s account he doesn’t even wait to be asked to help. He just gets on and helps a man in need. Making mud with saliva Jesus spreads it on the man’s eyes - there are echoes here of the second creation story in Genesis. He tells the man to wash in the pool of Siloam on the south side of the Temple. And the result is that the man is enabled to see. Now hold on to this. Jesus responds to suffering by opening up the possibilities of God working loving purposes in the situation. And that is surely a good model for us.

But this story is not just about a healing. It is about a transformation. Let me tell you a story. It goes like this. One day a Christian and a Communist were sat on a park bench watching the world go by. As they observed the goings on, they noticed a poor, drunken beggar dressed in rags. The Communist pointed to the beggar and said, “Communism would put a new suit on that man.” But the Christian responded, “Maybe so, but Jesus Christ can put a new man in that suit.” Now for me this should not be seen as an either/or story. The Marxist in me entirely approves of the words of the Communist - to each according to his needs is not a bad concept. But it doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t solve the problem for problems can keep repeating themselves. A new creation is needed to go along with the social transformation. And in John’s story, the greatest miracle is the transformation that takes place within the blind man.

What is the transformation? Well I don’t know how many of you watched Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian.” It’s actually quite a good film and if you read interviews with the team you will find that it was not intended to make fun of Jesus but to make fun of how we are prone to searching for gods made in our image and to be honest of the church - and I think there are times when people are entitled to do just that. Anyhow there is one scene in which Brian who has become a messiah figure due to public misunderstanding, is harassed by a beggar crying out;

“Alms for an ex leper.”

We are encouraged to believe that this is a leper who has indeed been healed by Jesus after many years of leprosy accompanied by begging. In the dialogue there is a cute moment when Brian asks the ex leper who cured him only to get the answer;

“Jesus did. I was hopping along minding my own business. All of a sudden, up he comes, cures me. One minute I’m a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood’s gone, not so much as a by-your-leave.. You’re cured, mate. Interfering do-gooder!"

And in that we see that healings such as this one are not just about a cure to an illness but about entering a totally new way of life. This blind man would probably have developed a security from his practice of begging. He has done it for years. But now as a man who could see, that practice had been taken away from him. He would have to learn to live a very different way. How this man did so we are not told but in his conversation with the Pharisees we see a man rise to levels that can hardly have been expected. The man who had begged for his subsistence, the man who had had to please others so that he might have the necessities of life, now becomes a man who is not prepared to be browbeaten but who is prepared to argue his case with those learned Pharisees. Yes, the man has been transformed and now he is a new creation. So never forget that Jesus is in the business of changing people. He transforms them into new creations. And this is part of the business of the church today.

But finally the blind man seems to see better than the Pharisees. Hence that mysterious phrase of Jesus;

“I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”

There is indeed an irony that a blind beggar would seem to see better than the religious professionals. There is a temptation to reach that point where one cannot see the wood for the trees. And amongst these quite definitely devout people that state had been reached. For there are times when we all need to see the most important truths of all. I am reminded of a story about Karl Barth who may have been the greatest theologian of the 20th century. His “Christian Dogmatics” are certainly a most impressive legacy. Yet coming towards the end of his life he was asked after a lecture what he considered to be the greatest truth that he had learnt in his fruitful life. His reply was this;

“The greatest truth I have ever learned is ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so,’”

And that my friends we need to see - that Jesus loves me, you, the cussed guy down the road who drives us crazy and yes also the Muslim bowing down to Allah. Never, ever forget that the love of Jesus is for all. Otherwise all we are left with is sanctimonious mumbo jumbo!

And that is at the heart of seeing. Forget your aspirations at knowing the truth to all life’s big questions. Search for truth for unfocused devotion can be a dangerous thing but have the humility to know with Paul that our knowledge is partial and that we see as through a darkened glass. Still remember that the love of God for all and through all is what matters most.

One of the best hymns to have come out of America in the 20th Century was Thomas Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, take my hand.” Sung at the funeral of Martin Luther King, its background was in the unexpected deaths of Dorsey’s wife Nettie and the child she was carrying. Dorsey went through guilt at not having responded to an instinct to remain with her rather than travel to a revival meeting. He also felt let down by God until he came to a place of resolving to listen closer to God and in that fund peace. That peace took him to a piano late at night in a music school and there as he played a melody came that most memorable of hymns;

“Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When my way grows drear
Precious Lord linger near
When my light is almost gone
Hear my cry, hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When the darkness appears
And the night draws near
And the day is past and gone
At the river I stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I'm tired, I'm weak, I'm lone
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home.”

May our eyes like those of the blind beggar be opened to the courageous, unconditional love of God that comes to us through Jesus. May we see!


TORRINGTON METHODIST CHURCH - Sunday March 2nd 2008

Mothering Sunday - Our Mother God

1 SAMUEL 1: 20 - 28 JOHN 19: 25 - 27

I remember back in 1999 when the Methodist worship Book came out. The circuit in which I was working on the Isle of Man decided to purchase a number of copies for use throughout the churches. Generally it was well received. There was just one matter that caused concern - the Communion service in which God is addressed as both “mother” and father.” And I know that for some, that one reference to God as “mother” invalidated the whole book.

And yet I think that that one reference was entirely justifiable. Now don’t get me wrong. Next week we will not be praying to;

“Our mother who art in heaven.”

That is not how Jesus taught the Lord’s Prayer and it is not how it has been prayed for two millennia. And I’m far too much a respecter of tradition to disregard either scripture or the historic teachings of the church.

And yet I equally do not want to ignore the motherhood of God. And in that I have some worthy colleagues. Listen for a moment to Anselm who became Archbishop of Canterbury just six years after the death of William the Conqueror. Nor regarded as a liberal trendy, he had this to say;

“Jesus, you are gentle with us as a mother with her children.”

And then listen to the greatest religious thinker that this country has ever produced, Mother Julian of Norwich, who over six hundred years ago wrote;

“As truly as God is our Father, as truly God is our Mother.”

Now of course most Biblical references to God portray God as male. That is hardly surprising given that the social context in which the scriptures emerged was one in which men were dominant. But there are exceptions. In the Old Testament there are to be found verses which provide us with images such as God being as a woman in childbirth, a mother unable to forget the child she has fed and a midwife attending a birth at a time when only a woman could serve in that role. And the list could go on much longer. And within the Gospels, Jesus likens God to a woman searching for a coin whilst Jesus takes on himself female imagery in his lament over Jerusalem when he cries out;

“How often have I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”

Now of course, God is beyond gender. Being spirit, God does not have the attributes that make us male or female. Indeed, it is irrelevant for in the very first chapter of Genesis we are told that God has created male and female in God’s image. Of course Jesus lived as a man although it is his humanity rather than his gender that is significant in him being the means of our salvation.

Speaking of God as “father” or “mother” doubtless provides us with a quite a range of pictures. Observing the media and hearing people’s stories suggest that whilst for most people there are positive responses to the term “father,” there are those for whom the term is a block on any relationship with God. And yet our stereotypes of fathers and mothers can fall short of reality. I know in many a home the ultimate threat may have been;

“Wait till your father gets home.”

But we know that fathers are not necessarily the fearsome disciplinarians that those words imply. After all in some homes it is the mother who is the strict parent whilst the father may have great qualities of caring, patience and compassion which are often associated with mothers. Time and again the stereotypes are seen to be removed from the realities.

Surely God combines both fatherhood and motherhood in God’s dealings with us. Indeed God represents the very best that can be hoped for of both fathers and mothers. Truly, God is the altogether lovely perfection of parenthood. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the Father figure who is intended as a representation of God, in some ways behaves as a mother would do. He shows restraint in the face of the Prodigal’s insensitive request for his inheritance. When the Prodigal returns he is most unmanly in running to meet the Prodigal and in kissing him. And then when the other son refuses to join the celebration, he takes on the mother’s role as a peacemaker rather than thrashing the lad as would have been expected of a father. No wonder that Rembrandt in his painting, “The Return of the Prodigal son” has two very different hands of the father touching the returned son - one being very muscular whilst the other has the elegance and gentleness of a woman.

So whilst I am not going to start praying the Lord’s Prayer by beginning with “Our Mother” rather than “Our Father”, I do think it is important to recognise that in God’s we find the wholeness and the perfection of both fatherhood and motherhood. Our God is the divine parent to whom we owe our lives and in whom we find all that we could want in a parent. Yet ultimately, this is about our search for ways to relate to God and to describe God. And then the list of ways in which we can see and experience God would seem to be endless. Our language can never fully describe the wonder of God,

But finally what thought can we take away? I think it is this. God loves us passionately. God is concerned for our well being. And God cannot stop being concerned for us even when love becomes painful. He is what we would wish a parent to be and more besides. So today let us just wallow in God’s love - the love without limits!


BIDEFORD METHODIST CHURCH - Sunday March 2nd 2008

Lent 3 - Not so gentle Jesus (Non lectionary sermon)

JOHN 2: 13-22

I think the first prayer that I learnt came from Charles Wesley. It began;

“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
Look upon a little child;
Pity my simplicity,
Suffer me to come to Thee.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, I attended a church where proudly displayed was what I now know to be Warner Salmon’s painting “The Head of Christ.” It’s the picture that most of you will have seen (500 million copies have been produced) in which Jesus has flowing blonde hair, blue eyes and makes the late John Inman look like The Terminator. In short it is a picture that has always made me want to protest;

“What a wimp!”

In both prayer and painting I think we have got Jesus very badly wrong and I for one have had to do a bit of unlearning. Which is just as well because today’s reading portrays Jesus in a manner that is hardly “meek and mild.” So let the real Jesus be unleashed!

And that Jesus is certainly blazing with anger in John’s Gospel. Now John puts the clearing of the Temple at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus whereas the other Gospel writers put it as the follow up to the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday. Some would argue that there could have been two such events but given the importance attached to the Temple as a centre of religious and economic life in Jerusalem, it is surely inconceivable that Jesus would have been allowed two such outrages. After all the American scholar EP Sanders argues that this is the event that was the trigger for the execution of Jesus. So I am inclined to think that this episode occurred at the timing suggested by the first three Gospels whilst John being more concerned with significance than chronology has found it suitable for his purposes to tell this story at the beginning of his Gospel.

So let’s for a moment look to the temple itself. The Temple at the time of Jesus was the third Temple ( or a major development of the second Temple depending on your point of view) to be built on that site. Building had begun under Herod the Great at about 20 BCE. It would not be totally completed until about 63 CE under Herod Agrippa. It was a thoroughly magnificent building made of white marble that gleamed in the daylight. Hugely impressive, it conveyed a message about the greatness of Israel’s God and it was the centre of Israel’s religious and economic life. So to confront the Temple establishment was a bold and audacious move by Jesus.

So to what exactly did Jesus object? It wasn’t simply that there was a market place. This was normal in any temple cult. Currency need to be changed from that of Rome to Jewish money in order for the necessary payment to be made. Appropriate livestock had to be sold in order for sacrifices to be made and that which was brought in needed to be inspected. And yet, protesting that God’s house has been turned into a “market” Jesus unleashes his full fury upon the traders - making a whip of cords to drive the animals out of the Temple, scattering the coins of the money changers and overturning their tables.

Wow! This is no meek and mild Jesus. This is a Jesus who is furious, a Jesus who is not going hang around to observe social etiquette. But why? In part it is because the Temple traders are using religion as a means to carry out extortionate practices at the expense of poor worshippers. After all, Jesus is here in line with the prophetic tradition in rejecting the exploitation of the poor. And he knows only too well that much of this commerce is in fact controlled by high priestly families such as that of Annas (Jospehus refers to the “bazaars of Annas“) which included his son in law Caiaphas who figures in the trial of Jesus. No way is Jesus prepared to sit back and see an elite carrying out sharp practice to the detriment of worshipers, many of who would have been impoverished. Instead, we witness a courageous stand against the dominant powers.

Another cause of the anger of Jesus may well have been that the activities about which he protested were going on in the Court of the Gentiles. This Court was as far as gentiles could go. And yet, they were hardly experiencing worship in the midst of a bazaar. Jews could go further especially if they were men but this was as good as it got for gentiles. Now whilst most of what Jesus has been doing has been with his fellow Jews, he has hinted that God is for all peoples in for example his conversation with the Samaritan Woman at the Well and in the parable he told of a good Samaritan. Here, he can no longer abide a system which has been abused in such a way as to keep people from a full experience of God’s love. It has to end! I just wonder to what extent our proclamation and attitudes today keep people who are other than us, away from a full experience of God’s love today.

So there we are. Jesus, far from being meek and mild, is eyes ablaze with anger. His actions are the actions of fury. So perhaps we need not be afraid of anger. Indeed, I would suggest that there are times when we should embrace anger even when that anger is directed towards the places where many would not wish it to be placed. I certainly feel anger at the production of instruments that could carry out mass killing including when they are done by my own country. I certainly feel anger at the opening of casinos and bookies that exploit human weakness. I certainly feel anger at the toleration of homelessness and inadequate housing in a country where such need is often but a few yards from ostentatious wealth whose desires seem to be much more listened to in high places than the cries of the needy. So let there be no mistake - at times anger and the action that goes with it is a Christian duty! Be gone meek and mild church! Arise a church of militancy for the dispossessed, the voiceless and the victims!

But still this is not the point at which to stop. As Jesus is challenged, to give a sign for what he is doing, his answer is;

“Destroy this Temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

How do we interpret this? Well certainly one possibility is to see it in terms of a prophesy of the imminent destruction of the Temple. John’s readers will know that this has happened in 70 CE.

But I guess that most Christians will see it as pointing to his own body. For ultimately the risen Christ will be all that the Temple should have been as the place to meet with God. As we travel through Lent on the way to the events of Good Friday and Easter, we see in Jesus the all sufficient means through which we may approach God and experience the fullness of God’s love. A day of anger in Jerusalem has shown the temporary nature of the Temple as a means to God. Instead we can see in the passionate courage and love of Jesus that in him all our hopes and dreams can be wisely invested.

A world without the Temple seemed an impossibility. Today, we still put our hopes in wrong places be they nation, leaders or even British values. These things are not necessarily wrong in themselves but when we depend on them, they become a form of idolatry. The only place that I can encourage you to invest your allegiance and hopes in in Jesus Christ who is God made flesh. He is thoroughly reliable.


ALVERDISCOTT METHODIST CHURCH February 24th 2008

Lent 3 - Good news for Outsiders

JOHN 4: 5-26, 39-42

This morning time is short and we face a scripture that speaks profoundly to us. So I just want to highlight a little of the message that comes at us from this encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Sychar.

Firstly, that this meeting ever happened tells us something important about Jesus. You see, this encounter comes against a background of over 500 years of enmity between Jews such as Jesus and Samaritans. Its roots lay in the planting of new peoples into the area by Assyrian conquerors. With time not only was there a racial issue between two people but a religious issue also. For Samaritan religion had come to a different place than Jewish religion. As the dialogue makes clear one of the differences was in the place of supreme worship of God. For Jews, the Temple in Jerusalem was the place that counted. Samaritans on the other hand looked to Mount Gerizim which was close to the scene of this encounter. Once a temple had stood there but Jewish leaders had destroyed it a century earlier.

By the time of Jesus, both parties had their grievances and so they tended to have as little to do with each other as possible. Indeed most Jews would have avoided going through Samaria but Jesus didn’t.

Anyhow, our scripture finds him thirsty by the well when a Samaritan woman arrives. Firstly he asks her for water and out of that engages her in conversation. Nothing unusual in that you might think. But in that culture it was unusual. For as verse 9 makes clear, Jews did not normally associate with Samaritans. And more than that it was not normal for a man to engage in private conversation with a woman other than a member of his family, something which led to the disciples being surprised at finding Jesus talking with a woman. Do you get it? Jesus was not letting the conventions of the day get in the way of proper and respectful conversation with this Samaritan woman. To most Jewish people, she was an outsider but to Jesus she was quite simply a person worthy of respect.

Now it would seem that her experiences of life had not been altogether kind. We are told that she had had 5 husbands before her current partner. Often this is interpreted as suggesting that she had a particularly sinful lifestyle. Her coming to the well at a time when the Sun was at its hottest rather than earlier in the morning, is often interpreted as suggesting that she was ashamed to be with other women who knew her story all too well. But this is reading too much into her story. The woman may simply have been unfortunate, a victim of bereavement is a society where life expectancy was not all that could have been wished. She may have been harshly treated by men in her life to a point where some of the spark had been knocked out of her so that she preferred to stay away from company. We do not know. What we do know is that if others thought her not to be worth their time, that was not a view shared by Jesus.

Oh make no mistake, here we find the worth of all people being affirmed by Jesus. Differences for him were not an excuse to erect the barriers. Whilst our rag the Daily Mail was this week exposed offering money for stories that would reflect badly on East Europeans living in this country, Jesus systematically knocks down the walls we build against people who are deemed to be other. Indeed, in his respectful dialogue with a woman of other faith, perhaps we can see a model as to how we can dialogue with people of other religions in this country. This means being prepared to listen and even to seek the help of those who are “other” as Jesus does in his request for water, rather than hectoring them or dehumanising them.

Now, this is pretty traditional interpretation. Jesus is on the side of the outsider and this has important significance in how we treat outsiders today be they of other religion, other lands especially asylum seekers or those who are deemed to have in some way or other to have flawed lifestyles. The love of Jesus is for all and we do no favours when we put limits on the love of God.

But I think there is something else going on here. It is too easy for us to see Jesus as the insider and the Samaritan woman as the outsider. You see, that is not the whole picture. This encounter is not in Israel. It is in Samaria. It is on the home turf of the Samaritan woman. She is the one who is at home. And in this place it is Jesus who is the outsider. Consciously and deliberately Jesus has made himself into the outsider. And this can speak to Christian living today. In a real way, Christians need to get used to being the outsider in what is effectively post Christian society. Forget about a past when Christianity in its corrupted form of Christendom dominated. Look to today where we are surrounded by many a Samaria and like Jesus respond to the challenge to engage with a society in which Christians are the outsider. There is a real temptation in times of falling church numbers in Britain, west Europe and increasingly the USA to retreat into a bunker mentality. And yet the example of Jesus urges us away from that. Jesus urges us to positively engage with the diversity of humanity especially with those whose experience of rejection is greatest. If Jesus can be the archetypal outsider, then that is the place for us.

This story is at a well. People who lived in the Middle East in those days as today knew only too well the worth of water - pity Coca Cola with their wasteful use of water do not know this worth. Shortages of water are a problem for much of the world. And yet vital as that is, Jesus offers this Samaritan woman a vision of “living water” which will bring refreshment for all time. This was an is the offer of Jesus. In our world of the rat race in which the rats all too often do their worst to those who cannot keep up, Jesus offers the living waters of his presence, his love and his acceptance. He brings grace, a word that can change the world, through which he gives us a value that we can never earn. This grace is something that we can mediate to others. Just as Jesus stood out against life denying culture in his time, so to are we called to challenge the grey arbiters of power in our world with a vision of grace.

The Samaritan woman rejoiced in her encounter with Jesus. She tells what has happened to her fellow Samaritans. Jesus stays a couple of extra days with the historic enemy. And it is they who discern that Jesus “really is the Saviour of the world.”

And what more of this Samaritan woman? We know no more of what happened to her although I cannot but think that this encounter was life changing to both this woman and to Jesus. But across the world she goes on being celebrated. In Mexico, La Samaritana is celebrated on the fourth Sunday of Lent with specially flavoured water being given so as to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. In Russia she is honoured as Svetlana which means “equal to the apostles.”

What an elevation for this outsider! But this is the Gospel of the ultimate outsider in which outsiders still find favour.


BIDEFORD METHODIST CHURCH Sunday February 24th 2008

Lent 2 - Moving with God

GENESIS 12: 1-6 JOHN 3: 1-17

I am one of those people who finds it hard to warm to that patriarch of Genesis, Abraham. A man who on two occasions puts himself before the well being of his wife by pretending that she is his sister so as not to disillusion powerful men who wish to sleep with her, is not exactly the sort of person I admire. That he is recorded as exiling his first child and her mother, being prepared to sacrifice his child whether it be Isaac as in the Jewish and Christian traditions or Ishmael as in the Islamic tradition, and that he seems to have difficulty getting on with people leading to a splitting with Lot and even the unleashing of a war, mean that to be honest I don’t find Abraham to be the sort of guy I would choose to go out for a pint with.

And yet, Abraham is a venerated figure in three religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Why should that be? I think that the answer is that this deeply flawed man is at the same time a man who is prepared to give himself to doing what he feels God to be calling him to, even if this means that he is in more than one way entering new territory.

At the time we meet him, he is already advanced in years. His family have already made a great move. They have travelled from Ur which is probably in what is now South East Iraq to Haran which would be on the Syrian/Turkish border. Their goal has been Canaan but they have not arrived at that destination.

But now comes a call from God;

“Go from the country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

Now I know that migrations on the part of nomadic people were not unusual. But there comes to all of us a time when we want to feel settled. We can all find ourselves held to the places and people that are familiar. Nothing unsettles us quite as much as change.

And yet, this elderly man demonstrates a remarkable level of obedience to God. He get up and moves even though he does not know where he will be going. And in so doing, he abandons the props with which he had lived including his extended family. All of this for an uncertain future! All of this responding to a promise that this elderly man who is married to an elderly woman, would be the founders of a great nation. It sure is obedience even to the point of being just a little crazy.

And if you follow the story, you will find that deeply flawed Abraham keeps trying to do what God calls him to. And of course through his first two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, he is seen as fathering two great nations.

Now, Abraham may not be the primary figure in any of the religions. For Judaism, I would suggest that Moses is more significant. And certainly for Christianity it is Jesus who is of prime significance whilst for Islam, it is the Prophet Muhammad who is seen as the greatest of God’s messengers. But within each of those faiths, Abraham is a vital figure. Jewish circumcision looks back to him and Jewish people see themselves as children of Abraham. For Christians, his significance is seen in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus going back to him and his portrayal in the Letter to the Hebrews as a great example of faith whilst Muslims see him as the prime example of Hanifism, faith in One God.

But the greatest Biblical tributes to Abraham are found in his being described as a friend of God. We first find this incredible description of Abraham in Isaiah (41:8) and it is repeated in the Letter of James where we find it written;

“Thus the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” and he was called the friend of God.”

What a description of Abraham’s relationship with God! It is unique. And it comes about because Abraham believed the incredible promise of God and acted accordingly.

Yes, Abraham is an example of a man who responded to a dynamic understanding of God. He had the capacity to appreciate that God is not simply about the continuance of the status quo but God challenges us to see the world in new ways and to move with God even when that moving takes us into the realism of uncertainty and unpredictability.

I think that there is also movement going on in our Gospel reading. In it we find a well known encounter between Jesus and a man named Nicodemus. Now, Nicodemus was a part of the religious establishment. After all he was a Pharisee, people who were certainly known for their orthodoxy. More than that he would seem to have been a member of the ruling council, the Sanhedrin. And yet, we find him crossing boundaries by coming to speak to Jesus. Oh, we would not have been short of learning. He could have been given the position he occupied. But this Nicodemus was no closed mind and so having heard about Jesus, he was prepared to abandon the safety of past understandings to see if through Jesus he might be enabled to move forwards. In Nicodemus is the ultimate reproach for the closed minded. He is a reminder that precious as inherited truth is, God is always challenging us to new ways of exploration.

The encounter begins with misunderstanding but in the ensuing dialogue there is much that merits contemplation. This morning, I just want to briefly touch on two insights from this scripture.

Firstly, there is talk of a new birth. The same Greek word can be translated as meaning “born from above” and “born again.” My impression is that Jesus is speaking of being “born from above” whilst Nicodemus understand him to be speaking of being “Born again.” That at any rate is where the commentaries leave me.

But think for a moment. Is not being “born from above” quite a revolutionary thought? You see, at the time of Jesus one’s birth status was important. One’s place of honour depended upon it. It was a factor for life in a society in which status was so very important. But wait for it! If we are “born from above” as children of God, then surely we all have a new status. We are all lifted up. And with that then surely distinctions of social class begin to fade away. More than that, in a world in which the only arena in which men and women could free associate with one another was where they were brothers and sisters, this concept of being all children of God surely challenged both segregation and the ranking of men above women. Truly, we miss all too often the vision that comes from being “born from above” that Jesus is heralding a social revolution in which all might find hitherto denied dignity. No wonder that the Apostle Paul was later to write thos earth changing words;

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

Of course, Christianity is about so much more than social reform but it is undeniable that it challenges honour systems that put some above others. Within the gospel is the seeds of social transformation and part of our discipleship is to work out and live its meaning for today.

And secondly, there is the message of Divine love directed at the world. Ancient Israel seems to have lived with a tension between those who saw God’s love as directed exclusively in the direction of Israel and those particularly within the prophetic tradition who saw that love as being wider, directed even as illustrated in for example the Book of Jonah towards the greatest of Israel’s enemies. John 3: 16 has often be used as a clincher verse for exclusion of non Christians from God’s love. This morning I resist that debate but urge you to here evidence that God is attached to the whole world. And that attachment to the whole world is so great that the Son has been sent in order that we might from now be experiencing the quality of life which comes from being in the unending presence of God. And in that presence transformation is worked out as instanced by for example John Newton who following his conversion to faith in Christ eventually came to that second conversion that did not just lead him away from the slave trade that had been his livelihood but into campaigning against that which he now could no longer tolerate.

I think that both Abraham and Nicodemus are examples of people who were prepared to resist the temptation to stand still. Had they stood still, then their lives would never have flowered as they did. Both learnt that just clinging to the place that they were at, was not sufficient. Our God is a dynamic God who urges us forwards. This can serve to mean that our understandings of God need to develop, that our understandings of the injustices of the world need to move forwards and that even how we worship is a not something that should be left fossilised.

Today, we live in a fast changing world. Often Christianity is regarded as irrelevant at best. You and me are called to be a part of God’s mission in our world. By all means cherish that which is our inheritance but for goodness sake, do not close down the doors on God doing something new. Time and again, we need to have the nerve to ask if we are currently in the right place with God. We need to be open to stepping out into the unfamiliar for God most certainly does not stand still. The question for every Christian church this Lent is whether we are accepting of fossilising or whether we are prepared to move with God and God’s mission.


ALWINGTON and NORTHAM METHODIST CHURCHES - Sunday February 17th 2008

Lent 1 Choices

Genesis 2: 15-17; 3: 1-7 Matthew 4: 1-11
In his “Confessions”, St Augustine writes;

“Give me chastity and continence but not just now.”

I guess, we all know the reality of temptation. It is a part of being human. That has always been so and always will be. And today, as we enter into the season of Lent, we are met by scriptures on this very subject of temptation.

From the Old Testament has come the story of what has traditionally been referred to as “The Fall.” It is a story that shows man and woman breaching the one boundary given to them by God. It is a story that reminds us that there is a real temptation to breach boundaries and to take on ourselves those things that belong to God. How we see those boundaries today, is a matter of some debate. After all God has called humanity into the process of creativity. So at what stage do we over step the mark in matters such as the application of scientific knowledge? A big one for ethicists there!

Now, the story operates on one level as a reminder of our need for humility. We learn through it that we have a real temptation to step outside of God’s will. From the story has come an understanding of “original sin” which sees humanity as sharing in a falling short of what God would wish us to be. And in so many ways as Paul recognised, Adam is representative of humanity.

But the story has so much more to tells us. Firstly it reminds us that the things we do bring consequences. The disobedience of Adam and Eve brings exile from the garden for them amongst other things. And indeed shame enters into the human experience. And still today, we know what it is to live with the consequences of the choices we make. That is why it is so important to make our peace with God and with others as we worship.

But the story need not be seen as entirely negative. The Orthodox tradition has been particularly helpful in offering a positive outlook on this story. They would suggest that acquiring knowledge of good and evil is a picture of our being enabled to grow up. You know, as a father I am having to learn to let James and Kaye make their own decisions. A part of me would love to wrap them up in cotton wool and protect them for all of their lives. But what would that do to them? It would leave them as but little children for all of their lives. So all I can do is to seek to influence them but to then allow them to make their own decisions even when I might wish they made other choices. It is painful at times but it is the duty of a love that respects them. Likewise this story can be seen as God showing his love for humanity by enabling us to enter into choices, even those that are not in keeping with God’s will. Put simply, the story can be seen as God telling us that we can be free beings who grow through experience rather than utterly dependent little children, forever in nappies.

Now, if Paul sees Adam as a representative person, he equally sees Jesus as a representative person. From Adam, Paul sees death entering the world through disobedience. Through Jesus, he sees the greater power of life entering the world through obedience. Why? Because Jesus is the one who is victorious over temptation!

The tempting of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry is a reminder of the full humanity of Jesus. He is tempted in every way as we are. Matthew sets the temptations in the wilderness shortly after Jesus had been baptised at the Jordan by John the Baptist. The temptations which in length of time equate to the length of Lent are temptations as to the nature of his forthcoming ministry. Tired and hungry as he was, Jesus must have found it hard to resist these temptations to make things so much easier. Each of them was attractive to Jesus - after all temptation has no power if it is not attractive.

Those temptations have meaning today. Turning stones into bread is not a bad thing of itself and yet as the answer of Jesus reminds us, the good is no substitute for the best. Jumping from a pinnacle of the Temple into the depths of the Kidron Valley relying on God’s intervention, would certainly be spectacular even by the standards of some of today’s tele evangelists. But forcing God’s hand is hardly a stance of worship or discipleship. And then doing a deal with evil to attain power is alien to God’s character in every way. And how many have made that particular error of going along with this and that so as to climb a greasy pole believing that with them at the top things would be so very different - only to discover that the result of selling one’s soul is that the compromiser is different and the wrongs just go on and on!

One thing that always catches my eye as I look at the tempting of Jesus, is that the use of the scriptures in temptation. There we see the danger of the clincher verse so beloved by literalism. For Scripture can be used in destructive ways. That is why in Methodism saying “The Bible says” is not enough. To take seriously scripture, we use the Wesleyan Quadilateral in which scripture is in dialogue with tradition, reason and experience. Furthermore, there is value in seeing the scriptures through what we know of Jesus. Given that Jesus is seen to have been all loving, embracing and inclusive, we do well to recognise that we have a problem if our understanding of a scripture is at odds with what we know of Jesus. Always, our theology needs to be in touch with the Word made flesh that is Jesus.

Finally, I want to make a contemporary point. In the past three days, listening to the radio and reading the newspapers has at times made me ashamed to be British. I refer to the controversy over the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture to lawyers on Thursday. I have read the lecture and subsequent clarification by the Archbishop. I am not sure of the extent to which I agree or disagree with him as yet. But I do know that I am disgusted at the misrepresentation of the lecture and vilification of the man. I beaing a bear with a small brain, know that at times his arguments are hard to understand and I wish that he would be a little easier to understand (although many of the lawyers present were very impressed at what they heard). Contrary to what is being portrayed, he did not call for a parallel system of law to be introduced. Sections of our media are guilty of bearing false witness in this matter and of inflaming tensions that they themselves have done much to fan. In the case of that great theological publication, the Sun which has sent Page 3 girls to Lambeth Palace and a sound system playing “Rule Britannia”, the coverage has been totally mendacious. The front page on Thursday was nothing short of incitement to hatred! And sadly, far too many have jumped on a bandwagon without bothering to find out what the Archbishop said, such as the MEP I heard on Friday night on 5Live who was quick to condemn the Archbishop but had it eventually squeezed out of him that he had only read a newspaper account - Peter Hitchens managed a similar performance of ignorance on a Welsh radio channel.

I hope that we don’t as a society fall further into a soundbite method of discussing complex issues. The question of law and religious minorities is complex. May we not fall into the temptation of following the voices of hatred whose desire to hold on to exclusion results in denigrating a most reflective holy man, a man who seeks to give value to all. But of course, we wouldn’t be the first to do that would we?


Bideford Methodist Church Sunday February 10th 2008

Transfiguration Sunday - The transfiguration of Christ

MATTHEW 17: 1-9

It hardly seems possible but as we enter February, we are but days away from Lent and the contemplation of the way of the cross. Our next few weeks will be weeks in which the Passion of Christ is at the centre of our thinking. And indeed today’s Gospel reading is very much in the shadow of the Passion. Only a short while before the event which we shall today consider, there has been a high point and a low point in the understanding of those who travelled with Jesus. The high point has been the declaration of Simon to Jesus;

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

“He’s got it!” we are inclined to shout. And Jesus seems to have shared our pleasure for in response to this momentous declaration, he has told Simon that now he shall be known as Peter which means “Rock.” And amazingly, on this rock, will Jesus build his church.

The low point has been a total misunderstanding of the
Messiahship of Jesus. This has been revealed in Peter’s reaction to what that Messiahship entails. For when Jesus speaks of the imminence of his suffering and death, Peter cannot but rebel at the thought;

“God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

And for this desire to protect Jesus, Peter has thrown at him by Jesus, one of the great put downs of all time;

“Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Poor Peter! In practically no time, he has gone from “Hero to Zero.” He must have felt crushed. No doubts about his sincerity but surely a case of being sincerely wrong. And his journey to real understanding would have a lot further to go.

But, however humiliated Peter felt himself to be, Peter was by no means chucked out of Jesus' inner circle. Indeed but six days later, Matthew tells us, Peter along with James and John was taken up a high mountain by Jesus. But this would be no ordinary trip up a mountain. On the contrary, it would be an experience to remember for the rest of their lives! An experience that would take them into a wonder so much greater than could be conceived by the scope of their imaginations! An experience that would be teeming with meaning!

So what happened upon that mountain? Well, they certainly saw Jesus in a way that they had never seen him before. Matthew speaks of Jesus’ face shining like the Sun and his clothes becoming dazzling white. Echoes here are to be found of Moses' face shining after an encounter with God. Oh here, they see that Jesus is so much more than they had hitherto realised - the result being that here was an experience not just of Jesus being transfigured but equally of the three disciples being transformed.

Indeed, the experience is about more than an inexplicable change in Jesus’ appearance. It goes so much deeper than that. Firstly, the disciples see Jesus talking with two venerable figures from the past. How they are able to recognise Moses and Elijah we are not told but that he should be seen as in conversation with these men, is highly significant. After all, Moses was known as the great lawgiver of Israel and Elijah was known as the greatest of the ancient prophets. Matthew’s readers would certainly understand the message contained here, that Jesus represents the completion of the Law and the Prophetic tradition. They would get Matthew’s message that in Jesus the hopes of all the years were finding fulfilment. In Jesus, the story of ancient Israel was finding its true meaning and its ultimate goal.

But further revelation was to come. As James, John and Peter know not what to do, there come a voice from the heavens. In part it echoes the voice from the heavens that was heard at Jesus’ baptism, as it proclaims;

“This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased.”

But then comes an addition;

“Listen to him!”

I would guess that these words were important to Jesus. Too often we underplay his full humanity in our desire to affirm his divinity. But that humanity is a core part of our Christian doctrine. And that humanity would mean that in tough times, Jesus would need to be able to look back and find assurance to enable him to face those times. As the barbarism of a cross would loom ever closer, he would need to be able find assurance that he was in God’s will - anything less and you turn Jesus into an automaton!

And for Peter, James and John, this message would also be important. Soon they would face despondency as Jesus was taken from them. Soon they would know what it was to take huge risks for the gospel. And in such times, the ability to look back on a moment of assurance, would be invaluable. And invaluable it most certainly was for as we find in the Second Letter of Peter;

“For we received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him (Jesus that is) by the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.”

You see the wonder of this occasion did not leave them. It was a memory to savour as they sought to live out their calling as followers of Jesus. But let us not forget that important as wonder and awe are, so to is the call to listen to Jesus. After all if we do not do so, we end up with a distorted understanding of God who as David Jenkins has reminded us “is as he is in Christ.”

So what of our response? Poor old Peter was reduced, as I guess we would have been, to speaking gibberish. In a way his suggestion to build tents for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, represents our tendency to seek to institutionalise religious experiences rather that let them transform us. For always one of the great temptations is to hang on to what feels good to us rather than to engage with real discipleship in a world that is so very often uncomfortable and filled with pain. We need to be fed spiritually to be truly equipped for service but if all we do is to wallow in the good feelings that can be ours, then the call of Christ is rejected and his words are treated as unheard. Jesus and his friends will come down the mountain and immediately encounter a boy who is disturbed and in great need of help. The need of such suffering and marginalised people serve to remind us of the temptation to be so self centred as to be so seemingly heavenly minded as to be no earthly use. After all, in terms of our Christian discipleship, the purpose of the magnificence of the mountaintop is to equip us for service in the valleys.

Now we stand ready for the journey that eventually leads to Calvary. As that journey nears its end, we will see Jesus’ agony at Gethsemane. Once more the same three companions, Peter, James and John, will be taken with him. Once more they will fall short, three times falling asleep while Jesus was praying out of his deep anguish.

The presence of Peter, James and John at these two events of opposing extremes, mountain and valley, reminds us that suffering and glory are intrinsically linked. The follower of Jesus cannot ask for the glory without the self giving for to ask for such is to ask for that which is other than the way of Jesus. Ultimately it is the Crucified Lord who will also be the Glorified Lord.

As for us, well we can cherish what is revealed about Jesus through the accounts of his Transfiguration. We can cherish the varied experiences through which we are taken to the mountain top. But then, our calling is, strengthened by such experiences, to follow Jesus and to serve him even in the lowest valleys.


GAMMATON AND ALVERDISCOTT METHODIST CHURCHES - SUNDAY FEBRUARY 3RD 2008

Epiphany 3 - Light from the margins

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

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

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

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

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