A Sermon on Conversion

Readings

The Conversion of St Paul (2015) Year B RCL Principal

To Be Converted, or continued, or both…

Today is, as you may have guessed, the festival of the Conversion of St Paul.  So I am going to begin by asking - as one should to an Anglican audience - "how many of you have been converted…?!??!"

No, not really.

I could tell you my conversion story, though… imagine a tubby little boy who looks just like me but without a beard, oh and mousey browny-blond hair.  This little lad is in a small chapel tent in a field of tents in a place called Polzeath (or Polzeth as many call it) and he’s chatting to a genial older chap who asks.  Do you want to give your heart to Jesus?  To which I replied yes.
So in that simple setting, having heard over the course of that week the message of faith in a new way, I committed myself to being a Christian.  It wasn’t spectacular, there were no lights or voices from the sky.  I just said a prayer.  And it was a beginning.  I called it my conversion. So did the Christian Community to which I belonged – it was a crucial part in my journey of faith.

It wasn’t a Saint Paul moment – I didn’t have a dark and disturbing past to be set free from.  Unlike the stories I had heard back in my youth of Gangland conversions in the Bronx, or the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, or the miraculous changes of heart of tough guys from the East End of London my story was boring. Which was a bit of shame, I thought. 

In Frank McCourt’s autobiographical work ‘Angela’s Ashes’ he talks of how it was common for the young Catholic schoolboys taking their first confessions to make up things in order to feel that they actually HAD something to confess.  They were worried that if they didn’t have something juicy to say they would be punished for pride or for lying!  In my protestant world, you really wanted a good conversion story.  But it was not to be – I might have embellished stories of what I considered dreadful childhood sins, but they weren’t really substantial.  I was no St Paul. My conversion, such as it was, was significantly less dramatic.

In fact, the idea of Conversion as we have had it passed down to us has picked up some negative connotations, it shares a dodgy reputation with ideas like ‘Mission’, ‘Repent’, ‘Sin’ and even ‘Salvation’ – words whose meanings have baggage, weight, because of the ecclesial or local culture that has used them.  These words have been used to bludgeon the unwary and the unsuspecting, the cowed and the dominated, the colonised and the confused.  Repent or die – physically or spiritually… 

The language of conversion has been used to threaten and coerce, and that is heartbreakingly shown in a poem by J. Neil C. Garcia which talks of the metaphorical death by drowning of a transgender woman forced to choose to be a man by her traditional family. It’s a long poem so I won’t quote it all – the link is here   – but it talks from the perspective of a transgender woman forced to live a life as a heterosexual man by her family, and talks of the perpetuation of masculine violence bound up in this act of “conversion” and its aftermath and ends with the heartbreaking words.:

…Though nobody
Remembers, I sometimes think of the girl
Who drowned somewhere in a dream many dreams ago.
I see her at night with bubbles
Springing like flowers from her nose.
She is dying and before she sinks I try to touch
Her open face. But the water learns
To heal itself and closes around her like a wound.
I should feel sorry but I drown myself in gin before
I can. Better off dead, I say to myself
And my family that loves me for my bitter breath.
We die to rise to a better life.

Conversion does not have a good history.  

And yet today is a festival – a feast of conversion. We have little or no detail of the birth or death of St Paul, Apostle to Gentiles, so we celebrate this exceptional, miraculous event which turned him from being a persecutor of the Church to being a champion of Jesus Christ and an architect of the order of the Church.  His writings, rich in theology and practical advice, deeply rooted in his Jewish ancestry and contemporary culture, desperate to enliven a burgeoning Church with the life of the living Spirit of God in Christ are a substantial part of our Scriptures and his influence is strongly felt in the church today.

We celebrate his turning from one way to another, the radical diversion of his path on that road to Damascus and his realignment to following the way of Christ. This, we are told, is conversion – a fracturing of reality, often the result of a crisis moment, a moment of revelation, a moment which changes everything…

But that is how we have so often been told conversion works, the only way that conversion works! In many traditions within the Christian faith, this is what it means to be saved –  it is such a striking image that we we have the vivid account of it not only in today's reading from Acts 26, but in two other places in Acts, also in Galatians and a reference of Christ appearing to Paul alluded to in his account of the resurrection appearances in 1 Corinthians chapter 15… Obviously this conversion was a dramatic, life changing – and according to the hyperbole of some commentators, world changing – event. 

That’s how it’s been portrayed in the stories passed down, in countless sermons, in artworks through the ages – two of which I copied for you to see and which, I hope were given out with our bulletin for today…  In the Caravaggio painting, one of at least two of Michelangelo Meris da Caravaggio’s portrayals of the Conversion of St Paul – Paul is so overwhelmed that he has fallen from his horse!
  
Which brings me to what I really want to say – like the horse in Caravaggio’s painting, or the Donkey in the nativity story, or the idea that there were three kings at the manger – there is so much layered on to what conversion is – and so much of the nuance, the variations, the different aspects of what the whole idea of conversion is and might be that it is hard to drop the baggage and consider again what this concept of Conversion might actually offer to us today!

Though I am glad for the influence of good, Christian folk, who brought me to a very deliberate start of my own pilgrimage of faith, I realise that this moment was just that – the start.  I was consciously making a commitment to my journey. I turned from one way to another, but I know that God was at work long before that moment, making Godself known to me through scripture, through the people who shared my life, through the traditions and worship of the Church community that gave me a sense of belonging.

But that wasn’t my only conversion, it was a part of my ongoing conversion.  Or perhaps a better word would be ‘metanoia’ – the Greek word which appears throughout the New Testament and is often translated repentance, but might best be understood as ‘turning’.  I’ve used this illustration before but the word ‘repent’ is one of those wonderful English words which the Church seems to have hijacked – it crops up much more in the kind of English novel that says something like ‘Mr Smithers repented of his intention to visit Miss Lambert and instead found himself heading in the opposite direction to a nearby hostelry’.  It simply means a change in direction.

Conversion too easily becomes seen as ‘flicking a switch’ – and both the Author of Acts – commonly thought to be Luke the Evangelist – and Paul himself in today’s reading are keen to stress the break between one part of Paul’s life and another.  “once I was very bad now, through God’s grace and the work of Christ, I am good’, ‘once I persecuted the Church, now I am persecuted because I serve Christ’.  This kind of dramatic break in the life narrative of Paul serves to show the wonder and the power of Christ.  It is what the Church needed to hear in its early days, the powerful and rapid transformation which Christ affects.  It’s a very black/white, light/dark, good/bad thing and easily slips into the simplistic, dualistic (as Richard Rohr might say) way of thinking that we are so inclined to veer towards.

But we all know that faith, and indeed life, are much more complex than that.  Take this poem by a Theologian and writer called Scott Cairns which I found on the Theology and Literature website. 

Adventures in New Testament Greek: Metanoia

Repentance, to be sure,
but of a species far
less likely to oblige
sheepish repetition.

Repentance, you’ll observe,
glibly bears the bent
of thought revisited,
and mind’s familiar stamp

–a quaint, half-hearted
doubleness that couples
all compunction with a pledge
of recurrent screw-up.

The heart’s metanoia,
on the other hand, turns
without regret, turns not
so much away, as toward,

as if the slow pilgrim
has been surprised to find
that sin is not so bad
as it is a waste of time.

Scott Cairns

Conversion, metanoia, repentance – whatever we wish to call it, is a lifelong activity. Turning not so much away, as towards – towards Christ, towards Christlikeness.  It is a discipline and a grace – something that comes from our openness to the spirit of God and from a longing to know and feel the life of Christ within us.

It comes partly from spiritual practice, and I have said repeatedly from this pulpit and in many groups and conversations that I believe we are being challenged to be a spiritual community in the broadest sense – a community that in word and deed turns to the way of the spirit and seeks to live by the faith to which we are called, to which we are drawn.

But conversion is, to my mind, summed up well by thinking on what it means to turn towards Christ.  For me every act of compassion is a turning to Christ.  Every prayer, every attempt to still the many voices of the world and open ourselves to the life of faith is a turning to Christ. Everytime we open a newspaper, or the browser or our computer and see news which disturbs us and we pray about it, and seek to act in response to it with justice and love we are turning to Christ. Every time we seek to care for those in need we are turning to Christ. Every time we open ourselves to truly listen to another human being, are willing to change and learn and grow, we are turning to Christ.  Every time we speak out against injustice and challenge systems of oppression and marginalisation we are turning to Christ.  Every time we come to worship, alone or together, in silence, or in liturgy and song we are turning to Christ. 

This is conversion.  Not that we become a Christian, but that we seek through all of our pilgrimage to turn to Christ.  It is summed up well, I think in the part of the Baptismal liturgy that I copied along with the Michelangelo and Caravaggio paintings for you. It’s all good stuff! But I find challenge in those last lines which ask ‘
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbour as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
Will you strive to safeguard the integrity of God's creation, and respect, sustain and renew the life of the Earth?

May we continue to learn, grown and know that conversion, that metanoia, to which Christ continues to call us.  Amen.

Struggles with Suffering

Presentation (2014) Year A RCL Principal

Malachi 3.1-5

Hebrews 2.14-18

Luke 2.22-40

A Sword Will Pierce your Own Heart also

God is here!

You’ve already heard that phrase a few times this morning.  That bold proclamation which is the foundation of today’s Gospel reading – when Anna and Simeon encounter the baby Jesus and proclaim ‘God is here’ – both in word and in action.  Simeon through the words we have come to know as the Nunc Dimitus, Anna with words of praise and speaking of all that the child would accomplish.

These proclamations, which are – Luke is keen to point out – fully the work of the Holy Spirit (a theme that will crop up again and again in Luke’s Gospel)  burst in on the activity of Joseph and Mary as they seek to fulfil the holy law and offer the sacrifice due.  God is here.  God is here in this child, in this place, in this activity, in the promise of who Jesus is, in the embracing of those outside of the expectations of the day (notably the gentiles), in this act of taking, blessing and sharing.

Just as an aside, these are the formal actions of the Eucharist – that the bread and wine is ‘taken’, ‘blessed’ and ‘shared’ – and in my understanding of this sacrament, and one I believe is the common Anglican understanding, it is in the sharing, the communion, that this sacrament is made efficacious, in which the moment of grace is present.  It is not in what the presider does, not in the words we say, but in the sharing.

So Simeon takes Jesus into his arms, says words of blessing, and then shares the truth of who Jesus is with all who are there and gives Jesus to his parents who in turn will share him with the world. 

But the words Simeon says are not easy words, not just about how amazing Jesus was, they are words of departing ‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace.’ And they are words which discern the end of Jesus’ ministry, the inevitable consequence of confronting this world with the reality of God, as Simeon says to Mary words which have resonated with me for years, but particularly since considering these verses for this week “so that the hearts of many will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own soul also’ – or indeed in some translations of verse 35 of chapter 2, your heart will be pierced (though the Greek word psyche, which is used in this verse, is most commonly translated soul it means essence, the seat of who we are, our very being, the heart of things)

This time of amazement and wonder – there was a lot of amazement and wonder going on in these passage and in the preceding passages in Luke, was also a time which presaged pain and suffering, of struggle and even (for those of us who know the end of the story) despair and death.

One of the hardest conversations any Christian can have, and it’s one I (and I am sure we all) have repeatedly, is about suffering.  The questions ‘why does God allow suffering?’ or even worse ‘is God testing me’ or the really difficult one ‘what is the meaning of this suffering?’ crop up again and again.

The reason I put them in that order is because I think that as we move from one of those to another we betray a certain vision of God which I suspect most of us would not, indeed could not, buy into. So I am not going to answer them in any logical order but to say something about suffering, meaning, testing, the will of God and all that in a kind of messy blob – because that is what this is, messy, difficult, heart breaking, heart piercing.

There is some stuff that I feel I can say boldly.  I suspect some interpreters would disagree with me, but I am going to say these with absolute conviction.  These things are:

God does not cause suffering nor direct it at us. But nor does God stop suffering.

God does not want us to suffer.

God did not want Jesus to suffer in order to take his anger at sin out on someone.

God does not cause us to suffer (or avoid suffering) due to our behaviour, good or bad.

God does not have a plan for you and I that includes trying us through suffering, leading us through pain and teaching us by making us suffer.

Oh boy, this is a big subject, perhaps I should have allowed a few more weeks for this.  All I can do is offer some of my own understanding, using the scriptures from today and the wider picture I feel comes from Scripture, the tradition of the Church, the reason and heart that we have as Christ followers, and indeed Christ bearers.

We see in both the Luke and Hebrews readings for today a lot of reference to things which are uncomfortable for us to consider and which on first look might jar with our understanding of a loving, gracious God.  Or at least that point us towards theologies that might jar!

First of all we have in Hebrews a theology of sacrifice which uses this word ‘atonement’. Now when linked with the word ‘substitutionary’ atonement it comes to mean that Jesus suffered in our place.  Some would even go so far as to say that God demanded punishment for the sin in the world and that Jesus stepped in to assuage God’s anger and suffered for our sins in order to deflect God’s wrath from us.  That is a vast oversimplification of the understanding of penal substitution, but it’s not an unfair one.  Sin causes God anger, God cannot live with sin, sin must be paid for, and Jesus paid the price.

No.  Just no.  It’s a theology that seems to suggest that God can’t forgive without someone getting it in the neck.  That mercy can only happen if a certain set of circumstances are fulfilled.  That somehow suffering is necessary for God to love us. 

It’s a theology that can’t cope with the idea that things happen just because they happen.  One of the hardest things that Christians seem to struggle with getting to grips with is that God might not control everything that happens.  Perhaps stuff happens because things happen.  On a philosophical level, if we truly believe that God gives us freedom, then the concept of God guiding every act and consequence contradicts that idea completely. 

In my youth there were a series of movies based on the mythology of ancient Greece – Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the Titans, that kind of thing – they often had the groundbreaking work of Ray Harryhausen and his stop motion animation – but that’s my inner nerd showing… Anyway, one of the most striking images that repeatedly appeared in these movies was that of the Gods playing chess with the lives of Perseus, or Jason or whoever – moving him and his companions around on a chessboard on a whim, controlling and manipulating every move.

That is not the teaching of the Christian Church. 

It’s a view that absolves us from responsibility – an immature view that prevents us from being truly adult and taking credit and blame for our own lives.  I think it was CS Lewis who once wrote ‘God and the Devil get a lot of credit for things they have nothing to do with.’

And it’s hard to let go of the idea that a God who is all-powerful, infinite, all knowing and all loving – that understanding of God rooted deep in Christian tradition and philosophy – it is hard to let go of the idea of control, that everything happens ‘for a reason’.  As if God uses suffering and pain to teach us – like an angry parent standing over us saying ‘I’m going to teach you a lesson’. 

Well that’s a deeply inadequate view of God.

It’s much harder to get to the point where we join with the writer of Ecclesiastes and say ‘meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless’ – or as another translation says ‘useless, useless’.  Sometimes all we can do is look at suffering and say it is meaningless, there is no reason, God is NOT trying to teach us something through it.  God is not getting us to fit into a plan, God is not causing suffering to teach us something.  God does not say that so and so gets ill and so and so gets rich either because of their wickedness or their righteousness, or in order that they might grow, spiritually, through the experience.

BUT – and this is the witness I find in Scripture – God is with us in all things, in joy and in suffering.  Alongside us, suffering with us, heartbroken, soulpierced.  The God who chooses to act through and in us, is the same God who is with us and in us in good and bad. 

This God was alongside Christ in all he went through, but did not make it happen in order to satisfy some kind of heavenly bank account against which there was a debt.  When we hear that Christ is a Sacrifice there is an aspect of self-offering, of self-giving that was the result of Jesus absolute commitment to the values of God and the life of what we call the reign of God.  Jesus’ dying was a result of his dedication to the outcast and the unloved, to the truth of God in all things and the calling to justice and the removal of those things which drew people away from God.  He spoke out against injustice and intolerance, and the misuse of power for personal, political or religious ends.  This was why he was executed, not to satisfy an angry God who needed appeasing.

That was why a sword would pierce Mary’s heart. Because this commitment to the truth would bring Jesus to death and suffering.

It reminds us too that as Christians we are not exempt from suffering, we don’t – as this community knows – get an easy ride because we are people of faith.  In fact if we are committed to the values of Christ then we too find ourselves in danger of suffering, even to the point of vilification and pain. 

Even within the discipline of opening ourselves up the God we will find things that might cause us pain – facing up to the things which turn us inwards to the exclusion of others, of God and of that which is best for us.  I believe that is the judgement which Malachi talks of, not the kind of judgement often held of God looking at humankind and saying ‘you are bad and need punishing’ but a judgement which says ‘you are graced, come to me that I may give you life’. In the adversarial view of justice which our contemporary society holds we see the judge as adjudicating between right and wrong, in the view which seems more consistent with scripture the Holy Spirit is described as an advocate, speaking for us, encouraging, enlivening, bringing hope and affirmation.  In an adversarial judicial system someone must be punished, in an advocate system, reconciliation and healing is the mark of true justice.

So, we come back to the opening of my thoughts, and of the introduction to this day.  I believe that these readings, with their talk of suffering and pain, of atonement and judgement, hold a very positive message behind them – the one I began with. God is here!

God is here alongside the one who is broken by suffering. 

God is here alongside the one called to stand up for what is good and right, no matter what the cost.

God is here with those whose path of faith is a struggle.  And with those whose path is a joy.

God is here, even when suffering is meaningless, when there is no reason for bad things happening.

God is here as we share, and support and love and care and speak and struggle, and pray and hope and cling to faith. 

God is here. 

Amen.

St Luke

This last Sunday Morning's sermon was on St Luke. Here's what they got...

St Luke (2009)

Acts 16.6-12
Luke 10.1-9

St Luke the Evangelist…

When I lived in London, which was some time ago, there was a visit from an American Evangelist to Earls Court Arena. He was coming to bring his ‘healing ministry’ to the UK – his name was (and I assume still is) Morris Curello. London was plastered with huge posters which had pictures of abandoned wheelchairs and dropped crutches, and various medical impliments discarded in the wake of this man’s healing campaign.

There was some controversy over these posters because a number of people said they degraded those who were wheelchair bound, and in the Church there was an adverse reaction to what was derogatorily referred to as ‘Faith Healing’. Derogatory because faith healing seems more to do with the person that has such a ‘ministry’ than the God who Christians believe is the great healer, or Christ who is referred to as ‘the Wounded Healer’. And for Curello the greatest criticism levelled at him was that he emphasised the work of the Holy Spirit in performing astounding ‘tricks’ of healing at the expense of those firstly who weren’t healed and secondly of the God who we describe in Trinity.

That sets the scene for today! You may be wondering why this reference to healing ministry to begin our thoughts for this Sunday service this morning. Well, today is St Luke’s day, St Luke writer – according to tradition – of the third Gospel, St Luke who, tradition (and a late 2nd Century document) also says was a healer, a doctor. St Luke, companion of St Paul who is also patron saint of doctors and all those in the medical profession.

So I thought it worth kicking off my thoughts today on the theme of healing. Even though the writings of Luke – commonly accepted to be both the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles – don’t make a particular issue of healing in themselves. They don’t show a particular bias towards healing miracles at the expense of say, parables, or other teaching, or even other miracles. It seems that to Luke healing was a wider issue, of which we will say more later!

Whilst Luke talks of Jesus healing and writes of the miracles of Jesus they always have a meaning, a depth behind them. At the start of his ministry, in Chapter Four of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus having been thrown out of the synagogue for speaking with such authority then goes on to perform an exorcism and the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law which proves that he has authority over demons and sickness. In Chapter Six of the Gospel of Luke Jesus has a debate about the Sabbath, then proceeds to heal a withered hand on the Sabbath, showing himself to be Lord of the Sabbath.

In Chapter Seven Jesus heals a centurion’s servant to show that even those outside of the Jewish people are able to share in the life of God. In Chapter 10, today’s reading, Jesus sends out disciples to preach the Gospel and heal, not as a magic trick but to show and to share the presence of the kingdom, the reign, of God.

I could go on, and often do, but the accounts of healings and miracles we have in our Gospels don’t exist for novelty or to impress people into the life of faith, but as signs of God’s work in the world.

There are arguments in the Church today about whether such miracles are still possible today, or whether they were only for what we would call the age of the apostles, the early Church. I believe they are possible and indeed happening, but I’ve not seen any, or as someone said a day or two ago on Twitter – a website I use – “I believe miracles are not only possible but happening, but I can't attest to any with confidence.”

Actually, the miracles we see day to day are those we take for granted. The health and healing that comes through the skills of our medical staff, doctors and surgeons. The freedom from depression and loneliness that comes from love and support given by both professionals and communities. The everyday miracles of generosity and grace and love and faith that take place in a thousand unseen ways in our parishes and in towns and villages and remote places in our land and throughout the world.

And I believe healing is not just about feeling better, or having a miraculous experience, God’s healing as well as coming about through the work of inspired medical practitioners can take place at the deepest level. I have seen people healed of their fears and bereavements and brokenness through prayer and through the love of Christ. People may not necessarily get better, but that doesn’t mean that their brokenness is not healed, or being healed. And in some cases I have seen people embrace death as healing, longing to meet God and to let go of the pain and suffering that comes from sickness and disease.

We confuse healing at its deepest level with the spectacle of the Morris Curello’s of this world. God is at work beyond the brokenness of our bodies and though there may be times that he does act in an obvious and visible way God is at work constantly in many ways we cannot see. In our healing services here in the Five Alive Mission Community we would welcome God choosing to act miraculously and spectacularly, but most of us know God to be infinitely more subtle and gracious than that.

So on this St Luke’s day we give thanks for the one who shared the story of the greatest healing of all, the healing of all creation in Jesus Christ, in his death and resurrection. As Christ has restored us to the fullness of a relationship with God our loving heavenly father and as he has brought us new life through his own suffering and new life, we give thanks that he continues to work in us is more ways than we can imagine or fully know.

And we give thanks that for St Luke his concern was to share the good news with us, to let people know about Jesus and to inspire us to do the same. And we can do that in all sorts of ways – they may not be spectacular, they may be subtle, they may feel understated or even ineffective, but every act of love, forgiveness, grace and mercy that we perform through the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit is another way in which Christ is made known and in which the kingdom of God is made real in, through, because of and for us.

May we be those who continue to know God’s healing in myriad ways, and may we know the love of the wounded healer Jesus Christ, and may we share that healing with those we meet, and live with, and whose lives we touch. Amen.

A sermon for Proper 22

Proper 22 (2009) Year B RCL Principal

Mark 10.2-16

Turning things Upside-down

I am going to indulge myself for a moment and talk about my children! Firstly my little girl Katherine. For those of you who have heard all of this before please feel free to switch off for a moment! Katherine is eight next month and she is an absolute joy not always easy, but so full of life and creativity and a desire to know things. Jack is very similar, lively, thoughtful, exploring, fun, with a great sense of humour. He has been at school now for a couple of weeks and apart from coming home very tired, he is enjoying the whole experience, making friends and generally making the most of things. I must admit, though, that I never realised just what an effect having a child would have on me. I come from a large family – large in the sense of lots of us – and have always known what it is like to have younger siblings and nephews and nieces and cousins etc etc around. I am surprised how much Katherine and Jack have changed our lives (not just in practical terms, such as sleep, having to picking up nursery, getting to and from school, meeting up with their little friends, spending lots of money and all of that!) but how my attitudes and understandings have changed.

And I can go on about her for ages, as many know – how exciting it is to see themlearning about everything around them, and to hear them trying out words, and telling me what everything is, how much fun it is to see them playing. The list goes on. I am, I’m afraid to say, the perfect example of the doting dad. But then I am like hundreds of parents before me, and like hundreds of my contemporaries.

But this isn’t always the case, and certainly hasn’t always been the case. In lots of ways we have the luxury of enjoying the childhoods of our offspring, we live in a society relatively free of disease, where education is encouraged and valued, where children are seen as something special.

In poorer countries, and throughout history, children have been viewed very differently. In Jesus’ day children were often considered to be something of a waste of space. When a family had a child they were a drain on the often meagre resources of the family. They needed food, clothing and care until they were old enough to work. It was then that they were really valuable.

In lots of ways our society’s view is the result of the romanticised vision of childhood that came from the Victorian images of children. It was our Victorian forebears that became obsessed with the innocence of childhood, and how precious children were. This is a good thing, I’m not offering a criticism of it! But as childhood deaths decreased, as our society was able to care for children and foster childhood as something important and valuable for itself – we lost this hard edged viewpoint of children being valuable only when they could pay their way.

I’m not suggesting that parents were heartless and felt nothing for their children, but that when life is hard, people can get harder, and it can be difficult to feed extra mouths.

Into this situation Jesus speaks. Jesus turns these viewpoints around, he values children, he shows them affection, he even says that we have to be like them in order to enter the kingdom. We must receive the kingdom of God as a little child in order to enter it.

So what does this mean? Well, children are reliant on being provided for – every one of Jesus hearers would have known that. Jesus is telling us that there is nothing we can do to gain the Kingdom except to receive it. We cannot earn it, we cannot win it, we cannot deserve it – all we can do is take it.

Again, Jesus turns expectations upside-down. So much of conventional religion is based upon earning a reward for religious observance, or for attendance, or for good works. To Jesus, just as a child was unable to earn, to provide for itself, so the believer must take what is offered. It is summed up much more technically in Martin Luther’s emphasis on sola fides – through faith alone. It is only when we can receive from God, let go of our pride and our cynicism, our reticence, our self indulgence, our sin – only then can we truly receive from God the measure of his grace he longs to give to us, only then can we enter into his kingdom here on earth in all its fullness.

The question to ask is whether our own expectations actually get in the way of our Christian life and the life of our Church? IF we don’t expect God to work in our villages, in our lives and in our Churches then God cannot work there.

The Christian life is, or should be, full of surprises. As we discover more about God then we will be constantly surprised at who and what he is, and all that he can do for, to and even through each one of us. The Christian life is an adventure, filled with the fullness, the abundant life that Jesus said he came to bring.

And in order to experience this abundance we are called again to do one thing – to be child-like in our acceptance of God’s will for our lives.

It is important to remember, though, that we are not called to be child-ish, but child like. Called to take life with the seriousness, but absolute joy that children exhibit as they grow up and explore the world. Called to question, to challenge convention, to ask why, to laugh, to cry. Being like a child is about stripping away the baggage and things which weigh us down, and coming to Christ as we are, it is about admitting our need for and dependence upon Christ. It is about being willing to learn, and being willing to change.

In many ways it is about doing things the way Jesus did, that is, differently. In the beginning of today’s Gospel reading Jesus starts with ‘you have heard it said…but I say to you’ – he challenges convention, and even sets the standards higher than the religious authorities of the day. Jesus calls us to be like him, willing to reject convention, willing to do things differently to society, willing to be different.

So, the challenge is there for us. To receive the kingdom. And what do we have to do – to accept it as the free gift it is, to enjoy it, to value it.

And when we are able to do, that God is able to give to us all that he longs to. And with that grace from God then we can live lives to the high standards he calls us to, we can be those who not only know about God’s kingdom, but know God’s Kingdom.

In the wonderfully ironic way of the Christian Faith, our highest calling is to be like a child. In order to be great we must be like those who are the least – in Jesus day that was children. The Kingdom of God belongs to those such as these.

A Sermon for Passion Sunday

Lent 5 Passion Sunday (2009) Year B RCL Principal

Jeremiah 31.31-34

Psalm 51.1-13

Hebrews 5.5-10

John 12.20-33

Living with PASSION

I don’t know what sort of things you are passionate about. When I say passionate I mean that you feel grasped by them, unable to let them go – you want to spend lots of time doing something that excites and inspires you. Perhaps your passion is Music? Movies? TV Soaps is a very popular choice! I am passionate about a number of things, one of them being my wife and children, you may have got the idea that I am passionate about guitar playing (whether or not I am terribly good at it) – but something that has become a passion of mine is motorcycling.

I love riding my motorcycle, I like all the gear that comes with motorcycles – helmets, heavy gloves, leathers, waterproofs, gizmos and gadgets – they all add to the fun of being a ‘biker’. I like looking at motorcycles too, and meeting with other bikers, and enjoying part of something that is fun, and exciting, and passionate.

If we allow them to, our passions can sometimes distract us. We can find that we become so caught up in them, that we lose sight of other important things in our lives – our families and friends, our work, all sorts of things. It can be easy to allow our passions to become obsessions.

This Sunday is Passion Sunday – when we begin to think about another kind of Passion – the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. As we move towards Holy Week, we remember Jesus’ suffering and death, the struggle and pain that he underwent in the last days of his life. This is commonly known in the Church as his Passion because of the strength of the feelings Jesus underwent and the difficulties he faced.

On this Sunday I want to think about our vision as a Mission Community, as we will over these coming months take the time to consider again our hopes and our aims in the Churches, beginning with us being centred on Christ, but also being filled by God’s Holy Spirit with faith and love and exercising generously the gifts that God has given. Today I want be talk about living our Christian lives with Passion.

This is a very appropriate theme for this Sunday, but we must be careful not to get the idea of Jesus’ passion mixed up with being Passionate Christians. The two ideas aren’t separate from each other, but they have different meanings in many ways.

And today I want to take this opportunity to ask what you are passionate about? Or rather, are you passionate about your faith? To be honest, if many of us took our Faith as seriously as some of our other passions, our Churches would be full, and the Gospel would be spreading like wildfire in our country and beyond.

But Passion is not something we hear preached about very often in our Churches. The idea that our faith can be all consuming can be seen as a little bit distasteful, somewhat uncomfortable, not very ‘British’.

But as Christians we are called to live our Christian lives with Passion, devotion and commitment. There are no half measures in God’s love for us nor should there be in our love for God. We are all filled with God’s Spirit of faith, hope and love, the Spirit that gives life in all its fullness.

Our Bible readings for today give us some idea of God’s opinion about our lives. In the wonderful reading from the book of Jeremiah we are told that God’s law, the will of God as described in the Old Testament, will pass from the written word, from tablets and scrolls and papyrus and paper and books – into our hearts. The promise is, says God, that he will write his law in our hearts.

As Christians we believe that God has done this, he has given us life through his Spirit who lives in our hearts and convinces us of God’s love and draws us towards God’s will. It is this new law, the law of love, that should inspire our passion. We are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind. If that’s not a good definition of passion, I’m not sure what is. And alongside this we are called to love our neighbour as our self.

This isn’t something that is open to negotiation. It’s not an optional extra to Christian Faith, it IS Christian faith. This all consuming love is the foundation, and the purpose, of faith.

And it was this love, this all consuming passion that was the basis of Jesus life, and which led him to his own Passion and death on that Good Friday. It was this all consuming love that guided all that he said and did. It drove his faith, and it led him in the will of God.

It wasn’t easy, and it lead to death, but it led also to the resurrection that brought each one of us to share the life of God.

In our Gospel lesson we have the memorable saying of Jesus that unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it cannot bear fruit. This is a powerful image, and though we know a seed doesn’t actually die under the ground, the waiting, the seeking can sometimes make it seem as if it is gone and then comes back to life again.

Death is the lack of passion, a place of emptiness. Life on the other hand is filled with vitality and vigour.

In our own lives are there things that we need to let go of, things that we need to allow to fall into the ground and die in order that our Christian Faith may truly live? Perhaps there are distractions, things we take us away from truly giving all to God. Perhaps we are afraid to what might happen if we truly gave up everything to God. Perhaps we are not sure what it means to hand over the whole of our lives to God. Perhaps we simply don’t see this as relevant to us.

But the Bible is quite clear that, as Christians, our faith must be alive, and active, and filled with passion. When we are alive in our faith, when we have allowed our distractions, fears, misunderstandings and apathy to fall into the ground and die, it is then that we can bear the fruit of the Gospel.

And this fruit is to do God’s will, to serve Jesus as we follow him. In our Gospel reading our Lord said

Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

Christian life is not a passive thing, but must be a passionate thing. Serving and following are active, not passive – they are things we must actively pursue as Christians.

And we do all of this that God’s name may be glorified, that his Kingdom may come and his will be done. That the seed of this old world may pass away and God may bring resurrection life to all of creation. That, as Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel – the judgment may come and the ruler of this world be overthrown. That the fullness of life in Christ can come. That Christ may be lifted up from this earth and may draw all people to himself.

We can play our part in this great plan, in our great hope of faith, by living our Christian lives with Passion in all that we do. Willing to face the consequences and the costs, just as Jesus was, in order that God may work in us and through us and in partnership with us might usher in the new life of his Kingdom to all people.

May this aim become something that informs and inspires the whole of our lives, may Passion for Christ and for the coming Kingdom consume us and draw us ever closer to God. Amen.

Epiphany Sermon

Epiphany (2008)

Come to the king, whoever you are…

I don’t know if you remember the Christmas publicity campaign from a few years ago, one which caused some controversy at the time, but being broad minded myself I rather liked it. It had a cartoon picture of three outrageous faces with a caption which went something like this:
You’re in a stable, you’ve just given birth and now three kings have turned up with presents for the baby – talk about a bad hair day....

Of course, it’s trying to get us to think about the familiar story of the arrival of the wise men in a different way, which most of us who are responsible for preaching and teaching during our major Christian festivals are always trying to do! I think that, and the fact that ‘bad hair day’ is one of my favourite modern phrases, means that this ad really appealed to me, despite the fact that various green ink users in Tonbridge Wells got very excited about the whole campaign.

But as I have said often over this Christmas period, it is easy to forget the wonder of this story we know so well – familiarity seems to breed if not contempt at least a sort of numbness with regards to this amazing story. And the fact that we have a mish mash approach to the story with various elements from different Gospels mixed up together and the timescale of the arrival of the wise men’s arrival being less than clear means that we probably don’t enquire too deeply about this amazing event

It doesn’t help that we have layered meanings upon meanings on the text itself. First of all, despite the fact that I love the carol ‘we three kings’ as part of our worship there is no evidence that these were actually kings. Nor, unlike the suggestion in the carol, is there necessarily any deeper meaning to the gifts given... In fact I found this in the Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary on the whole Bible of , 1871 this excellent passage:
That the gold was presented to the infant King in token of His royalty; the frankincense in token of His divinity, and the myrrh, of His sufferings; or that they were designed to express His divine and human natures; or that the prophetical, priestly, and kingly offices of Christ are to be seen in these gifts; or that they were the offerings of three individuals respectively, each of them kings, the very names of whom tradition has handed down—all these are, at the best, precarious suppositions. But that the feelings of these devout givers are to be seen in the richness of their gifts, and that the gold, at least, would be highly serviceable to the parents of the blessed Babe in their unexpected journey to Egypt and stay there—that much at least admits of no dispute.
To be honest, its just a good sing!

What is important is what we do know about the wise men, and that should be enough to fill us with a sense of wonder and surprise and indeed a sense of being challenged in our own attitude.

We begin by asking why this story is included here in Matthew’s Gospel – it isn’t found elsewhere in the New Testament, or referred to by any other source. For Matthew, the passionate Evangelist to the Jewish People, the one who believed in the kingship of Jesus, the King of the Jews, what is he saying to the Jewish people?

Well, lets start with what we know - we do know that the wise men, or Magi, were not Jewish – they came from the east, they were outsiders. They may have been astrologers, they certainly believed that the stars were worth studying and that signs of import could be found. In many ways they are beyond the pale, outside of the Jewish faith – it isn’t them who quote from the book of the prophet Micah, it is Herod’s advisers. By the time they arrive in Jerusalem they are lost and not quite sure where to go next….
Matthew, who is very Judeo-centred in his Gospel writing, seems to be both stepping outside of his usual boundaries of trying to get the message of who Jesus was to the Jewish people and yet at the same time is sending a message to his Jewish readers – that those outside of God’s chosen people were able to see that Jesus was king, that Jesus was the one prophesied as Messiah, the chosen one. These foreigners could see it, surely those of the Jewish faith who read the Gospel could see it to. It’s a challenge thrown down to the reader. This should make the faithful Jew think about whether they accept Jesus as king. If even those outside the faith can see, surely it would be obvious to those within.

So we find our first challenge. Have we seen the light of Christ? If so, how have we responded to it? Do we accept Christ as our King? And if so, how does this have an impact on our lives. I was listening to a sermon recently on the internet which I was guided to by Paul and Kath and was struck by one of the question asked at the start – what would the Church look like if we really did act as though Jesus were our king? If we lived by kingdom values in everything we did?

It’s a good thing to ask at the beginning of this new year? In what way can I as an individual live up to the values of the kingdom of God? What changes would I have to make to the way I live my life if I really acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the king of everything? Even more so – what changes should our Church be making if we truly want to make this an outpost of God’s Kingdom?

I see the Kingdom made real and am profoundly moved by seeing our Churches in action – by the concern of our pastoral teams to reach out to the communities, by the prayers and concern of our fellowships for the sick and those in need, the bereaved, those we are linked with in various mission agencies. The way our Churches in the five alive Mission Community are seeking to be at the heart of our villages is an inspiration to me and I consider it a huge privilege to be a minister in this place. It is what attracted me in my original contact with the parishes last July and is something that is still inspiring and overwhelming me on a daily basis – it is why I am happy to be back from holiday, in fact!

But we cannot rest on our laurels, there is still more to be done, and we need to ask again and again, how is Jesus made King in our Church? What can we offer? What should we be doing? That is our mission and our calling for this coming year, to consider again our ministry to our parishes and to ask where we need to move and, indeed, where we need to stand firm. But this is something we will all be doing and we will be talking about it in the coming weeks, months and, dare I say, years!

The second challenge from this reading springs from this first Challenge of making Christ our king in everything and from our reading for today. It comes from the wise men – the outsiders. Matthew, for all his Jewish identity and agenda, makes it clear that these outsiders have something to say, and that they respond to Christ in the most appropriate way. If there is one thing our Churches need to continue to do in order to grow in Kingdom values, it is to welcome the outsider and reach out to those beyond these walls.

It’s not a new message and I am moved to preach on it regularly. We exist as the Church to worship God and to proclaim Christ to the world. This means welcoming those who see things differently, allowing them to bring who they are and and what they have to offer, letting them ask questions, encouraging them to come in and to be a part of our Church family, showing the love of Christ to all, no matter how they look, or sound, or what they think. We are called to be a place of openness to outsiders, and to listen to them, and to allow them to challenge us.

As the outsiders came to worship Christ and proclaim him king, may we too be those who put Christ as the focus of our Church and our lives, and may we be open to God speaking in unexpected ways through unexpected people. May we be open to the values of the kingdom and live them in all we do and think and say. May 2009 be our year of kingdom values, or I should say, the start of considering again the values of the Kingdom of God.

A sermon for Advent Sunday

Genesis 1.1-5
Psalm 43
Isaiah 45.2-8
Isaiah 9.2-3,6-7
Psalm 36.5-10
1 Thessalonians 5.1-11, 23-24
Isaiah 60.1-5a
Matthew 5.14-16

Advent 1 2008 Year B RCL

Looking for the Light

Have you started dreaming about what presents you hope to get for Christmas yet? Have you started thinking of the wonderful reaction hope to see on the faces of friends and family as they open up the gifts you bought them. Are your expectations high? Us human beings are pretty good at building up our expectations - a theme that is particularly pertinent as we dream of the wonderful gifts we hope to receive and as we tell ourselves that we’ve finally found the perfect present for the person who has everything.

Unfortunately most of these expectations seem to be dashed as we find our new video game, gardening equipment and expensive jewellery have become badly knitted jumpers, funny coloured ties and an abundance of hankies with your initial on the corner - and that the inventive and original gift you gave is exactly the same as that which three other people gave as well. Our expectations never really seem to be live up to.

God never seems to live up to our expectations either. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, though. If I were to turn to Isaiah 64, one of the readings set for today, but not one of this readings we are using for today’s theme of looking for light, we would read a prayer that begins:
“Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil...”
This was how the Israelite prophet Isaiah hoped that the Messiah would appear, in glory, bursting through the gates of the sky to reveal the power of God to all the nations and to exalt his chosen nation Israel. This was the hope of the people who heard the prophet Isaiah, or the third prophet called Isaiah as we believe this part of the book comes from. These were those who pictured the light of God as a blinding light, an overwhelming and challenging light, those who thought that the messiah was to be the Messiah of the Jews, a warrior Messiah who would rid Israel of its oppressors and make it a nation to rule over the Gentile, a powerful force who would show Yahweh’s power to the world. In this picture the Messiah will be "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."- a strong leader, one who would carry the power of God to put down the rebellion of human hearts against God.

Israel had good reason to hold these expectations, they were the chosen people of God, connected to him by a covenant that bound them together. Yet by the time of Jesus they had been exiled not only once, but twice and were under occupation by Rome and under Roman rule. What had happened to the land that God had promised them? Where was the light in their darkness?

It was perhaps natural to expect God to redeem them, to send a Messiah who would be the Saviour of the Jews, to restore them to their land - to fulfil the promise that God would save and redeem His people. This was the hope that had been built up over hundreds of years, it had become a longing - a longing for a redeemer who would liberate the Jewish people and exalt them so that they could take up their rightful place as the chosen people of God. They understood the writings of the prophets to point to the one who would, as Isaiah wrote “rend the heavens and come down”, they believed they were waiting for a political Messiah, a mighty Messiah of power to meet their need for freedom from their Roman oppressors.

It wasn’t that their expectations were wrong, they were the result of a certain way of seeing the promises of God, they were expectations of a certain kind held because of a certain situation. It wasn’t that these were bad expectations, or false ones - but that God often doesn’t live up to our expectations - in fact God holds to a very different way of doing thing than we do, a way we do not easily understand and which we often find difficult to grasp, a way that is often surprising and confusing, and often the opposite of what we would expect or hope for.

And it is because of this thwarting of expectations that we celebrate the birth of Christ every year. In fact, we celebrate a God who came in human form, who was born vulnerable and lowly, who lived the life of an itinerant preacher, teacher and healer and who died, almost in obscurity, an agonising and dishonourable death. It is this God that we think of at this time of year as we move towards Christmas, and this Christ, this Messiah, who rose again and whom we long to see and who we long to come and live with us, we think of in this season of Advent.

Jesus wasn’t anyone’s idea of a Messiah, he turned things upside-down, Jesus shows that he has a different understanding of God, different expectations. He brings out a meaning other than that which had been expected He talks of justice, freedom, salvation for all - not just the Jews, God has redeemed and saved his people, but his people are all of the inhabitants of the world he created. Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the light, not just for God’s original chosen people, but for the whole world.

And this theme of expectations goes on throughout scripture. These expectations comprise new values, new hopes - they are about love, wholeness, self-sacrifice, servanthood and justice, they aren’t about political power or favouritism but about God’s love poured out on to all humanity, God’s free gift of grace. This is the light of the world, the light which we are all called to live by and the light we are called to shed throughout all the world. And all of this is unexpected, undeserved, the result of a God who takes our expectations and goes further than we could ever expect, it isn’t that God doesn’t live up to our expectations but that our expectations could never live up to what God has in store for us.

God can do more than we ever ask or imagine, God is a God of surprises who bursts out of our unimaginative bonds and can bring us to new life in him. God calls us to dream and to set our hopes high and to seek Christ in one another and the world in which we live. These are the expectations to aspire to, to let ourselves be gripped by God and to be set free to serve Him in love and to dream dreams of the kingdom of God, and of the return of Christ into our lives - this is the advent hope and we start by expecting it today.

But what are our expectations this Advent-time as we lead up to another Christmas? Do we expect the same routine of TV, Carols, Mince pies, Shopping and all the paraphernalia that goes with modern Christmases? How low are our expectations? Low expectations are the kind God must find it hard to break out of, ones that not only have missed the point but that give Him nothing to work with.

It is easy for us to look back with the benefit of hindsight and say that the Jews were wrong, that they had false expectations, that they were misguided, and many Christians do make such negative assumptions - but those we read of in scripture were seeking God and the fulfilment of His promises, faithfully searching for the end of God’s plan - today many in our world seem to have given up looking. Have we lost the vision of God’s upside-down kingdom, have we let go of the hope of a Messiah, Yeshua, the Christ who redeems our world and longs to draw all people to Himself?

This advent season I hope we can all take the time to examine yourself and look at your expectations - be prepared to have them dashed, but try and give God something to work on to start with – let us together long for the life and light of Christ be shed abroad. And may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Amen