Sermon Series Guide

This Sermon Series contains 10 Sermons and an Introduction, which are published on this Blog in reverse order (i.e. the newest sermon is seen first).  If you would like to read through them in the order in which they were delivered, please use this list of links:

Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?

What's Bread and Wine got to do with it? (Being a Eucharistic Community)

Today, as some of you may be relieved to hear(!) we reach the last in our Sermon Series on 'Marks of an Authentic Church'.  We have ranged over a wide area of thinking, which has included Jesus' priority for the poor and sick, the generosity of God's grace, and the notion of sin as the absence of love.  We have thought about our calling to be producers, not consumers, and how we need to have an intelligent understanding of Scripture.  We've wondered about how to blend the mystical with the scientific, and how we can be tolerant and open to all.  We've thought about how to embrace tradition while being open to the contemporary.  And last week, we we challenged to understand that forgiveness is how the world is set right.

Today, I want to wrap up this series by talking about something that we do, every week, year in and year out, which I believe crystallises all these ideas.  It's something that takes so much of the thinking we've been doing, and wraps it all up in a beautiful little parcel.  I'm speaking of course, about the Mass, or the Holy Communion, or the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist....whatever your favourite name for this service is!

Actually, all these different names are important...because they spring out of the ongoing debates in the church, all around the world, about the primary meaning of this liturgy.  Those who use the word 'Eucharist' are drawing from the Greek word 'eucharistia' which means 'thanksgiving'.  For them, the key moment of this service is the eucharistic, or thanksgiving prayer, during which the people of God are reminded of God's actions in the world and in their lives through Christ and the Holy Spirit.  The Eucharist is where we give thanks to God for the sacrificial death of Christ, and commit ourselves to live new lives following his example.

For those who prefer the term Holy Communion, it is the more 'communal' aspects of the service which are important.  Through the liturgy, the 'community' comes together, and communes with God and one another, before going out to love and serve the Lord in the community.  It is that 'communal' emphasis that has led the Church of England to mainly prefer the title 'Holy Communion' than some of the other options.  We are a parish church, called to serve a certain parish, in a certain community.  We invite others to an ever more Holy Way of being in communion, and in community.

The Lord's Supper is a term mainly used by what we call 'non-conformist' churches - those who do not conform to the teachings of the historical orthodox and catholic versions of Christianity.  Most Lord's Suppers are, to most traditional Christians, a very stripped-back, bare version of the liturgy.  The main focus of a Lord's Supper is the meal of bread and wine, which is consumed (mainly) as a memorial of Christ's death.  A Lord's Supper tends to focus on the meal as a historical event, rather than (as the traditional churches teach) something which is still happening today.  The bread and the wine are tokens, rather than something which by the Holy Spirit, is mysteriously transformed into the body and blood of Jesus - whether that is meant spiritually or literally.  The piece of furniture on which this happens is called the Lord's Table, rather than an Altar - because non-conformists prefer to believe that what happened once cannot be repeated again.  For them, the sacrifice of Christ was made once for all, and cannot be repeated.  Those who prefer the term Altar claim that in some spiritual sense Christ continues to sacrifice himself again and again for the life of the world...and therefore, the place on which this Sacrifice is made present would be called an Altar.

There are many, many other names for this central feast of the Christian Church, and many many ways of interpreting all the different elements that it includes.  For example, some Christians call this 'The Table of the Lord' - the 'Mensa Domini'.  Some call it 'the Lord's Body' - the Corpus Domini.  Some call it the 'Holy of Holies' - the 'Sanctissimum', or the 'Eulogia' (the Blessing) or the Synaxis (the Assembly).  And there are others!  The main alternative that I suspect you have all heard is of course The Mass.  There are debates around where that particular title came from.  One idea is that the word comes from the same root as the word 'Mess' - as is used on ships all over the world.  Its the place of 'the Meal' - so the The Mass is The Meal.  Another discussion is around the Latin words of dismissal, at the end of the service:  "Ite, Missa Est', which directly translates as 'Go, the dismissal is made'.  Some scholars believe the word Missa is form of the Latin verb 'to send' - so would translate the phrase as 'You are sent' - emphasising that having received the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist, we are sent out into the world 'to love and serve the Lord'.

And all of this is very interesting...especially to a geek like me!  But of course, the real question is this:  what is the Service for?!  What's is its fundamental purpose?  Why do we do it, and why should we continue doing it?

Surprisingly, one of the most profound answers that I've found to these questions comes from an Atheist.  The philosopher Alain de Botton has written a description of what he calls 'the Mass', which is well worth hearing (in his stimulating and challenging book "Religion for Athiests: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion").  For him, the Mass is an antedote to so much of the loneliness and self-absorption of modern society - and he argues that Atheists need to learn from the Church.   For example, he praises the Mass for the way that it brings people together in community around a meal.  He points out that with declining church attendance we have seen an exponential rise in Restaurants - because people have an inbuilt human need to congregate around a table.  But, he points out, "contemporary restaurants pay lip service to the notion of companionability'.  They fail to "introduce patrons to one another, to dispel their mutual suspicions, to break up the clans into which people chronically segregate themselves or to get them to open up their hearts and share their vulnerabilities with others.  The focus is on the food and the decor, never on opportunities for extending and deepening affections.  ...When the meal itself - the texture of the escalopes or the moistness of the courgettes - has become the main attraction, we can be sure that something has gone awry.  Patrons will tend to leave restaurants much as they entered them, the experience having merely affirmed existing tribal divisions.  ....Restaurants are adept at gathering people into the same space [like churches] and yet Restaurants lack any means of encouraging them to make meaningful contact with one another once they are there."  (Minor editing and contraction is mine).

In contrast, de Botton says these things about the Mass...

"The composition of the congregation feels significant.  Those in attendance tend not to be uniformly of the same age, race, profession or educational or income level; they are a random sampling of souls united only by their shared commitment to certain values"

"The Mass actively breaks down the economic and status subgroups within which we normally operate, casting us into a wider sea of humanity."

"If there are so many reference in the Mass to poverty, sadness, failure and loss, it is because the Church views the ill, the frail of mind, the desperate and the elderly as representing aspects of humanity and (even more meaningfully) of ourselves which we are tempted to deny, but which bring us, when we can acknowledge them, closer to our need for one another."

The Mass "should inspire visitors to suspend their customary frightened egoism in favour of joyful immersion in a collective spirit - an unlikely scenario in the majority of modern community centres"

These are all brilliant observations, I think.  de Botton uses them as the basis for designing a new kind of Restaurant - and Agape Restaurant - where guests would be coaxed away "from customary expressions of superbia ('What do you do?, 'Where do your children go to school?) and towards a more sincere revelation of themselves ('What do you regret?' 'Whom can you not forgive?' 'What do you fear?')."  The liturgy of such a Restaurant, argues de Botton, would "as in the Mass, inspire charity in the deepest sense, a capacity to respond with complexity and compassion to the existence of our fellow creatures."

I rather like the idea of de Botton's Agape Restaurant.  In fact, if he did but know it, such restaurants already exist in many churches.  We have one, just like that, in our Community Cafe, and so does the Portsmouth Family Church, the Wesley Methodist Centre, and the Pastoral Centre in Emsworth.  This is what Authentic Christians do - we take a simple idea from the normal plane of modern existence...in our case, the idea of eating together.  Then we transform it, with God's help, into something holy, by introducing the idea of community - teaching people to love their neighbour as they love themselves.  We give every visitor a warm welcome, and the chance, if they wish, to think about the deep questions of existence.

And that is what the Mass, or the Holy Communion, is about too.  It's the place where people from all walks of life can come together, united by a common Vision of what the world could be like.  We are united by a common love for God and the things of God.  We are united by a common understanding that none of us is free of sin, and we all need to give and receive forgiveness...from God and each other.  We are united by a common meal, in which we take into ourselves the very stuff of God, in bread and wine; so that he may give us sustenance for the next stage of our life...whether that be the next day, or the next month.  Together, we recite historic words of faith, like the Creed.  Many of us might struggle with the accuracy of some of the words we recite, but nevertheless they tie us to the previous generations who have believed before us. Together we offer up the world, in all its chaos and pain, and challenge ourselves to be part of the solution to the world's problems.  We share peace with each other...even with people who we would normally not think of as friends.  And together, we commit ourselves to going out in the name of Christ, to love and serve the world.

What could be a more appropriate and magnificent thing for Christians - let alone Athiests! - to do?

Amen.

Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?

Understanding that Forgiveness is How the Universe is Set Right

Romans 8.12-25   & Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43  (Readings for Trinity 5)

Today, were going to return to our Sermon series on the Marks of an Authentic Church.  You'll  remember that since Christmas we've been thinking about what a truly authentic church would look like - and, I hope, asking ourselves whether we match up.

Today, I want to think about the topic of forgiveness - and let me begin by quoting directly from Dr April Love-Fordham, whose blog around these ideas was the inspiration for this whole sermon series.  By the way - she uses the term 'non-conservatives' - meaning those Christians who are not tied to conservative views about God or Scripture.  I tend to prefer the term 'authentic Christians'...because I think it’s a bit more positive, and inclusive.  But, with that caveat, here's what April says about Forgiveness...

"The non-conservative movement believes that forgiveness is not a suggestion.  Forgiveness is how the universe is set right.  Jesus forgave us.  So we have no choice, but to forgive others.  The act of forgiveness is the world’s only hope of salvation.    This means we forgive our enemies and live in peace. This is a complex and difficult concept in a world that thinks peace is manufactured by having bigger guns than your enemies.  The non-conservative believes that the way of Christ must begin with forgiving all others and seeking to live in harmony."  (Go to this link to read all of April's thoughts).

I could really stop preaching right there...couldn't I?  But you are not going to be so lucky!  Instead, I'd like to invite you to think about how this theme of forgiveness relates to the Gospel and New Testament readings we've just heard.  St Paul, first of all, presents us with a picture of a Creation that is 'groaning in labour pains' and 'subjected to futility'.  He's talking of course about our World, in which the creative energies of God have been perverted by the destructive impulses of man.  Instead of living in harmony with nature, (as in the mythical Garden of Eden) we pillage the land, and destroy its resources.  Instead of living in peace with one another, we live in a constant state of conflict.

This imagery is picked up by our Gospel reading, and made really vivid by Jesus' imagery of wheat being sown with 'tares', or good seed being sown alongside weeds.  In his explanation of the parable, Jesus says that the good seeds are the 'children of the kingdom', and the weeds are the 'children of the Evil one'.  In other words, there are two kinds of people in this world, according to Jesus.  There are those who are living their lives by Kingdom principles - those that I would call 'Authentic Christians'.  Then there are those who live by principles which look nothing like the Kingdom - and could even be described as the Kingdom of the Evil One (if such a being could really be permitted to exist by a loving God).  Those principles are the ones we see at work all around us - they are the principles that are described by such pithy sayings as 'Greed is Good', and 'There's no such thing as Community', and 'Charity begins at home'.  Those are the principles which drive our consumerism, and the increasing racism we see rising in our country.  Those are the principles which lead us to forget that every human being is our brother, or our sister, and that we are called to love them, as much as we love ourselves.

But the Kingdom of the Evil One is most clearly seen on the international stage...especially at the present time.  And it is particularly seen in the apparent inability of human beings to forgive one another.  Over the last few weeks, we have once again seen Israel and Palestine explode into conflict and mutual hatred.  Any historian will tell you that there are very good historical reasons for both these nations to be deeply suspicious of each other.  But what they never seem to learn, year after year, is that rehearsing the wrongs of the past will never enable them to move forward.  Both nations live under the old legal code of Judaism and Islam.  They have, deeply within them, the notion that justice requires 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'.  This is a very ancient principle - which was actually established to put a limit on revenge.  In other words, if someone causes a member of your family to lose an eye, it is not acceptable to go and kill the perpetrator.  The perpetrator should only lose an eye.  By this means, justice is done, revenge is limited, and spirals of violence are prevented.  Or, at least, that's how the argument goes.

But, as Ghandi famously said, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind". It is an unavoidable part of our nature that we human beings make mistakes.  We are bound to cause pain and distress to others.  Sometimes deliberately...but more often than not by simple carelessness.  A careless word, and unthinking phrase.  Even a deliberate action taken on the basis of assumptions, rather than real knowledge.  The most recent world-scale example of that was the invasion of Iraq, made on the incorrect assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass-destruction pointed at the West...which it turned out, they didn't.  Time and time again, on a world-wide level, wars and conflicts erupt over incomplete information, half-truths and half lies.  And the whole world goes blind.

It happens on a personal level too.  I've even seen it in churches...where people are struggling to be authentic Christians.  I've seen people leave the church over an unkind word, or even an ill-timed joke or attempted bit of humour.  I've seen people who refuse to speak to other Christians who they think have wronged them.  I've even seen people avoid each other at the Peace!

 Jesus had a far more radical solution.  He said, radically, imaginatively, "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you".  And on another occasion "If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left".  In other words, forgive, forgive, forgive.

As April Love-Fordham pointed out in the quote I read just now, "Forgiveness is how the world is set right.  Jesus forgave us.  So we..."(who are trying to live authentic Christian lives) "...must forgive others."

But what does true forgiveness look like?

Let's just break down the word into its too parts.... 'for' and 'give'.  The second part, to 'give', implies the giving-up of something, doesn't it?  I suggest that it means being prepared to give up my right to feel offended.  It means giving away my anger; it means refusing to let hurt, and feelings of revenge, consume me any longer.  The real point of this kind of forgiveness is that it actually has no direct impact on the person who has wronged me.  They may never change their ways.  They may never find the grace to be someone I could call a friend.  But by giving up my anger, or my rights for revenge, what they have done to me no longer has any power to hurt me.  It is ME who benefits from forgiveness!  And that's why it’s a practice worth pursuing.  Freed from feelings of hurt and revenge, I'm able to carry on living my life as though the hurt had never happened.

This is a very logical argument isn't it?  And it’s fairly easy to get your head around it for the little silly arguments that happen within any group of people.  But what about the big stuff?  What about forgiving the person who has, say, killed my child.  Or, a hot topic in the current new cycle, how could anyone forgive the infamous Jimmy Saville for his abuse?  This is where authentic Christian forgiveness becomes even more important.  The Jimmy Saville enquiry will take years.  Victims of his horrible acts will be asked again and again to re-live what happened to them.  But to what end?  Saville himself can't be prosecuted beyond the grave, except by God.  To such people, and indeed to anyone who has suffered massive hurt at the hands of another, it turns out that the only real solution for ANY victim, is forgiveness.

Let me be clear here...I am not saying that murderers or pedophiles should not be prosecuted, and put away from society.  They absolutely should be prevented from ever harming anyone else.  But for their victims, the only way that they will ever be able to rebuild something like a normal life is through forgiveness.  And, when such terrible people are locked away, there should be nothing approaching revenge about their treatment.  A humane society, founded on authentically Christian principles, would understand that all people have the capacity to mess things up – and that we are all affected by the lives we have led.  Jimmy Saville, Mira Hindley, Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler were all once tiny babies, innocent and newly formed.  They learned their appalling behaviour from the damage that was done to them by others.  Forgiveness, then, should have been their way out too.  But no-one ever taught them that.

And finally - let's think about the first part of the word forgiveness...'fore'.  To for-tell, is to predict that something will happen.  So to 'for-give' is to find a way of giving up one's right to feel hurt, or to get revenge, even before there is anything to forgive!  It is to be so full of God's grace, that forgiveness is offered at the very instant that hurt is caused.  To for-give is, in fact, to learn how to 'pre-forgive' - to live in a way that forgives all humanity for its stupidity, even before the latest stupid act has been committed.

This is something I'm trying to learn.  I started driving at a very young age.  I got my licence just six weeks after my 17th birthday, by a combination of luck and flannel towards the Driving Examiner!  I thought, therefore, that I was a very good driver...and naturally, I then thought that every other driver on the road was an idiot!  I was a suffered from what we now call 'road-rage' - and I would drive in a state of constant anger and frustration at the other drivers on the road.  I'm ashamed of that behaviour now.  Deeply ashamed.  I worry about the number of people whose day I completely upset by my angry stupidity.  What changed?

It was actually a work of the Holy Spirit which enabled me to understand that the things people did to me on the road were rooted in all sorts of issues that I could never know about.  Perhaps the person who cut me up was rushing to the hospital for a sick friend?  Perhaps the person driving too slowly in front of me was a nervous wreck for whom 40 miles an hour felt like 90?  Perhaps the person who turned across my path had just received terrible news, and their mind was elsewhere at that moment.  With those kinds of thoughts in my head, I learned how to 'pre-forgive' - and now, I drive with much more serenity.  The actions of those around me no longer affect me.  I am no longer a bundle of nerves and anger...and I arrive at my destination without feeling exhausted.

It’s perhaps a silly example - but I hope it makes the point.  If authentic Christians could live in this way towards everyone who wrongs them, the Kingdom of God would quickly be established.  This is the way that the great Saints of old lived.  This is the way that Jesus called his followers to live.

Is it the way that we are living?   Amen.

Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?

Being Authentic doesn't necessarily mean being Contemporary

After all the deep reflection of Lent and Holy Week, and the joy of our Easter celebrations, it's time for us to return to the question of what it means for us to be an 'Authentic Church'.  But before exploring today's theme, let me quickly remind you of where we have been exploring together up until now.

We've thought about how we need to reflect Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.  

We've explored how wide and generous is God's grace to us. 

We've mused about how to understand sin as the absence of Love, and 

how Christians need to be producers not consumers.  

In Lent, we considered how we can have an intelligent understanding of Scripture; 

and then Fr James invited us to think about how to blend the scientific with the mystical.

Our last theme was about being tolerant and open to all - and you might remember me telling you about my relationship with Christians in Ghana, with whom I disagree on all sorts of theological levels, but with whom I remain a brother and fellow-Christian.

These week's topic takes up that last theme again.  This week, I would like us to think about how we can embrace tradition while being open to modern trends in our culture.  Or to put it another way, I want to suggest that 'being authentic doesn't necessarily mean being contemporary'.

When I go to Ghana, on Friday, I will take part in a number of significant services.  I shall be present at the retirement of the Bishop of Cape Coast, and then at the enthronement of his successor.  I shall also be installed as a Canon of St George's Cathedral in Ho.  I know from previous experience that all these services will be conducted in sweltering heat.  They will each last up to four or five hours, and I will have sweat running out of every pore!  But I also know, from previous experience, that they will be services that will blend traditional church practices with modern Ghanaian culture in a quite unique way. 

There is much about their worship which the highest of high church worshippers in England would find very comfortable.  There are lots of smells, and bells!  There's acres of lacy fabric shrouding the Altars and priests.  There are, it seems, dozens of acolytes with candles which are moved around the service in complex choreographed movements. And much of the English language portions of the service are said in what we would consider very old fashioned English...essentially straight out of the old book of Common Prayer.

However, having embraced so much of traditional Anglo-Catholic worship, the Ghanaian church has also learned how to incorporate modern culture into its worship.  So, whilst there is a traditional robed choir and organist at Cape Coast Cathedral, there is also a worship band with guitars, brass instruments, and drums of immense size.  And therefore, at various points in the service, the mood changes significantly to one of sometimes ear-splitting proportions!  This particularly happens during the sometimes two or three collections which take place during the service - during which the whole congregation dances to the front of the church, and deposits their gifts in a large collecting box.  Suddenly, the mood shifts from somber traditional Anglo-Catholic to something loud and joyful.  Hands are raised or clapped.  Handkerchiefs are waved like little flags, people dance and sing their hearts out. 

Somehow, the Church in Ghana, has managed to combine joy and reverence in their worship, in quite a unique way.  I think we could learn quite a lot from them.  The English churches tend to be either one or the other.  We either attend worship that is loud and modern, or something more traditional.  We tend to be, as a nation, quite set in our individual ways, and we can easily feel very uncomfortable about doing anything that is new, or different.  

I've experienced that here, as much as anywhere else.  I've welcomed new people to our worship here at St Mark's - who have then told me, on leaving, that they find our use of bells during the Eucharist just a bit too Catholic for their taste.  I've spoken to others who have said that they find our tradition of singing hymns with a robed choir just a bit too old fashioned...and that they would like to have more worship-songs and choruses.  On the other hand, I know people in this congregation who consider that any music written after 1750 is 'dangerously modern'!  I've found that when I've attempted to introduce a bit of hand-clapping into more up-beat worship songs, that most people steadfastly cling to their hymn-books, and refuse to join in!  

But do you know what?  Statistics that are gathered by the church every year tell us that there is a return to tradition happening all around the country.  We've seen lots of new initiatives springing up all around the church, including 'Messy Church' and 'Cafe Church' and many other very useful tools of outreach.  But did you know where the most significant growth is taking place in the English churches at the present time?  It's actually in our cathedrals!

People all over the country are being drawn back to the traditions that some of the previous generation abandoned rather too easily.  This is particularly true of those whom theologian  Dr April Love-Fordham calls "Non-conservatives" by which she refers to the kinds of Christians who embrace the ideas about grace, inclusion, the intelligent reading of Scripture, the priority on community that I think we also embrace here at St Marks.  Love-Fordham says this: that "Non-Conservatives are not generally drawn to contemporary Christian rock and loud screaming guitars on Sunday mornings.  This kind of worship music feels laughable at times to them and they’d rather flee than attend a church with a praise band leader standing on stage fussing at them to clap their hands with more gusto and to sing louder.  Non-conservatives are returning to high church with smells and bells – and lots of contemplative silence, prayer books, and the Eucharist generously practiced.  They want to learn spiritual disciplines and to worship in an atmosphere that lets the heart experience God.  Who would have predicted that?  But they aren’t into making church look and sound like a rock concert."

I think that Love-Fordham has a point! And I say that despite the fact that, as most of you know, I am a keen fan of jazz, blues, and rock 'n' roll.  When I listen to music privately, in my car or at home, it's often full of screaming guitars, and cranked up as loud as my speakers will go!  But when I worship, I have learned to value the traditions that the church has evolved over 2000 years.  There is immense depth in the words of our ancient hymns; the wisdom of the ages can be found there, whereas many modern worship songs lack anything theological at all.  There is enormous benefit in the profound gift of silent contemplation; the gift of being able to draw back from the noise of modern life, and draw from the well of the presence of God's still, small voice.  And as we shall explore in a few more weeks (as this sermon series comes to an end) the traditional practice of the Eucharist has a way of drawing a whole congregation together into the presence of God like none other.

The challenge that all churches face today - which is the very challenge that the church in Ghana is grappling with - is how to maintain a balance.  How shall we offer the gift of our traditions to a world which constantly seeks the new and the innovative, and which so quickly rejects what it thinks of as old-fashioned?  We serve a population which embraces every new fad of technology or fashion without ever asking whether any of it adds anything significant to the sum of human experience.  We serve a population which has been lulled into believing that a new smart-phone, or a flatter-screen TV is the answer to all human angst.  Or that the latest album from a fly-by-night band of one-hit wonders will answer all the emotional needs of life.

To such a population, we need to find ways of saying that we hear their cry for the modern and the new.  We hear it, and to some extent we share it.  We are all victims of a consumer culture that searches out the latest gadget, or longs to buy the latest fashion. And it is healthy and right that we should incorporate something of modernity into what we do together in worship. The use of modern English, understandable by everyone, is vital.  Modern instruments and modern beats are valuable in communicating that God loves modern people just as much as previous generations.

But for them, and for ourselves, we need to continue looking backwards as well.  We need to learn what we can from the practice of the Ancients...practices that sustained them, and which still have immense power to sustain us today.  Sustained silence, meditation on wisdom in word and song, the repeated mantras of the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and the Eucharist...these are the practices which sustained our fore-fathers and mothers.  And if we will let them, they still have the power to sustain us today.

Amen.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?

Being Tolerant and Open to All: Melting Pot or Tossed Salad?

John 4. 5-42

Once again, by remarkable co-incidence, our Gospel reading for today coincides very nicely with our sermon series about 'Marks' - or characteristics - of an authentic church.  We have so far covered six out of the ten topics that I want us to explore.

• We've thought about how we need to reflect Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.  
• We've explored how wide and generous is God's grace to us. 
• We've mused about how to understand sin as the absence of Love, and 
• how Christians need to be producers not consumers.  
• Two weeks ago, we considered how we can have an intelligent understanding of Scripture; 
• and then last week Fr James invited us to think about how to blend the scientific with the mystical.

Now, having listened to the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, I'd like us to think about how we are called to be 'tolerant and open to all'.

The Samaritans were people who lived in what had been the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  Their capital city, Samaria, was located between Galilee in the north and Judea in the south. The Samaritans were a racially mixed society - with both Jewish and pagan ancestry. Although they worshiped Yahweh like the Jews, their religion was not mainstream Judaism. For example, they accepted only the first five books of the Bible as canonical (or legitimately from God), and their temple was on Mount Gerazim instead of on Mount Zion in Jerusalem (Jn 4:20).

The Samaritans of Jesus' day were strict monotheists. In some respects they were more strict than Jews about the commands of the Mosaic law, especially the sabbath regulations. In some ways there are similarities between Samaritans and the stricter forms of Islam that we encounter today.  They were fiercely bound by rules, and utterly convinced that only their interpretation of Scripture was the right one.

The Samaritans were despised by ordinary Jews, and they believed that contact with a Samaritan would contaminate them.  For example, Jews who were traveling from Judea to Galilee would cross over the river Jordan, bypassing Samaria and then cross over the river again as they neared their destination. The Samaritans also hated the Jews just as much! (Lk 9:52-53).  And as our Gospel story for today tells us, Samaritans and Jews would not normally even drink from the same well.

Can you imagine, then, the reaction that Jesus would have got by spending any time at all with a Samaritan - let alone asking for water from their well?  Even today, people get very twitchy indeed if our leaders have any kind of contact with people we hate.  Many of the negotiations which took place with the IRA in the 1990s had to be done in secret, because the public would not have stomached our leaders talking with terrorists.  If you listen to any political radio debate today, it is often striking how many political opponents won't even sit in the same studio as each other.  Instead, the interviewer has to ask questions of one side, and then later put the same questions to the other.  It's as though politicians fear that if they sit in the same studio as someone from an opposing view-point, that they will somehow be contaminated by them - or that supporters will think they've gone soft.

Sadly, the same is true in matters of religion and morality too.  Many high-church or orthodox leaders will simply have nothing to do with, say, evangelical or charismatic Christians - and vice versa.  Different Christian groups look down on each other with disdain, believing somehow that God has shown only them the correct way to worship, and the only way of interpreting the Bible.  Across different faiths, it is sad but true that many senior Christian leaders have never set foot in a mosque or a synagogue. Many Muslims and Jews have never entered a church.

Jesus cuts through all this stupid separation between peoples.  He asks for a drink from a Samaritan well, and then enters into a tolerant an open debate with a Samaritan woman.  Among many topics that they range over, a central one is the question of where it is most correct to worship God.  Jews had a temple on Mount Zion, and the Samaritans had theirs on Mount Gerazim.  Which one was right?

But notice how Jesus doesn't let himself be drawn into the question of who is right or wrong about where to worship.  Instead, he cuts straight through such petty issues, and points to a much deeper, greater truth.  "The time is coming", he says, "when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth".  In other words, he says, the question of where to worship is so much less important than the question of how to worship.  Wherever worship happens, it should be done in 'spirit and in truth' - or perhaps we could say, with the soul and the mind, or with spirituality and integrity.

Jesus, then, cuts through the petty squabbles of humanity (the questions about who is right or wrong) and points us back to the source of all life, our heavenly Father.  He reminds us that we are all children of God, and we are all capable of worshipping God in spirit and in truth, not least through him who reveals to us what the Father is like.

An authentic church, then, is one which, following Jesus, refuses to let itself get locked into silly debates about what is right or wrong about our religious practices.  An authentic church, is one that recognises that people have a wide and varied understanding of God, and that no-one but Jesus himself can legitimately claim to be right on almost any topic you care to mention.  Is it right for women to be Bishops?  Only Jesus knows.  Is it right for gay people to be married to each other?  Only Jesus knows.  Is it right for priests to wear robes, or would a shirt and jeans be easier for non-Christians to relate to?  Only Jesus knows.  Is it better to sing ancient hymns to the sound of an organ, or to crank up a drum-kit to the sounds of Graham Kendrick?  Only Jesus knows.  Is the celebration of the Lord's Supper properly called a 'Mass' or a service of 'Holy Communion'?  And should there be 'smells and bells', or not? Only Jesus knows.  And fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on your feelings in the matter) he is not recorded as having said anything at all about such matters - at all!

An authentic church, then, holds onto its theological views and its traditions rather lightly. But it doesn't stop searching for meaning and for truth.  True tolerance, between people of different beliefs, is not about creating a melting pot, where all ideas are up for grabs, and where nothing matters any more.  To worship God in spirit and in truth means that we have to keep on doing the hard work of seeking God with heart and mind.  The word tolerance doesn't imply the creation of a blended soup, where all the flavours run together until there is no distinctive taste at all.  Rather, true tolerance is more like a tossed salad.  Flavours (or ideas and views) find a way to live alongside each other, accepting with humility that no-one but Jesus has the authority to judge between different ideas about God.  An authentically tolerant church takes seriously the command to 'judge not, lest ye be judged'.  It focuses, instead, on helping all people, wherever they come from, whatever their background, to begin to see God in spirit and in truth.

This is, in fact, one of the specific and deliberate features of what it means to be Anglican.  The Anglican church is a messy place, without a doubt.  We argue and debate all sorts of different understandings about tradition and theology.  We have charismatics and orthodox churches.  We have liberals and conservatives.  We have traditionalists and modernists...but we are all Anglicans.  We all worship, in each Diocese, under the authority of one Bishop, whose role is to be a focus for unity for an infinitely wide and diverse bunch of people.

In May, I will be travelling back to Ghana, to spend time with my friend Bishop Matthias and his clergy.  Matthias and I disagree on almost every aspect of theology and church practices that you could mention.  He believes in the reality of Satan; I don't.  He believes that women should not be priests, let alone Bishops; I do.  He believes in robes and high church liturgies...I'm really not that bothered, either way.  He is convinced that we should drive on the right hand side of the road, I am wholly committed to the left!  But, despite all these differences, we are friends.  Despite our sometimes passionate arguments on a whole range of topics, he is going to install me as a Canon of his Cathedral in May.  Despite knowing that I disagree with him on many subjects, he is going to embrace me as a brother, and give me a seat of honour in his Cathedral.

That, my friends, is what authentic Christianity looks like.  It's a Christianity which does not judge another person, but which is tolerant and open to all, without sacrificing one's own beliefs.  An authentic church - which I dare to suggest the Anglican church is, at its best - embraces difference, throws people together like a tossed salad, and adds the dressing of love.

Amen.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?

Blending the Scientific with the Mystical

This sermon was delivered by Rev'd Dr James Grenfell on 16th March 2014

Text:  John 3:1-17 (The Gospel for the 2nd Sunday of Lent)

This morning we’re continuing in our series of sermons reflecting on the marks or characteristics of an authentic church and we’re going to be thinking some more about the relationship between our faith and science. Because one sign of an authentic church will be its ability to relate to other ways of seeing the world with humility, maturity, and confidence. One of the most successful and dominant ways of seeing and interpreting the world for the last 300 years has been science. So how we’re able to relate our faith to science is a good test of how we might be able to do it in all sorts of other areas too.

The relationship between faith and science hasn't always been a good one. You might remember that in the 17th century the Roman Catholic Church put Galileo on trial and then locked him up because he dared to suggest that the earth went around the sun rather than the other way around. And it’s not all been one way traffic either. Much more recently, in the last five years, there has emerged a new and much more aggressive form of atheism. It’s led by a group of scientists, the new atheists, who argue that belief in God is a primitive and a dangerous delusion. Religion is a cause of so much suffering and violence in our world that it should no longer be tolerated. Those scientists and their supporters state that religion should be actively resisted and wherever possible, abolished.

But to help us think about this some more, I want to tell you a story about James Usher. James Usher was an Irish bishop in the 17th century, the period when modern science was just beginning.  He spent decades calculating with painstaking accuracy the exact dates of the events in the Bible all the way to Genesis. He was helped greatly by those big family trees you get in the bible.  Those longs lists of descendants in the Old Testament which tell you who begat whom and which often helpfully include how old people were when they had their children. Bishop Usher managed to fill in a couple of crucial gaps by using other historical sources. He got back to the year when he thought creation took place and then  he tried to narrow down the date. He reckoned that God had an interest in mathematical harmony and so it was logical that he would have chosen to create the world on a date when the sun was at one of its four cardinal points: middle of summer or winter (the longest or shortest day, or the beginning of spring or autumn (when the clocks go forward or back). Then, looking back to Genesis, he read that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden had fruit on that was ripe. It must therefore have been harvest time in the autumn. The nearest Sunday to this date and therefore the Day on which Creation was completed was 23 October 4004 BC.

It’s easy today to laugh at Bishop Usher’s efforts or to feel sorry that he wasted so many years of his life in trying to calculate all this. Because what we can see now is that Bishop Usher was simply on the wrong track. The Bible isn’t some sort of scientific textbook and the Bible isn’t meant to be used to give you a scientific answer as to exactly when and how the world was created. The Bible contains all kinds of crucially important truths about God, about ourselves and the place we have in God’s creation. But those truths aren’t scientific ones and if you read the Bible looking for scientific type truth you’re left with a very distorted reading of the Bible and end up with answers a bit like Bishop Usher.

You can see the mistake being made the other way around too, by scientists this time. Richard Dawkins, probably the best known of the new atheists does just this. He claims that God is just like a scientific hypothesis and that you can test God using scientific methods. When you do that, he says, you find that God doesn’t exist. I don’t know about you but the God that I believe in isn’t going to be threatened or constrained by the test that some scientist has dreamed up for him. Nor can I imagine what kind of proof there would have to be to convince me that God doesn’t exist. But it wouldn’t look like a scientific proof - I’m sure of that.

In our gospel reading this morning we've heard about Nicodemus going to see Jesus at night. Nicodemus, who was a respected Jewish teacher, recognises that God is present in what Jesus is doing but wants to know more. And he has a slightly comical conversation with Jesus and manages to misunderstand totally what Jesus is talking about.

Jesus tells Nicodemus that to enter the Kingdom of God one must be born from above. In fact the Greek word for ‘from above’ (anothen) also means ‘again’ - Nicodemus takes the literal understanding and thinks Jesus is talking about entering one’s mother’s womb once again.

Nicodemus thinks Jesus means entering his mother’s womb once again and he doesn’t get it. He’s further puzzled when Jesus talks about God’s Spirit being like the wind that blows where it likes. There’s another pun here - the same word in Greek pneuma means both Spirit and wind. No wonder Nicodemus was confused.

I think that the ways in which Nicodemus misunderstood Jesus help us to think about how science and faith sometimes misunderstand each other. Science and faith use the same words sometimes but each mean something entirely different by them. Science and faith give us two important but different ways of looking at our world; they have different starting points, and methods, and ways of measuring things; but we need both of them.

Rather than trying to show how different faith and science are, a much more interesting, creative question is to ask what gifts does science bring to faith and visa versa. I think that science brings to faith a desire for clarity, an endless curiosity about our world, and a commitment to the pursuit of truth. Science can also bring with it a capacity for awe and wonder in face of the beautiful complexity and simplicity of our world. Faith can bring to science a different but no less passionate search for truth. Faith can also give to science a proper sense of humility which it sometimes lacks, that there are limits to the truth that scientific reason gives us.
As well as giving humanity enormous gifts, science has also been responsible for great suffering in our world. It badly needs the kind of truth, sense of purpose and moral values that faith can offer.

The languages of faith and science need each other. Ultimately, they both need to be blessed by the Spirit of God who, as Nicodemus discovered, blows where it wills. The immense truths of God’s presence are not exhaustively described by the language of faith any more than they are contained or disproved by science.

So an authentic church community, one which is secure in its identity as the body of Christ will always look generously and critically for the truth about God in other areas of human study.  Only by doing this can we receive the gifts that science and other disciplines have for us.

Amen.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?

Having an Intelligent Understanding of Scripture

This week, we are continuing our series on Marks of an Authentic Church.  So far, we've thought about how authentic churches reflect Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.  We've mused about how wide and deep is the grace of God towards his people.  We've thought about defining sin as the absence of love.  And last week, we focused on how God calls us to be producers, rather than consumers.

This week, I want to do something rather dangerous.  If we are to truly understand what it means to be an authentic church, we can't do so without tackling the thorny subject of the Bible.  This is dangerous ground - because it is ground over which some people have given their lives.  It is precious ground, because people often hold views about the Bible which are deeply rooted in their emotions.  But it is ground we must cover in our search to be authentically Christian.

The Bible is a collection of writings that has been responsible for more joy and, I suggest more pain, than perhaps any other collection of writings in the world.  It has inspired and shaped whole nations, and many world leaders.  It has taught people about God's heart of love for his creation.  But it has also been used to subjugate women, defend slavery, and curse homosexuals.  It has lifted the eyes of the faithful above the daily grind to gaze upon eternity.  But it has also been used to justify war on a vast scale.  It has taught many people the power of living sacrificial lives.  But is has also helped others to justify living in vast wealth, like Solomon.

The core problem, I think, is that people simply fail to work out for themselves what the Bible actually is.  Perhaps the most troublesome phrase, attached to the Bible, is the phrase 'the Word of God'. When many people hear it - and perhaps you are one of them? - they assume it means that the whole Bible contains the very words of God.  They imagine that God dictated the words of the Bible directly to its scribes, and that every word, and every phrase, contains clues about God, or about what God plans for the human race.

People who hold this view believe the Bible to be 'inerrant' (which of course means, 'can't be wrong').  They tend to qualify that statement by saying that the Bible is inerrant in its original manuscripts.  So they are prepared to have some flexibility about how the text may have been incorrectly translated, or transcribed over the years.  But essentially, such people believe that the Bible is an all sufficient guide to every circumstance of human life.  If the Bible says it, then it must be true, they believe.

Unfortunately, this has a lot of important consequences.  Have you heard, for example, about Pastor Jamie Coots, of Kentucky, USA.  He hit the news a couple of weeks ago when he was bitten by a rattlesnake, and died.  He was holding the snake at the time because according to his reading of the Bible, God promised that true believers would be able to handle such snakes, but never die.  Sadly, Pastor Coots was wrong.  His family have lost their father, and his church have lost their pastor, because he believed in Biblical inerrancy.

That was perhaps an easy example to use.  But there are still more important questions.  What do you do, for example, when the human race seems to have moved beyond the Bible's interpretation of how human beings should live together?  We've seen this in the recent debates over Women Bishops.  You see, taken at face value, the Bible clearly teaches that men and women have different roles in society.  And, if we read the text as being inerrant, and the actual Words of God for all time, then there is no way that anyone could agree that Women could be Bishops.

But, human society has moved on - way beyond a text which at its newest is still 2,000 years old.  We understand so much more than our ancestors did about the way human beings are made, in the image of God.  We believe that it is our human qualities which define what roles we may be called to play...not our gender. If God has given us leadership skills, then surely we are called to lead?  But someone who reads the Bible as inerrant really struggles with such an idea.

We then, I believe, need to return to an earlier understanding that the Church about the Scriptures.  In the earliest days of the church, there were lots more Scriptures around.  There was a Gospel according to Thomas, and another of Peter.  Even Mary Magdalene was said to have written a Gospel.  There were, in fact, so many different writings about Jesus, and quite a few older texts from the time of the Old Testament, that the Bishops of the Church had to get together in the 4th Century to have a jolly good argument about it all.  Over a period of some years, and after long meetings in Nicea, and Carthage, they finally arrived at a list of which books should be 'in', and which books should be 'out'.  The ones that were 'in' are (broadly speaking) the books that we call the Bible today.

Well, I don't know about you, but I know a few Bishops!  I try to imagine how I would feel if one of them told me that they had just returned from a series of conferences.  I imagine them telling me that all the books that had ever been written about God had been put in a room, and then after years of discussion they had been separated into two piles...books that were in, and books that were out.  I don't know about you - but the first thing I'd want to do is find out what was in the books that were ruled 'out'!

Let's get a few things absolutely straight...and absolutely in line with the historic teaching of the church.

• The Bible was NOT dropped from heaven.
• The Bible was NOT delivered by an Angel, first class from the Heavenly post office.
• The Bible was NOT dug up in a farmer's field as golden plates which could only be read with magic spectacles (like the Book of Mormon)
• The Bible was NOT suddenly discovered in a middle Eastern cave intact and whole
• The Bible was NOT dictated to a single prophet (the way the Qur'an was, apparently, dictated to Mohammed, Peace be upon him)
• The Bible was NOT written by Jesus...in fact the only words he is recorded as writing are some words in the sand which quickly blew away.

So, if that is not what the Bible is...then what is it?

• The Bible is a collection of writings spanning approximately 1000 years, but drawing on even older stories (like the Creation and the Flood) which were handed down by mouth
• The Bible contains a mixture of different kinds of writing - there is poetry (like the Psalms), there is history, there is prophecy and warning, and there are law books.  It has multiple authors across thousands of years. And even the writing of history was different, in those days.  History books of the ancient world were far less concerned about what actually happened, as whether what happened contained a moral or a truth to be transmitted.  It doesn't matter whether Adam and Eve existed or not.  What matters is what their story tells us about ourselves and our relationship to God.
• The Bible is a record of first one tribe, the Jews, and then a wider tribe, the Christians, who caught glimpses of what God was like, and attempted to write down their thoughts.
• The Bible contains some words which we can legitimately think of as Words of God, especially many of those attributed to Jesus.  But is also contains much that is speculative or aspirational.  

Here's the really important fact: we need to be very careful about glibly assigning the phrase 'Word of God' to the Bible.  It contains some words of God, without doubt.  But it is not, in itself, even a full record of the Word of God.  Its primary purpose, is rather to point us to He who was, and is, the true Word of God, Yeshua Christos - Jesus Christ.  But the Bible only points us to Jesus.  It sends us in the right general direction.  But its details should be treated with caution.  Jesus himself never authorised an autobiography.  Much of what is written about him, even by the Gospel writers, is second or third hand.

So, how can we know the mind of God?  If the Bible is not the 'maker's instructions' (as some Christians have claimed) how are we to know how we should act?  How are we to know whether we are even saved?
For that final conundrum, I believe, God sends us help.  He doesn't send a text book, but instead he sends his Spirit.  Jesus is, I believe, the very revelation of God to the world, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reminded the Gospel writers, and continues to remind us, of what Jesus taught.  To quote Dr April LoveFordham, "The Bible is unique, holy, and rich with God's wisdom, but it was never intended to be a substitute for the Holy Spirit's wisdom guiding our lives".

It is, I believe, the Holy Spirit who has guided the Anglican Church (and many others) to recognise and celebrate the ministry of women, despite what the Bible says.  We have the Holy Spirit to thank for the ministry of people like Kim, our Curate, and Joanne, our Archdeacon  It is the Holy Spirit who persuaded the Church to turn its back on slavery and racism, and will, I believe lead the church eventually to turn its back on discrimination of all kinds, including towards those of different sexualities.  It is the Holy Spirit who leads us on.  Not the dead letter of a millenniums-old collection of spiritual writings - but a living, breathing God who by the Holy Spirit keeps on pushing the Church to become more and more authentic.

Amen
_________________________________________________________________________________
Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?

Producers not Consumers

PRODUCERS, NOT CONSUMERS

Preached on the Feast of the Transfiguration 2014:  Matthew 17:1-9

Today, I want to continue to unpack what it might mean for us to be a truly Authentic Church.  We do so in the context of the Feast of the Transfiguration, when we remember how Jesus met with Elijah and Moses on a mountaintop, where his appearance was transformed so that he shone in dazzling light, and where God's voice was heard telling Jesus' followers to 'listen to him'.

This crucial moment in Jesus life comes at a pivotal point in his ministry.  For a moment, on the mountain-top, he is seen for who he is at his core.  He is the Son of God, the incarnate Word through whom all things were made.  He is served by even Moses and Elijah, two of the greatest men that had ever lived.  By even meeting them, who were dead, he stands as a bridge between this world and the next.  It's a powerful moment, pregnant with meaning. But what is even more astonishing, is what comes next...

...According to the account in Mark's Gospel, this moment is a turning point.  Having been transfigured, glorified, recognised as the Son of God, Jesus comes down the mountain, and then sets his face towards Jerusalem.  He walks, with purposeful steps, towards his death and humiliation at the cross.

This is, I believe, the core of the story.  Jesus comes not to reign in power and majesty, even though power and majesty are at the core of who he is.  Jesus comes not to dominate humanity, but to offer his very being, and his very life, in the service of humanity.  Jesus shows us that God's way is the way of giving and self-sacrifice.  The fulfillment of his earthly ministry will not be to climb onto a throne...but to be nailed to a cross.

This is a theme we will revisit again throughout Lent, which begins this week on Ash Wednesday.  And its a message that the world still doesn't get.  When we look around the world, at all the conflicts that are presently taking place, it is not difficult to see humanity's fundamental failure to understand the servant heart of God.  All the conflicts we observe are ultimately about Power.  Will the Russians control Ukraine, or will the Western Powers?  Will President Assad hold on to power in Syria, or will the rebels?  Over and over again, in Irag, in Afghanistan, in Turkey, in Eqypt, and in a thousand other places of smaller conflict, the issue is about power...power to control others.  Power to impose one group's will on another.

It reminds me of how children behave in a playground.  Gangs form up around a playground leader.  The Gang leader provides identity to the gang, and promises protection against other gangs.  There is no great intellectual idea underpinning these gangs...it's just pure self-preservation, and a childish desire to dominate others, and to own the playground.  It's the Capulets versus the Montagues.  It's the Jets versus the Sharks.  It's the Sunnis versus the Shiahs.  It's the so-called Christians versus the so-called Muslims.

It is not without reason that the Bible refers to human beings as God's children - because that is how we behave.  We fail, again and again, to understand that our Father's way is the way of sacrifice and service.  We completely miss the mark (which incidentally, is an old meaning for the word 'sin').

And this is true of other aspects of our lives too.  Even on an individual level, we act like children in a playground.  We revel, for example, in the fact that human beings no longer think of themselves as servants to one other, but rather as consumers of each other's goods and services.  We live in an age of consumer rights, and consumer watchdogs.  The mantra of any company that wants to make a profit has to be "The Consumer is King".

But along the way, we have constructed a society which would quickly crumble into anarchy and war - in just a matter of days - if just a few of our consumer products became unavailable. Look at how even the threat of a fuel strike has us queuing at the petrol pumps.  If we heard today that Supermarket lorry-drivers were going on strike, how many of us would dash to Sainsbury's this afternoon to fill up our cars?  We no longer grow our own food, or make our own clothes...we consume the food, clothing and energy that others provide for us.  Like children...children who are utterly dependent on their parents.  We have become utterly dependent on those who provide the services we need.

Sadly, I fear, this tendency towards consumerism has crept into the Church too.  It is sometimes celebrated in the press that Cathedrals are getting larger congregations than at any time in their history. Great news, on the surface.  But why is this?  Perhaps, for some, it is a genuine love of high quality music and worship.  Perhaps it is a desire to connect with God through soaring music and soaring columns and stained glass windows.  But aren't these, essentially, consumerist desires?  Cathedrals have an uncomfortable fact to face: that many of the people they see, packing into their pews, are only there because they want to have their religion 'done to them'.  They want their priests to do all the work of praying and thinking; they want the choir to do all the hard work of singing.  They want Christianity that makes them feel a bit spiritual, and touched by God, without having to do more than turn-up to be part of it.  Many of them (though by all means not all) want nothing to do with the hard-work of feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, comforting the lonely and the bereaved.  They are happy to throw a few quid into the collection plate, and pay for others to fulfill their Christian duties for them.

This, however, is fundamentally at odds with the kinds of Christian communities that Jesus envisaged.  Jesus wanted his followers to be parts of a body of believers, who acted as salt and light to their neighbours.  He wanted churches to be places where people truly learned the value - to themselves and to others - of putting service and sacrifice first.  He wanted churches that were full of people who produced valuable products for the world - products of love, charity, forgiveness, sharing and community.  He didn't want consumers, whose only contribution was to turn up, listen to the choir, and throw a few coins in the collection in the hope that the building will still be open for the next time they need a bit of spirituality.  He wanted producers who gave and lived sacrificially - who truly worked out what it meant for them to love God, and to love their neighbour as themselves.

A truly authentic church, then, will be the kind of church which is growing up, beyond the playground.  It will be the kind of church which is full of people whose hearts are bent on giving, not receiving.  It will be full of producers, not consumers.

I wonder...which kind of church do you think we are?  Do we, 'listen to Him' - as God told Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration?  Are we the kind of people who produce more than we consume?  Are we those who are salt and light to our neighbours, offering sacrificial lives, poured out in service?

Or are we, sometimes, those who turn up for church because we like the music, and we want our weekly injection of religion?

Each of us must answer that question for himself...but perhaps some of the questions we might ask are along these lines:

When did I last give a day of my time to sit with a lonely person and offer them love?
When did I last bring food for the foodbank to church?
When did I last offer an hour to make tea and coffee in the Cafe, or after church?
When did I last give up a day to paint a wall, or polish a floor in this building that tries to be a beacon of the Kingdom in North End?
When did I last give an amount of money to the church which really felt like a sacrifice?
When did I last sacrifice some TV time to read the Scriptures or pray for the world?

If the answer to such questions is something along the lines of 'well, quite recently actually' - then I suggest all is well.

If the answer is 'I can't remember' then perhaps some deeper questions need to be posed.  Because these are the sorts of things that authentic Christians do.  These are the signs of an authentic church.

Amen
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Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?

Understanding Sin as the Absence of Love

Sermon Preached on Sunday 22 Feb 2014:  Understanding Sin as the Absence of Love

About 15 years ago, in my early thirties, I had a mad moment.  It was a time when if was fashionable to have very very short hair.  So, in a fit of stupidity, I shaved off all my hair, just to see what it looked like. I'll let you imagine the reactions of my wife and daughter.  But needless to say, they were horrified.  So was I!  Some heads are just not meant to be shaved!  So I immediately found an old baseball cap and plonked it on my head - determined that it would not be removed until my luscious locks had returned!

The following Sunday, I made my way to church, where I was the Worship Leader.  I had steeled myself for the various comments that were bound to come my way from the congregation.  What I wasn't ready for, however, was the reaction of my Vicar.  He saw me, standing at the front of the church in my baseball cap, and he looked horrified!  He marched over to me, and snatched the hat off my head, saying 'You can't wear that in here!'.  I was really puzzled.  I thought the days of having to remove your hat in church had long gone.  I forget my Vicar's exact explanation, but the gist of it (as I recall) was that according to the Bible, men should have their heads uncovered when praying, because men were made in the image and glory of God.  That's what Paul taught, in his first letter to the Corinthians.  (See 1 Cor 11:4 ff).  Women, on the other hand, were considered subservient to men, because Eve came from Adam.  They were supposed to wear a head-covering in church, to show that subservience.

So, to my Vicar, from his particular theological standpoint, the wearing of a hat in church - by a man - was clearly sinful.  To wear any kind of head covering was, for him, a violation of the clear teaching of Scripture.  But, I must confess, I struggled for a long time over this.  In particular, I wanted to know what sort of God would dictate such a strict rule.  And what would be the consequences if I were to disobey this rule?  In other words, what did this rule say about the character of God.  Was God really that bothered about what I was wearing?  Was he really looking at me with a deep frown, and shouting 'sinner' at me?  Would a lightening bolt strike me down?

That question has plagued me during the many of the debates that the church has been having over recent years.  There are some who seem to believe that if the church ordains women, then it is acting contrary to God's will, and is therefore in a state of sin.  Some have similar concerns about whether gay people can legitimately marry, or indeed whether a gay person can be a priest or should be allowed to marry.  Underlying all these debates is the same question as the one I asked about the hat...Just what is the picture of God that people are carrying around in their heads?  Is God, as they seem to think, some kind of heavenly rule-maker.  Does he set rules that make no sense to the modern mind...but which have to be slavishly followed simply because they worked for the society of 2000 years ago?

These kinds of questions arise, I think, because we are fundamentally confused about what sin is, or what it isn't.  Some people think that just because something was banned in a collection of Scriptures we call the Bible, then that defines it as sin.  But others, like me, are not so sure.  For example, St Paul wrote that he never permits a woman to speak in church...from which we could draw the conclusion that our dear Kim is acting sinfully every time she preaches or leads prayers!

There are all sorts of complicated theological arguments that I am tempted to lay before you now.  I could speak about the codification of the Canon of Scripture, and the process by which some Scriptures were included in the Bible, and others weren't.  I could lecture you on Christian ethics from Iraneus to Kirkegaard and beyond.  But, I fear you would all be asleep, very quickly.  Instead, let me ask this question:  how can I know whether something I do is sinful or not?

Last week, Fr James spoke to us about God's Grace.  He reminded us of a loving God who, through Jesus, changed river-water into the equivalent of 5000 bottles of wine.  He reminded us of the Father who ran out to meet his prodigal son, even though a Jewish man would never run.  James used a whole pile of wonderful Scripture-stories to show us that God's relationship with human beings is fundamentally, completely, utterly underpinned by Love.  To quote James, "God doesn’t love us because of anything we could do to please him. He doesn’t love us because we’re good at serving others, or we’re particularly holy, or we go to church a lot. God just loves us - and he loves us from before we were born."

In his first letter, the Apostle John wrote words that are used at the beginning of wedding services today - but which we don't hear often enough in other worship.  John said this:  "God is Love, and those who live in Love live in God, and God lives in them".  (1 John 4:16)

In Lent, as we did in Advent, we will hear again those words of Jesus which, he said, summarised all the Laws of God:  "Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbour as yourself" (cf Luke 10:27).

So, having thought about all these quotations, it shouldn't surprise you to learn that I consider Love to be the yardstick by which we can measure and decide on what is sinful, and what is not.  In other words, if any action I take, or any thought that I have, is motivated by something other than love...then it is probably sinful.
Let's try a few examples, to see if this theory works!

Let's imagine that I take my car to the garage, and the mechanic tells me he can knock off 20% of my bill if I pay in cash.  I know that this is because if I pay cash, he won't have to pay tax.  Is it sinful for me to take him up on his offer?  Let's leave aside questions about rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.  How does the Law of Love help me to solve this conundrum?  Well, the principle at stake here is whether I am 'loving my neighbour as I love myself'.  If I deprive the Government of tax, then I deprive my neighbour of the things that tax pays for - like healthcare and schools.  If I keep that money for myself, then I am clearly not loving my neighbour as much as I love myself.  So, yes, paying cash for goods or services in order to evade tax is clearly sinful.

Let's try another...

Is it sinful to pinch a pencil from the stationary cupboard at work?  After-all, everyone does it.  But the Law of Love teaches us that all stealing is a failure to love our neighbour as much as we love ourselves.  If every teacher in every school were to pinch even one pencil each per year, the cost of pencils across the country would rise into thousands of pounds - possibly hundreds of thousands.  That money could be spent on employing more teachers, or improving education for everyone.  So, if I steal even one pencil, I am putting my own interest above the interest of others, above the interest of the wider society.  So, yes, it is sinful.

Let's try another...

Is it sinful for a woman to be a Bishop?  Now that's a trickier one!  To solve it, I think we need to think about love for neighbour, AND love for God.  If a woman - or indeed a man - is motivated to become a Bishop by love - increasing love, sharing love - then how could it be sinful?  And what of God's love?  Haven't we seen that God's whole being is driven by Love and made of Love?  How could such a God speak words of condemnation, seeing the love being offered by anyone who seeks the role of a Bishop?

This then is my thesis:  we need to look very carefully at rules which human beings create for themselves.  We need to judge every human action, and every human thought by the yardstick of Love, which Jesus himself set.

Is it sinful to break a speed limit?  Yes, if by doing so I put my neighbour at risk, or I risk prematurely depriving my family of their father.

Is it sinful to wear a hat in church?  Only if you believe that God likes making up rules to torment the bald-headed!

So here's the rub:  An authentic church is, I believe, a church which asks the Love question, all the time. The things we do together...our patterns of worship, our sharing of community, our treatment of visitors, our giving of time and resources...are these motivated by Love?  If so, then, the whole notion of sin becomes something we can lay aside, as we move together into God, into love, motivated by Love, exploring Love,  sharing Love.  That's the kind of truly authentic church that I believe we are growing to be.

Amen.
_________________________________________________________________________________

Sermons in this series:

1) Introduction

1a) Reflecting Jesus' priority for the poor and the sick.

2) Having a wide and generous understanding of God's grace - Jesus poured out grace and forgiveness to everyone he met.  Are we the same?

3) Understanding Sin as the absence of Love - How should we understand Sin?  Breaking Rules?  Who decides what is Sin anyway?

4) Encouraging Christ-ians to be producers, not consumers - We live in a consumer society. Is there a danger that some of us ‘consume’ Christianity?

5) Having an intelligent understanding of Scripture - How do we approach the Bible?  A hand-written text from God?

6) Blending the scientific with the mystical - Was the world created in six days?  How did Noah get all those animals onto the Ark?!

7) Being tolerant and open to all - How do we connect with other human beings?

8) Embracing tradition while being open to the contemporary - How can we honour the old and embrace the new?

9) Understanding that forgiveness is How the World is Set Right - Is forgiveness the answer to the World’s problems?

10) Being a Eucharistic Community - How does taking Jesus into ourselves help us?