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?