Sermon for Sunday 15th April - Easter 2 2012

Sermon for Easter 2 Sunday 15th April 2012

This Extraordinary Life

“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul,
and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions,
but everything they owned was held in common. And with Great power the Apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus’

The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead defies all categories - it makes no sense in our world - it is totally Other. And the evidence for it is not to be found in anyway like the evidence for anything else in all of Creation. Despite the plethora of books arguing ‘from the evidence’ either for or against and both with Compelling certainty - it cannot be Proven. But that is Not to say that there is no evidence. Rather there is evidence which fits the Extraordinary nature of that to which it attests. As the Resurrection of Jesus is an event Like Nothing ever encountered, it produces communities of people who live in a way that defies any explanation, Except that Christ is Risen and his Life is flowing out into the world.

The idea of a group of people living together in such freedom as the Acts church, not grasping onto things but freely sharing all they had with one another is beyond our categories our understanding of how the world is supposed to work. We hear it and Have to dismiss it. What we as Christians have come to call stewardship is nothing of the kind in the light of God’s Light and life. The Acts church are true stewards of their possessions - they do not understand them as their own - they only exist for the benefit of others. No economic model will account for  this - no theory of life together - only the resurrection of Christ - the one who does not grasp but lays down His life.
The one who does not hold on but lets go

And if we truly believe in the Resurrection then we too should be set free to live likewise, in such a way that people have no choice but to consider the Extraordinary Truth which they see enacted. It is This Visible lif of the church which lends the preaching of the Apostles its ‘Great Power’

So we come to the second Sunday in Easter - as I said last week -it takes time for this Easter message to sink in - it seems just too vast for us to grasp and comprehend and in a sense that is Important. For it is not to be grasped - it is to be received! And lived out. Even He in his great humility does not grasp at equality with God - If we try to grasp, if we wait until we grasp this Resurrection of Jesus - we will Never Live in its light. Mary Magdalene in the garden wanted to grasp - to take hold of him, but He wouldn’t allow her. ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” there would come a time shortly when she would be Given this life as a gift but for now she had to learn not to grasp.
    I remember as a teenager talking long into the early hours with a friend about God and at some point came up with an utterly cast iron ‘Proof’ of his existence. We were utterly thrilled - we’d Got it! We’d Grasped it. The following morning we arose excitedly to tell all we could meet - but when asked, ‘What is your proof?’ - we couldn’t remember :) It had slipped through our fingers
    The Life of God is not a set of rational propositions which we can master, He is Light and Love and Life. Like the daily bread for which we pray - it is His Life which is Given and we are to receive and live out of it, not grasp it. The Israelites in the Wilderness were taught this lesson early on in the Manna - they were told ‘collect only that which you need for the day’ - which is freely provided, but they tried to grasp more and it turned to maggots in their hands. Not grasping.
    Strangely enough it is Thomas of all people shows us the way of faith - the so called doubter - yet the only one who believed far better the way of Christ than his companions - ‘Let us also go that we may die with him’. Thomas Knew that to follow Christ meant Death - unlike those who hoped it wouldn’t and like Peter were prepared to gamble on it not being the case and so promise never to leave him. Not Thomas. But Thomas Knowing where it must go. And thus Knowing Jesus was going to his death he is all the more to be surprised by Joy. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ For Thomas it was not enough that one should come back from the dead - no. After all in the days following his resurrection there had been tales of tombs opening and the dead walking around - no for Thomas he had to Know that it was Jesus - I need to Know it is the Crucified one - I must see - I must touch and then Jesus appears to him - and it is Enough. He knows he doesn’t have to grasp him.

And that perhaps is why faith at the end of the day is expressed in obedience to him and not in a set of beliefs - for we cannot grasp what this resurrection life means except through the obedience of faith we live into it. In a sense there is no other way to discover the truth of the Christian faith than to live it. As I said all through Lent - the more we live into it - the more we discover it is true, the More we want to enter deeper and deeper in.
    We have to live the Resurrection life - the Life that Jesus sets free and gives to us - we have to live His Life. And unless we understand that we don’t begin to get off first base in this Christian Life - for the Resurrection teaches us that the Christian life is the life of the Risen Lord. The Christian Life Is the Life of the Risen Lord - there is No other Life.

And Christ begins to share that life with his disciples in these weeks following the Resurrection. Do not cling onto Me, Mary. I have given my Life for you and so now you may receive it ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

Some years ago - when I was just starting out in my first parishes - I led a course on the Lord’s prayer. I began one session by paralleling what we might call the old words - with its ‘thee’s and temptations and trespasses, with a more modern form, with its ‘you’s and trials and sins. One member of the group, a good man and very devout, said he could not agree with the new form - he said ‘As human’s we can forgive trespasses, but only God can forgive sins’. We then began a very interesting discussion as to what if anything was the difference. But it struck me that this in a sense was precisely how the Scribes criticised Jesus when he healed the paralysed man “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Who Can forgive sins but God alone??     Actually it is a Very good question if we properly understand the nature of Sin, that it is a breaking of the bonds of the Love of God that sustain the world - Sin is Always against God - we are in a sense Never sinned against - Sin is Always a rejection of the Love of God, if often we find ourselves on the receiving end of it, ultimately it s God’s Love that is Rejected. As David said after his murder of Uriah and adultery with Bathsheba - Against You, You only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight’ When we are sinned against we always lose sight of God - We are afronted, but in the end all sin is only ever against God, against Life and Love. Who CAN forgive sins but God alone?? Only God truly Can forgive - which brings us to the next step in this extraordinary Resurrection account. We are already left breathless by the fact of the Resurrection  - our hearts and minds racing and struggling to catch up with the reality of the Crucified AND Risen Lord and then ‘Jesus came and stood amongst his disciples and breathed on them and said ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

He breathed on them the Very life of God - and what work did he give them to do?? It is odd how we do not think this so very odd - ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and . . .Love people?’, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and . . . heal people?’  But no. ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and - forgive’ Everything else is secondary - the first need is forgiveness. The first work of the cross is Forgiveness - Restoration. Because Only when one is Forgiven and knows it can we be Restored and so set free to Love and Heal. God Creates his New Heaven and New Earth by forgiving Sins - by reweaving the broken tapestry of Creation, as it were remaking all the delicate connections through which Love and life can flow.

As anyone who has ever been forgiven much will tell you, it makes All the difference in the world. As Jesus said of the woman ‘She who has been forgiven much loves much’ Forgiveness precedes Love. Without Forgiveness Love cannot flow. We need First to forgive and we say - Ah this is so hard, but the point is this - it s not Our life - it is His life in Us - He forgives Through us. Receive the HOly Spirit - He gives us his life as a gift and it is like the manna to be freely used and spent on the undeserving, in unmerited acts of forgiveness like the prodigal Father does to the errant son. Does he ask forgiveness? Does he come crawling back in sorrowful repentance? No!! - He comes to the Father, that is all - he is forgiven. This is what God does. So he enters into the joy of his father.

You see we gasp at the extraordinary nature of the Resurrection - mocking our careful sense of decency and order and ‘how the world works’, as if we Knew. He is risen from the dead??
But wonder of wonders - this Resurrection Life is then poured out on all who will be open to receive - on all who will become themselves forgivers, on all who would be children of their heavenly father. Who like their heavenly father do not hold on even to their own son. Even God does not seek to possess - He is the Great Giver. And so the early church Lived - not grasping or hoarding - just letting it flow through their fingers, out into the world.

The Christian Life is Pure Gift. We can never grasp it - we can only receive it and Live it.

Amen

Lent Meditation - Denial of the body

'For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgement against themselves.'

Talk of denial of the body in Lent, may well evoke images of fasting, of 'giving up' bodily pleasures for a time of prayer. (The Saints of the church always remind us that fasting without prayer is the devil's own work, so to speak)  But for now that is what is not what I wish to explore - there is yet time as Lent still has a few days to run.

Nor do I wish to think too deeply about our disembodied existence in modern culture. If it is true that the average Westerner spends at least ten hours a day sat, as I am now, in front of a screen, then our bodies are little less than a set of levers with which we interact Virtually, and then only if we are working or 'interacting' online. If we are sat in front of a movie or the TV then our bodies are pretty much out of it. Indeed our flicking of the remote from station to station is only a sign that our minds and the chemical reward signals that do so much of the driving of our minds are in control. Our bodies are all but useless.

And yet we Are in a very real sense, our bodies. As we are we Act. Whatever we do is somehow bodily, and we can only engage others through the medium of our bodies, our bodies Express us. We need to be physically present to be Alive. It is an irreducible fact.

             In the beginning the man and the woman were naked and unashamed. they were Present. Knowing and Fully Known. So When Christ comes into the world he comes Embodied, for the Body is the vehicle of Knowing and being Known. How would we for a moment recognise each other apart from our bodies?

This leads me on, perhaps surprisingly to The Church. For many of us in the Western Church, the Church itself has been largely understood, for better or worse as an aid to faith - but that encounter with God in Christ was somehow separate. We see the church as one thing and Christ as another. And of course in one sense this is true, but only I suggest in the sense that the Son is not the Father, nor the Father the Son. In a sense we may I think speak of the relationship betwixt Christ and His Church as 'two in one and one in two' (to misquote an old hymn). Too much?? Certainly to the modern ear, Yes. But to our forebears in faith??

St Paul in his teaching on marriage puts alongside the one flesh union of marriage, the union twixt Christ and the Church, the bride of Christ - the two become One. And of course he is explicit in this regard in his teaching in 1 Corinthians - You Are the Body of Christ. He paints this at the individual level by saying, 'it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.' This presence of God in and through the believers is most starkly put in the story of Anaias and Sapphira - (Acts 5:1-11), where Peter rebukes their deceit to the church as deceit to God

And finally we have the words of the Lord - 'when two or three are gathered in my name, I am Present in the midst of them'

The truth is that we encounter Christ in and through our fellow believers - as Jacob said of Esau 'truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God' - this is no less than that which our true apprehension should be of our fellow Christians. They are God's chosen vehicle to mediate the Love of Christ. We see this plainly in the idea of laying on of hands, such a vital part of Christian praxis. The body of the believer is literally Vital in prayer, in healing ministry, in blessing, in ordination, in baptism and confirmation, in the Eucharist. 

The verse at the head of this article, taken from St Paul's teaching on the Eucharist. Tuned as we are to doctrines of the Presence in the Sacrament, it is all too easy to miss that what Paul has in mind here is as much the body of the church. Put another way, if you do not recognise Christ in each other, then you do not recognise him in bread and wine.

Where accidents of church history and poor teaching have led so many of us to deny this truth, 

it is still the truth and our fellow believers are to us as Christ, if we will believe.

And therein lies so much blessing.

In my previous blog I spoke about following Christ. How we do this is actually discovered in many many ways though mutual submission to one another in Christ. We learn obedience to Christ in obedience to one another. We serve Christ in serving one another. We bless Christ in blessing one another. We suffer with Christ in suffering for one another.

Oh how much our lives might be blessed if we Knew this Truth?

An old hymn which grows out of an understanding the Christ and his church are Not joined together in mystical union says this . . .

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.

Yet as many many many will testify, we take things to the Lord in prayer and yet we have no peace and we have much pain - for we do not discern the body.

As of old, it is pride that causes us to hide from one another. 

We imagine we are open to God, but we do not trust God in one another

Do we know His Presence in the body?

It is in the touch of another that is the touch of Christ - the One who calls us back to ourselves, our bodies and the more certain and sure presence of God

This is one denial we need to give up for Lent
And beyond . . .

Lenten disciplines - Almsgiving (3)

So we left Almsgiving thinking about the Prodigality of God - who freely lavishes Love and Goodness on this world he has created. Jesus Knows (or does he?) that only one of the ten lepers will return to give thanks - but does that mean he concentrates his healing on the one who responds - indeed we know Very little, about whether Jesus' healing miracles were responded to in faith. We may perhaps presume that because in a few cases such a response is noted by the evangelists, that it was actually a rare occurrence. But then we may well ask ourselves How frequently do I give thanks? Indeed given All that He lavishes on us if we were to give thanks we would Never stop. For every moment, every breath, every view, every human encounter is Gift, and even the most devout of His followers pay little attention to most of it.

Instead of course our lives ought to be healthily focussed not on the gifts but on the giver.

But this matter of Alms can easily find us out.
As I noted yesterday our 'Giving' is all too often self observant, self judged and self referential - far far more Care Full than the 'secret' giving Jesus enjoins on us. And this Care Fullness is not only individual, but corporate.

In one of my former churches there was hanging upon the South Wall a large wooden plaque, listing many benefactors of the parish. Well of course their giving, even post mortem, was not done in secret, but was different to much of ours in that they gave Alms. They gave to the Poor. Bequests for the benefit of the poor of the parish. How much of our Giving nowadays is to the Church? It might be sobering to discover how high a percentage of Christian giving is effectively to ourselves, making sure We have a minister, or We have a building, or We have . . . well we get the point.

There is a lack of thought about the Almsgiving that Jesus enjoins on us that takes us away from our own pre-occupation with ourselves. For to give alms is to give to the poor

Is indeed part of the reason for the decline of the church is that our wealth, vast as it is, for it is our combined wealth, we keep in the family.

The manna was given daily - it wasn't meant to be hoarded, or indeed invested in bricks and mortar. When it was hoarded it went bad. Are we in the church actually hoarding that which was freely given to us? How many sermons exhort us in giving to Give More to the Church? How many exhort us, as Jesus does, to give it all to the poor?

Jesus always promised to build his church - to tend and care for it. Perhaps if we took him at his word, something quite amazing might happen amongst us  - or perhaps we have drunk to deeply of the myth of Scarcity . . . of which more anon.

In the Lenten disciplines we follow Jesus into the wilderness, to live in dependence on the abundance of God. In the matter of giving we are most certainly unmasked in many different ways.

The Empty Church (Part 1)

" Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching."

Hebrews Chapter 10, verses 19-25 

 By and large, the Book of Hebrews is not one of those books you go to in the bible when you're looking for comfort or gentle guidance in the life of discipleship. In this respect it is somewhat akin to the Apocalypse of St John, or the book of Daniel, though much more ignored than either of these. No-one has made a mint out of cartoon versions or a best selling series of books based on Hebrews. To hijack GK Chesterton, 'it has not been tried and found wanting, rather it has been found difficult and not tried". There is hardly an 'easy' verse in it. 

So it comes as a relief in the midst of the unremitting obscurity and apparent harshness of the text - (angels, mountains on fire, no sacrifice remaining for backsliders, and people getting sawn in half not being a staple of Sunday school talks or indeed sermons) - to come across verse 25 in the tenth chapter, 'not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some'. Well at least we get that . . . or do we?

Commentators on this passage note its force. My Greek critical commentary heads this verse 'STAY TOGETHER!' and remarks that failure to meet with our fellow Christians is 'associated with apostasy - though the author does not claim a direct causal link between the two'. To which we might heave a hearty sigh of relief as it seems meeting together is less and less understood as Essential to faith in this day and age. There is little sense abroad in the contemporary western church that we'd 'crawl across broken glass to get to church', or that in failing to make corporate worship our Highest Priority, we are cutting out throats - but we should be and we are.

Yesterday is / Today was 'Superbowl Sunday'. 

[My apologies for mixing tenses, but living in New Zealand has led to me developing a Douglas Adams sense of tenses, it is a little like the confusion caused by time travel. (See "The lighter side of languages" half way down this article if you wish to know more about this).]  

I wake this morning to have found this article on the atheist portal of Patheos. The essence of it is that atheist organisations have hired planes to fly above this culmination of the American Sporting year, trailing banners that proclaim, Nelson Munce like to the gathered Christian fans enjoying lunch in the parking lot,  'HA - HA - football is more important to you than God!'

Now at this point there will be many many readers of this post, who protest loudly that there are a hundred and one Good and Godly Reasons for being at the game rather than being in church. I have been around long enough and read enough material on Contemporary Mission to know them all . . . but I am finding that they are wearing thinner and thinner, and given they've only been around for 20 or so years, that means they're not terribly durable. 

Yes, if some Pastor had said to his congregation last week - Look folks I KNOW that it will feel like a living death to you to be dragged away from the worship of the living God in the presence of the Saints, I KNOW that the sacrament is the very lifeblood of the church - but JUST THIS ONCE can we deprive ourselves for the sake of the world, and go 'pester the hell out of those who think that a game of American football is more important that the worship of the Living God', and what is more we will schedule special services either side of this so that we might be revived after this DEPRIVATION. I might perhaps have allowed discussion of the possibility that their might be some mileage in pursuing this line of reasoning, but otherwise I don't think so.

The sense that Very Regular Church Worship is Essential to faith it seems is at best in rapid decline and the arguments against it are almost exclusively nothing more than rationalising our practise as normative.

There is a lot I wish to say about this, but in order not to turn this blog into a book, I'll tackle it as one would eat an elephant, a mouthful at a time . . .

How did we get here?

In the beginning, the presence of Christ was understood solely as the gathered community - 'where two or three are gathered, there am I in the midst'. Most interestingly this verse in Matthew's gospel concerns church discipline and the Risen Christ ( as we must always undertand him when we hear the gospel) says to his church - your authority is mine. It is mind numbingly challenging especially as we have so learnt to dissociate Church with the presence of Christ.

Of course this association between the gathered people of God and the Presence of God goes back to the very beginning in the garden and is then consecutively re-enacted in tabernacle and temple and only finally does the Glory depart as the people refuse to recognise God 'in their midst'. Jesus in saying what he does only restores the link between the gathered people of god and the presence of God.

The Kingdom is among you was the presence of Christ - living and active in his church. Thus Simon Peter and John do what Christ does in healing the lame man. Silver and Gold have I none . . . (yesterday I preached on this). . . the church is present so Christ is present to heal and to save . . .

Then something happened - it may be 'Christendom', but perhaps that is putting it too simply and this isn't the place for exploring what happened - but the result was that The Church became The Thing. Becoming powerful in the worlds wealth. The Glory - the Shekinah - that marked the Presence was superceded by that which is glorious in the eyes of humankind - the Church, empowered by the world outdid the world in Scholarship, in Learning, in building programmes - and in our eyes it looked Very Good (all that we had created).  Funnily enough it was one of the great theologians of the church, Thomas Aquinas who allegedly observed that the Shekinah had departed, that Church and Christ were no longer the same - that the earthly kingdom the Church had built did not correspond to the heavenly one Christ announced - that Earth and Heaven were now separate domains. For as the Pope said 'We can no longer say, Silver and Gold have we none' - he is said to have replied 'sadly neither can we say, In the name of Jesus of Nazareth rise up and walk'. Apocryphal it may be, but it hits the mark.

We had built a wonderful edifice - an Empty Church.

And thus having dissociated Church and Christ in practise, and the tide of the church's power ebbing fast, it was all too easy to begin to suggest that we didn't Need Church, we just needed Jesus (ably abetted by our rapidly growing materialist individualism). By and large, within the older Protestant churches almost exclusively, we have abandoned Church as of the Essence. Yes there are some on the fringes who recognise that the call is to community, that in the community of faith Christ is present and that that is all that is necessary, but they are a small minority. For most of us, we like to think we're Christian and we think we can be so with lip service to worshiping together.

We started with Paul being so bold as to assert that the Church was the Body of Christ, and Jesus asserting that His discipline was directly administered through the Church - to a place where for our own glory we dissociated Christ and his Church and majored on Church - to  a place now where all we need is Jesus and if there is something more interesting or more pressing, church can be dropped, because it isn't the highest Priority.  But I suggest, that in speaking thus we have so lost sight of what the church is, that in effect we are saying Christ and His Life isn't our highest Priority.

In the beginning people faced martyrdom rather than not worshiping Christ in and amongst his people - now we would think it a sort of martyrdom not to be able to go to the football

"Failure to meet with our fellow Christians is 'associated with apostasy - though the author does not claim a direct causal link between the two' "- for most of us in the West, I suggest we think that there is NO link between the two and even if it might be true for some, it certainly isn't for me and my personal Jesus. Apostate because I don't go to church??? HERESY!!! 

Or it may be that the atheists have got us Bang to Rights  . . .

Sermon for Candlemas

 

Candlemas 2012

Malachi 3.1-5

Ps 24.1-10

Heb 2.14-18

Luke 2.22-40

Worship at the heart

One of the aspects of living in New Zealand I’m taking a bit of time to get used to is the distance from everywhere. Not particularly the distance from everywhere Else, but from everywhere in NZ. Although it is a small country relatively speaking it is well spread out, certainly in comparison with England.

One of the things I am adjusting to is not being able to pop on a train and nip to a conference, and be back in a day. Over the years I would go somewhere 3 or four times a year, making the most of my talent for decoding the Labyrinthine workings of the British Railways ticketing system to get myself cheap tickets to travel around the country and often be home in time for tea.

Now on the day I have in mind I went to a conference for in London. There were three speakers – speaking from different theological perspectives. And One got right up my nose. He was the Vicar of a Very large church in Oxford and declaimed about doctrinal purity and how his HUGE church which was getting bigger and bigger (he was very happy to say how huge it was) had decided that it wasn’t going to play its part in Diocesan affairs because it didn’t like its bishop (with whom it disagreed) and so would give its money where it thought fit, it would call the shots.

            Well I have to say I almost lost it with him over coffee – I am a mild mannered man J and Rarely get angry but having struggled for a good number of years in two small hugely under resourced parishes trying to preach the good news and bring some life, his pontificating about how his large and extremely wealthy parish wasn’t going to support the likes of mine, poor and struggling because they knew better . . . excuse me whilst I recover my emotional stability! I told him in no uncertain terms that if he was really so keen on Mission as he said – he should tell his Huge and Well heeled congreagation they should get off their elegantly attired behinds (or some such words) and leave his church and go support the mission where it was struggling. I don’t want your money – I want people to come and help!!! Labourers for the harvest field.

I was Very Cross!! J

Anyway all that is by way of a carefully crafted preamble. Most if not all preachers complain from time to time, ‘Oh if only folk would respond to my preaching!’ but secretly I think they actually are hoping no-one will, for heavens, if folk Really heard and Really Got the Message well . . .

I’d like this morning to spend a little time saying a few words about our friends in Brockville Community Church.

Just Friday I went on behalf of Bishop Kelvin to consider with our Presbyterian and Methodist friends the future of this church in our parish. Put very briefly – they are at once facing Great Joy and Great Peril. About three years ago the Presbyterian church paid for a minister there, Andrew Scott – he has done a great work and the church has a Vibrant mission to its community which as you know better than me is by NZ standards impoverished – they have a Huge monthly community meal for the parish and two vibrant youth groups – BUT the church itself is small in number and struggling financially and the Presbyterian church may no longer be able to pay for Andrew’s ministry which for better or worse is key.

Well I was wondering – as you know Vestry has already decisded to give a tithe of the fair money and we have launched our Coffee and pastry appeal – Donate $5 a week and get rid of the excess Christmas flab J - and I had several ‘Wonderings’ as my mind Wandered – but then my mind wandered back to that Conference . . . to my brother in Christ who so successfully got up my nose and his large and successful church and my call for him to send labourers . . . and Christ’s call last week to leave our nets and follow him . . .

            Not long before Christmas we hosted Steve Maina and he spoke of many mission opportunities and how it might be possible to get agroup together and go out on mission, somehere like Samoa, or even as far afield as North Africa – and it would be Life enhancing – I think as a church we would benefit as folk inevitably come back form such trips fired up for mission – but as I shared this with Vestry  - the point was made that perhaps we ought to look more closely to mission on our doorstep – which brings us to Brockville, which of course ies within our parish. BUT one thing Steve said did stick in this regard also – for he spoke of visiting a large church wehre very regularly folk were commissioned to leave that church and go work in the mission field - and I wondered if as a congregation we might send some of our people to go and worship and work in that parish . . . I wondered if Christ might be calling some of us to go there?? I thik it is good when we can give money for mission, but giving People . . . well I think that that challenges us – but perhaps this is the challenge from Christ regarding Brockville . . .Well as I said, secretly most vicars don’t want people to respond so I’ll move swiftly on J

This week we celebrate Candlemas or to give it its more prosaic name, the Feast of the Presentation – Never fear I shall tie it all up , eventually J - We have thought about the beginning of Christ’s ministry at his baptism, his calling of the disciples and now with his ministry begun we think about the Lord coming to His temple – to quote Malachi. In John’s Gospel Christ’s first public act is to cleanse the Temple – John puts it there because this is KEY to the ministry of Christ. Luke who like the other evangelists places the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of Holy Week, still inserts this incident, the Lord coming to his temple – the one waited for by faithful Israel – Simeon has Seen the Salvation of the Lord in the Christ Child. He comes to the Temple, he is first recognized for who he is in the Temple – There Acknowledgement is made of the Presence of God’s Christ in the World. And these things happen everytime we gather together – Christ is recognized, worshipped here in the house of God.

            Worship is at the Very Centre of the human response to God – Christ in his Humanity Worships God in Obedience and self sacrifice. Right Worship is Essential – We are not truly human unless we come to worship, indeed if we don’t come together to publicly worship – but that Worship must be Right Worship – it must be true Worship. Christ comes to Purify the sons of Levi, the Priests, so that Right worship might be made. What is more Right Worship is the Very source of God’s life flowing into the world. We tend to think all to readily that it is what we do outside of church that lets God’s Life flow into the world, but the Reality is – and this has been proven down through the ages over and over aain that without the worship of the true and living god – all the Life dries up – for it is in Worship and the Eucharist –that Heaven and Earth are connected

Corporate Worship is the Very heart of Christian Life. To miss out on the Eucharistic feast is in a very real sense to miss out on heaven, however obscured at times this may be.

The Pastor and writer Eugene Peterson, who wrote the translation of the Bible some of you may know as the Message – tells a wonderful story to illustrate this. He had in his congregation a man who like in many congregations was a bit on the fringe – not least because his life was utterly chaotic – he was alcoholic and it was rumored he beat his wife. It wasn’t good. Anyway, over time the man got his life turned round – but he was still pretty much the roughest of diamonds when one day he totally surprise his Pastor by announcing he believed he was called to be ordained – well a more unlikely candidate you could hardly imagine – I can only begin to think what the folk responsible for advising thought of it, but . . . over a long period of time, the call was confirmed. The man struggled through all the academic stuff and was finally called to be pastor of a small struggling church in the back of beyond. To Peterson’s amazement, for he believed he’d done nothing to encourage the man’s ministry , he asked him to preach at his Installation and ordination as Pastor. Well alone he went to what was little more than a tin hut. A windy and cantankerous organ and a small shabbily dressed choir of a few ‘reedy old ladies’ Peterson recalled. Half way through the service there was an anthem – Peterson said – musically it was terrible, none of them could sing particularly well, but half way through the man being ordained poked him in the ribs to catch his attention. ‘Isn’t it beautiful!’ he murmured. Well Peterson all to aware of this man’s past thought he was being sarcastic, btu he looked round at the man and saw his face was just rapt with what was happening – he was caught up in the beauty of the worship that his sophisticated pastor had just failed to see . . . a telling tale in many ways. And most of us, most of the time have our eyes closed to this reality

Shared Worship is Always an opportunity for heaven to break into the world – it is in God’s eyes its purpose – and when it is all about Him it is. But the Worship of Israel had become all about them – an opportunity to make money – to delight in elegance rather than to delight in the Lord – so Christ comes to purify the sons of Levi, for Worship is the Heart – Worship is the Door of God’s Life into the World, Supremely in the Worship and Sacrifice of Christ.

This is something I believe we have largely lost sight of. Too many Christians nowadays believe they can get by worshiping alone – or on the hills – Shared public Worship is not of the essence for them. They are Very Mistaken. Christian Life Requires Christian Worship – together, Week by Week and more often if possible.

Which brings me back to Brockville, but also how we think about the relationship of Worship and Mission. As I recounted last week we have lived in an age where worship dwindled but folk said – it’s OK, there’s still mission there – the church has a presence in its social ministries – perhaps hospitals or schools or agencies feeding the hungry. Except the evidence shows that that presence dwindles, and either expires or loses touch with the Life that sustains it when there is no worshipping community – it is the Life of that community that sustains Mission – there is No Mission without a Worshipping community.

Sustaining the Mission in the end requires sustaining the worshipping community. We have lots of money, but perhaps it is our people they need??

I am of course thinking aloud – I hope that you will think and pray with me for this church, but also about our own hearts and approach to what we do here Sunday by Sunday – Because at the heart of our faith is humankind being offered to God in the person of Christ - an act of Right worship to God – We enter into His worship when we too live sacrificially – we receive blessing from God as Christ is blessed in Baptism – that blessing is for the world. Everything flows from this

Sermon for Advent Sunday

 ADVENT SUNDAY 2011

ISAIAH 64:1-9

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MK 13:24-37

What are you looking for? John 1:38

One of the most intriguing, perplexing, at times Wonderful but usually downright exasperating things about human beings is that for all we are meant to be set apart from other creatures by the size of our brains and our power of rational thought – we are precisely not.

For example – I KNOW that a healthy diet and exercise will make me feel better – I KNOW not only that fatty and sugary foods are bad for me, that excess carbohydrate makes me feel bloated and uncomfortable. Not only do I know these things are true, with my background in life sciences as well as Physics, I know precisely why they are  true, BUT do I ever say ‘NO!’ to a piece of home baked chocolate cake or manage to avoid that late night bread and honey treat? No, I don’t. If I ever drop dead from a heart attack, my last thought may well be, ‘I can’t say I didn’t see that one coming!’

Or take my love affair with my Kindle. Now I know that it is cleverly designed to interact with my deep seated book buying compulsion and thus progressively empty my bank account. I know that – ‘in under a minute’ - from the comfort of my own chair I can be reading a book carefully suggested to me by a computer programme devoted entirely to finding books I am likely to buy. The Calorie free alternative to Chocolate fudge cake!! But does this knowledge stop me compulsively buying books? NO! Does it reveal a Life not controlled by rational impulses? You bet!

Well after that insight about myself what follows may just be a simple case of projection, but I see the same irrational behaviour all around me. From the economy to the environment – we live in an age where we are better informed than ever about precisely why what we are doing is No Good! The World’s Economic order based on the ludicrous suggestion of infinite Credit has finally come to its logical conclusion and No one could really say ‘Well we didn’t see that one coming!’ – The Worlds leaders meet again very soon once more to say ‘Something must be done!’ about the rapidly advancing global climate catastrophe – but forgive me if I sound more than a little hopeless regarding the outcome, especially when we are caught by our need to further expand our economies . . .

You see, for all our rationality ( and I think we must admit that animals behave far more rationally than humans ) we fail to understand the human condition if we ignore the fact that it is not our rationality which controls us. As my daughter put it on her recent facebook status “Reason is in slavery to the desires of our hearts”.

Put another way, our Desires or our Longings are what guide and direct our lives – our restless hearts are much more evident in the lives we leads than our supposed rationality.

Of course this can be neatly covered up. We may lead what to the outsider look incredibly orderly rational lives. I know for years I did in many respects – until I was ordained!! Now I know that in some people’s eye’s seeking ordination is in itself a sign of a kind of madness – but what completely threw me was how ‘out of control’ my life became when I started my life as a Priest. And it came to me that this was for a very obvious reason, that by and large from the age of 5, first as a school pupil, then a university student, then as a school teacher – my life was ordered by bells, by timetables. I wasn’t free to do what I wanted and I believed that I was highly Rational and organized in my being, but actually it was my Bine that was being organized, by timetables and bells. And this showed itself especially in my struggle to pray. When I’d been a school teacher, I had to leave home each morning at 6.30 so I got up at 5 to pray. It was the only time I could, so I did. And then once ordained, well I had all the time in the day to pray – and it became a real struggle. I knew I Should be praying, but I discovered that in my heart of hearts I didn’t really want to, other things seemed ot be more important.

I remember talking with my spiritual director about this and how I just wanted to go and live in a monastery and so have my prayer directed by bells – and she fairly firmly reminded me that as I was married with children that that wasn’t an option!!  - and indeed, that  it was better for me to face the desire of my heart, my lack of desire for God rather than kid myself as I had been all along to that point.

When Jesus started his ministry and folk started to follow him, he asked them the most pertinent question of all – What are you looking for? What is the desire of your heart? What are you looking for? What in your heart of hearts do you Really want??

            So on this Advent Sunday I think it is worth asking that question. Confronted as we are with this Shockingly Powerful image from the Gospel ‘But in those days, . . . , the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. Is this what we are looking for, what in our heart of hearts we really want?? Because Advent is about looking precisely for this – the consummation of all things – crying with the Prophet Isaiah – Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence— as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! Waiting for this – as the prophet goes on - From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.

Advent is a time of Waiting – of waiting on God, of waiting for God – and at first like the prophet we all say – Yes – Of course I want this Life of God to break out into the world – but Advent is a Long time to wait – longer than ever this year – four whole weeks – and we are offered disciplines for these special times – disciplines which help us to wait, but which also Test the reality of our desire for Him. Everyone has a leaflet suggesting ways in which we might Wait on God this Advent – particularly Waiting on God as we begin to discern together where God may wish to take us as a church. And it is worth taking up a discipline with which we are not comfortable. We may spend much time in prayer – good – then perhaps a little fasting might be in order, or one of the other suggestions. Why? Because it is God’s desire we are seeking, not our own and we all too easily confuse the two. That is why I suggest meeting with someone you do not know very well and sharing together about what you think God may wish for our church, because then you may well discover that what you thought was God was really YOU – as Another voice is given space.

You see what happens? This is a Reality Check. After affirming confidently that God works for those who wait for him, it becomes clear that he waiting reveals a different reality. The prophet goes on - You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed. We waited for you – but our waiting revealed we didn’t want to wait – we didn’t desire your heart above all  - our waiting revealed the state of our hearts, we didn’t Wait, we sinned – the prophet goes on We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. The Waiting reveals the true longing of our heart and it is Not for God – He goes on There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.

The prophet realizes that that cry of his heart ‘Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence’ was untrue. The reality is ‘there is no one who calls on your name’.  These next four weeks I am asking the church to join me in the work I have been doing since I arrived, to seek God’s heart for the future of the church here. Might I suggest that at the beginning you take a few minutes as I have done, to write down what you think that is. And then through Advent, use one or more of the exercises I have suggested to Wait on God. Take time. So often churches do exercises like this and everyone writes down what They would like to see – but as God’s children, it’s not about Us – its about what He desires for us – and if at the end of Advent, All we have achieved is to come to the realization that we don’t want what God wants, whatever it may be, but that in reality we want what we want and we honestly face up to that, then we will have made a GREAT stride forward. If we follow the prophet through this passage in Isaiah 64 as far as Verse 7 and declare ‘There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you’, at least we will be living in reality and not deceiving ourselves – we will have seen the reality of our own hearts, and that is a Good Thing – BUT . . . HOW do we respond to this apprehension that in our heart of hearts we do not want what God wants but what we want???

There are two possible responses – despair – look at the state of my heart, what hope is there?? Or the Great theme of Advent – Yes There is Hope – in God alone. The prophet realizing that his own hearts desires have led him Far Far astray puts himself into God’s hands Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity for ever. Now consider, we are all your people.

We are all the work of your hand, We are the clay, you are the potter – You are the potter – we are clay in your hands.

I very recently put myself in the hands of another – I’d been having trouble right up high in my neck and my head – so I went to see Chris Soul – I had a massage as he went to work on what can only be described as the Dry and lumpy clay of my muscles – but the fascinating thing for me was how he focused on my feet – that getting my legs and my back and my neck straightened out  - he had to start with my feet – he had to go to work on the root of the problem – start from the base up.

            Christ the coming one goes to work on us from the root of our problems – if we wait on Him, wait For Him. It may well be that like the massage it is pretty painful – but I put myself in Chris’s hands because I knew there was a problem that needed sorting out and I trusted him.

In the end – the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart. When I was being interviewed for this post I asked the nominators – what do you think God wants to do amongst you –and received some encouraging replies – what I didn’t ask was the most important follow up – because I couldn’t ask this without taking time to listen carefully to my own response – which is  - If that Is what God wants, Is it what You want?? What are we looking for?

This Advent, let us wait on Him, allow Him to speak to our hearts and so work on them and transform them that when He Comes to dwell among us our hearts may not be afraid, but full of Heavenly Joy at his appearing. So that we may declare in truth with the prophet – Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence!!

Amen

Why I am not a Pacifist

"If we could stand back from our prayers . . .

we would see how easily we pray for improved circumstances, 

but how difficult we find it to pray for enlarged character"

 Robert Warren

Like the vast majority of right thinking people, I have never been a fan of war - its horrors need no rehearsing, forming as they do nowadays part of the news bulletins streamed into the cocoon of our homes more often than not. What is more I have long thought that Jesus' teaching, his life and most particularly his death defeating death - powerfully suggest that to refuse to take arms against another human being is indeed the Christian Way.

Yet, I declare Here and Now that I am not a Pacifist. And you may ask, given what I have already said why not? Is it not an act of disobedience not to take this position given what I have said? Well, No - I do not think that it is an act of disobedience.

But let us muse on that phrase a moment or two longer, 'an act of disobedience not to take this position'.

I could argue that I am mentally confused about it - (as indeed I could about many things :-) )
For example, I have long been an admirer of the thought of the predominant Christian ethical voice of the last two decades, Stanley Hauerwas who not only argues most presuasively for Pacifism as the only authenitc Christian position in this regard, but also dismantles the claims of those who say they are pacifists, most noticeably John  Howard Yoder. [See Hauerwas: - Performing the Faith - Bonhoeffer and the practice of non-violence - (SPCK, London. 2004) Ch 7]

There again I listen to another mentor, Dr Victor Shepherd, a most thoughtful Christian teacher and pastor. I listen to his analysis of Pacifism and as he says, he could argue for it, indeed he wants so to so, but for the images that run over and over again in his head of Jewish children being loaded into cattle trucks bound for Auschwitz.

One writer with compelling arguments for, and one teacher with heart searing reasons finally not to take this  position, against.

So, you might argue that I am not a Pacifist because I cannot make up my mind - but that it seems is never finally the real reason why we truly adopt 'A position'. [It is interesting to note in this regard that CS Lewis in Screwtape Letters suggests that 'Strongly Held Views' can be wonderful diversions from the life of faith . . .]

No, I am not a pacifist for two related reasons - firstly I have never, and as I am now in my 50th year of life in all likelihood will never, be required by whatever country of which I am a citizen to bear arms. So to declare myself when others may well be so required to do seems to me to be morally questionable. What is more I have never yet and by the grace of God never shall live somewhere where hearth and home come under such attack that I am faced with the choice to act or not, to kill in the defense of others.

Thus it seems that to declare myself either one way or the other is purely an act of . . .?? that is it - it is no act at all

So secondly I am not because to truly be a Pacifist has nothing to do with my convictions - in the end I can only be a man of peace if my heart is one where peace rules. Put another way, I can only truly be a Pacifist if that fruit of the Spirit, Peace rules in my heart so that my Actions are those of a man who embodies this fruit of the Spirit in his very being.

The title of this blog you may  have noticed was filched from that of a famous pamphlet of the early part of the last century by the philosopher Bertrand Russell - 'Why I am not a Christian', and it seems to me that I might similarly have entitled this blog. For the Christian life is in the end just that - the embodiment of the Life of Christ's Spirit - and that fruit has a long way to go to be full grown in me yet.

And there I might close and sit in my room and pray this fruit into existence, for how else will I become such a person, but that in my passivity He acts to bear fruit - yet I cannot sit content with that as a response. For it seems to me that it buys to easily into a private pietistic attitude that is widely held yet fails to produce those who in their lives reveal the light of Christ in such a way as to cause others to ask questions.
          But, you may ask, if sitting around in my room in the presence of The Presence (to quote one spiritual guide) is not enough  - is there anything I have given me that might help me to become what I am called in Him to be?

And the answer is an emphatic Yes - but it is a gift we largely ignore nowadays trained as we are in finding our own Way. It is the gift we receive in Baptism, incorporation into Christ's body, that group of people called in their common life to embody the fruit of the Spirit - yes indeed to Be Christ in the World. I may say more of this at another time, about how we are called to be disciplined communities that the Life of Christ might be revealed in us, that we bear much fruit. (We must not forget that Jesus addresses this Word Firstly to the Church as he speaks to the Disciples and that it is only secondarily that we might presume to hear it as individual members - to refuse this, to bypass the church in our hearing of the word is to remove ourselves from the One who speaks and is poisonously presumptuous)

I conclude with some words of Hauwerwas that I think are worth thinking upon with benefit in the case of the pacific fruit and adapted for the others

If we are as Christians to survive the violent societies that threaten to engulf us, we will do so just to the extent that we discover  . . . worthwhile activities through which we learn not just to be at peace, but that we love peace. . . Non-violence cannot be explained, it can only be shown by the attractiveness of the friendships that constitute our lives.

ibid. p 183