ElizaphanianTalks and Sermons

Shutting Down

2011-09-26T05:53:00.000-07:00

I think setting up a separate blog for my Talks and Sermons was a mistake. Hardly anyone reads them, and my main blog is suffering. So this is just to say that I'll not be posting here in the future, and over the next few weeks I shall transfer all the articles here on to the main blog and then shut this one down.

My satnav and my God

2011-08-07T05:24:00.001-07:00

We have this morning the remarkable story of Peter walking on the water – yes, I know Jesus walks on the water first, to demonstrate his Lordship over creation, but I find it really interesting that Peter walks on the water too – he listens to his master's voice, and performs miracles.

Which brings me to Suzy the satnav – one or two of you may have heard that I had passport problems and therefore didn't get to go with my family at the beginning of our holiday, I had to stay behind for a few days to get the paperwork sorted – and because I was alarmed at my family driving around France without two parents to share driving and navigation duties we purchased a satnav to help the process.

The first question was – what to call it? Well, do any of you remember the Enid Blyton Secret Seven books? Gabriel is reading them at the moment and he remembered that there is a character called Suzy, not a member of the seven, but sister to someone who is, but who is both very clever and very annoying – so, Suzy the satnav.

Now when I joined up with the family I drove across France to our next stop in Burgundy, and this was my first experience of driving with satnav assistance. And whilst I was driving, I just couldn't help thinking – there's a sermon here. The satnav is like God – it will tell you what to do and if you follow the instructions then all will be well. You will reach your destination.

More than this – Suzy was very forgiving. If you take a wrong turn, she simply said 'recalculating' and then started giving you new directions from where you now were. I think this is very close to how God reacts to our sin – he is very forgiving, he simply wants us to get to our destination, so whenever we go off down the wrong road he simply responds creatively and says, well, now you're here, go this way.

Of course, it was possible to completely frustrate Suzy. There was one time when we stopped at a rest-stop which wasn't registered in her maps, and all Suzy could say was 'return to highlighted route'. This tied in with some situations that I have experienced where people are so far away from God that the most essential thing to do was simply preach the gospel. There was no question of getting in to the fine detail of life choices, there was simply the over-riding priority of saying – come to Christ, confess that Jesus is Lord, return to the highlighted route.

Now the analogy does break down in the end. In particular there was a moment in Calais trying to get to Eurotunnel when Suzy was unplugged and hurled into the back seat because she was trying to get us somewhere that we didn't want to go – but that wasn't really Suzy's fault, as her map didn't have the latest roadworks in place – and sometimes God says 'it's up to you'. I'm coming to realise that God isn't really into micro-management – that we really do have free-will, and He respects that. Sometimes we just have to make the local choices for ourselves.

But the key thing about Suzy is that listening to her made travelling abroad so much easier and more restful than it would otherwise have been. I had confidence in her – which brings me back to St Peter. When St Peter is concentrating on Jesus, and listening to his voice, he accomplishes miracles – walking on the water. But when he is distracted from Jesus, and becomes afraid, then he begins to sink. The voice of God is more reliable than any satnav. If we listen to it, and if we refuse to listen to any of the voices of fear that want to distract us, then we can perform miracles too. We might even experience our lives as one long holy day...

The wheat and the weeds

2011-07-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

(Delivered before Norway)
How should we respond to evil? The response of the servants is to uproot the weeds, but the Farmer/father says no. Let both grow together, or else you will pull up the wheat. The wheat and weeds are virtually indistinguishable: greek word for weed is name of a particular weed, zizania, which looks just like wheat. If we try and eliminate the bad, we will end up eliminating the good too.

Satan hasn’t done much – just sowed bad seeds. Satan has no power except the power of suggestion – in just the same way as the sower scatters seed of the gospel (last week's reading) so too does the Satan scatter the seed of doubt and disbelief, accusation and condemnation. And sometimes those bad seeds also find appropriate soil and bear fruit. And what is that bearing of fruit? It is the fostering of divisions and accusations, most especially within the church, within the field of wheat. Now we think we can tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds, but we can’t. When we act as if we do know the difference, then we are doing Satan’s work for him. He is relying on that for his work to be accomplished.

It needs to be said that Jesus talks more about hell than anyone else in Scripture. He uses very clear language of the last judgement. The point of this language of heaven and hell is to restrict the realm of punishment to God, and to separate it from our human realms. Vengeance belongs only to God. The most important thing about hell is that it places justice and judgement in the hands of God – in other words, it takes it out of our own hands. That is the only way to stop the cycle of violence and condemnation.

It is the desire to eliminate evil which causes the harm – and this is a zeal to be pure, to make sure that we are not contaminated by the unclean. At its spiritual root this is a desire to earn our own salvation, to be in control of our own destiny – and therefore it is a denial of God. Remember the sin in the garden – the desire to know good and evil. When we wrap ourselves in the mantle of righteous vengeance in order to root out wickedness from our midst, that is when we start wearing Satan’s clothes, and doing his work.

Our way is the way of the cross – it is the way of suffering forgiveness: not to walk in that way of peace is to perpetuate the crucifixion. Our human realms, after all, were the ones who punished Christ believing ourselves to be righteous. It is a common human dynamic to fight most strongly in other people what we most dislike in ourselves. The line between wheat and weeds runs within people, not between them.

Now I am not a gardener, but I understand that it is good advice not to spend too long on the weeds. Plant good seeds, and make sure that the good things grow. They will cut out the sunlight that the weeds need, and the weeds will then die out of their own accord.

In other words, concentrate on forgiveness. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.

Ps 37 1-9

Notes for a talk on the metaphysics of deliverance ministry

2011-06-16T02:36:00.000-07:00

One day these might get written up into a proper article - in the meantime they might be of some use to others...

Not with flesh and blood
Notes on the metaphysics and theology of the ministry of deliverance
For the Curates training day, Chelmsford, June 2011

St Paul: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” What does this mean?

Prevalent acceptance of materialism in our society, including amongst many clergy
Materialism = only what is describable in terms of 'hard science' is real
If you accept materialism, you're in the wrong job!
Materialism widely rejected at academic level, but still culturally dominant
Most important thought: something can be real without being material
These include: the soul, the devil, the demonic, the principalities and powers

Example: the government
How to describe the government in terms of hard sciences? Particular people, buildings, laws?
Government is very real – try not paying your taxes
Not physical, not biological – ie not reducible to hard sciences – but has vast influence on life

Realm of life particular to humanity, structured by language
Language is to humanity as water is to fish – it is what we swim in
Language shapes our behaviour – not just spoken words but embodied practices (rituals)
'Government' is perfect example of a 'principality' or 'power' – something which structures our lives – something to which we give greater or lesser allegiance
Dodgy word, but for now let us call this the realm of the spiritual

The realm of values and worship
First commandment: worship God alone – this is about getting our priorities rightly ordered
If God is first, then everything else falls into proper proportion
Only the holy can see truly, or: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God
Idolatry is giving something excess importance, a form of value blindness or distortion
Orthodoxy = right glory = right values
If the worship is wrong, everything else goes wrong in consequence

The imagination
Point to something in the room that wasn't first imagined (other humans – possibly – other creatures – definitely – not much else)
Imaginations generate reality; also – as lungs breathe air our imaginations 'breathe' the spiritual
Our imaginations condition our perception, we see what we expect to see
First and most important task of Moses – teach Hebrews to imagine differently
Hitler and Gandhi – 'casting spells' with language (importance of poetry, cf Rowan Williams)
Major task of evangelism is generating a right imagination of Christ

The demonic
When values are distorted, when the imagination fastens upon something toxic
Scale of distortion – oppression, obsession, possession
Self will diminishes over time, sense of being 'captured' by something external
False Gods, eg Mammon, Baal – just as real as government, still have lots of associated patterns of behaviour being reproduced over time
People can become lost within these realms

The uncanny
MoD people get called in when there is something strange and disturbing
Not everything strange is demonic; often very simple 'scientific' explanation
Sometimes a speculative 'scientific' explanation (eg poltergeists, place memories)
Essential thing is link with the pastoral, ie to heal the understandings (sometimes heal the family tree)
MoD is principally a pastoral ministry

Comparison with mental illness
“Mental illness” is a loaded term, not yet philosophically robust – but could become so
Physical illness – body problem, can give rise to mental effects (eg hallucinations, Alzheimers) – aetiology understood, not what is meant by 'mental illness'
Spiritual disorders – not organic in origin, need spiritual treatment not drugs (Tolstoy did not need anti-depressants)
Distinct 'grey area' between the two
Problem historically that psychiatry was materialist in outlook, psychiatry now improving (more humble!) but church must guard against being captured by secular perspective

Liturgies of liberation
MoD is about doing things with words and actions to change the spiritual reality
Only possible in context of faith (ie imagination is engaged, sometimes OUR faith is enough)
Central task is proclamation of name of Christ – at name of Jesus, every knee shall bow
In other words, re-establishing right worship, right priorities, right values, truth, light
Names carry great power
Traditional language carries power – metaphysical redescription, whilst possible, is counterproductive – 'the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he didn't exist'...

Further reading

On the philosophy of language my understanding is shaped primarily by Wittgenstein. A good place to begin studying him – and start to disengage from various materialist mistakes – is 'Theology after Wittgenstein' by Fergus Kerr

On the notion of 'powers' see Walter Wink's 'Powers' trilogy

On the importance of a Scriptural imagination see Brueggemann's 'Prophetic Imagination'

For a contrarian take on psychiatric care see Thomas Szasz 'The Myth of Mental Illness' or Mary Boyle's 'Scientific Delusion'. See also 'The Danger of Words' by Maurice Drury, a psychiatrist taught by Wittgenstein

On Ministry of Deliverance as well as set texts see especially Gabriele Amorth 'An Exorcist tells his story'

Some things cannot be fixed

2011-05-19T00:41:00.000-07:00

Good Friday sermon for this year. I had lots of different things in mind.

Some things cannot be fixed.

In our lives we experience lots of things that go wrong, from small pieces of machinery where screws fall out and can never be found again all the way up to the major traumas of sickness, bereavement, separation and death.

When a man is injured in an accident and completely unable to carry on with his life as it had gone on before. When a couple have spent so long hurting each other that the basic essential of trust simply isn't there on which to sustain or rebuild a marriage. When a child dies.

Some things cannot be fixed.

When we are in that place where something cannot be fixed, and we suffer, we can understand why Jesus exclaims to the Father 'why have you forsaken me?' We live in a world that is broken: this is a part of the meaning of the cross.

The cross represents clash between the ways of God and the ways of the world.
It is also god coming alongside us and sharing in the brokenness.

When we enter into that place of complete frustration, when all of our most intense and worthy and dedicated efforts are simply not enough, when we feel most trapped – that is when we are placed upon the cross – that is when we share in the burden that Jesus carried.

Was Jesus deficient in some way? Did he do things wrongly? Was he to blame for his crucifixion? No – and in the same way, whilst sometimes our own sin leads us into a place of profound and sustained suffering, sometimes it is not our fault at all – it is simply that the world is broken, and we have to endure the brokenness.

And actually, when we are tempted to think that it is all our fault that things have gone wrong, that we are the ones to blame, that the brokenness must somehow be our responsibility – our tendency to persist in the habit of self-blame is actually a self-indulgence. Are we more capable and more compassionate than Christ? Are we gifted with greater insight and inspiration than the Son of God? For if even He, if even He could not persuade the powers of what needed to be done, if even He could not avoid the cross, why should we think that we can? We are not greater than Christ.

Some things cannot be fixed – I believe that to be true, and to be liberating if it is rightly understood – but I must also say that this sentence is not complete. Good Friday is not the last chapter at the end of the story. The cross is not the full stop. We can only rightly understand the cross of Good Friday, we can only rightly understand the crosses on which we find ourselves, when we take into account all that God is doing. For nothing is impossible with God. Some things cannot be fixed – I should say, some things cannot be fixed, by us, in this life.

For some things can be fixed by God – or perhaps, if not fixed, then redeemed. One of the first things that I was taught when I first began to study theology, and which has always stayed with me, is the idea that God can take the broken fragments of our lives and build something new and beautiful out of them – like taking shattered glass and creating a stained glass window out of the pieces. What has gone cannot be replaced, but sometimes a new meaning and comfort can be found.

And some things can be fixed, by God, in the world to come – and this is possibly the greatest mystery of all, that one day, in the words of the Revelation to St John, there will be “a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”

Christian faith is the ability to deny ourselves and our desires, to take up our cross, and follow Jesus, sharing in his work and healing the world. Faith is a trusting that one day, those things which cannot be fixed, those traumas which nail us to our own crosses – that these will one day be overcome. Christian faith is at one and the same time to accept and bear the burden and pain of the cross – whilst also remembering the resurrection. In the meantime, we are called to endure, to bear the pain and the weight of this broken world, for he who endures to the end shall be saved, and in the end, "it is accomplished".

We are going to sing a hymn, and I would like to finish my words by simply reading out the first verse:
Be still, my soul; the Lord is on your side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to your God to order and provide;
In every change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; your best, your heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

A message from the Lord

2011-02-14T08:17:00.001-08:00

I wonder if the parents here remember that moment when a child first says 'I hate you'... It hurts and it shocks but most parents keep loving anyway, we move on, we recognise that children are overwhelmed by feelings of the moment and that it takes time to develop stability of character, and recognising the harm that comes from hurtful words... and there's the rub – for how many adults do we know who actually have developed that stability of character? For sure, most adults that are outside of a prison have managed to control the public expression of their anger, but often the heart still seethes on the inside.

This is what Jesus is trying to address. The sermon on the mount is quite possibly the most radical spiritual manifesto ever proclaimed, and we are blessed to be spending a few weeks looking at it, before Lent begins. The sermon starts with the beatitudes, the blessings – blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth and so on. Then it immediately goes on, with the material we looked at last week, about how we are to be different, we are to be salt and light in the world, and Jesus says that he hasn't come to abolish the law but to fulfil it. Now Jesus is starting to spell out just what that means. Jesus' appeal is not about an external observance and conformity with what society wants and expects. It is about a change of heart, it is about repentance.

I'm going to concentrate on his teaching about murder here, but the same applies to what he says about sexuality and oaths. What Jesus is doing is at one and the same time radicalising the accepted teaching, and spiritualising it. 'Thou shalt do no murder' – and notice, just in passing, that the law is 'do no murder' not simply 'do not kill' – Jesus takes this publicly observable and definable law and says 'it is not enough'. It is not enough to refrain from killing someone if you harbour such enmity and hatred in your heart that you have killed them many times in your imagination – and that is partly because those feelings will have inevitable consequences in our wider life. It may not lead directly to your killing someone, but there is something called 'hate speech' and what hate speech does is generate a climate in which certain people and certain groups become scapegoated and vulnerable. Even if the person speaking the hate doesn't kill someone, it makes it more likely that someone else will. Ponder the fact that the Nazis didn't start physically terrorising the Jewish population until around 1938, but they were drawing upon five years of propaganda in order to do so. What we say matters, which is why in Scripture there is so much extensive teaching about guarding our tongues.

For what we say will reflect the nature of our heart – as Jesus teaches elsewhere, it is out of the abundance of the heart that a person speaks. What Jesus is challenging us to do is to change our hearts so that we recognise that we do not have a place to stand in our own right, that we are entirely dependent upon God. We are therefore required to forgive those who sin against us, to not set ourselves up in judgement over them, for when we do we only bring judgement down upon ourselves. We can only do this when we are firmly rooted in God, when we know that He knows us better than we know ourselves, and when we know and really believe that He loves us nonetheless. In other words, if we are to follow what Jesus commands then we must spend time in prayer and reflection, seeking to purify our own desires and longings in the fire of a genuine relationship with the living God.

For this is really how we are to consider those who make us angry, whom we wish to insult and call a fool. When such things happen, they reveal to us our own inner state. Have you ever had a day when you are driving the car, and someone ahead of you does something really stupid – like overtaking around the corner that you are driving into – and then suddenly the red mist descends and your feelings of anger are overwhelming? Perhaps it is just me... And then there are other days when the same sort of provocation happens, and yet all you do is slow down calmly and carefully, and then carry on with your business, and you don't give it another moments thought. The difference is in the state of our own hearts, not in the behaviour of other people. There will always be people doing crazy things, and as we live in a fallen and broken world, that means that there will always be people sinning and hurting others, hurting us. That will happen – and all that we can control is how we react to it. So when we come across someone who angers us, their behaviour is simply a revelation: a revelation of who we truly are, of all the passions which are locked up within us. For the saintly, therefore, someone who provokes our own anger is to be profoundly thanked, for they bear a message from the Lord to us, and the message is “Anyone who says 'you fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.”

The truth is that, if with the Lord's help and through his grace we are enabled to conquer our own restless and unruly hearts then we are enabled to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we become peacemakers, we become the children of God, we can let our yes be yes and our no be no. We can simply speak from the abundance of our hearts. Whereas, if we are ruled by our anger and bitterness, if our mouths speak only scorn and ridicule, then hell becomes our home. Our integrity is lost, our souls are lost, and destruction and havoc in our social relations are not far away.

Let us then take our Lord's words to heart, repent and change our hearts so that we can become bearers of peace to all with whom we have to do. Amen.

West Mersea Giving and Thanksgiving service, January 30 2011

2011-01-30T05:47:00.000-08:00

20110130 West Mersea Giving and Thanksgiving

Dear friends, we have gathered together this morning to consider our financial situation, to reflect on giving and thanksgiving – and it is a good thing to be together. We are a very diverse family of Christians in this church, spread across at least five different congregations, and that difference is a blessing and a strength. I believe that we should seek to be a broad church within which all manner of Christians can find a home and place in which to grow in faith, service and love of the Lord. Yet there are times when we need to come together to consider matters which affect the church as a whole, and this is one of them. Thank you for coming today.

Financial context
I would like to begin by sharing with you the financial position of the church, and the decisions that the PCC have been making, so that you are fully informed of the financial context that we operate in. This opening ten minutes will, I am afraid, be very dry. I want to make some comparisons between 2004 and 2010, (2004 chosen because it is as far back as we have computerised records) first with regard to our income, and then our expenditure. Our core income, by which I mean the regular giving from the congregation and money given to the collections during the services, rose from around £65k in 2004 to £76k in 2006 – that largely reflected our growth in numbers with the development of the 9.30 congregation – and it currently stands at about £78k, so an increase in what we might call the giving of our regular congregations of £13k over the period in question, most of the increase coming at the beginning. If we then include our other sources of income, such as fees and the hiring of the hall and so on, our income in 2004 was just under £86k, and in 2010 it was just under £93k – an increase in our total standard income of around £7k. You will realise that what this means is that the level of core income which we received from those other sources has actually dropped since 2004. It dropped from £7k in 2004 down to less than £3k in 2007, but has been built up again to just over £5k last year. This is an area that we need to strengthen, and the PCC has been considering ways in which to do that. Our income over this time was also supplemented by some legacies totalling around £35k or so, and some other one-off donations.

So in many ways this is a positive story. Our income has been going up. What complicates matters is that our expenditure has also gone up, and by significantly more than our income – hence this need to consider our finance!

Now our expenditure. In 2004 our expenditure was £75k, and that was the last year that our expenditure was covered by our income, excluding legacies. Our expenditure rose to £88k the next year, and built up to a peak of £107k in 2009 – that included £8k on the new boiler. Last year expenditure was £101k, and this year we expect to spend around £108k – the trouble is, at the moment we don't have £108k of income to cover it! A large part of that rise in expenditure was committed to employing Mark Brosnan as our Associate Priest – we spent around £35k on his ministry, spread over four years, and we made the decision not to continue that ministry on financial grounds. However, it is the expenditure in other areas which is the on going concern.

First and foremost is the cost of repairing the fabric. The expenditure that was saved by not employing Mark was then taken up by the increased cost of repairs, on which we have spent £15k over the last two years – compared to £700 in 2004 – and we need to maintain that level of expenditure for some time! It is my belief, shared quite widely I believe, that it would be right to appeal to the wider community in West Mersea for help with maintaining the fabric of the parish church. To that end we are launching an appeal for help with the fabric costs, which will 'go public' at the beginning of March, with a mailshot in Mersea Life magazine. We are going to appeal to the community for direct help with some urgent projects, but we are also planning to set up a Friends organisation – as has happened in the other parishes of the benefice – so that there is ongoing help into the future. Please do keep your eyes open for developments on that score and join in so far as you can.

I think it is important, though, to share with you what we spend your money on. If we take out what we spent on Mark, and what we spend on major repairs then our core expenditure has risen from £74k in 2004 to £95k in 2010, an increase of £21k per year. Two things about that.

The first thing is that almost half of that increase in costs is directly attributable to the rise in our parish share. This year we are paying a little over £60k to our parish share, and that is by far the largest item of expenditure in our budget. The parish share is what we pay to the Diocese to employ clergy, and we don't have much latitude in negotiating that (For interest, the average cost of a vicar, if everything is included is nearly £60k). The remainder of the increase in our underlying costs since 2004 is made up of an increase of £2.7k in our utility bills, £4k in charitable giving and the remainder in our office costs. Our scope for trimming our expenditure is actually quite small. Even if, for example, we decided to stop giving money to charity from the PCC, it would probably only grant us a year's grace before the problems arose again. Put simply, we can expect our expenditure to increase by around £4k a year, and so we need to raise that money from the congregation and from whatever fund-raising efforts that we can put into place. For the last several years we have managed to increase our income enough to have met the previous years commitments – not the present years. Hence our reserves have slowly been drawn down as you can see clearly from the graph on the circulated sheet.

Let me emphasise the most important points. In order to make our budget balance this year, and not including any fabric repair costs, we need to raise our income by around £10k, and we will then need to raise our income each ongoing year by 4 or £5k per year simply in order to maintain the ministry that we are presently providing. Some of that we might be able to make by having more 'events' like concerts; but I expect that most of it will have to come from you, the regular congregation. As I say, this does not include the money that we need to spend on the fabric; we are very much hoping that the separate appeal to the community and the setting up of a Friends organisation will address that aspect of our obligations. However, we have also run down our reserves, and it would be prudent to start building them up again.

Now there is one feature of our giving which I would like to spend more time on. The Diocese calculates the average giving per church member per week, and I have the figures for the Colchester Deanery. They are a few years old (to end 2007) but I don't believe the underlying picture has changed. The average member of Colchester Deanery gives just under £9 a week to their church. That average hides quite a lot of variation. In North Colchester, in Myland and in St John's, they give around £12 a week each; here in Mersea we give an average of £6 a week each. In other words, the typical church member in Colchester gives 50% more to their church than a typical church member in the Mersea benefice, and church members in North Colchester give twice as much as church members here.

Now averages can be misleading. I am well aware that there are many people here who give sacrificially of their income, who simply cannot afford to give any more, and to them I would say: thank you, take heart from the story of the widow's mite, for the Lord looks on the heart, not the quantity of cash. Jesus is clear that giving to the God does not displace our obligations to families or to the poor. What is given is between you and God, and nobody can ever second-guess or judge another person in this regard. As St Paul puts it, “Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” But yet. Having said that. Pondering that discrepancy, between the average giving in our neighbouring parishes and the average giving in this parish, I do wonder if a large part of the explanation is simply that we, as a church community, do not understand what it is to have a Christian attitude to money. And if that is the truth then I must take the foremost responsibility for that situation as I have not properly spelled out what a Christian understanding of money actually is. Before writing this address I looked back through some recent annual meeting addresses, and it seems that, in each of the last four or five years, I have said then what I have said to you again this morning: we need to raise our level of giving; as a church, we do not give enough to make ends meet. That sort of appeal has not been successful, and so I feel that I need to become more explicit in describing how we are to understand money.

Theology of Money
You may have noticed that the Church of England is greatly exercised about two related matters at the moment: women bishops, and homosexuality. These two matters, on which so much of our hierarchy's energy is being expended, are not matters on which our Lord Jesus Christ says a single word. You cannot say the same about money. Jesus teaches repeatedly and explicitly about money, and we need to pay attention to what he says because, to put it in very stark terms, what we do with our money is a salvation issue. It is much more of a salvation issue than our sexuality.

So what does Jesus say? He says this: “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” What this means is that what we do with our money has to be placed under what we do as disciples, what we do with our money has to be directed by our faith. If we do not do that – if we simply go along with the habitual patterns of our society – then we are not worshipping God, and consequently our salvation is at issue. If you think that I exaggerate, I would refer you to the story of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke's gospel, where Jesus is very clear about the implications.

So what does it mean to direct our use of money by our faith? Well, it is not that money itself is intrinsically evil or disordered – Scripture has a very positive attitude to material wealth – the trouble is that the love of money can mislead us, and take us a very long way from God. This is the burden of some of Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom. When the merchant finds the pearl of great price, all else is given up in order to purchase it. Or when the man who found the treasure hidden in a field sells everything else in order to buy that field. What is on offer from God through Christ is a share in something so marvellous and wonderful that everything else simply pales in comparison. “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!” It is not that 'everything else' is wrong in itself, it is that if we get distracted by those other things, wonderful in themselves, and lose our sight of God, the source of wonderful things – then we lose everything. What does it profit us if we gain the whole world but lose our own souls? No, first we must seek God's kingdom and God's righteousness and then all these things will be given to us as well.

How does this love of money that Jesus criticises, and which is so toxic to our spiritual health – how does it manifest itself? Well, the obvious way is seen in a character like Scrooge, the classic miser who is concerned simply to hoard up his bags of gold. Yet such an obvious disorder is not, I believe, the prevalent way in which the spiritually toxic love of money manifests itself in our society. There are two key ways in which our views on money can be disordered.

The first relates to fear. I'm sure you will have heard me say in previous sermons that the opposite of faith is not doubt but fear. It is fear that destroys faith, whereas that faith which is perfect love drives out fear. In a closely related fashion the spiritual poison which is a love of money does not lie so much in an explicit hoarding of cash as in a fear, a fear of poverty, of not having enough to live on. If we are afraid of not having enough then we will tend to try to hang on to what we have got and this is the root of the behaviour that turns someone into a scrooge. The spiritual cure for this is to listen to the most-repeated command in Scripture: do not be afraid. Then, instead of having the closed fist of fear which squeezes tight, we have the open hand of faith onto which God can pour his blessings. It means listening closely to St Paul when he talks about learning to be content with what he has. [Malachi 3.7-12] I think there is also some truth in what the Psalmist writes: “I have been young and now I am old, but never have I seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging for bread.” (For that to be true would mean – especially in our present economic context – that the church starts to take material wealth, and the need for members to support each other, much more seriously than we do at the moment. Exploring the full implications of that is a matter for another time.)

The second way in which our approach to money can be distorted relates to materialism, that is, when we use retail therapy to cover up a spiritual void within us. Some of Jesus' most challenging words were addressed to the young lawyer who wanted to be perfect. He had a very good understanding of the law, and was living what seemed to be a very righteous life. Yet he was aware that there was something more that God was asking from him, and so he asked Jesus for advice. And Jesus said 'Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven. Then come, follow me'. Our culture tells us so very loudly, through all the advertising and media within which we swim, that purchasing is the path to happiness. This is a lie, a wicked lie, and one that has incredibly destructive consequences. All that the world wants from us is to increase our greed, because it is our greed that will keep the economic engines stoked. This is our contemporary idolatry. We do not burn children for Moloch, which the ancient Hebrews did when they had fallen away from the faith; we simply ask them to work until their fingers bleed stitching cheap clothes to add to our wardrobes. What we do with our money matters. God will hold us to account. And yes – Thou shalt not shop at Tesco!

So must we give up all our possessions and sell them to provide for the poor? After all, St Francis is revered because he did just that, and there have been all sorts of wonderful consequences flowing from his decision. I do not believe that the way of that young man, the way of St Francis, is necessarily the right way forward for everyone. Yet I also do not believe that we will come to a right understanding of money unless we hear those words with full force, as if they were addressed directly to us. What I mean is this: all that we have belongs to God. The Earth is the Lord's and all that is in it. That includes everything that we possess, it includes all that we earn. Unless we recognise that everything that we have is a gift from God, which we only enjoy on a temporary basis, which is ultimately for him to dispose of, we will never have a right attitude to money. So I believe that we must be prepared, in principle, to follow the advice that the young man rejected, and which St Francis followed. Unless we are prepared to give up all that we own, I do not believe that we are worthy to be called Christ's disciples.

What might it look like, once we have heard God's call and accepted that all that we have is God's gift? Well, we give thanks for what we have. In response to God's giving, we respond with thanksgiving. And that means worship, and it means sacrifice, which in the end are the same thing. The Hebrew word for sacrifice has its origin in that simple word: thanks. Thank you God. Sacrifice is simply giving back to God the things which are God's. It is recognising that the Lord gives and the Lord takes away – Blessed be the name of the Lord. Here, I believe, is where we are called to hear the importance of so much of the Old Testament literature, which describes the processes of sacrifice in the Temple, and lays down the regulations for what the people should offer up to God, such as in our first reading from Nehemiah. The shepherd should offer up a perfect lamb. The one who grows fruit on the tree should offer up first fruits. Those who grow grain should offer up the best grain. The father should bring his first-born to be dedicated to God forty days after his birth – ah yes, in the Christian tradition that is called Candlemas, when we remember that happening to Jesus, as described in our gospel – we are celebrating that today, specifically in a choral eucharist tonight in Peldon.

What Scripture teaches is that the needs of worship, our sacrifice of thanksgiving, this comes first. Unless we bring our monetary affairs into the context of our worship then we are simply paying lip-service to the idea of serving God rather than mammon. Giving to the church, giving to our worship – this is the primary way in which our attitude to money becomes rightly-ordered. When the Hebrews did this it did not mean that they then became completely righteous in every respect; what it meant was that, by sacrificing their wealth rightly they learnt the right attitude to money, that is, that God is more important than anything else. Giving up the first fruits, giving up the perfect unblemished lamb, dedicating the first-born child – in other words, giving up those things which are most valuable – this is how the right attitude to material wealth grows in us. Unless we do something similar, we have no hope of becoming righteous with our money.

At the heart of this process was the notion of the tithe, that is, the ten per cent that went to the priests, in order to maintain the temple, to meet the needs of the poor and to enable the community to be reconciled with God. We no longer have that Temple. Jesus destroyed it, and it was replaced after three days by his body – and what we do when we break bread together achieves what was achieved by the temple. Yet the principle of giving to God in worship remains. We no longer slaughter small mammals and birds – we share a cup of wine. That is what our eucharist is – the word eucharist is simply the greek word for thanksgiving – and our eucharist is our sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Yet the spiritual principle at issue here has not gone away. It remains the case that by bringing our first-fruits to God we are rightly ordered to material wealth. We are called to give to God what is right, not what is left. The Church of England therefore teaches that each Christian should give away 10% of their income – half to the church, half to other charities. In practice a member of the Church of England actually gives around 2% of their income to the church. I believe that we, as a local church and as a national church, have not heard God's message with regard to our money. We do not acknowledge that all wealth belongs to God, that all things come from him and what we give is a thanksgiving. Because of this our church is financially stressed, distracted by the storms of the world's preoccupations, and failing in its mission to share and live out the gospel. When we are obedient, then the peoples will praise God.

I do not believe in asking people to do more than I do myself – here is a form in which I am raising my contribution to this church. I'm not going to tell you how much I'm giving – as I said earlier, what we give is a matter between ourselves and God. Yet I would ask you please, as a very serious matter, to review your understanding of money, the role that it plays in your life and especially your spiritual life, and to consider, prayerfully, whether you can significantly raise your level of giving to the life of this church. Work out what it would mean to give 5% of your income to the church, what that would mean on a weekly or monthly basis. We cannot go on as we have been over the last several years.

A Christian understanding of money can be simply stated: all our wealth comes from God and belongs to him. We acknowledge that truth, and we become rightly ordered in our attitude to our money, when we give to our worship and do not neglect the house of our God. In practice that means tithing our income – 5% to the church, 5% to other worthy causes. We give with thanks, because first we have received. We love, because we have first been loved.

Let us pray for God's guidance:
Holy God, you are the source of all good things, from whom all blessings come;
we ask you to send your Spirit and guide our hearts and minds
so to order our attitudes to our wealth rightly
that we might do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly before you all our days;
this we ask, in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.

Revolting students, and not being cynical

2010-12-12T05:03:00.000-08:00

Yes... revolting students. The rather rich son of a Pink Floyd guitarist – a band whose most successful song contained the line 'we don't need no education' – is seen swinging on the Union Flag on the Cenotaph; he then apologises saying that he didn't realise what it was. That particular student is currently studying history at Cambridge University... (I wonder if they learn about irony?)

OK, a cheap score and I shouldn't laugh too mcuh. Clearly there is a great deal of disillusionment with our political process at the moment, and I would like to argue that there is a spiritual problem here. As a society we are cynical about our politicians. The common view holds politicians in contempt, seeing them as seedy chancers, one small step above an Arthur Daley or DelBoy, out for what they can get, concerned only with hanging on to their own powers and privileges and parliamentary expenses, while our hospitals, schools and transport system go to ruin. When, for example, a Nick Clegg makes a coalition agreement, which necessarily involves compromise, that action is interpreted as a betrayal. It is as if our society has lost the capacity to understand politics in a grown up way – and hence we see the sorts of things that happened in London last week.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I am not intending today to give a party political broadcast, nor really am I wanting to talk about politicians very much. My target is actually the state of mind that can react to our political community in such a way. For there is something deeply depressing about this broad attitude, this cynical contempt. It is a symptom of a spiritual sickness – a profound loss of faith in our world, a sign that our capacity for joy has been damaged.

For what is actually going on with this response of cynicism? Well, there are various elements, but the key one for me is that it is a response of the powerless. Those in a position of power have become remote and inaccessible, nothing that we do seems to make a difference to them, and in this position of powerlessness all that we have left is the scorn that can be poured out on their heads. We can’t see any way in which we can affect what they do, so we indulge in a culture of complaint – it’s our way of getting back at them. And it happens in all walks of life. But let us be in no doubt that when we do this we are actually helping to maintain the status quo. When we say that all politicians are useless it undermines the capacity of any one politician to actually change things.

This is something which Jesus understood. In our reading from Isaiah today we are presented with a vision of tremendous joy. The lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy, they shall obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. This is a cheerful message, a vision that inspired the early Christian community and energised their activity. There was something here that could be hoped for and worked towards, and they took its message to heart: Be strong! Fear Not! Your God will come and save you! What this did – what all the prophets did, from Moses with Pharoah, through Isaiah and Jeremiah, all the way through to Jesus saying ‘Blessed are the poor in Spirit’ – what this does is to say that “It doesn’t have to be like this”. It allows us to dream that things can be different. It allows us to hope that things will improve. It allows us to cultivate our capacity for joy. It develops the imagination, the prophetic imagination, that is the real force for changing the world, the vehicle for the Spirit, the means for bringing the Kingdom into being. And if you don’t believe me, just think on these words for a moment: "I have seen the promised land".

Listen again to our reading from James. “You also must be patient. Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged. See the Judge is standing at the doors! As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord”. We are called to work quietly, thoroughly, with patience and perseverance for the overcoming of the world. And we mustn’t grumble, we mustn’t complain, we must not take offence.

For we have received a promise in Jesus, we have received a hope, we have received the capacity for joy. This hope, this longing, is what Advent is about. For we look forward with eager longing to the coming of our Lord, when all shall be changed, when the lion shall dwell with the lamb, and when all the things that trouble us, or threaten us, fall away.

For Jesus has transformed the situation. He acted out the prophecy of Isaiah, and so could give this message, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.’ For those who do not believe, Jesus is offensive, to the powers that be, to the cultured despisers, to the ones who mutter in cynical despair. But he is coming again, and sooner than we think. Let us, in the meantime, love one another, and not grumble, and fill our hearts with the joy that is coming into the world. Amen.

Remembrance Day Sermon 2010

2010-11-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

We have gathered together today to remember before God those who have gone before us, who gave their lives in war in order that those whom they loved would be saved.

In the news this morning the newly appointed Chief of the Defence Staff is alleged to have said that defeating Islamic militancy – the enemy against whom our armed forces are presently fighting – that defeating them was “unnecessary and could never be achieved”. Now I know that the Telegraph cannot always be trusted in its reporting, so I don't want to focus my remarks upon General Richards himself. I would however like to say a few words about the attitude that those words express, because, even if they are not a faithful report of General Richards' views, I'm sure they do reflect the views of other people in this country.

To begin with, it is, of course true, that an ideology cannot be defeated on the battlefield. Particular expressions of an ideology can be – as was the case in the Second World War – but an ideology itself cannot be defeated by physical force. So in that sense of 'can never be achieved' I understand the point that is being made. Yet what is missed, so it seems to me, is the truth that ideologies can be defeated in their own terms; that is, they can be shown to be false if they can be shown not to achieve what they claim to achieve – and it is that, so it seems to me, which is our task.

In the case of Islamic militancy, the central claim is that the Western world is in a state of barbaric ignorance, cut off from God, as a result of which people cannot flourish. In contrast to that, those who have embraced Islam, most especially through accepting Sharia law, are able to flourish in their lives. The armed struggle is undertaken as a struggle to advance human liberty and happiness – throwing off barbaric regimes that destroy people physically and spiritually, and exchanging that state for one in which true human freedom is established. The argument is not, therefore, between one side that seeks freedom and well-being, and another that resists those things, but rather a struggle between different visions of what human freedom and well-being actually are.

Islamic militancy is a view which has very deep roots, going back at least two hundred and fifty years to the Reform movement in Saudi Arabia known as Wahhabism, and taken forward by others. It long predates the establishment of Israel, or the Western invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan, and we would be gravely mistaken if we ever thought that withdrawing from Afghanistan, or abandoning Israel, would solve our problems. Most importantly Islamic militancy is not a trivial ideology, and we must not dismiss it trivially, nor is it one which does not contain any truth. In criticising the West, they are right to point out the ways in which we fall short of God's intentions for us – because we do - and there is in fact a very great deal of overlap between the critique of our society given by the Islamist militants, and that given by faithful Christians. There is also, of course, a very great deal of difference between what is seen as the solution.

For we do still live in a place where we are free to pursue a Christian faith, even if that freedom is starting to break down at the edges. Whatever our concerns about being allowed to wear a cross if you are working for British Airways, or whether you will lose your job as a nurse if you offer to pray with a patient, we are not like the church in Baghdad that was recently attacked by Islamic militants, with great loss of life. And we have that privilege for the simple reason that people have struggled for it – struggled with force of arms, and struggled spiritually. The greatest victories for Christian faith were won by the martyrs of the first centuries, who would rather have been fed to the lions than renounce their Saviour. They were the ones who demonstrated the true nature of freedom, who demonstrated what it meant to live an abundant life, and it is their spirit that we need to emulate.

The only lasting victory over Islamic militancy will come from demonstrating that we are not a Godless society, and that, in pursuing God to the best of our abilities, as we have known him revealed in Christ, we show in our lives what it means to live as free and flourishing human beings. And what does that mean in practice? What is it that I am actually saying we need to do? To answer that, I would like to share with you a passage from St Paul's letter to the Romans. St Paul writes:

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is noble and right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

We will not overcome the ideology of Islamic militancy by simply fighting suicide vests with cluster bombs. We will overcome it by remembering what it is that those we remember today fought for, remembering it and renewing our commitment to it – that is, the values of a Christian civilisation – which is one that takes those words of St Paul seriously. Let us not be overcome with evil, but let us overcome evil with good. Those we remember today fought and died in order that we might enjoy the freedom to pursue a Christian life in peace – so let us honour their sacrifice by renewing our commitment to our Christian inheritance, trusting in the God who sent his Son, not to condemn the world, but that the whole world might be saved through Him. Amen.

A short funeral sermon

2010-11-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

In the Revelation to St John, which finishes the Bible with a vision of the end of all things, we are told that God 'will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.'

At the end of all things there will be no more tears – but here, now, there are; for here, now, we have to confront the pain of loss, the pain of having someone whom we love taken from us, the pain of saying goodbye. There are so many things for which it is possible to give thanks today, in the gift of ____'s life, the gift of being able to share time together. We have heard much about him in [the] eulogy, so much for which to be thankful. And yet still, it is only human to have wanted more, to not want to let go just yet, to not have the relationships broken by death.

I sometimes hear it said that time heals all things, that in time we 'get over' being bereaved. I'm not sure that that is completely true. I do believe that, in time, the shock and the severe grief will pass, but things are never the same again. Where once there was a connection, now there is a gap. For those who mourn, there is a coping, there is a moving on, there is even the return of joy and laughter, but, in this life, I'm not sure that we can expect a complete healing.

But I believe that this is for a reason. The connections that we make with those whom we love, which will all, every last one of them, eventually be broken by death, theirs or our own – they make us who we are. And the promise that we receive in Christ is that, one day, those connections will be restored, and we will, once again, be the people that God has called us to be – formed and shaped by the love that we share with one another. For we are told that God is love, and that love is eternal, in other words, love conquers death, it is not conquered by death. We are not meant to 'get over' our loss – we are meant, one day, to be put back together again. It is not something that we can achieve for ourselves, but it is something that – just as with the gift of life to us in the first place – it is something that can be given to us by a loving and gracious God. One day, we will meet again those from whom we are separated by death. And on that great day, there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for our old order of things will have passed away. And God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.

Let us pray.

Increase our faith!

2010-10-11T02:14:00.001-07:00

“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents forgive him. If he sins seven times, and repents seven times, forgive him.” To which the disciples reply 'Increase our faith!'

It is unarguable that one of the most central and important strands in the teaching of Jesus concerns forgiveness. How often must I forgive my brother, as many as seven times? As many as seven times seven times says Jesus elsewhere – in other words, always. Where there is repentance, then forgiveness follows. And this teaching is knitted together with that about refusing to judge each other, and about being perfect like God in heaven is perfect, pouring down rain upon the just and the unjust alike. And the measure that we give shall be the measure that we receive, that is, if we don't extend forgiveness to others then we shall not receive forgiveness ourselves, in this world and in the next. In other words, to forgive is simply what it means to be a Christian, and in so far as we do not forgive, then that far have we failed in our faith.

Which is the point that I believe Christ is emphasising today. When the disciples say, in response to this emphasis upon the necessity of forgiveness for salvation, 'increase our faith!' they are not asking to have their opinions changed, to start believing one thing rather than another. They are asking for a greater strength of character. To which Jesus responds by teaching them about the role of a servant, 'would you thank the servant simply because they did what they were told?' In the same way, when we forgive, it is nothing about which we can boast – we are simply doing our duty, and that duty IS our faith – for faith IS a doing.

For various historical reasons, the church has managed to tie itself up into all sorts of knots about the nature of faith, of salvation, of the contrast between grace and works. It is an argument that carries a great deal of energy even now, simply because several hundred years ago people in this country, in this county, possibly in this town were hating and killing each other because of disagreements about the nature of faith.

Quite clearly we are not saved by our actions – that is called salvation by works, as if we could earn our way into heaven. Not only can we not do that – for the simple reason that when we do good things we are only doing our duty, as Jesus teaches – but in fact, if this doctrine were true, what a monstrous and frightening position to be placed in. For it would mean that eternal salvation would rest upon our decisions and actions and, frankly, I can't cope with them being that important. But thanks be to God, for that is not Christianity.

In Christian faith, grace comes first, which means God comes first, which means that we rely not upon our own strength but upon the prior action and desires of God. We trust that God is love, that the God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Christ is the true God, and that in following him we have life. All that we do is rooted and founded in grace; to use the language of the BCP “LORD, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works...”

For whilst it is true that we are justified by faith – in other words, faith in Christ is what makes us part of the Body of Christ, the community of Christians, those who are saved and redeemed by him – it is also true that, as repeated throughout Scripture in Old and New Testaments, we will be judged according to our deeds. It matters what we do.

The other day, when the family were sat around the dinner table, faith came up in conversation, and I had to explain to Barnabas what faith was. I used this image: when I drive, I act on the assumption that other drivers will keep to their side of the road. I don't know for absolutely certain that they will do so – sometimes, no doubt, that is not true – but I act on the basis that this is true. I have faith that this is true, and this is shown by my actions, in keeping to the left hand side of the road and not being paranoid about whether drivers coming from the opposite direction will crash in to me.

In the same way our faith is shown by what we do. Do we act on the basis of trust in a loving and gracious God – and therefore forgive our brothers and sisters seven times a day? Or do we act on the basis of one trying to safeguard a position, trying to earn our way to heaven, and therefore not developing the moral courage required to seek and pursue the life of forgiveness.

It is hard and a wearying of the soul to sustain the position of self-righteousness. I am sometimes reminded of a comment – I can't remember where I first came across it, but the image has remained in my mind – that a human being defending their pride and their sense of righteousness is like a dog standing on its hind legs: it is temporarily impressive, but you can't escape the feeling that it is neither natural nor sustainable.

Our faith is shown by what we do. As James puts it in his Epistle, “faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.”

It is our duty to forgive each other. This is not a matter of how we feel. It is not a question of trying to get to a place where our hearts have been completely converted and we can with sheer joy and simplicity of heart start singing the Sound of Music whilst wandering in the mountains. No, this is simply a case of doing our duty, of being obedient to our Lord's commands, wherein, even when we can by grace achieve it, we can only say 'We are unworthy servants'. No, forgiveness is the choice not to be offended or scandalised by the sin of someone else, however much it hurts us. It is to bear one another's burdens. Forgiveness is the decision and action to continue in relationship with others, to take our place as one sinner amongst a community of sinners.

Let us then not be distracted by the contemporary gods of narcissism and navel-gazing and simply get on with the job of being a forgiving and reconciling community – and may Gods grace go before us to increase our faith, enabling us to continue in all the good works that he has prepared for us to walk in. Amen.

Joy in Heaven (Luke 15.7)

2010-09-13T01:33:00.000-07:00

Jesus says "I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous person who do not need to repent". This is a wonderful teaching - but what does it mean? I want to begin by saying a little about heaven's expectations and priorities.

Expectation: that we don't fall away, that we do live righteously – this is 'normal' – that everyone enjoys the fullness of the faith and lives in God's presence and experiences the abundance of life that Jesus showed was possible for a human being. To live a 'good life' is simply living in accordance with God's creation, so it is His achievement, not ours, and no cause for any pride or justification on our part. So when someone who has lost this is returned to it then there is cause for rejoicing, for that is progress. Hold in mind that this teaching is foreshadowing the parable of the lost son which immediately follows our gospel passage.

Priorities – a business might imagine that a 1% loss is acceptable. When I was a student I worked for Argos during holidays and weekends, and they had an accepted percentage of 'wastage' of their stock, which covered accidental damage but was also in many ways simply a cover for light-fingered employees. The cost of bringing that figure down to zero was disproportionate, so they basically turned a blind eye to it.

God's economy is different. Consider what it means for God to be the shepherd seeking out the one lost sheep – after all, the shepherd is thereby leaving the main flock to fend for itself. God's concern and love and mercy are concentrated on the sinner (Jesus does not come to the righteous but to those who are sick) – we might even say 'Christ is more regularly to be found outside the walls of the church than inside'. Or to put that slightly differently, with God there is no 'inside' or 'outside' – so any boundaries that get drawn up are entirely human products and lacking in sanction from God. In other words, when we draw up a boundary between who is in and who is out we are going against God's intentions, we are going against the heavenly expectation. After all: how many people are we prepared to write off or give up on? What sort of losses are we prepared to tolerate? When a priest in the Church of England is ordained there is a preamble which states that a priest is to 'search for [God's] children in the wilderness of this world's temptations and to guide them through its confusions, so that they may be saved through Christ for ever'. And that is not just a task for clergy, but for all Christians.

How do we do it? Well, we must preach the gospel, in season and out of season. We cannot know how it will be heard, but that is neither our responsibility nor our concern. Consider the parable of the sower - what farmer would give such little attention to the quality of the soil that the seed falls into? But we are not responsible for another's salvation, indeed we can never know whether someone else is saved or not, not even those closest to us, and I suspect it is a presumptuous sin to even enquire about it.

We have Back to Church Sunday in two weeks – to whom can we extend the invitation 'come back'? who can we search out in the wilderness? But just as important a question: are we prepared for it? If ten people came in the door seeking to become disciples, would we cope? Yes, we are about to start running an Alpha course, but there is more to discipling than that. To be sure, if we don't have the discipling programme in place, we will not be reclaiming any lost sheep. For me the heart of a discipling programme is actually inseparable from being disciples ourselves.

Which brings me to what I believe is at the heart of this text: the joy in heaven is over repentance not righteousness. Righteousness is normal and expected, it is what we were created for – repentance is the acknowledgement that we are not righteous but we have a desire to change. It is the heart of stone that has become a heart of flesh. I think that is the key. If we are a repentant community then we will be a community that will gather the lost. There may be something to learn from the AA programme (it seems the church so often needs to learn things from its children; the same applies with the Samaritans) – sessions begin with someone saying 'My name is Charlie and I am an alcoholic'. This is not because Charlie is still drinking several pints of vodka a day but because he has recognised both the truth of who he is and the need and value of living and sharing alongside other alcoholics, which is the only thing that keeps him sane and honest. He needs the community, and the community needs him.

And so on that note: my name is Sam, and I am a sinner.

Amen.

"Do not go from house to house"

2010-07-04T04:51:00.000-07:00

20100704 Luke 10 gyrovagues do not go from house to house

Our gospel reading this morning is Jesus' instructions to a large group of disciples – seventy or so. There is almost certainly a link here to the 'number of nations in the world' as understood at the time – so here we have a symbolic mission to the gentiles to parallel the mission to Israel by the twelve disciples from chapter 9. The instructions are very similar – travel light, travel in peace, heal the sick, cast out demons and so on. We are the inheritors of these instructions – the great commission at the end of Matthew has Jesus commanding his disciples to 'make disciples... teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you'. So there are things here which we are to obey if we are to be Jesus' disciples today.

I want to focus in on one small part of the instructions, which is Jesus' command 'Do not go from house to house'. Why might Jesus command this? Simply put, a necessary part of the disciples' work is the building up of relationships. When Jesus comes, later on, he will be able to build upon those established relationships in his own ministry. Were the disciples simply to keep moving around then the opportunity to build up relationships is lost – and this directly hampers the mission of the gospel. I'm sure you all know the phrase 'a rolling stone gathers no moss' – well, in this case, what Jesus is saying is that the moss is essential. The network of connections that Jesus sees as important is the moss – the life that grows on the stones.

Last Sunday night I was talking about the rule of St Benedict, most especially the three vows that Benedictine monks take, one of which is stability, which is, I believe, very relevant to this text. In Benedict's time – around 580AD – there were many monks who wandered around from one monastic house to another. Benedict could not have been more critical of them, writing “The fourth kind of monk is that called the Gyrovagues, or rolling stones. These are guests all their lives for three or four days at a time, in one monastery or another, throughout the various provinces. Always on the move, they are never stable. They are slaves to self-will and gluttony and in every respect worse than the Sarabaites” - these latter being another type of monk that Benedict describes as having “not been tested by any rule of sound discretion or by the experience of tradition so as to become like gold in the furnace, but are like base metal, soft and yielding. By their works they keep faith with the world...”

“Do not go from house to house.” What is it that Benedict finds so objectionable about the gyrovagues? Or, to put it differently, why is it that there is such an emphasis upon stability in his rule for monks? Well, what stability means in this context is the persisting of a relationship – the growing of moss upon the stone. There are two significant spiritual temptations. One is to become so fed up with the problems that other people represent that you become a hermit, withdrawing from the world and engagement with others, and therefore never allowing yourself to be challenged. This leads to spiritual stagnation and death. The other is to form a self-selecting enclave of the acceptable – to gather together all those who think the same way and to put walls around the group. This, too, leads to spiritual stagnation and death.

There are some vitally important spiritual virtues that can only be formed by persisting with a particular community of people over the long term. To begin with, it means not being able to run away from the decisions and choices that have been made, it means having to live with the consequences of your own actions in self and others. To do this is to walk the path of spiritual maturity and life, this is what it means to engage with the process of love and forgiveness. Secondly, it means making a promise to a community which is in itself a claim of faith in the future of that community, it is saying that 'this community will endure'. Finally, and most importantly of all, it is saying that true happiness, and true holiness (which are intimately linked in the Christian tradition) is not to be found somewhere else. God is to be found here and now, and whatever it is that is preventing that happiness and holiness, a change of external circumstances will not fix the problem. Realising this is, again, the path of spiritual maturity and life.

One of the ways in which Anglicanism has carried forward an inheritance from Benedict is in the comprehensive and (small-c) catholic approach that the church takes to membership, which is exemplified in the parish system. If you are baptised and you live in the parish then you are a member of your local church. Ideally, the parish church is where all the Christians in a particular place are gathered together. Of course, we don't live with that today. What we have on Mersea – indeed what we have with the church throughout the world – is a situation of fracture. Different sorts of Christians in different places. This is not the will of God for the Body of Christ.

So is it ever right to break away from a congregation or a church? Possibly. I would draw an analogy with a marriage. The marriage vows are extremely serious – and let us not forget that 'God hates divorce' (Malachi 2.16) – but that does not mean that there are not situations when it can be the lesser sin to break away. For example, in a relationship that is systematically and relentlessly abusive it is not of God to simply be a doormat or punchbag. Jesus was robust in acting against injustice and protecting those who were vulnerable, and I think that those higher principles would apply to the break up of a toxic relationship. Yet there is a great deal of difference between that and simply giving up on a relationship because of a single argument or falling out, or simply the trivial desire to find something new.

When I am doing the usual marriage preparation classes I talk about the vows as being the heart of the marriage, and I sometimes talk about them as being like a sailing boat. If the couple sticks to their vows then they will be able to sail and make progress towards their destination – but without the vows the couple are at the mercy of the elements and they will simply drift, subject to the wider worldly forces of wind and tide around them.

So I think it can be right to break away from a church, if it has become a place where the soul is being systematically destroyed. There are people who have gone from this place and made a stable spiritual home in another church, and I believe that to have been of God; similarly, there are those who have come to this place from another church, and made their home here, and that too is of God. Yet it is never a trivial thing. There will always be doubts and second guessing involved – truly, just because something is the lesser of two evils does not make it into something good. Yet the situation can be redeemed by the grace of God, if a person allows that grace to take root in their lives – and that taking root means, again, not moving from house to house, in a restless search for an unattainable perfection. It means making a renewed commitment to stick with a group of people through thick and thin, learning to love their neighbour, and, in truth, learning to love their enemy and pray for them. It means allowing the moss to grow back – for it is the growth of the moss which is our spiritual health. To wander rootlessly without a stable spiritual home is to wander apart from Christ. This is why he told the disciples 'do not go from house to house'.

Joining a church is not a trivial or shallow decision. It is like a marriage, and should be treated in the same way. The church is not simply a leisure pursuit, where those who have a particular penchant for singing songs and dressing up in albs gather together to indulge their peculiar tastes. It is much more serious than that. Being a part of a community – for the long run, through thick and thin, putting up with the bad things and enjoying the good, holding fast to the fellowship through triumphs and disasters... not going 'from house to house' – this is what makes a church community into a Christian community. It is what identifies it as a true part of the Body of Christ.

May God's grace so dwell with us that we are enabled to hold fast to one another, relying solely on the one who died to save us from our sins, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Depression and the Gerasene Demoniac

2010-07-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

20070624 Proper 7 Year C
Gerasene demoniac and galatians 3

Doctor, doctor, you've got to help me, my brother thinks that he's a chicken! Well why don't you bring him in to see me then? We can't do that, we need the eggs!

We have in our gospel today the story of the healing a man possessed by demons. I would like to say something about mental illness in general, and depression in particular. As a society we have virtually lost the language of describing certain forms of behaviour using spiritual categories - not necessarily "demonic possession" - but the realisation that theology is an essential component of understanding human life. I'm a bit of a sceptic about "mental illness" as such, and I'm greatly sceptical about pharmaceutical involvement unless there are exceptional circumstances - in my view much of what we describe as mental illness is most often a spiritual issue, and it requires spiritual treatment; that is, at root, much so-called mental illness is resolvable through faith; it is caused by bad theology and it is cured by good theology. I wouldn't wish to deny the existence, in some situations, of an organic basis, which requires medication - but I think it is vastly rarer than the current medical practice would allow for. To flesh this out I want to talk about depression in particular.

To begin with, some forms of depression can be very healthy and right and necessary - not an illness at all, it is a time of spiritual adjustment to new realities. For example, if someone you love dies then it is both natural and necessary to experience loss - to expect someone newly widowed to be all bright and bubbly is manifest nonsense.

Other forms of depression can also be a response to a great sin, where the conscience cries out for release, and it needs a process of confession and absolution. The trouble with this is that it rests upon a robust account of sin, the idea that some actions are wrong and some actions are sins. In our wider culture sin is not named and people can flounder in great confusion and anguish until they are able to see clearly the situation that they are in - the naming is important, and the truth sets free.

Depression can also be born from a refusal to change to new realities in life, and is therefore about an inner dishonesty. In my experience this normally resolves around anger - anger is seen as illegitimate, it is therefore buried, and the soul is poisoned. The cure for this sort of depression is to let the anger out, to discover more about our own souls and pursue the path of honesty with oneself. The most helpful thing here is to remember that Jesus gets angry - and if the new reality is something toxic, which destroys life, which is injustice - then anger is precisely what is called for to confront that new reality and fight it. Anger has two children, hope and courage - and they are both very healing - for the poison is no longer internalised, it is no longer seen as part of the identity of the sufferer. They are no longer to blame. However, I should note that there is a problem with anger. I think anger is always a gift from God, and a sign of falsehood and injustice - but anger by itself does not say whether the problem, the falsehood or injustice, is on the inside or on the outside. Prayer is still needed.

There is another form of depression which is just as often about transference from a community, where somebody is kept "ill" - the community 'need the eggs' - and I believe that this story of the Gerasene demoniac is an example. Note carefully that the demoniac is kept chained in place - he is not allowed to wander into the desert and separate from the community, but is kept as one who is 'living dead', unclothed (no social standing) and living amongst the tombs. The demoniac is a scapegoat - note the name of the demon is 'legion' or 'mob' or 'crowd' - it is precisely the mentality of the mob that has infected him. In the description of this story in Mark's gospel the man is stoning himself, which is such a potent symbol of internalising the standards of the wider society. How many people do we know who spend their time stoning themselves because they feel that they deserve that punishment? The demoniac is functioning as a scapegoat within the social system - remember the description of the rite in Leviticus, where the High Priest lays hands upon the goat and transfers all the sins of the community onto it, and it is then driven out into the wilderness. This is a very widespread cultural phenomenon, we can see many examples of it in our own time - the one serves the many by being excluded, and then the group feels better - the scapegoat is the lynchpin of the system. What is remarkable is the word for scapegoat in the Greek rite - pharmakos - you could say humans are addicted to the drug of scapegoating, and that in our society we are no longer so vulgar as to stone people, we simply give pharmaceuticals to the pharmakon instead.

'What have you to do with me?' says the man to Jesus. It's as if he is expecting Jesus to be on the side of the established system, but Jesus is different, he is transformative and he breaks the system. He heals the man - not by transferring his sense of wrongness onto somebody else within the community (that would have kept the system in place) but by transferring the demons into a group of pigs who then die. The possession comes to an end. And what really reveals the complicity of the community is there is no relief, there is no delight in the curing of the man - instead there is fear, a sentiment repeatedly affirmed in the narrative. For how can the society carry on functioning without its lynchpin? The possessed man is healed but the community are most explicitly not healed - they are still possessed by the scapegoating process and do not know how to live without it. So the first thing they do is ask Jesus to leave - another scapegoat!

Christ is always acting to stop the process of scapegoating. And Paul has something to say about this too. His teaching from Galatians that we have just had is a powerful call to unity. He abolishes the three most important ways in which the human community separated out the clean from the unclean - racism, sexism and economic oppression - and he claims that for the Christian that is now irrelevant. Nobody is outside our circle - we are all sinners, therefore we are not kept clean by excluding the mad the bad and the dangerous - and the mad the bad and the dangerous are not isolated from us. We are all in this together, and so we can none of us be understood separately from the system within which we are a part. For the Christian, we no longer need a lynchpin - for the one who forms us was himself lynched.

The cure for possession is possession, "until Christ is born in us" - Jesus is the way the truth and the life, his burden is light, he sets us free... but hang on. There is a DANGER here, a danger that the Christian community hasn't always avoided. We could simply set up a new system, where the depressed are blamed for having a lack of faith - then called more and more strenuously to really convert - it really is still all their fault and we are still not really to blame, we are still separate and pure whilst they are unclean: a new system with new lynchpins. No. That is not the faith. The whole point of being filled with Christ is that we no longer define ourselves over against other human beings - 'we're not like those atheists/ catholics/ baptists/ 9.30 people/ 11 o'clockers/ those who haven't been born again - fill in your own definition here....' We define ourselves solely by reference to our relationship with Christ - until Christ is born in us.

This is not an experience, a special holy moment, but a dawning awareness that beneath our wrongness which occupies the dramatic front of stage in our minds, we are right with God. That God loves us, that God likes us, and that God is working to heal us and drive out our demons - that is what a living faith does - it slowly takes up our wounded hearts and minds and it brings them to Christ that they might be healed. Our destiny is to sit at Christ's feet, clothed and in our right mind, and when that happens - only when that happens - we are to follow Christ's command: 'go and tell what God has done for you' - for then the whole community is healed, and the Kingdom shall come.

A short homily for Trinity Sunday

2010-06-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

Today is Trinity Sunday, possibly the day that is least looked forward to by any preacher... How to explain something which is by definition a mystery? I'll keep my words brief this morning – one analogy, and one detail.

The analogy – consider the performance of a piece of music, where there is the composer of the music; there is the conductor of the music; and there are the musicians.

The composer is the Father, the one from whom all things come, the source of the music, the Creator.

The conductor is the Spirit, the one which animates and directs, prompts and provokes.

The musician is the Son, the embodiment of the music, the note made audible, the word made flesh.

We might say that God is the performed music, within which the composer the conductor and the musician are all related. And this is the detail: the crucial thing to understand about the Trinity is that it is a relationship – it is something experienced before it is understood. In just the same way as we are all formed by a relationship, with parents and friends, so too is God approached and understood through a relationship.

The doctrine of the trinity was developed fairly late on in the early church – a good few hundred years after the life of Jesus – because it was the only way to account for the experience of the early church itself in its life and worship. The relationship came first, and the doctrine is always playing catch-up.

So let me bring those two things together – the analogy and the detail.

The life and worship that we are called to is one in which we participate in the music – Christ is the embodiment of the music, the notes made audible – but we too are the Body of Christ, we are, you might say, the orchestra, and we all have different parts to play which contribute to the whole. We need to be in tune with the lead violin; we need to follow the promptings of the conductor; we need to pay close attention to the page. Our role might be to play different instruments; then again, it might be dancing to the music; or, it might simply be contemplating and appreciating the music.

The crucial thing is that we share in the relationship – it is when we do this, when we allow the music of God to direct our lives, that we enter into our inheritance as children of God and find the peace which the world cannot give, or, perhaps, the music that the world cannot play.

Amen

Exploring Discipleship with St Benedict 1: Introduction and overview

2010-04-30T03:25:00.000-07:00

Learning Church (Mersea) #21 - Exploring Discipleship with St Benedict 1: Introduction and overview

Introduction to an exploration of discipleship with St Benedict for West Mersea Learning Church/Supper

This series will be something of a sequel to my 'Let us Be Human' sequence.

Where next for the Anglican Communion?

2010-04-01T04:18:00.001-07:00

Talk to the Learning Supper last Sunday.

Learning Church (Mersea) #20 - Where next for the Anglican Communion?

Revival

2010-03-24T04:29:00.000-07:00

Originally posted June 2007.
This is a substantially expanded and amended version of my sermon yesterday, based on Luke 7.11-17 & Galatians 1.11-end (in particular, West Mersea worshippers will find it of interest). Click 'full post' for text.

The story of the widow of Nain has great human impact: a sorrowing widow; a son that dies; and then - revival.

One of the first things to bear in mind about this story is the social and economic context - that is, unless there was an economically productive male around, you were incredibly vulnerable. So a widow is vulnerable without her husband, but even more than that, a widow losing her son is doubly vulnerable, not simply in economic terms but because the son was her link to the future, a source of meaning as well as means. It is precisely this concern for the vulnerable that is the Spirit behind the prophetic teaching, calling the faithful to provide for the widows and orphans. And here Jesus' compassion and prophetic stance is clear - "his heart went out to her" - and just like Elijah with the widow of Zarephath the man of God revives the son from the dead, and gives him back to his mother. The family is reunited, means and meaning are revived.

There are a number of aspects to this story to explore. A first is simply to wonder: does Jesus experience a premonition of what is to come as he takes part in this tale? Does he consider that before too long his own mother will be outside the city wall, grieving for her dead son?

But going a little deeper than that, is there something here about our faith, about what it is to pursue that faith within a church community - and perhaps, is there a message here specifically for this church in West Mersea?

To explain what I mean by that, I'd like to talk about St Paul's conversion experience, on the road to Damascus, and in particular how he describes it in this passage from Galatians - where he describes the sort of person that he was before he met the risen Lord, and the sort of person he became after, which allowed the good news to spread. Paul says that in his former life he was extremely zealous for the traditions of his fathers - but then he began to disbelieve in them. In other words, meeting with Christ began to generate disbelief in him, a disbelief in what had gone before.

The thing is, being human, we surround ourselves with customs and habits and traditions - they are useful in helping us to negotiate our way through life. And they come up in all areas of life - think of how you make a cup of tea, for example. Yet when these habits and traditions enter into our ways of worship we call them 'sacred', and these form our religions. It seems to me that part of what being a Christian means - part of what coming to know the living Christ involves - is precisely that we become less concerned about the sacred, less concerned about being religious, just in order that we might concentrate on something which is even more important - the new life offered in Christ, which relativises all of our religious traditions and sacred arts. This is the process of redemption - the light of Christ entering into all the darkest corners of our own hearts as we slowly attain to the full stature of the risen Christ.

The thing is, in so many ways, Christianity is still a very young faith. We may have been going for some two thousand years, but we are really only just beginning to get to grips with what it means to say that this man Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God incarnate upon earth. We still have so far to go on our pilgrimage; we are still discovering the depths of faith. You could say that the faith is this young man outside the walls of a town.

Do I mean that the faith is dead? Hardly that. But I do wonder how far the church is in the position of the widow - disconnected from the future - and beginning to despair.

"Young man I say to you get up." It is through being addressed by the word of the living Word that the dead come to life, that the dead are revived.

A few years ago I was told a story about one of my predecessors as Rector of Mersea, Reg East, who was a rather Charismatic individual. He had a dream, or a vision, of the island of Mersea catching fire, and the fire spreading, which he understood to be a promise of revival. I have pondered this a lot, along with a comment from a colleague that an upsurge in musical creativity is often associated with a revival - and that we are presently experiencing just such an upsurge.

Is a revival coming? I really don't know. I do know that a revival is not something that is in our control; it's not something that we can achieve. We are not called to produce a revival; we are called to be faithful. In other words, to give right glory to God, the Son who is raised from the dead. That's what being orthodox literally means - right glory. That is our task, that is our witness and that is the only true revival we can seek - to praise the God who gives life to the dead. We must worship the risen Christ, and always be aware of the danger of being caught up in our religion instead.

I do believe that, as I said in my first ever sermon in this place, the tide of unbelief has turned, that the Spirit is abroad in this country, and that we will see a resurgence of belief. I interpret the renewed squeals on the part of the atheists as being an acknowledgment, deep from their bowels, that their argument has been lost. For so long it seemed unarguable that as you matured as a person, so you left behind the childish blandishments of sentimental faith. That lie has been nailed, and we are seeing the consequences rippling down into the wider culture.

But more than this: I am certain that God is doing something special in this place: here, in West Mersea. I reflect upon the remarkable gathering of strength that is occurring here - the associate priests, the retired clergy (with some more on the way), the musical team, the way in which vocations are prospering as with pastoral assistants and lay evangelists being called forward from our midst, the lay leadership in all its forms. I reflect on the fact that, according to Bob Jackson, we are one of the fastest growing churches in the country. We do have a remarkable story to tell in that regard.

I also reflect on Saturday morning when the PCC gave a unanimous endorsement of my proposals to rearrange the sanctuary. I wasn't expecting this - I had thought that the PCC would be split, and although I thought it would be in favour, I was expecting that the majority would be insufficient to carry the proposals through - for this sort of change, it is not enough for there to be a bare majority, there needs to be a much stronger sense of widespread consent. In the end there was unanimity - even amongst those members of the PCC who couldn't be present, four expressed a preference, and all four were in favour.

This was strangely humbling. I think in part it was humbling because there has been pain associated with the change, and undoubtedly - related to this and to other emphases that I have brought to my ministry here - some cannot participate in the process, and they choose to leave.

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me."

I am still digesting everything that happened on Saturday morning. It is as if there was an endorsement not simply from the PCC but from the Spirit also, saying not just 'keep going' but 'go further, do more!' There is a cost to this; the challenge I face is how to ensure that the old testament heart remains a heart of flesh and doesn't become a heart of stone.

And yet; the Lord is with me. I have felt very close to Him these past couple of months - to the extent that colleagues have remarked upon it. And He has given me the ability to see farther than most. This doesn't make me infallible (hardly that!!), it doesn't mean I won't get some things completely wrong, especially with regard to details. But I have this vision of what is possible. And I must pursue it. It's been creeping up on me slowly, and it isn't something I fully understand, or can even describe. I feel frightened, and nervous, and excited all at the same time. What I am convinced of is that something remarkable is happening here in West Mersea. My task, my prayer, is that I can work out what God is doing - and then get out of the way.

O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvellous things.
His right hand and his holy arm have gained him victory.
The Lord has made known his victory;
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.
He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.
Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who live in it.
Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy
at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.
(Psalm 98)

Address for West Mersea APCM, 2010

2010-03-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

It is my custom on these annual meeting Sundays to talk about the previous year and to look forward to the years to come. This year that task is more difficult than usual due to everything that followed on from my decision to ask ______ to retire from his position as Director of Music last May. Our community was wounded by what happened. We lost a good choir. Worst of all, relationships were ruptured. The aftermath took up a very great deal of our time last year, and what I would like to do with you this morning is briefly say something specific about what took place, and then, at much greater length, share with you some of my reflections as I have tried to think about it theologically, to consider what happened in the light of Christ and in terms of what makes for a Christian community.

The specific thing that I would like to say is to acknowledge the mistake that I made with regard to the process of what happened. By making my request to ____ in private I was acting outside of the knowledge of the wardens and church council. My reason for that I still believe to have been a good one: in order to achieve the changes that I was seeking, had I gone through the formal route, I would have needed to spell out my reasons for coming to the decision that I had. I felt that this would be pastorally disastrous. I wanted to find a route that would cause less pain. Sadly, when ____ chose to make my request public he closed that path and I ended up in precisely the place I had sought to avoid. Now, in acting initially outside of the due process I was aware that I was taking a risk. I understood that I was taking a risk on my own behalf. What I did not fully appreciate was that I was also taking a risk on behalf of the community. If I had followed the proper processes from the beginning then I believe that our church community as a whole would have been protected from some of the worst aspects of the power struggle that followed. The dispute would not have been presented as an issue deriving from my idiosyncrasies as Rector, it would rightly have been presented as a decision flowing from the church authorities in unity. I have apologised to the wardens and PCC, but I think I also owe you, the community gathered for our annual meeting, an apology for acting independently of the council. I'm sorry; I got it wrong.

However, following the correct procedure would not have prevented everything that followed. ____ would still have been asked to retire and, most probably, we would still have lost those elements of the choir who were not prepared to serve under someone else's direction. This, for me, remains the most painful element. I never wanted to lose the choir and, to repeat what I said in my letter to the congregation last May, I did not dismiss the choir. I miss those choristers who have chosen to leave, and I wish they would come back, and take part once again in offering their gifts to the glory of God. The door will always remain open to them.

~~~

Now I have, contrary to my normal practice, changed the set readings for today. As time goes on I believe less and less that there is such a thing as coincidence, and one of the elements of what happened last May that struck me forcefully was the gospel reading appointed for the Sunday when the situation blew up – the same reading that I have chosen for this morning, with which to begin my theological reflections.

Jesus says “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” Let me bring out two elements to ponder. The first is that pruning is painful. As we grow and develop over time, we develop attachments. We find a place where we are comfortable and we settle down and, as a result, we then resist any changes. However, God does not rest; he is always calling us to sing a new song. Preserving a tradition is never about keeping things exactly as they are, it is, rather, about expressing age old truths in a new context, keeping true to the underlying principles, but sitting lightly to any particular expression of them. When we are pruned, we are being called to surrender to God's process.

The second element to bring out is that Jesus describes the pruning happening to both fruitless branches and fruitful branches. All are pruned – it is our common lot. In other words, pruning is not a punishment for bad behaviour, it can, paradoxically, be the reward for good behaviour. That which grows is pruned, in order to encourage even more growth.

I believe that this language of pruning is how we are to understand what has happened to our choral tradition here in this place. My desire was to preserve the long term future of our choral tradition through reform and renewal – I sought evolution, not the revolt and revolution that in fact took place. Yet this is academic, for we are now in a starkly different place, with our choral plant greatly pruned back. This is the context in which we are called to affirm and nurture the new singing group. It is neither right nor fair to compare what went before to what we presently have – that is to compare a rose bush that had fully bloomed to raw new shoots. What I believe and trust is that, with time, and patience, and tender care, we will be surprised by what God has in store for us. I am immensely grateful to Peter Dollimore and to the singing group for all the work they are putting in, and I look forward to what they are able to share with us over the coming years.

Of course, the future will not be a repeat of the past. Although I very much hope to see a return of choral anthems at the 11am service, for example, we will not again have a robed choir sitting in the sanctuary area during communion services. I believe that the sanctuary was a contested space – that the physical cramping symbolised a spiritual problem – and that the re-ordering of the sanctuary now in train properly emphasises the altar-table, from which we receive our most essential spiritual medicine, the food for our pilgrimage.

~~~

Which brings me to the main substance of what I want to share with you this morning. There are other elements in the gospel reading which are worth emphasising, not least the emphasis upon Jesus's commands – for what are we here for? What is the common vocation of all the baptised?

At the end of Matthew's gospel the apostles are given the great commission. This is something that is, so it seems to me, as often misremembered as followed, so I'd like to read it out to you. Jesus says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Note, in particular, that Jesus does not command us to go out and convert the world to the gospel. Rather, we are told to make disciples, through baptism, teaching and obedience.

The church is called to make disciples, a task which is, of course, not separable from our common baptismal vocation to actually be disciples ourselves. I would like for us to have as our theme for the coming year the theme of discipleship. What does it mean to be a baptised person? What does it mean to be a community that takes the making of disciples seriously – a community that is serious about its own growth in faith and which takes seriously the need to disciple those new to the faith? Or, how can we obey what Jesus commands us in this morning's gospel – to love one another as he has loved us – so that we might be worthy to be called his friends; how can we bear fruit to the Father's glory, thereby showing that we truly are Christ's disciples?

When we are baptised, and we die to the world, we die to judgement and condemnation. We are then raised to the life of forgiveness. That is the occasion and the meaning of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Just as the Satan is the accuser in a law court, so too the right understanding of the Holy Spirit is that of a defender in a law court. To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be enabled, by grace, to set aside the drama of judging and being judged, to let the Holy Spirit handle all the accusations on our behalf. It is to accept the reality of our sin and at the same time the reality that through his death on the cross Jesus set us free from our sin. No longer do we have to worry ourselves with any concern over whether we are pure or not. No longer do we have to worry ourselves that our salvation depends upon how far we succeed in making ourselves morally acceptable. Let me tell you a secret. I am a sinner. Let me tell you another secret. So are you. So are we all. As Isaiah puts it, O woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips and I stand amongst a people of unclean lips!

I am not describing an easy path. I am describing what it means to take up our cross and follow Christ. It is much easier to find someone to blame for all our troubles, and join with others in rejecting them. To forgive sin is supernatural in the original and best sense, and it can only be achieved by grace. This is because sin hurts. Sin is not an abstract concept – it is very real. It is painful, it is costly, it draws blood both literal and metaphorical. But the remarkable thing is that when the path of forgiveness is chosen, and the burden of judging has been handed over to God above, then the soul is freed to love. In other words, although there is undoubted benefit to a reconciliation between two sinners, the principal benefit of forgiveness is to the one doing the forgiving, not to the one being forgiven. As St Paul writes, we are to “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” To live by forgiveness is what it means to be a Christian, to pass on forgiveness just as we have received forgiveness. To forgive is to be released from the Law, it is to claim what we say in our Lord's prayer: forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us. It is to claim our baptismal inheritance as God's beloved children. When we live by grace and forgiveness then we receive grace and forgiveness – now and for ever. When we live by judgement and condemnation then we receive judgement and condemnation – now and forever.

To be baptised is to find our unity and identity in a place other than our own virtues and values. We are the people who worship the one found outside a city wall, the one whom the whitewashed sepulchres repudiated and murdered. The glue that unites us is an acceptance that we each sin, that we can only be saved by unmerited grace, and a rejection of the path of judgement. If we are to abide in the Father's love then we are to love each other as Christ loved us. We have been forgiven; now we are to forgive each other. This is what we act out every time we share bread and wine together, this is how we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Sinners gathering round a table to share a meal, sinners distributing, sinners receiving, sinners setting aside their judgement of each other in order to receive a common mercy and forgiveness. Jesus said: “This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

~~~

So, in the light of what happened to our community last year how can we, over the coming year, pursue the path of discipleship – the path of becoming more mature disciples ourselves, and the path of helping to form the newly reborn into discipleship? How can we become a place where conflict is able to be resolved creatively, not destructively? How can we live up to the promises made at our own baptism? How can we, in short, become a place and a people distinguished by our capacity to forgive?

Well, it won't happen overnight.

To use an evangelical phrase of which I have become quite fond: what the Lord has laid on my heart is that what I need to learn, and, I trust, what we need to learn, can be found in the Rule of St Benedict. I plan to spend the next year's Learning Suppers exploring what he has to say. I also plan to restore the Saturday morning Learning Church sessions, so that people have a choice over whether to come at that time – the talk will be the same for each occasion.

St Benedict established his rule at a time when the Western Roman Empire was beginning to disintegrate, and his communities became cultural arks, transmitting classical civilisation down to us today. I am sure the truth that his Rule has enabled Christians to share a common life for over 1500 years has something of importance to say to us, not least because I believe I am right in saying that the original foundation for worship in this place was of a Benedictine character.

Just to give you a foretaste of what I plan to discuss, I would mention just two of the things that I believe St Benedict has to say to us. One is that he discusses the virtue of stabilitas, what we might call stickability. In Benedict's time monks often moved around from one monastery to another. Benedict taught that this made spiritual growth impossible. If we walk away when we encounter difficulty then we can never learn how to deal with sin properly; we remain scandalised and offended, and the truth of God's amazing grace is not in us. To abandon the community is to abandon Christ.

Another is that Benedict spends much time dealing with issues of authority and obedience. Not to put too fine a point on it, what our community is suffering from, both in terms of what happened last year and the ongoing consequences, is a power struggle, a rejection of the duly appointed authorities in this church. A properly Christian and disciplined understanding of the nature of power is essential for the health of our church community. After all, as St Paul writes in Romans, the Kingdom of God is not a matter of words but of power.

These are the sorts of things that I look forward to exploring with you over the coming year.

~~~

So. All in all it has been quite a year. I am not as innocent as I was this time last year. Yet I would also say that I have very rarely felt as close to and comforted by the Lord as I was last summer. I have a great deal for which to be thankful. I am very grateful for all the messages and gestures of support that I have received, often from surprising quarters, and most especially when the realm of Satan had me in their sights last month.

In truth, I think that we as a community are in a remarkable place and that God is very close to us. Although there are still unhealed wounds amongst us, and there remains work to be done in that regard, I am certain that God is guiding us to the place he has prepared for us to be. Remember that the Israelites had to journey through the desert for forty years before they were enabled to enter the promised land. Remember that Christ was not raised to glory before he was crucified. Remember that it can be a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God – and that is where I believe we are at the moment.

I would like to end by sharing something from St Paul's letter to the Romans, which is one of several passages that have given me comfort over the last ten months or so. I believe that it sums up all that needs to be said. “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed... And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose... What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died — more than that, who was raised to life — is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

May the God of all mercy and forgiveness, source of all our life-giving grace, journey with us and guide us, this coming year and always. Amen.

Gay Bishops

2010-03-03T09:14:00.000-08:00

My Learning Supper talk - basically an account of why it is possible to have a high view of Scripture and still find room for saying we need to change position on homosexuality.
Learning Church (Mersea) #19 - Gay Bishops

For those we love (All Souls, 2001)

2010-02-27T10:14:00.000-08:00

For those we love

Recently, I watched the BBC documentary series on the Planets and the solar system. The last programme in the series was called Destiny, and it concentrated on what will happen to the sun. In some four billion years, the sun will expand into a red giant – it will become so large that the surface of the Sun will come out as far as Venus, possibly even as far as earth. This blue-green oasis will become sterile, a billiard ball of rock floating in space, and all life on earth will be extinguished. Everything that has ever been on this earth will have gone. Then, a few more billion years after that, the Sun will explode, and the planets will be shattered, and the solar system will become an ocean of barren rocks, circling in cold, dark and empty space. This was a powerful and sobering image, an image of the nature of God’s world. For this is the way of creation: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die”. A time even for the Sun to die.

When faced with the reality of death, the fact that all things come to an end, we might be tempted by despair. Where has the meaning gone? Why has this person been taken from me? What is the point? It is true, death does make some things comparatively meaningless. On the wall over there on the South side of the church, is a stone with an inscription on it, which is reminiscent of Shelley’s poem ‘Ozymandias’. The inscription reads : Of carthage wall I was a stone, O mortal read with pity….

That inscription is a testament to the vanity, the vainglory of worldly ambition. As Jesus puts it, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”. If we give our hearts to the things of the world, then death will take them away from us, and grievous will be our parting from them. But the treasure that is laid up in heaven cannot be touched, for it is eternal, it is the very stuff of God.

Think of God like this. God is a master weaver. He is working on a loom, binding threads together, and creating a tapestry woven with golden thread. This golden thread is the stuff of love. When we love someone, we form a connection with them. This is what a loving relationship is: it is a golden thread that runs between people, a tie that binds. When we love each other, we produce this golden thread. And this is what God works with – this is the treasure that is laid up in heaven, the golden threads of our love for one another.

Now, we are here tonight because we love someone. We are here to remember them, and to pray for them. This is God’s work, for God’s work is the work of love, and in loving, we too participate in God’s work, and we do God’s work. We are taught that love is stronger than death, and so it is. For love never ends. The work of love does not stop with death, it continues on. When we pray for someone who has died, when we remember them in our hearts and continue to love them, then we are still making that golden thread which God needs to work with. And God doesn’t take much account of death. God views this world from eternity, from outside of time, and the boundaries of our lives – what seem to us to be something starting, and then something finishing – are to him the threads of his tapestry. Each thread has a certain length, yes, but from his point of view it is always there in front of him, a part of his work. And if we love, then we become part of God’s work, and so held before him in eternity. That is what I believe heaven is. When God gets up from his work, and he lifts the tapestry of his love up from the loom of his creation, he will consider the work of his hands. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”

I could not begin to try and imagine what sort of tapestry it is that God is producing – we are like Paul, “now I see dimly, then I shall see face to face” – but I do believe that it will be marvellous to behold. I believe this, because I believe that we have been given a foretaste in the events of Easter morning. When Jesus rose from the dead, the meaning of this world became clear, and the terrors of this world lost their sting. We, the church, the body of Christ, are formed by that one event. We live within it; we are the community of the resurrection, the risen body of Christ. All of Christianity is governed by that one, marvellous, miraculous morning, when the Son rose.

This is our hope, this is our faith, this is the God in whom we put our trust. The God who works on a scale and with an imagination that is far beyond what we can comprehend, besides which our consideration of the death of suns is as nothing. And yet, this is also a God who is engaged with us at the heart of our lives, in our most intimate private selves, in our joys and in our sorrows, in our celebrations and in our mourning, and above all in our love for those whose lives in this world have come to an end. A God who is here, now, working with our love as we remember and pray for those whom we love but see no longer. May they rest in peace and rise in glory.

Amen

Self accusation and repentance

2010-02-18T04:05:00.000-08:00

How often do you get asked 'what are you giving up for Lent'? It's a very individualistic question that only makes sense in a consumer culture. In previous centuries the entire community would have shared in a common fast (h/t Maggi). In many ways it would be both good and timely to go back to the future – there is a natural link with Transition towns and our necessary preparation for a time of scarce and expensive energy – but not this year.

This year I'm going to accept the individualism, but focus on individual repentance, which is the great theme of Ash Wednesday, Lent as a whole, and indeed, the ongoing Christian life.

I want to talk about five paths of repentance – taken from the great church father St John Chrysostom, the title meaning 'golden mouthed'

first path is the most important: self accusation. Psalm 32.5 “Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD "— and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”

Sometimes our sin is obvious – but then on those occasions, assuming that we are genuine in our faith, then so too will be our repentance, and we do not need advice for discerning the sin. We simply – simply! - need to be granted the courage to act upon our knowledge.

Yet more often our sins are hidden – the psalmist writes (19) “Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults” – we may not know of them, but we are still responsible for them – which is why, in the litany, we talk of our “sins of negligence and ignorance and our own deliberate sins”.

Is there a way to strengthen our ability to accuse ourselves? Actually there is, using something called the examen – it stems from the Ignation tradition, practised by Jesuits for 500 years. Jesuits are called to do this twice daily; a difficult discipline but a very useful technique. Perhaps it is something to begin once, and then do when possible. I imagine that over time, as more effort is invested in it, so too a greater return on that investment is given.

The examen is a particular form of prayer: get to a calm place; enter into the presence of God (assume that he is there); give thanks for gifts of the day; petition the Holy Spirit for assistance and the enabling of honesty; then review the day, seeking to discern the Spirit's promptings; finally bring all that has been learned to Jesus and seek his guidance on the way forward.

The heart of this is, as Chrysostom writes, to “Rouse your conscience to accuse you within your own house, lest it become your accuser before the judgment seat of the Lord.” Our conscience will lead us into the light. Yet we must also always have in mind St Paul's comment to the Corinthians, when he says 'my conscience is clear but that does not make me innocent. It is Christ who judges me'. In other words, we should never delude ourselves that we can attain innocence and perfection by our own efforts. We can only open ourselves up to the actions of grace upon us.

This first path of repentance is the most important. It is the heart of our soul-work, and it is the work of a lifetime. Some of our sins are incredibly deep-rooted, and often they are not the most obvious. For example, our culture tends to be obsessed with sexual sins (a la John Terry) but lust is the least of the deadly sins, pride is rightly the worst and is often the most hard to address. Christ tells us that some demons can only be driven out by prayer, but patient and caring conversation with a spiritual director, pastor or therapist can also be a great benefit.

Chrysostom outlines four other paths of repentance:

The second path is forgiveness. It is to pray sincerely the Lord's prayer 'forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.' This is a great spiritual law repeatedly affirmed by Christ: the measure that we give will be the measure that we receive; if we forgive our debtors our heavenly father will forgive our debts; judge not, lest ye be judged. As Paul writes in Ephesians, “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you.”

The third path “consists of prayer that is fervent, careful and comes from the heart” - it is the desire to seek God and the willingness to be guided by him.

The fourth path is “almsgiving, whose power is great and far-reaching.” Charity is a love which covers over a multitude of sins.

Finally, the fifth path, according to Chrysostom, is when “a man lives a modest, humble life, that, no less than the other things I have mentioned, takes sin away. Proof of this is the tax-collector who had no good deeds to mention, but offered his humility instead and was relieved of a heavy burden of sins.”

So these are five possible paths of repentance: self-accusation, forgiveness, prayer, charity and humility. In truth these are five aspects of the single path, which is the desire for Christ to become our sovereign in truth and not just in word.

What we do in this service – through the ashing marked on our foreheads – is an acting out of that desire to accept Christ as our Lord. For our faith is not bodiless – it is not just about what goes on in our minds – it has to be incarnational, that is, just as Jesus was not just a teacher but the word of God in human form, so too must our worship and our lives be not just about words but about deeds – the ash symbolising the inevitable end for all the human vanities and selfish conceits with which we so often become preoccupied and which distract us from the right path. As we receive the ash and the reminder of our death, let us set our minds on the things which are above, and the way of life opened up for us in Christ. May we each be enabled by grace to examine our lives in the light of Christ, to repent of our sins, and return to the living God. Amen

On women bishops

2010-02-16T08:16:00.001-08:00

Learning Church (Mersea) #15 - Women Bishops (Learning Supper)

Talk and discussion around women in the Church of England being consecrated as Bishops.

The future of the Church of England (2007)

2010-02-16T08:15:00.000-08:00

Learning Church (Mersea) #14 - The future of the Church of England

An exploration of what may happen to the Church of England as a result of the split in the Anglican Communion. More questions than answers.

Creationism and Global Warming

2010-02-16T08:10:00.001-08:00

A learning church talk, delivered when I was more persuaded of the scientific case for AGW than I am now.

Learning Church (Mersea) #13 - Creationism and global warming

Christian critique of creationist theology and its impact on the struggle against global warming, with particular reference to the Southern Baptist conference resolution of June 2007.

The use and abuse of 'Born Again' language

2010-02-16T08:09:00.001-08:00

A learning church talk on the language of being 'Born Again'.

Learning Church (Mersea) #12 - Shibboleth #3: unless you are born again

Discussion of boundary markers in the Christian church; New Perspective on Paul

The doctrine of Penal Substitution

2010-02-16T08:08:00.001-08:00

A Learning Church talk on Penal Substitution (I'm not in favour...)

Learning Church (Mersea) #11 - Penal Substitution - Shibboleth #2

Sola Scriptura

2010-02-16T08:07:00.000-08:00

A Learning Church talk on Sola Scriptura.

Learning Church (Mersea) #10 - Sola Scriptura

The Bread of Life (Talks on Eucharist)

2010-02-16T08:02:00.001-08:00

Scarborough Talk: audio and notes

2010-02-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

Audio:
Learning Church (Mersea) #16 - Scarborough talk part one (20 mins)

Learning Church (Mersea) #17 - Scarborough talk part two (33 mins)

Learning Church (Mersea) #18 - Scarborough talk part three (13 mins)

Notes for Scarborough talk, February 2010

How does faith fit with Transition Towns?
Or, more generally, what is the path for the faithful through this time of crisis?

A little about me
Rector of West Mersea benefice since 2003
Previously in DofE
Involved with Transition Island Mersea – first preached about it at Civic Service in 2007 to local Mayor and MP
twice featured in the Daily Mail!!

Mr Cohen
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions/Won't be nothing you can measure anymore/The blizzard, the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul// When they said REPENT (REPENT)...I wonder what they meant

Summarise Main thesis
The prophets – right worship, right relationship, else a mighty judgement coming
Merton: "The only thing that can save the world from complete moral collapse is a spiritual revolution. Christianity, by its very nature, demands such a revolution. If Christians would all live up to what they profess to believe, the revolution would happen." (From: Ascent to Truth)

Context
Limits to growth
Turmoil and choices
Dimensions of where we will be: between positive (sustainable) and Die-Off

The earth
To be managed? Or received as gift?

Some basic principles
God is creator, we are creatures
The earth belongs to God (Ps 24.1, Lev 25.23)
God is the first gardener (Gen 2.8)
In Christ the creation is renewed (Romans 8 vs Genesis 2)
The promised land is the vision

Core point: Earth travails are symptoms of more fundamental problem
“Therefore the land mourns…”
Examples: Hosea 4, Jeremiah 4
Link with sin
(Genesis 2: cursed is the ground because of you)
No separation between creature and creation
(that’s gnosticism)
technological hubris – problem not something to be 'fixed' by our power

Be faithful!
"Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into Heaven, it has been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that 'economic forces' automatically work for good and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that 'progress' is good, that it is good to be modern and up with the times. It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and defaults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of creation. For in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities and nations. He is a contradicter of the fundamental miracle of life. A part of the normal practice of his power is his willingness to destroy the world. He prays, he says, and churches everywhere compliantly pray with him. But he is praying to a God whose works he is prepared at any moment to destroy. What could be more wicked than that, or more mad?"
(Wendell Berry)

Spiritual sickness is the core
Church has the cure of souls
Need to talk about vices and virtues – like greed
Danger of sounding like right wing US – difference is in taking symptoms seriously
Allow God to have charge of the earth, else titanism and hubris

Being a Christian in this context: Revolution
“Christian belief cannot be adequately stated in today’s political terms, for no revolutionary belief can ever be stated in terms of the society which it subverts, and Christianity preaches the ultimate revolution.” (Herbert McCabe)

The nature of our spiritual work

Brueggemann
Royal consciousness – the world, the status quo
Prophetic imagination – the promised land, prophecy
Egypt(Babylon/Rome)/resistance/wilderness/ promised land

Tools
Idolatry (diagnosis)
Wrath (prognosis)
Eschatology/Kingdom life (treatment)

Idolatry
The first commandment comes first
Enabling life choices – what is it that we value
If living God is at centre, all life flourishes
Present world is shockingly vicious – not to be saved
What do we want to conserve? (slide rule)
Community resistance and fleshpots

Wrath
Bad thinking (Mr Robertson on Haiti)
Two Christian truths:
'wrath of God' refers to something very real, nature of creation – if we ignore maker's instructions then we suffer (putting hand in fire)
but also 'there is no wrath in God' (Julian of Norwich – potential patron saint, lived through the Black Death etc) – need to take Jesus with us when we read OT
Nature of God and catastrophe – Tower of Siloam

Eschatology
Living in the Kingdom – the end comes suddenly, therefore live as if it's about to come
Vision of the promised land – material abundance

The nature of community:
Transition Town process
Best game in town? - the only practical game in town
Movement of the Spirit: how are we called to love our neighbours today?
Transition today = slavery for Wilberforce
What we choose now will last for a long time

Distinctive and essential input from Christians
Is Transition attractive to Christians because it offers what the church does not?
Sense of meaning and purpose and community and relevance
But ours is the larger story
The most important thing that we can contribute is a holy community

Hauerwas quote on discipleship: “We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God’s kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is the formation of people who see clearly the cost of discipleship and are willing to pay the price.” (From 'Resident Aliens')

Individual choices?
Individualism is part of the problem (= more debt to get out of debt)
Recognise letting go and submitting to God
The first commandment comes first
Making community stronger/ ego weaker

Revolution 2

"If Christianity is to prove itself in open rebellion against the standards of the materialist society in which it is fighting for survival, Christians must show more definite signs of that agere contra, that positive 'resistance', which is the heart of the Christian ascetic 'revolution'. The true knowledge of God can be bought only at the price of this resistance." (Merton)

Maintain discipline
10 commandments define a community
Not individual choice, but 'we the people'
Cannot bear the burden ourselves – cult of romantic heroism

Call to a new monasticism
MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1980, my emphasis): “It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead – often not recognizing fully what they were doing—was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point. What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict.”

Pledges
Prayer foundation for everything else, single most important work we do

"If the salvation of society depends, in the long run, on the moral and spiritual health of individuals, the subject of contemplation becomes a vastly important one, since contemplation is one of the indications of spiritual maturity. It is closely allied to sanctity. You cannot save the world merely with a system. You cannot have peace without charity. You cannot have order without saints." (Merton)

Worship, esp New Covenant, Eucharist = mending of creation
Simplicity, make room for God and the variety of human life
Quality not quantity, abandon language of 'growth' (=cancer)
Share, striving against each other is recipe for mutual destruction
Choose the human option, be the creatures within creation God intended

Walking in the wilderness – much of our civilisation will pass away – “but I have seen the promised land” - John 10.10

Could be wrong – but what is of God will prosper - Jeremiah 29.11

Be a clown for Christ

2010-02-11T10:03:00.000-08:00

(The notes for my Easter sermon in which, at the end, I put on a wig and red nose and gave the congregation lots of balloons. Inspired by a post on Ben Myers' blog.)

Easter 2008
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

we've just come through three days -
maundy, vocation, life, Jesus who he was and is
friday, voice of world, jesus saves
sunday - voice of God, vindication, do not be afraid

This is the great Easter celebration - made more special by baptism of young Max - Easter is the very best time of year to be baptised - most ancient practice
wonder what he will grow up to be - once upon a time, a long long time ago, in the days before playstations and wiis there were stories about little boys wanting to run away from home and join the circus - don't hear that so often today, but there is something in that appeal that I think is rather important

message today is that we need to become like a travelling circus - the message of the cross is foolishness, today we are to be fools for Christ - for Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

Consider tightrope walkers; trapeze artists; the man who sticks his head into the mouth of a lion

all death defying - lives shown that are not constrained by the fear of death

the fear of death shapes us in so many ways - distorts our lives - prevents us from hearing our vocation

vocation - complete bliss and wonder
world - prevents us achieving vocation
jesus takes world on, world does worst on Good Friday
easter is God vindicating Jesus -

"DO NOT BE AFRAID" - you can pursue your vocation with confidence - you can be like the lion tamer sticking his head between the jaws; you can be the ones swinging on a trapeze or walking the tightrope - the message of Easter is that these things are possible

to be Christian is to live death defying lives - not all called to the high wire - are called to live differently - not to be caught up in the accumulation of wealth - not to be caught up in false glamour

what Christian life is - what Max is to be baptised into - intention for him to have full and wonderful and abundant life - not to have a life distorted by worldliness

In an insane world the sane person is called mad - we are to be the clowns for Christ - now you can each have a balloon to remind you of the need to be foolish - to follow your vocation wherever it leads, to not be afraid of all the obstacles that the world can put in your way - to rejoice that today we are set free

For Christ is Risen, Alleluia

Ministry of Deliverance (1): Initial pastoral advice for clergy

2010-02-10T00:18:00.000-08:00

This is from a talk I gave to year 3 curates yesterday:

PASTORAL CARE
For all who are involved with incidents in the parish when Healing & Deliverance ministry seems appropriate.

Deliverance Ministry is first and foremost a pastoral ministry – it is about helping the weak and vulnerable. We are called to the cure of souls - deliverance ministry is the equivalent of acute care, as contrasted with the 'general practice' of normal parish work. NB This can include those who are not resting in peace
The majority of the ministry can be achieved simply by listening and taking the problem seriously, however outlandish the circumstances seem to be. Often the greater part of the distress experienced by someone is not due to the strange phenomena themselves but rather the fear, either that they are losing their grip on sanity, or, worse, that other people will think that they are. Cultivate the ability not to be shocked: don’t be rushed, stay calm – this should help others to do so too!
Have 1 or 2 mature Christians to work with you – it is wise that one is the opposite sex to yourself.
Prepare yourselves in prayer before you meet anyone, asking for God’s protection (St Patrick's Breastplate). This is a ministry where it can be very costly to not be in a state of grace.

~~

Get some background information and try to make some initial diagnosis in your own mind. Make notes where possible.
Ask the question (to yourself): who is suffering here?
Ask the questions (to others): is anyone having a difficult time at the moment? There is often a particular 'trigger' for strange phenomena.
LISTEN! Open up your awareness; try to get a sense for a) the people involved, and b) the "atmospherics"
In many ways what we do in this ministry is replace a 'toxic story' that is harming people with the healthy story of the gospel, leading to their flourishing.
Normally it will be helpful to pray with those who you are helping, often better to use specific prayers, some can be found in Common Worship Pastoral services.

~~

Be cautious if there appears to be a mental health problem, it would be helpful to gain some rudimentary understanding of mental illness; contact the area adviser if you want to discuss it, we are always at the end of the telephone line, or e-mail.
Always discuss what you think is necessary with the person and get their consent to proceed.
Liturgy can be powerfully effective. Do not scorn the power of 'props', especially the sign of the cross, on person or in place, or the liberal application of Holy Water. You have the authority as ordained ministers to act; often a blessing of the home or celebrating communion in a home or place of work is sufficient to prevent the phenomena recurring. The area adviser will help if you feel you need support – or other local or more experienced clergy.
NB Avoid and discourage all publicity. Satan's realm is gossip, and the media is an institutionalised purveyor of gossip, it is unlikely in the extreme that publicity will help this pastoral work.

(Part 2 will be a sketch of the metaphysics of this ministry)

This night all Gods die (a Christmas sermon)

2010-02-07T07:07:00.001-08:00

This will be a sign to you: a baby lying in a manger

I'd like to begin my remarks tonight by talking about the end of the world, the twilight of the gods, gotterdammerung, ragnarok, armageddon - the day when Tesco has nothing left on its shelves - and what I want to say to you on this magical night is: "this night all gods die"

For what do we think of when we think of the gods? The traditional mythical portrayal is normally of heroic figures, of Zeus and Apollo, or Odin and Thor - characters that are larger than life, filled with mighty power and special skills, who can interact with mortals but only from a position of great superiority

So why might I claim that gods such as these die on a night such as this? Simply because, for a Christian, here is where the real God, the one, true, living God, God with a capital G, can be found - and can be found, moreover, in the form of a small human baby.

This will be a sign to you: a baby lying in a manger.

A baby who is not invulnerable and filled with amazing strength; this baby is an especially vulnerable one, homeless, a refugee, warmed by the breath of the animals as he struggles into life in their feeding tray - and remember, at the end of this story, this god gets executed like a common criminal

we cannot believe in both sorts of gods - it is either one or the other - so we can either believe in gods geared around strength and power and victories, a celestial form of "my dad is bigger than your dad" - or else we can believe in a god that can be discovered in what is weak, what is not respectable, what can so easily be ignored by all the people well fed, warm and satisfied in the inn.

this will be a sign to you: a baby lying in a manger

or perhaps there is room to disbelieve in both? to disbelieve in all the Greek gods, and the Norse gods, and the Celtic gods and so on - and then, as some atheists like to put it, to not believe in just one more? I don't believe that's actually a possibility, for let me ask the question: what are the priorities around which we build our lives? for that is really what the gods are - they embody and personify our values, they represent those things for which we strive, they are what guide our choices day by day, as slowly but surely we either build a prison for our souls, or a home in which to live - and everyone, even atheists, has priorities in their life

for all that happens, when people are deceived into thinking they don't worship any gods is that other things, things that we don't normally recognise as being gods take the place of God, and these become the objects, the idols, around which lives are built, and lives are then destroyed. After all, possibly the best example we have seen, this year, of a god being toppled is our financial system, what Jesus called Mammon - and we're all vulnerable to that temptation, to look to the accumulation of wealth to provide security, and respect, and comfort, and happiness - it doesn't of course, and in a time such as this, when that particular god has toppled to the floor, the emptiness of that worship is revealed for all to see

such gods are not the one, true living God - for the hallmark of the true and living God is that worshipping Him leads to life, not death; it leads to peace in our hearts, not strife in our souls; it allows us to flourish as fully human beings, to know and become who we truly are, and not simply to be pieces chewed up and spat out by an unthinking and uncaring system

how then, if tonight is the night when all gods die, how can we learn to listen to that living God? Well let us pay attention once again, to that small and vulnerable baby, the one that can be pushed aside so easily.

This will be a sign to you: a baby lying in a manger.

Let me suggest that the living God speaks his Word in just the same way; he will not normally light up the sky in bright neon to tell us what to do; no, his is a quiet voice, one that is easily pushed aside or shouted down by all the voices that fill our heads - of friends, of family, of society, of economic necessity - but this quiet, easily pushed aside voice - this voice is persistent, this voice will never leave us, for this voice leads to life, and the eternal desire of this voice is to lead us into abundant life

this voice speaks a word to us, a word which was there in the beginning, when we were first thought of, and a word through which we ourselves were made - it is a voice which already knows the fullest truths about us, more truths than we are even prepared to admit to ourselves in our most private moments - and which speaks a word of love in just those places, at just those times

if we can but listen to that voice, if we can but leave the comfort of the inn, and go to be in the stable, with the shepherds and the wise men, and the donkey and the ox, then we too can hear this voice which leads to life - for that is what is at stake in this story of the death of the gods, and the birth of the living God

this will be a sign to you: a baby lying in a manger.

may each of us hear this voice of the living God, so that Christ can be born in our hearts, this Christmas time, and for ever more. Amen.

Living the language of love

2010-02-07T07:05:00.002-08:00

Have you decided to give something up for Lent? Imagine giving up chocolate - then going to a meal with someone - and then the after dinner mints get passed around - and the host says "go on, just one, doesn't make much difference...." Your host is Satan!! At least, that's the conclusion I draw from this morning's gospel (Mk 8.31-end)

What we have here is an example of social pressure - and this is Satan, for this is what Jesus is resisting. Consider that Satan is the accuser, the prosecuting lawyer in a court case; he is also described as being the prince of this world, you could say that he holds sway over the court of public opinion. And sometimes the pressures of public opinion can be severe - if you stick out then the finger will point at you; it can be much safer to go with the flow and keep your head down. Jesus criticises Peter for confusing the things of God and the things of man - it is the latter where the Satan holds sway.

Social pressure has ways of disguising itself, and is often couched in the language of 'should' and 'ought' (and even 'you should be ashamed of yourself'). I want to suggest that we need to exercise a Godly suspicion when this language is used. Sometimes what is being recommended with a should or an ought is of God - eg, 'you should pray more' - but sometimes it isn't. I'd like to propose a way of discriminating between when the 'shoulds' are good, and when they are otherwise. The simple question is: can the 'should' thought be rephrased in terms of the great commandments?

The first and greatest commandment is to love God, to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength. This comes first and is the most important command. I see it as intimately bound up with vocation, the sense of who we are before God and who God is calling us to become.

And the second command is alike, namely this: we must love our neighbours as ourselves; in other words we are called to share the love of god with each other, to look after each other and care for each other, to nurture each other and forgive each other - so that all might enjoy the life that God intends for us.

Let me give you two examples which may make things clearer. Imagine a musician, say a teenager, being exhorted to practice his instrument by his parents. Perhaps it was an expensive instrument and the parents say 'we've spent so much on your music lessons you should be doing more with it'. Contrast this with the thought: 'I have a gift from God and it fills me with joy to play my instrument - I am more myself when I am playing than when I'm not'. Both forms of language might lead to the teenager playing the instrument, but only one is inspired by love.

On the latest U2 album there is a marvellous song which contains the words (it's effectively a song of praise addressed to God) "I was born to sing for you". When Bono is singing that he is expressing his vocation, he is being the person God has called him to be. My point is that if we can't rephrase the 'should' into something which inspires and enables life then it is just social pressure and is Satanic.

A second example: imagine a middle daughter who has taken on the principal burden of caring for an elderly aunt despite having other siblings equally connected. And the request comes in to go and visit to do her shopping. Is this a 'should'? "You ought to go and do it because if you don't nobody else will"? Or is it actually "I love my aunt Nellie, I enjoy seeing her and I don't want her to experience hardship." If we can rephrase the 'ought' into something that allows us to experience the joy of loving someone else, the joy of caring for someone else, enabling them to life and to flourish - then it is godly; but if not, it is just social pressure, and, worse, it opens up scope for being abused.

So this is the challenge: to rephrase 'should' and 'ought' into the language of love. In part it is about examining our motivations: am I pursuing this course of action because it is loving, or am I simply giving in to being pestered? or to gain approval? or because I'm afraid of disapproval? The core questions we must explore are: is this enabling me to become the person that God is loving me into being? Is this enabling me to share the love of God with someone that I love? and, if we're really saintly - can the boundaries of my loving be broken down just a little bit more so that I can love more widely than I have done as yet...?

Which brings us back to Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. I love this little verse 'he spoke plainly about this.' It's a strange thing to have in a written text which has just said pretty clearly what Jesus was saying. The passage only makes sense if you think of it as something spoken and written down; think of Peter sharing his memories with Mark and emphasising 'he spoke plainly about this'.

In the story - and it is something I'm sure Peter would have remembered painfully clearly - Peter is voicing social disapproval, but why is he doing this? Because to be killed by the authorities would, in worldly terms, show that Jesus was not from God - "cursed be he who hangs from the tree" (Deut). It would have been against Scripture!! We need to be aware that sometimes even the Bible can be used for worldly purposes, as it was, for example, when it was used by the Southern states to defend the institution of slavery. We need to read the Bible with the Holy Spirit by our side, and remember that the Holy Spirit is the defence counsel in the law case, he is there to defend us and we can leave the arguments about social pressure to him. If we are following God then the Spirit will be with us, and we don't have to worry about defending ourselves in terms of public opinion.

Which must have been a comfort to Christ at this time, when he was preparing to take up his cross - and what does the cross symbolise, this tree upon which he was hung that, in Paul's words, allowed Christ to become a curse for us? What does it mean for us to take up our cross? It means that, if we follow those two commands, if we abandon the language of 'should' and 'ought' and start to live the language of love; if we allow the love of God to shape us and enable us to share that love in the world - then we will come into conflict with the world. We will become light shining in the darkness and those that cling to the darkness will resist. Then, the form that the resistance to us takes, when we are pursuing the will of God in our lives, that is the shape of our cross. And we must each take up our own cross in this life.

Sometimes clinging to the darkness can seem the most righteous thing: it is what we should be doing, it is what we ought to be doing. From our reading, "the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law", these were not rabidly evil people, as if, were we only to look clearly, we'd see the horns sprouting out of their heads. They were people like us; perhaps I should say they were people just like me, put into a position of religious authority and given responsibility for keeping the system going. I don't doubt that, at least for most of them, they felt that in opposing Jesus they were doing the right thing; "it is expedient that one man should die for the people".

Yet Jesus had this specific vocation, this claim upon him from the Father, which he never allowed to break. That is why he was without sin - sin is simply anything which breaks our relationship with the father, anything which disrupts our obedience to the first commandment - and Jesus never allowed that relationship to be broken. Jesus was true to his vocation to the bitter end. He could have gained the whole world, but the world would not have been enough. In the same way, each time that we give in to social pressure we lose a little bit of our souls - and what does it profit us if we gain the whole world but lose our own souls?

Jesus came to set us free, to become children of God. What this means is that we allow God to take charge of our lives, that we live as his children, as heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ. Then, if we walk in his path, we take up our cross and follow him - then we can share in his ultimate victory, and enjoy a risen life with Him.

On forgiveness

2010-02-07T07:05:00.001-08:00

Texts: Mark 8.27-end, James 3.1-12

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me... will save it.”

What does it mean for us to take up our cross and follow Christ? Let's explore the context for the teaching: Peter has just confessed Jesus as the Messiah. One might think that this was a commendable action – indeed, in the parallel passage to this in Matthew's gospel, this is where Jesus says 'on this rock' he will build his church.

Yet instantly, Jesus begins to teach the disciples what being the Messiah means, and Peter takes him to one side and says 'surely this must not happen to you' – this is what leads to Jesus' strong words. What has happened is that Peter has confused his understanding of the Messiah with God's understanding of the Messiah. Specifically, he has confused the things of men with the things of God.

What are these things of men being referred to? Well, think about what the cross represents. We have become more accustomed to it, and so the sense of shock associated with a crucifixion has been lost. The cross was not simply the death penalty, not just an execution. That would be bad enough, and it would express the condemnation of the community. No, the point about crucifixion was that it was intended to be thoroughly humiliating as well as excruciating painful, it was meant to represent the absolute stripping away of any honour or self-respect. We still find this difficult to address completely – for example, Jesus was almost certainly entirely naked on the cross, as that would have completed the process of humiliation – and yet, as with our cross here, Jesus' still has some modesty preserved. Crucifixion is the absolute repudiation of a person by society. It was the way in which society chose to obliterate a person, to leave nothing left.

This is what is meant by 'the things of men' – for the things of men are the realm of social approval. Peter wants Jesus to be popular, to be welcomed and accepted. Jesus knows that this is not his path, that he must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed. In order for the way of God to be established, the difference between God's way and the human way must be made absolutely explicit – Jesus will have to be lifted up and turned into an object of scorn and derision. Only in this way will it become possible for people to be set free from that social realm.

For the social realm is a trap. Our reading from the Epistle of James is highly relevant to this. Beginning with the rather frightening teaching – for me that is – that 'we who teach will be judged more strictly', James goes on to talk about the evil of gossip, of the immense harm that an unbridled tongue can do to both an individual and to a community at large. 'Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body.' One might say that the realm of the tongue is precisely that social realm which Jesus is trying to get us to move away from. By this I mean anything to do with social approval; anything to do with social currency, The Biblical teaching about gossip is not that the problem with gossip is that it is untrue. Gossip can be perfectly true and still be evil. Gossip is any conversation that has as its main purpose an evaluation of social status, a sharing of scandal or celebrity, any conversation about who is up and who is down, who is in and who is out – these are the things which the world is concerned with, and these are the things which we are not to be concerned with.

So, given this, what does it mean for us to take up our cross? I am very fond of this pithy summary of the gospel: “if you don't love, you die, if you do love they'll kill you.” The cross is different for each and every one of us, but whatever form the cross takes for each of us, it will have one thing in common. Our cross will be whatever form social pressure takes when we embark upon the way of love. If we seek to follow Jesus, the one who was despised and rejected by the great and the good then we can expect that in our turn, whatever our particular context is, we too will be despised and rejected by the great and the good. It is unlikely in this country that people will actually try to kill us for being a Christian, but the level of social hostility is now quite strong and likely to get stronger for quite some time.

So that is our cross. How then can we respond to this social pressure? What are we to do when we are faced, as Jesus was, with people who are sincere and well-intentioned and who, for the good of the community, see that it is right for one man to die for the people?

We are, of course, to do as Jesus did. Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. It is forgiveness that overcomes the things of men, and how is this? Well, let us go back to consider what the things of men are. It is everything to do with social approval, social respectability. In particular – and this was absolutely true in the culture of Jesus' time – what we have here is the whole concept of 'face', as in 'saving face'. In this context, think what the way of forgiveness means – it is an abandonment of any desire to save face. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all sorts of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

In other words, we must abandon any sense that we need to defend a position of social respectability. Just abandon it, give it up. It means nothing to God, let it mean nothing to us. And so any damage to that social position can and must be forgiven. For forgiveness is the way of God over and against, in opposition to, the things of men. Forgiveness says that there are more important things in human relationships than social respectability, and the church as a community is to be marked out against the wider society by being the community that models forgiveness as the way to relate to each other. This is why it is so essential to hold on tight to the teaching that we are all sinners. If we are all sinners then none of us have any face to save. We are each and every one a mess, deserving to be scorned. We have no rights in the situation.

All we have is the one thing that I haven't mentioned so far. Jesus says that he must be despised and rejected and killed – but he also says that he must, after three days, rise again. The only grounds that we have for walking in the path of forgiveness, the only resource and strength that can sustain us and enable us to carry our cross, is the knowledge that we have been forgiven first. That whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us, to set us free from this process. It is the resurrection, and it is only the resurrection, that feeds us with the Holy Spirit, our counsellor and defender, the one who meets and overcomes all the accusations levelled against us.

May we each be given the grace and confidence to walk in the light of the resurrection, abandoning the snares of social respectability, finding instead the way of forgiveness, which leads us into eternal life – the life for which our Lord Jesus Christ took up his cross, and suffered and died... that we might live. Amen.

Haiti and suffering

2010-02-07T07:04:00.001-08:00

This is what I would have preached this morning, if I had been well enough to get there! Essentially the same as something I preached following the tsunami five years ago.
At my Bible Group on Friday afternoon the question came up about the suffering in Haiti: how can God let such things happen? It now looks as if some 200,000 people will have lost their lives in the disaster. But the scale of this disaster doesn't really affect the underlying question. I think that Fyodor Dostoyevsky framed the question well in the nineteenth century, when, in his novel The Brothers Karamazov, he has one character say that there is nothing which can justify the suffering of one innocent child. I think that is right. There is no greater tragedy than that which can happen to one person, to one family. What happened in Haiti is not a greater challenge to belief in a good God than a beloved child getting cancer, for example.

Formally the problem looks like this - we have four statements:

P1: God is omniscient - he knows everything

P2: God is omnipotent - he can do anything

P3: God does not desire suffering - he is good

P4: There is suffering

It is incoherent to assert all of P1 - P4.

Now, as you might imagine, there are lots of ways in which religious people have responded to the problem, most of which take the form of denying one or more of P1-P4. I have some sympathies with all of those, in other words, I think that all of P1-P4 are complex truths which need to be broken down, and that much of the immediate force of the problem is lessened when they are broken down. But I don't think that this answers the real force behind the question, which I think is much more direct and relevant than most philosophical questions. As I see it the problem of evil is much more about how to live in the face of suffering, rather than being an intellectual nut to crack. When you are faced with trauma, all the philosophy in the world means nothing.

Some years ago I took the funeral of a 33 year old man who had died in tragic and unclear circumstances. There was some suggestion that drugs were involved, but there were no clear answers. In talking to the parents, the father talked about how he had built a swimming pool in the garden for his son to play in, but that now his son was dead, he said "was it worth it?" In other words, the real problem of evil is one about the meaning of the suffering that we experience. In my ministry so far, I've discovered that those who can place some sort of interpretation on what they experience are far better able to cope with tragedy than those without some sort of guiding framework; in particular, those who lack any sort of religious faith can be totally overwhelmed by an experience such as this.

I think when any of us are faced with an overwhelming experience of suffering, there is a profound existential choice that is made - and all of the religious and philosophical arguments only come in to play after that choice has been made. The choice is about whether life is meaningful or not, and it is that choice which generates the various resources needed in order to live. In other words, when the problem of evil becomes one that is of vital importance to resolve - because life has just whacked you over the head with something awful - then you are forced into determining your own attitude.

If you resolve that life is meaningful, then you carry on building your life around whatever it is that you value, and you say that those things which you value are sustainable in the face of evidence to the contrary (the suffering, the logical problems etc). And I would say that as soon as you start to talk about those things which you value in this context, you are inescapably resorting to religious language. ‘To believe in God IS to see that life has meaning’ (Wittgenstein)

If, on the other hand, you resolve that life isn't meaningful then - I would argue - something essential for a good life is taken away, and you are left with suicide in various different forms, some of which don't immediately lead to a physical death. And religious language is meaningless.

For me, when I am faced with the logical arguments about the problem of evil (much the strongest arguments against the existence of a loving creator) I am content for there to be an irreducible element of mystery about it, and to say that although I can't answer the problem now to my own intellectual satisfaction, I believe that there is an answer. This is because I see the alternative as unliveable - I could not raise a family, and enjoy that raising, if I didn't experience it as 'worth it', whatever the future might hold for me or for them. In other words, my answer to the problem is a choice about how I live, not a belief that I hold in my mind.

And the way in which I think about this issue is through the language of cross and resurrection. The cross represents the way of this world, and the nature of our suffering. And the resurrection represents our hope that one day it will make sense. For in Christ we have received a promise, a promise of eternal life for all who turn to Him. When we are confronted with pain that we don’t understand, when we feel cheated by life, we still have a choice. We can say that life is meaningless, that it doesn’t make sense, and reject what God has given to us. But if we do that, we never move away from the cross, and we never get to Easter morning. For the alternative is to say, although I don’t understand how this can make sense, I trust that God is in charge, that He loves us, and that nothing and no-one who is truly loved is ever lost. That somehow our brokenness will find a place in God’s design. That is our hope, that is our faith, that is the God in whom we put our trust. May God guide us all through the valley of the shadow of death, and may his goodness and mercy cover us all today and for ever more. Amen.

Women in the Episcopate (Learning Supper talk)

2010-02-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

This is a recording of my talk to the Learning Supper last week on Women Bishops (I accept that's probably not grammatically correct, but it is conventional). The audio quality is a bit crackly - that's because I had to drastically compress the file (one hour long) in order to make it uploadable to gabcast.

I wouldn't have thought that there is anything new here for people who are familiar with the debate.

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Calming the Storm (Luke 8.22-25)

2010-02-07T06:49:00.000-08:00

In our gospel lesson this morning we have the familiar story of our Lord calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee. I want to pick out three things from the story that I believe are worth pondering.

The first: the story is told as evidence of Jesus' capacity as the Son of God. Consider some passages from the psalms -
psalm 65 'You answer us with awesome deeds of righteousness, / O God our Savior,/ the hope of all the ends of the earth/ and of the farthest seas, / who formed the mountains by your power,/ having armed yourself with strength, / who stilled the roaring of the seas,/ the roaring of their waves,/ and the turmoil of the nations.”
or from psalm 89 “O LORD God Almighty, who is like you? / You are mighty, O LORD, and your faithfulness surrounds you. / You rule over the surging sea;/ when its waves mount up, you still them.”
or, most fitting of all, from psalm 107: “Others went out on the sea in ships; they were merchants on the mighty waters. They saw the works of the LORD, his wonderful deeds in the deep. For he spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves. They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths; in their peril their courage melted away. They reeled and staggered like drunken men; they were at their wits' end. Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven.”

The sea, for the Ancient Hebrews, represented the forces of chaos that threatened to overwhelm civilisation – this is why, in the vision of the end in the Book of Revelation, 'the sea will be no more' – in other words, there will be no more chaos, everything will be rightly ordered. So when Jesus calms the storm he is demonstrating his divinity, his capacity to act as God – no wonder the disciples are amazed!

OK, the second point. No doubt it might sometimes apply to us literally, that we want God to still the waters for us, but I think most often this passage can be understood symbolically. That is, if you are anything like me, then there are times when we feel as if all the forces around us are too much for us, that we are about to be overwhelmed, to have our fragile vessels swamped with water, that we will no longer be able to cope with all that is going on, that we will go under, we will sink and we will drown. Well, in those situations, we need to do what the disciples do: turn to Jesus. When the disciples give their attention to the waters of chaos, then their fear increases. When the attention turns to Jesus, then the situation is resolved. I'm sure you're familiar with that way of looking at things.

Well, what I want to do for my third point is undermine that a little. You see, it occurs to me to ponder why Jesus is cross with the disciples. It is as if, when we do turn to Jesus in our distress, he is annoyed – “where is your faith?” he says. This seems rather odd – surely the disciples were demonstrating their faith when they sought out Jesus to rescue them; clearly, to use the phrase, they were affirming Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour? Why then, is Jesus annoyed?

Well, I don't think it was simply that his sleep was disturbed, as parents are when the children come in at five o'clock and announce cheerfully 'it's morning time!' No, I think it is more that Jesus believes that we are more capable than we allow ourselves to be. Jesus is asleep in the boat – in other words, he had trust in the disciples to take him safely to the other side. I think what annoyed Jesus was that the disciples weren't exercising their own responsibility. This might simply be to do with their ability as sailors, but I suspect that it is more than that. Consider those stunning words in John's gospel when Jesus says “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

In other words, I believe that one of the messages we are to take from this passage is that we have the capacity within ourselves, as believers in Christ, as members of his body, to still the waters. This might take different forms. It may be an exercise of authority, rebuking the chaos which threatens us. It may mean recognising that those things which seem to threaten us are really not important at all, that we “can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same”. It might even mean that we can perform signs and wonders as evidence that the Kingdom is close at hand.

When we are assailed by chaos on all sides, when the water seems to be rising and we seem to be sinking, we are indeed able to turn to Christ and seek safety with him, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. Yet that runs the risk of a rebuke from our Lord – o ye of little faith! May God grant us the gift of abundant faith, that we might sail our vessels safely, and bear Christ forward in our lives. Amen