We live as ‘the connected generation’ and we live as Christians.
When we make our communion we network with all those in this Church and with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.
It’s great to be just a small part of such a wonderful whole that’s going to be revealed in its fullness beyond death. It’s great to have faith in the Risen Lord who connects us with one another, with the whole church and the risen Christ’s transformation of the cosmos.
The great priest and thinker Teilhard de Chardin reflected on the passages in scripture than speak of all things being brought together in the risen Christ. He looked for signs of this happening and saw them in a pathway of creation moving from inanimate being to the animation which is life, then from life to self-consciousness as in human beings made in God’s image. He saw that the next obvious stage would be the connecting up of human consciousness globally, which we now see in the internet.
Teilhard de Chardin prophesied almost a century ago the connecting up of conscious beings into the collective consciousness we call the World Wide Web. The picture that came out of his thought and prayer is of the whole cosmos resembling a cone with the movements within it converging upon Jesus as the apex or omega point. Our individual futures, that of the universal church and the whole created order rests in Jesus and is to end in Jesus.
This is the ultimate vision of what it is to ‘be connected’ and to be Christian and it is based on the truth of Christ underlined to us year by year in the Easter season.
The internet and the growth of high speed electronic communication seems to me, to be part of a God planned connecting, but, it has a great downside which I hint at in this month’s P&P Rector’s Letter about the lack of space in lives.
Electronic communications have facilitated ever tighter personal and work schedules that seem to be squeezing out family and village engagement, though of course they can and do serve these. The great flow of e mails I’m being copied into about the Jubilee Village Day on Monday 4th June is one indicator. Hopefully we’ll all be the richer for that extraordinary flow of e mails! Nevertheless there seem to be people living in the village deprived of time to stand and stare which is harsh for them and for us. Villages lose heart when people haven't time for one another.
Connecting is different nowadays. Half of teenagers will send 30 texts today, some of them in their sleep. The internet is officially an addiction so that 73% of 13-17 year olds say they couldn’t stop going online even if they wanted to. They know ‘e-anxiety’, the feeling that comes on as soon as you’re unable to check your email or take a look on Facebook. How many of your children or grandchildren will sit with you this Sunday lunchtime with their phone on the table?
Of course they’re only doing what human beings have always done – polyphasing, keeping in with different networks, only simultaneously – simultaneously, there’s the rub. You can’t be with someone truly if you’re on the phone as well!
To bring ourselves back to the sorts of connecting that gel with the Christian vision, that rests and ends in Jesus, we need to be reminded about the nature of friendship and how it is rooted in friends being fully present to one another in space as well as time. Living in a village, worshipping at a parish Church, provides the opportunity for making lifelong friendships through being regularly present to one another.
You can have friends on Facebook – I have and I tweet them – but the friends that really matter are those you’ve lived close to over time. Through the common life of village and church we build friends who can help rub off our rough corners and make us better instruments of bringing all things together in Christ.
Friendship’s a spiritual reality. We see our inner selves, as if in a mirror, through our friends, with their honesty about us, something we can best bear from a friend.
Friendship holds us to principle. It’s also empowering to know someone who’ll be on your side through thick and thin.
I still engage in friendships made at public school fifty years ago. I was comparing notes with such a friend who’s now in city finance to whose children I’m godfather. John and I still ‘do our chair’ every night, heaping up our clothes for tomorrow in reverse order, as we did 50 years ago in our Dormitory. In this way he gets quicker to the City and I get quicker to my prayers! Typical advantage of a boarding school education! John can speak truth to me that few others are able to as the close friend he is.
The other day I bumped into a young man at the gym with an eight digit number tattoed on the inside of one arm. Curiousity got the better of me. Jokingly I asked him which jail he’d been in. ‘No jail’ he said. ‘It’s the military number of my best friend. He died in Afghanistan four years ago’.
I praised him for keeping his friend’s memory and sacrifice alive.
It got me thinking. Christianity’s a religion of friendship. God made us for friendship. Sin came in as a barrier. By his dying and rising Jesus Christ removes that barrier making us friends with God.
Just as that young man had his friend’s number tattoed on his arm so Our Lord has got your name and mine written on him. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands the Lord says in Isaiah 49 verse 16.
In this Church, through its worship and supremely through the eucharist, the memory and sacrifice of our friend Jesus are kept alive. Christianity builds beyond earthly friends and networks towards a communion with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven. Through friendships with Our Lord built up as we engage with scripture and sacrament it populates heaven, no less!
Gathered as we are once again, at his Table, I invite you to place your trust in the One who knows you by name and who is always present with you however distracted you are.
May our hearts burn as he speaks his word to us and may our eyes be opened as he makes himself known to us once more in the Breaking of the Bread.
Sunday, 29 April 2012
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Easter 3 22nd April 2012
As I looked through today’s scripture, thrilling as it does with the resurrection, I was thinking about Tuesday’s annual church meeting and our aspirations for church growth.
Don’t we need to be more of a community of the resurrection, I thought, an Easter People?
When you come as I hope you will come on Tuesday night to own your church and elect its lay officers I hope that in the reports you’ll receive you’ll catch more than a glimmer of the resurrection.
People get intrigued into church more than they get persuaded by good fellowship, intelligent preaching and sound liturgy – and there’s nothing more intriguing than what is seen to conquer death.
Let’s look back into the pew sheet and have another look at the readings. First that passage from Acts 3. It follows on from the healing of a lame man who went leaping and bounding into the Temple. How intriguing that must have been! Something worth following – someone worth following! Let’s read v16 aloud together if you can find it: To this we are witnesses...by faith in the name of Jesus, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.
When God is at work people get drawn in! Is God at work here at St Giles? Listening to Vicky Spencer on Easter Day might have made you think so. Where people, lay people especially, speak of God at work and demonstrate it people sit up and listen. And they are sitting up and doing so– even in Horsted Keynes!
Then the second reading from 1 John 3. This celebrates what the resurrection does for us. Let’s read v2: Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 'We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.’
We don’t lose our members when they die – we’re the only body in Horsted Keynes that doesn’t! Daphne’s funeral on Friday at the eucharist and on Saturday recalled her desire for God all through her life expressed in steadfast attendance at the eucharist. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In the bread and wine of the eucharist we behold Christ veiled – we could not face him if he wasn’t – but then, on that day of universal resurrection when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
As a church we need to build more of the eager longing for the Lord 1 John 3 speaks of, a longing that is infectious and that leads beyond this world. In our monthly St Giles night we’ve been trying to infect one another with it. How blessed we are as a church to have members who long for the word and the sacrament and for Christ in one another. How much we’ve got to learn from one another spiritually! May Jesus intrigue us through one another!
Lastly the Gospel reading, exceptionally from Luke since only by supplementing from the other Gospels can St Mark’s year B make an actual year. In this passage from Chapter 24 Our Lord emphasises the physicality of the resurrection, showing his wounded yet glorified hands and feet. Those who were at the Easter Vigil will recall that when we blessed the Pascal Candle we placed five nails in its side to represent the physical crucifixion. Then to further make his point Our Lord eats a piece of fish. The point he makes is – well let’s read it together in verses 46-47. 46and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. The point Our Lord makes is the same point St Peter makes in the first reading: it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer.
The atheist writer Albert Camus once debated the resurrection with French Dominicans. He complained that the resurrection was an unreal and unsatisfactory happy ending. They answered by pointing to this text. God came to share our suffering which served to expiate the sin of the world. No suffering we have to endure is now strange to God.
As one of Wesley’s hymns puts it: Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears. Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers. With what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars.
Is there something of this intriguing paradox around in St Giles? Ask Peggy Diss – and do pray for her as she faces cancer treatment. Ask anyone of our church members who has suffered knowing Jesus beside them. So many suffer without faith nowadays!
How intriguing it can be to them to see how resurrection faith both lightens our tread, under the heaviest of burdens, and spurs us on towards the vision of God beyond death that St John speaks of. It is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name.
This morning the risen Christ invites us once more to repent, to turn to him for forgiveness, so that his light may shine in us and through us. St Giles as a light house? Maybe, if you and I become lighthouses, little candles lit from the Easter Candle? Lit with this faith – that the only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, and now what but who!
In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but Life - and where that life is to be found – as I believe it is more and more at St Giles – people who’ve it will infect others who’ve yet to find it!
‘The source of false religion is the inability to rejoice, or rather, the refusal of joy, whereas joy is absolutely essential because it is without any doubt the fruit of God’s presence.’ So writes Eastern Orthodox writer, Father Alexander Schmemann. He continues: ‘One cannot know that God exists and not rejoice...the first, the main source of everything is “my soul rejoices in the Lord...”. The fear of sin does not save us from sin. Joy in the Lord saves’.
So our focus this Easter Sunday morning is on rejoicing for eucharist and Christian life itself means no less than thanks and praise. Christ is risen! ‘In his, in God’s presence is the fullness of joy and at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore’ says the Psalmist.
Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!
Don’t we need to be more of a community of the resurrection, I thought, an Easter People?
When you come as I hope you will come on Tuesday night to own your church and elect its lay officers I hope that in the reports you’ll receive you’ll catch more than a glimmer of the resurrection.
People get intrigued into church more than they get persuaded by good fellowship, intelligent preaching and sound liturgy – and there’s nothing more intriguing than what is seen to conquer death.
Let’s look back into the pew sheet and have another look at the readings. First that passage from Acts 3. It follows on from the healing of a lame man who went leaping and bounding into the Temple. How intriguing that must have been! Something worth following – someone worth following! Let’s read v16 aloud together if you can find it: To this we are witnesses...by faith in the name of Jesus, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.
When God is at work people get drawn in! Is God at work here at St Giles? Listening to Vicky Spencer on Easter Day might have made you think so. Where people, lay people especially, speak of God at work and demonstrate it people sit up and listen. And they are sitting up and doing so– even in Horsted Keynes!
Then the second reading from 1 John 3. This celebrates what the resurrection does for us. Let’s read v2: Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 'We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.’
We don’t lose our members when they die – we’re the only body in Horsted Keynes that doesn’t! Daphne’s funeral on Friday at the eucharist and on Saturday recalled her desire for God all through her life expressed in steadfast attendance at the eucharist. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In the bread and wine of the eucharist we behold Christ veiled – we could not face him if he wasn’t – but then, on that day of universal resurrection when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
As a church we need to build more of the eager longing for the Lord 1 John 3 speaks of, a longing that is infectious and that leads beyond this world. In our monthly St Giles night we’ve been trying to infect one another with it. How blessed we are as a church to have members who long for the word and the sacrament and for Christ in one another. How much we’ve got to learn from one another spiritually! May Jesus intrigue us through one another!
Lastly the Gospel reading, exceptionally from Luke since only by supplementing from the other Gospels can St Mark’s year B make an actual year. In this passage from Chapter 24 Our Lord emphasises the physicality of the resurrection, showing his wounded yet glorified hands and feet. Those who were at the Easter Vigil will recall that when we blessed the Pascal Candle we placed five nails in its side to represent the physical crucifixion. Then to further make his point Our Lord eats a piece of fish. The point he makes is – well let’s read it together in verses 46-47. 46and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. The point Our Lord makes is the same point St Peter makes in the first reading: it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer.
The atheist writer Albert Camus once debated the resurrection with French Dominicans. He complained that the resurrection was an unreal and unsatisfactory happy ending. They answered by pointing to this text. God came to share our suffering which served to expiate the sin of the world. No suffering we have to endure is now strange to God.
As one of Wesley’s hymns puts it: Those dear tokens of his passion still his dazzling body bears. Cause of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers. With what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars.
Is there something of this intriguing paradox around in St Giles? Ask Peggy Diss – and do pray for her as she faces cancer treatment. Ask anyone of our church members who has suffered knowing Jesus beside them. So many suffer without faith nowadays!
How intriguing it can be to them to see how resurrection faith both lightens our tread, under the heaviest of burdens, and spurs us on towards the vision of God beyond death that St John speaks of. It is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name.
This morning the risen Christ invites us once more to repent, to turn to him for forgiveness, so that his light may shine in us and through us. St Giles as a light house? Maybe, if you and I become lighthouses, little candles lit from the Easter Candle? Lit with this faith – that the only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, and now what but who!
In Jesus Christ we gain not ideas, doctrines, rules but Life - and where that life is to be found – as I believe it is more and more at St Giles – people who’ve it will infect others who’ve yet to find it!
‘The source of false religion is the inability to rejoice, or rather, the refusal of joy, whereas joy is absolutely essential because it is without any doubt the fruit of God’s presence.’ So writes Eastern Orthodox writer, Father Alexander Schmemann. He continues: ‘One cannot know that God exists and not rejoice...the first, the main source of everything is “my soul rejoices in the Lord...”. The fear of sin does not save us from sin. Joy in the Lord saves’.
So our focus this Easter Sunday morning is on rejoicing for eucharist and Christian life itself means no less than thanks and praise. Christ is risen! ‘In his, in God’s presence is the fullness of joy and at his right hand there are pleasures for evermore’ says the Psalmist.
Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Easter vigil & day 8th April 2012
The Gospel accounts detail the cruel death Jesus Christ suffered, how his tomb was found empty and how he appeared after his death and burial to hundreds of people.
You can’t prove the resurrection. You can’t prove God. Neither, for that matter, can you prove any historical event actually happened.
Christianity is founded on the acceptance of credible evidence. This is found in well tested historical writings and in the ongoing impact of the risen Jesus upon lives right up to today.
If I could prove God he’d be less than me, and the same’s true of the resurrection.
I believe in God and I believe in the resurrection. Both beliefs are reasonable whilst going wonderfully beyond reason.
How wonderfully beyond reason is the love that saw you and I as precious enough to merit the gift of Himself!
This love counters hopelessness, guilt, fear and apathy.
First hopelessness. The Easter victory of Jesus engages with that most demoralising state of the human mind - the belief that life is lived for nothing.
The novelist Thornton Wilder paints the dilemma of two vantage points, one without and one with the perspective of the resurrection: Some say that…to the gods we are like the flies that boys kill on a summer day. And some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.
Could it be that much of the workaholism around in a materialistic society is a running away from standing still and thinking that hideous thought ‘life is all for nothing’?
Either this life is the prologue of eternal life or it’s no more meaningful than that of the flies that boys kill on a summer day.
The raising up of Jesus at Easter irradiates this dark hopelessness.
God, who made us, so sympathises with our weaknesses and insecurities he’s come among us and walked the valley of the shadow of death himself.
Easter speaks of a Love expecting nothing of us it’s not prepared to go through itself.
That Love, stronger than death, turned the tables on death so it can no longer demoralise those who know the risen Lord Jesus beside them.
If Christ’s victory counters hopelessness it secondly provides a remedy for guilt.
St John Chapter 20 recounts how the risen Lord Jesus told his disciples If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.
The truth of Easter brings forgiveness to counter guilt as surely as it brings life to the dead.
Guilt is the deep down feeling that you’ve done wrong. This is natural for human beings who’re both made in God’s image, with a sense of right and wrong, and yet so often fail to do right and fall short of God.
Jesus Christ comes into lives precisely because there’s sin there that needs dealing with! He died and rose to bring us the forgiveness that’s the very antidote to guilt.
Christianity is guilt-ridding not guilt-ridden.
Easter shows us Jesus came to save the world and not to judge it, but people have to let him free them from guilt by opening up their hearts for his cleansing.
Hope for the hopeless, forgiveness for the guilty. Thirdly the perfect love revealed on Easter Day casts out fear.
Do not be afraid the angel said to the women at Christ’s tomb, you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised (Matthew 28.5-6).
Sometimes we get deceived into thinking of Christianity as a place to gain moral improvement. It’s far more than that. Living as Christians is primarily about losing our enslavements, especially the fears that stop us living to full potential.
Nelson Mandela once said our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God...We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us’.
Easter’s about Christ’s raising and our own raising to become more fully and fearlessly what we’re meant to be.
If Easter addresses hopelessness, guilt and fear lastly it addresses apathy about the state of the world.
It teaches us that, though the world is far from what it should be, God is truly ‘on the case’. The raising of Jesus from the dead speaks of this world being taken up by God into his new creation and how we can work with God for that new world where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3.13).
Christ’s resurrection speaks with relevance to a world where a billion people live on less than a dollar a day, where nations live in perpetual conflict and where human consumption punishes the environment.
Why sacrifice for the needs of others if in the end nothing we do will make any difference? Asks Bishop Tom Wright, who goes on to affirm: If the resurrection of Jesus happened, however, that means there’s infinite hope and reason to pour ourselves out for the needs of the world.
Apathy means lack of passion and it names a real spiritual problem in our society. Why bother? Once you catch on that the Maker of all bothers you gain heart, and not just for yourself but for the world around you.
The Martin Luther King’s of the world gain passion from the resurrection because they catch on that God’s God of the future coming into being. In King’s case his active faith brought a future to be that radically improved civil rights in the United States.
Christ is risen – he’s changing the world – and he wants us in his team!
He wants Nelson Mandela’s and Martin Luther King’s to rise up in Horsted Keynes with resurrection faith in the God of the future!
Tomorrow also is God’s – this is our faith! With the risen Christ at our side we’ll be seeing the kingdom of this world becoming the kingdom of our God and we’ll be part of the heavenly celebration of this the eucharist anticipates.
As often as we celebrate this sacrifice we further the Easter work of redemption not least by throwing ourselves into the fray of the working team that’s holy Church.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, O Lord, on earth as in heaven, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
You can’t prove the resurrection. You can’t prove God. Neither, for that matter, can you prove any historical event actually happened.
Christianity is founded on the acceptance of credible evidence. This is found in well tested historical writings and in the ongoing impact of the risen Jesus upon lives right up to today.
If I could prove God he’d be less than me, and the same’s true of the resurrection.
I believe in God and I believe in the resurrection. Both beliefs are reasonable whilst going wonderfully beyond reason.
How wonderfully beyond reason is the love that saw you and I as precious enough to merit the gift of Himself!
This love counters hopelessness, guilt, fear and apathy.
First hopelessness. The Easter victory of Jesus engages with that most demoralising state of the human mind - the belief that life is lived for nothing.
The novelist Thornton Wilder paints the dilemma of two vantage points, one without and one with the perspective of the resurrection: Some say that…to the gods we are like the flies that boys kill on a summer day. And some say, on the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.
Could it be that much of the workaholism around in a materialistic society is a running away from standing still and thinking that hideous thought ‘life is all for nothing’?
Either this life is the prologue of eternal life or it’s no more meaningful than that of the flies that boys kill on a summer day.
The raising up of Jesus at Easter irradiates this dark hopelessness.
God, who made us, so sympathises with our weaknesses and insecurities he’s come among us and walked the valley of the shadow of death himself.
Easter speaks of a Love expecting nothing of us it’s not prepared to go through itself.
That Love, stronger than death, turned the tables on death so it can no longer demoralise those who know the risen Lord Jesus beside them.
If Christ’s victory counters hopelessness it secondly provides a remedy for guilt.
St John Chapter 20 recounts how the risen Lord Jesus told his disciples If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.
The truth of Easter brings forgiveness to counter guilt as surely as it brings life to the dead.
Guilt is the deep down feeling that you’ve done wrong. This is natural for human beings who’re both made in God’s image, with a sense of right and wrong, and yet so often fail to do right and fall short of God.
Jesus Christ comes into lives precisely because there’s sin there that needs dealing with! He died and rose to bring us the forgiveness that’s the very antidote to guilt.
Christianity is guilt-ridding not guilt-ridden.
Easter shows us Jesus came to save the world and not to judge it, but people have to let him free them from guilt by opening up their hearts for his cleansing.
Hope for the hopeless, forgiveness for the guilty. Thirdly the perfect love revealed on Easter Day casts out fear.
Do not be afraid the angel said to the women at Christ’s tomb, you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised (Matthew 28.5-6).
Sometimes we get deceived into thinking of Christianity as a place to gain moral improvement. It’s far more than that. Living as Christians is primarily about losing our enslavements, especially the fears that stop us living to full potential.
Nelson Mandela once said our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God...We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us’.
Easter’s about Christ’s raising and our own raising to become more fully and fearlessly what we’re meant to be.
If Easter addresses hopelessness, guilt and fear lastly it addresses apathy about the state of the world.
It teaches us that, though the world is far from what it should be, God is truly ‘on the case’. The raising of Jesus from the dead speaks of this world being taken up by God into his new creation and how we can work with God for that new world where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3.13).
Christ’s resurrection speaks with relevance to a world where a billion people live on less than a dollar a day, where nations live in perpetual conflict and where human consumption punishes the environment.
Why sacrifice for the needs of others if in the end nothing we do will make any difference? Asks Bishop Tom Wright, who goes on to affirm: If the resurrection of Jesus happened, however, that means there’s infinite hope and reason to pour ourselves out for the needs of the world.
Apathy means lack of passion and it names a real spiritual problem in our society. Why bother? Once you catch on that the Maker of all bothers you gain heart, and not just for yourself but for the world around you.
The Martin Luther King’s of the world gain passion from the resurrection because they catch on that God’s God of the future coming into being. In King’s case his active faith brought a future to be that radically improved civil rights in the United States.
Christ is risen – he’s changing the world – and he wants us in his team!
He wants Nelson Mandela’s and Martin Luther King’s to rise up in Horsted Keynes with resurrection faith in the God of the future!
Tomorrow also is God’s – this is our faith! With the risen Christ at our side we’ll be seeing the kingdom of this world becoming the kingdom of our God and we’ll be part of the heavenly celebration of this the eucharist anticipates.
As often as we celebrate this sacrifice we further the Easter work of redemption not least by throwing ourselves into the fray of the working team that’s holy Church.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, O Lord, on earth as in heaven, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Saturday, 31 March 2012
Palm Sunday 1st April 2012
Why did Jesus die?
The Creed answers he was crucified for us.
It does so after it names Jesus God from God, light from light, true God from true God.
The link between Jesus in April 33AD and us in April 2012AD is in the AD – anno Domino.
Because of who Jesus is as Lord what he suffered on Good Friday carries forward to all times in a way only God can achieve.
When these lowly hands take bread and wine in a moment what Jesus did then will become a living reality for us now.
This is the Church’s faith, that the death of Jesus impacts us today, but where is this impact on my life?
How you see Jesus is inseparable from how you see his death and what difference it makes for you.
There’s a plaque in Aldersgate near the Museum of London commemorating an event in the life of Methodist pioneer John Wesley. Wesley, an Anglican priest, had always said the Creed we say. To him though Jesus as God from God, light from light, true God from true God was more head than heart knowledge.
That evening of 24 May 1738 he reluctantly attended a Christian meeting at Aldersgate. There he felt his heart ‘strangely warmed’ and received an assurance that the death of Jesus all those years ago was a gift of forgiveness and assurance for him personally. From that day he set off on an itinerant preaching ministry covering 20,000 miles a year which touched thousands of lives with the reality of Jesus Christ now alive in him.
'Faith is the amen of the intelligence and the will to divine revelation.'
When we say the Creed or hear the annual account of Christ’s passion our ‘Amen’ is often more notional than passionate.
As educationalists say in their motto: We hear and forget, we see and remember, we do and we understand.
Hearing about the Cross, seeing the Cross is nothing compared to acting upon it and the love that lies behind it.
For what Jesus has done for us in Holy Week to come real to us we need to put our lives on the line, to act as if he were alongside us still – then we understand.
You see we can hear about Jesus, we can even believe notionally - in our heads - that he is God incarnate - but it may make no difference to our lives.
I believe Mongolia is in-between Russian and China but that belief makes very little difference to my life. I have prayed once or twice for Mongolia but I have never been there and have no friends from there.
Yet I believe also in the resurrection of the dead. I have not experienced that either, but it has come real to me through One whom I trust, who has himself experienced resurrection and who has promised me a share as well when I die!
It is the Jesus we are talking of who has promised me this!
'Christ is as great as your faith makes him' said the evangelist D.L.Moody.
Why did Jesus die?
He died for us, say the Bible and the Creed.
When you approach the crucifixion with faith in Christ’s divinity you see it as an action demonstrating this truth, that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3.16
It is an awesome act of substitution in which Jesus dies in our place so as to live in our place. All that suffering just recounted in the passion account was borne by Jesus on your account and mine.
The holiness of God, affronted by sin, demands a penalty which he himself provided.
It is like the pauper woman in court charged with theft faced with a judge who sentences her to fine or imprisonment. She has no money for the fine so the judge sentences her to imprisonment. When the court finished the judge goes and gives her the fine she can’t afford satisfying both mercy and justice.
To believe in the crucifixion of Jesus is to commit to a God who loves us and who is holy, who reaches out to us in love even though we are sinners.
In his holiness he cannot be reconciled to sin, but through the sacrifice of Jesus upon the Cross the horror of sin is overcome and we are credited with God’s own love and holiness.
The power of evil over humankind is overcome by the Cross. Only when we see that power being overcome in our own lives through it does the Cross make sense. When we find ourselves living more by faith in God than self-sufficiency, living more by submission to God than by self-will.
Through coming to the Cross we see benevolence flowing where there was self-seeking before and humility where there was cold self-righteousness.
Only when we see those sinful tendencies and find the merciful therapy of God in Jesus Christ can we know how wonderful a thing the Cross is, what awesome yet living and practical truth it contains.
We know deep down how flawed our lives are but we hide that truth from others and even from ourselves.
Just like when you’re preparing a meal like scrambled eggs, and a bad egg slips in to make the meal unacceptable for human consumption, the sin in our lives makes us unacceptable to a God who, in the words of the prophet Habakkuk, is too holy to behold evil.
Yet Jesus died. By God’s Son going to his death and through death to resurrection we can call upon him in April 2012 to make our 'stinking' lives fragrant and acceptable to God.
As St Paul writes in the first chapter of Ephesians God has made us acceptable in the beloved. By the death of his beloved Son God has made all who abide in Christ acceptable to himself.
May that joy of seeing the barriers set up between ourselves and God lowered be ours this Holy Week.
God seeks intimacy with us. To achieve this, in an awesome mechanism far beyond human understanding, Jesus was crucified for us.
This is good news to all who will face both the truth of it and the truth about themselves as sinners in need of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Creed answers he was crucified for us.
It does so after it names Jesus God from God, light from light, true God from true God.
The link between Jesus in April 33AD and us in April 2012AD is in the AD – anno Domino.
Because of who Jesus is as Lord what he suffered on Good Friday carries forward to all times in a way only God can achieve.
When these lowly hands take bread and wine in a moment what Jesus did then will become a living reality for us now.
This is the Church’s faith, that the death of Jesus impacts us today, but where is this impact on my life?
How you see Jesus is inseparable from how you see his death and what difference it makes for you.
There’s a plaque in Aldersgate near the Museum of London commemorating an event in the life of Methodist pioneer John Wesley. Wesley, an Anglican priest, had always said the Creed we say. To him though Jesus as God from God, light from light, true God from true God was more head than heart knowledge.
That evening of 24 May 1738 he reluctantly attended a Christian meeting at Aldersgate. There he felt his heart ‘strangely warmed’ and received an assurance that the death of Jesus all those years ago was a gift of forgiveness and assurance for him personally. From that day he set off on an itinerant preaching ministry covering 20,000 miles a year which touched thousands of lives with the reality of Jesus Christ now alive in him.
'Faith is the amen of the intelligence and the will to divine revelation.'
When we say the Creed or hear the annual account of Christ’s passion our ‘Amen’ is often more notional than passionate.
As educationalists say in their motto: We hear and forget, we see and remember, we do and we understand.
Hearing about the Cross, seeing the Cross is nothing compared to acting upon it and the love that lies behind it.
For what Jesus has done for us in Holy Week to come real to us we need to put our lives on the line, to act as if he were alongside us still – then we understand.
You see we can hear about Jesus, we can even believe notionally - in our heads - that he is God incarnate - but it may make no difference to our lives.
I believe Mongolia is in-between Russian and China but that belief makes very little difference to my life. I have prayed once or twice for Mongolia but I have never been there and have no friends from there.
Yet I believe also in the resurrection of the dead. I have not experienced that either, but it has come real to me through One whom I trust, who has himself experienced resurrection and who has promised me a share as well when I die!
It is the Jesus we are talking of who has promised me this!
'Christ is as great as your faith makes him' said the evangelist D.L.Moody.
Why did Jesus die?
He died for us, say the Bible and the Creed.
When you approach the crucifixion with faith in Christ’s divinity you see it as an action demonstrating this truth, that God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. John 3.16
It is an awesome act of substitution in which Jesus dies in our place so as to live in our place. All that suffering just recounted in the passion account was borne by Jesus on your account and mine.
The holiness of God, affronted by sin, demands a penalty which he himself provided.
It is like the pauper woman in court charged with theft faced with a judge who sentences her to fine or imprisonment. She has no money for the fine so the judge sentences her to imprisonment. When the court finished the judge goes and gives her the fine she can’t afford satisfying both mercy and justice.
To believe in the crucifixion of Jesus is to commit to a God who loves us and who is holy, who reaches out to us in love even though we are sinners.
In his holiness he cannot be reconciled to sin, but through the sacrifice of Jesus upon the Cross the horror of sin is overcome and we are credited with God’s own love and holiness.
The power of evil over humankind is overcome by the Cross. Only when we see that power being overcome in our own lives through it does the Cross make sense. When we find ourselves living more by faith in God than self-sufficiency, living more by submission to God than by self-will.
Through coming to the Cross we see benevolence flowing where there was self-seeking before and humility where there was cold self-righteousness.
Only when we see those sinful tendencies and find the merciful therapy of God in Jesus Christ can we know how wonderful a thing the Cross is, what awesome yet living and practical truth it contains.
We know deep down how flawed our lives are but we hide that truth from others and even from ourselves.
Just like when you’re preparing a meal like scrambled eggs, and a bad egg slips in to make the meal unacceptable for human consumption, the sin in our lives makes us unacceptable to a God who, in the words of the prophet Habakkuk, is too holy to behold evil.
Yet Jesus died. By God’s Son going to his death and through death to resurrection we can call upon him in April 2012 to make our 'stinking' lives fragrant and acceptable to God.
As St Paul writes in the first chapter of Ephesians God has made us acceptable in the beloved. By the death of his beloved Son God has made all who abide in Christ acceptable to himself.
May that joy of seeing the barriers set up between ourselves and God lowered be ours this Holy Week.
God seeks intimacy with us. To achieve this, in an awesome mechanism far beyond human understanding, Jesus was crucified for us.
This is good news to all who will face both the truth of it and the truth about themselves as sinners in need of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Lent 5 25 March 2012
Some Greeks…came to Philip…and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
That phrase, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ is written around many a pulpit.
In Holy Cross Church by Kings Cross Station there is a pulpit crucifix which unlike ours, facing the people, faces the preacher.
Here in St Giles Captain Louis Wyatt’s carvings on the front of this pulpit centre on the figure of Our Saviour flanked by St Augustine, St Francis, St Joseph and St Peter. Each figure took 90 hours to carve we read in Stenton Eardley’s history.
Carving a figure of Jesus to present to people – and what a lovely figure Wyatt made, do look at it afresh – carving a figure of Jesus to present is the preacher’s labour of love and not least in Passiontide.
It is as if the literal veiling of the Cross calls urgent attention to the central mystery of the faith.
Today’s Old Testament reading from Jeremiah Chapter 31 speaks of a promised new covenant when instead of commandments written on stone God will write his law on human hearts by the gift of the Spirit. This covenant is founded on the blood of Christ, This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins we hear daily at this altar.
The second reading from Hebrews Chapter 5 speaks of God’s choice of his Son to take high priesthood on behalf of humanity so as to be able to become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. That choice is proved, according to the author of Hebrews, by Christ’s own evident reluctance shown in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Our Lord did not want honour for himself but made submission to his Father, dedicating his whole life and humanity unreservedly to the will of God.
That renunciation of will in Gethesemane is summarised in the Gospel passage from St John Chapter 12 ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’
Self-offering that wins glory is built into the life of God himself.
The great French priest scientist Teilhard de Chardin speaks of how that principle applies to our best development as the human race: To allow God, when it so pleases him, to grow within us, and, by death, to substitute himself for us: that is now our duty; that, if one may use the word, is our opportunity; and that is the only attitude that can finally bring salvation.
Teilhard is struck by the liturgical repetition in Passiontide of the refrain from Philippians ‘Christus factus est’ – Christ was obedient unto death. Commenting on this refrain he writes: That is obviously the exact and profound significance of the cross: obedience, submission to the law of life – and to accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.
Our Lord lived to die a death for the life of the world. We too are called as Christians to lose our lives, all that is governed by wrong self-interest and self-concern, so that his life may flow in us to bring glory to God.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
Our best response to that request happens many a time unwittingly as people see us being carried along by the Lord as we carry something of a cup of sufferings, cheerfully and obediently, with faith in Jesus who is become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
Passiontide reminds us that no sorrow on earth needs to be wasted.
By being taken up into the mystery of Christ’s love, in his passion and in the eucharist, there is transformation. This comes as we gain grace to accept with serenity the things that can’t be changed or courage to change the things that should be changed in our lives.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
I end with Teilhard’s great meditation on the hands of our Saviour:
Into your hands I commend my spirit. To the hands that broke and gave life to the bread, that blessed and caressed, and were pierced – to the hands that are as our hands, of which we can never say what they will do with the objects they hold, whether shatter them or care for them, but whose whims, we may be sure, are full of kindness and will never do more than hold us in a jealous grasp – to the kindly and mighty hands that reach down to the very marrow of the soul – that mould and create – to the hands through which so great a love is transmitted – it is to these that it is good to surrender our soul.
That phrase, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ is written around many a pulpit.
In Holy Cross Church by Kings Cross Station there is a pulpit crucifix which unlike ours, facing the people, faces the preacher.
Here in St Giles Captain Louis Wyatt’s carvings on the front of this pulpit centre on the figure of Our Saviour flanked by St Augustine, St Francis, St Joseph and St Peter. Each figure took 90 hours to carve we read in Stenton Eardley’s history.
Carving a figure of Jesus to present to people – and what a lovely figure Wyatt made, do look at it afresh – carving a figure of Jesus to present is the preacher’s labour of love and not least in Passiontide.
It is as if the literal veiling of the Cross calls urgent attention to the central mystery of the faith.
Today’s Old Testament reading from Jeremiah Chapter 31 speaks of a promised new covenant when instead of commandments written on stone God will write his law on human hearts by the gift of the Spirit. This covenant is founded on the blood of Christ, This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins we hear daily at this altar.
The second reading from Hebrews Chapter 5 speaks of God’s choice of his Son to take high priesthood on behalf of humanity so as to be able to become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. That choice is proved, according to the author of Hebrews, by Christ’s own evident reluctance shown in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Our Lord did not want honour for himself but made submission to his Father, dedicating his whole life and humanity unreservedly to the will of God.
That renunciation of will in Gethesemane is summarised in the Gospel passage from St John Chapter 12 ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’
Self-offering that wins glory is built into the life of God himself.
The great French priest scientist Teilhard de Chardin speaks of how that principle applies to our best development as the human race: To allow God, when it so pleases him, to grow within us, and, by death, to substitute himself for us: that is now our duty; that, if one may use the word, is our opportunity; and that is the only attitude that can finally bring salvation.
Teilhard is struck by the liturgical repetition in Passiontide of the refrain from Philippians ‘Christus factus est’ – Christ was obedient unto death. Commenting on this refrain he writes: That is obviously the exact and profound significance of the cross: obedience, submission to the law of life – and to accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.
Our Lord lived to die a death for the life of the world. We too are called as Christians to lose our lives, all that is governed by wrong self-interest and self-concern, so that his life may flow in us to bring glory to God.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
Our best response to that request happens many a time unwittingly as people see us being carried along by the Lord as we carry something of a cup of sufferings, cheerfully and obediently, with faith in Jesus who is become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.
Passiontide reminds us that no sorrow on earth needs to be wasted.
By being taken up into the mystery of Christ’s love, in his passion and in the eucharist, there is transformation. This comes as we gain grace to accept with serenity the things that can’t be changed or courage to change the things that should be changed in our lives.
‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’
I end with Teilhard’s great meditation on the hands of our Saviour:
Into your hands I commend my spirit. To the hands that broke and gave life to the bread, that blessed and caressed, and were pierced – to the hands that are as our hands, of which we can never say what they will do with the objects they hold, whether shatter them or care for them, but whose whims, we may be sure, are full of kindness and will never do more than hold us in a jealous grasp – to the kindly and mighty hands that reach down to the very marrow of the soul – that mould and create – to the hands through which so great a love is transmitted – it is to these that it is good to surrender our soul.
Thursday, 8 March 2012
The Uniqueness of Christ Newman Forum, Uckfield 7th March 2012
What I have to say the Uniqueness of Christ has the inevitable three parts.
These will be thesis, counter thesis and synthesis. When we get to synthesis we end with discussion - OK?
Nevertheless I would value interruptions for clarification as I know what it's like to follow a meeting where gobbledegook is spoken, terms floated not in popular parlance. I am a school governor.
So let's get on with the thesis!
"He was born in an obscure village, the son of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter's shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he became a wandering preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn't go to college. He never visited a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of those things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through a mockery of a trial. He was executed by the state. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that One Solitary Life."
This anonymous poem captures the unique force of Jesus.
"The name of Jesus) is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world" wrote Emerson.
Lecky the historian of rationalism wrote: "Christ has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists"
To get a perspective on the universality of Jesus we can follow endless tributes from people as far from the Christian fold as Lecky who cannot begrudge the universal significance of Jesus Christ.
Napoleon Bonaparte in Elba after much study of the life and character of Jesus wrote "From first to last, Jesus is the same; always the same- majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle..... I know men; and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. Everything in Him amazes me...He is truly a being by Himself...great with a greatness that crushes me. I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ"
In the words of Victor Hugo "Pythagoras, Epicurus, Socrates, Plato, these are the torches of the world; Christ is the light of day."
With the coming of Jesus the world has experienced something unique that twenty centuries have yet to plumb the depths of.
"It would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus" as someone put it, reflecting that in measuring the make of this Man we find ourselves lost for a standard in human terms.
The atheist Rousseau admitted that "It would have been a greater miracle to invent such a life as Christ's than to be it".
"Christ is not valued at all unless he is valued above all" wrote St. Augustine, one of the greatest minds to serve the cause of Christ.
What is the basis of this widespread perception of Christ's uniqueness?
It comes down to the widespread belief that in Jesus the Maker of the universe was made flesh.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." John 3.16
This truth is historically grounded as surely as the history of Jesus. This history is mainly found in the New Testament documents which thrill with the truth of God's love shown in his resurrection that announces a love over us all that's stronger than death.
"Nothing in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8.39
In my book Meet Jesus I set out how the world of scholarship weights favourably the evidence for the existence of Jesus and takes extremely seriously the historical basis for his resurrection.
In Jesus we find the perfect balance of love and truth and power. His loving acceptance of sinners is coupled to a burning conviction of truth and holiness and a readiness to empower people with the Holy Spirit given after his resurrection.
So it is true to say in the words of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa that: "Jesus came to put fear into those who don't have it and to take it away from those who do."
Christianity is established on the conviction that, in Jesus Christ, God, who is utterly different to us and beyond our imagining - has come to be one with us with enormous implications for human nature as we are invited, in the words of 2 Peter 1.4to "become participants of the divine nature."
One could go on but undoubtedly the uniqueness of Christ is his claim to divinity so that the Anglican priest John Stott writes; "Christianity is not primarily a theological system, an ethical system, a ritual system, a social system or an ecclesiastical system - it is a person: it's Jesus Christ, and to be a Christian is to know Him and to follow him and believe in Him".
Thesis - now counter thesis!
Whereas most Christians believe that Jesus is the unique Son of God made flesh there are many who would dispute this claim.
In his essay “Why I Am Not a Christian,” the agnostic Bertrand Russell wrote, “Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if he did we know nothing about him.” Russell does not speak well even of Christ’s character, “I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above him in those respects".
Muslims respect Jesus as one of their prophets but the rejection of his uniqueness in revealing God on earth was and is a defining issue for them as a religion that historically cut across Christianity.
Hinduism depicts Christ as one among many great gurus and that's the position of many in our society sympathetic to Jesus Christ as a great moral example.
The uniqueness of Christ has been challenged for centuries by other religions but the rise of so-called postmodernism provides the main challenge to contemporary Western thinking about Jesus.
Where did the term “Postmodern” come from?
A helpful paper at a 2004 Conference sponsored by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization has this to say.
"In 1979, the French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard published a landmark article entitled, “The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.” In the article, he coined the word ‘Post-Modern’ and stated what has come to represent the growing crisis of trust in Western civilization and, coupled with globalization, this crisis is quickly influencing many parts of the world. In the Modern world there was a belief in an overarching truth – whether informed by a Christian world-view or even a secular belief in progress and in the perfectability of humanity. Lyotard argued that Modern societies maintained (or even produced) order and stability by generating what he called “grand narratives” or “master narratives.” These ‘meta-narratives’ provided a clear sense of destiny. All intellectual reflection was understood to be a journey with a clear destination – the pursuit of truth. In the emerging Postmodern context, it is thought that we are only on a virtual voyage where we explore self-created worlds. In short, the very nature of truth has begun to collapse. There is no longer a cohesive ‘canopy of truth’ or meta- narrative which gives meaning and purpose to civilization. Thus, Postmodernism is defined by four features: the loss of meta-narratives, the collapse of absolute truth (or scepticism about absolute truth claims), scepticism about history and the general loss of meaning.
To speak of Jesus as unique is counter to the whole tenor of this post-modern context we live in which warmly endorses Ghandi's haunting statement that it's hard to be fraternal is you hold to absolute truth.
Those who challenge the uniqueness of Christ claim to have history on their side as they point to the Christian crusades against Islam and extreme Muslims such as those responsible for the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Centre. Such ventures, it is claimed, derive from belief in an absolute truth so compelling that it is dismissive of humanity.
Even the universe isn't unique, runs the dismissive thesis, which points to belief in multiple universes or the multiverse.
The very term 'unique' grates in a post modern society which can Google its way into reasons for disbelieving anything!
Dick Keyes Director of L’Abri Fellowship has some insight in a paper he wrote entitled The Uniqueness of Christ in an Age of Relativism.
"Pluralism is not new, we need to see that our society has developed a way for viewing pluralism that is widely accepted. That way of viewing is a philosophical system called relativism. Relativism is one possible paradigm for understanding pluralism. It is a system that denies that anyone can know absolute truth about God or about ultimate things and asserts that it is naïve for a person to think he or she has knowledge about such truth. Relativism declares that we are finite; we have no standard or criterion to judge competing truth claims, no scale with which to measure or examine differing beliefs."
He goes on with an interesting analogy: "When considering relativism, I often think of the example of a lifeguard on a beach who has an elevated chair so he can look down over everybody and see what is going on. He has a perspective that nobody else on the beach has. Everybody else has his or her feet in the sand, cannot see beyond immediate neighbors. But the lifeguard has an elevated chair from which to see the whole beach. Relativism tells us that nobody has that elevated view when it comes to religion. Everybody is at ground level, with only his or her local perspective. Relativism claims that we have a lot of people from different perspectives saying what they think ultimate truth is, but that these people are simply expressing their own beliefs. They are attempting to name what is not namable. Relativism claims that it does not make sense to talk about some religions being true and other religions being false; doing so brings the wrong categories to the discussion."
I picked up these paragraphs from the net. They touch on how one particular phenomenon or viewpoint can be granted universal significance. Beyond the postmodern problem lies a whole philosophical objection called 'the scandal of the particular'. This objection is touched on by Paul who talked to the Corinthians of the gospel being a stumbling block or 'scandalon' because of its focus on a particular person in a particular age. "We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles". (1 Corinthians 1.24)
On the Internet the major challenge to Christ's uniqueness is the dismissal of his resurrection as a merely spiritual and subjective event that somehow got fixed in the minds of his followers but is without historical basis.
In 2008 I spent Eastertide engaging with atheist Steven Carr on a blog about the truth of the resurrection. His main thesis was to challenge the historicity of the New Testament documents through underlining the lack of first hand eye witness evidence. The earliest written accounts of the resurrection of Jesus in St Paul don't mention the empty tomb, he alleged, and to a degree he is right, even if Paul's mention of his death mentions burial then resurrection implying a rising from the grave. Then the Gospel accounts are little later than Paul and are very clear on the empty tomb.
Thesis - counterthesis - synthesis!
Picking up on the historical examination of the uniqueness of Christ I think the perceived consensus of scholars on the historical Jesus is very important.
New Testament scholarship is a broad church but there's growing consensus that John's Gospel, though containing much accurate history, stands apart from the other Synoptic Gospels in its triumphant portrait of Christ as in the 'I am' sayings.
Unfortunately ultra-conservative Christian apologetic, in making reasonable defence of Church teaching, relies over much on Christ's uniqueness as self-proclaimed in John's Gospel. The Christ of St John is presented in the light of his resurrection, says scholarship, so that the story of his life is overlaid by the writers' awareness of his risen presence. Even C S Lewis, writing on Christ's uniqueness, expresses the view that a man who said what Christ said had to be mad, bad or the Son of God but his memorable challenge is built overmuch on the less-historical Johannine Christ.
The historical Jesus that emerges from scholarship has a more nuanced self-understanding which fits better with human psychology. Matthew, Mark and Luke nonetheless evidence his remarkable capacity to pronounce God's forgiveness, heal, deliver and teach with an authority that his contemporaries saw as a pointer to his divine origin.
I believe the divinity of Christ is evident in the earliest Gospel accounts, though it shines most brilliantly through the rest of the New Testament, which would never have been written unless something had happened to put Jesus on the world's map for ever, that 'something' being his resurrection.
Though Jesus preached the kingdom of God his followers preach his unique person and it's hard to explain that shift without the historical event we know as the resurrection, let alone the change in the disciples and the shift of the Jewish Holy Day to the first day or the week.
The uniqueness of Jesus is in his revelation both of who God is, as a Trinity of love, and of who we are, as fallen creatures. It is the genius of Jesus to open up both a vision of God and one of humanity so that the good news he brings is transformative for both individuals and communities. The forgiveness he won for us and brings to bear on Christian life and the intimacy with God that flows from this is something that those who experience it are forced to label 'unique'.
In an address exploring the finality of Christ in a pluralist world Archbishop Rowan Williams admitted “Belief in the uniqueness or finality of Christ is something that sits very badly indeed, not just with a plural society but with a society that regards itself as liberal or democratic,” but he goes on “Christians have claimed and will still claim that when you realise God calls you simply as a human being into that relationship of intimacy with Jesus, then you understand something about God which cannot be replaced or supplemented. The finality lies in the recognition that now there is something you cannot forget about God and humanity and which you cannot correct as if it were simply an interesting theory about God and humanity.”
At the heart of the uniqueness of Jesus is this revelation of what I would call the supremacy of the personal. Ultimate reality has a human face, not one we've put on it but one God himself has put into it by the incarnation.
As we move to synthesis from thesis and counter thesis we have to admit that the bad things done in the name of Christ are injurious by their disloyalty to the love he came to reveal. If Jesus is unique in his person, revealing the love of God, Father, Son and Spirit, violence that depersonalises in his name is the ultimate contradiction.
As we reflect back on the counter thesis which touched on Postmodernism I have another quote again from that 2004 Lausanne sponsored evangelisation conference. "Postmodernism", I quote, "presents possibilities which may benefit or assist Christian communication. Postmodernity has challenged the foundations of the Modernist project with its smug confidence in the perfectability of people, the certainty of never-ending progress and the unassailable reliance on human reason. The collapse of the false meta-narratives of Modernity (reason, perfectability, progress) provides an opportunity to communicate the true meta-narrative that is rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Thus, Postmodernism represents new challenges as well as new opportunities for Christian reflection and action."
As the Lausanne network recognises, the Church as an institution is necessary to bring Jesus close to people in every age through preaching, the eucharist, Christian fellowship and holding them to a spiritual discipline. Yet part of the unique appeal of Jesus Christ is his transcendence of Christianity through both his supernatural nature and superlative character.
That is recognised in the 1965 Second Vatican Council declaration on non-Christian religions where we read "The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself."
This historic statement has a remarkable inclusivity about it that's built upon the uniqueness of Christ through whom all things were made and in whom all things will come together.
From Evangelicals and Roman Catholics back to Anglicans. In his 2010 paper Rowan Williams teaches that the uniqueness and finality of Christ, rather than being unfair to those who haven't heard of him, makes possible the universal reconcilability and fellowship of human beings.
Hence, the Archbishop continued, it's a serious failure when Christians “treat others as if they know nothing, and we have nothing to learn” as if there were no hope for people outside of the Christian faith.
A belief in the uniqueness and finality of Christ, he said, gives Christians both a “generous desire to share” and a “humble desire to learn”.
“In dialogue between people of different faith we expect to learn something, we expect to be different as a result of the encounter. We don’t as a rule expect to change our minds,” he said.
“We come with conviction, with gratitude and with confidence, but it is the confidence which I believe allows us to embark on these encounters, hoping that we may learn - not change our conviction - but learn.
“When we sit alongside the Jew, the Buddhist, the Muslim, the Hindu, we expect to see in their humanity something that challenges and enlarges ours. We expect to receive something in their humanity as a gift to ours.”
I will let those synthetic words be our invitation to do likewise by sharing our constructive thoughts as we examine among ourselves the unique claims of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
These will be thesis, counter thesis and synthesis. When we get to synthesis we end with discussion - OK?
Nevertheless I would value interruptions for clarification as I know what it's like to follow a meeting where gobbledegook is spoken, terms floated not in popular parlance. I am a school governor.
So let's get on with the thesis!
"He was born in an obscure village, the son of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter's shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he became a wandering preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn't go to college. He never visited a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of those things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through a mockery of a trial. He was executed by the state. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that One Solitary Life."
This anonymous poem captures the unique force of Jesus.
"The name of Jesus) is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world" wrote Emerson.
Lecky the historian of rationalism wrote: "Christ has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists"
To get a perspective on the universality of Jesus we can follow endless tributes from people as far from the Christian fold as Lecky who cannot begrudge the universal significance of Jesus Christ.
Napoleon Bonaparte in Elba after much study of the life and character of Jesus wrote "From first to last, Jesus is the same; always the same- majestic and simple, infinitely severe and infinitely gentle..... I know men; and I tell you that Jesus is not a man. Everything in Him amazes me...He is truly a being by Himself...great with a greatness that crushes me. I defy you to cite another life like that of Christ"
In the words of Victor Hugo "Pythagoras, Epicurus, Socrates, Plato, these are the torches of the world; Christ is the light of day."
With the coming of Jesus the world has experienced something unique that twenty centuries have yet to plumb the depths of.
"It would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus" as someone put it, reflecting that in measuring the make of this Man we find ourselves lost for a standard in human terms.
The atheist Rousseau admitted that "It would have been a greater miracle to invent such a life as Christ's than to be it".
"Christ is not valued at all unless he is valued above all" wrote St. Augustine, one of the greatest minds to serve the cause of Christ.
What is the basis of this widespread perception of Christ's uniqueness?
It comes down to the widespread belief that in Jesus the Maker of the universe was made flesh.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." John 3.16
This truth is historically grounded as surely as the history of Jesus. This history is mainly found in the New Testament documents which thrill with the truth of God's love shown in his resurrection that announces a love over us all that's stronger than death.
"Nothing in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8.39
In my book Meet Jesus I set out how the world of scholarship weights favourably the evidence for the existence of Jesus and takes extremely seriously the historical basis for his resurrection.
In Jesus we find the perfect balance of love and truth and power. His loving acceptance of sinners is coupled to a burning conviction of truth and holiness and a readiness to empower people with the Holy Spirit given after his resurrection.
So it is true to say in the words of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa that: "Jesus came to put fear into those who don't have it and to take it away from those who do."
Christianity is established on the conviction that, in Jesus Christ, God, who is utterly different to us and beyond our imagining - has come to be one with us with enormous implications for human nature as we are invited, in the words of 2 Peter 1.4to "become participants of the divine nature."
One could go on but undoubtedly the uniqueness of Christ is his claim to divinity so that the Anglican priest John Stott writes; "Christianity is not primarily a theological system, an ethical system, a ritual system, a social system or an ecclesiastical system - it is a person: it's Jesus Christ, and to be a Christian is to know Him and to follow him and believe in Him".
Thesis - now counter thesis!
Whereas most Christians believe that Jesus is the unique Son of God made flesh there are many who would dispute this claim.
In his essay “Why I Am Not a Christian,” the agnostic Bertrand Russell wrote, “Historically it is quite doubtful whether Christ ever existed at all, and if he did we know nothing about him.” Russell does not speak well even of Christ’s character, “I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above him in those respects".
Muslims respect Jesus as one of their prophets but the rejection of his uniqueness in revealing God on earth was and is a defining issue for them as a religion that historically cut across Christianity.
Hinduism depicts Christ as one among many great gurus and that's the position of many in our society sympathetic to Jesus Christ as a great moral example.
The uniqueness of Christ has been challenged for centuries by other religions but the rise of so-called postmodernism provides the main challenge to contemporary Western thinking about Jesus.
Where did the term “Postmodern” come from?
A helpful paper at a 2004 Conference sponsored by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization has this to say.
"In 1979, the French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard published a landmark article entitled, “The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.” In the article, he coined the word ‘Post-Modern’ and stated what has come to represent the growing crisis of trust in Western civilization and, coupled with globalization, this crisis is quickly influencing many parts of the world. In the Modern world there was a belief in an overarching truth – whether informed by a Christian world-view or even a secular belief in progress and in the perfectability of humanity. Lyotard argued that Modern societies maintained (or even produced) order and stability by generating what he called “grand narratives” or “master narratives.” These ‘meta-narratives’ provided a clear sense of destiny. All intellectual reflection was understood to be a journey with a clear destination – the pursuit of truth. In the emerging Postmodern context, it is thought that we are only on a virtual voyage where we explore self-created worlds. In short, the very nature of truth has begun to collapse. There is no longer a cohesive ‘canopy of truth’ or meta- narrative which gives meaning and purpose to civilization. Thus, Postmodernism is defined by four features: the loss of meta-narratives, the collapse of absolute truth (or scepticism about absolute truth claims), scepticism about history and the general loss of meaning.
To speak of Jesus as unique is counter to the whole tenor of this post-modern context we live in which warmly endorses Ghandi's haunting statement that it's hard to be fraternal is you hold to absolute truth.
Those who challenge the uniqueness of Christ claim to have history on their side as they point to the Christian crusades against Islam and extreme Muslims such as those responsible for the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Centre. Such ventures, it is claimed, derive from belief in an absolute truth so compelling that it is dismissive of humanity.
Even the universe isn't unique, runs the dismissive thesis, which points to belief in multiple universes or the multiverse.
The very term 'unique' grates in a post modern society which can Google its way into reasons for disbelieving anything!
Dick Keyes Director of L’Abri Fellowship has some insight in a paper he wrote entitled The Uniqueness of Christ in an Age of Relativism.
"Pluralism is not new, we need to see that our society has developed a way for viewing pluralism that is widely accepted. That way of viewing is a philosophical system called relativism. Relativism is one possible paradigm for understanding pluralism. It is a system that denies that anyone can know absolute truth about God or about ultimate things and asserts that it is naïve for a person to think he or she has knowledge about such truth. Relativism declares that we are finite; we have no standard or criterion to judge competing truth claims, no scale with which to measure or examine differing beliefs."
He goes on with an interesting analogy: "When considering relativism, I often think of the example of a lifeguard on a beach who has an elevated chair so he can look down over everybody and see what is going on. He has a perspective that nobody else on the beach has. Everybody else has his or her feet in the sand, cannot see beyond immediate neighbors. But the lifeguard has an elevated chair from which to see the whole beach. Relativism tells us that nobody has that elevated view when it comes to religion. Everybody is at ground level, with only his or her local perspective. Relativism claims that we have a lot of people from different perspectives saying what they think ultimate truth is, but that these people are simply expressing their own beliefs. They are attempting to name what is not namable. Relativism claims that it does not make sense to talk about some religions being true and other religions being false; doing so brings the wrong categories to the discussion."
I picked up these paragraphs from the net. They touch on how one particular phenomenon or viewpoint can be granted universal significance. Beyond the postmodern problem lies a whole philosophical objection called 'the scandal of the particular'. This objection is touched on by Paul who talked to the Corinthians of the gospel being a stumbling block or 'scandalon' because of its focus on a particular person in a particular age. "We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles". (1 Corinthians 1.24)
On the Internet the major challenge to Christ's uniqueness is the dismissal of his resurrection as a merely spiritual and subjective event that somehow got fixed in the minds of his followers but is without historical basis.
In 2008 I spent Eastertide engaging with atheist Steven Carr on a blog about the truth of the resurrection. His main thesis was to challenge the historicity of the New Testament documents through underlining the lack of first hand eye witness evidence. The earliest written accounts of the resurrection of Jesus in St Paul don't mention the empty tomb, he alleged, and to a degree he is right, even if Paul's mention of his death mentions burial then resurrection implying a rising from the grave. Then the Gospel accounts are little later than Paul and are very clear on the empty tomb.
Thesis - counterthesis - synthesis!
Picking up on the historical examination of the uniqueness of Christ I think the perceived consensus of scholars on the historical Jesus is very important.
New Testament scholarship is a broad church but there's growing consensus that John's Gospel, though containing much accurate history, stands apart from the other Synoptic Gospels in its triumphant portrait of Christ as in the 'I am' sayings.
Unfortunately ultra-conservative Christian apologetic, in making reasonable defence of Church teaching, relies over much on Christ's uniqueness as self-proclaimed in John's Gospel. The Christ of St John is presented in the light of his resurrection, says scholarship, so that the story of his life is overlaid by the writers' awareness of his risen presence. Even C S Lewis, writing on Christ's uniqueness, expresses the view that a man who said what Christ said had to be mad, bad or the Son of God but his memorable challenge is built overmuch on the less-historical Johannine Christ.
The historical Jesus that emerges from scholarship has a more nuanced self-understanding which fits better with human psychology. Matthew, Mark and Luke nonetheless evidence his remarkable capacity to pronounce God's forgiveness, heal, deliver and teach with an authority that his contemporaries saw as a pointer to his divine origin.
I believe the divinity of Christ is evident in the earliest Gospel accounts, though it shines most brilliantly through the rest of the New Testament, which would never have been written unless something had happened to put Jesus on the world's map for ever, that 'something' being his resurrection.
Though Jesus preached the kingdom of God his followers preach his unique person and it's hard to explain that shift without the historical event we know as the resurrection, let alone the change in the disciples and the shift of the Jewish Holy Day to the first day or the week.
The uniqueness of Jesus is in his revelation both of who God is, as a Trinity of love, and of who we are, as fallen creatures. It is the genius of Jesus to open up both a vision of God and one of humanity so that the good news he brings is transformative for both individuals and communities. The forgiveness he won for us and brings to bear on Christian life and the intimacy with God that flows from this is something that those who experience it are forced to label 'unique'.
In an address exploring the finality of Christ in a pluralist world Archbishop Rowan Williams admitted “Belief in the uniqueness or finality of Christ is something that sits very badly indeed, not just with a plural society but with a society that regards itself as liberal or democratic,” but he goes on “Christians have claimed and will still claim that when you realise God calls you simply as a human being into that relationship of intimacy with Jesus, then you understand something about God which cannot be replaced or supplemented. The finality lies in the recognition that now there is something you cannot forget about God and humanity and which you cannot correct as if it were simply an interesting theory about God and humanity.”
At the heart of the uniqueness of Jesus is this revelation of what I would call the supremacy of the personal. Ultimate reality has a human face, not one we've put on it but one God himself has put into it by the incarnation.
As we move to synthesis from thesis and counter thesis we have to admit that the bad things done in the name of Christ are injurious by their disloyalty to the love he came to reveal. If Jesus is unique in his person, revealing the love of God, Father, Son and Spirit, violence that depersonalises in his name is the ultimate contradiction.
As we reflect back on the counter thesis which touched on Postmodernism I have another quote again from that 2004 Lausanne sponsored evangelisation conference. "Postmodernism", I quote, "presents possibilities which may benefit or assist Christian communication. Postmodernity has challenged the foundations of the Modernist project with its smug confidence in the perfectability of people, the certainty of never-ending progress and the unassailable reliance on human reason. The collapse of the false meta-narratives of Modernity (reason, perfectability, progress) provides an opportunity to communicate the true meta-narrative that is rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Thus, Postmodernism represents new challenges as well as new opportunities for Christian reflection and action."
As the Lausanne network recognises, the Church as an institution is necessary to bring Jesus close to people in every age through preaching, the eucharist, Christian fellowship and holding them to a spiritual discipline. Yet part of the unique appeal of Jesus Christ is his transcendence of Christianity through both his supernatural nature and superlative character.
That is recognised in the 1965 Second Vatican Council declaration on non-Christian religions where we read "The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself."
This historic statement has a remarkable inclusivity about it that's built upon the uniqueness of Christ through whom all things were made and in whom all things will come together.
From Evangelicals and Roman Catholics back to Anglicans. In his 2010 paper Rowan Williams teaches that the uniqueness and finality of Christ, rather than being unfair to those who haven't heard of him, makes possible the universal reconcilability and fellowship of human beings.
Hence, the Archbishop continued, it's a serious failure when Christians “treat others as if they know nothing, and we have nothing to learn” as if there were no hope for people outside of the Christian faith.
A belief in the uniqueness and finality of Christ, he said, gives Christians both a “generous desire to share” and a “humble desire to learn”.
“In dialogue between people of different faith we expect to learn something, we expect to be different as a result of the encounter. We don’t as a rule expect to change our minds,” he said.
“We come with conviction, with gratitude and with confidence, but it is the confidence which I believe allows us to embark on these encounters, hoping that we may learn - not change our conviction - but learn.
“When we sit alongside the Jew, the Buddhist, the Muslim, the Hindu, we expect to see in their humanity something that challenges and enlarges ours. We expect to receive something in their humanity as a gift to ours.”
I will let those synthetic words be our invitation to do likewise by sharing our constructive thoughts as we examine among ourselves the unique claims of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Lent 1 Stewardship Sunday 4 March 2012
There’s a battle going on for our Church – would you believe it?
It’s an ownership battle that’s part of the battle for our souls and its part of what Lent’s all about.
In Lent we remember we’re lent.
Is my life mine or is it lent to me? Is St Giles ours or is it lent to us?
There’s a proprietorial spirit that afflicts us all – it’s my life. I do it or did it my way.
Over against it there’s the spirit of stewardship by which we see our whole life as it really is - as lent us by God - so that we are his and St Giles is God’s Church.
Today is stewardship Sunday. For the last two years Lent has brought with it the opportunity to review the gifts we employ in God’s service, time, talents and treasure.
It’s also an opportunity to see how much more our Church is becoming God’s Church and not just a fellowship that enjoys meeting on Sunday in a Grade I listed building of outstanding beauty.
Let me touch on the second area first.
It was evident at last Sunday evening’s healing service that we’re a Church that recognises God at work in lives. What Peter Vince and James Nicholson shared about that was so powerful and made all the more powerful in my mind by their day by day commitment to the fabric and worship of St Giles.
St Giles, unlike New Labour, does God. You may laugh but some churches are guilty of what Paul describes in 2 Timothy 3.5 of holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Members are so concerned to keep their social club comfortable they’re wary of God talk and keep up the outward ritual of Church whilst barely acknowledging their stewardship of God’s mission. One Church over Chichester way fought having a sign to them from the main road in case outsiders came to disturb them!
I prefer to be called Father John, whilst respecting folk who find it too distant. This is because I aim to be everyone’s friend but am primarily here to be God’s priest for us. Do pray for me in that perilous role, as Maker’s rep, called to make our fellowship at St Giles more godly and less proprietorial.
The best people to teach us about where we stand on this are our visitors. If you see a strange face in Church is it your instinct to make time to welcome them after the service or does that concern get lost in your business after service keeping up with your mates at St Giles?
Archbishop William Temple said the Christian church is the only organisation on earth that exists for the sake of non-members. Do we?
I’m only asking because it’s Stewardship Sunday!
There are good signs of our getting there as a Church. Over the last year we’ve started: St Giles Night, a monthly evening with a spiritual focus, to help deepen discipleship, monthly healing ministry on Wednesday evenings and monthly prayer ministry after the all age eucharist. All of these ventures have seen lay members receiving as well as sharing spiritual capital. It’s also been good to see increased attendance at our occasional and regular midweek eucharists.
In terms of stewardship of buildings the glazed inner porch doors installed last May open up St Giles making the building seem more accessible. We’re still working at and praying for the right development of toilet facilities that are so necessary in terms of comfortable access. The thinking behind these changes, and significant changes in the Martindale, isn’t or shouldn’t be proprietorial. We’re not doing these things out of pride in appearances but as stewards wanting to be more effective as a missionary Church. We seek to make the worship of God accessible by better engagement with the local community.
This is what Christian stewardship is about – but it begins like Lent with you and I recognising we’re lent and not our own.
In this holy eucharist, Sunday by Sunday, day by day, we profess this truth of stewardship which sees life as it really is, as lent us by God.
Our Lord Jesus gave himself for the Church to make it his own. He came in fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham that he’d build a fruitful people. In today’s Gospel Our Saviour warns that as he would suffer on the Cross so we will suffer to lose our lives for his sake.
In the eucharist we gratefully recall Christ’s self gift, pledging our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice alongside his self-offering. As we reflect in Lent on the engagement of our time, talents and treasure with God’s Church, may what we say we offer be reflected more in our lives. The test of any act of love is that it hurts self interest.
It’s an ownership battle that’s part of the battle for our souls and its part of what Lent’s all about.
In Lent we remember we’re lent.
Is my life mine or is it lent to me? Is St Giles ours or is it lent to us?
There’s a proprietorial spirit that afflicts us all – it’s my life. I do it or did it my way.
Over against it there’s the spirit of stewardship by which we see our whole life as it really is - as lent us by God - so that we are his and St Giles is God’s Church.
Today is stewardship Sunday. For the last two years Lent has brought with it the opportunity to review the gifts we employ in God’s service, time, talents and treasure.
It’s also an opportunity to see how much more our Church is becoming God’s Church and not just a fellowship that enjoys meeting on Sunday in a Grade I listed building of outstanding beauty.
Let me touch on the second area first.
It was evident at last Sunday evening’s healing service that we’re a Church that recognises God at work in lives. What Peter Vince and James Nicholson shared about that was so powerful and made all the more powerful in my mind by their day by day commitment to the fabric and worship of St Giles.
St Giles, unlike New Labour, does God. You may laugh but some churches are guilty of what Paul describes in 2 Timothy 3.5 of holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Members are so concerned to keep their social club comfortable they’re wary of God talk and keep up the outward ritual of Church whilst barely acknowledging their stewardship of God’s mission. One Church over Chichester way fought having a sign to them from the main road in case outsiders came to disturb them!
I prefer to be called Father John, whilst respecting folk who find it too distant. This is because I aim to be everyone’s friend but am primarily here to be God’s priest for us. Do pray for me in that perilous role, as Maker’s rep, called to make our fellowship at St Giles more godly and less proprietorial.
The best people to teach us about where we stand on this are our visitors. If you see a strange face in Church is it your instinct to make time to welcome them after the service or does that concern get lost in your business after service keeping up with your mates at St Giles?
Archbishop William Temple said the Christian church is the only organisation on earth that exists for the sake of non-members. Do we?
I’m only asking because it’s Stewardship Sunday!
There are good signs of our getting there as a Church. Over the last year we’ve started: St Giles Night, a monthly evening with a spiritual focus, to help deepen discipleship, monthly healing ministry on Wednesday evenings and monthly prayer ministry after the all age eucharist. All of these ventures have seen lay members receiving as well as sharing spiritual capital. It’s also been good to see increased attendance at our occasional and regular midweek eucharists.
In terms of stewardship of buildings the glazed inner porch doors installed last May open up St Giles making the building seem more accessible. We’re still working at and praying for the right development of toilet facilities that are so necessary in terms of comfortable access. The thinking behind these changes, and significant changes in the Martindale, isn’t or shouldn’t be proprietorial. We’re not doing these things out of pride in appearances but as stewards wanting to be more effective as a missionary Church. We seek to make the worship of God accessible by better engagement with the local community.
This is what Christian stewardship is about – but it begins like Lent with you and I recognising we’re lent and not our own.
In this holy eucharist, Sunday by Sunday, day by day, we profess this truth of stewardship which sees life as it really is, as lent us by God.
Our Lord Jesus gave himself for the Church to make it his own. He came in fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham that he’d build a fruitful people. In today’s Gospel Our Saviour warns that as he would suffer on the Cross so we will suffer to lose our lives for his sake.
In the eucharist we gratefully recall Christ’s self gift, pledging our souls and bodies to be a living sacrifice alongside his self-offering. As we reflect in Lent on the engagement of our time, talents and treasure with God’s Church, may what we say we offer be reflected more in our lives. The test of any act of love is that it hurts self interest.
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