Sermons from Bideford 2004/05 Year A

A DIFFERENT KIND OF KING MATT 25: 31-46

2005-11-28T13:23:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, two schoolgirls on the Israeli side of the border with Jordan were shot dead by a a Jordanian soldier who seems to have just gone berserk. The pain in the village of Beit Shamesh was immense as was the anger at this outrage. However, to the surprise of the entire world, the Jordanian King Hussein left his palace and went to the homes of the slain girls. In each home, he went down on his knees and looked up to the grieving families to say, “I beg you, forgive me, forgive me. Your daughter is like my daughter, your loss is my loss. May God help you to bear your pain.”

I remember that story because the actions of King Hussein were not what is normally expected of a King, let alone a proud Hashemite King. Indeed, our normal picture of Kings is of those who are proud and who often with relish wield authority over life an death. Our own history is full of stories about the self interested use of power by many of our Kings and Queens.

Today, real power rarely lies with Kings but the use of power continues to be a matter that commands our attention.

Our world all too often sees the power of weapons. In addition to the threats of terrorism, we see many countries developing and acquiring more powerful weapons which could conceivably far exceed the effects of the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Power lies with he who has the biggest toys and the greatest propensity to use them.

Our world today sees the reality of economic power. Peoples’ livelihoods can be wiped out by decisions taken in offices far away. The economically powerful can make decisions that make or break the lives of so many others.

And furthermore our world today sees the power of marketing and advertising. Day by day we discover needs we never knew we had and the big brands so often claim a loyalty from many especially of our young people as they leave sweatshop workers living on a pittance whilst paying a fortune to that modern curse, celebrities, who are paid great fortunes, to convince us that their brand of trainer or whatever is the only option for those who want to be a part of the in crowd.

Surely, we are at a time when it is sensible to be wary of power and the motives of those who wield it.

And yet, today, we come to Christ the King Sunday. Now ecumenically celebrated, Christ the King Sunday came into being in 1925 at the instigation of Pope Pius X1. He was uneasy at the way society was emerging in the wake of the Great War. Lenin had come to power in Russia and Mussolini was on the march in Italy. Men who used power in an unscrupulous way were all over the place. And , perhaps having seen the Papacy lose the Papal States, he felt that the church and Christ were being sidelined. So this particular day was inaugurated with a vision of encouraging people to look to the greater Kingship of Christ.

But that Kingship is a Kingship like no others. For Christ turns all our notions of Kingship upside down. He was not materially wealthy. He held no position of state. Indeed although he never espoused violence, he was subjected to the violence of the state through a show trial and execution with religious establishment and occupying political power both implicated. He left no writings . And yet!

And yet it is as that famous piece of prose ‘One Life’ puts it;

Nineteen centuries have come and gone and today he is the centrepiece of progress and I am far within my mark when I say that all the armies that have ever marched, and all the navies that were ever built, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the Kings that ever reigned put together have not affected human life upon this earth as has that one solitary life.

So what is this Kingship about? Like the Jordanian King, he leaves the place of splendour to be at the place of suffering. In that place he allows himself to be vulnerable to the very worst that humanity can offer. And yet through it he shows love to the unworthy, brings hope to the despairing and offers forgiveness to the guilty. For this is the way of the self giving Kingship of Christ.

And this Kingship is a Kingship that challenges us in the exercise of power today. You see King Jesus calls us out of the Me Me society and challenges us with a vision in which justice is at the heart of society with a particular emphasis on those who are seen as the losers. In this there is a continuity with the Old Testament emphasis. We heard this morning from Ezekiel. Ezekiel was a man who had no doubt that authority had been misused in Judah. The unjust rulers were in his eyes responsible for the fact that he and many others were far from home in exile whilst back home Jerusalem lay in rubble. His vision of God is a vision in which God tells him;

‘I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.’

For Jesus, the vision goes further. In the vision of the sheep and the goats, he proclaims that what we do for the vulnerable - hungry, naked, imprisoned- we do for him for he is there in the places of vulnerability. Now some would contend that in this vision with terms such as ’these brothers of mine,’ a phrase that Jesus elsewhere uses for his followers, that Jesus is peaking of what we do for Christians. And yet that goes against the real message of Matthew’s Gospel which time and time again shows Jesus’ concerns and compassions going beyond any definable community. After all is not the calling of the church to be the one organisation which exists as much for those who are not its members as for those who are its members?

Still in our treatment of the vulnerable, is how Jesus sees our loyalty to himself being tested. Mother Theresa of Calcutta once put it well when perhaps reflecting on our Gospel reading she wrote;

‘At the end of our life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.
We will be judged by;

“I was hungry and you gave me to eat.
I was naked and you clothed me.
I was homeless and you took me in.”
Hungry not only for bread - but hungry for love
Naked not only for clothing - but naked of human respect and dignity
Homeless not only for a room of bricks - but homeless because of rejection.
This is Christ in distressing surprise.’

And finally, how does King Jesus treat us when we fail? Here’s a story that may help.

A man dies and goes to heaven where he is met by St Peter at the Pearly Gates.

‘Here’s how it works’ says St Peter. ‘You need 100 points to make it into heaven. Tell me the good things you have done and I will give you a certain number of points for each item, depending on how good it was. When you reach 100 points, you get in.’

‘Well’ said the man. ‘I was married to the same woman for 50 years and never cheated on her, even in my heart.’

‘Wonderful’ says St Peter. ‘That’s worth 3 points.’

‘3 points’ replies the man looking a little dejected. ‘Well I attended church all my life and to be fair I was a pretty good giver.’

‘Terrific!’ says St Peter. ‘That’s certainly worth a point.’

‘Only one point!’ The man by now looks worried. ‘Well I started a soup kitchen in my city and I did work in a shelter for the homeless.’

‘Fantastic, that’s good for 2 more points’ exclaims St Peter.

‘Only 2 points!’ the man cries. ‘At this rate the only way I’ll get into heaven is by the grace of God.’

‘Bingo! 100 points!’ shouts St Peter. ‘Come on in!’

And friends that’s what the Kingship of Jesus is about. It turns the world right side up. It values those who are the most vulnerable and calls on us who are the subjects of Jesus to do the same. But ultimately, when we miss the mark, thanks to a thing called grace, it gives to us more than we could ever deserve.

What a King! Truly, a different kind of King!

This sermon was preached in Bideford on November 20th 2005 - Christ the King Sunday

MEMORIES

2005-11-28T13:16:00.000-08:00

On January 27th 2001, the first Holocaust Memorial Day was commemorated at Westminster Central Hall. Amidst the story of sufferings, Rabbi Jonathan Sachs recounted how after the liberation of Auschwitz, there was discovered in a crevice in the wall a small scrap of paper. It had been placed there by a former inmate in what was a desperate communication from that place of death. On it was just one word - Zahor - the Hebrew for “Remember!”

Remembrance is something that we often need to do. In Nicaragua at a time when so many people were disappearing as a result of the then government’s death squads, Archbishop Oscar Romero began the practice of reading the names of those who had disappeared in the previous week, prior to the celebration of the Eucharist. And as each name was read, the congregation acknowledging their link with those who had been taken from this life, would respond by proclaiming “Presente” - "Present!"

Today we come with our own need to remember. We remember those who were caught up in the wars that have afflicted our land during the past century. We remember;

Soldiers and civilians,

Heroes on the battlefield and those who in fear deserted,

Those in whom war brought out the best and those in whom it brought out the worst

Those on our side and those who were the foe

All alike caught up in the human tragedy that is war. For make no mistake, what we are remembering today is the tragic propensity of the human race to resolve its conflicts by expecting the ultimate sacrifice particularly from its young on the field of conflict.

Today we can have no doubts as to the awfulness of the events we remember. It was after all a soldier, General Sherman, a man fought in the American Civil War, who perhaps put it best when he proclaimed;

“War is hell!”

Indeed it is horrendous to think how those who might in other circumstances have got on perfectly well, find themselves in mortal combat in our so often divided world.

One of the most moving episodes of the Great War was the unofficial Christmas truces that took place over the Christmas of 1914. Sharing fags, the singing of carols and apparently the odd game of football, British and German soldiers for precious hours or days enjoyed their shared humanity before their respective High Commands ordered a resumption of the slaughter of war that was to continue for another ghastly four years.

The writer Thomas Hardy puts it well in poem;
“Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have set us down to wet
Right many a nipper kin!

But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face ,
I shot at him and he at me,
And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because-
Because he was my foe,
Just so - my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although

He thought he’d ’list perhaps,
Off- hand like - just as I -
Was out of work - had sold his traps-
No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half a crown”

And in those words we are reminded of a shared humanity which points us to both the awfulness of war and the place of hope. For all those who fell in the conflicts we remember today, were precious children of God. Each and everyone valued by the God who sees even the sparrow fall unnoticed in the street. How much more does God care for the fallen who are in our hearts and minds today!

During the past week there was a television programme which looked at the Great War through some of the survivors. When the programme was begun there were twenty seven survivors. Now there are only four survivors left. In the programme, the humanity of these grand old men shone through. Some had very painful memories. One had not spoken of the war for eighty years until in a nursing home he suffered flashbacks as a result of bright lights. But perhaps the most moving scene was when one of these splendid old ‘Tommies’ whilst visiting war sites in France, went to lay a wreath in one of the German cemeteries. His humanity was a shining light on a site where he as a young man had witnessed all too painfully the darkness of death and destruction. And if he could take time to ‘remember’ those who had been the foe, then surely it is only right that we take time to remember those who went from this area and made the ultimate sacrifice

Back to the story from Auschwitz and we find from the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs the ultimate purpose of what remembrance is about for after telling the story, he observed;

“It is for us to remember not in hate or anger, but simply so that what happened should not happen again.”

This idea that remembrance is a key to a new future is something that is echoed at the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem where the visitor is greeted by an inscription that reads;

“In remembrance lies the secret of deliverance.”

But that is not an understanding that should in any way be alien to us for it is at the heart of our service of Holy Communion. There we remember the sacrifice of Christ which empowers us to live for him in the world.

This morning we seek once more a path to deliverance. So much of human suffering is beyond any explanation. And yet the Scripture give us a vision beyond war. Isaiah offers a vision of new inclusive communities in his vision of a banquet of all peoples. He dares to imagine that God will ‘destroy the shroud that enfold all peoples’ and a future in which death will be swallowed for ever. Instead is offered a hope of a time when ‘swords will be turned into ploughshares.’ Time and again from the Scriptures comes the calling for the people of God to be peacemakers. And surely that is our calling in response to the debt of honour that we owe to the fallen and all those who have suffered in conflicts.

Recalling the sacrifices of precious people calls us to

- let not their memory dim

- to treat well and with respect those who have served in times of peril and surely it is saddening to read the British Legion’s report on how many of our veterans are rather than living as heroes, living in poverty

- to commit ourselves to the search for peace and mutual respect between peoples.

Back in 1940 Coventry Cathedral was destroyed as a result of heavy bombing. In the rubble workmen found a large number of nails from the Middle Ages. The nails were gathered up and fashioned into crosses plated with silver. One cross of these nails was set on an altar in the ruins of the old cathedral. Behind it is a large charred cross and inscribed on the wall behind are the words, “Father forgive.”

Many of these crosses have been sent to other countries and thousands of postcards depicting the Coventry Cross of Nails and the words, “Father, forgive” have been distributed all around the world. Out of destruction has come a symbol of forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.

But forgiveness, reconciliation and peace can only come against a background of remembering. Barbara Streisland’s classic song, ‘The Way we were’ contains the haunting lines;

“What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget”

But that is about evading reality. Today we do remember because it the right things to do and because it is the only background that can enable us to repay all those who sacrificed by creating a world of forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.

This was a Sermon for Remembrance Day Nov 13th 2005 preached at Bideford.

BUT WHAT IS ENOUGH? LUKE 12:13-21

2005-11-10T16:10:00.000-08:00

The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story entitled ‘How Much land does a Man Need?’ It tells the story of a peasant named Pakhom who sees his problem as being a lack of land. Should he have enough land, he comments that he would not even fear the Devil himself.

His opportunity arises when the landowner of a nearby estate decides to sell her property and so he decides to buy forty acres of this land. To finance this, he has to sell a colt, half of his bee colony, hire out one of his sons and to borrow the rest from his bother in law. The purchase works out well. Thanks to a good Harvest he is able to pay of all his debts.

End of story you might think but No! Soon he feels cramped and develops problems with his neighbours and so hearing of land beyond the Volga which is available at a decent price, he sells his land and purchases more land than he could ever have dreamt of owning.

But once again he comes to the conclusion that he needs yet more land. Some years later he hears that another landowner is prepared to sell 1,300 acres for a good price. Pakhom is on the verge of buying this land when he hears from a passing dealer of some far away land which he could buy for next to nothing. And so off he sets again. There he meets a chief who offers to sell him all the land he could walk around by day for a mere 1,000 rubles. There is but one catch. If he has not returned to his starting point by sundown, he will lose both the 1,00o rubles and the land.

Pakhom spends the night before the walk in a state of total excitement and the riches that lie ahead. In the morning he meets with the Chief who puts his hat on the starting point and with that Pakhom sets off to the rising Sun. And so Pakhom walks for miule after mile. Each time he thinks of turning, the land seems to good to lose and so he goes on and on until at breakfast he makes his first turn. The next turn, he puts off time and again until just after lunch. But by then he has gone so far that he is tiring and the walk back becomes ever more difficult. He realises that he has tried to cover too much ground. As he look up, he sees the Sun setting. Fearful that he is about to lose everything he runs, runs despite the pain in his legs and chest. But time is short, too short and so with the Sun nearly set, he makes a final surge towards the starting point where the Chief is waiting for him. And as he reaches the laughing Chief, his legs give way.
“Ah that’s a fine fellow, he has gained much land” says the Chief. But for what? Pakhom has died in the effort and now in Tolstoy’s immortal phrase, “Six feet from hi head to his heels was all he needed.”

A strange story! Like Jesus’ story of the rich fool a rather morbid story. But No! For the message of both of these stories is about how we chose to live our lives. Pakhom like the Rich Fool has been seduced into living for things. Like the rich fool, he has lost the capacity to be satisfied for both of these characters are powerful warning of how materialism can distort our lives.

Now, at this point a brief cautionary note. This Parable reminds me of a much misquoted Scripture. How often we hear it said that ‘money is the root of all evil.’ Nowhere does the Bible say such a thing. The relevant Scripture is that ‘the love of money is the root of all evil.’ And so, the failing of the rich fool is not that he had money or even that he invested it for any economic system requires profits to be invested for future requirements. No, the sin of the rich fool is that he has allowed the acquisition of things to dominate his whole life. His view of life was a self centred view that emphasised Me and Mine above all other considerations.
In a sense the Rich Fool is an echo of the Rich Young Man who approached Jesus. In neither case are they condemned for their affluence. In both cases, their problem is that they put that affluence at the centre of their lives pushing God out to the edges. Here is where the conflict comes with the teachings of Christ who urges us to be open to God in our lives and to be aware and responsive to the needs of others as demonstrated by the Parable of the Good Samaritan which we focused on last week.

But perhaps at this point we need to open ourselves to the message of Christ in this parable. For are not we all open to the same attitude as the Rich Fool. We live in a society where modern day marketing has immense power to create in us needs we never knew we had. Gadgets, bigger wardrobes and flashier cars nag away at all of us. We all know the need to do or achieve something different and in no time our focus can depart from God. Our parable this morning is a wake up call. It doesn’t call us to hair shirt living but it reminds us that as creatures of God, we need to keep our focus on God and what God calls us to do.

As Mother Theresa put it;

At the end of life we will not be judged by hown many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done.
We will be judged by
“I was hungry and you gave me to eat.
I was naked and you clothed me.
I was homeless and you took me in.”
Hungry not only for bread
But hungry for love
Naked not only for clothing
But naked of human respect and dignity.
Homeless not only for want of a room of bricks
But homeless of rejection.
This is Christ in distressing surprise.’

And so this morning, amidst the activity of life we take time out to come to a simple table where we might receive the gifts of Christ, bread and wine. And as we encounter the living Christ who accepts us, we seek his help to keep our lives in focus.
AMEN

This sermon was preached in Bideford on November 6th 2005 at a Communion Service. It was the last of a 3 part series on 'The Parables of Jesus.'

NEIGHBOURS - MORE THAN AN AUSSIE SOAP! LUKE 10: 25 - 37

2005-10-31T01:21:00.000-08:00

It was during the war in the former Yugoslavia. A reporter covering the violence in Sarajevo saw a young girl fall to the ground, hit by a sniper’s bullet. He threw down his pen and paper and ran to a man who was holding the stricken child. Seeing the gravity of the situation, the journalist guided the man and child into his car and then sped off in the direction of the hospital.
As they drove through the streets, the man holding the girl called out, “Hurry, my friend, my child s still alive.” Moments later he called out again, “Hurry, my friend my child is still breathing.” A little later with a voice that betrayed some desperation, he called out again, “Hurry, my friend, my child is still warm.”

Alas, by the time they reached the hospital, the child had died. As the two men sat together, the man who had held the child turned to the reporter and said, “Now comes a terrible task. I must go and tell her father what has happened.”

The journalist looked at the man with shock before saying, “But I thought she was your child.”

“No” replied the man “but aren’t they all our children?”

A 20th Century story that reminds us of our interconnectedness with one another, a message that is at the heart of the parable that Jesus told about the Good Samaritan.

Let us just for a moment look to the background of this parable. Jesus has been asked for the way to eternal life. He has reminded the man of the Old Testament Law. The man when asked what is in the Law, answers with words taken from the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, words in other Gospels attributed to Jesus but in Luke’s Gospel receiving the assent of Jesus - namely to love God with heart, soul, strength and mind - and also to love one’s neighbour as oneself. These are accepted by Jesus as summarising the Law and encompassing its spirit. In short, the follower of Christ is called to love God with all his or her being and for that to be expressed in the love of others. In a sense the two go together for the ways of God are ways of love and kindness.

I remember years ago hearing of a story in which a man arrived at a church to be warmly greeted at the door. Ignoring the warmth of the greeting, he muttered angrily, “ I came to Church to worship God, not to socialise with the likes of you!” In a real sense he had missed the point for the worship of God is not just expressed in as it were addressing the one who is on high. Surely it is also horizontal in its direction being directed to God whom we meet through what the Quakers call the ‘Divine Spark’ which is to be found in others whom we encounter.

But back to the story that Jesus told. The man wanted to know more and so we find him asking Jesus who is his neighbour. And at that Jesus tells this well known story. It is about a reckless traveller going on what then and even into the 20th Century was a dangerous journey from Jerusalem to Jericho. It was a journey which stretched for some 20 miles with a descent from 2,300 feet above sea level to 1,300 feet below sea level. It was rocky and full of sharp turnings which made it a happy hunting ground for brigands. So notorious was the road that in the 5th Century Jerome tells us that it was known as “The Bloody Way.” Only a fool would dare to travel it alone and it was about such a fool that Jesus tells his story about. Nobody listening would be remotely surprised to hear that this man received a good going over. After all he had earned it with his stupidity.

But the story moves on to look at those who later came down the road. The first such people were a priest and a levite, good respectable religious men. But for their own reasons, as they see the battered man, they decide that he is not their responsibility and so pass by on the other side. But then comes a third man, a Samaritan! I wonder if there was a groan from Jesus’ listeners at this. After all they would have seen Samaritans as the enemy. Five centuries of animosity between Jew and Samaritan had taken place and there was in the lifetime of Jesus, no sign of historic handshakes or the likes. The Samaritan had no reason to care for a battered Jew but there we find the rub! For amazingly the Samaritan far from administering another kicking actually administers first aid to the wounded man before taking him to an inn and paying for his convalescence there. The Samaritan, unlike the beaten man’s own people, emerges as the true neighbour of the battered Jew.

Sometimes now, we tame this story into being a rather nice story but I am sure that most of those who first heard Jesus tell it, heard it through clenched teeth because this was a story that challenged their prejudices and suggested that even those whom they most despised were the people whom the command, “Love your neighbour” brought them into contact with.
And heard truly today, it continues to be a story with the power to shock and discomfort. For its essential message is that our responsibilities are not simply to “Me and Mine” but to those whom we decidedly see as “Other.” Oh, I know that none of us gets worked up about the small community of Samaritans that still exists in the Middle East but I wonder if we too see some people whose beliefs, lifestyle or place of background discomfort us as being beyond the pale. Well, this parable challenges us to examine our points of prejudice and to see that those we find it hardest to see as our neighbours, are precisely that, just as us, children of God. And so, this parable rebukes us should we be tempted to dehumanise others in our hearts and challenges us to see in neighbourliness not the sickly niceness of the Australian soap, but a calling to work for fair play for those unjustly treated in life even when at times they are in part the architects of their misfortunes.

But how far does all of this go? Let me tell you about Michael Weisser a prominent Jew who moved to Lincoln in Nebraska USA. As he and his wife were unpacking, they received a phone call telling them they would be sorry to have moved there. Soon they received hate mail purporting to come from the Klu Klux Klan with sick racist and anti semitic pictures. The police when contacted, advised that it probably came from Larry Trapp who was the leading Klansman in that state. They warned that he had a history of violence, making explosives which were used against the Klan’s victims. Indeed they had reason to believe that he was plotting to blow up the synagogue that Weisser was called to lead.

Now Trapp despite all of this was confined to a wheel chair as a result of lat stage diabetes. So when he began a race hate TV series on a cable channel, Weisser rang his hotline phone number and reminded him that under his hero Hitler’s laws, Trapp would have been amongst the first victims.

Over time, Weisser continued to phone the hotline. One day, Trapp picked it up and responded aggressively in the end demanding to know why Weisser kept ringing. At that moment Weisser remembered a suggestion from his wife and so responded, “ Well I was thinking you might need a hand with something, and I wondered if I could help. I know you’re in a wheel chair and I thought maybe I could take you to the grocery store or something.”

Trapp gave a sort of gruff thanks. Weisser continued with the calls and eventually Trapp admitted that he was having to do some thinking. But in no time Trapp was back with the same old hate filled rants. Next time when they spoke there was a row and Trapp admitted that he found it hard to get out of his old ways. The next evening, however, he phoned Weisser and told him he wanted to give up his old ways. That night they met and amid many a tear embraced.
Ultimately, Trapp left all his racist organisations and wrote many a letter of apology. When his health deteriorated further, he moved in with the Weissers and Mrs Weisser gave up her job to nurse him. He even converted to Judaism.

Larry Trapp, a man who fro childhood experienced the violence of his own father had met his own Good Samaritan and been changed by the experience.

Most of us cannot imagine going as far as Michael Weisser. Yet there is no greater need to day than that we show value to those who are other than us. It is only commonsense for as Martin Luther King observed,

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Yes, in our world of diversity, we need to recognise that all who hurt are indeed our children.
This morning as we look to God who reconciles the world to himself, may we take seriously, the call of God made flesh that we should seek reconciliation and real love in a world where we all are NEIGHBOURS!

This sermon was preached at a service of baptism at Bideford Methodist Church on October 30th 2005 as the second in a series of 3 sermons from 'Parables of Jesus.'

FORGIVENESS UNLIMITED

2005-10-31T01:15:00.001-08:00

When I left the Isle of Man, I suspected that there would be a number of people who I had met who I would never hear of again. One of those was Robin Oake who for much of our time there was the Chief Constable of the Isle of Man Constabulary. Before you get excited about a possibly colourful past, I had better disabuse you. My dealings with Robin Oake were strictly on areas of Christian activity. During my first year in Kirk Michael he was involved in supporting a number of meetings at the Methodist Church which were organised by a Christian body to whom we let the church out. I also served with him on Walk Isle of Man. I can’t say that I was close to him but I appreciated that he was a very sincere man who was as straight as a dye.

It was whilst in Cambridge that I heard of a policeman who had been stabbed to death in Manchester. Even the name Stephen Oake failed to register with me but what caught my eye was reading of Robin who turned out to be Stephen’s father, in a tearful interview spoke of how he was praying that God would help him forgive his son’s killer. In subsequent interviews, Robin Oake has spoken of praying for the killer of his sin, a killer who is now serving a life sentence. Had I never met Robin Oake, the cynic in me could easily have thought that what I read was just words but I know enough of this man to know that he who has suffered a terrible loss, is sincere in his belief that following Christ leads him to express forgiveness even to one who has taken from him a much loved son.

Today is the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York. I guess that most of us can remember the moment when we heard what had happened. In my case I was popping into a shop to buy computer ink cartridges. My first instinct was to visit a nearby member of one of my churches and together we sat in silence watching as events unfurled.

In the years that have followed, there have been two wars, further terrorist outrages and we seem more ready to excuse torture than was the case in the past. Whilst there are those with whom it is difficult to envisage dialogue, I think that we are moving more and more to a polarised world in which polarisation are getting ever larger. A while ago I watched a short film which suggested that;

Terrorism is bred in
Fear
Anger
Hatred.

Terrorism creates in the people against whom it is aimed;
Fear
Anger
Hatred in otherwise peaceful people

Retaliation creates;
Fear
Anger
Hatred in innocent people who suffer from such retaliation

And of course terrorism is bred in such
Fear
Anger
Hatred

In other words, a cycle of hatred and violence is self perpetuating and it is an ever increasing circle in its scope. And I would add that what is true regarding nations is also true of families and communities.

No wonder Mahatma Gandhi expressed the view that “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” originally devised as a means of keeping conflict within proportionality, ultimately leads to a world of blind and toothless people.

And so we come to the words of Jesus. Jesus is clearly in favour of breaking the cycle. His disciples want to know how many times they should forgive those who wrong them. Is seven times enough? But Jesus isn’t into their numbers game. He comes up with the unbelievably high formula of seventy times seven. In other words, Jesus suggests that there is no limit but that there is a calling to go on and on forgiving. In a sense Jesus turns upside down all our notion of common sense and the expert’s view of statecraft.

But we all know that forgiveness is at times a tall order. I think of my mother’s cousin who was a prisoner in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for a lengthy period of time. I am told that when he returned home after the war, neither his mother or girl friend recognised him at first. Having never talked about the war with him, I do not know if he ever forgave his captors or even the nation that did such wrongs to him. I can’t but think it would have been asking a lot of him.

And then I think of Simon Wiesenthal the Jewish prisoner of the Nazis who later became famous for hunting down Nazi war criminals. He wrote a moving book entitled “ The Sunflower.” It tells of his time as a prisoner and of his encounter with a dying SS soldier. He was brought to this man who had but hours left to live and listened to the man’s story of having been involved in a massacre of Jews. The soldier knew he had done wrong and wished the forgiveness of a Jew. Wiesenthal listened patiently to the man and even provided him with water. However, the request for forgiveness was something that Wiesenthal could not respond positively to in part at least due to the Jewish understanding that one can only forgive what has been done against oneself as opposed to others. So in silence he rose and left the man.

Some might take another view. An example is Bud Welch. He lost his daughter in the Oklahoma bombing. For a time he was consumed with bitterness. But then he recalled how his daughter had so passionately opposed the death penalty and had told him before her death that it never solved things for the victims. So he began to speak out against executions and even visited the killer Timothy Mc Veigh’s father and did everything he could to oppose the execution which ultimately took place.

For indeed one of the problems with holding on to grudges is that they can consume us. Nelson Mandela served 27 years in gaol. Some time after his release, he met with the then President Clinton. Clinton had one big question which he wanted t put. It concerned a look on Mandela’s face as he walked to the gate of the prison. Clinton saw upon Mandela’s face a look of anger and hatred which he couldn’t reconcile with the Mandela who he was now meeting and who he knew had taken great steps for reconciliation. In response to the question, Mandela explained that he thought of all that had happened to his family and friends in those years before adding;
Then, I sensed an inner voice saying to me, "Nelson! For twenty seven years you were their prisoner but you were always a free man! Don’t allow them to make you into a free man, only to turn you into their prisoner."

And in a real way we can learn from those words. For bitterness can only enslave us and prevent us from being the people that God wishes us to be, the people who reflect his love and peace.

But it is inevitably hard. Corrie ten Boom knew how hard it was. She spent years in Ravensbruck Concentration camp where unspeakable horrors took place. There her own sister Betsy was among those who died. In 1947, whilst speaking in Munich, one of the cruellest guards at Ravensbruck approached her. He told her how he had become a Christian and that he knew he had God’s forgiveness but he wanted to hear hers as well. In that moment she just could not reach out to this man and so she prayed for God’s help and ultimately she was able to fully forgive this man who had done such wrong to her and so many others.

So are there limits to forgiveness. With God, the answer is No! But what of us? Well, surely forgiveness to be real has to be sought by the wrongdoer. It is not about our forgetting what has happened or our assuming that the person couldn’t have done better. It is about recognising the wrongdoer as someone capable of moral actions even if they have acted immorally. It is necessary that they sincerely seek forgiveness and it is that sincerity rather than the scope of the wrong done that should be the gate to forgiveness. For nations I suspect that what is needed is the resolve for reconciliation and an ability not to simply demonise as increasingly is being done against the wider community of Islam. We certainly need to desist from judging others by their worse moments or we might be judged harshly on the same basis.

More and more I sense that in our world there is a tendency to dehumanise others with all the horrible consequences that such involves. Against such a background, I suggest we need to treat seriously the countercultural teaching of Jesus.
AMEN

This sermon was preached at the evening service at Northam on September 11th

SHOCK AND GRACE LUKE 15:11-32

2005-10-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

The film “Amadeus” tells the story of the relationship between Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The music of Mozart is amongst the greatest music ever written and it is close to impossible to imagine a time when it becomes forgotten. Salieri was also a distinguished musician, the Court Composer of the Austrian Emperor no less. However, his music was no match for that of Mozart and Salieri knew it. His earnest desire to write great music of praise to God was eclipsed by the ill mannered brat of a delinquent that was Mozart. Salieri just cannot cope with God so gifting the obnoxious Mozart that he becomes consumed with bitterness, eventually turning on a crucifix to utter his pain;

From now on we are enemies. You and I. Because you choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy and give me only the ability to recognize the incarnation.

In these words, Salieri as many have done since finds the grace of God unfair.

Perhaps at this stage we need to look at a few simple definitions. When we talk of justice we talk of getting what we deserve. When we talk of mercy we talk of being spared what we deserve. But when we speak of grace we speak of getting what we do not deserve, the generous kindness of God.

And it is such grace that is at the heart of the Parable of the Prodigal Son or as perhaps it is better described, The Parable of the Loving Father.

In this story, Jesus uses the Father figure to teach us something of the nature of God. Sometimes, we struggle to appreciate just how wronged the Father is by his younger son. Sometimes, we simply see the younger son as a man in a hurry. However, the New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey who lived in the Middle East for many years points out the uniqueness of the son demanding his share of the inheritance. It simply does not happen in the countless Middle Eastern stories of two brothers where often the younger brother is a rascal. Why? Because the request is so extreme that it would be understood as expressing a desire for the father to die. In short the younger brother is telling the father to “drop dead!” And yet rather the beat his Son for his callous request as the hearers would expect, the Father gives him his inheritance and his freedom. For this Father is not acting as a Jewish father would be expected to act. Instead, he is the Father who gives his child the chance to explore in freedom.

This surprise gets added to later for when the Son returns with precious little repentance but rather the actions of self interest, the Father responds not with chastisement but with instant forgiveness and generosity, restoring the Son to all the joys of being a Son, the very status that the Son had so abused.

Think back to what grace is, the giving of what we do not deserve and here you will find it in full.

And in this we see the grace of God to you and me. Here we see God not as a stern monarchical figure as so often the Church has portrayed God as being but as a parent filled with the extremities of love, crossing even the boundaries of gender by running to kiss the Son and later by remonstrating with the sullen older Son in a way that would normally be the conduct of a mother rather than a father. No wonder that Rembrandt is his painting of “The Return of the Prodigal Son” goes out of his way to portray the Father with feminine as well as masculine characteristics. It is in the merger of the two that we are able to see the immensity and the self giving that is the Father’s love. And God made flesh in Jesus shows us how much that grace is for us. Not for nothing does the Requiem Mass write of Christ’s Passion and journey to the cross with the moving words;

Remember, merciful Jesus, that I am the cause of your journey.

And so in a world in which people are written off for their failings, the grace of God reveals that the God of the Universe, values us in full knowledge of our shortcomings and offers to each of us value and love beyond anything we deserve. So when we feel as nothing, written off by others, God in love longs to embrace us with the arms of absolutely unconditional love. And God has that feeling for us not because of any illusions as to how good we are but in full knowledge of our shortcomings. And that is what grace is about.

Sometimes, today, I hear Christians wonder what the followers of Jesus have to offer to the world today. We have no monopoly on great music, fine literature or beautiful art. We have found that whilst in the 19th Century it was the Church which opened up the possibilities of education and provided much health care, the public sector can now do this much better than we can. When it comes to working with the young, other organisations can provide much better equipment particularly with regards to the likes of computers. Yes, in most fields, we have precious little that is unique to offer. And yet we have one precious thing to share which people need- grace! That is the news of God’s grace and the potential to be a means of God’s grace to others.

Phil Yancey tells an appalling story of a friend. This friend was approached by a prostitute who was in a terrible state. Homeless, sick and hungry, she came to Yancey’s friend and revealed a dreadful story of how her drug addiction had taken her so low that she was renting out her own daughter to her clients so that she could afford drugs. Yancey’s friend felt intense anguish knowing that he would have to report this woman to the authorities and so had few means of helping her. In despair, he asked her if she had thought of going to a church for help. A look of panic came over the woman before she answered,

“Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”

And in those words we find a challenge, for during the life of Jesus, people who had hit rock bottom ran towards him rather than away from him. The whole background to this story is that the Pharisees were complaining that Jesus was sharing meals with undesirables. And of course that is how in our story the older brother saw the younger brother. He saw only the bad in his younger sibling and so felt no desire to welcome him back and on the basis of justice he was probably right but he had missed out on grace.

I get a feeling that today, the older brother is representative of mainstream attitudes in our society. We give up on people, freeze them in their worst moments and see them as lesser. The modern day High Priests of media preach a message of judgement without mercy. How utterly contrary to the message of Christ in which people are restored out of timeless love.

During my time in training, I spent some time in prison chaplaincy often with a minister who found Circuit work stressful and unrewarding. His work in bringing hope, giving time and showing value of prisoners seemed to be what kept him going. And whilst I do not share his unhappiness at Circuit life, I think I can see where he was coming from for behind those imposing bars where dwelt many who were whatever the wrongs they had done, themselves casualties, chaplaincy was so often a sign of grace through which the incarcerated men were able to begin discovering what it means to be valued, an alien experience for all too many.

Increasingly, I feel that our society has a choice of the way ahead. We can self righteously write people of when they foul up. It may seem like commonsense to many people even though it ultimately leads to ever increasing cycles of shame, broken lives, hatred and violence. Or we can dare to let ourselves be dominated by grace with all the counter cultural implications of such a choice.

Struggling for a title to this sermon, I came across the example of a minister who provided a sermon title of “Murderers, Criminals, Prostitutes Welcome.” And rather than have it put on a Notice Sheet as I do, he had it put on the church sign out in front of the church. In no time, the complaints began, telephone calls were made to members of the church council condemning the minister and demanding that the sign be pulled down. They had not understood grace.

But for me my mind when back to the days before the Iraq War when we were told that “Shock and Awe” would be unleashed. Overwhelming military power, we were told was the way to change things. Judge for yourselves the consequences of such a notion. This morning I just want to leave you with the suggestion that ultimately grace changes more than overwhelming power can ever do. For this gift of God transforms our lives and has the capacity to change the world beyond. And it is hardly for us to refuse for each of us has received of God more than we could ever deserve. For his grace, his love for us has changed everything even at cost to Christ

Remember, merciful Jesus, that I am the cause of your journey.

I am sure he remembers. But do we?

This sermon was preached at a baptism service in Bideford on October 16th 2005. It was the first in a series of 3 sermons on 'Parables of Jesus.'

THANKS AND THANKS LUKE 17:11-19

2005-09-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves so thanks for nothing.

With that offering of a grace, cult figure Bart Simpson speaks for much of our contemporary culture. For we find so often today that our world is committed to endorsing our independence rather than our dependence on God, so much so that ‘Thankyou’ seems to be becoming an alien word.

A story is old of a woman at an airport departure lounge. Faced with a delay she sat down to read a book. After a while, a man sat down next to her. After a few minutes the woman reached down to the bag of cookies that she had bought and ate one. To her horrror, the man took one as well. And so it went on. Every time she took a cookie so did he. Not surprisingly she found herself getting ever more angry but whilst her face betrayed her rage, she never said a word. Eventually there was only one cookie left. Now to make things worse, the man beat her to it before with a smile breaking it in two, eating one half himself and giving the other half to the woman. At that moment, the man’s flight was called and so he set off, giving her one last smile. In return the woman produced her least friendly frown. With the cookie thief safely out of the way, the woman used the vacated space to stretch out - and at that moment she felt her hand brush against her unopened bag of cookies. She had been the cookie thief. The man had been generous. And now it was too late to thank him.

A missed opportunity to express gratitude can be seen in this morning’s Gospel Reading. Ten men were lepers. This meant not just that they suffered from a terrible disease which in its most extreme form as Hansen’s disease destroys the nerves in fingers and toes but that they also suffered from exclusion from society as those who were unclean. A community of need so great that distinction between Jews and Samaritans became important, led them to banded together to cry out to Jesus for help and pity. Not that this distinction is ignored by Luke. You see, the Samaritans were hardly popular amongst the Jewish community. After all, they were regarded as those who had ceased to be Jews in a meaningful way. They may have had their origins in the tribes of Israel. But after the Assyrians had overrun the North of Israel eight centuries before Christ, those citizens who were not killed or taken into permanent exile, found their cities in Samaria settled by foreigners of other faiths. Gradually the Jews and these foreigners intermingled in way that brought a racist reaction from some as well as an abhorrence that their religion had become compromised. In the years that followed, Jews and Samaritans snubbed each other and the Samaritans went so far as to set up a rival centre of worship to Jerusalem at Mount Gerazim. Even in the childhood of Jesus, the Samaritans used the remains of dead animals to desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem. And so perhaps the naming of one of the lepers in this border community as a Samaritan is not without significance.

And that significance comes out in the story of reactions to the healing of these lepers. Nine of them did precisely what Jesus told them to do. They went on their way to see the priest to get verification for their healing. They went off so that they could speedily rejoin society. But the Samaritan did something different. Having set off like the others, he turns around. Why? Because he sees in his healing the work of God and he knows that he needs to give thanks to God and praise God. For in a real sense the wholeness that was now his, is about discerning the presence of God within our lives, even in those things we consider ordinary, and that same wholeness means being grateful for the ways in which God blesses us. This is what it is to be truly human.

It is a bit like the story of the evangelist Harry Ironside who in a crowded restaurant bowed his head to pray before eating a meal. The other man at the table asked him if he had a headache. “No” replied Ironside. So the man asked him if something was wrong with his food. Ironside replied, “Ni, I was simply thanking God as I always do before I eat.” “Oh” replied the man in true Bart Simpson mode, “ you’re one of those are you? Well I want you to know that I never give thanks. I earn my money by the sweat of my brow and I don’t have to give thanks to anybody when I eat. I just start right in.” Ironside’s immortal response was, “Yes, you’re just like my dog. That’s what he does too!”

At that is a matter for Harvest. In our society of self dependence, are we becoming blind to the gifts of God, instead seeing man as the giver of all things. I like a statement by William Sloan Coffin who in America has been a powerful voice against injustices. Yet reflecting on the changing situation of his declining health, he says;

I am less intentional than attentional. I am more attentive to family and friends and to nature’s beauty. Although still outraged by callous behaviour, particularly in high places, I feel more often serene, grateful for God’s gift of life. For the compassions that fail not, I find myself saying daily to my loving Maker, ‘I can no other answer than thanks and thanks and thanks.

And that is at the heart of Harvest Thanksgiving. Too often we marginalise God in our world. Yet at Harvest we are reminded that to be truly human we need to say Thanks and Thanks and Thanks. And then seeing how we are blessed by the generous gifts of God to be like the Samaritan to use the wholeness God gives us to work for justice and the fair use of the resources of our world.

But may we do so with appreciation. A man was once chased by a tiger. He ran and ran until he came to a sheer cliff. As the tiger neared him, he grabbed a rope hanging over the cliff and climbed out of the tiger’s reach. Looking up, he saw the tiger above just longing to eat him. Below he saw a drop of some 500 feet. What could he do. Just then he saw a rare sight, a bright red strawberry growing out on the side of the cliff. He reached out his hand grabbed the strawberry and popped it into his mouth. So good was it’s taste that he exclaimed, “That was the best strawberry I have ever tasted.”

In a dire predicament he appreciated something that was good. We may not be chased by tigers but we too need to appreciate the good gifts that we so often take for granted and whilst not minimising all that we owe to human graft, be grateful to the God who is at the heart of all the good things we enjoy, and who continues to bless us from the generous heart of Divine love.

This sermon was preached at Gammaton Harvest Festival on September 11th 2005

A Bush and a Cross Exodus 3:1-15; Matt 16:21-28

2005-09-04T05:49:00.000-07:00

I like the story of President George W. Bush walking through an airport when he meets an elderly man with a long beard, wearing robes and sandals and carrying in his arms two tablets of stone. Excitedly, Bush runs up to the old man and asks;

"Sir, are you Moses?"

The man carries on walking so Bush chases after him, once more asking;

"Sir, are you Moses?"

Still the man carries on walking without responding to the question. But persistently, Bush carries on his pursuit, saying to the old man;

"I don’t know if you are Moses or not, but if you are Moses, you aren’t exactly friendly."

At this the old man stops and looks Bush in the eye before responding;

"Of course I am Moses, but you and I both know that the last time I talked to a Bush I spent 40 years wandering around in the wilderness."

Yes indeed. The calling of Moses through the Burning Bush was something that changed the life of Moses. Furthermore, the calling of Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and on a journey to become God’s people was peculiar in the extreme. For Moses was about as suited to such leadership as perhaps today, Simon Cowell would be suited to opening up a Charm School.

There is an old story of a church looking for a new pastor. The Selection Committee had spent hours one night looking for the right person and were ready to give up when they came upon this letter of introduction from a candidate;

"To the Ministerial Nominating Committee. It is my understanding that you are in the process of searching for a new pastor, and I would like to apply for the position. I wish I could say that I am a terrific preacher, but I can’t - actually, I stutter when I speak. I wish I could say that I have an impressive educational background, but I can’t - no college or seminary, just the school of “Hard knocks.” I wish I could say that I bring a wealth of experience to the job, but I can’t - I have never been a pastor before ( unless you count the flock of sheep I have been shepherding). I wish I could say I have wonderful pastoral skills, but I can’t - sometimes I lose my temper and have been known to get violent when upset. Once I even killed somebody, but gracious folks that you are, I am sure that you wouldn’t hold that against me. I know that churches these days want young ministers to attract young members, and I wish that I could say that I am young, but I can’t - actually, I am almost 80,,, but I still feel young. With all that which might go against me, why am I applying for your position? Simple. One afternoon recently, the voice of God spoke to me and said I had been chosen to lead. I admit, I was a bit reluctant at first, but… well here I am. O look forward to hearing from you and to leading you into an exciting new future. Yours sincerely,"

The Selection Committee looked at each other aghast. The chairperson asked, “Well what do you think?” the question seemed totally unnecessary. A stuttering, uneducated, inexperienced, arrogant, old, clearly neurotic ex - murderer as their pastor? The man must be crazy. The Chairperson eyed each of the committee before she added, “It is signed Moses.”

Certainly Moses was an unlikely choice to be God’s leader in the epic that was about to unfold. Everything about him was wrong. That is except for the fact that he was able to sense the presence of God in a way that few others would have. In a burning bush, he sensed the presence of God and dared to realise that he was on Holy ground. It’s a bit like Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it in her poem, "Aurora Leigh";

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.

And that is the big question. Do we like Moses see God’s presence in our world or are we oblivious to the presence of God?

Now the important thing about God’s call to Moses through the burning bush, is that it is a call for Moses to be involved in God’s work of liberation. At this time, the Hebrews are like many a minority community in the world since, the victims of oppression. They are treated as slaves, as lesser people by the power that is Egypt. Their contribution to that society just generations before is as it were airbrushed out of history. Their situation had about it a hopelessness that has its parallels in the position of non European races in South Africa not so long ago. Like them they had little reason to expect things to change. But in the story of Moses, we see the God who is on the side of the victims of injustice and who demands a change of perspective and a change of situation. We see in this story no quiet acceptance of injustice but instead a refrain that breaks forth time and time again with ever increasing crescendo;

Let my people go!

And in the story of Moses and the Exodus, we see the giant of oppressive power brought to its very knees. And it is no accident that where people are deprived a fair deal in life, this story is recalled as a message of hope. This is particularly true in the context of South America where the extremes of poverty and ostentatious wealth live in close proximity with the position of the powerful maintained by death squads and misuse of state power. For to the communities marked by liberation theology, this story says that God is to be found as present in the struggle against injustice and cruelty and part of our path of discipleship is to cooperate with this Divine work of liberation.

And yet, I cannot help but be uncomfortable with some of the way in which the story later pans out. We later hear of plagues which wreak havoc, of the horror of the deaths of the first born sons of the Egyptians and the drowning of many of their conscript army. I find myself shuddering at the thought that God’s liberation may be for one people and not for another. I struggle with the seeming indifference of the Biblical accounts to the victims who happen to be Egyptian. And perhaps my reason is not just that it seems unfair for collective guilt to have been imposed in the past. For I think part of my unease is contemporary. I am uncomfortable when collective guilt is directed against a people on mass. After all did we not see something of that in the video of the London suicide bomber who was prepared to condemn a whole people for what he saw as wrongs perpetuated in our names even if we were opposed to those actions.

Too often in history, it seems to me that wrongs have been righted by means that have produced their own wrongs. And circles of ever increasing hatred and violence are the result. Yes, the Scriptures commit us to opposing injustice but surely we are not called to that damnable lie that ends necessarily justify the means.

And it is here that our Gospel Reading fits in. Peter has not long before acclaimed Jesus as “Messiah.” He has seen Jesus as the one who will bring victory to his people over those who have imposed on it the long night of wrong. But he has failed to understand the ways of God in bringing the triumph of right. He still sees a victory won by the killing and destruction of enemies. No wonder he is unable to understand the Kingship of Jesus where the weapons of power will be love and forgiveness. No wonder he is unable to understand a Jesus whose victory will be seen not in killing others but in being killed himself. But surprising as it is to him, his whole understanding of God has to undergo a mega transformation.

Soon he will learn the power of self giving. Soon he will see in the cross the way of God bringing salvation to the world. For in the Cross is God in Christ offering a sufficient sacrifice that draws us away from demanding further shedding of blood. The need for vengeance is gone as is the need to punish ourselves as so many do. The Cross proclaims with power that Christ has taken on himself all the wrongs and sufferings of the world and no longs to share his risen life with each and every one of us. For to him, we are all special and valuable.

So this morning we meet the risen Christ afresh at the Table. And then we go into the world. And as we go into the world, we go seeking the sensitivity to the presence of Christ that was Moses’, the willingness to serve God despite our limitations which took some time for Moses to reach, the passion to oppose injustice and all that dehumanises which God revealed to be the Divine way to Moses, and finally with the appreciation that in all things we need to be guided by the way of Jesus who values and loves even those whose humanity we too often deny.

This sermon was preached in Bideford on September 4th at a Communion Service

WHO AM I? Matthew 16: 13-20

2005-08-25T01:09:00.000-07:00

Who do you say I am?

A simple question asked by Jesus to his closest followers.
They have just told him what others have been saying. Their answers have linked Jesus with the prophetic tradition be it through John the Baptist, Elijah or Jeremiah. Each of these three men has been used by God at some point in the past, in John’s case actually overlapping with Jesus.

Others might have produced very different answers. To some, Jesus was the healer who had given them restored health. To others, Jesus was the teacher who had given them value. Whilst to others, Jesus was man who mixed with the wrong type of people, a man whose teaching was a blasphemy which was disobedient to the Law, a man who threatened the religious traditions of Israel. Meanwhile, for some Jesus was someone to be mocked, to have a crown of thorns placed on his head, a sort of King but without dignity.

And since then, this question has still not gone away.

Who do you say that I am?

For Jesus goes on being seen in so many different ways. We have the indecisive Jesus of Zefferelli’s Last Temptation and in contrast Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar in which Jesus is interpreted through the lens of celebrity. Meanwhile, traditionalists, revolutionaries, feminists and believers in patriarchy all seem to construct Jesus in a way that suits them.

And yet, this Jesus hold a great fascination for so many people. A piece of prose entitled One Solitary Life that dates back to the 1920s perhaps explains why;

He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in an obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty
He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born
He did none of the things associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He was only thirty three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through a mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he has dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind’s progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the Parliaments that have ever sat
All the Kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life.

In those words we see a glimpse into how unique Jesus is. No wonder, his followers began to see him as Lord! No wonder, as the early Church reflected, they saw in Jesus the full measure of Divinity. This of course led to lengthy debate within the Church. They saw Jesus as a man but they also saw him as Divine. How could this be understood. The key man in the process of such understanding was the Emperor Constantine who came to power in Rome in the year 312. He had had a vision of the cross just the night before a crucial battle. Many would question how genuine his conversion was. After all whilst he became a patron to the Christian Church, he also worshipped in the temples of the Sun God whom his ancestors had worshipped. However, he did get the Christian leaders of his time to gather together in order to resolve the question as to who Jesus was. And it was at Nicaea in one of those Councils that it was resolved that whilst Jesus was fully human, he was also Divine, being ‘One Being’ with God the Father. So we find the significance of Jesus enhanced. This is more than another of the heroes of the past. This is the one in whom we meet with God. It is as David Jenkins, when Bishop of Durham, said;

God is. He is as he is in Jesus. Therefore, there is hope.

You get the picture? If you want to know what God is like, all you have to do is look at Jesus. In this man is God. Through him, God has taken on flesh and come into our world. As we look at his birth, we can sing;

He came down to earth from Heaven.

In his death, we see God suffering for the world. And in his resurrection, we see affirmed God’s decisive YES to all that Jesus, said and did in his ministry.

But whilst Constantine was right about Jesus’ significance as being ‘One Being’ with God, he was equally wrong as to the character of Jesus. His understanding of God was about power. He believed that God had granted him victory in battle with his rivals for supremacy in Rome. And so, he linked his power to God. And in the name of his power, he killed his wife in a boiling bath, executed his son and generally linked his often cruel use of power to his being God’s man. And sadly, others have down through the years followed in his footsteps using God as a defence for cruelty and domination over others in a way that is a sick perversion of all that Jesus was about.

Indeed, Jesus cannot be put into our neat boxes. Nowhere is that more clear that in Peter’s answer to the Who do you say I am question. His answer You are the Christ, the Son of the living God can be seen as a statement of faith, faith on which the church is to be based. But that is not the whole picture. For whilst Peter’s statement is absolutely true, the problem lies with what he and others understood the Christ, the anointed one of God would do. You see, the expectation was that the Christ, the Messiah, would be one who would be victorious over Israel’s enemies. Years of wrong would be ended and all would be well. And in this understanding, there is no room for a Christ to be tortured or to die the vile death of a criminal. Soon Peter will be resisting Jesus when Jesus talks of his future sufferings. For Jesus turns upside down the traditional expectations of the Christ that Peter shared.

As we face the Who do you think I am question, we face a question that is about more than titles. We face the very way of Jesus. For Jesus is about a Kingship that is like no other Kingship. Unlike Constantine, the Kingship of Jesus is not about domination and coercion. Instead it is rooted in the giving of value to all, it is rooted in a vision that all can be connected to God, it is rooted in a vision of peace and that peace with justice. It has values of respect, forgiveness and graciousness. And whilst as the humiliation of a Cross reminds us that it comes with no guarantees of success, it is this Jesus who has changed the world through love rather than might.

On Saturday, many of us will gather in Torrington, to witness the burning of that great model of HMS Victory that has been erected over the past months. We may spare a thought to how that defeat of Napoleon in 1805 was a major blow to his plans to dominate Europe, plans that came so close to fulfilment. But Napoleon knew that great as his military power was, it was eclipsed by a greater albeit different power. Hear his words;

"I know man and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love: and at this hour millions of people would die for him."

The question asked to Peter - Who do you say that I am? - has resounded down the years and continues to challenge us today. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazis sixty years ago, we can see in Jesus, the God Man who encompasses both human and Divine. But we can never capture this Jesus into our neat modes of thinking. Instead, the proper response is to follow him on a journey in which we will be surprised and challenged time and again. And ultimately it is only in following Jesus that we can come to know him. And it is only in knowing him, that we can truly know ourselves.

This sermon was preached at a Baptismal Service at Bideford on August 21st. It wa written with the rock band TheWho's song of the same title ringing in my ears.

WHEN WALLS COME DOWN Matthew 15:21-28

2005-08-25T01:04:00.000-07:00

Reading today’s Gospel reading is a somewhat uncomfortable experience. Our preconceptions of Jesus seem to come crashing down. Even if we have been a little desensitivised by the antics and language of the contestants in Big Brother, I think that we cannot be other than uncomfortable to find Jesus likening Gentiles which after all includes as far as I know all of us, with the description ‘dogs.’

So what is going on here? Well, at a point when Jesus is tired and shaken by the news of the killing of John the Baptist, along comes a somewhat persistent Canaanite woman, making demands of him. Here is a woman who has a demon possessed daughter and she, as a loving mother, is going to stop at nothing to get her daughter better. And in that objective, she sees Jesus as the one who can meet her needs.

Perhaps at this stage, it is worth looking at what being a Canaanite woman entails. This woman who lived around the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, would have been at least nominally a descendant of those with whom the Hebrews had been involved in combat against going back to the events of the Exodus well over a thousand years earlier. I say nominally, because the territory from which she came, was territory that had been fought over by a range of peoples since. Philistines and Hittites were amongst those who had settled in this land, and the one thing they had in common was a deep enmity with the Jews. It was from these territories that just a couple of centuries before the time of Jesus, a King had invaded Jerusalem and by use of torture and persecution, sought to destroy the entirety of Jewish religious tradition, leaving a legacy of martyrs who were still very much remembered at the time of Jesus. So, you can see that this encounter is hardly likely to be promising.

Anyhow, the encounter begins with an almighty surprise. This outsider makes her approach, addressing Jesus as “Lord, Son of David.” This is remarkable on two fronts. Firstly, there is the bravery of this action. In the patriarchal society, it was not acceptable for a woman, especially an unrelated woman, to invade a man’s space in search of a favour. This was after all a society in which the system served to prevent women from acquiring an assertive role in public life. Yet here, in her desperation, this Canaanite woman dares to challenge these structures of what today would be described as sexism.

Yet, perhaps more remarkable is the great insight she shows in the titles with which she addresses Jesus. At a time when those on the inside including his closest disciples fail to recognise it, this outsider woman is able to see Jesus as “Lord” and as “Son of David.”

Commentators seem to hold a range of opinions as to her motives in addressing Jesus with these titles. Perhaps their use enables her to address him in an acceptable way as a subject to a King. Perhaps, it is done in this way out of her desperation to bring help to her daughter. But, it seems that out of her desperation she has possibly inadvertently stumbled on the true significance of Jesus. The outsider has come to understand what passed the insiders by. Increasingly, I think that this is important. Too often, we are closed to the insights of those who are other than us. Yet often wisdom comes from surprising places. After all some of the most valuable insights on peace and justice of which I am aware come from Mahatma Gandhi who followed the path of Hinduism, some of the most important insights on environmentalism come from campaigners outside the Christian community and 20 years ago when millions faced starvation in Africa, the most vocal voice to feed the world was an Irishman who had long been disenchanted with the Church with which he had grown up and who was prone to expressing himself in a somewhat non ecclesiastical manner. None of this denies that many times God works through Christian people but I would like to suggest this morning that this Scripture reminds us part of good Christian discipleship is about listening to the insights of those who in many ways might be seen as other than we are.

But now comes the problem. And horror of horrors the problem seems to be Jesus. His first reaction is not to respond. If he is a King, she is no subject and he is in no way obligated to respond to her. Indeed his reaction is to tell his disciples who are vexed at the disturbance, that he was only sent to “the lost sheep of Israel.” Hearing this is uncomfortable to us although it probably would not have shocked some of his followers who saw God in a tribal manner. But our problem soon becomes bigger when as the woman begs still more, by now on her knees, we find Jesus to telling her;

"It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs."

Dogs! That’s gentiles like you and me. Surely not! So in a sense we can only be glad that the Canaanite woman refuses to be put off. Back she comes with the rejoinder;

“Yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

And at that demonstration of faith and at that reminder that good things inevitably spread, Jesus changes tact, acknowledges her faith and gives her the healing of her daughter which this woman has craved.

But what has happened here. One view is that Jesus has used this exchange to lead this woman to discover her true value for herself and also to teach the disciples that the Gospel stretched outside of the comfortable box named Israel. Others see this encounter as showing Jesus developing his own understanding of his ministry through this encounter. Remember that Jesus is fully Human as well as fully Divine. And humanity is something that involves developing. Remember those words in Luke’s Gospel, after Jesus has questioned the leaders in the temple;

"And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature."

Perhaps this story hints that in his ministry, as one who is fully human, Jesus is still wrestling with his ministry and growing in wisdom. Indeed, if Jesus is changing in the encounter, might that not be a good example to all of us to follow, that we might not put certainty above compassion. For in the powerful words of the Jewish Rabbi, Sheila Peltz after her visit to Auschwitz;

“As I stood before the gates I realised that I never want to be as certain about anything as were the people who built this place”

The more I look at what I find to be this difficult encounter, the more convinced I am that it represents a powerful pointer to a God whose love is inclusive. The more convinced I am that it is a story that challenges the walls we build to divide us between an Us and a Them. It reads to me as a story that challenges us with a vision of God valuing even those whom we find it hardest to value. And as such, it draws us into God’s work of tearing down the man made walls that divide and exclude.

On Christmas Day 1989, the Jewish conductor Leonard Bernstein conducted the ‘Berlin Celebration Concerts’ on both sides of the Berlin Wall which was in the process of being dismantled. His orchestra contained musicians from both Germanys as well as the four allied powers who had occupied Germany at the end of the Second World War. A wall had given way to a new unity. For the occasion Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” was renamed “Ode to Freedom.” Walls had come down and most miraculous of all the miracles of that Christmas was that Bernstein was now being feted in that land in which he would have been murdered simply for existing less than half a century earlier.

This morning, I have both a challenge and an invitation. The challenge is to ask what are the walls that exist today in our world, our community and indeed within the Church that lead to some people being treated as lesser. And having recognised them, what are we going to do to help dismantle those walls?

The invitation is that recognising that God is for all, we are invited to the acceptance that is found at our Lord’s Table. For this is the appointed place where God touches us no matter what our individual story might be for as the story of the Canaanite woman reminds us, God wants to touch us even when we may be seen as distant from God .

AMEN

This sermon was preached at a Communion service in Bideford on August 14th

BIBLICAL BIG BROTHER Genesis 37: 12-28

2005-08-25T00:58:00.000-07:00

The book of Genesis contains a colourful collection of stories about the Patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all emerge as fascinating yet flawed characters. None of them, however, grabs the imagination quite as powerfully as the story of Joseph. Even if the story were not immortalised by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat,’ his is a story that catches our imagination.

This evening’s reading shows us great flaws in all the characters. Jacob, raised in what has long been a dysfunctional family, is an absolutely terrible father. Not only does he prize one son above the others, just as he himself was prized above his twin Esau by his mother, but he makes it obvious to the other sons. He keeps Joseph close to himself away from the grime of hard work and spoils him both emotionally and materially as shown through the special robe he makes him.

Not surprisingly, his actions leave sharp divisions among his sons.

As for Joseph, he seems to have behaved as a spoilt brat. From the reading we have heard this evening, we find that Joseph behaves like what at school we used to describe as a sneak or perhaps what some today would call a ‘grass.’ He can’t resist bringing his father bad reports about his brothers. But more than that! Joseph seems from the beginning to have experienced remarkable dreams, dreams which later with his interpretations transform his condition in a positive way. However, as a young man, he exhibits the level of sensitivity of a Big Brother housemate. He just cannot resist telling his brothers about the dreams which imply that he is going to be on a much higher plain than them. In Joseph, the worst of adolescent precociousness is revealed. One cannot help feeling that the young man could do with a trip to a good Finishing School to learn a few social graces.

But then there is the brothers. They were in the first case the victims of injustice. Their father’s preference for brother Joseph over them, was clear for all to see. It is not difficult to appreciate the pain they must have felt. But in their rebellion against injustice, they actually accelerated a cycle of injustice. One injustice was confronted by creating another one. You see, ultimately, Joseph was not the prime architect of the situation but such was their anger at the favouritism bestowed on him by their shared father, that most of them were prepared to kill him. Does this not speak into our world today where cycles of violence go on with ever increasing circles?
But of course, not all the brothers wish to do something as dramatic as fratricide. Reuben tries to defuse the situation. His idea is to throw Joseph into a cistern so that he might later rescue him. But when the idea of selling Joseph into slavery with the passing Midianite traders arises, enabling a hated brother to be got rid of and a handy profit made, he is not on the scene and ultimately does nothing to right the wrong. In a sense, Reuben symbolises the times when we fail to make a stand against what is wrong, preferring instead to remain in our comfort zone. In a sense his paralysing compromise with evil reminds me of the words of James Russell Lowell;

“They are slaves who fear to be in the right with two or three.”

And I suspect that there is a bit of the Reuben in most of us.

But what does this ancient story have to say to us today? In a strange way, I think this story is uncomfortably close to modern life.

Parenting is as hard today as it was then as I for one know. We, too, can be somewhat overindulgent just like Jacob. For the sake of ease, we can throw things at our young rather than our time. Certainly the challenging child needs time and patience with even handedness between competing children. Perhaps like Jacob, we can sense special ness in one of our children and elevate that one often unconsciously above the others, leaving behind pressures on the chosen and resentment on the part of the siblings. We need to be contra Jacob, in seeking the value of all our children including those whose gifts are less apparent.

But there is also something here about how we confront injustice. The brothers see injustice as being most effectively confronted by violence. I guess that this is often the dominant viewpoint in our world today. The problem is that when violence is seen as the answer, all too often we see new injustices emerging. Is not our history littered with examples of those who in their fight against injustice have ultimately brought about new injustices? So often the one time victim creates their own victims. This does not mean that we should be unconcerned about injustice. Indeed, the future for our world is grim if we do not look to correct injustice for injustice is often the first step in the circle of violence. However, it does mean that we need to be discriminating in how we confront the injustices around us so that the cycle be brought to an end. Increasingly, I think that the two outstanding figures of the twentieth century were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King who stood against injustice in a way that refused to be contaminated by hatred and violence.

And this finds its roots in a belief that all people have value. You know, in our world we are so aware that we unthinkingly dispose of our planet’s precious resources. It is a scandal which needs to be confronted. Yet worse still is the fact that we are prepared to throw away people. Some people especially far off or other than, are too easily regarded as of less significance than we ourselves and those we see as being like us. Perhaps one of our needs is to discover afresh a sense of shared value as children of God.

And our being children of God, serves to remind us just as God was present in this story, so too is God present in our lives. God may not be jumping in and intervening in a way that we recognise but God cannot be dismissed as a mere spectator. In times of joy and times of suffering God is present weaving God’s future. In the story of Joseph, the darkness of our reading is not the end for through these happenings Joseph matures and is able to be God’s man in addressing the calamity of famine. Ultimately all the participants learn valuable lessons.

For us, God is involved in our lives and whilst nothing in tonight’s scripture readings promise us lives of ease and comfort, God is the reference point by whom we should live our lives. For stories such as these are in the Scriptures as important guideposts to help us in the decisions we face in our journey of life.

This sermon was preached at Northam on Sunday August 7th

GETTING WET Matt 14: 22-33

2005-08-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

I think it was Mark Twain who tells the story of a visit to the Holy land where he decided to take his wife for a romantic ride on the Sea of Galilee. The boatman who he approached to take them onto the water noticed that Twain was well dressed and so suspecting that he had a rich customer to rip off, responded to Twain’s request for a price by suggesting $25. Walking away Twain muttered, ‘Now I know why Jesus walked!’

The story we have heard this morning takes us away from anything that corresponds with our experience of life. We know that nature does not allow people to walk on water even if some Nottingham Forest supporters were some time ago prone to suggesting that Brian Clough was able to do so. We can talk the talk but surely this story takes us into a world with which we are unfamiliar.

And so it is that people often try to explain away this story. Some regard it as a misunderstanding for it does not fit in with our rational understanding of nature. Others see it as a psychic phenomena. Still others see as a parable that eventually got passed on as an actual event. Others though see this story as an event that demonstrates that Jesus is the Lord of all creation, the one who has authority over all the forces of nature including the sea which in those days was greatly feared as a force of chaos and destruction.

You will doubtless have your own conclusions but about one thing, we must be certain. Within the early church, this story of Jesus walking on the water was a cherished story, a story passed on by the people of faith with the result that it is to be found in three of the Gospels that are in our Holy Scriptures.

In part, the cherishing of this story would seem to come from how it spoke to the early community of Christians in their situations. They received from the apostles this story at a time when they were a small minority in a hostile environment. For living the Christian faith, many knew what it was to be beaten. Some of their friends were executed. The road to social advancement was blocked. And when disasters happened they were the most likely to be blamed. For in the Year 70, following the great fire of Rome, Nero was to use the unpopularity of the Christians so that they rather than he, the negligent Emperor, should take the blame, to be the scapegoats. And so from the on, for two and a half centuries, the response to times in which Rome’s fortunes were low, was for the cry to go up for the Christians to be fed to the lions. And so, many would perish in places such as the Coliseum for the entertainment of the majority who despised what was termed the ‘Christian superstition.’

Any battered minority looks for signs of hope. Today, we hear of Muslim women who since the bombings of July 7th are afraid to go out for fear of being abused, spat on or attacked for wearing the hijab. How much worse was the position of Christians in Rome during times when the fury of the mob was unleashed. And against that background, can we not see that the message of Jesus, spoken to frightened disciples, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” is a message of hope. And I would suggest that in our world today we need to hear that same message. In our world, battered by the waves of war, terrorism, authoritarianism and environmental neglect amongst other things, we need to that same soothing message of Jesus offering us cause not to fear. And whilst, we cannot in Britain envisage the sort of persecution experience by early Christians in Rome or indeed by some Christians on other parts of our planet, increasingly we find ourselves in a land in which secularism is expressed primarily by an indifference to matters of faith and religion with a result that Christian communities are increasingly becoming marginalized and adrift from the direction of society. And so as we seek to be faithful, we need to hear afresh those words - “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

But the story also has something to say about the risks of faith. And here, the figure of Peter comes into his own. God old impetuous Peter! Well, here we find Peter daring to take an outrageous step. He sees Jesus walking on the water and his immediate instinct is to go to Jesus. So often, we talk about faith as a mind matter. But that shortchanges faith. I rather like the description of faith that I read recently which describes faith as “like that function of the heart that gets blood to hands and feet.” In other words faith involves action with all the risks that action involves. And it is expressed in a range of ways in which people are caught up in the ways of God, even meeting God in the process. Now Peter was a man who sometimes got things wrong. That was not about to stop. He would still have his moments of failure such as when got frightened after Jesus’ arrest and he would sometimes get things wrong as Paul certainly felt he had done with regards to his attitude concerning the Gentile mission. But, he clearly has a passion for Christ. And in our Gospel Reading, we find him leaving the precariousness of the boat in order to take a crazy risk with his safety to reach out to Jesus.

Heat those words again;

“Lord, if it is you, command me to join you on the water.”

Crazy! But that is the nature of faith, not always bound by norms but daring to look beyond and to see hitherto unforeseen possibilities. It is about seeing the potential of what a rock song calls a “a crazy little thing called love” to bring about a greater and more beneficial change to our world that might or force could ever dream of!

But of course, there is no plain sailing in our story. Things go wrong. Peter begins to sink as in so many ways most of us have done at some time or other. For faith brings no guarantee against failure.

And yet, there is hope. And here the hope comes from Jesus. Reaching out to save the sinking Peter, Jesus responds to Peter’s desperate cry of “ Lord, save me” with a gentle, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

And there is the rub of the whole story. We are often far from giants of faith. Indeed sometimes I wish that people would speak less of giants of the faith for such an emphasis can only make us feel inadequate. Yet more importantly, it can take us away from the emphasis of Christ. For the message of Christ is not that we have to be giants of faith but it is that faith as small as a mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds, is faith that can be used to move mountains. And are there not a few mountains in our world and even here in North Devon that could do with moving?

So this story about Jesus is full of meaning. It’s an encouragement to us to dare to take the risks of faith for God’s Kingdom. Just as 2,000 years ago, it challenges the accepted wisdom for this faith is a faith that is so God centred that it affirms that God is so worth following that it is better to risk being drowned with God than crowned by anyone else. This faith whilst keeping a focus on Christ, doesn’t necessarily know where it is going or whether it will see success. But it does know that it is about our opening our lives to connect with God’s love and grace. And whether we discern it or not, that love transforms the world and us. And when it comes to those times when all around us seem to be too much, a voice within, speaks to us as it did to those on a boat some 2,000 years ago;

“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

And knowing he loves us unreservedly despite all the ways in which we mess up, we are able to take the risks of dabbling our feet into the water for God’s Kingdom.

Preached at Alwington on August 7th 2005. This sermon came at the end of two weeks holiday and is heavily influenced by notes from Sarah Dylan Breuer and a sermon by P. Brewer. They deserve the credit for any good points. The weaknesses are all mine!

SIDE BY SIDE Psalm 139: 1-12, 23-24; Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43.

2005-07-17T01:16:00.000-07:00

I could never claim to be a gardener. It just is not me. The very thought of spending an afternoon in a garden makes concrete an attractive thought to me. So you can imagine that I feel rather out of my comfort zone, wrestling with a parable that Jesus told concerning weeds among the wheat. Indeed, my ignorance made it necessary for me to get to some books in order to understand just what is going on here.

What is happening here is that among the wheat that has been sowed are weeds. The weeds referred to here were a real menace at the time of Jesus. They looked like the newly sprouted wheat to the point of being indistinguishable from it. To make things worse, these weeds would entwine themselves around the wheat so that to separate them would mean disaster for wheat as well as seed. And so we find a state of dissatisfaction at the existence of the weeds as well as an instinct on the part of some of the servants to pull up these weeds, only for the owner to insist on waiting until the time of harvest.

Now what is this about for us today? It would be rather neat to suggest that some people are as wheat whilst others are as weeds. The problem with this is that most people in my experience do not fit neatly into categories such as these. Certainly within the church, there is plenty of imperfection. I recall the story of a rather nomadic worshipper. He was constantly on the lookout for the perfect church, the church that would be spiritual enough for him to join. That was until leaving yet another inadequate church, he explained his search to the minister only for her to reply;

Well when you find this perfect church, don’t join it because your presence will take away its perfection.

I know that dear old John Wesley had a thing about Christian Perfection and that his terminology has in many ways been understood, but I for one am yet to encounter the perfect saint. Perhaps, we do well to listen to the guidance of Martin Luther who describes the Christian as being at the same time saint and sinner, or if he is not sufficiently modern, we can listen to that great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn who once commented wisely;

The line dividing good and evil cuts through every human being.

Indeed, the monk, Thomas Merton, has much to teach us when whilst emphasising the need to strive for perfection, he sees a true perfection in learning to accept ourselves with all our imperfections.

For, an adult understanding of this Parable has to be that which appreciates that we ourselves, our church and indeed our nation are at times expressed in a manner of the weed rather than the wheat. To put too high a view as to the actions of self, church or nation, is in short a form of idolatry in which we equate our perspective with God.

But just as we need to be aware of the weed with us and all we hold dear, we should also be alert as to the signs of wheat in unexpected places. Two year ago, I spent the best part of a month working with the chaplaincy team at a Category B prison. On my first day, I was apprehensive yet by the end it pained me to leave the guys who were doing time. Why? Because some had come to feel like friends and in some of those I knew, I sensed the presence of God. And it is this which puts a Christian perspective at odds with the High Priests of the tabloid media whose judgement freezes people in their very worst moments for all time. No possibility of transformation is taken seriously and it is the acceptance of this destructive outlook which is a sign of a nation that has moved from Christianity.

Returning to the story told by Jesus, we find the servants wanting to destroy the weeds. This, they think will purify the field. And here, we come to an important distinction. The Scriptures have plenty to say about confronting injustice which is an imperative. The Kingdom calls us to stands on behalf of the victims of injustice. However, that is different from the weeding which Jesus, here, rejects - namely the destructive weeding which calls damage. Living at a time when around him were strict Jewish groups whose rules were such as to keep most out, Jesus is here restraining an impulse that has resounded down through the centuries to decide who is in or out of favour and to act rigorously on the finding. I feel that in this story, Jesus is warning against a churchmanship that excludes so many. I feel that Jesus is here warning against a tendency to dehumanise those with whom we are uncomfortable. And oh, if only that warning had been heeded, we might have been spared the slaughter of 5 million people in Europe for alleged witchcraft, anti Semitism with its ultimate horror in the Holocaust and a range of conflicts in which people have seen others as less than fully human. Once more Our problem has been not that we take Scripture too seriously but we have not taken it seriously enough - and that of course is a problem that Islam is also facing at this time.

But whilst, all of this warns about us making the judgements that belong to God, there is also the message of God’s judgement. The language on this is rather vivid. Fiery furnaces and gnashing of teeth are the metaphors applied. Perhaps, we need to treat this language of metaphor with care and not to literalise it. I think what is being communicated by Jesus here is that our actions in this world carry spiritual consequences for ourselves as well as others. And perhaps the biggest spiritual test is whether we are able to find joy in the immensity of Jesus’ love being felt in the most unexpected of places. For if the nature of God is consistent and God is ( to borrow a phrase from a former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins) as he is in Jesus, then God’s love will surprise us.

That love is strongly shown in our reading from the 139th Psalm. It is a love that just doesn’t let go, a love which pursues us however far from God we go.
A poem that expresses this well is Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven. Thompson was a man who seemed to fail in nearly everything he tried. He failed to make it to the priesthood. He failed in his aim to be a doctor. And his dissolute lifestyle led him to opium addiction. One of the weeds, I guess, and yet during the four years in which he was able to stay off the drugs before his depression problems led him to succumb once more, he wrote this poetic classic. Here are just a few lines which describe running from God;

I fled him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled him, down the arches of the years;
I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of mine own mind and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

But of course there is no escape. Look on in the poem and the poet finds no escape from God and God ’s love;

Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might seek it in my arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home;
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.

This morning we come to the Communion Table, we come with the prayer that we might be God’s wheat, that we should not exclude nor should we take on God’s judgement. But instead we come rejoicing in the pursuit of the God who as the Hound of Heaven pursues us when we are as weeds. And that is the God who now invites us to meet with him and receive his acceptance at his Table.

This sermon was preached at Bideford on July 17th at a Communion Service
AMEN

SOWING SEEDS OF HOPE Matt: 13: 1-9, 18-23

2005-07-10T07:32:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday evening, I had a fair idea of what I was going to be saying this morning. We were going to be looking at the Parable of the Sower. We were going to see how the seed of God’s Kingdom must be sown in the unlikely places as well as in the safe places, for Christ’s love is a love for which there are no boundaries. Also we were going to see how on some occasions we are unresponsive soil as well as being responsive on other occasions. How, it would have turned out, I do not know, but by Thursday morning, all my efforts at a neat sermon had become obsolete with the London bombings.

These bombs now seem to have killed in excess of eighty people. They happened in places which many of us are familiar with, from our visits to London. They were as the Mayor pointed out, ’an indiscriminate attempt to slaughter, irrespective of any considerations for age, for class, for religion or whatever.’ What happened was a reminder to all of us of the reality of evil in our world although along with evil we saw the other reality which is goodness in the efforts of the emergency services to save lives as well as in individual acts of kindness and heroism by those who happened to be on the scene.

Our prayers have to be with those who have suffered injury, bereavement or indeed uncertainty as a result of these deeds. It has to be our earnest hope that good use of intelligence and sound policing brings the guilty to justice.

Now around us, will doubtless begin a debate as to why this happened. I don’t want to really go into the politics of it here this morning. That is other than to say, if as seems likely, this was an action of Al Qaeda, we do well to ensure that we are not sucked unwittingly into its agenda. Al Qaeda is committed to a battle of civilisations - a battle between the ‘West’ and the community of Islam. This, however, is a fraudulent agenda for Al Qaeda does not represent Islam. When I was taught Islam by a Muslim scholar during my training, I was told that these terror groups represent a heresy. And indeed during the past few days, representative Muslim groups in this country such as the Muslim Council of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain have as I knew they would, totally condemned this atrocity. A blaming of ordinary Muslims, makes no more sense than blaming us because 10 years ago this week, General Mladic’s army of supposedly Christian Bosnian Serbs, massacred 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica. It makes no sense and adds to the hatred of the world of which there is already too much.

But let us be clear. Thursday‘s atrocity was about sowing the seeds of hatred. So often this becomes a circle with ever increasing levels of hatred and violence. A circle that is self perpetuating for it has within it no capacity to end it wrongs. I find myself thinking of Martin Luther King’s wise words;

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

In a recent book, the American scholar Walter Wink warns of the dangers of what he terms ‘the myth of redemptive violence.’ This myth which he roots in the Babylonian Creation myth in which the cosmos and indeed humanity are the product of conflict between the gods, sees violence as an inevitable necessity for peace and order. The myth is expressed in much of our popular entertainment and all too often in the affairs of the world. Tyrants and rebels alike seem to buy into this myth whose contradictions are powerfully echoed in George Orwell’s 1984 with violence saving, war bringing peace and might making right.

Wink argues that this destructive philosophy is dominant in our world contrary as it is to the Biblical perspective in which violence from its very beginnings with Cain killing Abel, is seen as a problem to be confronted, confronted ultimately by the self giving of Jesus on the cross.

At a time like this, we need for very different seeds to be planted. We need the seeds of hope to be planted. For that, there is no better example than Jesus. For Jesus is shown in the gospels as the one who constantly plants the seeds of hope for often the most unlikely of people. The man made barriers of race, religion, respectability and gender, are constantly broken down by Jesus who crosses them to offer all sorts of people glimpses into God’s love for them. Time and again, Jesus gives dignity and worth where it has long been denied.

And you know, seeds of hope and compassion can have great effect. I think back in my own life to those who have bothered to plant seeds for me at times when I was at my most awkward. In each of our stories, there are those who planted seeds, the results of which they never saw, but nevertheless seeds for which we can be grateful.

And you know! Seeds can change the world.

Think back to the momentous events of the fall of the Soviet Union. A key figure was Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin is now chiefly remembered as a somewhat hard drinking President whose policies created the robber barons or oligarchs as they are sometimes known. But before all that, Yeltsin had been a key figure in the movement for democratic reform, wishing to go even faster than Mikhael Gorbachev. Yeltsin’s finest moment was when Gorbachev was briefly overthrown by the old hardliners in the military. With Gorbachev held under house arrest, Yeltsin rallied the people of Moscow with the result that the military coup evaporated and Gorbachev was returned to power. Years later, Yeltsin gave an interview in which he said that in those heady days, his inspiration had been Lech Walesa, the Polish electrician who had formed the trade union ‘Solidarity’ and had played a major part in bringing democracy to Poland. Similarly, Walesa has said that he found his inspiration from Martin Luther King and the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, Martin Luther King is on record as saying that what brought him into that struggle was the courage of a middle aged black woman named Rosa Parks who one day decided that she had had enough of being treated as a second class citizen and so refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white man.

Is it stretching it too much to suggest that Rosa Parks sowed the seeds that ended the Communist empire?

The reality that confronts us, is that we all have the capacity to sow seed. Terrorists have shown us how to sow the seeds of hatred. Christ calls on us to dare to sow the seeds of love and hope. For a retired Methodist minister whom I know, who spent years with the Church of South India, the seeds of hope are sown by his keeping in touch with other faith communities in Bradford. When terrorism stretches our sense of community and creates tensions, we should be grateful for the likes of him. But it is not just for such situations that we are called to sow. Her in North Devon, we have our share of alienated people, our share of hurting people, our share of damaged people. For far too many people, hope has been crushed. But we hear this morning of a sower, whose seed is for all. And we are called, without fear or favour, to sow the seeds of hope that point to dignity and acceptance. It is these seeds of hope, that we owe to those who have this morning been baptised for without hope our God given humanity is fatally crushed.

Dare, my friends to hope! Dare to spread the seeds of that hope! For that hope can never be destroyed by the darkness!
AMEN

This sermon was preached in Bideford on July 10th 2005 at a service which included the baptism of three children

REDEMPTIVE VIOLENCE OR LOVE? Zech 9:9-10; Matt 11:25-30

2005-07-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

In the past few days I have found myself reading a book entitled, ‘The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium.’ It is written by an American theologian called Walter Wink.
Wink comes from a background in the American civil rights movement and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. In both of these situations the question of the use of violence in the struggle against injustice has been debated and so it is not surprising that one of the themes of his book is the question of violence.

His contention is that society today is dominated by ‘The Myth of Redemptive Violence.’ The essence of this myth is that violence saves. We see it in much of the cartoons which our children watch. We see it also painfully enacted in both terrorism and war. It is practiced by rebels and rulers alike.

This myth, Wink argues, has a strong religious dimension. In many ways its roots are found in the ancient Babylonian Creation story. According to this story, Apsu the father god and Tiamat the mother god, give birth to Gods. The young gods are so disruptively noisy that the older gods decide to kill them so that they can get some sleep. The younger gods find out about this plot and so before it can be carried out, they kill Apsu. His wife, Tiamat, the Dragon of Chaos plots revenge. Terrified by Tiamat, the younger gods turn to Marduk, the youngest of their number. They ask him to kill Tiamat. Before agreeing to do this, Marduk persuades the other young gods to grant him on the success of his mission, the dominant place in the assembly of gods. And so it is, that Marduk brutally kills Tiamat and out of her body creates the cosmos. Later out of the blood of one of those young gods who opposed him, Marduk creates humans.

So you see, the essence of this myth is that we owe our being to acts of divine violence and our world has evil from the beginning. It is the natural way of things.

Later in the myth, we see the humiliation and revival of Marduk which perhaps is echoed in much of our television and films, the initial defeat followed by the last minute victory of the good guy.

Anyway, the message of the myth is that we can see the victory of order over chaos is won by violence. And furthermore, this myth has had such power as to lead many to believe that perpetual conflict is inevitable and has allowed tyrants to justify their cruelties on the basis that only through violence or the threat of violence, can order be maintained. Indeed many have argued that their cruelties are the will of the Divine.

And today, this myth is still powerful. We see it enacted in the cinema. We see it in many a penal policy. We see it in the justifications of the arms trade. And at present it is rife in international relations.

But this myth is a myth without hope or beauty. And whilst at times Christendom colludes with it, it is a myth which is at total variance with the Christian message. The Genesis accounts of creation are very different. They place creation, not as a result of the hatreds of violent gods, but as a consequence of the loving action of one God. Humans are not given birth in order to fight allegedly necessary conflicts. On the contrary, humans are called to share in God’s loving, caring activities. When violence enters the world with Cain’s killing of Abel, this is not how things should be but a matter that needs addressing, a problem that needs a solution. Violence is not a means of redeeming what is wrong in our world but a sign of the need for redemption. And that redemption comes to us not through force but ultimately through the self giving of Jesus, the God Man, on the cross.

Indeed the chasm between the ‘myth of redemptive violence’ and a Christian viewpoint is shown in our Old Testament reading. Against the background of a painful exile, the prophet Zechariah, looks not to revenge for the age of wrong but instead offers a vision of peace. A vision of a King riding not on a war horse, the chieftain tanks of his day, but on a donkey, a symbol of peace, with a message of peace to all the nations. No nonsense of redemptive violence here. Instead, the path of peace. And of course, it is no surprise that Gospel writers looked back to that prophetic word as they described the coming of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, on a donkey.

Do you get the picture? The dominant view of our world today may be ‘redemptive violence’ but the Christian understanding is more one of non violence, albeit creative non violence for Christians can not be passive about injustice. And therein lies the rub. Christianity is not in conformity to the dominant world view. No wonder, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans;

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the will of God -what is good and acceptable and perfect.

And that is indeed a tough order, for all of us have within us the temptation to follow the drumbeat of conformity. Yet in following that drumbeat which takes us away from God, we lose something, for as the poet James Russell Lowell put it;

They are slaves who fear to be, in the right with two or three.

And indeed at times, we can feel that to be a Christian is a painful road. How do we live up to it? The struggle to pay the mortgage, the questions as to how long before the housing market whooshes down, the endless testing inflicted upon the young - are not these and other pressures enough? Surely we have all the burdens we can cope with? But no, says Jesus. He has come to take away the rage, to bring calm and value, to give to us a peace of mind. And if we think that to follow his way and to serve him in a world caught up in the ‘myth of redemptive violence’ is too much, he offers us hope and a promise;

Come to me, all ye that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart. And you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Here we meet the true Divine invitation. An invitation to move from the rages and the spiritual forces that dehumanise - into something so much better, Christ’s abundant life. Yes, there is a cross to carry. Yes, there is a serious calling. But we face it not alone but with the whole Body of Christ. Christ is with us granting his strength, love and peace. Through him, we are caught up in victory of love rather than of conquest, and when we fall he is there not to condemn us but to pick us up.

Elie Wiesel the Holocaust survivor, who wrote that chilling book, ‘Night’ about his path to Auschwitz and his horrendous experiences there, puts it beautifully in his ‘Messengers of God;’

When God created man, God gave him a secret - and that secret was not how to begin but how to begin again… it is not given to man to begin; that privilege is God’s alone. But it is given to every man to begin again - and he does so every time he chooses to defy death and side with the living.

The ‘myth of redemptive violence’ reduces human being to brutes, devoid of a moral base and without any intrinsic value. It excuses barbarity as part of the natural order of things. Our Gospel affirms God’s love for us especially as revealed in Christ. It reveals us all to be of value to God and meriting respect from one another. It reveals to us a God who sticks with us through thick and thin. But more than that it reveals a God who invites to come to eat and drink at his Table where we receive his love and acceptance, and in bread and wine to receive his Life.

AMEN

This sermon was preached at Alwington on July 3rd 2005 at a Communion Service

SINGING THE FAITH - Psalm 98 Revelation 5: 5-14

2005-06-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’ - So sang Julie Andrews some forty years ago. Even if the nun who later sang ‘Climb every Mountain’ put me off somewhat, those words still ring true.

Music has about it a number of unique qualities. It can calm us when we are stressed. It can invigorate us. And yes, it can stimulate us into both thought and action.

Next weekend, Live 8 will show that music has a power to influence opinions and possibly events. This is hardly new. In the 1960s the radicalism of the time, benefited enormously from the music of people such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. By 1984 the horror of events in Ethiopia brought about an articulation of rage by pop stars such as Bob Geldhof and Midge Ure which led to the best selling record ever, ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’ followed by the spectacular Live Aid Concerts at Wembley and New York. Other notable events and causes since have led to similar responses albeit on a smaller scale. The message is that music has a capacity to influence life and our world.

It is not that people always understand what they are singing. Back in the 1980s there was a great record by a singer called Eddie Grant. It was called, ‘I don’t wanna dance.’ It always filled the disco floors. And in a perverse way, I rather enjoyed watching people dance as they sang, ‘I don’t wanna dance.’

A flippant example - yes! For music often challenges our perspectives. Joan Baez singing, ‘Where have all the flowers gone’ always makes me think about issues of peace and war. And hymns have their moments when despite the familiarity of many of them, they make me think about my faith. For hymns have been a part of the life of communities of faith for a very long time.

The idea of singing in worship of God is hardly new.

We find it so often in the Scriptures going back to that moment of triumph when the people of Israel sang their praises to God following their freedom from slavery in Egypt, in the Exodus. And in the Psalms which were as a Hebrew hymn book, time and again we find the singing of praise to God. And songs go on with Mary’s ‘Magnificat’ when told the disturbing news that she is to have a child and when the child , Jesus, is born, even the angels sing to the astonishment of the shepherds. And then as our Scriptures come to a mighty climax with the Revelation of St John, exiled for his faith on the rocky Island of Patmos, which was in those times a brutal labour camp, what does John envisage? He sees the battered faithful singing songs of worship to the Lamb that is Christ and in doing so, receiving their own healing.

Perhaps, in that we can glimpse the importance of singing. If you go to a football match, it is commonplace for the fans of a side that has just gone into the lead, to taunt the opposing fans with a refrain of;

Sing when you’re winning;
You only sing when you’re winning.

But in Scripture, singing is not only for the moments when winning. Singing takes place in Psalms of Lament when the author is feeling totally wretched. I nearly chose for this service to have Psalm 13 read, a Psalm which includes lines such as;

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul,
And have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall me enemies be exalted over me?

You see, in singing we are able to bring our whole understanding and experience of life to God. We don’t just have to bring our nice thoughts for God is big enough to take all that we are. But often, it happens that as we sing of our pain, God brings hope. The same Psalm ends with a change of mood for having sang to God of pain, the Psalmist has drawn closer to God and so is able to conclude;

But I trust in your steadfast love;
My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord,
Because he has dealt bountifully with me.

And ever since its beginnings, the Church has sang. It has sang its praises in wonder and in awe. It is as Fred Pratt Green puts it in one of his hymns;

When in our music God is glorified
And adoration leaves no room for pride,
It is as though the whole creation cried
Alleluia.

Indeed it seems that hymns appear at the very moments when people focus most on God. Whilst there have been those who opposed other than the singing of metrical hymns, movements of God have repeatedly been accompanied by explosions of hymns writing. This can be seen in the history that gave the Church those profound Gregorian chants in the Middle Ages, the hymns of Martin Luther at the Reformation and in our Methodist history in the hymns of Charles Wesley.

I think I understand the reasons why our history stresses brother John who was after all the great inspirer and organiser of the Methodist movement. But I can’t help but feel that more people both at the time and indeed today, have come to understand the importance of the Gospel and our evangelical doctrines through Charles Wesley’s hymns than John Wesley’s sermons. Why? Well, apart form the fact that the sermons are to put it mildly difficult, I have a feeling that it is that which we sing again, again and again, that becomes a part of us. And the fact that Charles Wesley’s hymns were set to popular tunes only served to add to their popularity, a lasting popularity which led to Bernard Manning, the Congregationalist scholar rather than the Mancunian comedian, describing them as Methodism’s ‘incomparably greatest contribution to the common heritage of Christendom.’

None of this is to deny that John Wesley had something to contribute for contribute he jolly well did. When the 1770, hymn-book came out, John offered his rather fastidious instructions as to how we should sing. Here goes!

Sing all. See that you join with the congregation as frequently as you can. Let not a slight degree of weakness or weariness hinder you. If it be a cross to you, take it up, and it will be a blessing.

Sing lustily with a good courage. Beware if singing as if you were half - dead, or half - asleep; but lift your voice with strength. Be not afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard, than when you sang the songs of Satan.

Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; but survive to unite your voices together, so as to make one clear harmonious sound.

Sing in time. Whatever time is sung be sure to keep with it. Do not run before nor stay behind it; but attend close to the leading voices, and move therewith as exactly as you can; and take care not to sing too slow. This drawling way naturally steals on all who are lazy; and it is high time to drive it out from us, and sing all our tunes just as quick as we did at first.

Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself, or any other creature. In order to do this attend strictly to the sense of what you sing, and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound but offered to God continually; so shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here, and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

Mmmm. There’s some sense there although I think that with such a fussy approach, John Wesley would not have ranked as one of the great formers of choirs.
But here we are today. Over the years, a lot of hymns have been written and sung. They are means by which we praise God, seek harmony with God and attempt to live as Christian people today. And speak to us they do still.

When we question why we have life, a choir sings;

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul praise him for he is thy health and salvation!

And if this is remote to us another choir sings the refrain;

It is a thing most wonderful
Almost too wonderful to be,
That God’s own Son should come from heaven,
And die to save a child like me.

And then when we wonder how we can live for this God, once more we here the choral sound;

Still, with creative power,
God’s Spirit gives to men
A pattern of new life -
And worlds begin again.

But come the moments when we put limits on the extent of God’s love, and a mighty choir sings forth;

In Christ there is no east or west,
In him no south or north,
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.

And then when we sink to despair in the face of evil, we hear once more the sound of singing;

Hark! We hear a distant music, and it comes with fuller swell;
‘This the triumph - song of Jesus, of our King, Immanuel:
Zion, go ye forth to meet him; and, my soul, be swift to bring
All thy finest and thy noblest for the triumph of our King!

Do you get it? Time and again, singing the faith takes us closer to God. For never should we undervalue the gift of singing or the spiritual riches to be found within our hymn books.

Oh, the hills might be alive with the sound of music. But so to are God’s people! A people born in song! A people with a God to sing praises to! A people with a lively faith which is for singing and expressed in singing.

AMEN

This non lectionary sermon was preached in Bideford on Sunday June 26th at a service to mark Choir Sunday

FAMILY VALUES ? Genesis 21: 8-21 Matt 10: 24-39

2005-06-19T06:01:00.000-07:00

It was Mark Twain who once commented that his problem was not so much the things he didn’t understand in the Bible as the things he did understand.

Whether, he was right or not there certainly are some problems with the things we have crossed in today’s Scripture Readings.

Let’s first look at Abraham. I struggle at the best of times to find him an attractive person. Already, he has passed his wife of to an Egyptian Pharaoh as being his sister which has kept him safe but has led to her being morally compromised. Worse still, he has stirred up a right hornet’s nest in that at the instigation of his wife Sarah, he has decided to give God’s promise of a child a bit of a push by sleeping with her Egyptian servant Hagar. In the Genesis narrative, we are not told how Hagar responded to this happening which was certainly not an unknown practice in those times. However, given the power relationship, Hagar does not seem to have been in a position to make a free decision and so some commentators have likened this story to rape. That may be seeing the story through 21st century lenses but I suspect that Hagar was in no more of a position to withhold consent than were African slaves who were abused by the slave owners on America’s plantations.

Anyhow, the result of these shenanigans was that Hagar became pregnant with the son who was to be Ishmael. But more happened than that. The relationship between Hagar and Sarah deteriorated. May be because of the wrong she had suffered, may be because she a slave had what Sarah wanted most, Hagar began to despise her mistress and in return, Sarah treated her slave with cruelty - to such an extent that Hagar ran away. Yet such is Hagar’s pitiful state that she has to return to Abraham and Sarah where she gives birth.

But the problem does not end there. Some years later, God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah is fulfilled and Sarah gives birth to a son called Isaac. And with this, the problem between the women, flares up again. In away this is so modern - a story of a father with children by two women who both think he’s making to much of the offspring of the other woman. However, in this case the outcome is extreme. Sarah demands, at a party to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, that Abraham get rid of both Hagar and the now adolescent son, Ishmael. And so, desperate to maintain an easy life for himself as always, Abraham looks after himself by sending them to the perils of the desert. Comforting himself, with a promise that Ishmael would also father a nation, Abraham shows his ’love’ with a little food and a skin of water. What a Father!

Other than at Abraham’s grave, we never hear of Isaac and Ishmael meeting again. But a poison has come to exist, a poison that has gone down through the centuries. For today, the children of Abraham look back to this inglorious Father through these sons, Arabs looking back through Ishmael and Jews through Isaac. And the story of pain that begins with Abraham misusing Hagar, just goes on and on!

But perhaps, we might find a better picture of family values in our Gospel Reading. But here too, we are in for a bit of a shock. As you know today is Father’s day. This morning, I had cards from both of my children. My son, James, in typically robust form, sent me one with a cover which proclaimed;

This Father’s Day Card is given in a way of saying sorry for my behaviour over the last year

Before adding on the inside

And as an apology in advance for the year to come.
Happy Father’s Day.

Pretty typical of James.

As for Kaye, well in response to my often calling her Princess Kaye, she begins rather sweetly;

However old I get Daddy I will always be your little Princess

Sweet! But wait for it! On the inside is added;

And you will always be my servant!
Happy Father’s Day from your loving daughter.

Aagh! Family values are alive just as Jesus taught us.
Well, No! Not exactly! For Jesus tells us in our Gospel, that he has come not to bring peace but a sword, and wait for it:

To turn a man against his Father,
A daughter against her mother.

Some Father’s Day greeting card that would !

And the passage goes on to talk of those who love parents more than Jesus as being unworthy of him. It might not surprise you that when I yesterday visited my father who has Parkinsons, I did not talk in this sort of language.

So is Jesus really against family values? Well I find that hard to believe of one who would seem to have cared for his family in the absence of his father, one who commits his mother to John’s care whilst on the cross. Surely, if Jesus was cavalier on family, Paul would not have written so extensively on family matters in his epistles.

I think the truth is that Jesus is largely using dramatic language, speaking with hpyerbole to make his point. Remember this is the Jesus who warns at Gethsemane that those who live my the sword die by the sword. My guess is that he is emphasising the importance of following him and his way. Matthew’s first readers would know all to well how Jewish families divided over their response to Jesus, with Christians often being betrayed into persecution by their close blood relatives. For many family had become a reason not to follow Jesus. These verses powerfully remind us of the great importance of following Jesus even when it goes against our cultural norms and the views of those who are nearest and dearest to us.

But I think, there’s more to things than that. You may remember the story elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel of how Jesus’ mother and brothers come to see him. When told, Jesus
answers;

Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?

Before adding as he points to the disciples;

Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

You see, too often, we misuse family by using it as a means of restricting our sphere of responsibilities but the way of following Christ extends the circle for whom we should care. To care for Me and Mine is good but Christ challenges us to think wider.

How does he do so? Our passage has some clues. It calls on us to be like Christ rather than thinking we are Christ. That’s a warning against the abuse of power by associating ourselves directly with the Divine. But it does ask us to be like Christ and the message of the Gospels is that Christ is revealed in love in and to the most unlikely of places. I love the picture of God ’s love - love so great as to see the fall of a sparrow yet knowing and loving us much more than that. Don’t we have here a love that brings importance and value to those who feel as strangers to both? And as that is the way of the God who is in Christ, that is the way that Christ suggests we should be.

I can’t emphasise too strongly the importance of healthy self value. It’s a lack of self value that wrecks many a life. It’s a lack of self value that causes people to give up struggling with the challenges of life. It is a lack of healthy self value that lies behind the recent spurge of prison suicides. And it is not rocket science to affirm that self worth is a part of getting the best out of people. Years ago, I taught at Cornwall College on a course to do with working practices. I was ill-equipped on the subject and to be honest I was teaching one week what I had learnt the previous week. Most of it I have long forgotten. However, one thing I remember is Maslow’s pyramid of Needs. And there in that Pyramid is self worth both in regards to the negative of a person without self worth being unable to really function and the positive of self actualisation being a real motivator.

I defer to nobody in believing that the nuclear family is important and beneficial. I believe with all my being that such is the Christian perspective. But it is not the all! For the way of Jesus takes us beyond Me and Mine to a world that we are called to serve with outcasts, rejects and so on. The way of Christ is not about rejecting family but about widening our understanding of family.

Back to Abraham! He might not have been much of a Father but the story still has something to tell us of God as Father. For in Hagar’s distress, God meets her. Meets her just as when she ran away in her pregnancy. And in this second meeting, God brings healing from her distress, provides her and the boy with refreshments and gives to her and her son, the promise of a nation just as had been promised to Abraham and Sarah.

And there is the rub. The Patriarchs of Genesis are a pretty rum bunch but are blessed. But God’s blessings don’t stop there, reaching others including the victims of the Patriarchs such as Hagar. And so we see a great circle of love, a circle of limitless unbounded generous love which reaches a climax in Christ. For on this Father’s Day, we worship the God who is not tribal or limited but who is the Divine Parent of all, who brings us all into relationship with one another.

AMEN

This sermon was preached in Alwington on Sunday June 19th

JUNE 12TH 2005 LAUGHING WITH GOD Genesis 18:1-15 Matt 9: 35 - 10: 8

2005-06-12T13:20:00.000-07:00

It may just be that on rather too many occasions, I have run out of petrol. Indeed, on one birthday my wife gave me a container to fill with petrol at the nearest garage should I run out of petrol again. Anyhow I do rather like the story about a nun who was so eager to reach her destination that she drove past a garage with an array of petrol pumps, only to come to a halt a mile down the road. The nun walked back to the garage where the attendant explained that he would like to help her but unfortunately he had no container in which to put the petrol. Feeling sorry for her, he agreed to look in an old shed for something that might help. Anyway, the only thing he could find that could hold the petrol was an old bedpan. The grateful nun said that would be fine and so she made her way back to the car, taking great care not to spill any of the petrol. Reaching the car, she began to carefully pour the contents of the bed pan into the petrol tank. Just as she was doing so another vehicle came alongside. The driver rolled down the window and looked at the nun with incredulity before, gasping, ‘Sister, I sure wish I had your faith.’

That may have made you laugh - or not! However, there is laughter in our Old Testament reading this morning. It begins with a rather painful note. Abraham and Sarah have felt the pain of not having children t a time when this was a situation that meant exclusion. Some years before Abraham had been promised that his descendant would be a nation. With Sarah’s consent he had sought to move things on by making her slave Hagar pregnant with his son, Ishmael. But the Divine promise has been repeated with the emphasis that its fulfilment is to be through Sarah. Not surprisingly Abraham has laughed at the prospect of fathering another child when he is close on 100 years old and Sarah is already 90. Something a little crazy going on here!

And so it reads to us today. From time to time we hear of men fathering children at advanced ages - Des O Connor being one who has made the news in such a way recently. And to me it certainly is not strange for I would not be here if my grandfather had not fathered my mother how was his last but one child, at the ripe age of 72 years old. But even with our modern scientific discoveries, the idea of a woman having a child at 90 is beyond our experience. No wonder, when Sarah hears the mysterious strangers speak of her having a child within the next year, she laughs. I think the wonder is that she was not totally hysterical!

But it is going to happen. A bundle of joy is on the way in Isaac whose name fittingly translates as ‘He laughs.’ And so this is a story of God transforming a situation which in that time at that place, was a desperate situation which many would have judged as being a sign of God’s disfavour to something very different indeed. No longer does Sarah laugh at the ridiculousness of the Divine word. Now in her joy she is laughing with God. For as one of our praise songs puts it, we find that God has;

Turned our sorrow into dancing.

And this morning, I would invite you to see that God continues to transform the situations of hopelessness. For God is an ever present in our lives. I suspect that when Abraham first offered hospitality to the three mysterious visitors, he did not realise that he was entertaining God in the process. Indeed, the Scripture dances between a discussion with three men and a discussion with God. Perhaps, here we are being reminded that God is present with us at the moments when we least are understanding of it. But certainly, even if we have not experienced anything on the level with Abraham, I suspect many of us have heard the voice of God speaking through the mouths of people whom we have known. Only recently I read a sermon by Beth Quick, an American minister whose lectionary notes I read each week, with the title, ’The Voices in my Life.’ It tells of the ways in which God has called her into the path of the ordained ministry and how she has often heard God’s voice through friends and acquaintances. And I for one would say AMEN to that!

For indeed, God is still calling us to laugh with God. The Christian people have always seemed unequal to the tasks of the age. Even is the greatest days of the church in our country, those who have gathered for shared worship have been a minority. And yet to us, that minority, God entrusts us with the continuation of the work of the Divine. The story of the Church begins at Pentecost with a roomful of people, many of whom had failed Christ so badly just a few weeks before. But to such as these broken people, was entrusted the responsibility to take the story of and the teachings of Christ, across the entire world. And to day, the inequality between our resources and the calling, are as immense as ever. The words of Christ continue to echo;

The harvest are plentiful but the workers are few.

But still comes the challenge to let God move us and our world from despair to hope, from sorrow to joy.

The big story in the next few weeks will be the G8 summit at Gleneagles. At that summit, millions will be watching to see if the leaders of our world are going to make an adequate response to the needs of Africa which have been so effectively articulated by the Make Poverty History Coalition. We know that to respond adequately, means more than slogans and takes us into the world of difficult decision making. BUT to the cynical and to say that the challenge is insurmountable is no response for in Africa, extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS are responsible for in terms of the loss of human life, the equivalent of a daily tsunami! If ever the words Something must be done meant something it is in response to this challenge and that something certainly does not mean a continuation of a situation in which during the past 4 years according to today’s Observer, UK arms sales to the continent have quadrupled to reach the obscene total of £1 billions worth.

The stories in the Bible tell us of a God who brings hope from the most desperate of circumstances, a God who

- forms a nation out of two people who would be at the senior end of any Derby and Joan Club by granting them their heart’s desire

- who builds hope in a people whose leaders have for half a century been in exile whilst those left have been poor and without direction

- who brings a Saviour out of a stable and from a birth that was tainted with disgrace

-who uses motley crowd of ill educated hot heads to tell of that Saviour to the great centres of their world

- who transforms the agony of a criminal’s death upon a Cross to be a sign that that cross is the gateway to endless possibilities including the gift of eternal life.

The story of Abraham and Sarah speaks of the God who changes things. It speaks of the God for whom nothing is too hard. It speaks of hope for our world.

In a few minutes, we will approach the Table. There we will receive the tokens of bread and wine and as we receive we will be reminded that in these tokens we meet God. Ridiculous, the scoffers might say and laugh they surely will. And yet as find God’s love and acceptance in bread and wine, we find the harmony of God that enables us to then go into the world, laughing with God. For as we then go out into the streets, we can with joy proclaim;

The God who can do all things is with us

And at that, we can be filled with joy and laugh the laugh of joy.
AMEN.

This sermon was preached at a Holy Communion Service at Bideford

TRAVELLING WITH GOD JUNE 5TH GENESIS 12:1-9

2005-06-09T12:44:00.000-07:00

One of my interests over the years has been local and family history. My cousin, Anne, has spent much time painstakingly researching the history of the family of our respective mothers. She has gone back to the 1500s and it seems that our direct ancestors of the line researched are consistently located in three parishes. True, both of my grandfathers mined abroad, one in Chile and one in South Africa, but both came back to the parishes from which they came.

My late mother was certainly an example of someone who liked to stay where she was familiar. Her whole life was spent in one town, Redruth, and she found it hard to understand those who moved away as have most of my generation. I still remember her shock that her sister was moving to, horrror of horrors, Devon - for they people the other side of the Tamar wouldn’t be like us Cornish folk! How much greater her shock when I with my family crossed not just a county barrier but went off shore to the Isle of Man. And in a way I can understand how she thought for whilst I never regretted that move, occasionally on a not so good day, I would feel stranded as I looked out from Douglas Bay and saw the last boat of the day sailing out beyond the horizon. I guess all of us have a tendency to be happiest with the familiar.

Yet today, we look to the story of Abraham who having moved with his father’s family from Ur which is probably in today’s Southern Iraq to Haran which is in the area of the Syrian/Turkish border, now receives the call to go South down to Canaan, a land which includes present day Israel - only this time he is told by God to leave behind the things of the past. Given his age, it must have been a traumatic step to leave the things which had represented security. Indeed, the evidence is that Ur where he came from originally offered much more economically than Canaan and yet Abram’s obedience to the Divine call makes him a hero of faith and one who is even described as a ‘friend of God.’

But this story is about more than a physical move by Abram. The background is that the stories of early Genesis suggest that God has dealt with all creation and met with rebellion. Now comes the dawning of hope and it begins not with all creation, not even with one nation but with one person. Abram becomes God’s man but the purpose of this is made clear in God’s promise that through Abram the nations of the world will be blessed. And intererestingly, three faiths see in this man, one to whom they owe much. For before there was the Law, Abram obeyed and even trusted.

But Abram’s story is not a straightforward story. At times he is not particularly likeable. He is a man who to protect his own skin, tells an Egyptian Pharaoh that his wife is his sister, therefore sacrificing her virtue for his safety. In response to the promise of a child, he hurries God’s promise by making his wife’s slave girl pregnant. He has a difficult relationship with the inhabitants of Canaan and as for his treatment of his sons, I guess that today any family of his would be put by Social Services onto the ‘at risk’ register. Do you get the picture? This is a deeply flawed man and in many ways his journey is a spiritual journey. Standing still can not be an option. He has a need to grow to be the person that God would have him be. And there, we can find a message to ourselves. Like Abram, we are not all that we should be and like him we are called on a journey, not necessarily a journey to far off places but a journey of going closer to what God wants us to be. For Abram, it includes a change in his understanding of God as elsewhere in Scripture we find that he had been a worshipper of many Gods which is not surprisingly considering where his roots were. For us, we still have much to learn about God and what it means to be God’s people. Like Abram, we need to be open to God changing our vision. And is not that an important part of living in faith, that our vision of what it is to be truly human and what it is to be God’s people, get challenged? Think back into Christian history and contemplate a foul mouthed slaver named John Newton, who is touched by God and becomes not only an Anglican clergyman who writes hymns but a campaigner against the very system of slavery in which he once was so involved. And in other fields such as prison reform, reconciliation between races and more recently that great cause of our time, the eradication of the extreme poverty that blights the continent of Africa, amongst those who have offered new vision have been those whose perspective has been transformed by God.

In all of this, our first point of reference is flawed old Abram, a man who shows us that our flaws and shortcomings are no obstacle to being called on a journey with God. For God so often brings out the best from the worst.

And in all of this, paramount is the capacity of God to do things beyond our wildest imagination and dreams. In the case of Abram and Sarai, the Divine purpose is to be fulfilled through, yes, the seemingly impossible. Advanced in years and unable to have the children that were in those days deemed essential, God promises to make Abram into a great nation. The Impossible Dream! Yes but the message here seems to be telling us that when God is at work, the impossible can become the reality. The barriers that we are so concentrated on can like Iron Curtains or even Apartheid, come crumbling down. For in the scheme of things, God’s Kingdom is so much stronger than the power centres which we look to. And here, in an impossible promise, God reveals to Abram the means by which God will draw fractured humanity into relationship with the Divine.

But what does all this say to us? I think that we are called on a journey of discovery with God. We do not know where it will take us. Baggage that we hold dear may have to be jettisoned for that which is more worthwhile. We may at times appear to be counter cultural or even totally crazy. But as a man called Paul once wrote, that which we deem to be God’s folly is much greater that that which we deem to be our wisdom. In our lives, in this church, and indeed in our nation, God calls us not just to accept what is but to be guided by God to what is better. Travelling with God may be at times bumpy but it is creatively bumpy and if we are to be faithful in our commitment made to James earlier in this service, surely we need to be getting on to God’s bus and moving forwards with God.

This sermon was preached at Bideford on June 5th at a service in which a boy whose first name is James was baptised.

AMAZING GRACE MATT 9: 9-13

2005-05-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

A story is told of a French soldier during the Napoleonic Wars. He had fallen asleep whilst on guard duty and so at his court martial, he was sentenced to death. His widowed mother out of her deep pain, appealed her son’s case at every level on the chain of command. But failing on each occasion, she was eventually left with only the Emperor to turn to. Falling at Napoleon’s feet she begged for the life of her only child explaining that she depended totally on her son for her means of support. As she pleaded for mercy, Napoleon coldly told her that he son deserved to die. Without hesitation, the distressed mother replied;

‘You are right sire, of course. That is why I am asking you for mercy. If he were deserving, it would not be mercy.’

Touched by those words, Napoleon pardoned the soldier.

Today’s Gospel Reading shows us the mercy that is at the heart of Jesus. The calling of a tax collector named Matthew must surely have stuck in the gullet of many of those who first heard of it. You see, in those days to many of Jesus’ contemporaries, tax collectors were about as low as it was possible to get. Why should this be?

Firstly, they were seen as being those who betrayed their own people. The taxes they raised, went not to a veritable collection of good causes. No! They went to the Romans who were at that time oppressing the Jews and doing so with considerable brutality. Surely, it is not difficult to see that tax collectors such as Matthew were despised in the same sort of way that Vichy collaborators were despised in France after the Second World War. Enemies of their own people - that is what the tax collectors such as Matthew were!

But the indictment against Matthew and his sort didn’t end there . For a second charge could also be laid against them. This charge was that they were prone to being unscrupulous, dishonest characters. To make a worthwhile income for themselves, they were known to charge people well above their proper dues - hardly a way to win any sort of popularity contest as they often lived very well indeed as a direct result of the practice of extortion.

And finally, they were often outsiders from the religious life of their people. For their dealings with so many people made it close on impossible to observe the laws of ritual purity and so they excluded themselves from for example the worship of the Temple.

Wealthy these tax collectors may have been, but to the religiously sensitive, they were total outsiders who were far from God and from their own people.

And yet, it was one such as this that we find Jesus calling to be one of his close followers. And in the calling of Matthew, we obtain a picture of the wideness of the mercy that Jesus brings. As with so much of his ministry, Jesus is seen here to be holding his hand out to those whom respectable people held most strongly in contempt. There is a real sense that Jesus longs to bring the best out of those who are regarded as the worst. In so doing, Jesus scandalised not just the people of his own day for in so doing he also scandalises the people of our day. For today, we are a part of a society that often gives up on people, throwing them away and treating them as misfits. Even today, there is an all to common instinct to freeze people in their worst moments, never letting them move on from those moments. Yes, it is most commonly demonstrated in some of our less worthy media but the fact that it so often goes unchallenged, is a sign that they not only lead our thought patterns but also reflect them. But now, Jesus challenges us with a new way of thinking, the way of thinking that is dominated by the power of Jesus to bring about the transformation of love.

An example of this power of Jesus to transform is to be found in the life of John Newton. A foul mouthed sailor whose greatest delight was to break the faith of the one Christian sailor with whom he sailed, Newton earned his living out of the slave trade. By his own account, he sexually misused slave women and treated slaves both male and female with some considerable brutality. Far from the Christian upbringing which he had received from his mother , he was like Matthew a no hope person. Yet this wretch was reached by God in a storm and gradually changed his focus to such an extent that he became a much loved Anglican vicar at Olney and even a campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade. But Newton is best remembered for his autobiographical hymn, ’Amazing Grace.’

Listen to the words of the first verse;

Amazing grace (how sweet the sound)
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.’

Do you get the picture? Like Matthew, Newton was about as low as anyone could get. And like Matthew, Newton experienced the power of God to transform a life. And Matthew, like Newton, experienced this in a way that he did not deserve for both men learnt that God who is revealed in Jesus, offers not justice but mercy. And of course, as the condemned soldier knew, there’s quite a difference between justice and mercy.

The whole point of mercy is that it is undeserved. It is quite simply a generous act of Divine love that nobody can earn. Such is at the heart of so much of our worship and the liturgy of particularly poignant moments. In the Methodist Worship Book’s service for the Baptism of Infants, the minister addressing the child, recounts the Scripture;

‘We love, because Christ first loved us.’

And this mercy also figures when we come to receive Holy Communion for in the Prayer of Humble Access in which we acknowledge our unworthiness to come to the Table which is where we find God’s acceptance, that unworthiness is not a barrier for the same prayer states the great truth;

‘But you are the same Lord
Whose nature is always to have mercy.’

And even at our end, the song of mercy goes on when we are commended to ‘God’s perfect mercy and wisdom.’

So, in a real sense, the story of Matthew’s calling is a sign of what life is about - the unending mercy of God which is offered to us throughout all the changing scenes of our lives. Undeserved, it is for as we see in the story of the calling of Matthew , the call and the acceptance come before Matthew has done anything to merit this mercy. And that is something which lies at the heart of the Gospel. The first move in love and in offering acceptance is always the move of God. It never is and cannot be earned. The cycle always begins with God’s initiative for as the Apostle Paul wrote bear the end of his tempestuous life;

'But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: Whilst we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’

Yes, the gifts of acceptance and love for which so many cry out, come to us not because of some Divine illusion about us but in full knowledge of what we are, warts and all. And the simple truth is that however unlovely we might be, God just goes on loving us for his mercy is ultimately rooted in straightforward unconditional love.

So where does all thus leave us today? Well it certainly tells us much about the heart of God. It certainly tells us something about our own value to God but surely it cannot stop there. For this unconditional love and mercy if for all peoples including those whom we find it hardest to love or to value. And yet if this love and mercy is for us, then surely we are the evidence of the wideness of Divine love. So surely we are called to be a part of a circle of love and mercy, a circle which touches the unlikeliest of places. For then it is revealed that the whole of human experience can indeed be transformed not by effort but by that most incredible invasion into our world, the invasion of AMAZING GRACE!

AMEN

This sermon is to be preached at Alverdiscott on June 5th in the evening in a Communion Service

TRINITY - PSALM 8, MATT 28:16-20, 2 CORINTHIANS 13:11-13

2005-05-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

I was once guilty of a form of Planytis. For me it wasn’t a case of deciding which preachers I would attend worship led by. Instead I had a tendency to ensure that my days when I was not available to the Superintendent minister, were the ones which most discomforted me. In the case of Trinity Sunday, it was a Sunday when non availability could be virtually guaranteed. In a sense, I was as one with the late Bishop John Robinson who when asked how he would teach a child about the doctrine of the Trinity, replied,

‘I wouldn’t.’

And yet the doctrine of the Trinity is a major part of our Christian understanding. Not articulated in a formal way in the Scriptures, it represents an understanding arrived at in the early centuries of Christianity after fierce debate over the nature of Jesus. In that debate, there was a struggle between those who emphasised the divinity of Christ over his humanity and those who emphasised the humanity of Christ over his divinity. By the time of the Nicene Creed, it was beginning to be generally accepted that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. We could experience God as Father, Son and Spirit. Whilst today we often make the Trinity seem like a lifeless doctrine, we do well to appreciate that it came into being out of the dynamic experience of early Christians and from their passionate grappling with the search to understand that which God is about.

The God of the Trinity is experienced by us in a range of ways. Psalm 8 points us to God as the loving Creator to whom we owe our lives and the good gifts of creation. Some of you will be aware that I regard the hymns of Charles Wesley as amongst Methodism’s greatest treasures, I agree with the Congregationalist scholar Bernard Manning (no relation to the Mancunian comedian) that it is Wesley’s hymns that are the greatest thing that Methodism can bring to the ecumenical dialogue. Yet the one thing, I struggle with in Charles Wesley’s hymns is a tendency to refer to humanity in terms such as 'worms'. I hope I have misunderstood Wesley because I think Psalm 8 calls us to see humanity in a much higher context than that. This Psalm which points us to the majesty of God, tells us that God has created humanity with status, the status of being cared for by God, the status of being but a little lower than the Divine and ‘crowned with glory and honour.’ Out of this has come responsibility for caring for the created order, a sharing in the very work of God.

I wonder if we take this seriously enough. Too often we interpret the term ‘dominion’ which is first used in the Genesis 1 creation narrative to imply that we have a world to do with as we wish and this irresponsible attitude is increasingly lead us to the point of environmental crisis. Only a few weeks ago, a gathering of climate scientists meeting in Exeter at the request of the Prime Minister, concluded that the threat of climate change is so great that amongst other things;

- in the next few centuries, the sea level will rise by twenty feet wiping out whole communities

- sand eels have left the warm waters of the North Sea causing a collapse of the bird populations that have fed off these eels

- the increasingly acidic seas will lead to the destruction of all the world’s coral reefs within 35 years.

And if all that is not enough, the Independent Newspaper on Friday estimated that at the current rate of deforestation, the Amazon Rainforest will be no more within 50 years.

Such environmental disasters are a consequence of our failing to appreciate that Biblically ‘dominion’ is about following the example of God whose ‘dominion’ is exercised in loving care and servanthood. And what our world needs now is not a theology that justifies the ravaging of God's gift of this incredible planet but a theology espressed in the exercising of loving care of our planet in partnership with God.

So this morning, we see a challenge to not only appreciate that this world and our lives are the gift of God, but also that we are called to live out our high calling in harmony with that God.

But then we come to the stories of Jesus of Nazareth. I have always like a quote from David Jenkins from the time when he was Bishop of Durham. This is what he said;

‘God is. He is as he is in Christ. Therefore there is hope.’

What Dr Jenkins is saying here is that if we want to know what God is like, we only need to look at Jesus. Gaze at Jesus and we begin to see what unconditional love is about. This is the one who turns the world right side up. Jesus continually challenges our smug norms. He finds value in the most unlikely of places and people. He crosses the barriers of religion, race and gender to bring a message that to him all are special and loved by the Divine. Every prejudice of his day and by implication of our day also, is challenged with a message that our responsibilities are not just for those who are as we are but for people in all their diversity. For Jesus, our calling is not just about me and mine but also for those who in our dark moments we see as beyond the pail. And for this humanity which he meets at its very worse in his Passion, he gives his all and cries ‘Father forgive.’

But more! On Trinity Sunday, we recall that that Jesus is enthroned, is interceding for us, able to fully empathise with us in the weaknesses of our humanity for such has been his experience. And because he still is, there are those times when we sing aloud that which we can at all times sing in our hearts;

‘What a friend we have in Jesus.’

Note, it is 'What a friend we have in Jesus' not 'What a friend we had in Jesus.' For this Jesus lives and is for us in the present as much as in the past.

Last year one of my courses was in 20th Century Christology. We looked at how a range of 20th Century theologians interpreted the significance of Christ. One of them was Karl Barth, the great Swiss theologian. I found him rather difficult and didn’t dare attempt an essay on him in the examination at the end of the year. And yet one thing about Barth I find endearing. Towards the end of his life, after a lecture he was taking questions when a student asked him which of his theological discoveries was the most important one. Without hesitation Barth who had written thousands of pages in his 'Dogmatics' replied,

‘Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so.’

And those words which many of us remember singing in a Sunday School chorus say it all!

But we can not leave the Trinity without touching on the third person. Last week of course was Pentecost when we recalled the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the fulfilment of the promise of Jesus. This Holy Spirit totally transformed the closest friends of Jesus from the cowards of Gethsemane to courageous pioneeers of the Gospel, lions for God. In the Spirit we see God’s continued engagement with the world. Through the Spirit, God prods, rebukes, encourages and strengthens us so that the story of God goes on through the lives of those who follow God. The Spirit challenges our baser thoughts and lifts them to a higher plain where we can truly begin to respond to the vision of the Psalmist in which we care for the world, engaging in God's work. The Spirit is God at work in our world yet taking the risk of daring to trust in people to be partners in that work. And indeed it is through the Spirit that we know that we are not alone for to turn to the great hymn, ‘Hallelujah! Sing to Jesus’ we find that incomparably great line;

‘Not as orphans are we left in sorrow now.’

So on Trinity Sunday, we come not to meditate on dry words but instead to encounter a living truth of a God who is for us in differing ways - Father, Brother, Spirit. And who is probably experienced in many other ways too. That is the magnitude of our God who is all that we need God to be and so so much more.

And in Trinity, God is revealed as community, dynamic community and that is also our calling to be a community of diverse peoples in relationship to one another, constantly being patterned in God’s image so that we might take God’s togetherness into the world and in the words of Bishop Spong be those who are;

‘Living life to the full
Loving wastefully
And being all that we possibly can be.’

AMEN

This sermon was preached at Alwington on Trinity Sunday, 22nd Mat 2005.

ASCENSION Acts 1:1-14

2005-05-14T01:56:00.000-07:00

ASCENSION
It is one of those apocryphal stories. Jesus arrives at the Pearly Gates following his Ascension. There he is met by the angelic host. They all want to know about his time on earth. As Jesus tells his story of being raised in humble circumstances, the years of teaching, preaching and healing followed by his account of being at the receiving side of torture and murder prior to the ultimate conquest of death, the angels are enthralled. The story of all that Jesus has done to share the good news of a God who wants only the best for creation leaves them truly amazed.
But then, one of them has a question to ask;

“Lord, now that you are no longer physically on earth, who will continue to share the good news?”

Jesus answers, “There are eleven who were especially close to me and I have given them the responsibility of getting the word out.”

Relieved at this, the questioner responds, “ O Lord, these must be incredible people - the best and the brightes that creation has to offer!”

“Well, actually no,” Jesus responds. “These are average people with ordinary abilities. Not the “best and brightest” by any means.”

“But if these are only average people with ordinary ability, how can you be sure that they will get the job done?”

“To be honest,” Jesus answers, “I can’t be sure.”

“ You can’t be sure, Lord? What if they fail to do the job? What is your back up plan?”

Quietly Jesus answers, “ I have no back up plan.”

The story of the Ascension of Jesus tells us that it is now left to ordinary people such as us to continue his work. Luke in his account of the Ascension links the Ascension of Jesus with the challenge to continue the work of Jesus in Jerusalem where they were, in Judea which was nearby before deaded Samaria and ultimately to the ends of the Earth. Jesus might be absent in the physical sense but this absence would not be the end of the story but the beginning of a new chapter. Powerfully, this tells us that we are so valued by God that we are actually called to share in the ongoing work of God.

The problem with all of this is that on first reading we find the Disciples being given the impossible task at the very time when their resources are lowest. Weeks before at Easter they had found their own limitations severely exposed as they fled on the night of Jesus’ arrest. In those days, they experienced something of an emotional roller coaster ride. Now after a number of encounters with the Risen Christ, they were left alone - only with a giant of a task. Yet the message of the text is that they were not alone for Luke links his account of the task they are given not just with the Ascension but with the promise of the Spirit, the Spirit who working within them will be the guarantor of Christ’s continued presence. Perhaps the brief delay between Ascension and Pentecost represents a chance for the Disciples to begin to learn to walk on their own. BUT they are not to feel as orphans, deserted.

A helpful illustration may be one concerning Mahatma Gandhi who was one of the greatest figures of the 20th Century. His murder at a time of crisis in India devastated many within the Hindu community who had come to rely on his great spiritual guidance. His friend, Stanley Jones, the Christian missionary recalls hearing a well known Hindu poet named Mrs Naidu , lament this tragedy on the radio just three days after his assassination. Tearfully she cried out for both herself and her stricken nation;

“O Bapu, O Little Father, come back. We are orphaned and stricken without you.”

Stanley Jones said he could sympathise with her feelings but he also reflected;

“ O God, I am grateful I do not have to cry out for the leader of my soul: ’O Jesus, come back. Come back. We are orphaned and stricken without you.”

He knew that reality that the hymn writer writes of in ‘Alleluia! Sing to Jesus’ which is expressed in the line, “Not as orphans are we left in sorrow now.” For Jones was able to recognise that which makes Jesus different from others, namely that ‘though absent in the flesh, Jesus is a continuing presence in our lives as a result of the presence of the Spirit. Added to which Ascension is linked to a promise of return which means that ultimately it is the purposes of Jesus that will be fulfilled in the world.

But how do we live in the knowledge of the Ascension? Ultimately this leads us into an understanding that the Ascension is amongst other things one of the most political doctrines of the church. In Ascension, Christ is exalted and may truly be described as “King of Kings” or “Lord of Lords.” In the past week we have elected people into leadership in both Parliament and County Councils. Their tasks are important and their power to affect peoples’ lives is considerable. However, Ascension points us to One who is a higher power with a much greater claim on our allegiance and how we live our lives. Yet this authority of Jesus is at times counter cultural. It is the authority that challenges us to seek what is right through looking to the actions, teachings and self giving that we see in Jesus. This is the authority that puts before us the challenge that all should be treated with dignity, that our human created barriers against those we see as other than ourselves should be challenged and that power is best exercised in servanthood rather than in domination and manipulation. It puts before us great imperatives such as peace and justice along with great attitudes such as love and mercy. And radical as it may seem, when those imperatives and those attitudes are at odds with the exercise of authority in public life or in communities of faith, it is the authority of Christ that needs to be affirmed as supreme whatever the cost.

Today as we look to the Ascension we seek our place in the ongoing story of God’s work of love. It is a story that has not ended with Ascension but goes on through the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles and in the lives of people who follow Jesus.

In this I am reminded of the story of the Italian composer Puccini who wrote such great operas as ‘Madame Butterfly.’ He had begun writing his masterpiece Turandot which included such classic music as ‘Nessun Dorma.’ Sadly he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Feverishly he worked to bring his work to completion but in the end he died leaving an unfinished work. Friends who saw the brilliance of this work and who had been inspired by Puccini later completed it. One evening in 1926 a year or so after Puccini’s death, Turandot was performed for the very first time at La Scala Opera House in Milan. The conductor was Toscanini who had been a close friend of Puccini. When he got to the end of what Puccini had written, he lowered his baton before turning to the audience and saying through his tears, “ So far the Master wrote before he died.” The performance was over but the following night he was able to announce, “But his friends have completed his work” and the entire opera was performed.

And it’s a bit like that with us. We are called as the friends of Christ to continue the Master’s work. But we have the bonus of the realisation that through the Spirit, the Master is present with us and using us with all our ordinariness for his extraordinary purposes.
AMEN

This was preached in a different church to the sermon on paraclete - hence the two sermons contain the same illustration. I am grateful to David Leininger for the illustration re Stanley Jones and the aftermath to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

It was preached at Torrington on My 8th 2005.

EASTER 6 PROMISE OF PARACLETE - John 14:15-21

2005-05-14T01:50:00.000-07:00

EASTER 6
Dark Age Ahead! No don’t panic. This is not one last piece of negative campaigning ahead of polling day. On the contrary, it’s the title of a recently published book by the Canadian writer Jane Jacobs.

Jacobs argues that we are entering dark age unless certain trends are reversed. To her the danger is not only the loss of precious things but also the memory of them.

To her the threats are to be found in five area;

- Community and family are threatened by consumerism being put before family welfare.
- Higher education is threatened by being more about empire building than providing quality education.
-Science is becoming debased by being dominated by economics. Hence essential environmental action is rejected when costly.
- Government has become more about satisfying the desires of powerful groups than addressing the welfare of the nation.
- Once respected professional groups have become more interested in self protection than in accountability.

This side of the Atlantic we would probably see the dangers in different ways. There are echoes here of all the concerns of Jacobs but I for one would see prime threats coming from
the ocean of private debt, the growth of addiction problems and the serious environmental threat but what do I know? These matters have barely figured in the debates of the past four weeks.

Jacobs fears the entering of a Dark Age. Such a fear also existed amongst those who first read John’s Gospel. By now Christians had been kicked out of the synagogues which were the heritage of most of them. Families were divided, even the church was divided and most of all Christians were living on the edge of society despised by the powers that ruled in Rome and by the educated elite steeped in Greek culture.

So we find John reminding them of words from Jesus - words that would help them in their times of darkness. For the message was that they were not alone. Jesus had promised them that with the ending of his physical presence they would not be orphaned. Instead they would be given a Paracletos which can be translated as a comforter, an Advocate, a Helper or even coach - one who enables us.

But enables us for what. The answer is to be found in the first line of our reading which talks about keeping the commands of Jesus, continuing the work of Jesus. And what was that work? Well when I look at the stories of Jesus I see the one who valued everyone. The man who accepted those with checkered pasts, the man who elevated the role of women, the man who spoke of responsibilities to neighbours but showed the neighbour to be not just those with whom we are comfortable with but those who might be termed as strangers, those who are other than us and he demonstrated it most powerfully in the parable of the Good Samaritan where the neighbour comes from a hostile religious and racial tradition.

And the need for that way of love is needed today. I wonder why we do not see the sickness in society when many people live their lives experiencing a crisis of self esteem, feeling either denied of worth and acceptance or fearing that such acceptance is tenuous. There is something wrong in a society that not only throws away scarce resources in an environmentally destructive manner but people as well.

In our prayers we will along with the other churches of our District be using prayers concerning the General Election. They will come from the Bolton and Rochdale District and they do in part reflect the concern of Christians in that part of our land about the racist threat of the BNP. Yet before we feel to smug, even in Cornwall and Devon, there is a growing problem of racist attacks mainly but not exclusively in our bigger towns and that is not to mention the recently reported figure of 8,000 homophobic attacks in Devon and Cornwall last year.

Oh, the power of transforming love is needed now as much as at any time if we are not to slip into a new Dark Age. But our Scripture has reminded us that love goes on - not merely depending on us but with the help of the Holy Spirit. And to that cause we need to devote ourselves afresh this morning - for the sakes of James, Mark, Ellie and Levi if we can think of no other reason.

In the 20th century one of the greatest writers of opera was the Italian Puccini. ‘Madame Butterfly was one of his greatest successes. During the writing of Turandot his final opera, he was diagnosed with the illness that would kill him. Faced with death he threw himself into his work. However, in the end he was unable to complete it. After his death a small group of friends completed the opera. In 1926 it was performed for the first time at La Scala Opera House in Milan. Puccini’s friend Toscanini was the conductor. They got as far as Puccini had written before Toscanini stopped the performance dropping his baton and saying to the audience, ‘This is where the master ends.’ That was it for the evening but the next evening, came a different message as the opera continued, the message, ‘And this is where his friends began.’
And that is how it is with Jesus. The story does not end. Jesus work of love continues through his friends depending in the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. For Love has no ending and ultimately it is Love that is able to confront and vanquish the dark forces that would take us to a Dark Age.

A Sermon by Canadian minister Dave Martin inspired this sermon.
The context of this sermon was a service in Bideford at whichwhich four young children were baptised on May 1st 2005

GOOD FRIDAY

2005-05-14T01:46:00.000-07:00

I used to find Elaine difficult. She was the first Messianic Jew that I ever met. Time after time she would complain about sermons she heard containing anti Semitism. In my mind I psychoanalysed her and wished the problem away.

Many year later training for the ministry at Wesley House I realised there was a problem that could not just be ignored. We shared our site with the Centre for Jewish Christian Relations, a community of Jews and Christians dedicated to exploring the issues in relations between Jews and Christians. Two and a half years ago their Director Ed Kessler whose family had fled Austria in the 1930s took us to the Beth Shalom Holocaust Museum near Nottingham. We set off as an animated group of students but returned in total silence. We’d known that the Holocaust would be disturbing but what we encountered at this centre set up by a Methodist minister left us shattered. An effort in the midst of Christendom to destroy the Jewish communities of Europe and all memory of them.

For many of us this experience was something we could not let go of. For me it led me to study a course on Jewish and Christian Responses to the Holocaust in my final year. And I began to discover how right Elaine had been. The polemics within scripture which come from what is in essence a 1st Century family quarrel had in the centuries that followed been used to demonise Judaism with outbreaks of violence particularly prevalent at Easter as passion plays led to heightened emotions and prejudices. To me the most disturbing moment was reading the Dabru Emet Statement of Jewish scholars, a gracious statement, which whilst recognising the anti Christian nature of Nazism, also affirmed that were it not for years of Christian anti Judaism the terrible events of the 1940s could never have happened.

In the years that have followed most of the Christian churches have begun a journey of reconciliation with the older brother of Judaism. Hopefully this journey will not be at the cost of another scapegoat emerging in the form of Islam. However, we do well on this Good Friday to appreciate that the cross which is the supreme sign of God in Christ’s sacrificial love has at times been so misused that for others especially Jewish brothers and sisters, there is a shadow side. Such is shown by the story of well meaning efforts to erect a convent at Auschwitz to pray for the horrors that had happened at that place with a cross as a sign of hope only for many Jews to be mortally offended with the result that the Pope intervened to halt the scheme.

I wonder if we haven’t at times got our focus wrong as we look at the Passion of Christ. Increasingly I think that the story reminds of the dangers of the misuse of power by the powerful. We see it in the religiously powerful but also in the political power yielded by Pontius Pilate. Pilate was a man known for brutality, brutality which would later bring his career to an ignominious conclusion. This was hardly a man who needed a crowd to incite him to torture or execution. In a way he was a fore runnner of a long tradition of the powerful using political expediency as a cover for torture, violence and war.

Yet more uncomfortably by setting our attention on others, we often excuse ourselves. Rowan Williams in his book ‘Resurrection’ reminds us that unlike Jesus we are hardly pure victim for we also have within us the characteristics of the persecutor. Painfully we know how mobs of people just like us can like the Easter crowd vent fury, hatred and prejudice on others simply for being in some way other than what we are. We are caught up in what the American academic Walter Wink calls the ’ myth of redemptive violence.’ And if we excuse ourselves there we all know too well the sin of silence when we fail to speak for those who are victims.

I think of Martin Niemoeller the Lutheran pastor who at first was taken by Hitler before realising that Nazism was anti Christian, made his stand, spending years in gaol as a result. Listen to his words;

"First they came for the communists but I did not speak out because I was not a communist

Then they cam for the Socialists but I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Then the came for the trade unionists butI did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews but I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Finally they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me."

And yet there is one who is for us. Elie Wiesel’s book ‘Night’ which tells of his time at Auschwitz and Buchenwald makes for painful reading. Indeed he could only write it many years after the events. In one tortuous episode he describes the hanging of two men and a boy whom he describes as looking like a ‘sad eyed angel.’ The boys takes a long time to die and Wiesel refers to hearing man behind him asking ‘Where is God now?’ before going on to write;

And I heard a voice within me answer him;
'‘Where is he? Here he is….. He is hanging on the gallows.'’

I am not quite sure what Wiesel means by that. It may relate to his struggle as to whether he could continue to believe in a God in the light of the terrible things he saw and experienced. I don’t know. But I put it to you this morning that in a real sense the suffering God is present with all those who suffer injustice and pain. For in the cross we find the courageous self giving love of God in Christ, given for all.

The cross a form of torture, sadly used so often by Christians as a weapon, stands revealed as the means by which God in love embraces a world hooked on the drugs of self interest and violence. Through the cross, is revealed the supremacy of Divine love for as that great hymn of the Welsh Revival puts it,

"Here is love vast as the Ocean".

This sermon was preached at an ecumenical Good Friday service at St Mary's.