Readings
Romans 8:26-end
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Matthew 13: 31-33, 44-52
Jesus put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’
He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’
‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
‘Have you understood all this?’ They answered, ‘Yes.’ And he said to them, ‘Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’
Address
At the end of the eight o clock service last Sunday I was approached by a member of the congregation who said that he had appreciated the sermon but noticed that I had completely dodged the issue of hell and judgement. I had to agree, although in my defence my usual eight minute homily would have been rather longer had I tried to mention that as well.
I also promised that I would preach about hell the next time it came up. That was, of course, before I read this Sunday’s readings and realised that hell and judgement came up again, and this time with the added complication that the new testament reading is all about predestination. So, with knees trembling, I’m going to try and answer the question, ‘What is hell and are some people predestined to go there?’
But first a story to set the context. In the Baptist denomination they usually choose their ministers by what they call, ‘Preach-with-a-view’. In other words the elders of the church will interview prospective candidates for the minister’s position, and if they thought they had someone who might be right they would invite them to preach. After they left, the church would meet and decide together whether to call them as the new minister.
And so it was that a certain church had interviewed two candidates and couldn’t decide which one to invite to preach, so they invited them both and gave them the topic of hell to preach on. They both preached amazing sermons that kept people on the edge of their seats, but in the end the choice was quite easy to make. They chose the one who preached with tears in his eyes...
Whatever conclusions we come to about hell, the devastating thoughts that there may be some who will never experience the presence of God, and that there are evil people who never manage to ask for forgiveness should be uppermost in our thoughts. Talk of hell should never be one of our judgementalism and hope that someone in particular should go there. With that in mind let’s think about the subject.
Hell is not a clear-cut biblical concept. Throughout the bible, just as with the devil, hell is an evolving picture. In the earlier parts of the Old Testament there is no mention of either heaven or hell. Instead there was just Sheol, the grave, a grey place of no hope where what was left of a person resided after their life on earth was over. It also seems unjust to us because that was all there was in their beliefs; there was no distinction in what would happen to the good or the evil.
So let’s think about what hell might actually be. It’s a curious thing that in almost every religion there is some kind of doctrine of hell. What that hell looks like depends a great deal on whether the religion is primarily judgemental or whether it is full of forgiveness.
This difference is quite important for us as we consider Christian beliefs because it strikes me that what we say about hell is more likely to say something about ourselves than it is to say something about the truth. We all know, for example, that medieval Christianity went to great lengths to depict all sorts of horrible and permanent tortures that took place in hell and were inflicted by demons.
Yet none of that has any foundation whatsoever in scripture. In fact the one or two references to demons in hell strongly suggest that hell was actually originally created for them, not for humanity at all. In the parable of the sheep and the goats we get this at the end:
Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire that was prepared for the devil and his angels.’ Matt.25:41
Demons are most definitely not God’s torturers, so please abandon that concept. This depiction actually tells us that fear was at the root of institutionalised medieval Christianity, not love.
And I think the same is probably true today. If you look at fundamentalist Christianity you will see that it has a very firm teaching that hell is for sinners who will burn forever in eternal torment, and we all know that fundamentalist teachings are very judgmental, and that is true of fundamentalist religions whatever faith they are, simply because they are based on fear, not love.
Now we in the modern western world declare that God is love and that he wants all people to reside with him forever, yet we also have this belief that God, who is love, willingly sends people to hell be perpetually tortured in flames for all eternity, un-ending, simply because they got it wrong over the course of seventy years, for whatever reason, with no excuses permitted.
And in fact it’s even worse than that, because in the reading from Romans we have the concept of predestination built in, and there are plenty of Christians who recognise, quite rightly, that if you go all-out for a doctrine of predestination then you are left concluding that God predestined a vast multitude to hell. So they never had a chance! How can this possibly tally with our declaration that God is love?
Well quite simply it can’t. We also need to be aware that as well as the letter to the Romans which included that passage on predestination, St. Paul also wrote this to Timothy when writing about how to live a quiet and godly life:
This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 1 Tim.2:1-4
So clearly God wants people to be saved, and that desire, it seems to me, stands in opposition to the idea of God predestining anyone to hell or, for that matter, to heaven. Yes, I’m afraid I don’t agree that you can take what St. Paul says in Romans about predestination at face value - but that’s another sermon for another time, and I promise I will deal with that in due course.
What we do have to acknowledge, though, is that this parable of Jesus and many other places in the New Testament indicate that there are some who, through their actions in this life, will be excluded from God’s presence, and that is primarily what hell is. The absence, entirely, of God.
But that throws up a philosophical question. Acts 17:28 quotes a sermon from St. Paul where he refers to God saying:
‘In him we live and move and have our being.’
So if God excludes people from his presence because of choices they have made, can there be any existence apart from him?
This, I think, is where the images of the flames of hell come from. Our word for hell comes from the Greek, Gehenna, which means the Valley of Hinnom. This was a valley just outside Jerusalem where once the practice took place of child sacrifices in fire being made to the god Molech, a practice utterly condemned by God.
By Jesus’s time this accursed place had become the rubbish tip where a fire permanently burned and the rubbish from Jerusalem was tipped in and burnt, and I think that this is actually what Jesus was getting at. I do not believe that hell is a place where God sends people to be burned in eternal torment.
Instead, and this is where hell becomes a great sadness, I believe it is a place where those who, however many chances they are given, both this side and the other side of the grave, refuse to be a part of the kingdom of God. I believe God may give many opportunities, and I believe that those who, through chance, have never been in a place to have encountered God or heard about God in this life will be given that chance after their earthly death.
But the weight of scripture seems to suggest that, whatever lengths God goes to out of the love that he has for us to draw us into his family, there will be some who reject him, firmly and finally. If they will not be in God’s presence, and if we only have our existence because we are in God’s presence, what can there possibly be that is left to them?
St. Paul wrote these words to the church in Philippi
For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction... Philippians 3:18-19
Hell is destruction. The reason it is eternal is not that it goes on forever, but that its effects do. What I’m saying is that God, in his mercy, rather than condemning people to live forever without him, brings their existence to an end. They simply cease to exist. The theological term for this is annihilation.
I don’t think the Bible gives us a clear enough teaching about hell to say conclusively from scripture that it’s this or it’s that, but scripture, reason and experience make it absolutely clear that God’s love goes beyond anything we can imagine. Ultimately though, there may be those who refuse to accept that love.
For them there can only be a complete cessation of being. I think the reason we get this picture of flames is because a valley outside Jerusalem where the rubbish was burnt until it was burned up and ceased to exist was the best picture Jesus could come up with for hell.
I realise that this is not going to satisfy everyone, but for me it is the only picture that seems to make sense of what scripture says about the love of God and about the eternal choice he lays before all of us. We can only exist because we are in God’s presence. If we choose, finally, that we will not be with him, then there can be no where else to go. In his absence nothing can exist, and that, finally, is hell.
So if you have lived all your life fearful that God is looking for how you mess up so that he can justify sending you to hell, then maybe this is a time to breathe easy. It’s quite the reverse. God is love, and love is about togetherness, not destruction. Destruction is sadly the final option when every single other option has been tried.
If we refuse to be with God, there is nowhere else we can be, and God knows that eternity spent in his absence would be far more cruel than anything else that could be imagined. In the end hell, annihilation, is about mercy for those who refuse love. Amen.
Saturday, 23 July 2011
Saturday, 16 July 2011
Patronal Festival - 4th Sunday after Trinity: a many coloured church
Readings
Luke 8:1-3
Some Women Accompany Jesus
Soon afterwards Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat
Jesus put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, ‘Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.’ He answered, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!’
Address
The parable of the wheat and the tares is another one of those stories which cause us to pause and ask ourselves, ‘Which side of the fence am I on?’ If you remember from last week we had the question of whether we set our minds on the things of the flesh or the things of the Spirit and the challenge to ask ourselves whether we were asking , ‘What do I want?’or, ‘Who am I?’
But here the reading seems to be making it clear that even within Christ’s pilgrim people there are those who are not the real thing, but have been placed in the church by the devil, and we might find ourselves looking around and wondering, ‘Is it him? Is it her?’ or even, ‘Is it me?’
Let me give you a couple of examples to make you think. A colleague moved away from the West Country where he was working in a small village parish. He only stayed there a short time because the local squire basically ran the parish and nobody dared defy him. Consequently it was impossible to move the church on.
Another colleague moved churches after just two or three years. She was in a group of parishes where the same kind of thing had happened. In three out of the five churches for which she was responsible there were a group of powerful men who had taken over, become the churchwardens, and made all of the decisions. They made her life steadily more difficult until, on the edge of a breakdown, her senior clergy moved her to where her talents could be more appreciated.
Is that a case of the wheat and the weeds? Well it might be. The trouble is that once we begin looking what we risk is a ‘witch hunt’. In the Church of England we don’t have formal steps for church discipline, although churchwardens have legal right to expel someone from a service if they are causing disruption, but other non-conformist churches do have disciplining structures and can expel people from their fellowship.
At another church at which I have worked, exactly that had happened in one of the local churches. The first we knew about it was when a middle aged man started attending who asked if he could talk to us. He had been told to leave his previous church because the elders there disagreed with how he lived his life.
Naturally we welcomed him in and became good friends and he became an important part of our church family. This, I believe, is precisely the point that Jesus is trying to make with this parable. Elsewhere Jesus tells us not to judge or we will be liable to judgement and I think the reason he makes that command is because of the ease with which we get it wrong when we do judge.
We simply don’t have the right yardstick. It’s as straightforward as that. If we start looking around the church and saying, ‘That person’s not right here, they should leave’, it’s quite possible that what we’re actually saying, without realising it, is ‘That person’s not like us.’ We rarely judge someone in a pure way because, not only will we not know the entire reason for their actions, but our own preferences and baggage will get in the way.
Let’s go back to the parable for a moment. The weeds or tares are actually a plant called darnel. The whole point of this parable is that darnel looks like wheat when it’s sown and when it’s growing. If you try and pluck it out you’re just as likely to pull up something that’s actually wheat. Or in other words someone who appears different from you in church may be a part of God’s harvest of wheat, and someone who seems outwardly to be like you may be darnel.
It’s only when the field is ripe for harvest that you can see the difference, which refers to the end of the age when the Lord returns in judgement. He knows the difference and his angels will be able to remove the darnel from the wheat, separating out the true believers from those who cause evil amongst us.
Now, on this our patronal festival, you may be wondering why we’ve had this parable. I think that if we look at Mary Magdalene we have a classic example of someone who might have been classified amongst the early disciples as someone who was a weed growing up among them.
Now we don’t know exactly what Luke means when he says that Jesus cast seven demons out of Mary, but there was clearly something deeply amiss with her when they first met. Something had gone very badly wrong in Mary’s life. We could speculate that maybe she had been an abuse victim, or maybe she had made bad choices and been involved with the occult, which is indeed a way for someone to become oppressed by demonic forces.
Whatever it was, on a deeply spiritual level Mary had been very disturbed and it had taken the direct intervention by the Son of God to set her free. But I find myself wondering what she might have been like in those early few months or even years. Perhaps she made a complete and instant recovery, or perhaps, like many who have been victimised, even though they’ve been set free it can take an awful lot of love and acceptance before they find their way back to wholeness. Maybe the disciples had, behind her back, thought of her as ‘Mad Mary’. We simply don’t know.
But I certainly suspect that she wouldn’t easily have fitted in, and I can imagine Jesus doing a great deal to help her feel accepted and that she had a place. I can picture her gradually beginning to grow and blossom as she experienced the freedom that he had brought her. But imagine if she had been treated as darnel and expelled. How wrong that would have been!
Jesus ultimately chose her to be the very first person to see him after his resurrection. She became known as the ‘Apostle to the Apostles’, because she was sent by Jesus to bring the good news of his resurrection to the remaining eleven and the others with them. Had she been judged by human standards they would have got it so very wrong.
So ultimately what this parable does is make us consider all the many different shapes and sizes of God’s people, all of whom have been accepted. This is a warning to us not to judge others simply because their outward appearance may not be in agreement with what we think is appropriate. God’s church, and this local church, is meant to be a many-coloured thing in which we celebrate the colour and the diversity rather than fear it. Amen
Friday, 8 July 2011
3rd Sunday after Trinity: Who are you? What do you want?
Readings
Romans 8:1-11
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!’
‘Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.’
Address
I have heard people declare that Romans 8 is not just one of the pinnacles of scripture, but that it is the best chapter that St. Paul ever wrote. Well I’m not sure about that, but I think it’s certainly one of the most difficult ones to understand, which is why I’ve wrestled with it for several days this week while trying to figure out how to unpack it.
I think of it as a little like one of those suitcases that someone else has packed for you. They had to get everything in, but then they had to really force the lid down in order to lock it, but that leaves you with a problem. When you open it there is a real risk that your clothes are going to be launched, cartoon-style, all over the room.
I cannot hope to do justice to the entire passage in one sermon, but maybe I can at least open the suitcase enough to take a few clothes out for us to wear, without creating too much mess! So with that in mind, let’s have a look at this first section of the chapter.
It’s only a few weeks since we celebrated Pentecost Sunday, the day when the Lord sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within his people. However on the ground at least twenty five years have passed between that event recorded by Luke and the time St. Paul wrote to the church in Rome. That’s enough time for people to begin to think about what this spiritual life means.
The result of that comes in this chapter in the letter, a chapter that mentions pneuma, the word for Spirit, twenty one times, which is more than one finds in 1 Corinthians 14, the chapter that is most normally associated with the things of the Holy Spirit. However it is not as clear cut as that. This is not a chapter about Holy Spirit theology. Instead St. Paul is writing about the effect of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
What he sets out before us is actually quite disturbing. Now you will often hear me talking about how our Christian walk is one of shades of grey. Some commandments we are better at keeping than others, but for most of us there are always at least a couple of aspects to our lives that we struggle with; things that we know are wrong yet seem powerless to deal with.
But here St. Paul seems to offer us a very black and white distinction. We either live our lives according to the Spirit or according to the flesh; there is no middle way. He seems to be saying that we either live spiritual lives or we obey our own desires for what we want.
What are we to make of that? You see I don’t know about you but at first reading that makes me think that I must be walking according to the flesh because I know how often I give in to temptation, and if you’re honest you will know exactly what I mean. If we read it like that then this passage will be quite condemnatory.
So let me first set your minds at rest. This quote comes from the end of the immediately preceding chapter in Romans:
For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me...
Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.
Basically St. Paul is saying that his experience of the Christian life is just like ours. He knows what is right but keeps doing what is wrong. But if that’s what he says he finds in his own life, what then does he mean when he talks about living according to the flesh or living according to the Spirit? It’s clearly deeper than a behavioural matter, but what exactly does he mean?
I think our first clues comes in this verse:
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
The key word in there is ‘mind’. What is our mind set on? What does it feel like to have our minds set on the things of the flesh, or to have it set on the things of the Spirit? The reason I ask this is because I’m fairly sure that some of us will be struggling with guilt and self-condemnation because we’re sure that we’ve got our minds set on the flesh. So let’s think a little about what this means.
Those of us who are married or who have long term partners may be worried that the desire we feel for our other halves means that we have our minds set on the flesh, so let me reassure you first that this is not the case. Physical desire in the context of a covenant relationship such as marriage is a gift from God.
It’s meant to be there because it is all about the couple, and indeed those who have been together for many years may well have discovered the spiritual side to their physical relationship. Strangely, something that we may think of as being of the flesh is actually of the Spirit. But it can be of the flesh too. Those who go looking for sex as a primary means of self-fulfilment have got it the wrong way around, and they have their minds set on the things of the flesh.
In other words, in the context of our physical, sexual relationships, the act is the same but the meaning behind it is different. In the context of relationship it can be of the Spirit, but if it is about getting what ‘I’ want, then it is about the ways of the flesh.
A similar thing applies when we start focussing on ambition: it can be of the flesh or of the Spirit. For example, over the years I have seen two types of ‘climbers’ within the priesthood. There are those who recognise, in all humility, that God has given them gifts which will enable them to take on senior leadership roles. They have, with their servant hearts, allowed themselves to go forward and apply for senior roles. That is the way of the Spirit.
I have also seen those who have needed recognition for their own selves. They have also gone forward for senior roles, but that is to set the mind on the ways of the flesh. Are you beginning to see, therefore, that it is not what we do, but how we approach what we do?
To set the mind on the flesh is to set the mind on personal wants for the greater good of me. To set the mind on the Spirit is to aim for what is for the greater good. That may mean prayerfully, cautiously, permitting oneself to be in a senior position because, in all humility, you know you are the right person for the job. But if, then, you see someone else’s job, and you covet their responsibility and their public visibility that is a sure fire way of knowing that your mind is set on the things of the flesh.
When we are considering our life journey the question we should be asking over every decision is, ‘Is this purely because I want it, I need it, or can I lay it aside?’ Ambition and desire can be the ways of the Spirit in those who are spiritually self-aware. But they can also be our undoing.
I remember watching a sci-fi series many years ago called Babylon 5. It had a deeply spiritual side to it and I’ve never forgotten the episode in which the two characters who were being called to lead a number of species through a crisis were put through an almost desert like experience where they were asked if they could lay down their leadership and die, trusting that there may be someone else who was better qualified to lead the people.
It was only when they reached that point that they became qualified to lead. It was, in effect, a very Christlike thing to do. Jesus’s quality of leadership came by the way he was willing to lay down his life because that was what was asked of him.
That series, I believe, distilled this question of the ways of the flesh and the ways of the Spirit down to two questions: ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you want?’ Which one of those questions are you continually asking yourself? ‘Who are you?’ is to set your mind on the way of the Spirit. ‘What do you want?’ is to set your mind on the way of the flesh.
But now let me finish with some good news. St. Paul began the chapter with these words: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.’
We’re going to sin, all of us. We’re going to get things wrong. You probably already have before you got here. But if we’re on a spiritual path in Christ Jesus, then listen again to that opening phrase, ‘There is no condemnation’. There is no condemnation. There is no condemnation.
I recently read an article by someone who imagined what kind of response a church may get if they hung a banner outside the church with just those two words, ‘No Condemnation’. If you walked past that, wouldn’t you be interested? Trouble is, that’s not the message most people hear from the church. Instead they think we say, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do the other - yes definitely don’t do the other.’ Why? ‘Because Jesus loves you.’
Hurumph!
But here, this is the good news. There is no condemnation if we have our minds set on the things of the Spirit and are in Christ Jesus. And if you’re not sure what your mind is set on, ask yourself, ‘What is my primary question? Is it, “Who are you?” or is it, “What do you want?”’ Knowing the answer to that will help you decide what your mind is set on, and if you don’t like the answer, you can always change your mind. Amen
Romans 8:1-11
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!’
‘Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.’
Address
I have heard people declare that Romans 8 is not just one of the pinnacles of scripture, but that it is the best chapter that St. Paul ever wrote. Well I’m not sure about that, but I think it’s certainly one of the most difficult ones to understand, which is why I’ve wrestled with it for several days this week while trying to figure out how to unpack it.
I think of it as a little like one of those suitcases that someone else has packed for you. They had to get everything in, but then they had to really force the lid down in order to lock it, but that leaves you with a problem. When you open it there is a real risk that your clothes are going to be launched, cartoon-style, all over the room.
I cannot hope to do justice to the entire passage in one sermon, but maybe I can at least open the suitcase enough to take a few clothes out for us to wear, without creating too much mess! So with that in mind, let’s have a look at this first section of the chapter.
It’s only a few weeks since we celebrated Pentecost Sunday, the day when the Lord sent the Holy Spirit to dwell within his people. However on the ground at least twenty five years have passed between that event recorded by Luke and the time St. Paul wrote to the church in Rome. That’s enough time for people to begin to think about what this spiritual life means.
The result of that comes in this chapter in the letter, a chapter that mentions pneuma, the word for Spirit, twenty one times, which is more than one finds in 1 Corinthians 14, the chapter that is most normally associated with the things of the Holy Spirit. However it is not as clear cut as that. This is not a chapter about Holy Spirit theology. Instead St. Paul is writing about the effect of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
What he sets out before us is actually quite disturbing. Now you will often hear me talking about how our Christian walk is one of shades of grey. Some commandments we are better at keeping than others, but for most of us there are always at least a couple of aspects to our lives that we struggle with; things that we know are wrong yet seem powerless to deal with.
But here St. Paul seems to offer us a very black and white distinction. We either live our lives according to the Spirit or according to the flesh; there is no middle way. He seems to be saying that we either live spiritual lives or we obey our own desires for what we want.
What are we to make of that? You see I don’t know about you but at first reading that makes me think that I must be walking according to the flesh because I know how often I give in to temptation, and if you’re honest you will know exactly what I mean. If we read it like that then this passage will be quite condemnatory.
So let me first set your minds at rest. This quote comes from the end of the immediately preceding chapter in Romans:
For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me...
Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.
Basically St. Paul is saying that his experience of the Christian life is just like ours. He knows what is right but keeps doing what is wrong. But if that’s what he says he finds in his own life, what then does he mean when he talks about living according to the flesh or living according to the Spirit? It’s clearly deeper than a behavioural matter, but what exactly does he mean?
I think our first clues comes in this verse:
For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
The key word in there is ‘mind’. What is our mind set on? What does it feel like to have our minds set on the things of the flesh, or to have it set on the things of the Spirit? The reason I ask this is because I’m fairly sure that some of us will be struggling with guilt and self-condemnation because we’re sure that we’ve got our minds set on the flesh. So let’s think a little about what this means.
Those of us who are married or who have long term partners may be worried that the desire we feel for our other halves means that we have our minds set on the flesh, so let me reassure you first that this is not the case. Physical desire in the context of a covenant relationship such as marriage is a gift from God.
It’s meant to be there because it is all about the couple, and indeed those who have been together for many years may well have discovered the spiritual side to their physical relationship. Strangely, something that we may think of as being of the flesh is actually of the Spirit. But it can be of the flesh too. Those who go looking for sex as a primary means of self-fulfilment have got it the wrong way around, and they have their minds set on the things of the flesh.
In other words, in the context of our physical, sexual relationships, the act is the same but the meaning behind it is different. In the context of relationship it can be of the Spirit, but if it is about getting what ‘I’ want, then it is about the ways of the flesh.
A similar thing applies when we start focussing on ambition: it can be of the flesh or of the Spirit. For example, over the years I have seen two types of ‘climbers’ within the priesthood. There are those who recognise, in all humility, that God has given them gifts which will enable them to take on senior leadership roles. They have, with their servant hearts, allowed themselves to go forward and apply for senior roles. That is the way of the Spirit.
I have also seen those who have needed recognition for their own selves. They have also gone forward for senior roles, but that is to set the mind on the ways of the flesh. Are you beginning to see, therefore, that it is not what we do, but how we approach what we do?
To set the mind on the flesh is to set the mind on personal wants for the greater good of me. To set the mind on the Spirit is to aim for what is for the greater good. That may mean prayerfully, cautiously, permitting oneself to be in a senior position because, in all humility, you know you are the right person for the job. But if, then, you see someone else’s job, and you covet their responsibility and their public visibility that is a sure fire way of knowing that your mind is set on the things of the flesh.
When we are considering our life journey the question we should be asking over every decision is, ‘Is this purely because I want it, I need it, or can I lay it aside?’ Ambition and desire can be the ways of the Spirit in those who are spiritually self-aware. But they can also be our undoing.
I remember watching a sci-fi series many years ago called Babylon 5. It had a deeply spiritual side to it and I’ve never forgotten the episode in which the two characters who were being called to lead a number of species through a crisis were put through an almost desert like experience where they were asked if they could lay down their leadership and die, trusting that there may be someone else who was better qualified to lead the people.
It was only when they reached that point that they became qualified to lead. It was, in effect, a very Christlike thing to do. Jesus’s quality of leadership came by the way he was willing to lay down his life because that was what was asked of him.
That series, I believe, distilled this question of the ways of the flesh and the ways of the Spirit down to two questions: ‘Who are you?’ and ‘What do you want?’ Which one of those questions are you continually asking yourself? ‘Who are you?’ is to set your mind on the way of the Spirit. ‘What do you want?’ is to set your mind on the way of the flesh.
But now let me finish with some good news. St. Paul began the chapter with these words: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.’
We’re going to sin, all of us. We’re going to get things wrong. You probably already have before you got here. But if we’re on a spiritual path in Christ Jesus, then listen again to that opening phrase, ‘There is no condemnation’. There is no condemnation. There is no condemnation.
I recently read an article by someone who imagined what kind of response a church may get if they hung a banner outside the church with just those two words, ‘No Condemnation’. If you walked past that, wouldn’t you be interested? Trouble is, that’s not the message most people hear from the church. Instead they think we say, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do the other - yes definitely don’t do the other.’ Why? ‘Because Jesus loves you.’
Hurumph!
But here, this is the good news. There is no condemnation if we have our minds set on the things of the Spirit and are in Christ Jesus. And if you’re not sure what your mind is set on, ask yourself, ‘What is my primary question? Is it, “Who are you?” or is it, “What do you want?”’ Knowing the answer to that will help you decide what your mind is set on, and if you don’t like the answer, you can always change your mind. Amen
Friday, 1 July 2011
2nd Sunday after Trinity : The importance of doubt
Readings
Ephesians 2:19-end
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.
John 20:24-29
But Thomas (who was called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’
Address
Today we celebrate the saint’s day for St. Thomas, or ‘Doubting Thomas’ as we have all known him, and for that reason I want us to think today about doubt.
How does you favourite creed begin? Is it, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty...” Or maybe it’s. “We believe in one God...”. The Nicene Creed was probably the first of the popular creeds, originally written in 325CE and then revised in 381CE. The Apostles Creed, which is the Prayer Book creed has less clear dates, possibly originating earlier but not appearing in written form until 390CE.
The one thing that they all have in common is that they were written to describe what is normative Christian faith; that is they are there to set boundaries on what people who call themselves Christians should believe. They were forged in the fire of philosophical deliberations over what constituted heresy and who should therefore be excluded from the church.
But there’s one other thing that they all have in common. Many Christians, when they say one of the creeds, will feel it necessary to metaphorically cross their fingers when they reach one of the lines because they’re not sure whether actually they do believe that. The reason for that is that we live in an age of reason, and consequently if something does not make sense then we may well struggle to affirm our belief in it.
For example, someone once confessed to me that they went very quiet at the line, ‘He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.’ His reason for that, and I use the word ‘reason’ on purpose, was that he was a scientist and he ‘knew’ that the only way a child is conceived is through sex. Consequently he couldn’t say that line.
But then he came back to me a few years later and said that he had taken a good long look at the universe and reasoned in his own mind that if God had created all of this from nothing, however he had done it, and if he had raised Jesus from the dead, then how hard could it have been for him to have had Jesus conceived through a miracle instigated by the Holy Spirit?
He therefore felt able to affirm this part of the creed too. But can you see what he did? He had a problem with a particular line in the creed because of reason, but then he had used further reason to surmount his original objection to bring him to a point of affirmation, a point of faith, and this is typical of our era in the church.
Faith walks hand in hand with reason, and we therefore feel that if we’re not sure about something, then we are not a very good Christian, if indeed we can call ourselves Christian at all! So the first thing we need to do is positively affirm that doubt is a vital part of faith. Listen to this from the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, from Matthew 28:16-17. Bear in mind that this is after the resurrection.
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him they worshipped him; but some doubted.
These were men who had been in the presence of the risen Christ, yet still they doubted. Now our first inclination is to examine their reasons for doubting, and there we go again, typically 21st century westerners, looking for a reasonable explanation, or reasoned explanation so that we can solve the problem. But we don’t need to solve it; just accept it. Listen to these three quotes:
‘You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.’ - Plotinus
‘Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.’ —Miguel de Unamuno
‘Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.’ - Paul Tillich
‘Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.’ – Voltaire
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve begun to wonder about doubt and I think that a large part of the problems we have with it is because on a very deep level we are realising that whatever we say about God cannot be the whole truth.
Let me put this another way. Some of you know that, in common with a lot of clergy, I’m building a model railway. Don’t ask me why; I’m not sure. But imagine if all of the little plastic figures that will populate the platform came alive and started wondering about me, their creator. Anything that they say must be in terms of what they know about. So I would be compared to the malleability of the plastic, the strength of the metal, the vibrant colour of the paint and so on.
Whilst those things would be helpful from the point of their reasoned faculty in working out what I am like in terms of what they know, eventually they will realise that there is actually very little that they can truly say about me because all of their language is based on what they know, and everything that they know is what has been created.
But as for me, their creator, their language would not go far enough, and that I think is the important role that doubt has to play in theology. Think of it like this: Psalm 18:2 says:
‘The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer.’
God is also referred to in the same verse as a shield. But God is not a rock, nor a fortress, nor a shield. Those are just things that God is like.
And that is the key role that doubt plays. It causes us to ask things about God that we think we know, and then, if we are wise, it teaches us the limits of language. It shows us that God goes so far beyond language that sometimes our creeds will seem useless to us, and that is absolutely fine, because there is a deep wisdom here in the humility that we find.
Doubt exists to help us realise how much we don’t know and that should teach us to spend more time in God’s presence, just quietly, with all of our senses wide open for what we can learn. Reason is helpful up to a point, so long as we remember that eventually it will run out of words and descriptions, and God still goes on because our words and descriptions will always be inadequate. Then there is silence, and there we may find God. Amen.
************************
This is all about apophatic and cataphatic theology. Those two phrases are worth searching for on here. Wikipedia has a couple of good articles. I’ve also drawn here on the blog by this remarkable PhD student at Durham http://marikablogs.blogspot.com/2009/03/apophatic-and-cataphatic-theology.html
and for more on what these types of theology are, the wikipedia articles are worth a look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphatic_theology
Ephesians 2:19-end
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.
John 20:24-29
But Thomas (who was called the Twin, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’
Address
Today we celebrate the saint’s day for St. Thomas, or ‘Doubting Thomas’ as we have all known him, and for that reason I want us to think today about doubt.
How does you favourite creed begin? Is it, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty...” Or maybe it’s. “We believe in one God...”. The Nicene Creed was probably the first of the popular creeds, originally written in 325CE and then revised in 381CE. The Apostles Creed, which is the Prayer Book creed has less clear dates, possibly originating earlier but not appearing in written form until 390CE.
The one thing that they all have in common is that they were written to describe what is normative Christian faith; that is they are there to set boundaries on what people who call themselves Christians should believe. They were forged in the fire of philosophical deliberations over what constituted heresy and who should therefore be excluded from the church.
But there’s one other thing that they all have in common. Many Christians, when they say one of the creeds, will feel it necessary to metaphorically cross their fingers when they reach one of the lines because they’re not sure whether actually they do believe that. The reason for that is that we live in an age of reason, and consequently if something does not make sense then we may well struggle to affirm our belief in it.
For example, someone once confessed to me that they went very quiet at the line, ‘He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.’ His reason for that, and I use the word ‘reason’ on purpose, was that he was a scientist and he ‘knew’ that the only way a child is conceived is through sex. Consequently he couldn’t say that line.
But then he came back to me a few years later and said that he had taken a good long look at the universe and reasoned in his own mind that if God had created all of this from nothing, however he had done it, and if he had raised Jesus from the dead, then how hard could it have been for him to have had Jesus conceived through a miracle instigated by the Holy Spirit?
He therefore felt able to affirm this part of the creed too. But can you see what he did? He had a problem with a particular line in the creed because of reason, but then he had used further reason to surmount his original objection to bring him to a point of affirmation, a point of faith, and this is typical of our era in the church.
Faith walks hand in hand with reason, and we therefore feel that if we’re not sure about something, then we are not a very good Christian, if indeed we can call ourselves Christian at all! So the first thing we need to do is positively affirm that doubt is a vital part of faith. Listen to this from the very end of Matthew’s Gospel, from Matthew 28:16-17. Bear in mind that this is after the resurrection.
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him they worshipped him; but some doubted.
These were men who had been in the presence of the risen Christ, yet still they doubted. Now our first inclination is to examine their reasons for doubting, and there we go again, typically 21st century westerners, looking for a reasonable explanation, or reasoned explanation so that we can solve the problem. But we don’t need to solve it; just accept it. Listen to these three quotes:
‘You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty that is superior to reason.’ - Plotinus
‘Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.’ —Miguel de Unamuno
‘Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.’ - Paul Tillich
‘Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.’ – Voltaire
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve begun to wonder about doubt and I think that a large part of the problems we have with it is because on a very deep level we are realising that whatever we say about God cannot be the whole truth.
Let me put this another way. Some of you know that, in common with a lot of clergy, I’m building a model railway. Don’t ask me why; I’m not sure. But imagine if all of the little plastic figures that will populate the platform came alive and started wondering about me, their creator. Anything that they say must be in terms of what they know about. So I would be compared to the malleability of the plastic, the strength of the metal, the vibrant colour of the paint and so on.
Whilst those things would be helpful from the point of their reasoned faculty in working out what I am like in terms of what they know, eventually they will realise that there is actually very little that they can truly say about me because all of their language is based on what they know, and everything that they know is what has been created.
But as for me, their creator, their language would not go far enough, and that I think is the important role that doubt has to play in theology. Think of it like this: Psalm 18:2 says:
‘The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer.’
God is also referred to in the same verse as a shield. But God is not a rock, nor a fortress, nor a shield. Those are just things that God is like.
And that is the key role that doubt plays. It causes us to ask things about God that we think we know, and then, if we are wise, it teaches us the limits of language. It shows us that God goes so far beyond language that sometimes our creeds will seem useless to us, and that is absolutely fine, because there is a deep wisdom here in the humility that we find.
Doubt exists to help us realise how much we don’t know and that should teach us to spend more time in God’s presence, just quietly, with all of our senses wide open for what we can learn. Reason is helpful up to a point, so long as we remember that eventually it will run out of words and descriptions, and God still goes on because our words and descriptions will always be inadequate. Then there is silence, and there we may find God. Amen.
************************
This is all about apophatic and cataphatic theology. Those two phrases are worth searching for on here. Wikipedia has a couple of good articles. I’ve also drawn here on the blog by this remarkable PhD student at Durham http://marikablogs.blogspot.com/2009/03/apophatic-and-cataphatic-theology.html
and for more on what these types of theology are, the wikipedia articles are worth a look:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataphatic_theology
Saturday, 25 June 2011
1st Sunday after Trinity: Resonance and Chaos
Readings
Romans 6:12-23
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Matthew 10:40-42
Jesus said, ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’
Address
“No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.”
I bought my first drum kit when I was sixteen. It had been on loan to a friend of mine who’d let me play it and decided he didn’t want it and was at least third hand. It cost me the princely price of £45. I still don’t know if that was a good deal, but I was happy, even if my headache prone father was perhaps a little less so. Now £45 back in 1982 was a reasonable amount of money, but not huge, and I soon began to realise some of the problems with my purchase.
You see this really was a very cheap drum kit, and the place where it most showed was on the snare drum which was barely controllable. By that I mean that it buzzed a great deal. If I hit any other drum in the kit, the snare drum buzzed, or rather the snare, which is a grid of metal wires on the bottom skin of the drum, would rattle.
And of course, if I played the drums with other musicians, which is after all the whole point, then it seemed that whatever tone was played by whatever instrument, the snare would buzz. Why? Well let me give you a short lesson in physics. The snare buzz was down to something called resonance.
If you have two strings from a guitar, and they’re both, say E strings, if you pluck one of them then the vibrations it sets up in the air will make the other E string vibrate in sympathetic resonance. So long as the string is tuned to the same note, plucking one will make the other vibrate. But if you have a D string next to and E string, and you pluck the D string, the E string will more or less ignore it. It’s the wrong frequency.
But my snare drum wasn’t like that. Whatever frequency instrument you played, that rotten old snare would vibrate sympathetically along with it producing this really annoying buzz that got in the way of the music we were trying to produce. Everything we played was tarnished by that background ‘Bzz Bzz’ rattle. The question is, why?
The answer is quite simple actually. As I said a moment ago, the snare I had was really a very cheap one. It was made of wood and if you took the top skin off you could see that the plies of wood that make up the shell were beginning to separate. In other words, rather than being a fine musical instrument that was tuned to one note, my snare vibrated across most of the musical frequencies.
The result of that was that it resonated with absolutely everything. Play it an E and it could find an E somewhere in its chaotic construction and would vibrate along in sympathy. Play it a D and it would have one of those too, or an F, or a G. It was a cheap instrument and because it vibrated with everything it buzzed the whole time and ruined the music.
Now you may be wondering why I’m telling you this. It’s all to do with the nature of sin. St. Paul tells us not to offer our selves to wickedness and here, in my old drum, is an example of what happens if we do. Sin is very easy. It’s like being an old untuned drum. Whatever temptation comes along we vibrate in sympathy to it. A bit of gossip? Bzzzzt! A pretty girl walks past? Bzzzt! Not making time to pray because you’re in a rush and didn’t get up early enough? Bzzzt!
It’s so easy to do what we want. We just get on with being undisciplined and we’ll resonate in sympathy with any temptation that takes our fancy. So what then is the cure? Well actually it’s two-fold. If I think back to my old drum, it wasn’t just that it was badly made; half the problem was that I didn’t know how to tune it. Around the drum are little tuning screws, and by carefully tensioning them you can bring the drum skin into tune with itself.
Mine was out of tune so different parts of the skin were tuned to different notes, so would resonate with them. Once I’d learned to pull it into tune with itself by making sure the same tension was applied all around the skin, the drum became much more controlled. It resonated much less with other notes because it was only tuned to one note. That equates with spiritual self-discipline. But it’s only a part of the story.
You see it didn’t get around the fact that the drum shell was old, cracked and not fit for purpose. It didn’t matter how often or how carefully I tuned the skin, the drum shell was so bad that it would resonate with loads of different notes. Eventually I got the message and bought a new snare drum, and the one I now have has a much better shell. It is beautifully made and resonates only where I tune it to.
And that is what needs to happen to us. We can work really hard at self-discipline which is the equivalent of spending a lot of time tuning ourselves so that we don’t succumb to every temptation that comes past us, and that is really important to do. But it doesn’t get us past the sense that within us there is an old drum, and old self, that needs to be renewed.
But if we present ourselves to God, so by his indwelling Holy Spirit, so he gradually begins to renew us from within. As with so many things, God works with us in collaboration, so as we offer ourselves to him, so he begins to change us from within so that instead of vibrating in resonance with our own desires, we resonate in resonance to God’s desires.
The result of that is exactly what we see in the Gospel reading. If we welcome Jesus, we resonate with the one who sent him, the Father, and so we begin to resonate with the others that the Father sends. We will recognise prophets because our hearts will be in tune with their hearts. And we will recognise the righteous because our hearts will be in tune with their hearts.
We will resonate with them when they are in our midst, and we will become like them. So ultimately this message is very simple: We need to study and pray to learn more about and become more like Christ himself. And we need to ask to have our old self renewed. Then when his notes are played we will resonate with them because we will have presented ourselves to him as finally tuned instruments. We will be in tune with the song he is playing.
And that has to be worth doing, because the alternative is a cacophony of sound, resonating out of tune with every passing fancy; blown this way and that my our every whim. We have a choice. We can become more Christlike, or more chaotic. In the end there are only two directions in which to move. Amen
Romans 6:12-23
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Matthew 10:40-42
Jesus said, ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’
Address
“No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.”
I bought my first drum kit when I was sixteen. It had been on loan to a friend of mine who’d let me play it and decided he didn’t want it and was at least third hand. It cost me the princely price of £45. I still don’t know if that was a good deal, but I was happy, even if my headache prone father was perhaps a little less so. Now £45 back in 1982 was a reasonable amount of money, but not huge, and I soon began to realise some of the problems with my purchase.
You see this really was a very cheap drum kit, and the place where it most showed was on the snare drum which was barely controllable. By that I mean that it buzzed a great deal. If I hit any other drum in the kit, the snare drum buzzed, or rather the snare, which is a grid of metal wires on the bottom skin of the drum, would rattle.
And of course, if I played the drums with other musicians, which is after all the whole point, then it seemed that whatever tone was played by whatever instrument, the snare would buzz. Why? Well let me give you a short lesson in physics. The snare buzz was down to something called resonance.
If you have two strings from a guitar, and they’re both, say E strings, if you pluck one of them then the vibrations it sets up in the air will make the other E string vibrate in sympathetic resonance. So long as the string is tuned to the same note, plucking one will make the other vibrate. But if you have a D string next to and E string, and you pluck the D string, the E string will more or less ignore it. It’s the wrong frequency.
But my snare drum wasn’t like that. Whatever frequency instrument you played, that rotten old snare would vibrate sympathetically along with it producing this really annoying buzz that got in the way of the music we were trying to produce. Everything we played was tarnished by that background ‘Bzz Bzz’ rattle. The question is, why?
The answer is quite simple actually. As I said a moment ago, the snare I had was really a very cheap one. It was made of wood and if you took the top skin off you could see that the plies of wood that make up the shell were beginning to separate. In other words, rather than being a fine musical instrument that was tuned to one note, my snare vibrated across most of the musical frequencies.
The result of that was that it resonated with absolutely everything. Play it an E and it could find an E somewhere in its chaotic construction and would vibrate along in sympathy. Play it a D and it would have one of those too, or an F, or a G. It was a cheap instrument and because it vibrated with everything it buzzed the whole time and ruined the music.
Now you may be wondering why I’m telling you this. It’s all to do with the nature of sin. St. Paul tells us not to offer our selves to wickedness and here, in my old drum, is an example of what happens if we do. Sin is very easy. It’s like being an old untuned drum. Whatever temptation comes along we vibrate in sympathy to it. A bit of gossip? Bzzzzt! A pretty girl walks past? Bzzzt! Not making time to pray because you’re in a rush and didn’t get up early enough? Bzzzt!
It’s so easy to do what we want. We just get on with being undisciplined and we’ll resonate in sympathy with any temptation that takes our fancy. So what then is the cure? Well actually it’s two-fold. If I think back to my old drum, it wasn’t just that it was badly made; half the problem was that I didn’t know how to tune it. Around the drum are little tuning screws, and by carefully tensioning them you can bring the drum skin into tune with itself.
Mine was out of tune so different parts of the skin were tuned to different notes, so would resonate with them. Once I’d learned to pull it into tune with itself by making sure the same tension was applied all around the skin, the drum became much more controlled. It resonated much less with other notes because it was only tuned to one note. That equates with spiritual self-discipline. But it’s only a part of the story.
You see it didn’t get around the fact that the drum shell was old, cracked and not fit for purpose. It didn’t matter how often or how carefully I tuned the skin, the drum shell was so bad that it would resonate with loads of different notes. Eventually I got the message and bought a new snare drum, and the one I now have has a much better shell. It is beautifully made and resonates only where I tune it to.
And that is what needs to happen to us. We can work really hard at self-discipline which is the equivalent of spending a lot of time tuning ourselves so that we don’t succumb to every temptation that comes past us, and that is really important to do. But it doesn’t get us past the sense that within us there is an old drum, and old self, that needs to be renewed.
But if we present ourselves to God, so by his indwelling Holy Spirit, so he gradually begins to renew us from within. As with so many things, God works with us in collaboration, so as we offer ourselves to him, so he begins to change us from within so that instead of vibrating in resonance with our own desires, we resonate in resonance to God’s desires.
The result of that is exactly what we see in the Gospel reading. If we welcome Jesus, we resonate with the one who sent him, the Father, and so we begin to resonate with the others that the Father sends. We will recognise prophets because our hearts will be in tune with their hearts. And we will recognise the righteous because our hearts will be in tune with their hearts.
We will resonate with them when they are in our midst, and we will become like them. So ultimately this message is very simple: We need to study and pray to learn more about and become more like Christ himself. And we need to ask to have our old self renewed. Then when his notes are played we will resonate with them because we will have presented ourselves to him as finally tuned instruments. We will be in tune with the song he is playing.
And that has to be worth doing, because the alternative is a cacophony of sound, resonating out of tune with every passing fancy; blown this way and that my our every whim. We have a choice. We can become more Christlike, or more chaotic. In the end there are only two directions in which to move. Amen
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Trinity - Perechoresis: The Dance of God
Readings
Genesis 1:1-2, 26-31
In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water.
Then God said, "And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish, the birds, and all animals, domestic and wild, large and small." So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, blessed them, and said, "Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals. 29 I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; 30 but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food" - and it was done. 31 God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased. Evening passed and morning came - that was the sixth day.
Matthew 28:18-20
Jesus drew near and said to them, "I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age."
Address
Today is Trinity Sunday and I’ve heard those who are superstitious say that things come in threes. However, when it comes to God we have great difficulty because we know in our heads that God comes as both three and also as one. What I want to do this evening is to give you another way of imagining the Trinity, in terms of relationship, and then we can ask what that means for us.
However I also want to add a note of caution. When it comes to thinking about the nature of God, although we are in his nature, something I’ll talk about shortly, he is also totally other to us. So I can give you logical pictures to help think about the nature of God, but these are pictures, mere illustrations to help us start the process of thinking. The truth will be much deeper.
But because we make such a meal of understanding the Trinity, we are often apt to get it wrong and we have unfortunately done that on a number of occasions, and many of us often give up thinking about it because, well frankly we don’t know what we’re supposed to think. So let me tell you what the Trinity is not like, before we consider what it is like.
The most common mistake that is made is that it is one God who sometimes reveals himself as Father, sometimes reveals himself as the Son and sometimes reveals himself as the Spirit. The idea is that behind the Father, Son and Holy Spirit masks there is just one person. But that’s wrong. There is no one behind the three masks. The Father is the Father and is God. The Son is the Son and is God. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit and is God.
Incidentally, that’s a heresy called modalism; one God operating in three different modes. But it’s wrong. The Father is God, but is not the Son or the Spirit. Likewise the Spirit is God, but is not the Father or the Son. And the Son is God, but is not the Spirit or the Father,
Another one is that God is actually three separate gods working together as if they were one. That’s what Jews and Muslims tend to accuse us of believing. But that’s called Tritheism, three gods, but it’s wrong. God is one God. But God has revealed through scripture that within the one God there are three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
So if that’s what the Trinity isn’t like, what actually is it like? To explain that I want to introduce you to a theological term that may be new to you, perechoresis. This word is really important because it describes something about the character of God as Trinity. But what does it mean? Well bear with me and I’ll come to that in a minute, and I’ll show you a visual description of perechoresis which tells us something about ourselves.
But first let’s lay the foundations by thinking about the readings and how they are relevant to the Trinity. Both of our readings are tied to this. In the second one we heard Jesus expressly telling the disciples to baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, perhaps one of the first times the Trinity was named, and certainly before a deep theological understanding had been put together, but if we go right back to the beginning I think we find a suggestion that all three persons are present right at the beginning of Genesis too.
In the beginning, when God began creating, the writer of this section tells us that the Spirit of God was moving over the water. But this isn’t the only description of the Creation. John wrote the most amazing preface to his Gospel with these words:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
Now I can promise you that John intended that we read his Gospel in conjunction with the creation story from Genesis. How do I know that? It’s because there is a mistake in Genesis, but not in the Hebrew. However in the Greek version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, the translators missed out the definite article.
If you do a word-for-word translation of the first few words of Genesis 1 it actually says, ‘In beginning’, not ‘In the beginning’. It’s an error. But guess what you find at the beginning of John’s Gospel? Exactly the same error! So John is saying, ‘Look, that story that has God the Father as creating with the Holy Spirit brooding over the waters; well the Word of God, the Son, he was there too and his were the hands that the Father used to create with’
But what I find so interesting about the creation stories is that when God is about to create humanity God says to himself, ‘Let us make human beings in our image.’ This isn’t meant to be a Trinitarian statement, but it’s certainly rather interesting that the word ‘us’ creeps in!
So there is something about us which is very like God, which is exactly what God intended, and that brings us back to the big word, Perechoresis. So now let me tell you what it means. The word Perechoresis basically translates as intermingling. It’s important that we see there is a difference between mixing and intermingling.
In mixing, you take two or three things and mix them up and once they’re completely mixed you can’t separate them. That’s a bit like taking an egg yolk and egg white, and when you mix them up you have a mixture of both.
But intermingling is different. What it means is that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one essence, ie God, but they intermingle very closely. They are in an intimate relationship. Now that’s not easy to understand which is why I’d like to do a chemistry experiment to show you what I mean.
Now I said this morning that this only deals with two aspects of the Trinity and not with three but actually, tonight I can explain why this is about three parts. But first let me show you the demonstration.
What I have here is some blue water and some clear oil. They are of the same essence in that they are both liquids, but you can’t make them mix. You can, however, make them intermingle.
Watch... EXPERIMENT GOES IN HERE
TO SEE WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE HAVE A LOOK HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A5WyS5V67Y
See how they move in and out of each other. They are in intimate relationship. They are one essence, one type of thing, a liquid, but two characters intermingling in an intimate dance, a beautiful colourful relationship, and that, my friends, is what perechoresis is, and that is what the relationship is like between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Now at this point you may be thinking, ‘But I can only see two things. Where’s the Holy Spirit?’ Well the Holy Spirit is present. We often think in theological terms as the Holy Spirit as being the One through whom the Father and the Son express their love to each other, just like when we are filled with the Holy Spirit we also receive the love of God.
So the Holy Spirit is present right at the boundary between the Father and the Son, or here between the pink and clear liquids. The Holy Spirit is the contact between Father and Son. This is one of the reasons why a nickname given to the Holy Spirit is, ‘The Go-Between God’
So what is God like? God is one essence, and three persons. They are all one God, but they are intermingling in a beautiful dance of intimate love and fellowship.
And that, I believe, is what God intended when he made human beings like us to be in the image of God. God, the Holy Trinity, is a community and we were created to be a holy community too. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all in an intimate dance of love. They intermingle closely.
We can’t be quite like that because each of us are separate individuals in separate bodies, but the image within us that is God’s nature inspires us to live and love in community. We are meant to be engaged in a loving dance with each other in a network of friends and family, and that is what is meant by being created in the image of God.
What’s more it is the Holy Spirit through whom we love each other. It is the Holy Spirit who is the loving bond between us and through whom we communicate. God is a community of three who are one. We are a community of many, but we need to remember that Jesus also prayed that we, too, would be one, just as he was in the Father and the Father in him.
So my message to us tonight is this. We are like God, and we are meant to love each other too, and if we’re not sure how to do that, then we also should pray to be filled afresh with the Holy Spirit, that She may minister the love of God through us to each other, and then out into the wider world. Amen.
Genesis 1:1-2, 26-31
In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water.
Then God said, "And now we will make human beings; they will be like us and resemble us. They will have power over the fish, the birds, and all animals, domestic and wild, large and small." So God created human beings, making them to be like himself. He created them male and female, blessed them, and said, "Have many children, so that your descendants will live all over the earth and bring it under their control. I am putting you in charge of the fish, the birds, and all the wild animals. 29 I have provided all kinds of grain and all kinds of fruit for you to eat; 30 but for all the wild animals and for all the birds I have provided grass and leafy plants for food" - and it was done. 31 God looked at everything he had made, and he was very pleased. Evening passed and morning came - that was the sixth day.
Matthew 28:18-20
Jesus drew near and said to them, "I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Go, then, to all peoples everywhere and make them my disciples: baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey everything I have commanded you. And I will be with you always, to the end of the age."
Address
Today is Trinity Sunday and I’ve heard those who are superstitious say that things come in threes. However, when it comes to God we have great difficulty because we know in our heads that God comes as both three and also as one. What I want to do this evening is to give you another way of imagining the Trinity, in terms of relationship, and then we can ask what that means for us.
However I also want to add a note of caution. When it comes to thinking about the nature of God, although we are in his nature, something I’ll talk about shortly, he is also totally other to us. So I can give you logical pictures to help think about the nature of God, but these are pictures, mere illustrations to help us start the process of thinking. The truth will be much deeper.
But because we make such a meal of understanding the Trinity, we are often apt to get it wrong and we have unfortunately done that on a number of occasions, and many of us often give up thinking about it because, well frankly we don’t know what we’re supposed to think. So let me tell you what the Trinity is not like, before we consider what it is like.
The most common mistake that is made is that it is one God who sometimes reveals himself as Father, sometimes reveals himself as the Son and sometimes reveals himself as the Spirit. The idea is that behind the Father, Son and Holy Spirit masks there is just one person. But that’s wrong. There is no one behind the three masks. The Father is the Father and is God. The Son is the Son and is God. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit and is God.
Incidentally, that’s a heresy called modalism; one God operating in three different modes. But it’s wrong. The Father is God, but is not the Son or the Spirit. Likewise the Spirit is God, but is not the Father or the Son. And the Son is God, but is not the Spirit or the Father,
Another one is that God is actually three separate gods working together as if they were one. That’s what Jews and Muslims tend to accuse us of believing. But that’s called Tritheism, three gods, but it’s wrong. God is one God. But God has revealed through scripture that within the one God there are three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
So if that’s what the Trinity isn’t like, what actually is it like? To explain that I want to introduce you to a theological term that may be new to you, perechoresis. This word is really important because it describes something about the character of God as Trinity. But what does it mean? Well bear with me and I’ll come to that in a minute, and I’ll show you a visual description of perechoresis which tells us something about ourselves.
But first let’s lay the foundations by thinking about the readings and how they are relevant to the Trinity. Both of our readings are tied to this. In the second one we heard Jesus expressly telling the disciples to baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, perhaps one of the first times the Trinity was named, and certainly before a deep theological understanding had been put together, but if we go right back to the beginning I think we find a suggestion that all three persons are present right at the beginning of Genesis too.
In the beginning, when God began creating, the writer of this section tells us that the Spirit of God was moving over the water. But this isn’t the only description of the Creation. John wrote the most amazing preface to his Gospel with these words:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
Now I can promise you that John intended that we read his Gospel in conjunction with the creation story from Genesis. How do I know that? It’s because there is a mistake in Genesis, but not in the Hebrew. However in the Greek version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, the translators missed out the definite article.
If you do a word-for-word translation of the first few words of Genesis 1 it actually says, ‘In beginning’, not ‘In the beginning’. It’s an error. But guess what you find at the beginning of John’s Gospel? Exactly the same error! So John is saying, ‘Look, that story that has God the Father as creating with the Holy Spirit brooding over the waters; well the Word of God, the Son, he was there too and his were the hands that the Father used to create with’
But what I find so interesting about the creation stories is that when God is about to create humanity God says to himself, ‘Let us make human beings in our image.’ This isn’t meant to be a Trinitarian statement, but it’s certainly rather interesting that the word ‘us’ creeps in!
So there is something about us which is very like God, which is exactly what God intended, and that brings us back to the big word, Perechoresis. So now let me tell you what it means. The word Perechoresis basically translates as intermingling. It’s important that we see there is a difference between mixing and intermingling.
In mixing, you take two or three things and mix them up and once they’re completely mixed you can’t separate them. That’s a bit like taking an egg yolk and egg white, and when you mix them up you have a mixture of both.
But intermingling is different. What it means is that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are of one essence, ie God, but they intermingle very closely. They are in an intimate relationship. Now that’s not easy to understand which is why I’d like to do a chemistry experiment to show you what I mean.
Now I said this morning that this only deals with two aspects of the Trinity and not with three but actually, tonight I can explain why this is about three parts. But first let me show you the demonstration.
What I have here is some blue water and some clear oil. They are of the same essence in that they are both liquids, but you can’t make them mix. You can, however, make them intermingle.
Watch... EXPERIMENT GOES IN HERE
TO SEE WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE HAVE A LOOK HERE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A5WyS5V67Y
See how they move in and out of each other. They are in intimate relationship. They are one essence, one type of thing, a liquid, but two characters intermingling in an intimate dance, a beautiful colourful relationship, and that, my friends, is what perechoresis is, and that is what the relationship is like between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Now at this point you may be thinking, ‘But I can only see two things. Where’s the Holy Spirit?’ Well the Holy Spirit is present. We often think in theological terms as the Holy Spirit as being the One through whom the Father and the Son express their love to each other, just like when we are filled with the Holy Spirit we also receive the love of God.
So the Holy Spirit is present right at the boundary between the Father and the Son, or here between the pink and clear liquids. The Holy Spirit is the contact between Father and Son. This is one of the reasons why a nickname given to the Holy Spirit is, ‘The Go-Between God’
So what is God like? God is one essence, and three persons. They are all one God, but they are intermingling in a beautiful dance of intimate love and fellowship.
And that, I believe, is what God intended when he made human beings like us to be in the image of God. God, the Holy Trinity, is a community and we were created to be a holy community too. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are all in an intimate dance of love. They intermingle closely.
We can’t be quite like that because each of us are separate individuals in separate bodies, but the image within us that is God’s nature inspires us to live and love in community. We are meant to be engaged in a loving dance with each other in a network of friends and family, and that is what is meant by being created in the image of God.
What’s more it is the Holy Spirit through whom we love each other. It is the Holy Spirit who is the loving bond between us and through whom we communicate. God is a community of three who are one. We are a community of many, but we need to remember that Jesus also prayed that we, too, would be one, just as he was in the Father and the Father in him.
So my message to us tonight is this. We are like God, and we are meant to love each other too, and if we’re not sure how to do that, then we also should pray to be filled afresh with the Holy Spirit, that She may minister the love of God through us to each other, and then out into the wider world. Amen.
Pentecost - a new reality
Readings
Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
John 20:19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
Sermon
When I was very little, and I mean five or six, I can clearly remember asking my parents where I came from. Maybe it was because they were well practised at fielding this one, having had to deal with two older sisters asking the same question, but I clearly remember Mum telling me, quick as a flash, that they found me under a gooseberry bush!
Now that’s not the kind of biological answer one might expect, but at five or six years old that was all I needed. I had come from somewhere and been given to them so that they would take care of me. Of course when I was a little older I asked the same question again and was this time told in more detail what actually had to happen in order for there to be a ‘me’.
Two different stories but actually conveying the same truth, that I was a gift. In the first instance they found me where I had been left for them; in the second they had a share in God’s work of creation, but either way, I was still a gift. The central truth was I was given into their care, and that was the same regardless of the mechanics or the philosophy of how I came to be.
And when we look at the two accounts of the gift of the Holy Spirit we find once again that there are two stories. The reading from the Gospel of John is, I think, the philosophical one, the gooseberry bush version, that the Holy Spirit was given as a gift, breathed out from the lips of the Son of God, whereas in the Acts reading we are told the mechanics, if you like the biological equivalent of how it happened that the Holy Spirit filled the apostles.
John tells us the philosophy, that the Holy Spirit is a gift from Jesus. Acts tells us how it happened, but the central truth remains the same: the Holy Spirit is a gift from the Father through the Son into the depths of our being. But why? Why do we need the Holy Spirit?
Turn your minds back to John’s Gospel, and this comes from John 16:5-7
Jesus said, ‘But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, “Where are you going?” But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [or Helper] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.’
The disciples had begun to realise that Jesus was going to die and return to his heavenly Father. They had grown so much in the three years they had spent with him that the thought of him leaving them was tearing them apart. How on earth would they continue to grow and learn and become better disciples if he wasn’t there to teach them?
And so he explained that it was better this way because if he went then he could send the Holy Spirit who would actually live inside them and direct them from within. In many ways this is a much more adult way of God treating them. When the Son was alongside them they could not avoid his voice, but when the Holy Spirit is dwelling within us, we actually have to learn to listen.
So the reason we need the Holy Spirit within us is because the Spirit is our connection with the Father. When we pray, our prayers are not just going out into the spiritual ether, they are being heard by the Spirit of God dwelling deep within us, and I think that this is the spiritual truth I most want to convey.
You see when we get to Pentecost each year what we find is that people get hung up on the practical story of how the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost. We get worried about the tongues of flame, the sound of a mighty roaring wind and we especially get hung up on the gift of tongues. And we do all this for what reason? Are we scared? Is it the lack of control that our inherent Britishness rails against? Or is it because we don’t believe it?
Or is it because we have seen on TV or maybe experienced services for ourselves where people have indeed seemed drunk on God and we either dismiss it as emotionalism or fear it because we don’t want to be changed like that? Dealing with the first one, yes it is possible for ministers to whip their churches into a frenzy, but don’t dismiss the giving of the Holy Spirit because of that.
Of the people I know who speak in tongues, whilst there may be occasion when using that gift will bring about ecstatic feelings, for the most part it is a prayer tool that they switch on or off at will. They are in complete control of when they speak in tongues, and to be honest they are quite ordinary Christians. They don’t glow like a ready-brek advert.
So don’t get hung up on the mechanics. Hang on instead to the ‘found-under-a-gooseberry-bush’ philosophy that the Holy Spirit was given to you all that you would be able to worship God from the depths of your being and find the presence of God in prayer. You see St. Paul makes it quite clear that no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit who reveals that truth to you. It is then up to you how much more space you want to provide within yourself for the Spirit’s work to grow and develop. God respects your privacy and right of self-determination. If you want no more than for the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus as Lord, then the Father won’t push you. But if you wish to go deeper then let me reassure you that the infinite resources of God are already dwelling within you.
Elsewhere (1 Cor.6:19) St. Paul also makes the point that every one of us is a Temple to the Holy Spirit. By that he is referring back to the Old Testament reality that God descended on to the Temple built for him and resided in its inner court; the Holy of Holies. But later on in the Old Testament the divine presence left the Temple in judgement on it.
But now there is a new reality. That very same divine presence has descended and is now residing within you. You are all small temples housing the Holy Spirit, the divine presence, sitting deep within you creating a new space that is the Holy of Holies. That means that wherever you go in the world, God’s temple is in that place.
However, that brings with it responsibilities. The temple was a place of worship, and sacrifice and of meeting with God. It was also a place of teaching, where the Rabbis would sit in the Temple courts and explain the truths of God to the people. All of that is still true. You are a place of worship, of sacrifice, of meeting with God and learning about God. You are a temple, and you have a responsibility for what takes place within you.
So don’t get hung up on the mechanics of the presence of God within you, simply accept it. You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been brought by the Holy Spirit. Now recognise you are a temple to the living God, and start exploring the temple courts and the Holy of Holies, and be excited by what you find there, because it is nothing less than the presence of the living God. Amen
Acts 2:1-21
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’
But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
“In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
John 20:19-23
When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’
Sermon
When I was very little, and I mean five or six, I can clearly remember asking my parents where I came from. Maybe it was because they were well practised at fielding this one, having had to deal with two older sisters asking the same question, but I clearly remember Mum telling me, quick as a flash, that they found me under a gooseberry bush!
Now that’s not the kind of biological answer one might expect, but at five or six years old that was all I needed. I had come from somewhere and been given to them so that they would take care of me. Of course when I was a little older I asked the same question again and was this time told in more detail what actually had to happen in order for there to be a ‘me’.
Two different stories but actually conveying the same truth, that I was a gift. In the first instance they found me where I had been left for them; in the second they had a share in God’s work of creation, but either way, I was still a gift. The central truth was I was given into their care, and that was the same regardless of the mechanics or the philosophy of how I came to be.
And when we look at the two accounts of the gift of the Holy Spirit we find once again that there are two stories. The reading from the Gospel of John is, I think, the philosophical one, the gooseberry bush version, that the Holy Spirit was given as a gift, breathed out from the lips of the Son of God, whereas in the Acts reading we are told the mechanics, if you like the biological equivalent of how it happened that the Holy Spirit filled the apostles.
John tells us the philosophy, that the Holy Spirit is a gift from Jesus. Acts tells us how it happened, but the central truth remains the same: the Holy Spirit is a gift from the Father through the Son into the depths of our being. But why? Why do we need the Holy Spirit?
Turn your minds back to John’s Gospel, and this comes from John 16:5-7
Jesus said, ‘But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, “Where are you going?” But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [or Helper] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.’
The disciples had begun to realise that Jesus was going to die and return to his heavenly Father. They had grown so much in the three years they had spent with him that the thought of him leaving them was tearing them apart. How on earth would they continue to grow and learn and become better disciples if he wasn’t there to teach them?
And so he explained that it was better this way because if he went then he could send the Holy Spirit who would actually live inside them and direct them from within. In many ways this is a much more adult way of God treating them. When the Son was alongside them they could not avoid his voice, but when the Holy Spirit is dwelling within us, we actually have to learn to listen.
So the reason we need the Holy Spirit within us is because the Spirit is our connection with the Father. When we pray, our prayers are not just going out into the spiritual ether, they are being heard by the Spirit of God dwelling deep within us, and I think that this is the spiritual truth I most want to convey.
You see when we get to Pentecost each year what we find is that people get hung up on the practical story of how the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost. We get worried about the tongues of flame, the sound of a mighty roaring wind and we especially get hung up on the gift of tongues. And we do all this for what reason? Are we scared? Is it the lack of control that our inherent Britishness rails against? Or is it because we don’t believe it?
Or is it because we have seen on TV or maybe experienced services for ourselves where people have indeed seemed drunk on God and we either dismiss it as emotionalism or fear it because we don’t want to be changed like that? Dealing with the first one, yes it is possible for ministers to whip their churches into a frenzy, but don’t dismiss the giving of the Holy Spirit because of that.
Of the people I know who speak in tongues, whilst there may be occasion when using that gift will bring about ecstatic feelings, for the most part it is a prayer tool that they switch on or off at will. They are in complete control of when they speak in tongues, and to be honest they are quite ordinary Christians. They don’t glow like a ready-brek advert.
So don’t get hung up on the mechanics. Hang on instead to the ‘found-under-a-gooseberry-bush’ philosophy that the Holy Spirit was given to you all that you would be able to worship God from the depths of your being and find the presence of God in prayer. You see St. Paul makes it quite clear that no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.
It is the Holy Spirit who reveals that truth to you. It is then up to you how much more space you want to provide within yourself for the Spirit’s work to grow and develop. God respects your privacy and right of self-determination. If you want no more than for the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus as Lord, then the Father won’t push you. But if you wish to go deeper then let me reassure you that the infinite resources of God are already dwelling within you.
Elsewhere (1 Cor.6:19) St. Paul also makes the point that every one of us is a Temple to the Holy Spirit. By that he is referring back to the Old Testament reality that God descended on to the Temple built for him and resided in its inner court; the Holy of Holies. But later on in the Old Testament the divine presence left the Temple in judgement on it.
But now there is a new reality. That very same divine presence has descended and is now residing within you. You are all small temples housing the Holy Spirit, the divine presence, sitting deep within you creating a new space that is the Holy of Holies. That means that wherever you go in the world, God’s temple is in that place.
However, that brings with it responsibilities. The temple was a place of worship, and sacrifice and of meeting with God. It was also a place of teaching, where the Rabbis would sit in the Temple courts and explain the truths of God to the people. All of that is still true. You are a place of worship, of sacrifice, of meeting with God and learning about God. You are a temple, and you have a responsibility for what takes place within you.
So don’t get hung up on the mechanics of the presence of God within you, simply accept it. You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been brought by the Holy Spirit. Now recognise you are a temple to the living God, and start exploring the temple courts and the Holy of Holies, and be excited by what you find there, because it is nothing less than the presence of the living God. Amen
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