How do you know who to listen to? Series on John's Gospel : Two.

Fairly long post this week, and TWO readings!  Apologies for that but felt that the first one would potentially provoke some debate.

Paul

New Testament reading

1 John 4:1-12

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world. Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Gospel Reading

John 4: 43-54

When the two days were over, Jesus went from that place to Galilee (for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in the prophet’s own country). When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

So who should we listen to, and why?

Some of us were watching with great interest the information coming out from NASA about the New Horizons probe which has just flown past Pluto. New Horizons was the fastest probe we have ever launched from earth yet it still took nine and a half years, and some gravity assistance from Jupiter to speed it up, before it finally arrived at Pluto, travelling at 9 miles per second.  Now that sounds quite quick until we remember that light travels at 186,000 miles per second. That's why, despite still being well within the boundaries of our solar system, information from New Horizons currently takes four and a half hours to get to us. It helps us to come to terms with just how big our solar system is compared to the earth, or even just to our villages and towns.  And when we expand that out to how large our universe is, well light from our observable horizon has been travelling for 13.7 billion years and we have absolutely no idea what lies on the other side of that horizon, although scientists tell us it's probably more of the same; galaxies filled with stars and planets.

It is a very big universe, way beyond our comprehension, or so they tell us.  Why do we believe 'them'?  It's because we believe the people who are experienced in these things to tell us the truth to the best of their ability, and who have proven themselves capable of good research.  We believe them despite the fact that most of us have experienced only the tiniest fraction of the reality of the size of the universe. 

I wonder what it would be like if we said we wouldn't believe it unless we experienced it? 

 I wonder how well NASA would do if its scientists said, 'We don't really believe Pluto is there because no one has ever been there and experienced it for themselves before coming back to tell us about it'?

I wonder how science would progress if everyone said, 'I won't believe your experiment until I have done it for myself'? 

Thankfully, for the most part, sensible people are happy to accept the truth from the people that we trust to tell us the truth to the best of their ability regarding what they have researched. We rely on other people who have proven their expertise by their results.

However, it's interesting that when it comes to religious matters it all changes. I often talk about the experience of God and of how, for me, that sometimes occurs in the reflective times.  I wonder, then, how Christian belief would look if we refused to accept anything unless we had proof by our own experience?

In order to believe in God, do we need proof? Do we need miracles? Do we need something unexplainable to happen to us?  

Why is religion subjective truth when science seems to be objective truth? I'm not sure I can give a complete answer to that, but I hope I can at least show what I think is the yardstick by which we can make a judgement as to whether we should listen or not.  It seems to me that it is this issue that John seeks to deal with in the above Gospel reading as we continue our series on the parts of John's Gospel that don't appear in the regular lectionary.

First we need to explore the passage in front of us a little. John has a particular way of constructing his narrative so that each section seems to build on the previous one. That means that today's story is developed from the encounters that Jesus has had over the last few chapters, and its foundation is found in the prologue of the Gospel's first chapter where John tells us that The Word of God came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him.

John illustrates this in chapter 3 with the encounter with Nicodemus, a Jewish leader who, although he knows there is something special about Jesus, seems unable to accept him as Messiah at this point (although intriguingly he seems to later.) The second encounter John shows us is with a Samaritan woman who, after some debate, does accept him. To understand the significance of that we need to remember that Samaritans were thought of as being a mixed race by the Jews of that period. So they were not quite Jewish, and it is amongst them that John records Jesus receiving a slightly better welcome than he did from a Jewish leader. Our passage picks up from Jesus having spent two days with them in a Samaritan village before he moved on to Galilee.

So to build his narrative John portrays a Jewish leader as not very welcoming and a Samaritan woman as a little more welcoming once she understood more about him. What happens when he moves even further away from Jerusalem and encounters someone who was in all probability a Gentile, a non-Jew?

Now I should add that it's possible some confusion may arise here because this phrase about a prophet having no honour in their own country appears in the synoptic Gospels but there it is used of Jesus in Nazareth, the village where he was brought up. In John's Gospel the same phrase is used but is applied to Jesus moving steadily further north, away from Jerusalem, and has nothing to do with Nazareth.  This is because, from John's perspective, the Messiah's true home is Jerusalem, but he receives no honour there, no acceptance from those who lead, and so he steadily moves further away until we meet the royal official.

One of the reasons this passage doesn't make it into the lectionary is because there are some strong similarities to the healing of the centurion's slave found in the other Gospels, so much so that many commentators think it's the same story only told differently. What John does here, though, is to give it a place in an ongoing and developing narrative rather than a place for a simple miracle.

On the assumption, then, that this is the same story as the one found in the synoptics but told in a different way, what makes this so interesting for us is that, in this progression from Jewish leader to Samaritan to a man who is a Gentile, John appears to be taking great pains to suggest that the further away he goes from Jerusalem, the more of a welcome Jesus receives.  Given that John was himself a Jew, we should NOT read this as anti-Jewish rhetoric. He may simply have spent some of his time wondering why Jesus, a Jew, was rejected by the Jewish authorities. Bear in mind that John's Gospel was an evangelistic text and there is a body of opinion that it was written especially for Jews who no longer lived in Judea.  Personally I wonder whether John was someone who was deeply dissatisfied by the way his country had been run and so a part of his reasons for writing in this way was to express that.

But the point John seems to be making in all of this is that the message of Jesus is not just for Jews and, whilst in the synoptic Gospels evangelism is limited mainly to Jews, in John right from the beginning the author is showing its acceptance away from Jerusalem, the centre of Judaism.

That, then, is the background to this reading. What takes place is that the official's son is ill. The official acts, having heard about Jesus, by coming to beg him to heal his son. Jesus responds initially quite abruptly by saying 'Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.'  That response is quite important. Firstly it mirrors the kind of abruptness that Jesus greets his mother's request to help at the wedding at Cana in chapter 2 when they ran out of wine. Secondly, 'Signs and wonders', is a term that comes up a lot in the Old Testament when describing the ways God has dealt with the Israelites, and thirdly the word 'you' in that sentence is plural, so we might translate it as Jesus saying, 'You people won't respond unless you see signs and wonders.'

The official's response is not one of desiring a sign or a miraculous wonder. He just wants his son to be made well. He puts his faith in Jesus by ignoring the test and urging him to come. Jesus responds by telling him to go because his son will live. What happens next is crucial for us because, quite simply, the official takes Jesus at his word and responds by going home where he finds that, indeed, his son has recovered, and began to do so at the time Jesus had sent him on his way.  In other words the man acts on faith, not requiring a sign. He simply believes what Jesus tells him to believe. He doesn't have to experience anything to trust Jesus and the words he speaks. He responds to Jesus in much the same way that we respond to today's scientists, by simply believing him.

And that seems to me to be a perfect example of what faith actually looks like. 

He has never seen Jesus before. He has never met Jesus for himself. But he has heard what others have been saying about him and so he responds to their testimony by putting his faith in Jesus. This is a man who has not been tarnished by cynicism.

I wonder how that compares to us. What do we look for when we're trying to decide whether we believe someone else when they tell us about something spiritual? For me, by and large, I want to see if it has had a positive impact on who they are. Have they become someone I trust? Has their faith meant that this is someone who I could tell anything to in the knowledge that it would go no further? Is this a person whose spiritual experiences have transformed them so that their whole outlook on life is gradually being transformed from inward facing and their own needs, to outward facing and serving the needs of others? Is true, real, selflessly giving love something that seems to be growing in the depths of their being? To me, that seems to be the mark of someone who has touched the hand of God.

But I have to admit that, especially in my younger days, signs and wonders were a big part of whether I would put my faith in what was being said. If I witnessed someone apparently being healed, or felt caught up in some warm feelings inside by stirring worship, then I was apt to listen to what was being said. I liked being convinced by signs and wonders, yet Jesus, despite being the most amazing miracle worker, disparages them. Why?

I suspect that the problem with a faith that depends on signs and wonders is the ease with which we can be misled. Now I can point to a number of key spiritual or mystical experiences in my life which have been important, but they just kind of happened. In the times when God has seemed distant they have been helpful to fall back on, but they shouldn't be the foundation stones for what I believe.

However, for some people the proof of whether something is real is whether it is also dynamic and lively. Do things 'happen'? For those who feel influenced by the Christian charismatic movement, and I count myself within that, have we judged whether a leader or a church is spiritual enough by whether there is speaking in tongues or whether people are healed? I know I used to.

Yet here Jesus make it pretty crystal clear that we should not be reliant on those things as being solid indicators of truth. In fact I would go so far as to say we can be very easily misled if we do. For example, a few years back there was a very influential movement in charismatic circles which came out of the Vineyard church at Toronto and which became known as the Toronto Blessing.  At its height people were flying from all over the world to go there and receive the blessing and then to bring it back to their own churches.

Initially it seemed like something very special but after a while I became steadily more cynical because it became the next 'in-thing', the next mark of being a true believer. Commentators seem fairly sure that this did at least begin as a work of God, but, that maybe, in a sense, we got in the way.  The intriguing thing for me, having spent some time researching some of the Pagan pathways, is that at least some of the hallmarks of the Toronto Blessing bore remarkably close resemblances to some of the known characteristics of Shamanic practice together with similarities to a few psychotherapeutic practices.

Now we can make of that as we will. I'm not going to condemn Shamanism in this and I have a couple of good friends who are practising Shamans, but they have, on the whole, a very different set of religious beliefs from Christian ones. However, if we decide to use signs and wonders as proof of whether an experience is genuine then we can find ourselves in a strange place where Christians uncritically adopt a form of behaviour that they would criticize in a different religion.

Christians need to recognise that there are numerous religions which have signs and wonders attached to them and so they are not a proof that something is Christian. For example I know of people who are Wiccan who have engaged in a ritual called 'Drawing Down the Moon' in which the priestess invites the Goddess to enter her, and of whom some have testified that when it did happen the Priestess glowed with an inner light.

I have known of someone who converted to a Pagan religion because of an encounter in which they felt deeply loved by the Goddess on a spiritual level in a way they had never before experienced. Yet these experiences are founded on different beliefs from our own. Signs and wonders are not the exclusive preserve of Christianity.

I think this is why Jesus tried to make the point that we should not demand signs and wonders as proof that makes us believe. What then should we look for?

I think we should we be looking for changed lives. If someone is genuinely being touched by God, by whatever name we or they may use, then there should be a movement within their lives to being more loving, more giving of themselves. This is also what we find in the first letter of John, that love is the mark of someone who is touched by God.

No one is expected to be perfect, but if it is God who motivates us then that kind of transformation should be evident to everyone and should be the factor by which we should judge whether to listen and take note of what is being said or written. Remember that later on in John's Gospel, in chapter 15, Jesus says that 'Greater love has no one than to lay down their life for their friends.'

So with our modern scientists, we listen to the ones whose research has a good track record of producing reliable results. Likewise with our religious people we should listen and trust in those who seem to be on the road to love.

Love is the yardstick by which we decide whether to listen, and may the Spirit of God so change us that love becomes the yardstick by which others see the truth revealed in the ways in which we live our lives. It's unlikely we'll reach the heady heights of perfection, but let love be revealed as that which is at the heart of the One who dwells within us. 

John's Gospel series. One - the value of spiritual encounter

We begin a series on John's Gospel this week, looking at the passages which, for some reason or another, have been left out of the three year cycle of readings.  That means you will probably never have had a sermon on them before and those of us who preach will probably have never preached on this before.

Reading

John 3:22-36

After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized— John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison.

Now a discussion about purification arose between John’s disciples and a Jew. They came to John and said to him, ‘Rabbi, the one who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you testified, here he is baptizing, and all are going to him.’ John answered, ‘No one can receive anything except what has been given from heaven. You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, “I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.” He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.’

The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks about earthly things. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true. He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son and has placed all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but must endure God’s wrath.

Address

A philosophical conundrum...

I'd like to tell you what it's like to be me. I'd like to, but I can't. I'd like to show you what the colour green looks like to me because I truly want to know if it looks the same to you as it does to me. I'd like to but I can't. I cannot show you because you cannot be inside me and therefore cannot experience my reality.  And the same difficulty exists with the things of earth and the things of heaven. I have many friends who I would like to show these spiritual things to, this God whom I encounter, but I can't because they have no experience, no ultimate frame of reference. The only way they can find out what I'm talking about is to encounter for themselves the Ultimate Frame of Reference. And that's what this reading is about; the gap that exists between the things of earth and the things of heaven.

I think this reading probably falls into the category of difficult to understand, but once we break it down it becomes far easier to see that there is a deliberate structure to what the Gospel writer has crafted here, the way it builds on what he's already written and the point that he is trying to make, which is to do with the greater importance of spiritual things over material things.

So if we break the structure down the passage falls into three chunks. The first gives us the context of the events, the second tells us what actually took place and what John the Baptist said, and the third is the author's own commentary on the events.

At the outset we have some interesting information from John that you won't find in any of the other Gospels, that the beginning of Jesus' ministry was running concurrently with the work of John the Baptist. In fact this looks to be at odds with Mark's Gospel which seems to imply that Jesus began his ministry in Galilee after John the Baptist had been arrested.  Matthew seems to suggest the same thing, with John the Baptist's arrest triggering the movement of Jesus to Galilee and his initial message being the same as John's: 'Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.' But the author of John's Gospel suggests that there was an interim period, when they were ministering at the same time.  In fact he goes so far as to apparently link his Gospel to Mark's Gospel by making the rather over-obvious point that this was in the period before John the Baptist was arrested. So already we have learnt something new about Jesus, that for a short while he and John the Baptist were active at the same time. But the balance was changing, and as we move into the second paragraph we pick up the story that the Gospel writer is going to use to make his point.

It opens in a confusing way, that a discussion about purification arose between John's disciples and a Jew. What makes this so confusing is that the author tells us absolutely nothing about what was said in this discussion. However we can speculate that it was probably something to do with baptism and that the writer includes it here to reinforce a point he made earlier in the Gospel about the superiority of Jesus and the baptism he brings.  In the Jewish tradition one would immerse oneself in a mikvah, a bath of running water from a natural source, either as a purification rite or because one was converting to Judaism. John the Baptist was using this as a basis for his baptism of repentance; making the people clean for the coming of the Messiah.  Now it may be that the Jew who was debating with John's disciples was making a point that he felt clean and didn't need to undergo this purification ritual. Or it may have been more to do with something that Jesus and his disciples were doing concerning purification that was different from John.

I suspect that the author is leading us towards this second idea, that it is to do with something extra taking place amongst the baptism offered by Jesus and his disciples because that would be in the context of what has come so far in this Gospel. Let me remind you that when John the Baptist first appears in chapter one he declares that he baptises with water but Jesus will baptise with the Holy Spirit.

That narrative is followed by the wedding at Cana at which Jesus transforms water intended for purification rites into high quality wine, again giving the impression that the purification offered by Jesus is something new, something far reaching on a deeply spiritual level, that in some way he fulfils the law, Torah, in a way that we are unable to. Immediately after that story the author places Jesus in the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers, an event sometimes referred to as the purification of the temple.  Remember that the synoptic Gospels place that Temple event in the last week of Jesus' life but John uses it right at the beginning, once more, I think, as a literary device to keep his readers' awareness on this whole purification motif. And all of that has been building up to the comments that the Baptist makes in this second paragraph.

So his disciples come to John declaring, 'That man about whom you testified; everyone is going to him.' The implication at the end of that sentence is, '...and not us.' The ministry of John the Baptist seems to be winding down and his followers are worried about it. Are they perhaps even jealous? A new preacher comes to town who seems better than the old one and so everyone follows him instead.

But John, in an act of humility that illustrates the depth of his spirituality, declares that this is exactly right. He knows that he was sent to get things ready for Jesus and that now Jesus has begun, his own ministry should decrease. The story of the bridegroom, the bride and the delight shown by the friend of the bridegroom, or best-man as we would call him, is a very touching one.

There are several suggestions given as to what the Baptist means when he declares how the best man rejoices at the sound of the bridegroom's voice. It could be that sense of deep happiness that a best friend feels for his intimate friend as he listens to him make his wedding vows. It could be simply hearing his voice as he arrives for the ceremony. It could even have been the exultant joy that he would hear from the wedding chamber after he leads the couple to it following the ceremony for the consummation! Remember, this was a very different society from ours. But whichever way we look at it this is John making it clear that he plays second fiddle to Jesus, and that now the groom has arrived on the scene it's getting near the time for the best man, having completed his role, to vanish.

The third paragraph marks a subtle but important change. When you hear it read you assume that it is the Baptist continuing in his thoughts about Jesus, but actually, even though there is no punctuation in the original, most commentators and translators are convinced that this last part is the words of the author of the Gospel as he explains to us, his readers, what this all means.

It's clear that he is harking back to the account of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus just before today's narrative. You may remember that Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born from above, born a second time; born of the Spirit.  So the Gospel writer begins by asserting once more that if someone is of the earth then they can speak only of earthly things, but that Jesus is from heaven and so he can speak of heavenly things from his own experience. He can bring to us a spirituality which we cannot find here because it is not derived from here.

And actually this shouldn't come as any surprise to us, if, like me, you get frustrated with the kind of things we hear from the so-called 'New Atheists' such as Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins et al. They speak with an earthly logic which currently seems to depend on a rationalism that has no room for, and consequently no understanding or comprehension of the spiritual.  It seems to me that they must surely be utterly ignorant on a deep level about what it is we celebrate. I don't blame them for this, but I get upset that they can use logic to explain away the mystery they haven't experienced and which I can't even begin to put into words.

The Gospel writer is just telling us what we know, that once we have encountered Christ for ourselves we can see the colossal gulf between earthly and heavenly reality. I think this is one of the reasons why we can rarely reason someone into the Kingdom of Heaven. C. S. Lewis is among a handful of people who became believers after weighing all the evidence and making a choice.

That wasn't my way. I encountered Christ first and was left in no doubt by the experience that this was who I should follow. Subsequently I went on to develop a deeper understanding and theology, but it began with an encounter with the one who, as the Gospel writer puts it, is above all things.  It's a little like the first time you meet your soul-mate.  You can't explain why, you just know there is something special about them.  In time you discover more about them, but to begin with there is just *something* that you long to be near.  Then we get this giving of the Spirit without any limits which is also my experience, that the more I open myself to the things of the Spirit, the deeper I can go. There comes no time when God seems to say, 'Nope, that's your lot.' It always seems to be a beckoning deeper that I encounter. 'Come this way; there is more.'

Now I admit that I am uncomfortable with the last verse but I also think it's important that I state that this is not the last word on judgement. The writer only offers two categories; those who believe in Christ and those who disobey him. There is a vast array of other spiritual conditions between those two positions that are simply not dealt with here.

What, then, does this reading mean for us? I think it asks us a question about the focus we have on life. What do we put our energies into? Where are we seeking the answers to our spiritual questions? Is it through rational argument? Well there's no problem with that provided we realise that it can only go so far.  Our beliefs and theologies are useful because they frame for us some of what we can and should expect to find in God. We learn about the character and nature of God, about goodness, perfection, love and light. All of these things are good. But they pale in comparison with an encounter with God, and that, therefore, should be the aim of our spiritual practice.

How will you do that? Well at least a part of it is in meeting together, but  I suspect that the best place is in silence where there are no words, just an invitation of our hearts which says something like, 'Come Lord Jesus and reveal to me who you are.'  May we find the time in our busy schedules for dedicated waiting, stillness and silence; of time to listen and receive.

The Road to Freedom - thoughts about slavery

Last week our choir led a special service, aided by members of the school choir, to help us consider slavery and our response to it.  What follows is from my address in that service

Luke 4:16-19

When Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

******

Lots of religious hymns and worship songs have sentiments like 'Here I am Lord. Is it I Lord?' Or 'Lead me Lord'. These are lovely things to sing as we convince ourselves of our willingness to do what God asks of us. But what happens in the real world when God actually comes calling? In the cold light of day, away from the emotional beauty of the evocative music, we tend to be a little more reluctant.

“What difference can I make? Send someone else.” 

I love the story of Moses and his calling because it is so brutally honest, and if you read the whole of Exodus chapters 3 and 4 you find that Moses doesn't just protest to God that he will stumble over his words. Oh no, it's far more than that.  In the Hebrew he protests, “I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue.” Many Jewish commentators think that this means Moses had a stammer. Think about what that means. God, almighty God, who knows everything about everyone including our deepest thoughts, who is wise beyond description, chose someone to be his mouthpiece and speak his words who had a stammer and was already guilty of murder.

Not someone who'd be chosen to be a bishop then... 

Surely he was hardly the first person that we would have chosen in God's place. “What difference can I make? Send someone else.” “No Moses. It's you.” In the midst of all the professionalism of the modern church it is heartening that God has a different agenda.  You see we tend to think of God choosing big heroes, which is why it's quite disturbing to read what he actually does, because suddenly that places us in the potential line of people God might call. God works with people who are broken, aware of their shortcomings and their failures. God always seem to choose people who begin by saying, “No”. I speak here from first-hand experience!  

“What difference can I make? Send someone else.”

How about William Wilberforce, the man credited with achieving the abolition of slavery? It took him forty six years to get the slavery laws repealed right across the then British Empire. It took such a toll on him and his health that he died just three days after he received assurance that his final bill was going to make it through parliament. Yet right back at the very beginning of the campaign he came extremely close to giving up.  He was a Christian and I can imagine him saying, in the face of massive opposition from the rich and the powerful in parliament, 

“What difference can I make? Send someone else”. 

 God's response was to speak through his fiance, Barbara, who encouraged him, telling him that she believed he could do it. With her help he changed the world with regards to slavery.  He did what God knew he could do even though he thought it was too much for him. “What difference can I make? Send someone else.” “No. It's you.” But thank goodness slavery is now in the past and none of us need to be worried about being called to do the same kind of work.

Unfortunately, that's not true on either count. Slavery is not in the past and we need our eyes to be opened otherwise how will we know when we are called to change something? Slavery is an outrage and it still continues, even in the west. At its worst are the young women who are trafficked from eastern Europe and sold for use by men in the west.  But as we open our eyes to the world in which we live, so we need to question whether our definition of slavery needs to be wider than this.

Maybe it should also includes those who enslaved in other ways and not simply those who are owned by others. For example there can be the desire by someone who wishes for power to gradually exert it until they have a stranglehold on the direction of the lives and choices of others.

So slavery can be slavery to our own desires, slavery to someone else's need to have power over us, slavery because someone has genuinely bought us, right through to slavery to someone else's idea of how to run an economy where we run out of ways to climb out of poverty. The list is long and we need our eyes to be opened to that.  As Christians, what is our response going to be when God says, “I want you to be a part of the solution”? If we're anything like all of the other major heroes in the bible, it's likely that the first thing we will say, in the cold light of day, is “What difference can I make? Send someone else.”

Throughout the bible are the stories that show how God is always on the side of the oppressed and the enslaved. The Old Testament prophets are littered with warnings and threats by God against the powerful because of the way they treat those over whom they have power.  And then comes Jesus, and in this very short passage we get nothing less than his manifesto. Now my experience with the modern church is that we have a strong tendency to spiritualise everything and to put all scripture into the ideal of personal spiritual growth in our relationship with God. But over the last couple of years I have been progressively more challenged about this.  So it is that with this manifesto pledge of Jesus some of it is deeply spiritual, but some of it is very practical. As he quotes from the Old Testament he begins with a very clear affirmation of why he is about to do what he is going to do. It is because the Spirit of God is upon him, as we know from his baptism when the Spirit of God came down on him like a dove. So Jesus is affirming that he is here because of the action of the Spirit. This manifesto comes right from the heart of the Father.

In the next line he claims he has been anointed to preach good news to the poor. This is one of those places where we automatically assume he means the spiritually poor so that we can include ourselves. That interpretation is not invalid, but at the same time what the passage says is 'Good news to the poor'. We can interpret it any way we like but, at face value, the message of Christianity should also be good news to those at the bottom of the social scale.

So what is good news for the poor? 

 Isn't it that they will have enough? So that suggests to me that the effect that the gospel has on the rich should be to ensure that they share from their excess so that the poor are no longer enslaved by their poverty, and that they act to bring about the end of the causes of poverty. In other words the gospel should have a practical effect on the world.

How about freedom for the prisoners? We're back to slavery here. On one level many of us feel ourselves to be imprisoned by events in our lives and personal histories. Our present actions and fears seem enslaved to what happened in the past. Christ comes to set us free. But this is also about how we should be good news for those in the world who are genuine prisoners of conscience. What are we doing to set them free?

Recovery of sight to the blind may well be about healing, but it's also about spiritual blindness. This is about when we look at other people and judge how they behave when the reality is that we need to be looking at our own behaviour. It's that moment when you feel that sense of conviction that actually you are the one who needs to sort their life out, not everybody else. That's when we can say, “I was blind to my own failures, but now I can see.”

But then we get to the big one, to let the oppressed go free. What kind of oppression? Slavery by being owned for sure. What about the memories of how we were treated in the past oppressing our present behaviour? Can this be about being set free from that too? I believe so.

And what about the people at the bottom of our economic ladder who feel oppressed by the policies of their government? I did an experiment this week by putting my details into the BBC's online calculator to see if I would be better or worse off under the new budget. When I varied my salary I discovered that the break even point was about £18,000. If I earn above that ceiling I am better off.

But when I put my details in but with a lower wage I became catastrophically worse off, in one instance by well over £1,000! I think that those who say they are oppressed by the financial decisions currently being made have a point. And what was Jesus' manifesto? To let the oppressed go free.  

What are we going to do about it?

This is the manifesto of Jesus, and boy is it wide ranging! It also means that, if we are his people, then it is also meant to be our manifesto. This is what Wilberforce did. It's what Moses did even though he pre-dated Jesus. It's what God's people do, to help those who are in need of help, whose needs may have become so severe that they are enslaved.

So what about us? 

What might you be being called to do? It might be something that is going to change the direction your life takes. It might require a completely new way of seeing life by looking at the real lives of other people and undergoing a massive shift in how that means you're going to live. Or it might be something that seems small to you, at least to begin with.

It might simply be leading the prayers in such a way that God's Spirit moves through you to change lives through your prayers being answered. Or it could be working for a charity as a volunteer, writing letters for Amnesty International, and so on. It could be giving lifts to someone who can no longer run a car, or visiting those who can't get out.

So when God calls, and I believe he is calling each one of us to something, how will we answer? Will it be, “What difference can I make? Send someone else.” Or will we trust God that he knows what he's doing, and even though we think that we're the absolute last person for the job, God thinks we're absolutely the right one.

The manifesto of Jesus is to pave the way of the road to freedom. That must be our manifesto too. That means we have to do something when we are asked. And we will be asked. All Christians are tasked with a part of being Good News. How will we answer?

A social Gospel - breaking the taboos.

Fourth Sunday after Trinity

Mark 5:21-43

When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered round him; and he was by the lake. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.’ So he went with him.
And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him.


Now there was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?” ’ He looked all round to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’


While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’ He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.


*****

Not long ago I, along with all of the other clergy of the diocese, were privileged to have a morning listening to a talented lawyer, Shami Chakrabarti, who is the director of the British human rights organisation, 'Liberty'. Formed in 1934 by key public figures such as Clement Atlee and H. G. Wells in response to the appalling treatment by the police and the government in their response to the hunger marches of that year, Liberty campaigns for civil liberties and human rights in the UK.

Just to give you an idea of how important this work is considered to be by the British population, on their website they give specific information on how to volunteer to offer your time to help at their London offices. Embedded within that information are these words:

“Unfortunately we don’t have enough space to take on everyone who would like to volunteer, so there is competition for places. We ask everyone to complete an application form, provide a reference and attend a short interview.”

 Just think on that for a moment. The British population take human rights, and the need to maintain them, as being so important that you have to compete to be a volunteer, applying for a position as if it were a job. Now compare that to the church where we continually struggle to get people to volunteer for roles. I wonder why that is? Is it maybe because our work is seen as irrelevant? And is that maybe because, to most of the British population, it is? I wonder how it would be if, by the way we are church, human rights and dignities and their maintenance were counted as far more important than it currently is when compared to our various so-called 'strategies' for growth?


The reason I mention this is because of the way Jesus behaves in this Gospel passage. The context here is of Jesus breaking social, legal, political and religious taboos in order to help those in need. Just before today's story he has been exorcising the man who called himself Legion, the man who was living amongst the tombs, feeling so wretched and rejected that the only place he feels he belongs is in the most unclean place, amongst the graves.  So Jesus goes to the unclean place to give him back his life, his rights, his liberty and his place in the community. Jesus values him when no one else did. Then when we come to the next two stories, the ones in today's Gospel reading, we find Jesus continuing to do the same thing, confronting taboos, being amongst the unclean in order to restore them to community.


The two woman bear no similarities, and that's probably the point. One is a little girl on the edge of adulthood from an important family. We even get the name of her father, Jairus, a local religious leader. The other woman is far older. She is nameless, unclean, ashamed, embarrassed and shunned by her community because of continual bleeding in a society that was even more uptight about gynecological problems than ours.  There is no one there to go to Jesus on her behalf because she has fallen out of the bottom of society. In fact she is even breaking the law by being amongst the crowd, and she certainly should not, under religious law, have touched even the hem of Jesus' robe, because in doing so, technically, she had made him unclean too.  Yet when she touches him with intent, she is healed. But Jesus won't let it go. He knows something has happened, and so he asks, “Who touched my clothes?” The poor woman is terrified, knowing that the game is up, so she collapses in yet more shame at his feet as she pours out her whole sorry story.


I can imagine the concern on his face, the sorrow at what she has been through and the way the legal system has been used against her to ensure her ostracism from society. And so he publicly says, in front of the whole community, “Your faith has healed you.” It doesn't matter to him that she's broken the law by breaking a taboo of touching him though unclean herself.  What matters is that she is restored to her community and the only way that can happen is to be pronounced clean in front of everyone, using the title 'Daughter'. She is given her life and her liberty back, just like Legion was. But then comes the news that Jairus' daughter has died in the time it took Jesus to heal the older woman. Jesus, however, is undeterred and presses on to see her. Ignoring the ridicule of the crowd he goes in to her room, taking her parents and their supporters with him.


The little girl is dead, and Jesus breaks another taboo by taking her hand, and he tells her to get up. Now we might think, 'Well maybe he was right, maybe she wasn't dead after all', but the language that Mark uses is the same as he uses to describe Jesus' rising from the dead. Even at this early stage he is showing that he is even Lord over death.


So what then does this have to do with my opening remarks about Liberty? I think it is because all too often we miss the social side of what Jesus did. We assume that it was all about people's spirituality. The church works to bring the salvation of Christ but, for the most part in this country, we treat that as saving people so they go to heaven.


One of the things I say to baptism families is to ask the question, 'What is Jesus saving your child to do?' It's not just about saving from, it's also about saving for. Salvation is about this life too. So much of the work of Jesus, as in this passage, revolved around valuing the people that everyone else cast out and restoring these people to community.

So that is what we should be doing too. We might find it difficult in our minds to even imagine that the government and the police would take away the civil liberties of people in this country, yet our government is seeking to abandon the European Human Rights laws in order to put in place a much weaker British bill of rights which will give the government far more power over the lives of those at the bottom of community.

Where is the work of the church in all this? People often say we shouldn't be involved in such things, but if Jesus was openly flouting and challenging the taboos and laws of his society in order to restore the unwanted, unnamed and unclean to community, then so should we. I would urge you to allow yourselves to be challenged.  Read a different newspaper from the one you read.  Hear the real life stories of people who are forgotten by society. Perhaps visit the Liberty website, or look at other organisations such as Amnesty International. The needs and the rights of people were paramount to Jesus, so they should be to us too.

Christianity, disagreements and the real world

Sorry for the wait in posting this up.  It's been a pretty busy week since I preached this last Sunday.  

3^rd Sunday after Trinity

Readings

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labours, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honour and dishonour, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.

This New Testament reading is all about conflict and the reality and messiness of living life as a Christian. But first we need to understand what is behind this second letter that Paul has written to the Corinthians in order to get a feel for why he was writing what he did.

Paul himself founded the church in Corinth somewhere around the year 49AD, and we can read about it in Acts chapter 18. It seems that once he founded the church he remained with them for about eighteen months, preaching, teaching and simply being there alongside them as one of the apostles. His letters to them were probably written between 52 and 56AD and are therefore some of the earliest written parts of the New Testament.  They give us a snapshot of one of the first churches, and a reminder that church life has never been simple and without disagreement, so for anyone who yearns for a simpler time when the church really lived out its life as it was called to, that time never existed. There have always been disagreements. Our love and behaviour as Christians should be marked by how we deal with those disagreements, not by their absence.  (That also includes the messiness of recognising when some relationships break down irreparably, such as Paul's relationship with his co-worker Barnabas.)

The Corinthian church, in total, probably numbered about fifty or so people. Not so large really by our standards. In the Church of England if your congregation only numbered fifty, then you would only get half the time of a vicar, if you're lucky. The Corinthians had an apostle all to themselves for eighteen months plus visits and time from other prominent leaders. How times have changed!

We also need to abandon any ideas of them having a building in which they met as that also wouldn't have happened. At this point in the church's history it had no political legitimacy and, in the Greek culture of the time, they would not have jointly owned a property where they could all meet. So instead they would have met in each other's houses and probably only rarely would all of them have been together.

Paul wrote a number of letters to them, not just two, and whilst the first letter probably really is just a single letter, the second letter is more likely to be a gathered collection of several letters, and scholars think there were probably other letters in addition to these which didn't survive.  When we take them all together what we find is Paul trying to deal with a number of issues in his beloved church, and conflict is a large part of that. 

In this section of the second letter Paul is almost sounding rather defensive.  So what had been happening? What had gone wrong? Well it seems that essentially the church in Corinth had rejected Paul as their leader. No one is completely sure what happened but it seems apparent from elsewhere in the collection of letters that a group of troublemakers had arrived on the scene and stirred up key members of the church against Paul, making them doubt the validity of his apostleship.  No scholars seem to be able to make a clear case as to what exactly these troublemakers were saying or who they were; Paul simply doesn't give us enough information in what he writes. But it seems likely that, for Greek cultural reasons, the church in Corinth was drawn to more overtly and outwardly spiritual expressions of faith than was healthy for them.  You might recall in 1 Corinthians there is a section that runs through chapters 12 to 14 about spiritual expression, with the gift of tongues being especially favoured by them, leading to Paul reminding them that all of the spiritual gifts will come to an end, but there is something greater, saying to them, 'I will show you a more excellent way' before giving them a powerful lesson in love in 1 Corinthians 13.

So it seems likely that the external opponents of Paul who arrived in Corinth capitalised on their tendency towards spiritual pride and boasting, exploiting their weakness by preaching a softer Gospel which was one of freedom from suffering and of receiving ever greater spiritual experiences. These would have seemed very tempting to the Corinthians.  Think about it for a moment. If you regard yourselves as culturally better than much of the rest of the world, how much of a step would it be to listen to voices that affirm this? Think of that L'Oreal advert that continually pushes the message, 'Because you're worth it' and imagine how enticing a message that would be.  The Corinthian church were probably, therefore, struggling with the temptation to listen to a soft Gospel that told them that, as Christians, they were above suffering and should instead be attaining ever higher spiritual abilities.  (Actually, if I'm honest, I've come across churches that still believe this.)  In order to seal their authority and take over the church, all that remained, then, was for these new preachers to affirm that Paul was wrong and that the Corinthians should doubt he was even a proper apostle. That's why, scattered throughout these letters, we find occasions where Paul clearly describes himself as an apostle, and in this section we have a pretty good apologetic from him for these claims as he is brutally honest with them by reminding them what it has cost him.

In this section Paul refers to himself and his co-workers as undergoing hardships, of having been beaten, put in prison, or worrying themselves through sleepless nights, of going hungry, of learning to be pure, of developing the fruit of the Spirit, of the battle to be righteous, of being held in ill repute by some and as impostors by others, and so on.  Life has been difficult for him because of his beliefs, of that there can be no mistake, and yet he has stuck the course and therefore feels justified in using his persistence as evidence of his calling as an apostle of Jesus. And even this description of his suffering should come as a wake up call to the church in Corinth. They are being distracted by preachers telling them that life should be very spiritual and that they should be delivered from suffering.  The reality of life as a Christian is very different from this. We need only to look at our founder and his crucifixion to see that. We need not look much further than the 12 disciples, only one of whom lived into old age, to be further reminded.

In all of this, though, what we need to admire in Paul is his persistence. He has established a church. He's got to know them and worked alongside them for 18 months. They've been friends on a deep level; trust me you cannot minister to a church without them becoming friends. And then when some new teachers come along and steer them on to a different path, they turn on him.  So out of his love for them he sticks with them, saying sometimes harsh things to them, and gradually working to bring them back on track, back to the true Gospel of Christ and away from an easy self-centred one.

What, then, does all of this teach us, twenty centuries later? I think it's all about a heady dose of reality. Spirituality and spiritual experiences are a part of being a Christian, but only a part. We also have to live in the real world where people disagree about the right way to do things. That's life, as much for Christians as for the rest of the world. That's the messy reality.  What should mark us out as different is love and persistence in how we are when things go awry. There were occasions when Paul lost battles and had to walk away from churches, but he tried very hard to make things right first.

Given the grief that the Corinthian church had given him, any one of us could understand how he felt, and we would have excused him for throwing his hands in the air and saying, 'To hell with the lot of you, I'm going back to Ephesus!'  But he didn't. He carried on trying and committed time to them, despite their behaviour. He persisted out of love despite their insults.

May we also learn to persist in those difficult situations that we all face, both in church, home, work and social lives, and may we remember that we do so because God continues to persist with us, despite the barriers we, too, throw up.  The Gospel message is about how we live in this life, not just about our destination when we leave this mortal coil. May we never forget that.