Second Sunday Before Lent: worry...

Readings
Romans 8:18-25
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Matthew 6:25-34
‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.


Address
At last spring seems to be on its way. I think everyone would acknowledge that we’ve had a difficult winter. It’s been colder than many of us can remember, and it’s taken its toll on the community. All of the clergy and local funeral directors have sadly had to cope with more deaths than we’ve had in this season for a long time, and I find that to provide me with some sobering thoughts.

One of the tasks that I have therefore had to do rather a lot more of over these last few months has been giving tributes at funerals. I believe that the main task of a funeral address is to begin the part of the grieving process that depends on our memories of the person.

The addresses that I give usually therefore carry a number of stories which requires listening carefully to both what’s being said, and what is meant. There is a need to capture something of the best parts of a person, but we don’t always get this right. There is a story of a vicar who went to visit a grieving family and, since he’d never met the person who had died, began by asking them about him.

“Well”, they said, “he was a miserable old so-and-so really”. They went on to paint a not terribly complimentary picture of the deceased. This particular vicar rather took them at their word and he began his funeral address by saying, “Well, as you all know, he was a miserable old so-and-so.” Perhaps it wasn’t all that surprising that it really rather backfired on him because, whatever we think about someone when they’re alive, once they’ve gone what we really want is to remember their best parts.

But what if... What if all of our eulogies had to be absolutely honest? What if that vicar’s model of beginning by saying how miserable the deceased was because it was the truth became the norm? What would actually be said about us? So that got me to thinking about this and what mine would say, and I’m willing to bet that there is one line that pretty much everyone of us would also have.

Mine might say something like:
“He ran around a lot, always looking busy and trying to look like he at least had some inkling of what he was doing, but he might have achieved more if he wasn’t so worried about what people thought of him or whether he was going to get everything done. He would certainly have been a much happier person and far easier to live with if he could only have seen each day for its merits rather than being so worried about what was going to happen six months down the line. He never really learnt to enjoy each day.”

Have you ever wondered what your eulogies might say? I bet that for most of us there would be a line there similar to mine, ‘If only he or she had stopped worrying, they would have enjoyed life so much more.’

I believe that one of the biggest problems facing us as Christians is worrying. It saps our energy, keeps us up all night, and has the potential to make us very ill. Anxiety can lead to long term treatment for depression and the potential for drug or alcohol abuse when it gets out of hand,
but even just what we might think of as ordinary low-level worrying reduces our ability to enjoy life.

So why then do we actually worry? I suspect that there is a very good reason why worry evolved in the first place. It seems to me that, if worry remains as controlled concern, it is a way of turning possible events over in our minds until we find a solution to what looks to be a potential problem. It may well originally have been a form of problem solving.

Some of you may have had that experience of going to bed with a problem, sleeping on it (not worrying about it) and waking up with the solution. Our unconscious mind has this remarkable ability to work away at a problem when we’re not aware of it, and then feed us the answer when it’s figured it out. This is a perfectly natural human gift and a way of making decisions. But worrying is not helpful and I think there are three reasons why.

Firstly, worrying paralyses us. When we can see a problem coming, if we worry about it, absolutely nothing is achieved. Worry is a symptom of our psychological systems not working like they’re supposed to. It’s meant to be that a problem presents itself, you prayerfully look at it from all the available perspectives, you find the best solution available, possibly by sleeping on it, and then you act on it. Either the problem is solved or it isn’t.

But worrying persistently impedes that process. Instead of finding a solution we go into this spiralling loop that drives us ever deeper into despair because instead of looking at just the original problem, we start imagining all sorts of new scenarios that need yet more possible solutions which conjure up new problems that set us off on a new train of worry. It’s like a negative feedback loop that stops us in our tracks.

A few months ago it became apparent that someone, probably the American secret services, planted a computer virus in the Iranian nuclear facilities. In order to enrich uranium for potential weapons use they have to centrifuge it at ultra-high speed. The computer virus told the centrifuges to accelerate, to just keep speeding up, faster and faster, until they destroyed themselves by spinning at rates way above their design spec.

That’s a good metaphor for what worry does to us. We psychologically spin faster and faster, completely paralysed, until we collapse. Worry makes us exceed our design specifications. So that’s the first reason why worry is bad for us, because it paralyses us, and ultimately it breaks us.

The second reason is a little darker. Worrying is a symptom of us wanting to be in control. Why is it that we get into these mental causal loops that paralyse us? It’s because we’re imagining every possible scenario in order to maximise the possibility of bringing about our own desired outcome. We’re probably being selfish.

In other words we desire that our own will is what is done, so we examine all the alternatives so that we can figure out what actions we need to do to maximise the potential for getting our own way. Need I remind you that one of the prayers Jesus taught us includes the words addressed to God, ‘Your will be done...’ So as well as paralysing us, worry is symptomatic of us wanting to wrest control away from God, which leads to the third problem with worry.

Worrying is a sign that we are not trusting God. Now I know and firmly believe that we live in a freewill universe. I know that things can go wrong because God does not treat us like robots and the universe is not a wind-up toy, it’s a place into which chance and causation are intimately interwoven.

That means that there is space for joy and sorrow because you need real freedom for there to be real love that chooses to respond to God rather than love that has no choice because it’s programmed in. We can’t alter what happens by worrying about it, and the very act of persistent worrying suggests that we don’t trust God to bring about the best outcome possible given a series of events in our lives.

So worry paralyses us, it’s symptomatic of us wanting to take control from God and it indicates that our prayer lives are not deep enough to allow us to believe that God is with us and that we can trust him.

I think that’s why worrying is such a target for Jesus. Have you ever wondered about how happy he himself might have been? He’s often referred to as a man of sorrows, but is that altogether fair? He plainly knew that he was going to die for his people at some point, yet it didn’t exactly seem to paralyse him and stop him from eating and drinking and having a good time, something that the religious authorities criticised him for.

So we can only assume that the reason worrying became such a target is because he didn’t worry, but he could see how life-denying worry is. Don’t forget that in John’s Gospel Jesus said, ‘I came that they should have life, and have it in all its fullness.’ Jesus is wanting to set us free from worrying because when we stop worrying we begin to live again.

And this is also true for us as a church, as we consider our work over the last twelve months and look to what will happen in 2011. I am not for a moment saying that we shouldn’t plan. Nor am I saying that we shouldn’t be financially concerned by the way we still have to rely on random donations and legacies in order to make ends meet because we’re not giving sacrificially enough to actually run the church.

But there’s no point in worrying about it. Instead we find the antidote in the epistle where St. Paul writes, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

So I can tell you that everyone needs to consider whether they can increase their giving, but you either will or you won’t. If you don’t we’ll have to do less, but I hope you will increase your giving. Likewise, and more importantly, I can go on telling you that we all need to be more committed in prayer to our mission as a church, so that we grow in discipleship and can do a better job of meeting the needs of the people in our community.

You will either listen to me and engage more deeply with God and we will grow as God honours our prayers, or you won’t and we’ll shrivel. So I won’t worry, but I will pray, and I will hope that you will all spend more and more time in prayer as well. Growing in our relationships with God will open the way for us to grow as Christians and grow as a church.

And there’s no point in us worrying about the future of our church. We will either sustain our mission by working and praying, trusting God and growing, or we won’t. But I will hope that this church becomes a steadily brighter beacon shining in this place. Worry paralyses us but hope motivates us. Hope is the answer. So how do we let go of worry?

Well let me finish with some words from Mary Crowley, “Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway.”
Amen

Third Sunday before Lent: Being perfect or just growing up.

Readings
Leviticus 19: 1-2, 9-18
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:
Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.
You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; and you shall not lie to one another. And you shall not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God: I am the Lord.
You shall not defraud your neighbour; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a labourer until morning. You shall not revile the deaf or put a stumbling-block before the blind; you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.
You shall not render an unjust judgement; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbour. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbour: I am the Lord.
You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbour, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.


Matthew 5:38-end
‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.


Sermon
“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” It’s a good job Jesus doesn’t demand too much of us really isn’t it. I mean, how can we possibly manage this? Isn’t the whole point of the gospel that Jesus came to bring us forgiveness by his death and resurrection because God knows we can’t be perfect? This doesn’t make sense, and there’s a good reason for that, because this is another one of those places where our translations are not quite adequate.

On this occasion, though, it’s not their fault. The difficulty is that in every language there are many words that don’t have a complete equivalent in the language that you are translating into, and so it is with the word that St. Matthew uses here. Perfection, for us in theological terms, means something that is completely sinless, totally without blemish, but that may not be what Jesus meant.

For example, when I was a young lad I remember the first time Dad bought a new car. He only ever did it twice, but that first one sticks in my mind because I can remember standing at the window waiting for Dad to arrive home with his brand new white Opel Record estate. I can’t have been much more than five years old, but I was so excited, and I can still clearly remember him driving up the drive.

And of course we all had to have a look at this new car that no one had ever sat in or driven. The excitement of sitting on the clean new vinyl seats, which were a perfect excuse not to wear shorts in the summer. It even smelt new. Just perfect. For us perfect means shiny, bright, completely unblemished. But was that what Jesus was saying? Did he mean, ‘Be unblemished just as your heavenly Father is?’

I think not, because that is probably not what the word used here, telios, means. It has far more connotations of being complete, of being at maturity, of becoming all that you can become. In fact my old Volvo is far closer to that kind of perfection than my Dad’s shiny Opel was, because my old Volvo has seen a lot of life.

It has racked up a huge amount of character in its 140,000 miles. It has towed caravans, gone to weddings, baptisms and funerals. It's been full of drums/PA/guitars/harps and dragged us all over the place to gigs. It has been everything that a big old estate car should have been. It’s only shiny on the occasions it gets washed but it’s definitely not unblemished. It has life to it because it has become what it was made for, a workhorse to keep people safe in their journeys. My Volvo has more telios about it that Dad’s Opel Record had back in 1971.

So Jesus is not saying, ‘Don’t ever sin again’, because he knows that the likelihood of that is minimal. He is, instead, saying, ‘Become complete, fully mature and everything that you were meant to be.’ We might put it in more simplistic terms - ‘Grow up’!

And in the context of this passage, that makes more sense, because this whole section is about becoming complete, of being whole and mature, and I want to show you one specific way by which Jesus was trying to teach us that, and how, if we follow his teaching, we will be behaving like our heavenly Father.

So let’s cast our minds to the gospel reading. I want specifically to look at the final part, beginning from verse 44, where Jesus begins by saying that we should love our enemies.

Now I should point out that there are no teachings in the Bible that tell us we should hate our enemies. Jesus isn’t making this point to correct some part of the Old Testament law.

Instead he is looking at what comes naturally to us as humans, of hating people who hate us, and telling us that this kind of behaviour is immature; it is not the way to become complete because it is not being like our heavenly Father. The word used for love has its root in the word agape which is the Greek word for the kind of divine centred love that seeks the best for someone, regardless of feelings.

Agape is the kind of love that binds a married couple together when they express their commitment to each other in a way that transcends how they feel on any particular day. So what Jesus is telling us is that we should seek the good of those who are our enemies. But it seems so alien to us. Why would we want to love our enemies?

The answer is very simple. We love our enemies because that’s what God does. God refuses to make distinctions in how he treats people. Jesus uses a farming metaphor here to suggest that all farmers need sun and rain, so God sends sun and rain to all farmers, not just on the ones who love him, but also on the ones who hate him or ignore him, and this is the key point around which everything hinges:-

In administering love, God does not distinguish between those who love him and those who hate him, and therefore neither should we! When we act impartially, and when we actively seek the good of those who would seek evil for us, we are being like God, and in this context, if we begin tolearn to do that, we shall be on the journey to becoming mature, complete. But that’s not the way most of the world works is it.

In general people only treat well those who treat them well in return. It’s a case of, ‘You scratch my bike and I’ll scratch yours’, but that’s not how we’re supposed to be as Christians. Followers of Christ should be saying, ‘Regardless of how you treat me, I will look out for you and your needs.’ That’s what we find written all over the Leviticus reading, that the way of God is the way of loving all people and looking out for their needs.

This is one of the reasons why I have a deeply bad feeling about any organisation, particularly the more secretive ones, that looks out for the needs of its members, over and above other people, and this is something I have heard of too often in business circles. That is anti-Christian. Let the hearer/reader understand.

You see God doesn’t have favourites, and therefore neither should we. So think for a moment about how you treat people with whom you interact. If what we believe has any meaning whatsoever, it must affect how we live on a day to day basis. In what ways do we favour some people over others? In order to become more complete, we need to learn not to do this, but it’s difficult isn’t it!

But think about Jesus’s disciples. It is very likely that from early on Jesus knew that Judas would betray him. Yet at no time do we see Jesus treating him badly. In fact he went on trusting Judas with the money, even though the Gospel writer John indicates that Judas stole from it.

That’s the model for us, the maturity that Jesus showed. I wonder what we’d look like as a church if we tried to live like this, and I wonder what kind of business model we could provide if we worked like this. Amen

4th Sunday before Lent: Hate, Anger, Lust and Life

Readings

1 Cor. 3: 1-9
And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, ‘I belong to Paul’, and another, ‘I belong to Apollos’, are you not merely human?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labour of each. For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Matthew 5: 21-37
‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

‘It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

‘Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

Sermon
Many years ago my wife and I attended a charismatic prayer group of about two hundred people. In fact it was where she and I met for the first time, Ali as a worship leader and singer and me as a mere drummer. We married less than a year after we started going out, but not long after we returned from our honeymoon we began to recognise a disturbing new trend in the teaching at this group.

The leadership was a relatively youthful team, although they had a group of older people who offered them guidance, but what we began to recognise was a move towards what used to be called ‘heavy shepherding’, which is a way in which people are put under the control of a mentor who more-or-less tells them how to lead their lives.

Allied with this was a steadily more dogmatic approach to our faith with a sense of ‘don’t this, don’t do that and definitely don’t do the other’. Ali and I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable but we didn’t really know why. There was something so life-denying in what they were saying and doing, a new list of commandments seemed to be emerging where if you even appeared unhappy someone would tell you that was falling short because Jesus loved you so you had to be happy...

Eventually we could take it no more and, like quite a number of our friends, we left, disillusioned and hurt. Some I know never really spiritually recovered from it, and it has taken me a long while to be able to put into words what exactly was wrong, but I’m sharing this story because it has a great deal of bearing on what we read today in the Gospel and should actually shape our entire approach to scripture.

You see when we read those words of Jesus, they also actually seem terribly life-denying and harsh. Not only do you have to keep a lid on your actions, but if you even think the wrong thing the chances are you’ll burn in hell. This kind of reading is simply fuel for the fire of fundamentalists who seek to control your growth into life as Christians by inflicting fear on you. But is the way we read this really what Jesus was saying?

I want to suggest to you that he was actually being life-affirming, and it’ll be interesting to see whether I manage to convince you of that. You see if I preach the words to you as they stand, all they can do in any of us, if we have any degree of self-knowledge at all, is to bring about guilt and self-condemnation. Anger, lust and all the other things we do in our mind, yep I can tick all those boxes. What hope is there for us?

But what if Jesus is going deeper than the words of the Jewish Law, of Torah, in a way that doesn’t simply make it harder to keep, but actually makes it more positive? So let’s look at what he’s saying, beginning with the statement about anger. I was in a discussion group once when we began to talk about anger. One by one almost every one of us admitted that there were people we had encountered in our lives who we had wished dead because of what they had done to us. It was a refreshing degree of honesty.

Does that shock you, or are you honest enough to admit you have felt the same way at some point? You see that’s the endpoint of anger. In the less controlled that endpoint can be easily reached, particularly where we are fuelled by drink or drugs, but most of us will at some point have seen or experienced something so painful, so unjust, that we want retribution, and if it was bad enough we would want that person dead. That’s why we are warned about anger in our thoughts, because of the horrific endpoint.

You see anger, pent-up and indwelling, will change us. It will deny us life because all we can think of is how to get back at that person. Have you ever had those nights when you couldn’t sleep because of the way your mind keeps turning over the events again and again? Anger robs us of our humanity. It stunts us. And we can excuse it and call it righteous anger, or indignation about something that is unjust, but it still steals away our humanity.

It also robs us of our trust in God. Revenge is a way of saying to God, ‘I don’t trust you anymore.’ Deuteronomy 32:35-36 include these words from God, ‘I will take revenge. I will pay them back... the LORD will give justice to his people.’ If we act on our anger, then we are expressing that we don’t trust God to deal with the injustice we’ve been put through.

Now don’t get me wrong on this. If you are in a close relationship with someone who is causing you pain; physical, emotional or spiritual, letting go of your anger and forgiving them is one thing, but you may also have to walk away from that relationship for your own sake. But where there are incidents of injustice in our normal day to day life, where encounters have gone badly and we feel anger about it, those are the festering wounds that can steal our life from us.

And so Jesus paints a life-affirming picture of reconciliation, and this rang real bells with me. Many, many years ago, when I was in a youth group, there were two sisters. The older one was a year younger than me and the younger one was four years younger than me. When I was sixteen the younger one basically asked me for a date. Now she was only twelve, and I was four years older, and at that age it was a huge gap.

I didn’t really know what to say, so I basically lied, and said that I didn’t actually want to go out with anyone at that time. And of course that caught up with me when, only a couple of weeks later I arrived at the youth group with a new girlfriend. The young lady was heart-broken, and I was too stupid even to have realised what I’d done until someone tactfully pointed it out to me.

Nothing more was said for, maybe eighteen months, but then as a youth group we went to Spring Harvest which, if you’ve never heard of it, is a sort of charismatic teaching conference. At one of the evening sessions we had a reconciliation communion, and at that service we were invited to come and take a piece of bread, but not to eat it ourselves; we were to give it to someone we needed to forgive.

Lo and behold the older sister came up to me with a big beamy smile on her face and explained how angry she had been with me for hurting her little sister. We had a chat, she forgave me, I apologised profusely, we hugged and I left with a piece of bread, but more importantly, she left that encounter with her freedom restored. She had let go of her anger, and that is precisely what Jesus intended.

It was about a restoration of humanity. If we hadn’t gone through that it’s possible that even now, thirty years later, she might still be carrying that thorn in her side about what I did to her little sister by lying to her. Jesus’s words may seem harsher than the law, but they were about setting us free, not binding us up.

The same is true about the commands on lust and adultery. These are directed specifically to men in a culture in which women were legally treated as possessions. But Jesus was pushing through that and saying, ‘These woman are not objects to be desired or owned but equals to whom you should have real in-depth relationships.’ The crime of adultery in that culture was one man against another.

If a man committed adultery with another man’s wife, then his crime was not so much a sexual one as one of stealing another man’s possession. But Jesus went beyond that to say, ‘She is not a possession, she is an equal - a person with her own rights, gifts and abilities. You are not to lust after her as an object belonging to someone else.’ Once again he is telling us not to steal the humanity of another away from them.

And the oaths are all a part of the same argument. You swear an oath because you want to reinforce your honesty in a transaction. But in our God-given restored humanity we should be above and beyond that. Our honesty should be a given. We should be the kind of people who simply say yes or no, and because of who we are and our maturity in Christ, that will be sufficient.

If I say, ‘I swear on the Bible to do this’ I am basically saying, ‘Look, on my own I’m not honest enough to say I’ll do it. So I’ll add an extra something to make you believe me.’ But if we learn to live redeemed lives, then our yes and no will be sufficient because people will trust us.

These passages are entirely about truthfulness, love, honesty and faithfulness. They are about reconciliation and relationship. Our church culture at the moment can’t seem to get beyond, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that and don’t do the other’, all of which steal our humanity by adding one burden of guilt on to another. Jesus seeks to lift our burdens and restore our humanity.

So how about you? Is there a need for forgiveness and reconciliation in this church? Are there people in this family who you harbour anger against? How have you allowed that to subtract from your humanity, and what are you going to do about restoring it?

Let us pray.
Lord, your words sometimes seem harsh, yet are really so life-affirming. Where we have caused pain or been hurt, show us how we can make amends. Anoint our conversations with your love and prepare the way for our reconcilations.. Amen

5th Sunday before Lent: Is it love or just entertainment?

Readings
1 Corinthians 2:1-12
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,

‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him’—

these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.


Matthew 5:13-20
‘You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.
‘You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.


Sermon
When I met Alison I was drawn to her immediately. She was a beautiful young woman, with long dark hair. She’d just come back from a holiday and she must have Mediterranean blood because she catches the sun so easily and so she had a deep olive tan. Those of you who are aware how few details I notice in what goes on around me will be aware of just how smitten I was to have seen all this.

And then on top of being absolutely radiant, she was intelligent and gifted. I heard her lead a session about worship at the prayer group we attended during which she sang several of her own songs. I was in love in a big way. Fortunately she felt the same way, and so, just nine months after we started going out, we were married.

Now the reason I’m telling you this is because this first stage in the relationship that Ali and I have could be likened to what Jesus declares about how you light a lamp and then put it up so that everyone can see it, so that it gives light to everyone. This is very much the first stage in a relationship, when you are drawn in by the beauty of what you see.

That’s how it was for me when I met Alison. She wasn’t walking around wearing a veil. She didn’t hide her abilities as a theologian, teacher and musician; she used them, and because of that I was drawn to her.

So what drew you to Christ? Was it the worship that took place in church? Was it the singing, or the language or the prayers? Maybe it was the teaching?

You see this is what we find in the words that St. Paul wrote. When he first arrived in Corinth, he knew that he wasn’t a proficient speaker. He may have been an excellent theologian and a great letter writer, but apparently he wasn’t a terribly powerful speaker. But that was to his advantage, because he wasn’t tempted to try and make a great show in terms of who he was.

Instead he engaged in a ministry that was based on the power of the Holy Spirit so that the people were drawn to God directly rather than to him. St Paul wanted to avoid there being some kind of cult of personality around him, and so he simply engaged in the ministry of the Holy Spirit, and so the people were drawn in.

This is all very much like the first stages of love. It’s all about the beauty and majesty of what we see. We are drawn by the way the object of our affection moves; by the things they say and how they say them, and by how they look at us. And so in the first stages of our beliefs, as with our loves, we are drawn by the beauty, or the power of God.

But that’s not enough is it; not for the test of time. Because we all know that this is not true, deep, long-lasting love. The reality is that we change and we age; we grow and mature, and love has to deepen. We cannot be forever drawn to the youthful beauty that was once ours because it is fleeting. Love has to go beyond the city on the hill. Love has to go beyond the light on the lampstand, and this is my greatest fear for the church.

What I mean by that is that I don’t think we’re terribly good at that. I think that we expect our love for God to always remain like those first flushes of youthful love. What I mean by that is that we expect to be engaged by our church worship, and if that isn’t interesting, if the preaching isn’t full of life or if the singing doesn’t take off, then we begin to grow cool and our lives cease to be changed any further. Imagine how short our marriages would be if we had treated our spouses like that.

And this, I believe, is what St. Paul may have found at Corinth. So enamoured were they with the bright shiny worshipping in the power of the Holy Spirit that they thought that was all there was. There were difficulties with speaking in tongues becoming too prominent because it was different and seemed rather special, and the people were being drawn after this amazing preacher or that amazing preacher, and so St. Paul was trying to communicate that there was more to loving God than this.

Back to my relationship with Ali. She remains truly beautiful to me, but it’s no longer a skin deep beauty. I have begun to glimpse the deeper mystery within her of who she is. The more I get to know her, the more I want to know her more. I value her deep insights and wisdom more with each passing year, and that’s what’s supposed to happen in a loving relationship.

That, I believe, is what St. Paul was trying to convey to the Corinthians, that there are great depths to God, depths which are only searched by the Spirit of God herself. If we want to truly begin to engage with God it has to go much deeper than the surface veneer of our worship in Church; it has to be based in lives soaked in prayer and dedicated to good works.

My worry is with regards to how much effort we put into achieving this. Don’t get me wrong; I’m aware that it helps a great deal to have worship which is engaging and sermons that draw us more deeply in to thinking about these things. But does it stop when we leave the building? We live in a culture which is driven by entertainment, and that is reflected in what we do in church.

We have this kind of service, that kind of song, this many candles, and it all helps to keep people coming to church. But does it make us disciples? Does it encourage us to be like Jesus? You see that’s what a disciple is; one who learns from their teacher to be like him or her. So do we learn and apply, or just sit and receive. It’s only in application that we become disciples. Anything less is just being entertained.

I believe that one of the greatest reasons for marital break-up is that we have lost sight of what love is. We’re caught up in the glitz and glamour of youthful beauty, and those with wealth may spend fortunes on trying to retain it. But the real depth of love comes with maturity. Yes, the lamp is on the lampstand to draw us in, but once we have arrived on the threshold, we must journey deeper into God.

You are the salt of the earth. Make sure you continue to taste of salt. The only way we can do that is to go deeper into our relationships with God by disciplined prayer and meditation in our own homes. Then we will shine as Christ’s lights. But in shining as lights we are not to draw people to ourselves, but to direct them into the deeper mysteries of God. May we be inspired to search the depths of God in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Women as Bishops - Why it's the right thing.

Our PCC has asked me to preach on why I believe that women should be Bishops, in advance of the synod debates. So here's my take on it. It's rather longer than the usual offering and will be preached with overheads. This is in place of the third Sunday of Epiphany.

Readings
1 Tim.2:11-15
Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

Galatians 3:23-29
Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

John 20:11-18
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her. Sermon


Sermon
At our last PCC meeting I was asked if I would speak about women bishops in advance of the debate that we will be having at deanery synod soon. Let me say from the outset that we are going to be having women bishops in the Church of England; that is not in any doubt. The debates at the moment are about how to care for the spiritual needs of those who refuse their ministry.

I believe that my role today is more fundamental than that and is to do with brothers and sisters among us who are still unsure of the role of women in positions of leadership in the church, or who are sure it’s the right thing but not sure why. So what I’ve tried to do with this sermon is to address the most basic issues head on from the point of view of scripture. For many people there is a sense in which not accepting women as ordained priests and as bishops is based on what they believe the bible says.

Now we don’t have time to go through every relevant text, of which there are many, so we going to use just three to establish a principle for how we should read all of the texts. The specific question we’re asking is, are all pronouncements in the Bible absolute, or are some of them specific to a particular context?

So we’re going to look at two texts from the New Testament, together with the Gospel reading, and try and uncover what scripture really does say. But before we do that we need to be honest in acknowledging how we actually use scripture.

You see at the end of every reading we say, ‘This is the word of the Lord.’ Now at its most fundamental level that is meant to say something about how we treat the bible. However I suspect that we all mean different things by that phrase. For some of us there is a sense that the bible is God’s rule book for us and we need to take care to follow every word. Others may feel it is there to be used by the Holy Spirit for specific revelation, and for many there will be a sense of not knowing what the bible really is meant to be, other than something holy and special.

What I want to suggest to you this morning, as our foundation, is that a proper understanding of the bible requires that we acknowledge it to be a story of the spiritual journey of God’s people through the ages. What I mean by that is that there is a progression in revelation as the Lord moves his people from a limited knowledge and understanding to a greater and more complete understanding, and within that journey are a multitude of different cultural contexts and eras, so some of what is written in one place would be confusing if applied somewhere else.

Now for some of us there are immediately going to be alarm bells ringing because this could be interpreted as me saying that some parts of the bible can be discarded because they’re too old to be of value and we’ve moved on. That’s not what I’m saying. But what I do want to underline is that, even if we profess that the bible is all the word of God, we naturally still treat it as a progressive revelation whereby we discard some parts because they were culturally specific.

For example, who likes bacon sandwiches? Deuteronomy 14 verse 8 specifically prohibits eating bacon or even touching it. What about prawn cocktails or crab? Deuteronomy 14 verse 10 says, ‘Whatever (lives in water) but does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.’

Or how about those of you men who married women who were not virgins. Did you stone them to death? According to Deuteronomy 22:21 you should have done. I could go on, but the point is simple; we already treat the bible as revealing a progressive relationship with God that has developed in different contexts and different times. The trick is to understand what is culturally specific and what is universal.

We don’t keep some of those commandments anymore because we recognise that they applied to specific cultural circumstances and that is exactly the point: Culture has grown and changed and some of what was applied in the Bible simply does not speak into our modern situations.

For example, unless we understand the cultural specifics behind the letters St. Paul wrote we risk misapplying them in totally different situations for which they were never intended. So with that in mind let’s look at the first of the new testament passages where St. Paul writes to his dear friend, Timothy, at Ephesus.

First of all let me underline just how incredibly important the cultural context is in which we read this. At first sight to us this seems terribly inhibiting to women. But imagine you were a woman living in a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan and you received this letter from one of your authoritative leaders. What’s the first thing that strikes you?

What are the first four words?

'Let a woman learn...' If you lived in a cultural context in which men did everything, ran everything, made all the decisions and had all the control, this would be the most liberating thing you had ever read; a command from a spiritual leader that the women should learn!

No longer should they be kept ignorant so that they were virtual slaves, condemned to a life of serving the needs of their husbands. Knowledge, one of the most precious gifts in the universe, was to be given. Now you can see just how important the cultural context of understanding scripture is. And there’s more to come.

The skyline at Ephesus was dominated by the temple of Artemis at which only virgin women could serve as priestesses, and where they utterly dominated the men. The reason I mention that is because of the second thing we read in this passage. Paul says that he permits no woman to have authority over a man, or at least that’s what our translations say.

The trouble is, they are translations and there is a huge debate over the Greek word used because in the other contexts in which it is found in the ancient world the word basically means ‘dominate’ not ‘have authority over’. Now that begins to tell us something of the cultural baggage Timothy was having to deal with. Women in the Ephesian church may well have been aping the local context of women dominating men in the Cult of Artemis.

But St. Paul is telling Timothy that they must not copy what is happening in the Temple to Artemis. The women are not to dominate the men. The cultural context seems quite specific; that Christian women should follow Christ in their behaviour, not virgin priestesses from the cult of Artemis.

The next argument from this passage is that St. Paul seems to use creation texts to show that Adam was formed first and then Eve, and so that there is always a basic order intended by God in creation, that the male should be regarded as being first and so women should universally not have certain offices that give them priority over men.

However I don’t think that’s what it can mean because it would mean Paul is being inconsistent. You see in Romans 5:12-21 Paul refers to humanity’s problems stemming from the sin of one man, Adam, beginning with the words, ‘...just as sin came into the world through one man...’ There’s no mention whatsoever of Eve here; Adam is blamed entirely.

In other words Paul is using the creation narrative completely differently. Why? Simples? In Romans he’s making a different point because it’s a different context. To the Romans he’s trying to make a point about how Jesus, one man, could remove the sin that one man, Adam, brought into the world.

In both these cases Paul is trying to make an argument and using a creation text to illustrate what he means. If you try and teach both his metaphors as universal absolutes they contradict each other because in 1 Timothy he says sin came through a woman whereas in Romans he says it came through a man.

The context is everything and when St. Paul is writing to Timothy at Ephesus he is trying to stop the women of that church from bringing the ways of the Temple of Artemis into the worship of the one true God. This also accounts for the childbearing argument.

Again if the priestesses which led the Temple of Artemis were all virgins who dominated the men you can see here that in this context St. Paul is making a valid, if rather radical point, that, again in this context the women may need to marry and have children in order to live a radically different life from the one they once had under Artemis.

Whilst virginity may be highly prized in some parts of the church, in this context it had become idolatrous and was therefore getting in the way of their relationship with Christ.

It’s a little like Jesus telling the rich man that he had to sell all his worldly goods if he wanted salvation. It was not a universal command to us all but a specific one to a man whose personal context was that riches were in the way of his relationship with God. So for the women of Ephesus, the exalted position of virginity, highly prized by St Paul elsewhere, might need to be given up in this context because virginity had become an idol for them.

All of this is a long winded way of me trying to make it as clear as I can that, when we’re reading specific commandments in the Bible we must be crystal clear about the context in which they are made because they were real letters written to real people in real situations and what was needed in one place might be different from what was needed elsewhere.

But, as I said above, some pronouncements in the Bible are indeed universal. One such is our second reading. It is still couched in a particular context, which in this church was the Galatian church which had been infiltrated by those Paul called Judaisers. These were basically people who insisted that if you were going to be a Christian, you had to also keep the Jewish law; all of it; in its entirety. Basically they were reducing Christianity to being just another Jewish sect.

St. Paul was writing to them to try and persuade that in Christ people were set free from the tyranny of trying and failing to keep the law, and instead lived under the grace and forgiveness of Christ. Now clearly for us the verse which is of greatest importance is the one which says,
‘...there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.’

I believe that St. Paul was specifically noting here that, if the Galatians went back to the Jewish law, they would have to reintroduce circumcision and put back the divide between men and women, and he specifically wanted to avoid that!!! The societies of that period had treated men and women very differently, with women being controlled by men. The advent of Christ had changed all that and St. Paul wanted to avoid a loss of the freedom that had come.

In the early churches, before we lost our nerve, women did take on leadership roles in the church, and this was clearly intended by Christ by the way he included women. Now I know that some people will say, why then did he only choose men as his disciples? They will say that it proves only men can be church leaders. But that’s rubbish.

You see you could just as easily say that he chose twelve Palestinians who were circumcised and had beards. I only qualify in having a beard; does that disqualify me from leadership? Of course not. The reason the twelve were following him was cultural. Jesus was seen as a rabbi. All rabbis were men.

The disciples of a rabbi were chosen by the rabbi because he felt that they could learn under him to do what he did. Therefore Jesus could only choose men as his disciples; culturally speaking they were learning to be rabbis like him.

But in all other respects Jesus interacted with women in a way that no other rabbi would do. We know that Mary, the sister of Martha, sat at his feet to learn. Women were not permitted to do that, but Jesus positively encouraged it. Women financially supported Jesus and were among his followers, taking an active role, and as we read in our Gospel reading, the first witness to the resurrection was a woman, Mary of Magdalene.

What makes that so specifically important is that under Jewish law at that time a woman was not permitted to be a legal witness, but Jesus chose to show himself first to her. It was no accident. He could have shown himself to John and Peter, but he waited for them to leave the tomb and for Mary to be alone.

What’s more there is plenty of evidence that in the early church Mary Magdalene became known as ‘The apostle to the apostles.’ The reason for that is Jesus sending her, where the word apostle means ‘one who is sent’, to the apostles to deliver her testimony, ‘I have seen the Lord.’ Jesus counted her as the one who should deliver the first news of the resurrection.

So to those who detract from the ministry of women as bishops, I would have to say that, if it was good enough for Jesus to send a woman then with the biggest news of all time, why on earth should we be questioning whether he is sending women now? If St. Paul said that, ‘In Christ there is no male or female,’ shouldn’t we be rejoicing that through Jesus, God is restoring his intended order to creation.

Let me remind you that Genesis 1:27 says, ‘So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’ In other words it is only when you have men and women working in partnership that you see the full characteristics of the image of God.

I cannot tell you how much of a blessing it is to work alongside Rachel and Margaret and have a different set of insights on ministry. And when I spend time in the company of women and see how they are more likely to work together than in competition I realise just how much the Church of England needs their ministry as deacons, priests and as bishops.

If God created us in his image as male and female then I would go so far as to say, without women, the house of bishops is biased and incomplete. For the Church of England to grow and thrive we need to follow the direction of scripture which, I believe, makes it clear that God’s plan for us requires men and women to be working together in every part of the church.

And for me, if the next Bishop of Birmingham was a woman, I would be quite content, for if she were God’s chosen minister to the diocese, then I would pledge allegiance to her God-given authority, and from my heart I believe it would truly be God-given. Amen.

References
J. J. Davis, First Timothy 2:12: The ordination of women and Paul’s use of creation narratives,
URL: www.cbeinternational.org/files/u1/free-art/first-timothy-2-12.pdf

L. Goddard and C. Hendry, The Gender Agenda, IVP, 2010.

Women and the Church (WATCH) www.womenandthechurch.org

Second Sunday of Epiphany : Names have power

Readings

1 Cor. 1:1-9
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you— so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

John 1:29-42
The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and declared, ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.’ And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).


Sermon
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me’.
Some of us may remember that phrase from our childhood. It’s the kind of thing that we might have said in the playground to someone being verbally nasty to us. It was meant to be a way to let someone’s taunts just slide off us. Except that the truth that we all really know is that bones can heal and scars can fade, but persistent unkind words may stay with us for the rest of our lives.

Chief amongst the verbal damaging is the names that someone may call us and the reason for that is that names have immense power, and this is something that we seem to have forgotten in our enlightened secular age. Nowadays the names given to children seem to be influenced by whoever is the latest pop star or celebrity. But names have meaning and I think each of us has at least three or four names, and by that I don’t mean our middle names. Let me explain.

Firstly there is the name that we were given by our parents. That’s usually the only one we think of and often it is just used as a label to distinguish who we mean in conversation. But that name has a meaning. Then there is the name that we call ourselves. We may never actually know it, but the name encapsulates how we think of ourselves and is often dictated by the third name we have.

This third name is the one that other people use when they think of us, or talk to us, or about us. It may be a simple nickname, or it may be the way someone uses our name, the tone of their voice; the set of their face. Whatever it is this third name will undoubtably influence the name we have given ourselves.

Then there is the name that God calls us by. This is the most important name because this is our true self. We may not know it ourselves yet, but God does. It’s quite possible that this name is the name our parents gave us. I know of at least one person who has heard the literal voice of God calling them by name and God used their whole name, not the shortened form that other people use, but it was the name he was named with by his parents.

So we all have names, and those names have power because those names have meaning and that meaning and power runs as a common thread through the readings we have today. If we start with the first letter to the Corinthian church the first word in the entire letter is from the sender, Paul, but Paul is not his real name, or at least it is not the name his parents gave him.

We know from the book of Acts, which is incidentally addressed to Theophilus, which means ‘Friend of God’, that St. Paul began life with the name Saul. Saul means, ‘The one who was prayed for, or the one who was sent as a response to prayer’. It has this sense of asking God to send someone and this is the one who was sent in response. But at some point Saul changed his name to Paul by his own choice. Why?

I’m not sure we can ever be certain of this. Paul was the Latin version of the name Saul, and Paul was a Roman citizen, yet he did not need this new name. I have often wondered whether it has something to do with the meaning of the name. Paul means small, or perhaps humble and maybe has the connotations of. ‘...not all that significant.’

And so I have often wondered whether he chose this name as a mark of repentance for his earlier persecution of the church. After what he had done he couldn’t think of himself as someone that had been prayed for, the name Saul, so he went with Paul because perhaps he felt small in his own mind. That name change could have a powerful effect on who he became.

When we look at the Gospel reading we get several new names. John was known by most people as ‘The Baptizer’. He had been given a new name by those who came to him because of what he did, and that name came from people who recognised what he did as having lasting value in their lives. It was a good name to have. Names have power, and people would have been drawn to him by the new name.

But then John himself gives Jesus a new name when he twice refers to him as ‘Lamb of God.’ That nickname he gives Jesus is such a powerful name that two of his own disciples leave his side to follow this new Rabbi. But why? What was so powerful about the nickname, ‘Lamb of God’? I think it’s because it has powerful sacrificial connotations.

The blood of a lamb was used at Passover to remind the Jews of how they were kept safe from the wrath of God when the angel of death went over the Egyptians. But this name is much more powerful because the name is not the Lamb of the People, but the Lamb of God. It’s no wonder that two of John’s disciples left him to follow Jesus. Names have power.

And then finally there is Simon. Simon’s name means ‘to hear or to listen’, yet Jesus gives him a new name, Peter, which means rock. Of all the name changes this is perhaps the most significant here because it is the only occasion in these readings where we get the most important name, the name given not by our parents, nor our associates, nor by ourselves. In Simon Peter’s case we discover his true name, given by God - Peter, a rock.

What makes this interesting is that it really does encapsulate his nature. You see Simon means, ‘to listen’, yet one of the clearest things we pick up about Simon was that he was not good at listening. There are so many occasions throughout the New Testament where Simon gets it wrong because he doesn’t listen. He gets berated by Jesus for misunderstanding what kind of Saviour Jesus is to be because he won’t listen when Jesus says he must die for the people.

But as a rock he is someone who will get on and do things. I imagine Peter as someone around whom others will gather because he speaks up. I don’t know that Peter would have seen it in himself, but Jesus, who really knows people, saw it in him and gave him a new name that really encapsulated who he was. And names have power. Armed with his new name, Peter would have known what was expected of him, which is perhaps why he felt pain so acutely when he failed.

So what’s your name? Which of the names that you have is the one that has real power over you? Is it the name that your parents gave you? Or has that just become a label? Is it the name that your beloved calls you? The power of a secret loving name should never be underestimated in how much strength it bestows. Or do you call yourself by a disparaging name that you have allowed to steal from you. Let that old name pass away. Let it no longer have power over you.

You see God has a name for you, and in prayer you should seek out what that name is, because the name God gives you bestows great power on you in terms of who he has created you to be, and what he wants you to do. Names have power. What’s your true, God-given, name?

The Baptism of Christ: Power vs Love

To help with the context - this sermon was given at St. Mary's, Wythall this morning as they embark on an interregnum. Thanks guys for the welcome!


Reading
Matt.3:13-17
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ Then John consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’


Address

Matthew’s Gospel has some unique features in it that are not found in the other Gospels. Today’s Gospel reading includes one such feature as it is the only place where the dialogue between John the Baptist and Jesus is recorded.

What I’d like to do today is focus a little on that to begin with, and perhaps we ought to start by asking why Matthew included this dialogue. I think that there are three reasons; two practical, and one spiritual. Let’s think about the practical reasons first before we get to the more interesting spiritual side of all this.

From a practical point of view we have to get back into Matthew’s culture a little. Those who were there were well aware that Jesus had been baptised by John. At the time the Gospels were written there were still plenty of disciples of John the Baptist and it is quite possible that they were using the fact of Jesus’s baptism by John as a way for them to claim that John was greater than Jesus. By including this dialogue Matthew makes it clear that John declares his feelings that he should be being baptised by Jesus, not the other way around.

The second practical reason is that, once again those who were there may have been suggesting that Jesus felt that he was sinful and needed a baptism of repentance. Once again, John’s verbal deference to Jesus shows that wasn’t the case. However it is the third reason, the spiritual reason, which is the most important one to us, and to understand that we need to turn to the reason that Jesus gives to John.

He says, ‘Let it be so for now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness’. The words Jesus uses here are about an active doing of something in order that something..., that, ‘...all righteousness’, should be fulfilled, and in order to understand Jesus’s baptism and what it means to us, we need to understand exactly what he means by, ‘...in order to fulfil all righteousness’.

I spent a long while reading around this, trying to get the taste of it, and I think that Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, puts it best. He says that Jesus’s decision to be baptised, and his description of it as fulfilling all righteousness, meant that Jesus was utterly determined to humbly identify with those who he came to save in every conceivable way.

Baptism is a mark of repentance, of turning away from the old life of doing what we want to do and turning to the Light, to follow God’s plans for us. By being baptised Jesus was, in all humility, sharing and taking part in our penitence, and Matthew includes all of this to show us what kind of Messiah, of Saviour, Jesus truly was and is.

You see many of the Jews at that time were looking for a political saviour; one who would come riding in on a stallion in power, to set the nation free from Roman oppression, but right from the beginning of his Gospel Matthew makes it clear that Jesus is not like that. Instead of coming to have power over his people, Jesus comes to identify with them, to live their life, to represent them, and ultimately to die for them.

Instead of coming from above in power, Jesus comes from within in love. I once heard a preacher draw the distinction between power and love saying that they are mutually exclusive. If you come in power, it is to make people do what you want them to do, but if you come in love, it is to set them free, to be the people they were created to be.

John’s words to Jesus declares him to be the one who comes from above, and John expects Jesus to come in power, but by his reply and his actions, Jesus declares he is one of us, coming in love to save us from ourselves and to set us free. Now before I apply that to our baptism, let’s take a look at what happens next.

Jesus comes up from the water of baptism and the Holy Spirit comes down upon him, like a dove, and a voice is heard from heaven, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We also need to understand this in order to apply it to our own baptisms, but I don’t think we need to go into too great a depth.

I have already described how Jesus comes in love, not power, and the dove confirms that, as the dove is a symbol of peace. The words of God, declaring his pleasure in his Son, confirm the words and actions of Jesus. Jesus comes to bring us the peace of God, and the Father declares that this is his will. By coming in love rather than power, Jesus is fulfilling his Father’s will. Now, what does this mean to us?

When we are baptised, we are baptised into Christ. This shows that our baptisms have more than one meaning. Clearly there is the washing with water to symbolise that in Christ we are washed clean of our sins. Also, as a sacrament, baptism is an outward sign, that we can all see, of an inward new reality; that this baptised person is joined to God in a way we might struggle to describe in words, but can experience in a similar way to how a married couple grow to experience each other’s love and presence.

But there is something else too. If we are baptised into Christ, we are also baptised into his ministry, and that is a ministry of love and of service; it is not a ministry of power. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we get so antsy about powerful Christian leaders: there’s something about their pushiness and power that seems at odds with Jesus.

Just as Jesus came to serve, and to love, and to identify with others, so we are also called to do the same. If we are in him, we are baptised with his baptism, and that means that if he identified with others in order to help them to be free to become who they were created to be, then we have the same mission; to help set people free.

Over the coming few months, and maybe more, as a church you will have to look to your own resources and your own gifts. Indeed that’s the great release that can come in an interregnum - that the congregation must look to what they bring to the church. It will give your next vicar some ready-prepared building blocks to begin work with. So as you start to think about what your gifts might be, here’s the question you can use to work out what to do with them. Can you, by the gifts you have been given, do something to set people free?

Or to put it another way, what are you doing to set people free, because that is what your baptism into Christ is supposed to make happen. Some of you are working in industry and maybe in positions of management and leadership. What’s your leadership style? Is it one of using your power to get things done, regardless of the cost to people?

Or do you come alongside your co-workers, valuing them for who they are. Managing people with a servant heart can be very difficult, but it’s not impossible. It can be hard because people can treat that kind of attitude with distain, seeking to take advantage of us. However, some people do respond well to it, because they see us living out the Gospel that we claim has made a difference to us and to how we live.

What about those of you involved in a more local community sense. The same thing applies. How can you be encouraging to those lacking in self-confidence? How can you involve the lonely? How can you, by your actions, help to set free those who have had their sense of self-worth taken from them by those who have had power over them?

If we are baptised Christians, then we are baptised into Christ. His calling to serve is therefore our calling. We, too, can trust in the Holy Spirit to help us, because so many of these things go against our selfish desires and are hard for us, but in Christ and through Christ we have a part to play in setting people free. That is our baptism and it is a worthy cause to live for, and one day I hope that we too will hear our Father say, ‘This is my child, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased’. Amen.