A sermon for Harvest-time

Readings: Joel 2.21-27 and Matthew 6.25-33

Looking back on it now, I had a very privileged child-hood.  I grew up in the countryside of Devon and Somerset.  In the summer holidays, I worked on a local farm, tossing hay-bales onto trailers, looking forward to the reward of a cheeky glass of cider with the Farmer at the end of the day.  In my home churches, Harvest was a time of great abundance, with goods from fields and gardens displayed in complete profusion all over the place.

It is perhaps only those of us who have sweated in the fields to bring a harvest in, who can really understand the sense of satisfaction at a job completed.  In past times, the celebration of Harvest was as much a sense of relief, as anything else.  Relief that drought had not visited the crops.  Relief that there were no injuries to farm workers, this year. 

All is very different today.  Harvest now takes place every day of the year.  If we can’t grow the food we want in England, we buy it from other parts of the world.  Labourers are still needed, but mechanical systems of picking food are taking over.  No-one tosses hay onto trailers anymore.  The word ‘Harvest’ just doesn’t have the resonance that it once had.

And yet, at the same time, the world of nature has perhaps never been more in our minds.  We are far more aware than we were in the 1970s of the interconnected nature of all living things.  On our TV screens we witness the destruction of the rain-forests, record breaking temperatures every year, and forest fires across the globe.  We watch the melting of the glaciers, and we build our heightened sea-walls against the rising of the seas.  Ironically, there has never been a time when we have been less connected to the land, and yet more affected by it.

The last few decades seen a marked shift in the way we think about God’s relationship to creation and harvest, too.  In a short while, we will sing that ‘we plough the fields and scatter’, and celebrate that our crops are ‘fed and watered by God’s almighty hand’.  But actually, I doubt that many of us really believe that anymore.  In fact, we have far more faith in the science of weather-forecasting than we do in the idea that God sends the rain – despite the number of parishioners who ask me to pray for good weather when their birthday party is taking place!

Now you might think that I’m sorry about that.  After all, isn’t this loss of faith in a God who sends rain a dangerous thing for the church?  Surely, if people stop praying to God for rain – or any other need – the churches will empty?

Well, perhaps they will…or at least they will empty of those people who think of God like some kind of genie, or fairy godmother, who will grant wishes in return for the right words.  My hope and observation, however, is that with the advance of our understanding of creation and the harvest, we are in fact growing up.  We are moving away from the medieval God in the sky, who granted – or refused - the wishes of his farmers.  Instead, we are beginning to glimpse the God who is the energy at the centre of all things: the God who inspires us to use our intellects to shape and control our own environments.

Instead of a Father Christmas God, to whom we cry for solutions to our problems, we are confronted instead by the actual God of Scripture.  This is the God who, according to the great Genesis myth, creates a beautiful garden and then gives it to his children with the command that we should ‘take care of it’.  That was my message to last week’s Green Festival, at the Pallant Centre.  I argued that the stories of religion give us a framework for action in the face of the climate catastrophe.  I asked them to consider taking up a new slogan:  “take care of the garden”.  I suggested that, as a slogan, it has deep religious roots for those who want to excavate them.  It also contains a sense of command, of imperative, that human beings really need to hear.  “Take care of the garden!”

Our abuse of the planet doesn’t only result in heatstroke and loss of agricultural land to drought and fire.  It also has huge effects on the populations of countries who are worst affected by these changes. That in turn leads to wars over resources – including Putin’s present war to capture the grain fields of Ukraine.  Wars, and famine, lead to mass migration – as people desperately search for hope in other places.  Such people become targets for modern-day slave-traders, who will promise migrants a land of milk and honey, if they will “just step into this van, or cargo container” and be transported around the world.  On arrival, these people find that there is no milk and honey, after all.  Rather, they find they have been sold into illegal slavery – as labourers, factory workers or as sex workers.  Can you imagine what it feels like to leave your home and family, promising them money to tackle their poverty, but then finding yourself as a slave without any power over your life?  The Medeille Trust exists to help such people, when they are liberated, to get their lives back on track.  And that’s why we are supporting them today.

 I do not mourn the passing of a belief in the Weather-God, or for any idea of a god who, in response to the right words, said in the right way, will supply all our needs – like a sort of heavenly vending-machine.  I wonder how many modern-day slaves pray to such a god, only to find that no answer comes?  How many people in Bangladesh or the Pacific Islands pray for relief that never comes, as their homes sink beneath the rising seas?   Rather, I pray for a new understanding of God – the insistence of God who is the creative heart of all creation, the love which binds us, inspires us, and teaches us, through prophetic speech and powerful stories, to “take care of the garden” and to share the bounty we possess for the good of all. 

This is the God to whom Jesus directs us in our Gospel reading.  After telling his disciples not to worry about clothes and food and drink, he says this:  “Seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness: and all these things will be given to you as well”.  Jesus is calling the world to hear the cry of the Kingdom:  feed the hungry, welcome the stranger and set the captive free to “take care of the garden”.  If only humanity would embrace the teaching, mythology and commands of the Kingdom!  If only justice would flow like rivers, and the inequities of humanity were washed away.  Then, as the prophet Joel says, “the threshing floors will be filled with grain; the vats will overflow with new wine and oil, and then you will know that I am the LORD your God, and never again will my people be shamed”.  Amen.

The Pursuit of Wisdom

Text: Proverbs 3.13–18

Happy are those who find wisdom,

   and those who get understanding,

for her income is better than silver,

   and her revenue better than gold.

She is more precious than jewels,

   and nothing you desire can compare with her.

Long life is in her right hand;

   in her left hand are riches and honour.

Her ways are ways of pleasantness,

   and all her paths are peace.

She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her;

   those who hold her fast are called happy.

The pursuit of Wisdom

A few years ago, during one of our marathon clean-ups of the church, I was making my way round to the outside store cupboard, loaded with good and chattels.  Fumbling for the lock, I managed to drop everything I was carrying with an enormous crash.  Just then, I noticed a man of the road, sitting and watching me with a bemused smile from the bench in the churchyard.  Once I had gathered up the junk I was trying to store, and gathered up some of my dignity, I decided to sit and have a chat with the man.  

His name, it turned out, was ‘Bowler’ – no doubt because he sported a rather fine bowler hat, festooned with badges he had accumulated in his life.  Bowler told me that he enjoyed his life on the road.  Every year, he would walk from Brighton to Penzance, little by little, stopping for as long as he wished at town like Havant along the way.  His life was free of stress.  He begged a little, when he needed money, but mainly he lived out of what he could scavenge from fresh food waste in supermarket bins, or from hedgerows along the way. 

I found myself comparing my rather frantic and busy life with his. And I found myself wondering whether, in fact, Bowler may have been the wisest man I had ever met.  He had found a balance in his life which gave him an aura of real serenity.  Just as I was wondering about this, Bowler held out his hand, with some bird seed in his palm.  And a little robin hopped out of the lavender bush, and landed on Bowler’s fingers.  As they enjoyed breakfast together, the robin and Bowler, I was certain that this was indeed a very wise man.

Wisdom, of course, comes in many varieties.  In our first reading, from the book of proverbs, we heard what we presume to be King Solomon’s hymn to wisdom.  Solomon thought of wisdom as female – and he extolled her many virtues.  She is more precious than jewels, and she is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her.  The accumulation of wisdom was the highest ideal for the Jewish mind, as well as for much of the ancient world, exemplified in the great philosophers, like Plato and Socrates.  Wise people were venerated.  Their teachings were soaked up.  Their ideas for living well were followed by millions.  

How very different from our own time.  As a society, we tend to prioritise celebrity, entertainment, novelty and fashion over the pursuit of wisdom.  The word ‘philosophy’ is a Greek word meaning, simply, ‘the love of wisdom’ – and true wisdom takes years to accumulate.  

But we shovel off our wisest and more experienced politicians to the House of Lords, and give the management of our country to the new kids on the block.  We require our priests to retire at the age of 70.  We have little interest in what the elderly have to teach the young – but instead we tease and belittle them for not being able to operate the remote control, or a mobile phone.  

Now I realise, given the average age of today’s congregation, that I am undoubtedly preaching to the choir here!  You are all very wise, aren’t you? Given the amount of grey hair, you certainly should be!  But here’s the thing…

Despite the accumulation of years, and of grey hairs, some of us never do manage to accumulate wisdom along the way.  We can be too easily blinded by the very same things that blind the rest of society.  Celebrity, novelty, entertainment and fashion, the pursuit of short-lived pleasure, the attraction of wine and food and travel, these and many other things society offer us can so easily distract us from the pursuit of real wisdom.

Later in the book of Proverbs, in chapter 9, Solomon says this:  “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”.  The word ‘fear’ in that translation means something like ‘reverence’ and ‘respect’.  It’s part of the tradition, that Jesus repeated, of putting our love, reverence and respect for God at the heart of our lives.  In the words of the Hebrew Shema:  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might and with all your strength.  This, as Jesus said, is the First Commandment.  This is where our focus should be, if we are ever to aspire to be those called wise.

For it only when we bend our desires towards the things of God, and towards actively loving and seeking God, that all the other distractions of life begin to fade away.  When we put God first, we suddenly find that we become less concerned about missing an episode of Coronation Street.  Time is created, by our willingness to let go of earthly pleasures – time for thinking, for reading the wisdom of others, for studying the scriptures, and for growing in wisdom. And that is a goal worth pursuing for, in Solomon’s words: “Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her revenue is better than gold.  Amen.

Multi-cultural Sunday

Here are the notes of the sermon I preached at the Redeemed Christian Church of God this morning, during their 'multicultural festival' at St Faith's Pallant Centre. I did depart a fair way from the actual text - because of such an enthusiastic congregation! It was lovely to preach in a very different style to my normally measured tones! Lots of alleluiahs and amens drove me onward to some fun stories and rhetorical heights. It was great fun - though I don't think my normal congregation is quite ready for it! These notes, however, contain the basic message of my talk.

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Thank you for inviting me to share a few words with you today, on Multi-cultural Sunday. I count it a real privilege. And I’m delighted to be able to worship with you again, after what has been a rather long time!

You might well wonder what my credentials are for speaking about multi-culturalism. Especially as I stand before you as the epitome of a white, middle class, member of a former colonial nation. I had much the same reaction about 13 years ago when I was made a Canon of a Cape Coast Cathedral in Ghana. (For those who don’t know, ‘Canon’ is a title, given to priests as an act of recognition or thanks because of some service or sacrifice which has been rendered. On that occasion, it was to thank me and Clare for having given accommodation to a priest from Cape Coast for about three years, in our home).

But let me get back to the story. There was I, standing in a Cathedral stuffed to the walls with shining, black Ghanaian faces. I was the only white man – probably for many miles. Furthermore, the Cathedral building was formerly the garrison church of the British Army, from the time when they protected the West African slave trade. When it was built, it would have been stuffed full of British military types, but now, I was the only white man in town. It was quite a reversal – and one that I was delighted to be present, to see.

I thank God that I have had a lot of multi-cultural experiences in my life. In the late 1980s, for example, I ran a 300-bed hostel in South London, very near Brixton. There I got to sample a lot of West Indian culture, especially that which came from Jamaica. The hostel I ran was for refugees, most of whom came from East Africa – victims of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the civil war in Somalia. I came to know many of those people very well, while I helped them to assimilate into British culture. In fact, I’m still in touch with a few of them – one lovely Somalian woman in particular, who ended up marrying my brother!

I remember one important cultural lesson from that time. One day, I was working on the Reception desk, and a man came up to the counter, and said “Room 353”. I remember thinking ‘how rude!...why doesn’t he say ‘please’?. So, as I was the one with power in that relationship (because I looked after the keys) I stared at him – with an especially hard stare – and I said “Room 353 what?”. The poor man looked surprised and confused. But he thought for a moment and then tried “Room 353 sah!”. I shook my head, and decided I would have to teach him how to ask properly in English. “Listen” I said, “Would you be so good as to kindly give me the key to room 353, please?”. The poor man tried very hard…but it really was too much for him. We both laughed at his attempt, and I handed him the key. It was then that a much more experienced member of staff took me to one side and said “You have to remember that not every culture has a word for ‘please’, or even ‘thank you’. In many cultures, you simply state what you want, and accept that you either get it, or you don’t. Whatever happens, once you’ve stated what you would like, is God’s will.”

That was an important lesson for me, in my youthful years. I learned then that the culture in which we are born teaches us ways of interacting with each other. But when we are removed from that culture, a whole new set of rules and practices have to be learned.

I’ve also learned a great deal about the way that some cultures impose themselves on others – especially the British Empire of the past, and the American Empire today. This was brought home to me very starkly during one of my visits to Ghana, when I was touring around the churches with my friend, the Bishop of Ho. First of all, I noticed that the form of the service, the way the priests dressed, the music they sang was all pretty much as they had inherited it, 150 years previously from British Anglican missionaries. We, here in England, have moved on from many of the things they wear, the words they say, and the hymns they sing. But because tradition was so important to the people of that region of Ghana, very little indeed had changed. In some ways, it was like stepping back in time.

I also noticed that all the pictures of Jesus on church walls were of ‘British Jesus’. He had white skin, and often had blond hair. I asked my friend why this was. Didn’t people realise that Jesus wasn’t a white man from Hampshire? My friend agreed, but he then explained that tradition meant it was impossible to change the pictures. He feared that his congregation would strangle him if he got rid of the pictures of Jesus they were used to.

I learned some other lessons too. In that particular part of West Africa – in Eastern Ghana – the Twi nation has very strong traditions about the complementary roles of men and women. In Twi culture, women are honoured as life-givers, because they bring children into the world. Men, who by tradition were the hunters, are the life-takers. So far, so good. But what happens when a woman feels called to become a priest? In Twi culture, only a man can be a priest, because part of his role is to commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus. It is a man’s role only, because men are the life-takers. But as a life-giver, a woman should never be so dishonoured as to participate in a killing action – even a metaphorical one.

These are just a few examples – and I could tell you many more! But my point is that we do well to remember that the culture in which we are raised is just one of many cultures. And as we move between cultures, we need to adapt, and to live in new ways, some of which can be quite challenging. Learning to listen to each other, and learn from each other, is vital if we are ever to understand each other.

One of the sharpest divides between African and English culture, right now, tends to be over the issue of same-sex attraction. I’m not going to say much about this – don’t worry! (Not least because children are present). But I would just make this observation: British culture has always embraced new ideas and innovations enthusiastically. It is what made the British, for a while, one of the Masters of the World. We embraced new technology, like steam engines, then petrol machines, and then computers. We love novelty and gadgets, and we tend to embrace new ideas – which is why our Christianity tends to be fractured into so many different factions and churches. We tend to turn our back on tradition, in favour of what new and exciting things might happen if we embrace something new. If you want a clear picture of an Englishman, imagine a very pompous old man (like me) standing up and saying “Now please listen while I teach you about the importance of tradition….oh look! A new robot hoover for my carpet”

Other cultures, are more embedded in their traditions. Traditions give them an anchor to hold onto, amid the ever-shifting tides of change in the world. That’s been my experience of Africa, mainly – although I do notice that there is a young generation coming through who are being increasingly tempted towards the novel and the new things of western culture.

But what can the church offer, to both traditional and more experimental cultures? I think it is this. Culture informs and dictates many of the ways we act towards each other. As Christians, we have a higher allegiance than to our own culture. It’s an allegiance to the Kingdom of Heaven, which is a counter-cultural phenomenon. The Kingdom of Heaven stands against all human cultures. It analyses and comments on all cultures. It turns many cultural ideas on their head. What do I mean?

I like to remind my congregation, from time to time, that the Kingdom of Heaven is a topsy-tury Kingdom. It was founded by the Lord of the Universe, who was born in a stable. The King of Creation, who lived in poverty. The commander of armies of angels, who required peace and non-violence. The Word incarnate of God, who allowed himself to be executed.

The radical teaching of Jesus. and the Kingdom of Heaven he announced, stands in complete contrast to so much of what we take for granted. To those who shrug their shoulders at the poor, God says ‘there shall be no poor among you’. To the rich man who accumulates treasure, Jesus says ‘you fool, tonight you die’. To the one who is struck on the right cheek, Jesus says ‘offer your left’. To the man forced to carry a load one mile, Jesus says ‘take it two miles’. To the war mongers who conquered his land, Jesus gave himself up to die – to show them that the ultimate result of violence is that you place the Lord of the Universe on a tree, outside your city, outside your culture, outside your life.

Ultimately, then, our identity as Christians doesn’t rest in our personal cultures, however rich and wonderful they may be. Rather, we are given a new identity, and a new culture, by the Lord who inspires ALL culture. He gives us the identity of Son or Daughter of Heaven. He gives us brothers and sisters from every corner of the World. He brings us together as one family, with one heavenly father. He makes us citizens of heaven – the greatest culture there will ever be.

So on multi-cultural Sunday, let us be glad and grateful for the cultures in which we were born and raised, celebrate the other cultures we have experienced along life’s road, but never lose sight of the culture God gives us, through Jesus Christ, the culture of the Kingdom of Heaven!

Faith and the Green Movement

 A talk to the first Havant Green Festival - 16th Sept 2023

Thank you for this opportunity to address your Festival.  It’s real privilege.  I’m especially aware that not everyone here would call themselves a person of faith.  But in the next few minutes, I’d like to make the case for a stronger connection between the Green movement, and the world of faith in general.

You will know, I’m sure, that there are hundreds of creation myths, from religions all around the world.  All the ancient civilizations had them.  The idea that Creation was an event of some description seems to be hard-wired into human beings.  Perhaps that’s because we each have our own beginning, and we can’t cope with the idea of anything else not having some kind of beginning.  We also, instinctively, want to know where we came from, and why we are here.  It is part of our endless search for meaning.

The word ‘religion’ comes from the same root as the children’s toy, Lego – it’s the Latin word ‘legio’, which means, ‘to choose, to collect, to connect’.  It was from that word that the Romans created their legions – collections of individuals, chosen to be connected together by a common cause (to fight for Rome).  Religion, then, means to ‘re-connect’, in spiritual terms it means any activity which re-connects us to the sense of the Divine within all humans.  Religion is about that endless search of all humanity for meaningful origin stories for creation, and discovering meaning for our own short lives within creation.

The world of science has been a challenge to religious thinking, since the Renaissance.  That’s a great pity, as far as I am concerned, since theology was once considered ‘the queen of the sciences’ – precisely because good theology has always used the scientific method of hypothesis, test, repeat, to deepen human understanding of that which is beyond our limited gaze.  For those with an open mind, science still has many unanswered questions, to which religion can sometimes provide helpful answers.

The obvious big unanswered questions remain the ones about origin and meaning.  Science teaches us, for example, about the Big Bang.  But it can’t tell us anything meaningful about what happened before the Big Bang.  Science can only hypothesise.  Was it, for example,  just a latest big bang in an eternity of an ever expanding and contracting Universe?  We’ll never know for sure. Did the trillions of stars and incalculable matter of the Universe really emerge from a tiny point in space, no bigger than a pencil dot?  Again, science can only hypothesize.  What about meaning?  We are hard-wired to search for it, but science has no answer to the question, except to hypothesize that we are the Universe observing itself, through our reasoning brains.  There are many other areas we could explore.  What is dark matter?  Are there multiple dimensions?  Could one of them be ‘heaven’? 

My point, though, is to say that it is tempting to assume that science has replaced religion, over the essential human questions of origin and meaning.  But, in reality, science really knows very little about those vital questions.  And so, I would argue, it is unwise to jettison the wisdom of the millennia of religious truth-seeking, in favour of the new kid on the block, of science. 

A more troubling aspect of science, is that it is frequently highjacked by greedy men, for their own purposes.  That is true of religion, of course, too.  But whilst the greedy men who highjack religion have done so mainly to feather their own nests, the high-jacking of science and technology is that it has global consequences.  Science has given us mass transportation, and the food to feed billions who are multiplying as a result of scientific advances in medicine.  But it is science that has also given us the ability to fill the air with pollutants, to carve up the earth for minerals, to lay waste to the forests, and to pollute our rivers, and to fill the world with plastic gadgets and gizmos.  All these things have happened because some human beings have had the will and the wit to use the advances of science to sell ‘meaning’ to the rest of us.

But the ‘queen of sciences’, theology, offers us a different lens of meaning, which might yet hold some of the answers to the global problems we are facing.  The religious myths of the world provide us with a moral framework in which to operate the tools of science.  At their heart, all religions have some common moral commands – which offer meaning, and teach restraint.  For example, you’ll have heard of the ‘Golden Rule’ – that great teaching common to all the major religions of the world, and most of the minor ones as well.  It goes like this:  ‘Do unto others as you would be done unto’.  Jesus, the Buddha, the Prophet Mohammed and many more have taught this rule. 

If (if only!) that rule were commonly taught, and commonly held, we might begin to imagine and entirely different world.  Shareholders of water companies might not permit sewerage to be pumped into our seas, because that’s not what they would want for themselves in their own seas – on whatever tropical island they reside.  Forests might no longer be cut down by shareholders who live happily in beautiful countryside, because they would think about how they would feel if someone cut down their local forests.   Native lands might no longer be excavated for minerals, because the owners of the mines would think about how they would feel if the land beneath their luxury villa was dug out from under them.

Another common theme among religions is the call to live lightly upon the earth.  These are captured in teachings of the great religious thinkers, like:

Christianity:  “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and vermin destroy, and thieves break in and steal”

Buddhism:  “The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”

Hinduism:  “The earth, the air, the fire, the water, they are all made of the same elements as our body.  So why do we continue to harm them?  We must learn to live in harmony with nature”

Judaism:  “Who is rich?  Those who are satisfied with what they have”  and “Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil”

Islam:  “The world is beautiful and verdant, and verily God has made you his stewards in it, and he see how you acquit yourselves”

Taoism:  Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

I hope you are grasping my central point here.  Science has given us amazing tools to improve the nasty, short and brutish life that most of us spend on earth.  But scientific progress devoid of meaning has led us to the brink of extinction as a species.  I would argue that only religion, in its broadest sense, can offer us a framework for stepping back from that brink, by reminding us of what our ancestors knew instinctively.  They knew that the earth, of which they were stewards, had rhythms and limits – and they learned to live in harmony with them.  Religion gave them a meaningful framework, and adequate myths, for living equitably with other humans, and with the planet, their home.  Whether their creation myth was of Mother Earth, or of a Creation by a god, religion offered them a way of seeing themselves in relationship to creation…not masters and exploiters of it, but stewards of it.

As a ‘religionist’ with a Judeo-Christian background, I can think of no more powerful myth than the story of Creation, as told in the Book of Genesis.  In one of the great Creation myths of the Bible (and there are at least three!) God builds a garden. It’s a delightful place full of all manner of animal and plant life.  Into the garden he places human beings, and he commands them to ‘take care of the garden’. 

Perhaps, I suggest, that one phrase, ‘take care of the garden’ could become a new rallying cry for the Green movement.  It has religious roots, which are deep enough for anyone with the time and inclination to explore.  It contains a sense of command, and of urgency, that our world needs to hear.  It implies the wise use of technology, and it implies purpose.  It presumes that the garden, if taken care of, will abide for ever.  Yes, my friends, let’s ‘take care of the garden’ – and teach the world to do the same.

 

I remember two of the questions that were asked after this talk.

Q. Do you think God will solve the climate catastrophe?

A:  It depends on what kind of god you have in mind in your question.  If you picture God as some kind of Santa Claus in the sky, rewarding his children or punishing them depending on whether they are naughty or nice, then No.  But if you see God as the creative and loving source of every positive human action, inspiring and leading us to become all that we can be…then yes, I could see God helping us to save ourselves, if we listen to the still small voice within.

Q.  Why should we trust religion when all they do is fight each other and exploit others?

A.  I always say ‘judge a religion by the teaching of its founder, not by the idiots who pretend to follow the teachings, but pervert them to their own ends.  Every organization, political party, even football clubs attract people who are on their own power-trip.  But that doesn’t negate the essential core of what each organization, including religions, are teaching.

 

A Christian nation?

Matthew 16:21-28 & Romans 12:9-21

During this last week, the Times published the results of a poll of Church of England clergy.  It’s caused quite a stir in many places.  Given that many of you will have read the survey for yourselves, or at least heard about it, I think it might be helpful if I were to tackle some of its results head on.

The survey contained a number of statistics about the clergy’s shifting attitudes towards same-sex weddings and blessings, as well as other aspects of public morality and the still vexed question of women priests and bishops.  Most of these statistics give hope to people like me, who pray, daily for a less condemnatory tone from the church.  But, of course, such statistics are grist to the mill of those who want to condemn the Church of England for being ‘woke’.  Personally, I don’t mind being called ‘woke’, if the definition of woke is to be someone who is awake to the issues of discrimination and prejudice in our society.  I DO object, however, to being labelled as one of the ‘tofu-eating wokerati’ which our Home Secretary so memorably called out recently.  I’ve never eaten tofu in my life!

The Times itself, as the publisher of the clergy survey, fixed its headline on a rather more national issue.  Two-thirds of the clergy surveyed declared, apparently, that Britain could no longer be called a Christian country.  This, my friends, came as no surprise to me.  Had I been invited to participate in the survey, and had I found the time to answer it, I would have said exactly the same.  In fact, it seems to me that Britain has not been a Christian country for a very long time indeed.

You may wonder why I say this – so let me invite you to think about the issue with me.  For a country to describe itself as ‘Christian’, logic dictates that such a country would deliberately follow the teachings of Christ and his apostles, in the way that it orders its life and institutions.   A definably Christian country would be to do the hard work of making Christ’s teachings a reality in our common life.  Our two readings of today offer us some rather good examples of what that teaching encompasses.

Take St Paul, writing to the Romans.  Let me just pick a few nuggets out of what Paul advises.  First, he says, “hate what is evil and hold fast to what is good”.  There is so much in our society and nation that could be described clearly as evil – and which we yet tolerate.  I mean evils like gambling, excess drinking, pornography, and – perhaps most pernicious of all - the excess accumulation of wealth by a tiny minority.

What else does St Paul advise?  He instructs the Roman Christians to ‘extend hospitality to strangers’.  Now, of course, I realise that the migration crisis of today has no real parallel to biblical times.  But a truly Christian nation would be asking itself hard questions about the language and rhetoric being employed on the subject of strangers in our midst today.  We would, in Paul’s words, ‘take thought for what is noble in the sight of all’.  

If that’s Paul’s perspective on how a Christian community operates, what about Jesus?  He, naturally, goes for the jugular.  ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’.  A Christian community, or nation, is defined – at least partly - by the extent to which it sacrifices itself for the good of others.  There is some sacrifice by our nation.  We do give aid to other countries, and as a population, we are notoriously generous to mass fundraising events, like Comic Relief and Live Aid.  But when we drill into some hard statistics, the news is not good…

The World Giving Index is an annual report which ranks over 140 countries in the world according to how charitable they are.  It may surprise you to learn that the United Kingdom ranks only 17th on the list.  Ahead of us, in terms of charitable giving, Indonesia (a Muslim country) is number 1.  Then, also ahead of us, are the likes of Kenya, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Zambia and, believe it or not, Ukraine.  It is remarkable, isn’t it, that some of the poorest countries in the world are also the most charitable?

Another key metric is the amount of tax paid for the common good by country – taxes which are meant for the benefit of all, especially those least able to care for themselves.  The top 10 countries for tax rates include the likes of Denmark, Austria, Finland, Sweden, Israel and Belgium – all well known for having strong health and education services, generous pensions for the elderly, and high indices of general happiness – but all with tax burdens of around 50%.  The UK is nowhere near the top 10 of such countries, with a tax burden of only 33%.

No my friends, in a comparison with Jesus’ teaching about taking up our cross, our nation can only barely claim to be called Christian, in terms of charity or the amount we agree to give for the benefit of the whole community through tax.

Jesus goes on in terms which are not difficult to relate to the rise and fall of the British Empire:  “for what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”.  There are some who look back with pride to the days when Britannia ruled the waves, and vast swathes of the World were coloured pink. But what did it profit us to have gained, practically, the whole world?  What aspect of our life did we forfeit?  Startlingly, if we rank countries by gross domestic product per head of population, the United Kingdom now doesn’t even make it into the top 20 nations of the world.  

Our once proud Christian nation is undoubtedly no longer so. We live in post-Christian Britain.  

In terms of our public morality around gambling, drinking and pornography we’re in decline.  

In terms of the high standards we should expect of our leaders, we’re in decline.  

In terms of the way we care for our ‘widows and the poor’ through our miserly benefit system, we’re in decline.  

In terms of the the way we dispense justice through our collapsing court system, the extent to which we give charity, our ability to heal one another through a crumbling health service, the way we unapologetically celebrate wealth and idolise fame, we are in obvsious steep decline.

There are SO many ways in which our national life barely resembles anything that a truly Christian country should look like.

But, my friends, there is hope.  Jesus died to save the World – and our little post-Christian nation is included in his sacrifice.  It is not too late, in Jesus words, for us to take up our collective, national cross of sacrifice.  It is not too late for us to declare the year of the Lord’s favour, to raise up the poor and broken-hearted, to set free the captives.  It is not too late, in Paul’s words, for us to hold on to what is good, to hate what is evil, to live in harmony with one other, to associate with the lowly, to take thought for what is noble in the sight of all, and to live peaceably with all.  Let us never cease from praying the prayer of Jesus himself – Thy Kingdom Come!  Amen!

Boasting for Jesus

Texts: John 13.16-20  & 1 Corinthians 9.16-19

Last week, as I’m sure you remember, I pondered the value of service both to the receiver and the giver of acts of love.  That theme of servanthood continues in today’s readings, thanks to the Lectionary – only, this time, there is a critical edge to the words we read.

First, in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, we can infer (from what he says) that he’s having a bit of a problem with the troublesome church in Corinth.  Much of his letter addresses matters of church discipline – and particularly focuses on inappropriate use of the gifts of the Spirit.  But today, we hear a note of frustration on the topic of boasting.  Paul starts this portion of his letter by saying ‘if I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting…’, which we infer means that the Corinthians were doing entirely the opposite. 

They had fallen prey to that most pernicious of problems in all religions; the sin of religious pride.  Perhaps, after the initial excitement of their conversion, the Corinthian Christians had started to pump themselves up as being superior to believers of other religions.  We can imagine them standing in the town square, railing at the crowd about how sinful they were, and about how the only way to be saved was through faith in Jesus.  The trouble is that a significant portion of the members of all religions have this tendency.  Amongst certain strains of Islam, for example, anyone who isn’t a Muslim is described as an ‘infidel’ (which means ‘unfaithful one’).  There is a built in superiority in certain kinds of people who claim that what they believe is the only faith that matters. 

We see this tendency today among certain sections of the church.  There are strains of Christianity which teach that all other so-called Christians are, in fact, apostate sinners condemned to hell.  Maybe that’s because such ‘sinners’ have a different attitude to Scripture, or they believe in welcoming people of varying sexuality, or they are criticised for letting tradition get in the way of the Spirit.  But among the most boastful sects of Christianity are those who hold in contempt anyone who doesn’t believe exactly what the sect believes.  That might be about, say, the meaning of the Cross, the coming of End Times, the Creation of the Earth, and the infallibility of Scripture.  Such people are labelled as ‘back-sliders’, at best, or ‘heretics’ at worst.

Which is a shame because I count myself among those who tend to have a rather more flexible, open approach to Scripture and its teachings.  My yardstick for deciding what is important in the Bible is Jesus himself – at least the Jesus presented to us by the Gospels’ sometimes competing and contradictory accounts. 

In our Gospel we read Jesus’ teaching that no servant is greater than their master, and no messenger is greater than the one who sent them.  Jesus is clearly warning his followers not to get ahead of themselves, and especially not to imagine that their ideas about God, theology and the world are of more import than the clear and plain teaching of Jesus.  Jesus spoke plainly, or in easy-to-understand parables about a whole host of subjects.  He left us in no doubt about how we were to live with God and with one another.

So when people turn to pages of the Bible to justify their own prejudices on a whole variety of topics, I find myself wanting to check their views against the published teachings of Jesus.  So, what did Jesus say about whether the world was made in six days?  Nothing.  What did Jesus teach about the meaning of his death?  Only that he had to die for the sins of the world – nothing about how his death would achieve that, nothing about paying a ransom to the devil, or paying the price for our sin, or appeasing the wrath of God.  He just said that he would pour out his life for the sins of the world. 

What did Jesus say about homosexual relationships, or about transgender politics?  Absolutely nothing.  But he did teach about the importance of love, and committed faithfulness in human relationships.

What did Jesus say about how to treat refugees and strangers?  He told a story of a hated Samaritan who turned out to be a blessing on one who would have labelled him a stranger.  He welcomed Romans, Samaritans, and gentiles of all kinds into his circle of love.

What did Jesus teach about whether women could be priests?  Nothing.  But he did include women among his wider circle of disciples – something unknown for any other Jewish Rabbi.

What did Jesus teach about wealth and possessions?  That hoarding them is stupid.

Do you see the point I’m making?  We human beings are very good at religious pride.  We are very good at nicking odd bits of Scripture, written for a desert tribe between two and three thousand years ago, and then quoting those Scriptures boastfully to claim that our version of the Gospel is the only Truth.

Instead, I recommend, we are invited to bring Jesus to the fore.  Let’s explore what God is like, and how we should live with each other, through the lens of Jesus: the one man in human history who could claim that God was his Father, in a real and literal sense.  After all, like Paul, we have a gospel – good news – to proclaim.  It’s the good news that God is real, though we’ll never grasp God’s infinite immensity.  It’s the good news that God loves us, and created us – never mind how or when.  It’s the good news that he sent Jesus to show us what the father-heart of God is like, and to teach us how to love each other, and live with each other.  Perhaps we would do best to return to the gospels, and see the world through the lens of Jesus Christ.  Now that would be something worth boasting about.

Amen.

Serving and Served - the true Christian Life

See Luke 22:24-30

As Max Bygraves used to say, “I wanna tell you a story”.  I picked this one up on Facebook, recently, and it touched me….

When I asked my 11-year-old son to help me unload dirt from our small pickup into his mother’s new garden boxes, his reaction was typical.

“Ummmm… I’m busy right now,” He said.

He was playing a game on the family laptop, wearing sweat pants and an old T-shirt, lounging on the sofa, feet on the coffee table.

“No you’re not,” I said.

There was a fight, moaning, excuses... the usual.

Moments later, we were next to a wheelbarrow shoveling dirt. He looked at me with flat eyes, his hood up, shoulders slumped, and said, “Why do we have to do this?”

I thought for a moment, because I’ll admit, it was a valid question. Neither of us were all that into flowers or vegetables, or any of the things that would be grown in those garden boxes. But my wife, Mel, loves gardening.

I thought, and he waited, and finally I said, “When you love someone, you serve them.”

I went on, telling him that I want him to grow up to be the kind of man who serves his family, friends, and community.

“This” I said while gesturing to the dirt, and the garden boxes I built the weekend before, and the wheelbarrow and shovel, and the first of many truckloads of dirt we would unload over the next few weeks, “Is what love looks like.”

He didn’t like my answer. I could see it in the way he reluctantly picked his shovel back up.

We finished unloading the dirt. The next day, while I was at work, and the kids and Mel had the day off because it was between terms, Mel sent me a picture.  Mel had picked up another load of dirt and before she had a chance to unload it, Tristan voluntarily started working. When she asked him “why,” he shrugged and said, “Because I love you.”

I’d never been prouder of my son."

That’s a beautiful story isn’t it.  It places service to others, and love for each other, at the core of a family relationship.  And for me, it stands as a model of what service to each other in the Christian family should be too.

Giving service to one another is a core principle of the Christian faith.  It is why all of us ministers, including Bishops, are first ordained as deacons, before anything else.  (The word ‘deacon’ comes from a Greek word that means ‘servant’).  Jesus modelled that same servanthood, not only in giving his life for us, but also by healing, teaching and leading.  Leadership is, in Jesus’ terms, another kind of service.  The best leaders seek nothing for themselves from the job of leading – only the satisfaction of seeing a community move forward.

The word ‘minister’ also points us to this notion of service.  And of course it is used not just of Christian leaders, but also ministers of the Government.  The word implies that the first and greatest duty of all Government leaders is to serve the people who elected them, without fear of favour, and never for personal gain.  Perhaps that is why we are so cross when any minister, in the church or in the government, appears to be feathering their own nest, rather than pouring out their lives in service to others.

The principle of service goes much deeper than just the leaders of the church, however.  It applies to all Christians, at every level of the church.  This idea is exemplified in that lovely hymn ‘Brother, Sister, let me serve you; let me be as Christ to you’.  When the call to service has been heard by every member of a church community, we can have real confidence that the Spirit of God is powerfully at work among us.

But what about those who feel too weak, or too poor, or too sick to offer service?  Does that exclude them from the Christian life of serving and loving others.  Not at all.  I have sat with many a sick person who struggles with the fact that they are no longer well enough to serve others.  They miss the sense of purpose that serving others gave them.  They miss the joy of giving service.  To such people, I always ask a question.  I say “Did you derive pleasure or satisfaction from your acts of service?’.  (They always say yes!).  “Then,” I say “now is your opportunity to let others gain that same sense of pleasure or satisfaction.  Your incapacity, at this point in your life, is your chance to give a gift of vulnerability.  Your vulnerability gives space for others to serve.  It is your gift to them.  Your vulnerability is, in fact, a service you can offer, in itself”.  I usually find that people feel better about themselves after that little talk!

You see, there is something intrinsically powerful in the giving and receiving of service.  When service is offered freely, without cost, and without looking for reward, it can bring surprising reward of its own.  If I sit with a homeless person feeling superior and powerful, with the power to either improve their life or leave them in the same state that I found them, then I have missed the deeper potential of my act of service.  I’ve missed the fact that the homeless person brings to that moment everything they have experienced, all they have learned about themselves, God, and the community.  If I set out only to serve, but not to BE served, I miss what God wants to give me through the transaction of service.  If, however, I sit with the homeless person with an openness to hearing how we can serve each other, then a new and vital relationship is likely to form. 

This is something of the heart of God that I detected in that story I started with.  The young boy, eventually, carried out his act of service out of love for his mother.  But what the story doesn’t explicitly say is that the Mother also served the boy – not least by growing and preparing food in the planters he was filling.  His father served the boy by awakening him to the depth of love he felt for his mother.  Service then, became reciprocal and shared.  The boy served his Mum, his mum served him, the father in the story served them both – and all were bound together in love.

This is something  of what the church means when it talks about the Trinity.  Each member of the Trinity is bound in love to the others.  From that love, service breaks forth – and those acts of service breathe the Universe into life.

Service then is one of the most profound things that a Christian can do.  It is life-giving to the one who receives service, AND to the one who gives it.  Service was at the core of Jesus ministry, and it is at the core of the Christian Way.  So let me leave you with this question:  what service will you offer and receive today?  Amen.