VJ Day Sermon 2015

Sermon on the 70th Anniversary Commemoration of VJ Day - August 16th 2015

War is, without doubt, the most destructive force on our planet.  Forget earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes.  Their destructive power – though often immense for a few hours – pales into insignificance against the destructive power of war.  The destruction of cities, the millions of victims of any world-wide conflict, the destruction of whole economies and entire races of human beings – these are just some of the effects of war.

Nuclear war cranks up the destructive potential to an even greater height.  It was Albert Einstein, reflecting on the pure destructive potential of the weapon he helped to create who said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”  He understood that a worldwide nuclear war had the potential to push the human race back into the Stone Age.

And yet, War is an inevitable and, it seems, ever-present aspect of human nature.  So, what can we learn from the wars of the past (let alone the wars of today)?   On this 70th anniversary of the surrender of Japan, perhaps it is worth a look at the causes of that particular conflict.

Between 1928 and 1932, Japan faced domestic crisis.  The Great Depression which affected the whole world also affected Japan.  There were spiralling prices, economic collapse, unemployment, falling exports and social unrest.  In November 1930, the Prime Minister of Japan was shot by an ultra-nationalist.  In 1932, the army tried to assassinate the next Prime Minister, and ultimately the military seized control of the country.  Between 1932 and 1936, admirals ruled Japan.  Confident and arrogant, they believed that the whole of Asia should be ruled by them – as a way out of economic collapse.  China was invaded, and in response, in 1941, the United States announced a punitive oil embargo.  For the Japanese leaders, that move was a perfect pretext for war, unleashed in December 1941 with the Pearl Harbour attack.

The rest, as they say, is history – including the history that some here today, like Bill Marshall and Govan Easton lived through in all its horror.  But it is the history behind the history from which we need to learn.  The conditions which prompted the rise of the Japanese military machine are similar to those that led to the rise of Hitler, half a world away.  Market forces in crisis, spiralling debt, unemployment and poverty – however caused.  It is when economies go bad that people look to extremist leaders for solutions.

That is, of course, precisely why so many people in the Middle East are following the mad mullahs of ISIL today.  Have you seen how they live?  Have you seen the poverty of shanty towns, unemployment on a massive scale, lives shackled by debt owed to Western banks and institutions?  People who are downtrodden by debt and poverty look for someone to blame.  It is not hard for their leaders to point the finger at us, with all our stored up wealth.  All that ISIL then has to do is remind their followers that many Americans and British people are Christians – and a war about economics quickly becomes a war about faith.  People will blow themselves up for a belief.  They will fly into skyscrapers for the promise of heaven.

War is what happens when language fails, and when we focus our angst, our fears, our problems on some other easily identified group.  For the Nazis, it was the Jews.  For the Japanese, it was the ‘evil Americans’ and their allies.  Today, for billions of people throughout the world, the West is perceived as ‘the great Satan’.  To those who live in abject poverty, shanty towns and starvation, we who live in relative comfort with our bank accounts and shares are seen as the problem.  Our apparent refusal to share our wealth, our insistence on closed borders, our pre-occupation with pleasure-seeking, these are all hated by the rest of the world in their misery and poverty.

Of course, our own perspective is entirely different.   Today, we give thanks for 70 years of peace in our own land.  For us at home, life has been peaceful.  We have been able to go about quietly building our society, largely without the fear of doodle-bugs or other bombs dropping onto us.

But in fact, such peace at home is largely an illusion.  British Troops have been involved in wars all over the planet – since 1945.  Many of you will remember such wars – many of you have even fought in them.  Greece, Malaya, Korea, Egypt, Kenya, Cyprus, Indonesia, Dhofar, Aden, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Lebanon, the Gulf War, Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Iraq (again), Libya, and now ISIL.

To imagine that the Second World War was the last Great War is to be naive in the extreme.  There has never been a ‘war to end all wars’.  And there never will be – for as long as human beings choose violence over talking, self-preservation over sharing, hatred of the ‘other’ over love of neighbour.

But there is another way.  Writing around 2,700 years ago, the Hebrew prophet Micah dreamed of a day when all the peoples of the earth would ‘learn the ways of God’.  “He will teach us his ways”, said Micah, “so that we will walk in his paths”.  “He will settle the disputes between peoples, and they will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.  Everyone will sit in peace under their own vine, and no-one will make them afraid”.

This peace will only come about when the peoples of the earth finally accept the rule and governorship of God.  Such peace will only come about when the people of the earth begin to take seriously what God meant when he told us to love our neighbours as ourselves – a message repeated again and again through the Hebrew Scriptures, and taken up with vigour by Jesus of Nazareth.  Only when we stop keeping the best stuff for ourselves, being content to watch our neighbours in other lands starve and die, will the world ever find the peace for which we all yearn.

If we will let him, the Lord will indeed be our Shepherd.  If we will follow his ways, he will indeed lead us beside still waters.  Our cups will indeed overflow.

But how will this be achieved?  There is no other way but the way of changing one person at a time.  To quote Mahatma Ghandi, ‘if you change yourself, you will change your world’.

So today, we give thanks for the 70 years of relative peace we have enjoyed here in Britain.  We remember, once again, those who gave their lives – or who were forced to give up their lives – for our peace. Today we especially pay tribute to those who endured the horror of the Death Railway and the Far East prisons. We remember, too, the innocent children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – those who never raised a weapon against any one of us.  We remember them, and all those who have sacrificed themselves, or who were sacrificed, in the vast number of conflicts ever since.

But let us not simply remember them.  Let us honour their sacrifice with a sacrifice of our own.  Let us, each one, commit ourselves to living differently from today.  Let us put aside the lure of wealth, and the pettiness of nationality, and realise that we are all, each one, children of the same God.  Let us learn from him, and follow his ways…so that perhaps, one day, such commemorations as this will no longer be necessary.

Amen

The Passion of the Christ

A Short Homily on the day of the Performance of the Havant Passion Play

Reading:  John 6.51-58

I wonder how many of you saw yesterday’s production of the Havant Passion, in the park.  If you missed it, there is another opportunity this afternoon at 3pm.

I also wonder how many of you have dared to sit through Mel Gibson’s 2007 film, ‘The Passion of the Christ’.  Gibson went to great lengths to make his telling of the Passion as authentic as possible (at least as far as he could tell).  The result, I have to warn you, is rather shocking.  Hollywood must have got through a lot of bottles of tomato ketchup in the making of that film!

The challenge of the Passion Story is of course to get a mental grip on what the suffering and death of Jesus really meant.  Jesus’ death has held a variety of powerful meanings for Christians – and in theological circles, it remains a topic of hot debate.  Here are just three of the main focuses for that debate…

Sacrifice for Sin:  Many Christians believe that human wrong-doing (sin) makes it impossible to be with God (the source of all purity and love).  Such sin can, however, be wiped away through the payment of a death penalty.  By dying in our place Jesus ‘paid the price’ and opened the way for us to be forgiven and restored as children of God.  This, many believe, is how Jesus ‘saves’ us from ourselves, our human folly, and even from Hell.

Redemption: Some Christians believe that our sins effectively make us slaves of the Devil or Satan (though others use the Devil only as a metaphor for sin).  Through his death, Jesus ‘redeemed’ us (like redeeming a hostage from a kidnapper) by paying the Devil a ‘redemption’ in the form of his own blood.  “O Perfect redemption, the purchase of God…”

The Great Example:  Jesus was willing to be executed by the violent forces of power and  influence of his day (the Roman authorities, and the religious leaders).  He did this, many believe, to demonstrate powerfully what happens when violent power, bad politics and human greed are allowed to control society.  The weak and defenceless are left to die, and God gets pushed out to the margins of society.

Christians have debated these (and other, still deeper) interpretations for centuries. New meanings of ‘The Cross’ are always waiting to be discovered.  It fascinates me, however, that Jesus himself said very little about the actual meaning of his death.  Nowhere in the Gospels does is he recorded as giving the kind of clear theological and intellectual meaning that we humans crave.  According to the Gospels, Jesus talked about his blood as ‘poured out for the sins of many’ (which points to the idea of sacrifice) and as the ‘wine of the new covenant’ (which implies that his blood is the seal of a new contract between humans and God).  But Jesus doesn’t get any more specific than that.  “Do this,” he says, “in memory of me – as often as you eat it”.

So, in Jesus’ words, as with so much of his teaching, there are quite deliberate layers upon layers of meaning.  As we see in today’s Gospel, those who heard him speak were just as perplexed.  ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ asked the Jews…clearly failing to understand the way that Jesus spoke in metaphors.

I have personally struggled with the meaning of Jesus’ passion for many years.  I’ve read hundreds of different theologians’ take on it.  I could lecture you for hours on the deeper possible layers of meaning that his passionate act of Sacrifice has for so many different people!  But I won’t.  There isn’t time today!

Instead, let me offer you this thought.  Following Jesus is not so much about precisely what you believe, but about how you follow Jesus.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus didn’t tell his followers exactly what to believe about his flesh that they were supposed to eat, or his blood that they were supposed to drink.  Rather, he simply says ‘eat’ and ‘drink’.  It’s a little bit like a parent who says to their child…”do as I say.  Don’t ask why.  Just do it!”.

Following Jesus is an act of faith, not an act of belief.  We can choose to believe all sorts of theological theories about Jesus.  But at the end of the day, Jesus calls out ‘Follow Me’.  Have faith in me. Live as I call you to live.  Live openly & generously.  Give freely, and you will receive.  Give up your life, and you will have life.  Love God and love your neighbour as yourself.  That’s the key, that’s the heart of it.

Don’t get hung up on the theological niceties…but rather, as the old hymn says:  Trust and obey, for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.

Amen.

The Mass, the Eucharist, the Holy Communion or the Lord's Supper?

Today, I want to focus on something that we do, every week, year in and year out.  I'm speaking of course, about the Mass, or the Holy Communion, or the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist....whatever your favourite name for this service is!

Actually, all these different names are important...because they spring out of the ongoing debates in the church, all around the world, about the primary meaning of this liturgy.  Those who use the word 'Eucharist' are drawing from the Greek word 'eucharistia' which means 'thanksgiving'.  For them, the key moment of this service is the eucharistic, or thanksgiving prayer, during which the people of God are reminded of God's actions in the world and in their lives through Christ and the Holy Spirit.  The Eucharist is where we give thanks to God for the sacrificial death of Christ, and commit ourselves to live new lives following his example.

For those who prefer the term Holy Communion, it is the more 'communal' aspects of the service which are important.  Through the liturgy, the 'community' comes together, and communes with God and one another, before going out to love and serve the Lord in the community.  It is that 'communal' emphasis that has led the Church of England to mainly prefer the title 'Holy Communion' than some of the other options.  We are a parish church, called to serve a certain parish, in a certain community.  We invite others to an ever more Holy Way of being in communion, and in community.

The Lord's Supper is a term mainly used by the 'non-conformist' churches - those who do not conform to all the teachings of the orthodox and catholic versions of Christianity.  Most Lord's Suppers are a very stripped-back, bare version of the liturgy.  The main focus is the meal of bread and wine, which is consumed (mainly) as a memorial of Christ's death.  A ‘Lord's Supper’ tends to focus on the meal as a historical event, rather than (as the traditional churches teach) something which is still happening today. 

For a non-conformist, (and for most evangelicals) the bread and the wine are merely tokens, rather than something which by the Holy Spirit, is mysteriously transformed into the body and blood of Jesus - whether that is meant spiritually or literally.  The piece of furniture on which this happens is called the Lord's Table, rather than an Altar - because non-conformists prefer to believe that what happened once cannot be repeated again.  For them, the sacrifice of Christ was made once for all, and cannot be repeated.  Those who prefer the term Altar claim that in some spiritual sense Christ continues to sacrifice himself again and again for the life of the world...and therefore, the place on which this Sacrifice is made present would be called an Altar.

There are many, many other names for this central feast of the Christian Church, and many many ways of interpreting all the different elements that it includes.  For example, some Christians call this 'The Table of the Lord' - the 'Mensa Domini'.  Some call it 'the Lord's Body' - the Corpus Domini.  Some call it the 'Holy of Holies' - the 'Sanctissimum', or the 'Eulogia' (the Blessing) or the Synaxis (the Assembly).  And there are others! 

The main alternative that I suspect you have all heard is of course ‘The Mass’.  There are debates around where that particular title came from.  One idea is that the word comes from the same root as the word 'Mess' - as is used on ships all over the world.  It’s the place of 'the Meal' - so the The Mass is The Meal.  Another suggestion is that ‘Mass’ comes from the Latin words of dismissal, at the end of the service:  "Ite, Missa Est', which directly translates as 'Go, the dismissal is made'.  In other words…'You are sent' - emphasising that having received the spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist, we are sent out into the world 'to love and serve the Lord'.

And all of this is very interesting...especially to a geek like me!  But of course, the real question is this:  what is the Service for?!  What is its fundamental purpose?  Why do we do it, and why should we continue doing it?

Surprisingly, one of the most profound answers that I've found to these questions comes from an Atheist… 

The philosopher Alain de Botton has written a description of what he calls 'the Mass', which is well worth hearing.  (This is part of his book "Religion for Athiests: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion").  He argues that Atheists need to learn from the Church.   For example, he praises the Mass for the way that it brings people together in community around a meal.  He points out that with declining church attendance we have seen an exponential rise in Restaurants - But, he points out, Restaurants fail to "introduce patrons to one another, to dispel their mutual suspicions, to break up the clans into which people chronically segregate themselves”.  The focus is on the food and the decor, never on opportunities for extending and deepening affections”.

In contrast, de Botton says these things about the Mass...” Those in attendance tend not to be uniformly of the same age, race, profession or educational or income level; they are a random sampling of souls united only by their shared commitment to certain values"

The Mass "should inspire visitors to suspend their customary frightened egoism in favour of joyful immersion in a collective spirit - an unlikely scenario in the majority of modern community centres"

These are all brilliant observations, I think.  De Botton goes on to suggest the formation of Agape Restaurants, where patrons are mixed up, and forced to sit with people they don’t normally mix with.  They should be places where people are challenged to think about life, and their place in it.  

I rather like the idea of Agape Restaurant.  In fact such restaurants already exist in many churches.  We have one, just like that, in Havant, in the Pastoral Centre with the Methodist Church.  So does the Portsdown Community Church, at the Beacon. There’s also the Meeting Place at the URC.  This is what Authentic Christians do - we take a simple idea from the normal plane of modern existence...in our case, the idea of eating together.  Then we transform it, with God's help, into something holy, by introducing the idea of community - teaching people to love their neighbour as they love themselves.  We give every visitor a warm welcome, and the chance, if they wish, to think about the deep questions of existence.

And that is what the Mass, or the Holy Communion, is ultimately about.  It's the place where people from all walks of life can come together, united by a common Vision of what the world could be like.  We are united by a common understanding that none of us is free of sin, and we all need to give and receive forgiveness...from God and each other.  We are united by a common meal, in which we take into ourselves the very stuff of God, in bread and wine; we take in sustenance for the next stage of our life...whether that be the next day, or the next month. 

And we do other vital things too.  Together, we recite historic words of faith, like the Creed.  Many of us might struggle with the actual theology  of some of the words we recite, but nevertheless they tie us to the previous generations who have believed before us. Together we offer up the world, in all its chaos and pain, and challenge ourselves to be part of the solution to the world's problems.  We share peace with each other...even with people who we would normally not think of as friends.  And together, we commit ourselves to going out in the name of Christ, to love and serve the world.

What could be a more appropriate and magnificent thing for followers of Jesus - to do?

Amen.

The Death of John the Baptist

The Death of John the Baptist

(Amos 7.7-15, Ephesians 1.3-14, Mark 6, 14-29)

Putting your head above the parapet is a very dangerous thing to do.  You’re quite likely to lose it.  And yet, that is what God has consistently called his people to do throughout the centuries. 

In the early days of recorded human history, the Jewish nation came to believe that God had called them to put their heads above the parapet.  They believed that through Patriarchs like Moses, God had called them to be a people through which the whole world would be changed, redeemed and saved.  This was to be a way of life that was completely at odds with the way people used to live in those days.  It was a way of life which included ideas like,

welcoming the stranger

sharing of wealth

a prohibition on usury (or the charging of interest).

and the very notion of charity. 

God called his people to willingly surrender some of their wealth for the good of the whole community.  Widows, orphans, strangers, the sick – all could be embraced and cared-for.  No-one would be exploited through the charging of interest.  All would be welcome.

And they were to do all this despite the pressures and the temptations of the world and the nations around them… nations who sought to conquer them and take over Jewish lands.  God promised them that if they would live according to his laws, they would prosper, despite the pressure on their borders.

But, the Jews were (and are) made of the same stuff as you and me.  Time and time again, they, like us, failed to live up to God’s call to be radically different to the rest of the world.  They were tempted by the allure of gold and power, and gave up the laws of God.  They failed to abide by the rules of Jubilee and Charity and purity.  The rich and powerful grew fatter, while the poor went hungry. 

God, however, did not give up on his people.  He sent them prophets, men who put their heads above the parapet, to remind people of God’s laws, and to call the people to repent.  We heard just now a small snippet of the book of Amos, who was one such prophet.  Amos lived about 750 years before Christ, at a time when the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were peaking in prosperity.  The rulers of the Kingdoms at that time had never had it so good.  International commerce was flourishing.   But as a result, the peasant farmers were being forced to grow crops that would make more money for their masters – like wine and olive oil for the rich to consume, instead of grain for bread. The rich oppressed the poor.  Might was right.  Profit was king.

Amos was himself a farmer and a herdsman.  Out of his own experience, God calls him to go to the capital city – and there he puts his head above the parapet – loudly proclaiming the iniquity of the current economic system.  He became a Prophet against profit.  (Did you see what I did there?) 

But, as you might imagine, this doesn’t go down very well with the people who have the power.  Amaziah, for example, was a priest of the Temple of the Golden Calf…and he was particularly upset.  The Golden Calf was a symbol of the wealth of the nation.  People prayed to the Calf for their own wealth…praying to be raised out of their own poverty.  It was rather like the way that people today buy lottery tickets in the hope of great wealth.  The people of Israel sacrificed desperately to the Golden Calf…and the priests lived off the sacrifices.  Amaziah was their priest – and he didn’t want Amos to upset his rather comfortable apple-cart.  He incited the crowd to beat Amos up.  Amaziah ridiculed the prophet, and warned him to get out of town.

Prophets against profit are never very popular.  And that was the pattern throughout the Bible’s history.  Time and time again, the prophets called the people back to the ways of God.  John the Baptist was the last in this long line of ancient prophets.  He too stood up against the powerful elites of his day – especially the vassal King Herod.  Herod was a puppet of the Roman authorities, but he lived in a fine palace, held lavish parties, and kept on partying while his people suffered and squirmed under the ‘might is right’ domination of Rome.  John the Baptist cried out against Herod…against his lifestyle, his love of wealth and profit and his iniquitous inter-marriage to his brother’s wife. He put his head above the parapet…and for his trouble, got himself locked up in Herod’s dungeon, then had his head removed.

There are of course many other juicy themes I’d like to explore about the death of John the Baptist.  The whole topic of the use of sex and seduction to obtain immoral ends is particularly juicy!  But I don’t want to over-stay my welcome.

Let me just conclude with these thoughts.  When the Bible speaks about the human beings of history, it describes us too. It reads us.  Human nature does not change.  There will always be wealthy elites, who will manipulate the power they have been given, or that they have taken, to oppress the poor. 

And, while it reads us, the Bible also calls to us…the modern day people of God…the new Israel.  We are the people who, as Paul said (while writing to the Ephesians in our second lesson) have had “made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ”. (Eph 1.9).  We cannot be in any doubt about this.  God has made abundantly clear, through the pages of the Bible the ‘mystery of his will’.  We cannot be in any doubt that the way the world is structured is absolutely and fundamentally flawed.  Wealthy elites have sway in our world – perhaps even more than in biblical times.  Something like 90% of the world’s wealth is owned by 10% of its population.  The poor are trampled on, or turned into slaves to work in the seat-shops and factories that support the wealthy elite.  Golden Calves are erected to give people hope.  They are called things like ‘the American Dream’, or given fancy labels like ‘equality of opportunity’…when in reality, all the opportunity is exclusively reserved for the sons and daughters of the elite. 

Into this sinful, depraved, iniquitous system…the Bible speaks loudly and clearly the ‘mystery of God’s will’ – his mysterious upside down view of the way the world should be.  Blessed are the poor…for theirs is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are the meek…for they will, ultimately, inherit the earth when the Great Day of the Lord comes.  Blessed are the peacemakers…for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  We have the words of Mary, echoing Hannah the mother of another prophet, Samuel…”He will put down the mighty from their seats, and exalt the humble and meek.  He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away”. 

Our task…our fundamental task…our mission…our calling is crystal clear.  We are called to co-operate with God in the building of a completely different way of life…establishing a Kingdom in which all can flourish, and everyone can thrive.  That’s what it means to be a follower of Christ.  In Paul’s words, we have been “adopted as his children through Jesus Christ” – we are the new people of Israel.  We, like Israel before us, are called to live holy and blameless lives.  We are called to declare the promises of God to the whole world, living by the light of “him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will”.  The great Day of Lord that Amos foretold will come.  The rich will be sent empty away.  The poor will be raised up and the meek will inherit the earth. 

But what does this calling actually mean for us?  What does it mean, as we considered last week, for us to ‘act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God’? 

On a personal level, you need to work that out for yourself.  What is God calling you to do differently as a result of understanding this calling?  What power do you hold over others that he calls you to relinquish?  How can you be more self-emptying, more uplifting of the poor and the down-trodden people you encounter in your life?  We need to work these things out for ourselves.  We need to take time to listen to God’s call on our individual lives.  Many of us live remarkably comfortable lives, don’t we?  Could it be that God is stirring us up to more fully ‘live for the praise of his glory’ (in the words of St Paul - Eph 1.12)?  Could you bring a tin of food for the food-bank?  Could you offer to visit one of the lonely and housebound members of this community?  Could you give up some sofa-time to improve our community facilities?  Could you sacrifice some of your personal financial resources for the work of the Kingdom? You need to answer these questions for yourself.

But as a community, I think God is speaking loudly and clearly.  Through our Mission Development Plan, he is calling us to build community structures that speak loudly and clearly of Kingdom Values.  There are physical spaces like our church building and our community halls in which the lives of the very poorest can be transformed into something at least approaching God’s counsel and will.  That’s why we are bending ourselves towards the task of restoring our church hall.  That’s why we are improving our church building. 

But as well as physical structures, I believe God is calling us to build new ways of being a community too.  We need to adapt the way we worship and worship spaces – so that they welcome and embrace the young, and those for whom traditional forms of worship don’t speak so clearly.  We need to get serious about learning what the Bible has to teach us, and about what it means to truly Follow Jesus – hence the new course we are starting in the Spring.  Our Mission Development Plan invites us to devote ourselves to:

• ·        worship of God and to service of our community
• ·        to discipleship for ourselves and encouragement and support of others
• ·        to nurture the young – who are largely absent at the moment
• ·        to enhance our environment – our piece of the planet which we’ve been given to care for
• ·        and to care for our buildings

We need to become, in short, the kind of people who put their heads above the parapet and who declare through our lives, our words and our actions, that God is at work, and the world will be changed. 

Amen.

What's Your Vocation?

Last night, at Portsmouth Cathedral, I experienced the enormous pleasure of attending the ordination of someone from my former parish. If you've never attended an ordination, you really should make a mental note to go at some point.  They are quite remarkable occasions, where someone who has gone through years of struggle with God, more years of study at college, many sleepless nights and buckets of 'formational' training finally stands before the Bishop.  At the ordination of priests, other priests gather round and together with the Bishop we all lay hands on the ordinand - praying for God's Spirit to fill them anew for their vocation.  It can be a very emotional moment indeed!

It also, happens to be the 10th Anniversary of my own ordination this weekend.  10 years since I had the hands of other clergy placed on me.  10 years since I was commissioned for a particular role within the Church.

I have to confess that I'm rather grateful to God that my commissioning didn't take the same pattern as the ordination of the Twelve Disciples in today's Gospel.  Jesus sent them out, two by two - and he forbade them to take anything with them for the journey, except a staff:  no bread, no bag, no money - and only one tunic.  It seems that Jesus wanted his disciples to be wholly reliant on God, and on the hospitality of others.  He called them to live on the charity of others - having no wealth that could be used to draw people to themselves.  Even today, there is still something of that in the way the church commissions its leaders.  Even Bishops are only modestly paid.  Many vicars and rectors live in lovely houses - with big rooms and gardens that can be used for parish events.  But we don't own them.  Our allowances are carefully calculated to give us enough to pay the bills, but not so much that we find it easy to save anything.  Most retired clergy end up living in rented accommodation, and have to cover services just to make ends meet.  

In setting this pattern, the Church is trying to follow the pattern of Jesus.  He understood that possessing too much wealth can be a very tricky thing for a human being to get right. Wealth can very quickly make friends for us.  If we are wealthy enough to host parties, or give lavish gifts to our friends, then we will always have people who want to be around us.  Wealth can be used - intentionally or not - as means of obtaining power over other people.  The wonderful Billie Holiday reflected this idea in her song 'God Bless the Child', when she sang:

When you've got money, you've got lots of friends,

They're crowding round your door

But when the money's gone, and all the spending ends

They don't come round anymore

But Jesus didn't want his Disciples to go out with presents, or to put on dinner parties to invite people - tricking them into sitting down to hear the Gospel.  His radical new way of living was not going to be based on using money as a lever to faith.  Neither did he want to present the idea that his followers would somehow live more easily than other people.  Following God, as most of us know only too well, is not a guarantee of wealth, or of good health.  The kind of preachers who tell you that if you follow God, he will shower you with a new car and the end of all financial worries are wrong.  Utterly wrong.  

In fact, over and over again, Jesus warned his followers about the false promises of wealth.  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom.  He told the stories of wealthy landowners who lost their lives just at the point at which they had gathered all their riches into barns.

Jesus called his followers into a very different way of life.  It was a way of life, as Paul discovered, in which weakness would be the path to perfection.  It was a way of life, as Ezekiel found out, in which there would be rebellion and hardship from a society which has stopped listening to God.  And, as The Twelve discovered, as Jesus sent them out, it would be a way of life in which dependence on one another, charity, poverty, a refusal to claim ownership of anything, would be the ways to performing miracles and changing lives.

We still struggle with these ideas, don't we?  These are counter-intuitive ideas.  Every day, through our newspapers, magazines and TV sets, powerful forces are at work underminding this idea of Jesus.   Through the media, we get a very different picture of what success looks like.  Even when we hear the occasional story of the miserable millionaire, or the suicidal pop-star, we brush them off as being exceptions that prove the rule.

But Jesus continues to call us to a new vocation.  He called me, 10 years ago, to give up a rather nice Government salary in favour of a church stipend.  He calls Bishops, often some of the most talented men (and now women!) of their generation to similar financial restraint.  And, I believe, Jesus calls all his followers to think very carefully - very carefully indeed - about how they use the wealth and opportunities that they have been fortunate enough to accumulate.

The word ‘vocation’ of course has the same roots as the world ‘vocal’.  Our vocation is our ‘calling’.  Some receive very special callings – perhaps to serve the church in an ordained or licensed ministry.  But all God’s people are called.  All of us have a vocation…a shared, general, universal vocation.  All of us who own the title of Christ-ian are called to live in a way – in fact in The Way – that Jesus outlined.  It’s a way of self-sacrifice.  It’s a way of receiving, through giving.  It’s a way of choosing the life of the community over the temptations of the individual.  It’s the kind of way of life that draws people out of their homes, and into fellowship with one another.  It’s the way of life that welcomes the stranger, and rejoices in difference.

The prophet Micah perhaps summed these ideas up with the greatest succinctness:

Micah 6:8:  (God) has shown you O mortal, what is good:  and what does the LORD require of you?  To act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

How can we act justly, when billions around us are starving and we fail to help?

How can we act mercifully, when we close our borders and our hearts to those who need our help?

How can we walk humbly with God, when we don’t pay any attention to the teachings of his Son?

This, then, is our calling and our vocation:  all of us.  Who knows where such a calling will lead us.  Some may be inspired to take up new responsibilities and challenges in the church or in the workplace and world.  Some may find new ways of using the gift of wealth they have been given to bless their community.  Some may even find themselves wearing a clerical collar!  All we can say, is that this is The Way of God:  to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.  

Amen

(Scriptures referenced:  Micah 6.8, Ezekiel 2.1-5, 2 Corinthians 12.2-10, Mark 6.1-13)

The World Hates Us. (John 17.14)

I want to take as my text today just one line from the rather complicated Gospel reading we have just had.  I wish I had time to unpack all of the reading…but you probably wouldn’t thank me for that! 

Here’ the line that particularly grabbed me:  “…the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world” John 17.14

Who do you think are the most persecuted people in the world?  Is it the Rohingya people, currently stranded at sea because they have fled Myanmar – formally Burma?  Could it be the Yasidis who were chased up a mountain in Iraq by ISIS last year?  Could it be the Palastinians who have been corralled and bombed behind the security walls of Israel?  Well, no.  As terrible as the circumstances of all these groups is, 80% of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians.  That’s according to the International Society for Human Rights, a secular group with members in 38 states worldwide. (Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/christians-the-worlds-most-persecuted-people-9630774.html).  The Centre for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that 100,000 Christians now die every year because of their faith.  That’s 11 Christians every hour.

That’s a bit difficult for us to understand, here in Western Europe, isn’t it?  As inheritors of the faith of the Roman Empire, we are used to thinking of Christianity as the culturally dominant force of our society.  Last week, I attended the Mayor-making, where the whole event was started by the saying of the Lord’s Prayer, led by the Mayor’s chaplain.  The week before, the past Mayor was here in church, with members of the British Legion, local councillors and our new MP, all to commemorate VE Day with hymns and prayers.  For us, Christianity is part of the warp and weft of our lives.  We might ignore it, we might choose not to participate in it, but it’s always there.

Yet the plain fact is that in other nations, Christians are locked up in jails for blasphemy.  In countries like Nigeria, churches are routinely bombed while worshippers are at prayer.  Egypt has recently seen its worse Christian-focused violence in seven centuries.  In Iraq, the Vicar of Baghdad, Canon Andrew White, has been told by the Archbishop of Canterbury not to return, because it is just too dangerous.

Can you and I imagine what that is like?  Can you picture what it would be like to have a bomb explode, right now, while we are at worship?  Can you grasp the fact that in the hour that we are at worship this morning, 11 Christians elsewhere in the world will die for their faith.  Lord, have mercy.

Why does the world hate us so much?  The easy answer would be to blame the rise of militant Islam (which is undoubtedly the main contributor to much of today’s violence towards us).  But that would be to miss the point.  Christians have always been hated.  We were hated by the Romans. We were hated by the French revolutionaries.  We were hated by Soviet Union and the Chinese Communists.  Along with our spiritual cousins, the Jews, we were hated by the Nazis. 

No, its not just the militant Islamists.  Everybody hates us.  Today there is a new brand of Christian-haters out there.  They are the militant atheists, like Richard Dawkins, who set out to persuade the nation that believing in God is foolish – like believing in fairies at the bottom of the Garden.    They claim that all religion (and Christianity in particular) is responsible for all sorts of great evils – from the Crusades to the tensions in the Middle East today.  Such narratives are powerful.  They are stories easily told to the gullible and the uneducated.  They are easily lapped-up by those who forget – or who have never been taught – that they only reasonable way to judge a religion is by the teachings of its founder.  Let me say that again:  the only reasonable way to judge a religion is by the teachings of its founder. 

It is people, politics, power-plays and profit that starts wars.  Religious wars are a perversion of religion.  Nothing more, nothing less. 

So why does the world hate us so much?  I want to suggest to you that it is for one basic reason.  Christianity stands in total opposition to the way in which the world goes about its business.  The teachings of Jesus cannot be read in any other way than as being in total opposition to the whole way in which human society is structured. 

Mary, the mother of Jesus knew this from the moment of his conception:  ”He will put down the mighty from their seat, and exalt the humble and meek”.  Jesus re-iterated this:  “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven”.  Jesus spoke up for the powerless, and against the powerful  Jesus stood in total opposition to the kind of world which we simply accept today.  He told stories of rich men who gathered their wealth into barns and big houses, only to find that they could not take it with them.  To the rich man, up a tree, who wanted to watch the world go by from his lofty vantage point, Jesus said “Come down Zaccheus – today we’ll have a party at your house”.  According to Jesus, it is not the wealthy, the powerful, and the war-mongers who will be blessed when his Kingdom is established – it will be the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, and the pure in heart.   

Jesus calls his followers to choose not to belong to this world of power-politics, the accumulation of wealth, and an obsession with celebrity.  We, who own the name of Christ-ian ‘do not belong to the world, just as our Master does not belong to the world’.   Jesus calls us to a simplicity of living, to a focus on God,  and to the right use of power to raise up the lowly and down-trodden.    Could it be that this is why Christians are so hated.  Because we stand in opposition to all that the world holds dear?

“The world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world”

That’s effectively the end of my sermon, for this morning.  But I need to tell you something else.  I hope you’ll therefore forgive me if I take a little longer than normal.  You see, I want to tell you what happened yesterday.

Yesterday morning, about 30 people from this community all came together in one magnificent project.  There were members of this church, like Mary, and Barbara and Graham and Richard and Penny and David and Paula and Mike and Sandra and Clare and Malcolm who rolled up their sleeves along with members of other groups who we serve through our halls round in the Pallant.  Together, they emptied those halls of years of accumulated junk.  We filled two skips, and about four van-loads of rubbish.  We re-stocked the Charity Shop for the next few weeks with all our junk.  We grunted and strained and cleared the garden behind church house. 

But more than that, we, the church in this place, brought people together in community.  We had members from Dynamo and the Havant Orchestra.  We had members of Alcoholics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous.  We had actors from Cloak and Dagger, and practictioners of Yoga – all working together for one common aim – to begin the process of transforming our Halls in the Pallant into a thriving centre for the community of Havant.

Our Mission Development Plan, which you’ve got a summary of in your hand, is all about building a different kind of world.  It’s a world in which worship and serious discipleship come top of the list.  It’s a world in which we seek to nurture the young – not set them to work in sweat-shops.  It’s a world in which we take our responsibility for the environment seriously – and a world in which we act as good stewards of the buildings we have inherited. 

This is not the world of the rich and powerful.  This is not the world in which we build palaces for wealthy people to live in splendid isolation – but a world in which we build palaces for the people – there in the Pallant. (The word 'Pallant' means 'Palace' by the way).  This is not a world which is content for children to be starved and sick and abused, but in which children are nurtured and given space to grow.  This is not a world in which the environment is raped for human entertainment, but in which the world we have been given is regarded as precious and fragile.

Ours is a world which will not be recognised by many people.  We should not be surprised when people tell us that sacrificing our resources for the good of the community is ‘not wise use of money’.  We will not be surprised when people tell us it would make more sense to knock down our halls, and sell the land for profit.   We will not be surprised when people tell us that solar panels are ugly, and that it makes more sense to keep on burning fossil fuels.  We will not be surprised when people tell us that gathering for worship on a Sunday is pointless, and that we’d be far happier going shopping like everyone outside these walls today. 

Today, we are launching our Big Build Campaign.  What we are doing is completely counter-cultural.  Today, we are saying ‘yes’ to community, and to working together for the good of all.  Today, I inviting every one of you to say ‘yes’ to following Jesus Christ into a different kind of world. 

Your PCC, together with our new Parish Development Officer, Dave, have been working hard to give shape to our Big Build Campaign.  A Campaign Committee has been formed, chaired by our Treasurer, Shelley.  Over a number of meetings, they have come up with a list of special events that we would like to put on over the coming couple of years – events that will both draw the community together, and raise funds to help us meet the goals of our Mission Development Plan.  There are tons of possible events…there are suggestions for dances, and concerts, for grand draws and sponsored events.  There are events we could run with other local organisations, and Special events like putting on a Victorian Christmas, or summer garden parties.

The Big Build Committee has divided up these events into five focus areas – and therefore five teams of people to deliver them.  Are you someone who loves putting on concerts?  There’s a concert team for you.  Do you like to boogie, or cha-cha-cha – there’s a Dance Events Team for you to sign up for.  Do you have good links with other organisations in our town, like the Spring Arts Centre, Dynamo, or other churches – then perhaps the ‘Co-hosted Events’ would be the best for you.  Do you have a flair for putting on big all-day events – then join the Special Events Team.  Or are you the kind of person who can doggedly continue, week after week, to enthuse people about a project – selling draw tickets, or encouraging people to buy a roof tile?  Then there is an ‘ongoing events’ team for you.

All we ask today, is that you express an interest in getting involved.  Shelley is going to be waiting to hear from you, at the end of our service.  She has a sign up-sheet, on which she’d like to get your name and contact details – and then over the coming weeks we’ll be in touch about getting each of these teams up and running and getting on with the task of building our community.

We choose to do this because we want to be different from the world around us.  The world may hate us for our optimism – our belief that the world can be a better place, that community matters.  But the world hates positive people.  The world does everything it can to bring them down.  We will not give in.  We have a mission.  We have a plan.  We are going to follow our Master.  

Amen.

VE Day 70th Anniversary - Address

Address for VE Day Service – 8th May 2015

I am too young to have experienced VE Day the first time round – as you will no doubt have worked out from my youthful appearance!  But I’ve seen the news-reels.  I caught a documentary on the BBC this week, which had recollections of VE Day from a wide variety of famous people.  There were lots of famous faces – everyone from Michael Parkinson and David Attenborough to Bruce Forsyth were there…with Ester Rantzen and even Jilly Copper thrown in for good measure.

However, what fascinated me most were the clips of film from that day – clips of people holding street parties; and clips of the great surges of people moving through London and settling down in Trafalgar Square to listen to Winston Churchill proclaim the surrender of the Nazis.

I was particularly struck by all the dancing in the street that took place – and by the fact that on that day there were not enough men to go around.  Women were often seen dancing with women, as indeed they had often had to do throughout the war.  Men were still away – not yet demobbed.  Many men, of course, had not survived at all.  Many men, and quite a few women, would never experience the joy of VE Day.  They had given their lives so that others could have this moment, and a long peace thereafter.

The overwhelming emotion of that day was, it seems, optimism.  A great evil had been defeated (as David said in the words of introduction to this service just now).  There was every reason to hope and suppose that things would get better from now on.  At that moment, no-one knew that rationing would continue until 1954 – nine more years. Few people had even heard of the Falklands, or Vietnam, or Korea.  No-one foresaw that the Cold War would come galloping over the horizon, with all its menace and fear.  Certainly no-one saw that the Middle East would become the powder-keg that it has become today.  No, on this day, 70 years ago, the streets were filled with optimism.

There was optimism at moments of Biblical history too.  Just now we heard the prophet Micah proclaim that a time would come when strong nations will beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.  A time would come, said Micah, when nation would no longer lift up sword against nation, neither would they learn war anymore.  Micah foresaw a time of pastoral bliss, when people would sit quietly and peacefully under their own vines and fig trees…no doubt wearing a nice straw hat!

But what were the circumstances that would lead to such peace?  What is it that Micah optimistically believed would bring about such a wonderful state of affairs?  For Micah, and for all the biblical prophets, days of peace will only come when God’s children – that’s you and me – have learned God’s ways and walked in God’s path.

The Bible is, among many things, a record of mankind’s quest to find out the ways of God.  But then time and again it is also a record of how we human beings seem to believe that we know better than God.  The Bible is filled with wisdom – wisdom which few people know, and even fewer people actually read.  And yet, God continues to call to us, through its pages, that the ways to peace are available…if only we would listen.

I learned a startling statistic recently.  I don’t know exactly how true it is – but it feels about right when you think about it.  Here it is:  since the days when Jesus walked on the earth, and taught us to love our neighbours as ourselves, there have been only seven years when some kind war was not taking place in the known world.  Seven out of 2,000 years.

That startling statistic should teach us something.   It should teach us that we need to listen harder, more intently to what God has told us about how we should live.

God’s rules are pretty simple.  They were boiled down by Jesus to just two over-riding and fundamentally simple rules:  love God, and love your neighbour as yourself.

Intriguingly,  Jesus isn’t the only religious teacher to have said this.  It’s a common teaching, running across all religions.  So much so that a variant of – that Jesus also used - it is known as ‘The Golden Rule’.  There’s a story I like about an old Jewish Rabbi, from around the same time as Jesus, who was once challenged to stand on one leg and recite the whole law of the Hebrew Bible.  Rabbi Hillel took up the challenge, stood on one leg, and said this:  “Love God, and don’t do anything to anyone that you wouldn’t like them to do to you.  All the rest is just commentary”

Let me ask you to try and capture some of the optimism of that first VE Day today.  Let me invite you to think what the world would be like if human beings actually lived by the Golden Rule.  This world about which I dream would be a world in which all disease would have been cured centuries ago – because money that has been spent on weapons for 2000 years would have been spent on medical research.  This world would be one in which everyone has enough to live on, and a fig tree or vine to sit under in a nice straw hat – because the resources of the world would be shared.  This world would be one in which nations no longer existed, because neighbours don’t divide themselves into nations.  This world would be one in which terrorism and extremism like that of the Nazis simply had no place….because the conditions which create such extremism would not exist.

Of course, I know that I am being utopian.  I know that you will tell me that I am an idle dreamer.  And until such a vision comes to pass, we need our troops, we need our weapons, and we need to protect what is ours from those who would forcibly take it away from us.  You would probably be right.  But I still want to hold on to optimism.  I can almost taste the optimism of those first VE Day crowds.  I want to bathe in that optimism, and keep crying out that the world really could be that good!  If only we would listen to God.

So today, let us celebrate the ending of the war in Europe, and the relative peace we have enjoyed for the last 70 years.  Let us give thanks for those who gave their lives for that peace.  Let us remember the joy of VE Day and the optimism of all those crowds.  But let us also re-commit ourselves to the task of loving God, and loving our neighbour every day.

A long journey begins with a single step.  Each day that someone lays aside hatred, selfishness and greed, and chooses to embrace every other human being as a brother or sister is one more step along Micah’s road…the road to the beating of swords into ploughshares.

Amen.