When will you listen? A sermon for Armistice (Remembrance) Day

Texts: Isaiah 48.17–19

Thus says the Lord,

   your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

I am the Lord your God,

   who teaches you for your own good,

   who leads you in the way you should go.

O that you had paid attention to my commandments!

   Then your prosperity would have been like a river,

   and your success like the waves of the sea;

your offspring would have been like the sand,

   and your descendants like its grains;

their name would never be cut off

   or destroyed from before me.

Matthew 11.16–19

 ‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.”

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.’

Homily

On this Armistice Day, we are treated to two short but powerful passages of Scripture.  

The first is the voice of God, speaking through Isaiah:  “I am the Lord, your God, who teaches you for your own good.  If only you had paid attention to my commandments!”  These are the words of a frustrated Deity…a God who we might imagine wringing his hands in frustration.  After all, through Abraham, Moses and all the great prophets he has done his very best to teach wisdom to his people.  Through commandments, laws, and volumes of wisdom he has taught them how to live – a way summed up by Jesus as ‘Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself’.  But over and over again, God’s people have turned a deaf ear to God’s wisdom – leading to a trail of blood, war, and godlessness throughout the history of the Nation.

This warning rings just as true for us today, as we contemplate the Wars of the last centuries.  We human beings seem to be pathologically incapable of solving our territorial disputes without going to war.  We seem locked into an endless cycle – a cycle of one or more wealthy nations grabbing all the good land and resources for themselves.  That leads to resentment on the part of other nations, who want that good land, or those resources, for themselves.  They create propaganda to inflame their populations, desensitising them to the humanity of those on the other side…and before you know where you are, Britishers are firing at the ‘Hun’, Nazis are annihilating Jews, Provos are firing at Catholics, Capitalists are firing at Communists, Christians and Muslims are firing at each other, despite both worshipping essentially the same God.

“I am the Lord, your God, who teaches you for your own good.  If only you had paid attention to my commandments!”  

Today, we honour the sacrifice of so many service men and women who have given their lives – as willing volunteers or as unwilling conscripts – in the meat-grinder of humanity’s wars.  This is not the place for a history lesson about the root causes of so many wars.  I will, in any case, leave the history to historians more qualified than me.  But it is the place for us to be reminded of the senseless futility of war, in comparison to the God-given alternative.

But we do not want to listen.  We are, as Jesus observed in our Gospel reading, like children in a playground.  We dance our little dances, and play our little games.  Our perspectives on the various propaganda we are fed is so narrow that we willingly lap it up.  Let’s blame the Nazis for the Second World War, not the Treaty of Versailles which created the economic conditions for their hate-filled rise.  Let’s blame the Muslims for the tensions of the Middle East which overflow our shores, not the powerful battles for control of their oil and resources over the last century.  Let’s criminalise the refugees for wanting to escape in little boats to the safety of our shores….not the systems of injustice, and the climate-shredding actions of the West which have fuelled their desperation.  

“O that you had paid attention to my commandments!’ says the Lord.  If only you would learn the power of sharing the earth’s resources, instead of hoarding them.  If only you learned the power of grace, over punitive sanctions.  If only you learned the power of forgiveness, over hatred and retribution.  If only you learned the power of peace over war.

O God, forgive us, for failing to heed your word and your wisdom, for generation after generation.  Break through, we pray, by the power of your Holy Spirit.  Teach us to turn our spears into pruning hooks, and our swords into ploughs.  We can’t do it on our own – as the Roll Call of Warriors on the Memorial outside this church testifies with such power.  We need your word.  We need your wisdom.  Help us…for we cannot help ourselves! Amen.

Follow me?

Texts: Jonah 3.1-5,10 & Mark 1.14-20

So...there you are, at home. You're maybe digging the garden. Or preparing the dinner. Or perhaps you’re settling down for warm evening in front of some soap operas...and there comes a knock at the door. On the doorstep is a wandering preacher, who looks straight into your soul and says "Come. Follow me".

What do you do? You've got a family who are relying on you. You've got responsibilities to them, and to your neighbours. You've got an employer who is expecting you to be at work...or a teacher who expects you in class. But there's something about this preacher. There's something inspiring about him.

Of course, you know something about him already. You've heard some of his teachings, and you've heard the rumour that he's out and about looking for followers. But you never expected that he would knock on your door.

So what do you do? Should you simply follow him out of the door? Should you step out on a new adventure...and let all your other responsibilities take care of themselves? Or should you shut the door in the preacher's face?

But you've been intrigued by this preacher's message. You've already heard him, talking about how the 'Kingdom of God'...the new government of God...is coming. You've heard him calling people to turn away from society's normal ways of doing things. You've heard him saying that people need to 'repent'...to turn away...and to believe that there is good news.

But that's hard, isn't it? Good news. Hmm. Good news for whom?  The last time you heard the phrase 'Good News' was when a politician promised you something extraordinary, painted on the side of a bus perhaps, or proclaimed from a TV studio.  ‘Everything will be better’, they claimed, ‘if you’ll just follow me’.

But this wandering preacher - this Jesus-bloke - he's promising another kind of good news altogether. Or at least that's what you've been hearing. Apparently, his good news is good news for the poor. And for those who are mourning. And for those who are pure in heart. And for those who are peacemakers. That's a bit different than good news for business-men and for weapon-makers...

Perhaps Jesus' good news...good news for the poor, and the oppressed, and the meek...perhaps that is worth following. Perhaps that is worth even laying aside your family responsibilities for a while.

What do you do? Are you prepared to follow this call to 'Follow me'. Because that's what heroes do. Heroes throughout history are always given a call to follow. Sometimes they resist that call. Like Moses who resisted the call to lead the people out of slavery (as we shall hear this evening in The Bible Story).  Or like Jonah, as we just heard, who resisted the call to go and tell the people of Nineveh to repent.

Because calls are dangerous. Calls lead us out of our safe, secure lives into lives of adventure, possible danger, and even death. But isn't it the case that the best journeys are the ones where there is adventure and challenge along the way?

That's a challenge that many followers of Christ have followed over the centuries. It's a challenge to stand up and fight for what you believe in. It's a challenge to leave family and home - and to become a peace-maker, sometimes even in a foreign land. It's a challenge that will certainly include adventure. It might well end in death.

But's it's a hero's call. It's a call to transform a society - perhaps through fighting to save the planet (as at least one of our congregation has done this week in Glasgow).  Perhaps it’s a call to engage deeply with a part of your community?  Perhaps it’s a call to take up transforming power of rendering aid and giving food to starving people though World Vision or the UN Food programme.  Perhaps it’s the simplest call to invite your neighbour or friend to come to church with you, or to share a church publication with them.  Perhaps it’s a call to offer up some time to run a charity shop, or provide a welcome to seekers of peace in the Church.  Perhaps it’s a call to pray, sincerely and deliberately – holding a dying world up before the face of its Creator.  Whatever your individual task, it’s a call to get involved in God’s mission to transform every human system which oppresses others - into a Kingdom of love, justice, peace, and harmony with all of Creation. 

So what do you do?

Do you follow this preacher - this Jesus? You don't know where he might lead you. Wouldn't it just be easier to stay at home.  Wouldn't it be easier to tend your garden, wash your car, survey your holiday magazines, and pretend that everything's alright with the world.  Wouldn't it be easier to never give your time, your energy, your skills, or your money to any other living soul?

Yes. It would be easier. But where's the adventure in that? Where's the challenge? Where's the growth? Where's the chance to be changed from glory into glory ever more like the image of God your Creator?

"Come. Follow me. And fish for people".

You hear the call. You know something of what it means. It's something about doing things differently. It's something about living differently...living for others, not for yourself. It's something about acquiring scars and wounds, instead of the latest stuff from the market or the shops. It's something about giving up home and family, and having nowhere to lay your head for the sake of a bigger vision, a better vision. A vision of a new kind of Kingdom.

You've heard the call.

What do you do? What do you do?

Anxious?

 Philippians 3.3–8a

For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh— even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

 

Luke 15.1–10

Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

So he told them this parable: ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

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I don’t know about you, but I confess to a certain level of rising anxiety this week.  I’m find myself anxious about a lot of things.  There’s the number of rising infections, of course.  Will I fall victim to this virus?  Will my family?  Or any more of my parishioners and friends, like dear Bill Saggrot, last week?  This week, I’ve been especially anxious about doing the right thing for our Remembrance Sunday commemorations - frantically trying to arrange all the pieces.  And I'm a bit anxious about the planning of our Christmas services - because I don't know how many people we will be able to safely accommodate.

But I’m anxious about other things too.  Like the state of world politics, especially in the context of COP26.  What chance is there, really, that the world's leaders will stop plaing politics, and become 'statesmen' (as the Queen so wisely challenged them, this week).   

Tomorrow is, of course, November the 5^th.  So that adds a new layer of anxiety – especially for those of us who have pets or very small children.  We want to protect them from the stupidity of letting off fireworks – usually by people who have no idea who Guy Fawkes was!

Anxiety is, of course, a normal human reaction to the changing circumstances of life.  It’s part of our natural protection mechanism.  We cast around for threats to our security, or comfort.  We are on our guard…and that makes us anxious.  We become more alert…less likely to sleep…and therefore more anxious. 

In our first reading, St Paul describes the kind of anxiety that he has lived with, all his adult life.  There’s an almost Trumpian level of boasting on display as he talks about all the ways that he tried to work himself up into being acceptable to God.  He was ‘circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, a Hebrew born of Hebrews a Pharisee, a persecutor of the church; righteous under the law and blameless.  (You can just hear Donald Trump at this end of that list can’t you?  ‘No-one has ever been more righteous-er than me!’).

There’s a lot of anxiety on display in today’s Gospel reading, too.  First, there’s the anxiety of the Pharisees and scribes.  They were anxious about this new charismatic preacher in their midst, who appeared to be leading people away from their way of doing religion.  They were anxious about losing their authority – losing their power base.

And then, in Jesus’ parables about the lost sheep and the lost coin, his main characters display anxiety too.  The shepherd is anxious about his lost sheep – so much so that he leaves all his others, to go in search of the one who was lost. The woman who has lost a silver coin is anxious.  How will she feed her family, or have dignity in her old age, when she has lost her coin?

Both the shepherd and the woman are offered to us as pictures of God.  Now, we need to be careful about making God in our image – but there is a sense in which Jesus sees God as being anxious about the spiritual fate of his children.  The Scriptures in general give us a picture of a God whose whole being is anxiously focussed on the salvation of humanity.  He is anxious to communicate his wisdom for living, sending prophet after prophet to teach us his ways.  When that stratagem fails, he sends his son – his very self in human form – to teach us from his own mouth, and then to die in order to show us the way to life.

And ultimately, it’s God’s sheer passion – anxiety if you will – for his children which saves us.  Paul ultimately discovers that all anxiety about faith, all his chasing after righteousness was ‘rubbish’ compared to the experience of finding out that God loves us, anyway.  In fact - and here's a nugget for Bible nerds - the word that Paul used, in Greek, was not 'rubbish' at all.  It was a strong, attention-grabbing word related to 'dung' or 'excrement', which would not normally be used in polite society.  Paul wants his readers to to understand that all the ways we try to save ourselves, without the wisdom and grace of God, are like so much...well...dung. 

We have no need to try and earn God’s favour – because he is already favourable towards us.  He loves us…enough to have come to live among us, and die among us.  For, what greater love is there than this…that a man should lay down his life for his friends?  This is the kind of God who will search out the lost sheep, or the valuable lost coin.  This is the kind of Father who stretches out his hands to his children and says ‘Come unto me, all ye who travail and are heavy laden…even in a pandemic, even when the politics of the world are in chaos, even when the climate is catastrophically changing…and I will give you rest.

So, to my own present anxiety, and to yours, I say this:  let us use the coming days to rest in the Lord.  Let’s stop chasing after the things of creation which we think will make us happy, and look to the source of all creation instead.  Let’s take time to rest in the loving gaze of our heavenly father, to contemplate his teachings, and receive the power of his love.

Amen.

The Raising of Lazurus - a sermon for All Saints Sunday

Text: John 11.32-44.

Here’s a little conundrum…what is John’s story of the raising of Lazurus doing as our Gospel reading for All Saints Sunday?  All Saints is an opportunity to think about, and celebrate, the promise of eternal life for all those who trust in God, and who receive his freely-offered gift of life.  It’s a Sunday when we are reminded of the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ in the heavenly places with the risen and ascended Lord.  Orthodox believers would remind us that it’s an opportunity to remember that while we celebrate this Eucharist on earth, Jesus eternally celebrates it in heaven with ‘all the Saints who from their labours rest’.

So with all that heavenly imagery, why does the Lectionary invite us to consider the story of the raising of Lazurus?  There are, after all, many other passages which might have been chosen, with a much more heavenly-focus.  What, for example, about that passage which is read at so many funerals, from John 14, when Jesus says that he is going to make a place for us in his ‘Father’s house of many mansions’.  Or what about Jesus’ promise to the repentant thief on the cross that ‘Today you will be with me in paradise?

The raising of Lazurus, by comparison to these eternal mysteries, seems somewhat of a let-down, doesn’t it?  After all, Lazurus was not carried off into heaven to be with all the saints.  Neither was he resurrected with a new body, as was to happen to Jesus (the first born from the dead).  The story of Lazurus is a story of resuscitation.  Not resurrection.  Lazurus was restored to his previous life.  He would still go on to die, just like all of us.

But this is no ordinary resuscitation.  And it is on that fact that we are invited to dwell, for a few moments.  First of all, Lazurus had been dead for many days, by the time Jesus got there.  In fact, Jesus took his own sweet time to get there…not exactly hurrying…precisely to allow enough time to pass.  We know this because when he commands the stone to be rolled away, Martha protests: ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days’.  (Incidentally, I rather like the Authorised translation of that line:  ‘Lord, he stinketh!’).

All this detail is given to us, by John, to make sure that there can be no doubt of the impossibility of what Jesus is about to do.  Human beings can be resuscitated after death, as we know only too well in our modern world of defibrillators and first aid training.  Quite possibly, even at the time of Jesus, a few people had been revived (after drowning, perhaps).  But not after four days! What Jesus is about to accomplish is beyond any human understanding.  He has the power to revive a body which ‘stinketh’ – in which the break-down of matter has already begun in earnest.  John wants us to see that Jesus can interrupt this process, and even reverse it.  He can bring back a man who was terminally sick, and whose body is corrupting, completely back to life!

Jesus himself gives us another clue as to what he is doing.  Praying publically to his Father in heaven, he says “have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me”.  Jesus wants everyone to see, witness and record his complete mastery of even the normal process of death.  More than that, he wants this moment to be a moment that builds faith.  He wants everyone to believe that God has sent him.

So that’s why we are asked to contemplate this story on the Festival of All Saints!   All the stuff about heaven, and the glorious but incomprehensible pictures of angels and saints in eternal Eucharist is all very nice – but it’s not something we can really relate too.  We know, instinctively, that all the metaphors of houses with many mansions, and heavenly Jerusalems coming out of the sky, streets paved with gold and days in paradise are just that: metaphors.  They are images which help us to see, poetically, beyond the veil of our physical existence into a dimension that we are not yet equipped to understand at all.

But Jesus raising a stinking corpse from the grave.  That we can see, through John’s eyes as our reliable witness.  That we can understand.  That gives us something solid and tangible to hold onto.  As Jesus says in chapter 14 of the same gospel, he is the way, the truth and the life.  Our hope of heaven is given real and tangible form through observing the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is on Jesus that we pin our own hopes to join the heavenly feast. It is through Jesus that God offers us the ‘sanctification’ by which we also can become ‘sancti-ficavit’ – which means, ‘made holy’:  that is ‘made saints’.  And his raising of Lazurus, surrounded by witnesses, recorded for our benefit by John, gives us hope – real and tangible hope – that in Jesus we can trust.

Liberal thinkers among us might well have a question at this point:  Is John’s gospel claiming that Jesus is the only way to heaven.  What about the teachings of the other great religions?  Will heaven only be stocked with Christians?  Or will there also be a place for the Sufi mystics and the Buddhist or Hindu devotees of peace and harmony.  Who here would consign Ghandi to eternal damnation?   What about the Dalai Lama?

The fact is, we cannot know.  We cannot penetrate the veil of heaven ourselves.  Personally, I find it hard to believe that the God of grace and mercy would consign his children to hell for having been born in the ‘wrong’ place and for faithfully following the religion of their parents.  

What we can say, with the witness of John’s gospel, is that Jesus provides a sure and certain path to heaven.  He has demonstrated, by the raising of Lazurus, that he has power over life, death, corruption and the grave.  To trust in Jesus is to put our faith in someone who has demonstrated his credentials.  He is The Reliable Way for us to join with all the Saints in life everlasting.  That’s good enough for me.  

I rejoice in the fellowship I enjoy with people of other faiths and beliefs.  I’ll partner with anyone of good will and a heart which longs for heaven.  But it is Jesus that I place my trust: for he has proved himself worthy of our faith and our hope of life which goes on for ever in the presence of God and All the Saints.  Amen.

Love One Another - even when you disagree

 John 15.17:  “I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another”.

I wonder if you’ve ever attempted to do something which you thought we be SO easy – but which then turned out to be a lot harder than you expected?  I once watched a TV painter create a landscape with a few strokes of his brush, and thought to myself “I could do that”.  I bought some canvass and some paints and brushes, and set to it.  I was going to be the next great artist!  After many hours of daubing paint upon canvass…I knew that it was not to be so!  It’s a lot harder than you think!

Which goes for Jesus’ bold statement today.  ‘I am giving you these commands so that you may love another’.  It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?  We just have to love one another.  Easy.  Well, perhaps not.  It’s easy to love those who are like us, and who think like us.  It’s easy to love the people who look like us, or come from the same background as us.  But the radical challenge of the Christian message is that we are called to love all humanity – wherever they come from, whatever their background, whatever their crime, however much they differ from us in the opinions, their prejudices, their upbringing and their culture.

This radical challenge has been played out on an international stage of the church, this week.  The House of Bishops in Ghana issued a statement of support for a bill currently progressing through the Parliament of Ghana.  This bill, if it passes, would criminalise homosexual acts, with a penalty of up to 5 years in prison.  Still further, the bill would impose prison terms of up to 10 years on those who support, or lobby for, homosexual people.

Now, of course, the idea of criminalising homosexual people is utterly unacceptable to those of us who live in a Western culture.  The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a strong rebuke to the Ghanaian House of Bishops, as have the senior leaders of the Diocese of Portsmouth, and many other senior church leaders.  The internet, therefore, has been ablaze in the last few days with people from Africa and people from the West angrily denouncing each other.  Many Africans tend (it seems) to appeal to specific and individual scriptures to justify their scorn for homosexual people.  Western people appeal to the great sweep of Scripture, and the command to love our neighbours as ourselves. 

Both sides in the arguments are coming from the context in which they have been shaped.  In the West, we’ve been taught to look beyond the ‘letter of the law’ into the moral and ethical framework behind the law.  Ours is a culture in which it is generally believed that ‘I can do what I want, so long as it hurts no-one else’.  Africans, on the other hand, bring a strongly patriarchal culture to their thinking, with a heavy emphasis on the traditional (and very different) roles of men and women.  As people who still tend to live in tight family or tribal groups, there is also a much greater sense of the community deciding what is right, or healthy, for an individual to do with themselves or their lives.

As a result of these marked cultural differences (and there are many more I could list) it is hard to see how these two very different groups of Christians will ever be able to agree with each other on this topic.  It will take much time, and many debates, for opinions on either side to be shaped and shifted by the other.  But can they both love each other, in the meantime?

Love, as St Paul so poetically states in 1 Corinthians 13, is patient and kind.  It does not keep any record of wrongs.  It perseveres.  Crucially, for the present international argument of the church, it ‘believes all things, and hopes all things’.  In other words, true love is open and accepting of the position of the other.  True love allows space for the Holy Spirit to speak, and for minds and hearts to be shaped to His divine will.  This takes time.  It certainly takes patience.  It certainly takes a constant, heart-felt desire to seek the Truth.

But it is not easy.  It takes courage to choose to love those whose ideas, culture and beliefs are fundamentally different to our own, even when we both call ourselves Christians.  But this is the hard command that our Lord, Saviour and Master gives us.  “I give you these commands, so that you may love another”.

Amen.

 

Is the Bible the Word of God? A sermon for Bible Sunday

According to one survey, the Bible has sold more than 6 billion copies in more than 2,000 languages and dialects. Whatever the precise figure, the Bible is by far the bestselling book of all time. 

On the other hand, the Bible is also the least read book in the world!  Very few Bibles ever get opened.  They are often given as gifts.  But, unfortunately, they often remain as pristine as the day they are given.

Why is this? There’s a number of reasons.  Sometimes the translations of the Bible are just too difficult, too archaic for modern minds to grasp.   Other people find that they do try to start reading the Bible.  But they soon get lost in a sea of numbers and laws.  

Others, having skipped the laws, find themselves in the Psalms, or in the Prophets...and there they quickly find their attention wandering.  For such writings come to us from a very different mind-set and culture.  And so, frustrated (and perhaps feeling a little guilty) people lay aside their Bible, and reach for a novel instead!  We find that we have a whole generation of Christians, in churches all over the world, who have been told time and again to read their bibles...but who find that they just can't do it. 

In my experience, if that’s YOU, you will undoubtedly be a good Christian. You will be someone who tries to follow Jesus every day. You will be someone who worships your Creator, loves their neighbour, and who gives generously to the work of God. And yet, you will be carrying around this weight of guilt that you never actually open your Bible.

So, how am I to respond to this fact? How would you expect me to react? Perhaps I should pull myself up to my full height and call you all 'Sinners!'?  

Hmm...I'm not sure that would help very much, would it? Because, actually, if you are one of those who finds the Bible difficult to read...I agree with you!  The Bible is not a novel. It's not a newspaper. Some people have described the Bible as 'the Maker's Instructions'. But for many, it’s the kind of instructions which come from the Far East, translated by someone who learned their English in primary school...like this bit of helpful instruction from a computer hard-drive I recently purchased:  "More simple under USB interface, it only can do until the 3rd step and deleted is present channel”.  And let’s be honest – that’s how some of us hear the Bible.  I know – I watch those eyes glazing over!

  But the Bible is not an instruction manual. Neither is it a well-planned novel from a single writer, who sets out to tell a story. Instead, it is a collection of writings, 66 letters and books, assembled over a period of about 1,600 years. (The word Bible itself means ‘library’).  It contains legal codes, songs and poetry, prophecy, myths, history, stories and some pretty complex theology. Sometimes these different genres are separate. Sometimes they are all woven into just one of the books! (The gospels are a good example of this.)

So does all this mean that we don't need to bother with the hard work of reading the Bible? No. It doesn't. One of the things that the Protestant Reformation gave us, was access to the precious pages of Scripture for ourselves. With that access comes the chance to grow daily in our understanding of God.  But unlike a Catherine Cookson or a Jeffrey Archer, reading the Bible is the work of a lifetime.  Its beauty, and its huge complexity, takes a lifetime of learning to even begin to master.

But, the church Fathers of old were right about one thing. They knew that, unless properly understood, the Bible can be so easily mis-used and manipulated.  That's why the quote "you shall not suffer a witch to live" was used so mercilessly throughout the Middle Ages.  It's why the letter to Philemon was used for so long as a justification for slavery.  It’s why the letters of St Paul are still used to silence women’s voices in some church leadership circles, and to denigrate people of minority gender identities or sexual orientations.  It is too easy for unthinking people to take a line or phrase from one of the Bible’s many competing voices to justify their personal biases and prejudices.

The underlying problem is that in some very loud quarters of the church, the Library of books, stories, myths, laws, poems and theology we have inherited has gained a status which it does not claim for itself.  Some of the loudest voices declare that the ‘Library’ is ‘the Word of God’…as if God had personally written down his thoughts for us, as fully- formed instructions for us to follow slavishly.  

Well…I might be about to shock you now.  My view (with which you are free to disagree and argue) is that we should be very careful about treating the Bible as the Word of God.   Rather, it is a collection of writings – Scriptures - which point us towards the actual Word of God – the Logos of God – which is Jesus Christ.  That’s why, in our services, after a reading from the Bible, we say ‘For the Word of the Lord’ – rather than ‘This is the Word of the Lord’ – as most churches still do.  

It’s a subtle distinction – and some of you may not have picked it up.  But by saying ‘For the Word of the Lord’, we give thanks for those parts of the Scriptures which DO point us to the reality and the truth of God. But we also give ourselves permission to understand that some of the Scriptures we have inherited simply do not contain such truth.  Rather, they are an echo and a reflection of a time when our spiritual ancestors were reaching out of their bronze and iron-age ignorance - towards the very idea of a Divine Being at the heart of all things.  

Along the way, they made some terrible mistakes – which we can read about in the Scriptures.  They murdered and pillaged in the name of their God, led on by leaders who told them that such was God’s will and instruction.  They conquered the land of other tribes.  They kept slaves and subjugated women.  They allowed religious ideas to be SO sacrosanct that even children could be stoned at the city gates for blasphemy.  They were contemptuous of foreigners, and miserly towards the poor.  None of these things are the Word of the Lord – they are only a record of humanity’s faltering quest for him – the actual Word of God.

For it is in Jesus Christ that the Scriptures find their target, and their fulfilment.  In the life and teaching of that one perfect human-being who was God among us, we find the inspiration and the focus of the whole Library we call The Bible.  He is both the author and the perfector of our faith – the first and the last.  He inspired the writers of the Bible to seek for him through its pages, like a mountainside inspires a painter.  And through his teachings, his life, his death and his ongoing inspiration – he leads us ever onwards to the sun-lit uplands of our Faith.  Amen.

Buy local - it's a Christian duty

Text: Matthew 6.25-33 and Joel 2.21-27

Some of you will remember that soon after I came to this parish, I launched a fundraising campaign to ‘see less of the Rector’.  It was an attempt, on my part, to shed some excess pounds – which many of you generously supported.  I was quite successful at the time – shedding around 2 stone, as I recall (which cost some of you a lot of sponsorship money!).  The trouble is that, to quote Miss Lane of the Candleford Post Office, ‘food is my one weakness’.  Actually, I have many other weaknesses too – but let’s not worry about them right now.  A love of food is certainly up there at the top of my list!

Actually, as some of you have kindly noticed, I’ve recently been attempting to shift some of the ‘lockdown lard’ which I accumulated last year.  Since August, I’ve managed to lose a couple of stones – but there is still more to go.  But I make no promises about being able to maintain the new Adonis-like body you see emerging before you!  I simply love food…too much!

So, for me and for all of us who love our food too much, today’s Gospel reading can be a salutary encounter, can it not?  And it also comes as a slap in the face to any of us who worry about which of the many choices of fashion we should employ, day by day.  “Do not worry…” about such things, says Jesus.  “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

The problem (as other foodies and fashionistas will agree), is that even with supply-chain challenges in our shops at the present time, there is simply SO much choice.  And this is because we, as a society, have indeed worried about what we shall eat and what we shall wear, throughout human history.  

This is nothing new.  It was just as big a problem for the people of Jesus’ day.  They may not have had fleets of lorries and container ships like ours, but they did import and export food and clothing from all over the Roman Empire.  It was a trade which, like ours, resulted in massive wealth for the owners of import companies, and misery for most of the people actually involved in making the system work.  For the Romans, it was the farmers, the sailors, the camel-train-drivers and the galley slaves who suffered.  For us, it is still the farmers, and the merchant seafarers, and the lorry drivers who live on subsistence wages, living months at a time away from their families, to bring us our pleasures.  So, I suggest, Jesus was not just pointing at individual ‘foodies and fashionistas’ like me (and perhaps you).  He was pointing towards the entire economic system – which we have refined, developed and expanded since his day.  

This is the behaviour of ‘gentiles’, according to Jesus – by which he means ‘unbelievers’ or those outside of a covenant relationship with God.  The Climate Change Crisis we are all facing today arises as a direct result of the choices we all make about the amount and choice of food we eat, and the origin of the clothes we wear.  We are acting like ‘Gentiles’ – like those who do not live in relationship with the Living God. When Jesus tells us to cease worrying about such things, he invites us to shift our focus.  Taken together with the rest of his teaching, and especially his priority for the poor, Jesus invites us to imagine what the Kingdom of Heaven would like on Earth.

It would be a kingdom in which we stop striving and worrying about the food we will eat, and the clothes we will wear – demanding our avocados in the middle of winter, or our £1 T-shirt from the sweatshops of the under-developed world.  It would be, instead, a world in which we use the abundance already around us – the abundance that the prophet Joel speaks about in our Old Testament reading. 

Take, for example, the plant known as flax.  In the middle ages, the vast majority of English clothing was made from flax, grown in English fields.  In fact, in the 1600s, it was a mandate of law that every English farmer should grow at least some flax in his fields, to supply the clothing needs of his neighbours.  Flax grew well in English soil and in an English climate.  It could be made into English linen of the highest quality, by skilled cloth-makers and weavers.  Flax was at the heart of our nation’s life, because it was a natural crop, naturally provided.  A healthy, local economy was built and sustained for centuries.

But then, cotton arrived.  Cotton won’t grow in an English climate.  But the fashionistas of the 1700s liked it.  Cotton was lighter, cooler to wear in the summer, easier to weave and sew.  And so, vast quantities of cotton had to be imported from warmer climates all over the world.  The old import and export practices of the Romans were re-ignited.  Fleets of ships, run by sailors ripped from their families.  Vast factories of under-paid workers toiled night and day.  Owners of import companies made money.  The rest of the population starved.  All because the wise words of Jesus were once again ignored.  We started to worry about what we would wear. 

The result was catastrophic, for our climate, for the slaves of the cotton plantations, for the poor workers in the dark-satanic cotton mills.  All because we started to worry about what we would wear.

When we worry about what we should eat much the same thing happens.  Food is imported from all around the world, at enormous cost to the climate, but at great profit to a few wealthy import-company owners.  

So, my friends…what are we to do?  If we who count ourselves followers of Jesus are to have a personal impact on the crisis humanity is facing, what shall we do.  Well, I suggest, the simplest thing we can all do is to buy ‘local’.  This is not because we are ‘Britain-first’ people.  Buying local and buying British has nothing to do with Brexit or ‘Little-Islander’ mentality.  Rather, it is a fundamental understanding that as the Bible teaches us, God has provided all we need in our own backyard.  Buying local, and supporting local economies turns out to be not just good for our planet, but a Christian duty we can all take up – wherever we live in the world.

There is no need to import goods from abroad, with all the attendant damage to our climate and to the lives of the workers who bring us such goods.  There is enough land in our nation, to feed and clothe our nation.  God has provided all we need.  Maybe not all we want, and all we like to worry about but certainly all we need.

“Your heavenly Father feeds the birds of the air.  Are you not more valuable than they? If God clothes the grass of the field, how much more will he clothe you?”

Amen