Month: July 2016

… At the end of all this, what did I learn about this rabbi, Jesus? That he is a rabbi who refuses to be drawn into making judgements which divide people. Instead he challenges us to step outside simply ‘knowing our rights’ and opens our eyes and hearts to our deeper motives, how we act towards  others, and towards God. Who sends us back to work out our differences for ourselves. 

So…. what shall I do now? Is the burning question for me. Do I stop to sort out my priorities in life, go back to my brother and work out how we can live together, our inheritance undivided; or do I just leave Jesus behind and go and find another rabbi who knows my rights and who, without quibbling, without conscience, will grant me what I want?

– the conclusion of my talk today, The rabbi who didn't play by the rules, and his story of a stupid rich man.

Colossians 3.1-11, Luke 12.13-21

The Tenth Sunday after Trinity, Sunday 31 July 2016

Queen Camel, Weston Bampfylde

 

This rabbi didn’t play by the rules. I went there asking him for justice. He refused me, and told me a very disturbing tale instead.

I asked the rabbi to tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. It was my right to take my share. It was owed to me, according to the law. So I was shocked by his reply. He said, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?”, “Who made me a judge or a divider over you?”

Well, I went to Jesus because, as a rabbi, he was a judge and arbiter. He had the power to divide. In our society, that was a rabbi’s role, to make legal judgements over our affairs. He knew the law and he ruled on it. And I knew the law, and I wanted the rabbi to confirm to my brother that I had the right to the inheritance. I wanted to get this rabbi Jesus on-side to force my brother to give me what I wanted. That was the legal practice of the land: a father dies and leaves the inheritance as a unit to his sons. If one heir wants a division of the inheritance then the rabbis rule that he should be granted it. 

So I went to Jesus because, as a rabbi, he had the power to divide us, brother from brother, by splitting the inheritance. But he refused to support this division. He refused to be co-opted by me in claiming my right to grab the inheritance and say farewell to my family ties.

Here was rabbi Jesus, resisting my plea, refusing to divide my brother and me, instead throwing the responsibility for my actions back onto me. This was breathtaking and very, very, challenging. Because now I had to go back to face my brother and work out a solution in the light of what Jesus said next. 

He told me a story which raised big questions about my motivation for taking this inheritance; and which challenged my outlook on life to the core. 

His story was about a man obsessed with the idea of building bigger and bigger barns to store more and more of the excess grain and goods he had in his possession, thinking this would set him up for life. The story ends with the man’s premature death, and God saying to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 

As I heard the rabbi tell this tale I couldn’t help making connections between the rich man in the story and myself.

These are some of the things I noticed about him, which shook me up.

First of all, he was full of himself. He naturally assumed that the extra crops that grew on his land, were his. For him to store up for himself. No thought that they may have been gifted to him by nature, by the Creator. No thought of sharing them with anyone else.

And secondly, I noticed that he only ever spoke to himself about these things. ‘He thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said to himself, “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones… And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ He didn’t have anyone with him to talk these things through with. He was rich – but very alone.

And so when God speaks in the story, he asks the question I was also asking, ‘These things you’ve stored up for yourself, once you’re gone, whose will they be?’ There was no-one to share with. If he’d ever had family, he’d alienated them, they’d long since left him to his own devices.

I noticed that God doesn’t mince his words with this self-absorbed rich man. He calls him a fool in the strongest term possible in our language. He calls him stupid.

‘Look at what you’ve done to yourself!’ God thunders.

‘You plan alone, build alone, indulge alone, and now you will die alone!’ [2]

So as I listened to the rabbi Jesus telling this tale it transformed from being about a wealthy successful man planning for his comfort in posterity, to being about a stupid rich man closed-off from his neighbours and from God, discovering that, of the things which really mattered, he had nothing.

Jesus’ story made me realise that the man’s excess was not a product of anything he’d done. The abundance on his land was a gift from God. And Jesus’ story showed up sharply for me that just as God gives, so also God takes away. The story makes it sound like we are tenants on God’s earth, indebted to our Creator. And when God says, ’your life is being demanded of you’,‘your soul is being required of you’, there God is calling in the man’s debt: having loaned the man his soul, now God wants it returned.

There were two sayings Jesus used, one at the start of the story and one at the end. 

The first one said, 

‘Take heed, and beware of every kind of insatiable desire; 

for your life does not consist in the surpluses of your possessions.’

And the last one said, 

‘So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves

but are not rich towards God.’

After hearing all of this from Jesus I realise that as far as claiming my inheritance is concerned, I know my rights – I’m entitled to the inheritance – but before I take it I might be best to pay some attention to my wrongs. To those insatiable desires I have for more and more; for the illusion that the more I have the fuller life will be for me.

I might guard against the fantasy that everything I have received in life is mine to keep. When the stupid rich man was looking for extra storage space he failed to note that he had ‘ample storage in the mouths of the hungry. Such a thought never enters his head’. [3] 

I might spend some useful time contemplating the thought that the wealth that I have, has been gifted to me; the thought that the life that I have I am indebted to God for.

I might consider the question which Jesus raised but left me to answer: a question that seems to hold the key to a satisfied life. What does it mean to be “rich toward God”? 

That’s a very challenging question. It suggests that what you most value in life influences the sort of life you live. If you most value wealth you’ll probably be very smart but very anxious; if you value God you’ll also value things like family, community, peace, etc, and you may dress cheaply but you’ll be satisfied. 

Being rich can buy us many things. But being rich towards God can buy us some very different things altogether. That’s what Jesus made me remember. He got me thinking that with money we can buy: 

– a bed, but no dreams; 

– books, but not intelligence; 

– food, but not appetite; 

– adornments, but not beauty; 

– medicines, but not health; 

– entertainment, but not joy; 

– a crucifix, but not a Saviour… [4]

Jesus left me with these deep questions to consider: 

First, what are the things you think will make you rich? 

Second, what are the things you think will make you rich towards God? 

He is teaching me that I can only be truly happy and fulfilled when my answers to both questions are the same. And that could take some time, some prayer, some hard work.

At the end of all this, what did I learn about this rabbi, Jesus? That he is a rabbi who refuses to be drawn into making judgements which divide people. Instead he challenges us to step outside simply ‘knowing our rights’ and opens our eyes and hearts to our deeper motives, how we act towards  others, and towards God. Who sends us back to work out our differences for ourselves. 

So…. what shall I do now? Is the burning question for me. Do I stop to sort out my priorities in life, go back to my brother and work out how we can live together, our inheritance undivided; or do I just leave Jesus behind and go and find another rabbi who knows my rights and who, without quibbling, without conscience, will grant me what I want?

 

Notes 

[1] This sermon is a combination of what I have learned from Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: a Literary-cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, Through Peasant Eyes, Chapter 4, The Rich Fool, p.57-73, and my sermon Being rich toward God, preached in Liverpool in 2004.

[2] Bailey p.67.

[3] Ambrose, quoted in Bailey p.64.

[4] With money we can buy – words seen on the wall of a restaurant in Guatemala: translated by Judith Escribano, quoted from a Christian Aid study guide, Rebecca Dudley, Peter Graystone, For love or money.

… This is not a ‘God loves you BUT…’ message; this is a ‘God loves you SO…’ message. … It is not saying that faith in Christ means escaping this wicked world. Rather the opposite; this message says, God loves you SO you can grow and flourish in his love right in the middle of this muddled world; this message says, God loves you SO you can walk with him, outwards from your place of prayer, to play your part in bringing unity where there is division; to help others as you go, to shorten the distance between themselves and God. …

From my talk today, I know this is the way the world is, because Donald Trump told me / Lord, teach me how to pray.

Colossians 2.6-19, Luke 11.1-13
The Ninth Sunday after Trinity, 24 July 2016
Sparkford ‘Together at Ten’, West Camel Methodist Church

 

How can hearing the gospel make you sad?

Well, there I was, walking through Yeovil the other day, under a bright warm afternoon sun, and the people were everywhere casually chatting with their companions as they wandered peaceably from shop to shop, while in St John’s churchyard some were viewing the beautiful floral displays as others sat on the grass reading, eating, relaxing. But on the opposite corner, at the top of Silver Street, positioned between Toni and Guy and Burger King, an evangelist was proclaiming loudly that all of us – old ladies, young babies and everyone in-between – were hell-bound sinners. That ‘God loves us BUT….’

And hearing that man’s gospel made me sad at first, quite mad afterwards. Because of the ‘BUT’. Why could he not simply stop at ‘God loves us’? Wouldn’t that be a more appealing message? Far more people were ignoring him than were ignoring the homeless man a few doorways down, with his gentle pleas to be listened to. Maybe the evangelist would get a better response if he stopped at ‘God loves you’ and started to explain to people why he does.

This toxic gospel, in a nutshell, says that we are bad, the world is bad, that our only hope is to turn to God and look forward to heaven. The problem with this so-called gospel (which is not good news at all) is that it is based on divisive thinking which has infected Christian spirituality from the very start. Dualistic thinking which goes like this: flesh versus spirit; works versus grace. God loves you BUT you cannot receive his love unless you escape this wicked world. [1]

We have got used to Christian thinking which polarises, where things are pitched against one another. Heaven as opposed to earth; the body to the spirit. Politics and prayer should be kept apart. Sacred and secular are two separate realms, holy and unholy. The Church and the world are set against each other.

My contention today is that this is not the gospel at all. This comes from the human tendency to divide and rule, to split things up so they can be controlled and manipulated, a tendency in wider human culture and society which has found its way into the very structure of religious thinking itself.

It seems to be human nature that we naturally polarise, want to keep things apart. It has to do with being in control, trying to make sense of things neatly, by oversimplifying. But as we know, it can lead to fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, fear of the other. We feel safer when we oppose, judge, differentiate, label and compare. Today we live in a polarised world: Conservative vs Labour, Christian vs Muslim, east vs west. Things are often said to be black or white. I know this is the way the world is, because Donald Trump told me. [2]

Oh, in these broken times, how we long for healing. Oh, in these restless times, how we long for peace. How in these confusing times do we long for a direction which will not lead us back down the old blind alleys we’re trying to escape from, but into something hopeful and new.

To the shoppers of Silver Street, and all of us, God has been taught as something ‘out there’ or ‘up there’, seen as remote and unapproachable. God, and everyone unlike us, too. How we long to overcome those things which divide us, to get out of our cycles of condemning and being condemned, how we long to find a way to begin to ‘shorten the distance between ourselves and God’. [3]

Well, here is the good news. There is a ‘how’. There is a ‘way’. The way is Jesus and the how is prayer.

As Jesus taught us, prayer helps us enter into a different way of knowing, an alternative way of perceiving reality. A way which removes all boundaries, barriers, divisions between ourselves, God and others.

It is very simple, the way he puts it. As Jesus taught us, our prayer might begin with a sense of God beyond: ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’ But it immediately then dares to pray ‘thy kingdom come’, and moves to an awareness of the God within us and inside the life of this messy world: ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.

When he teaches us to pray Jesus brings heaven and earth together. He leads us from a dualistic view of things to a unitive understanding. He leads us to reconciliation. [4]

Now, we know that Jesus’ social, religious and political world was just as fractured and fractious as our own. It was a fragmenting society riven with divisions and splits in the population.

Jews were pitted against Gentiles over issues of purity and identity; Zealot warred against Roman occupier; Pharisees and Sadducees were at each other’s throats; the scribes and the lawyers were at loggerheads; the Essenes opposed and defied the Temple authorities.

We understand that in the society of Jesus’ time, people were kept apart by a sense of hierarchy which honoured patriarchal families and to the well-to-do, who in turn regarded as shameful those at the opposite end of the spectrum – obvious social outcasts like prostitutes and tax-collectors (Roman collaborators), but also children and women. In this painfully polarised society the sick and maimed were excluded from the Temple and those who did not ‘fit’ were mercilessly marginalised. The Hebrew Scriptures taught of a God who was distant (Isaiah 55.8-9) and of enemies to be slaughtered (Ps. 139.19-22).

The people had divorced tithing and religious observance from issues of justice and mercy (Matt. 23.23), sinners were stoned not welcomed (John 8.1-11), and the chosen people saw themselves as superior to Gentiles (Mark 7.27). [5]

So, yes, a world very much like ours. And so the good news is that

It is precisely in this world of people divided, that Jesus develops his radical unifying and inclusive vision of the kingdom of God. With all his heart he longs to bring all people together as one in their dignity as beloved and cherished children of God. In the holy city Jesus cried out his heart’s longing ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing!’ (Luke 13.34). Jesus’ desire is for the unity of the world: ‘Then people will come from east and west from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God,’ he said. (Luke 13.29)

Where did Jesus get this heartfelt desire from? Maybe Isaiah’s so-called ‘servant songs’ which seemed to inspire in him a sense of his own vocation. Isaiah reveals a longing for unity and for elements that are often divorced or separated to be united: ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid… The cow and the bear shall graze’. (Isaiah 11.6-7)

Maybe Jesus was inspired by the Psalms’ call to worship of all living things: ‘Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! . . .Young men and women alike, old and young together’ (Ps. 148.10, 12).

Jesus always crosses boundaries and breaks down barriers. For him the child, the social nobody, is the model of true greatness (Mark 9.33-37). Jesus welcomes the presence of women (Luke 8.3; 23-49) and Mary Magdalene is the first witness of the resurrection.

Jesus reaches out to those marginalised by society embracing the leper (Luke 17.10-19). In Jerusalem, as he throws down the tables of the money changers in the Temple, he welcomes the outcasts and the ritually unclean: ‘The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them’ (Matt. 21.14).

Notice how many of Jesus’ sayings are about overcoming separation, loss and division. He sees the potential for things once separated coming together:

• The woman is reunited with her lost coin.
  The shepherd once again embraces his sheep.
  The yeast is mixed with the flour.
  The vine is joined to the branches.
  The birds come to roost in the branches.
  Things old and new are to be treasured.
  The enemy is to be loved.
  The prodigal is restored to his father.
  The wounded Jewish traveller finds himself in the arms of a hated Samaritan.
  God’s will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
  Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable.
  The kingdom is both now and not yet, here and still to come.

Jesus teaches that when God made the human person, he made us for him and he made us whole, affirming the law which says, ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’ (Mark 12.30).

The most significant sign of his inclusive kingdom, where barriers are overturned, is the meal at which Jesus eats with tax-collectors and sinners (Luke 5.29-32: see Luke 14.12-24). For Jesus, the open table – where everyone, regardless of shame or status, has an honoured place – expresses his readiness to smash barriers and social taboos; to unite.

Where did these ideas come from? They came from a place of prayer and contemplation. Prayer and contemplation were at the heart of Jesus’ life and practice. He removed himself to pray in the self-same hills above Galilee, where he also taught. When he gave the Sermon on the Mount, that hillside was precisely the same place where Jesus went to pray. His teachings and his healings flowed from his practice of prayer. [6]

So, what is the good news for us, in these broken times? It is that, if we find a place of prayer and contemplation, and pray the way that Jesus taught us, then we too can go back into the world empowered to reach towards healing and reconciliation.

The good news is that, if if we make our prayers fully awake to God being within us and inside the life of this messy world, that if we say ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’, then we are taking real, positive, steps towards healing divisions, bringing things together, and making peace.

The good news is that, if if we begin to accept ourselves as ones who God loves, completely, unconditionally, then we learn what it means to be forgiven – and from that, how to forgive others.

To the Colossians Paul wrote, ‘As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.’ (Colossians 2.6-7)

This is not a ‘God loves you BUT’ message; this is a ‘God loves you SO’ message. Paul is not teaching that faith in Christ means escaping this wicked world. Rather the opposite; this message says, God loves you SO you can grow and flourish in his love right in the middle of this muddled world; this message says, God loves you SO you can walk with him, outwards from your place of prayer, to play your part in bringing unity where there is division; to help others as you go, to shorten the distance between themselves and God.

Notes

Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) from the list which follows and the block quotes above, this sermon would not have come about were it not for the excellent chapter Jesus the mystic in Andrew D. Mayes’ excellent book ‘Another Christ, Re-envisioning ministry’ (SPCK 2014). This sermon is thus substantially Andrew’s, to whom I am extremely grateful.

[1] Andrew D. Mayes, Another Christ, Re-envisioning ministry, p.44-45, altered.

[2] Mayes, Another Christ, p.44-45, altered.

[3] Mayes, Another Christ, p.45-46, altered.

[4] Mayes, Another Christ, p.45-46, referencing John MacQuarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism.

[5] Mayes, Another Christ, p.44, altered.

[6] Mayes, Another Christ, p.46-48, altered.

 

… What Martha wants to happen is for Jesus to take sides with her against Mary – because the more people she gets on-side, the more the persecutor’s cause is strengthened and the victim is thus more likely to remain the victim. [This is] the ‘scapegoat mechanism’ which is at the heart of all human society. It’s what makes us send innocents to the cross, or to the tabloids, or to the edge of the playground on their own, it's how people get publicly shamed on Facebook and Twitter, as we play our part in asserting the survival psyche of our social group. …

– Jesus breaks the drama triangle: Illuminating what makes Martha mad, my talk today.

 

… I’ve just finished the biography of Paul McCartney, 850 pages of engrossing reading. McCartney was a pupil of The Liverpool Institute, which he resurrected twenty years ago as LIPA – the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. The original school was founded by Victorian ship owner and merchant George Holt, and the book quotes the motto of the Institute, "Non Nobis Solum Sed Toti Mundo Nati”. I close with the translation, for I think it is a fine motto for anyone seeking to embrace others, and willing to be embraced by others as neighbours, regardless of whatever their differences might be. "Non Nobis Solum Sed Toti Mundo Nati” translates as “Not for ourselves alone, but for the whole world were we born.”

Quoting Macca's old school motto in my salty sea sermon today, Not for ourselves alone, but for the whole world were we born: the Good Samaritan on Sea Sunday.

While we're at it, how about this bit of comic gold by Stevie Riks, Paul McCartney Makes A Cup Of Tea: "Now some sugar, right? … That's one for me and one for me werms, right? Ok. Dooooooo …."

Colossians 1.1-14, Luke 10.25-37

The Seventh Sunday after Trinity, Sunday 10 July 2016

Sutton Montis w Corton Denham, Queen Camel w West Camel

 

‘Who is my neighbour?’ – a question which is now, and always has been, at the centre of every Christian’s thinking about how we are to live, faithfully, with others in this world.

‘Who is my neighbour?’ – an interesting question to ponder on this, Sea Sunday, a day set aside for us to think about the sea and those who work on it, to consider our connections with them and our ministry to them.

How we answer the question ‘Who is my neighbour?’ will depend on our answer to another, more fundamental question, ‘Who am I?’ For there are deep-rooted reasons why we regard other people the way we do, and they are to do with the stories of our own lives.

Here in South Somerset we may feel relatively landlocked. But as we today mark the 160th anniversary of the Mission to Seafarers, it is interesting to note that it began on the beach at Clevedon, when one day, looking across to Flat Holm, the son of a young Anglican clergyman asked him, “Daddy, where do sailors go to church?” and the Reverend John Ashley turned down a parish appointment to begin a ministry to seafarers in the Bristol Channel. [1]

I’m certain that many of us here do have strong connections with the sea, whether through the places we have lived or through involvement in the Royal or Merchant Navies, or whether simply through enjoying sea journeys on holidays, travelling overseas on business – I’m sure the sea and the people who work on the sea, resonate with you, make connections with your own life story.

As for me, the sea played a large part in my formation. As many of you know I was born and raised right alongside the banks of the River Mersey, the view from my bedroom window across to the Wirral peninsular and the hills of North Wales and Snowdonia beyond, out to the Irish Sea. Ours  was a port city, so as I played on the beach at the end of our road, commercial ships and ferries passed by, and the sights and sounds of loading and unloading at the container docks less than a mile away were part of the background to every day. And I remember every New Year the sound of ships in the channel blasting their foghorns in the dark at midnight. 

So when I think of the question, ‘Who is my neighbour?’, I’m deeply aware that my neighbours aren’t just those next door, they are also ‘over the water’; aware that the waters which separate my place from other places, actually also connect those places together through those who move across them from port to port, from place to place.

Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that our neighbour is the one who does something for us.  And growing up in a place which embraced people from every continent and culture, with the oldest Chinese community in Europe, the site of England’s first recorded mosque, a large Irish and Welsh population, I felt myself blessed by what these others gave me: a love of oriental food, an appreciation of the traditions of other religions alongside their acceptance of my own, and the art, poetry and music of the Celtic fringes. Most of all, perhaps, Liverpool as a whole, and ‘Merseybeat’ in particular, was formed by what the so-called ‘Cunard Yanks’ did for us; the ‘Cunard Yanks’ being sailors who worked on the transatlantic liners that shuttled between Liverpool and New York in the 1950s – and every time they docked, they brought fresh sounds and fashions to an eager city. Which in turn, via The Beatles and others, we returned to the world. [2]

Those who work the shipping lines of course give virtually everything to us. The 40,000 freighters on the seas today between them carry 80% of the world’s trade and 90% of its energy. Nearly everything we eat, wear and work with has spent some time on a ship. Although it is almost invisible the sea trade is enormous, and this shows us how dependent we are on our international ‘neighbours’ whose work ensures that our material needs and desires are attended to. [3]

Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan also teaches us that our neighbour, the one who does something for us, is often the one we’d least expect to.

Of all the occupations in the world, sailors aren’t the best regarded. Their hard living, social isolation and general poverty has always put them on the margins of society, and when they have come ashore they have on the one hand been prey to the exploitation of opportunists, on the other have been looked down on for their drunken excesses. A famous Liverpool waterfront thoroughfare is called Paradise Street, because historically it was a sailors’ paradise of readily available women and alcohol. As in port cities everywhere, worried fathers would tell their daughters to ‘keep away from sailors’ on their Friday and Saturday nights out. 

So it follows that if he had told the story in another time and place, Jesus might have called it the Parable of the Drunken Sailor, for in this respect, sailors are just like the Samaritans of Jesus’ time and place. Given a wide berth by Judeans not so much for a perceived lack of morals, but more because of their religious differences; Jews regarded Samaritans suspiciously as semi-pagans in their beliefs and practices and went out of their way to avoid them. [4] This is the real shock value in Jesus’ story – not so much that someone stopped to help the bruised and bleeding man, but that a Samaritan did. He really wants us to understand that our neighbour, the one who does something for us, can often be the one we’d least expect – and to be always open to that possibility.

Of course, the question, ’Who is my neighbour?’ was the lawyer’s response to the law which said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself’. 

Part of the answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ rests in how I ‘love my neighbour’ – how I behave  towards the other – and especially, towards the one I’m least connected to, or comfortable with.

I haven’t researched the story of Reverend John Ashley enough to be able to support this with certainty, but knowing human nature the way we do, I think we could rightly imagine that there would have been some opposition to his idea of leaving conventional parish work at the start of his ministry to embark on a previously untried venture supporting outcast sailors. From family, peers and diocesan chiefs who would regard this a risky move at best, a scandalous waste of his time and energy at worst. 

Like other Christians who have stepped out into the unknown to pioneer mission work, not everyone would have shared Ashley’s view of his neighbour being the lonely, exploited and rather rough-edged sailor, not everyone would have seen any value in leaving the parish behind and taking church out onto such choppy waters. But ‘Ashley’s work inspired others to minister to seafarers and by 1856, when the Mission to Seafarers was officially constituted, there were mission “stations” in a growing number of British ports and harbours, and within a short time, chaplaincies on the Elbe, in Mediterranean ports, in Halifax, Nova Scotia and by 1866, as far away as Singapore’. [5]

If Ashley ever asked, ‘Who am I?’ he could have justifiably said that he was one who showed what it really meant to ‘love God with everything; and his neighbour as himself’. An inspiration.

I wonder how this connects with your story? We all have our inspirations, who have helped us to regard unusual others as our neighbours, and who have led us to try to reach out to others in need.

Back to my story in Liverpool. As a boy my Baptist minister was also the first Ecumenical Officer for Merseyside, a brave pioneering position in a city then still riven by religious sectarian divisions akin to Belfast and Glasgow. He helped me see my Catholic peers as near-neighbours, and those Protestants I disagreed with as equally loved too. [6]

Then living in a city which was dealing with the cultural legacy of the slave trade, just like Bristol and London, was a challenge in understanding how to enact the law of love towards neighbours. My first job was in Liverpool 8, Toxteth, during the riots of 1981, sparked by racial inequalities between the city’s institutions and its residents. In my first parish, nursing staff at the nearby large teaching hospital who had come from overseas to work here, would occasionally have their windows smashed for their trouble. There was always challenge in learning how to bring healing / reconciling initiatives into play in these situations. And I always learned through wonderful people who at the grassroots worked away at breaking down barriers, building community, loving the unloved, often misunderstood by the wider, influential society and unsupported by the institutional church.

I’ve just finished the biography of Paul McCartney, 850 pages of engrossing reading. McCartney was a pupil of The Liverpool Institute, which he resurrected twenty years ago as LIPA – the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. The original school was founded by Victorian ship owner and merchant George Holt, and the book quotes the motto of the Institute, “Non Nobis Solum Sed Toti Mundo Nati”. I close with the translation, for I think it is a fine motto for anyone seeking to embrace others, and willing to be embraced by others as neighbours, regardless of whatever their differences might be. “Non Nobis Solum Sed Toti Mundo Nati” translates as  “Not for ourselves alone, but for the whole world were we born.” [7]

 

 

Notes

[1] The Mission to Seafarers: History, The Mission to Seafarers at 160 [pdf download] and Wikipedia: John Ashley (clergyman).

[2] Wikipedia: Chinatowns in Europe; Chris Long and Jerry Chester, ‘The birthplace of Islam in Britain’: Kensington’s Victorian mosque reopens, BBC News, 27 June 2014; Declan McSweeney, A trip through Liverpool’s rich Irish history, Guardian, 15 October 2012; Liverpool Welsh website; Tim Jonze, Cunard Yanks: the sailors who taught Britain how to rock’n’roll, Guardian, 1 July 2015.

[3] Rose George, Deep Sea and Foreign Going: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Brings You 90% of Everything. 

[4] Wikipedia: Samaritans, Tensions between the Samaritans and the Judeans.

[5] The Mission to Seafarers at 160 [pdf download]

[6] Revd David Savage, mentioned in The Free Church Leaders – Together For The Common Good.

[7] In composing, with Carl Davis, his ‘Liverpool Oratorio’, Macca added a line of his own to the Institute motto, “Not for ourselves alone, but for the whole world were we born. And we were born in Liverpool”. Philip Norman, Paul McCartney, The Biography, p.642.

.. That old four-point gospel formula could not have been the gospel of The Seventy disciples Jesus sent out before him. It could not possibly have been the story which they went out and told. For they did their Galilean door-knocking way before Jesus’ crucifixion and death took place. When Jesus sent out The Seventy he was still very much alive and at the peak of his mission of teaching the good news of the kingdom of God, and demonstrating the coming of that kingdom in action. The gospel Jesus gave The Seventy to share could not have been about his death. Rather, his gospel must have been about his life…

– from my talk today, The good news is a conversation, not a formula.

Isaiah 66.10-14, Luke 10.1-20 

The Sixth Sunday after Trinity, 3 July 2016

West Camel (w Queen Camel), Sparkford (w Weston Bampfylde)

 

In these testing times we’re living through, how we long to hear some good news. In these days which feel like dark forces are being unleashed, how we desire to see an end to evil in the world.

An end to the suffering of the world’s poor; an end to the avarice of the wealthy which heightens inequality.

Freedom for those held captive for their faith or beliefs, those hemmed in by dividing walls, abandoned behind the razor wire of refugee camps and detention centres.

Sight for the blind of the world – including ourselves in our blindness to our own self-destructive ways; and all who are blinded by ideologies which lead to division, hatred and violence.

Release for those who feel oppressed – exploited in the employment market, targeted in the street because of their race or religion or sexuality, the belittled, the unlistened-to, the uncared-about.

How deeply we people of faith and goodwill desire to find the words to proclaim the love and favour of our Lord in a society where healthy dialogue in public conversation is at an all-time low.

So let us give thanks for today’s gospel reading – for, in telling the tale of Jesus sending out the seventy disciples, it brings us into the wonderful renewing realm of good news; and in recording the vision of Jesus watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning, it points us towards not just the possibility of an end to evil in the world, but that that end has already begun.

Let us allow this gospel reading teach us how we can proclaim the love and favour of our Lord in these testing times. Aware of Jesus appointing seventy of his followers to spread his good news around, I encourage you to think of ourselves included in their number.

Yes, let us think of ourselves as being part of The Seventy – for the world is desperate for good news today, and we who have an inkling of the gospel need the confidence and courage to share it.

But the first and foremost question for us is this: if we are The Seventy – what is our gospel? What is the good news which we must share?

The gospel many Christians have been brought up with, the theology behind many of our liturgies,  including the one we’re using today, the Reformed Protestant gospel of the past few hundred years, reduced into a formula of four simple points, is this: we are all sinners, whose sin separates us from God. God sent Jesus to die to save us from our sins – if we believe in him we will be saved.

This is so much part of our spiritual worldview that we might be forgiven in thinking it the only way of speaking about Jesus’s life and mission. But it is problematic, for it invites us to think of Jesus not as a man who lived a remarkable life, who fleshed out a liberating mission, but rather it reduces him to a formula, a spiritual fix. This so-called gospel is troublesome, for it contradicts everything Jesus seems to want to teach us about God being a loving Father, but instead offers us a God whose first instinct is not to create and hold us in love, but to judge us as sinful, and whose solution involves condemning his only Son to a brutal death. No wonder so many people fail to find any good news in this, feel repulsed by the blood-soaked language of our communion, and turn away to search for wholeness and blessing elsewhere. 

But when we consider the passage from Luke we’ve heard today, we realise that the gospel formula I just described – could not have been the gospel of The Seventy. That could not possibly have been the story which they went out and told. For they did their Galilean door-knocking way before Jesus’ crucifixion and death took place. 

When Jesus sent out The Seventy he was still very much alive and at the peak of his mission of teaching the good news of the kingdom of God, and demonstrating the coming of that kingdom in action. The gospel Jesus gave The Seventy to share could not have been about his death. Rather, his gospel must have been about his life.

This observation is good news in itself for those who suspect that some of the stories we have been telling about God have outlived their usefulness, some of the images of God we’ve held onto have lost their shine. That scripture contains far more wealth and wonder than we’ve reduced it to. And that the time is right for returning to scripture, prayerfully, asking the Spirit to give us the eyes of faith to help us make new discoveries there, to find other ways of talking about God.

Just one example of what can happen when we do – from today’s reading from Isaiah. It is said these days that the Church has alienated an entire generation of young people because of its slowness to affirm women in leadership and its reluctance to lovingly embrace those of different sexualities. Take a look at Isaiah 66.10-14. In it, the place where those ancient people met with God, Jerusalem, is described in feminine terms: she is a loving mother nursing her children; and then we hear God telling the people, “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” God too, describing – himself? herself? – in feminine terms as a joy-giving, loving nurturing mother. Putting the feminine at the heart of the divine.

You might notice that in the last verse God reverts to male, warrior mode. It is indeed, a verse in tension. It begins with that gentle nurturing voice, “You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of the Lord is with his servants.” But it ends in anger, “and his indignation is against his enemies.” So this is a passage in tension, a conversation fluctuating between God as a vengeful warrior and a loving nurturing mother. It is worth remembering that Isaiah was written not by one man, but by schools of writers over many decades. Eight centuries before Jesus, Isaiah was in conversation about God. And to me, this makes it a passage also very much for today. For we are a people in tension, between old ways and new, in how we view God, and how that affects the way we view the world, and live in it. In how we view the world, and how that affects the way we view God, and walk with him.

We can guess that, on the doorsteps of Galilee, The Seventy would have had the very same sorts  of conversations-in-tension; that in telling the good news they weren’t trying to sell a magic formula, they were provoking discussion – discussion about the life and mission of Jesus, about the meaning of the kingdom of God on this earth at this time.

Which brings us back to the question I began with – what was the gospel which Jesus gave The Seventy to share? What was the good news which they discussed in the towns and places where he intended to go?

Thankfully, we need not speculate on this, for Luke’s gospel makes it very clear indeed what Jesus’ good news was. Luke records it in Chapter Four:

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, … came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. He went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

 ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

        to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ [2]

This is the good news which Jesus gave The Seventy to share, and longs for us to embrace. This is the gospel of the kingdom of God, come to earth in the here-and-now, to transform lives in these present times. 

This is no abstract magic formula, either, and we can thank Luke for detailing the many ways in which Jesus fleshed out this good news.

By bringing good news to the poor – like the widow of Nain, whose son Jesus restored to life thus saving her from poverty; or the many so-called ‘tax-collectors and sinners’ who Jesus invited to eat with the respectable Pharisees and lawyers, around the same tables, giving equal value to each.

By releasing many captives – like the man in chains outside Geresa who Jesus healed of demon-possession, like Zacchaeus, released from his captivity to greedy acquisitiveness, who found healing in repaying those he had defrauded.

By restoring sight to the blind – like the beggar Bartimaeus who he healed by the roadside.

By setting free the oppressed – like the woman who wiped his feet with her tears in the house of Simon the Pharisee, whose devotion he affirmed, like the woman who had suffered from haemorrhages for twelve years, who he healed.

These acts of love were good news to those he helped and healed. How The Seventy must have enjoyed sharing those stories in the homes of the towns they visited. 

 

Furthermore Jesus’ teachings, often in the form of parables, encouraged discussion of these themes. Imagine what the conversations might have been like around the tables at those meals he hosted when he sat side-by-side the rich and poor, the respectable and the frowned-upon, the pious and the earthy people of the community. People challenged at that table, to put away their prejudices and to find some common ground. Imagine the effect of Jesus at one of these gatherings telling, let’s say, the parable of the dishonest manager, who put shrewd business practices above absolute integrity in his financial dealings, in an attempt to save his own job. 

Imagine the different reactions this story would provoke from the different people around the table. Imagine the conversation which Jesus then led – how that conversation would have helped people hear and understand perspectives very different from their own. Imagine how that conversation might have ended – probably not with everyone agreeing, but with everyone appreciating each other’s points of view more, and seeing the possibility of them learning to live with each other in a more open, accepting, way.

These shared meals and provocative parables were good news to those who experienced them, finding their lives enriched in these exchanges. How The Seventy must have loved inviting people to share in these conversations around their own tables. And been disappointed when they declined.

The gospel Jesus gave The Seventy to share could not have been an abstract formula about his death. Rather, his gospel must have been about his life, and his invitation for us to join a conversation about how we can flesh out how to embrace the life of the kingdom of God in this world.

A conversation which focusses us on asking, who are the poor among us and how can we bring good news to them, what does it mean for us to release the captives and bring sight to the blind, how can we set oppressed ones free, what would it mean for us to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour?

 

 

Notes

[1] Written in the crisis following the UK Referendum decision to leave the European Union. And helped enormously by Paul Neuchterlein’s notes on Girardian Lectionary. Reflections. Year C: Proper 9C.

[2] Luke 4.14-21 Sometimes called Jesus’ Nazareth Manifesto, the focus of my sermon Learning cooperation in the body, Devon, January 2013.