Month: June 2019

Galatians 5.1,13-26 [1], Luke 9.51-62 

30 June 2019: The Second Sunday after Trinity

Keasden (United service)

 

‘No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God’, said Jesus.

What would happen if a person did keep on ploughing while looking backwards? (The plough line would go off-line; some of the land available to be ploughed would be lost). 

What would happen if a person kept on grass-cutting on their tractor while looking backwards? …

I once knew a teenage farmer who destroyed a precious boundary hedge whilst driving a tractor because he was distracted, busy adjusting his headphones. You’ll have stories of your own….. 

Have you noticed how Jesus often taught with stories and images just like this one? Pictures from nature, images from agriculture. It was natural to him to do this, for Jesus and his generation lived close to the land. His people’s life is familiar to people here, who also live close to the land, and so the things he says are understandable to us, the things he asks for are do-able by us, here where we are.

‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’, Jesus said, impressing on his would-be followers the great challenge of living the life of faith.  And that’s what today’s readings are about. The challenge of living the life of faith. Paul also writes about this, in his letter to the Galatian believers, also using an image from the natural world. 

‘The fruit of the Spirit,’ he says, ‘is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.’ [2] 

I wonder if you think of yourself as a disciple of Jesus, as someone who has at some point in your life made a conscious decision to put your hand to the plough and make it your life’s mission to follow Christ? Or maybe you feel more like, ‘I’ve always been a Christian, from birth, from baptism. I was born to plough that furrow.’ However you’d describe yourself, Paul describes us all as ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus’; and he details those forms of behaviour which show us and everyone else how well we are doing at ‘living by the Spirit’,as he puts it, or ploughing a straight line, to use Jesus’ image.

It does us good to run ourselves through Paul’s checklist every now and again. For we do get distracted and diverted, ‘becoming conceited, competing against one another, envying one another’, as Paul puts it. Taking our eyes off Jesus and focussing on ourselves and the way we look in relation to others. It’s good to keep an eye on the direction we’re taking.

On clergy training this week I joined a group visiting St Paul’s Church, Manningham. Led by their clergy, we took a short walk to their neighbouring mosque, where we were warmly welcomed by one of the mosque committee (someone I suppose like a PCC member) and an imam, who gave us a guided tour. [3]

I’ve visited mosques before and learned a lot about our Islamic neighbours. [4] This time I was struck by how protestant the prayer rooms feel – they are vast open spaces with the minimum of decoration, so that worshippers can focus entirely on Allah – on God – without distraction; but I also noticed the prayer beads which were hanging on one wall for anyone to borrow, which, from what we were told, function in exactly the same way as rosary beads do in our Catholic tradition. 

But most of all my eyes were drawn to the various notices on the walls and on electronic display panels – notices giving the Salaah times for the day – the set times for the five daily prayers; and other notices of a more practical application: ‘Please park your car considerately’, one said; ‘No children under 7 years old in the masjid’. There were lots of notices about bullying not being tolerated, and then one which particularly struck me, a notice which said, ‘Please refrain from talk of worldly materialistic matters whilst in the masjid. Keep your complete attention on Allah.’ [5]

Now imagine if, inspired by this, I decided to adopt these ideas here – and that next time you walked into church you’d be greeted with signs which said, ‘No gossiping or idle chit-chat whilst in church please, focus yourself completely on Jesus’. … We might laugh or scoff, but that’s close to the spirit of what Paul and Jesus are talking about in our readings today, when they give warnings against living by the flesh with its passions and desires, against ‘becoming conceited, competing against one another, envying one another’.  

Jesus says, don’t look back. For our temptation to think that our way of doing things is the only way – isn’t that a form of conceit? 

Jesus says, focus on the furrow you are ploughing. For our striving to succeed where others fail – where does that competitive spirit come from?

Jesus says, stay fit for the kingdom of God. For our gossip and chit-chat – why create space for rivalry and envy? 

You know, some churches do have instructive notices posted in prominent places for people to read and respond to. [6] Sometimes you’ll see The Lord’s Prayer painted high up on a wall – to help us use our time in church prayerfully. Sometimes it’s the Ten Commandments – inviting us to reflect on the ways which God expects us to live. 

It is good that we should use our time in church to do these things, whenever we’re here. It is good also to take time every day, wherever we are, to ask the Spirit to help us put away those things which distance us from God and others and to fill us instead with that good fruit, of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

 

Notes 

[1] Galatians 5.1,13-26. The lectionary reading for the day stops at verse 25 but, following Paul Nuechterlein (Thinking We’re Right: the Ultimate Conceit), I’m including the crucial verse 26. My earlier talk Family misfortunes – the difficulties of desire is my version of Paul Nuechterlein’s sermon.

[2] Galatians 5.22-26.

[3] St Paul’s Church; Masjid-e-Quba, in Manningham, Bradford.

[4] This training course was initiated by the Diocese of Leeds Faithful Neighbours programme, which is affiliated to Presence and Engagement, the Church of England’s national programme ‘equipping Christians for mission and ministry in the wonderful diversity of our multi faith society’.

[5] Paraphrased from memory. See Masjid-e-Quba: While in Masjid.

[6] St Matthew, Keasden is one of these churches, with these texts displayed either side of the altar – as pictured here.

 

Galatians 3.23-29, Luke 8.26-39 

The First Sunday after Trinity, 23 June 2019

Austwick, Keasden

“My name is Legion,” he said. “Because I have an army of demons inside me.”

“The demons began arriving when I was young,” he said.  “I was always the odd-one-out in the playground, not sporty, happier to sit out on the edge and read a book – so the name-calling started: I was a wimp, I was queer, I was weird; and the pushing and punching started too: for wimps and weirdos are fair game for everyone else’s punishment. And every time I accepted their hateful words, that I was weird, I was queer; a little demon formed inside me. With every punch,  another demon. These demons taught me to hate myself, and drove me even further outside the circle everyone else belonged to – and I longed to belong to, for this was my community, this was my home.”

“His name is Legion,” said the people of Geresa. “He’s the one we make jokes about – which makes us feel better about ourselves. He’s the one we keep at arm’s length – which holds us together as a group because we’re not like him. He’s the one we demonise – we need him here, for we don’t have to face our own demons when we put them onto him.”

Luke’s report of this healing of Jesus is so precious a gift to us today. For it is about our mental health – our mental health as a collection of people. It demonstrates that mental health cannot be thought of or treated as a problem which individuals have, alone; something they have brought on themselves and must face in isolation. No, the healing of the Gerasene demoniac drives home the truth that our mental well-being is a community effort. 

This is such an important question for us to face today, for ‘mental distress’ in our society is spiralling upwards, on every scale. [1] The NHS reports that approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem each year, and in children and young people aged 5-19, 1 in 8 have at least one mental disorder. [2]

These rates are much higher in cultures like ours, societies possessed by the idea that material affluence is the key to fulfilment, that only the affluent are winners and that access to the top is open to anyone willing to work hard enough, regardless of their family, ethnic or social background. [3] If you do not succeed, there is only one person to blame – says the devil we all know.

And in countries like ours, which has the 7th most unequal incomes in the developed world, [4] consider the “pernicious effects that inequality has: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, (and) encouraging excessive consumption”. It’s proven that health and social problems of every kind are significantly worse where inequality is high. 

If I’m poor, or if I’m feeling poor, living close to others who are unbelievably wealthy, that’s got to be a failing on my part – says the demon who brings us all low.

How Jesus healed the demon-possessed man of Gerasa is vital for us to grasp, for it demonstrates how as a society, as a community, we can be healed; how we can find release from this devilish culture of isolating and blaming others – so prevalent we often don’t notice it, although it involves and damages us all.

Backtrack for a moment to another gospel story reported by Luke. Remember when Jesus returned from the wilderness to his home town Nazareth and announced to the crowd gathered there his intentions for his ministry – and how the crowd, angered by what he’d said, drove him out of the town, intending to throw him off a cliff? [5] It’s a pretty routine story for those times and for ours – for it’s usually the crowd who end up united and empowered at the top of the cliff, having ganged up against an individual, their victim, who they send over the edge to their doom. 

See how this differs from the story which we’ve just heard, of when Jesus healed a man who had a crowd of demons in him. In this story it is the individual, the victim, who is left safe at the end – and  it is the devilish crowd who go over the cliff. [6]

Jesus’ miracle at Gerasa reverses the normal way that things are done in the world. 

Normally, the crowd will remain on top of the cliff as the victim is cast over; instead, in this case, the crowd plunges down and the victim is saved. 

Normally, life in the village or society goes on as normal once the crowd have cast out their outsider. In the case of Jesus’ healing at Geresa the result is quite different.[7] 

Nothing can be the same again for the people of Geresa, now facing the challenge of how to find a new way to hold themselves together as a community no longer able to name, blame and reject their wimp, their queer, their weirdo, their feckless poor, their loser. 

The message this story sends us all is that the way of Jesus is a wholly other way we can all act in community. It calls for us to recognise in ourselves when we are acting like one of the crowd, mimicking its values and devilish behaviour – and invites us to break this behaviour by recognising, affirming and celebrating the humanity in each other person which we ourselves share. 

We Christians can contribute to the healing of society: by affirming our gospel values over any other. So, for instance, we reject the creed that material affluence is the key to fulfilment, and celebrate in faith that those who walk with Christ will live abundant lives, regardless of wealth. 

Condemn an unemployed woman for laziness and you’re very likely ignoring the reality of the situation which she is in – and you’re adding another demon to her troubled spirit. Uphold her as a sister, seek to understand her as a friend, and you’re both on the road to reconciliation and healing.

As Christians we can confront the lie that a certain notion of health, fitness and beauty is what will bring us recognition and acceptance; with the truth that each and every person is made in God’s image and cared for without prejudice by a God of grace and unconditional love.

Trouble a man with constant messages about his looks, his shape, his image and you’re filling him with demons. Tell him, show him, that he is loved and valued, absolutely just as he is, and you are both beginning to grasp the wonder of abundant life.

To the man they once called Legion, Jesus said: “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” Like the one he healed in Geresa, every member of our society longs to be ‘clothed and in our right mind’. And we can help to bring this healing, with every opportunity we take to challenge those attitudes which put demons into us all; in every moment we choose to live graciously towards others in response to all that God has done for us.

 

Notes

See also my earlier talks on this topic, Overcoming Legion in our village, preached at Little Budworth, 2013 and Queen Camel, 2016.

[1] Rates of mental distress almost doubled between people born in 1946 and 1970. In 1977, 22 per cent reported psychiatric morbidity. This had risen to almost a third of the population (31 per cent) by 1986. Oliver James, The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza. Quoted in Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?. p.35-36.

[2] McManus, S., Meltzer, H., Brugha, T. S., Bebbington, P. E., & Jenkins, R. (2009). Adult psychiatric morbidity in England, 2007: results of a household survey. The NHS Information Centre for health and social care. Sourced from Mind: Mental health facts and statistics. Mental Health Foundation, What new statistics show about children’s mental health. 23 November 2018.

[3] Oliver James, The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza. Quoted in Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? p.36.

[4] The Equality Trust: The Spirit Level.

[5] Luke 4.16-30.

[6] I owe this insight to Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Reflections, Year C Proper 7, and his notes and quotes from Rene Girard, The Scapegoat’, Chapter 13, ‘The Demons of Geresa’.

[7] Rene Girard, The Scapegoat’. pp. 170-171. Altered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Romans 5.1-5, John 16.12-15

Trinity Sunday, 16 June 2019: Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth

 

“When the Spirit of truth comes,” said Jesus, “he will guide you into all truth.”

The truth is coming. He said. The truth is on its way. The truth is not a given, it is not handed to us on a plate so that we now have all the knowledge we’ll ever need, so that we now know all that we ever need to know. No – the Spirit comes to guide us into all truth. But one day the truth will be complete. One day there will be a revelation, an unveiling when all will fall into place. For the Spirit comes to guide us into all truth.

Two thousand years after Jesus, the Spirit is at work guiding us into all the truth. For there are truths we still haven’t been able to bear that the Spirit is waiting to guide us into. Religious truths; scientific and historical truths; economic and ecological truths; all kinds of truth. [1] 

Perhaps the most difficult truth that the Spirit is yet to help us bear is the truth about why, so often, we turn our face away from things we know to be true; about what it is that causes us to deny truth so that we fail to act in response to it. Why our numbness in the face of reality?

I heard a truth today, oh boy. Across the world we daily grow nearly two and a half times as much food as the amount the average person needs to eat to be healthy. And yet around 800 million people go undernourished and a further two billion or so suffer some kind of ‘hidden hunger’, deficiencies in proteins or nutrients. [2] And I need help in understanding how this comes to be. I need guiding into all the truth about this; the truth about why it happens and the truth about how I as a person, how we as a community, can respond in compassion and equity. For another truth I hear today is the truth God spoke through Isaiah when he said to the devout ones like you and me:

Is not this the devotion that I want from you: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly. [3]

And another truth I hear again today, the truth which Jesus spoke, that whenever you feed the hungry one, give drink to the thirsty one, welcome a stranger and give clothing to the naked one, whenever you take care of the sick one and visit a prisoner, “I tell you, just as you do it to one of the least of these members of my family, you do it to me.” [4]

The times we live in demand that we yearn for truth, we never stop searching for truth, we struggle where necessary for truth. For the truth is coming. The truth is on its way. Whilst the Spirit is waiting to guide us into those truths we still find hard to bear, we may find ourselves on the wrong side of truth if it overtakes us.

The times we live in require us to ask the Spirit to guide us into truth. To live in response to it. To not be afraid to speak it. The world is too delicate, too precious, too valuable for us to stand aside or stay silent. 

We have heard the truth of late from the mouth of a sixteen year old. Greta Thunberg, whose great gift is a prophetic clarity and persistence in the face of the burning forests of our rapidly-warming world.  We heard her address the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, saying,

I often hear adults say: ‘We need to give the next generation hope’. But I don’t want your hope. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I do. Every day. And want you to act. I want you to behave like our house is on fire. Because it is. [5]

Now there’s a saying doing the rounds which goes, ‘Not knowing the truth doesn’t make you ignorant. Not wanting to know the truth is what makes you ignorant.’ [6] So we should pay heed to the modern day prophets who the Spirit is using to guide us into truths which will make us uncomfortable, and may cause us suffering of sorts – if suffering means giving up our oil-powered,  plastic-drowned lifestyles – for the deeper truth, as expressed by Paul in his letter to the Romans, is that 

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. [7]

It’s hard to get to the truth of things sometimes. And so many of us are hiding from the truth – especially about ourselves. But remember another thing Jesus said: ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ [8] 

Look at St Paul, whose transformation from violent oppressor of Christians to the greatest earliest Christian missionary witnessed to what the truth of God can do when it comes to a person in power. The truth that Saul held fast to, for so long, had been handed to him by Moses – it was The Law; it was, he thought, all the knowledge he ever needed to know. But Saul was a devout man, and I think it very likely that made him always open to the Spirit’s guiding him into truth. So when the Spirit came to him in that great revelation, that unveiling of Jesus on the road to Damascus, then all fell into place for Saul, soon to be Paul.

The truth that dawned on Paul was that through Jesus we each stand in God’s grace. He discerned the deepest of truths, that we are so absolutely graced, and that because we stand in God’s grace, we can live in hope – the hope of sharing God’s glory, the hope of being the people God intended us to be, able to play our part in shaping the world into the place God wants it to be.

The truth is coming. The truth is on its way. Every moment, every day the Spirit comes to guide us into all truth. The truth will challenge us and change us; but if we follow where it leads us then ultimately the truth will make us free. Let us embrace afresh today this wonderful search for truth.

 

Notes

[1] Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary: Trinity Year C, John 16:12-15, Reflections and Questions.

[2] Mike Berners-Lee, There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years. p.13-16.

[3] Isaiah 58.6-8 altered.

[4] Matthew 25.31-46 altered.

[5] Greta Thunberg, Our House is On Fire, in No One Is Too Small To Make a Difference, p.19-24.

[6] Unattributed. It’s a meme. You can find it all over the web, including here.

[7] Romans 5.3-5.

[8] John 8.31-32

 

 

Pentecost (Columba, Abbot, 597), 9 June 2019

Austwick, Clapham, Keasden 

Acts 2.1-21

 

Picture the wild goose, flying beneath a morning sky, red at the end of a stormy night; hovering over a pebbled bay at the back of a small Hebridean island. And picture below, at the water’s edge, a small group of wet, bedraggled men in a tiny boat washing up onto the rocky shore. Their leader looks back to the south, his eyes following the course they have travelled, to confirm that the coastline of Ireland is no longer in sight, and says, “This is the place.” As the goose passes above, the men step off and begin their walk inland.

Now picture the wild goose, flying through time, crossing the island to rest in grass alongside a cluster of buildings wherein the same group of men we saw earlier are now gathered in prayer, their leader intoning the Psalms as they together respond. The building which contains them is the work of their hands, a place of devotion and learning.

Today the church remembers Saint Columba, an Irish abbot and missionary evangelist credited with spreading Christianity in Scotland. He founded the abbey on Iona, for centuries a dominant religious and political institution in the region. Of a high-born tribal family, the legend goes that Columba had to leave Ireland sometime around the year 560, after causing the bloody battle of Cúl Dreimhne which left many men dead. The repentant Columba resolved to expiate his offence by going into exile and win for Christ as many souls as had perished at his hands. The monastery at Iona which he founded, he developed into a school for missionaries. One of the most famous of his alumni was St Aidan, who in the mid-seventh century travelled south to found the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, now known as Holy Island. [1]

The wild goose moves on through time; finding the island of Iona a perfect nesting-place, its compactness meaning that the geese are never far from water. As the wild goose flies through the centuries, the old monastic buildings fall into disrepair and ruin; new ones are built and then in time dismantled and abandoned. The wild goose was there a century ago when other groups of men spent two decades of summers in working parties rebuilding the abbey. Today the wild goose once again nests alongside a vibrant abbey, a centre of prayer, worship and contemplation; and takes to the skies above the ferries bringing visitors to the busy island day by day. 

The Benedictine abbey church had reached a substantial size by the fifteenth century, but following the Scottish Reformation, Iona once again fell into ruin – although it continued to be a place of pilgrimage for many visitors. In 1938, the Reverend George Macleod, minister of the dockland parish of Govan, Glasgow, took unemployed skilled craftsmen and young trainee clergy to Iona to rebuild the monastic quarters of the mediaeval abbey and to develop a new form of common life on the island. [2]

Macleod was an energetic and enthusiastic young minister “appalled by the social deprivation in Govan and the Church’s lack of response”.  Macleod’s new experiment proposed two things.  First, that unemployed craftsman would be invited to restore the ancient Abbey buildings, and second, that future ministers in the Church of Scotland could come and be prepared, working side by side with the craftsmen while living in community. [3]

That original task became a sign of hopeful rebuilding of community in Scotland and beyond. The experience shaped – and continues to shape – the practice and principles of the Iona Community, the ecumenical community which continues to use the site to this day. [4]

Today is also Pentecost, and what better way to consider the work of the Holy Spirit than by chasing the wild goose through place and time. For legend has it that from the time of Columba to the present day, in these northern lands the Holy Spirit has been symbolised by the wild goose. Unlike the calm and gentle dove, a wild goose is in essence untamed, uncontrolled and  unpredictable. And like the wild goose the Holy Spirit blows to and fro on the wind; coming in strangeness and power to disturb the status quo and to set people onto a new adventure with God.

It is this Spirit, I think, which links Columba and George Macleod. Both men inspired to turn the darkness into light – for Columba turning the darkness of his tribal battles back home in Ireland into the light of teaching and sharing the gospel with the people of Scotland; for Macleod turning  the darkness of unemployment in his dockland parish, into the light of bringing work and worship together and in that way restoring to Iona a living community rooted in a life of prayer.

This wild goose Spirit carried the two men’s work way beyond their original vision. Columba’s missionary initiative spread way beyond Scotland into England, Europe and beyond. Macleod’s working parties became the Iona Community which today is a worldwide movement of people committed to living out the Christian faith by bringing worship, faith and spirituality together with social justice and campaigning, environmental stewardship, peacemaking, healing and reconciliation. This is a diverse and inclusive community – like the one which the wild Holy Spirit engendered on that Pentecost in Jerusalem. Spend time on Iona today and you will hear every type of language spoken, see every type of person represented, all working together in the demanding common task of being faithful disciples in the everyday world. [5]

May the wild goose keep flying for us – may the Holy Spirit continue to bless us and disturb us. In the words of the hymn we earlier sang, by John Bell and Graham Maule of the Wild Goose Resource Group, 

Even now, as on that earliest day

we feel uncertain. So we pray:

Lord, give us Pentecost again

through city square and country glen.

With or without new tongues of flame

make your church worthy of your name. [6]

 

Notes

[1] Wikipedia pages referenced here: Canada Goose, Columba, Aidan of Lindisfarne.

[2] Wikipedia: Iona Abbey, Iona. Iona Community: Our history.

[3] Josh Sweeden, Book Review. Ronald Ferguson, Chasing the Wild Goose: The Story of the Iona Community.

[4] Iona Community: Our history.

[5] Iona Community: Our concerns.

 

 

 

 

[6] God’s Spirit came at Pentecost. John L Bell and Graham Maule, © Wild Goose Resource Group, Iona Community, Glasgow. In the collection Known Unknowns: 100 contemporary texts to common tunes.

Acts 16.16-34, John 17.20-end

The Seventh Sunday of Easter / Sunday after Ascension

2 June 2019: Eldroth, Keasden

 

In this period now between Ascension and Pentecost the worldwide church is being urged to pray ‘Thy Kingdom Come’. It’s a bold prayer to make when you think about it. ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ In other words, may the rule of God which is usually quite hidden, be revealed in the world; may the way of God, which is most of the time neglected, become the way of the world.

The world doesn’t really want God’s rule because we’d rather do things our way; but we followers of Christ pray in the way he taught us because we’re sure that God’s ways are the true ways towards goodness and the flourishing of the earth and its people.

‘Thy Kingdom come’ is a bold prayer to make also because when we pray it God involves us in answering it. I wonder if you’ve ever had the experience of praying, let’s say for a person you’re aware of in some sort of trouble or need, asking God to help them; and following your request,  where there’s a silence you’ve felt God replying to you – saying, ‘You help them. You go for me.’ When you pray ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,’ you’re likely to find that God gets you involved in the answer. How wonderful. 

When we pray we become united with God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – we know that because John’s gospel records Jesus asking his Father in prayer, that ‘… those who believe me … may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.’ United in love; united in fellowship; united in the ways of God’s kingdom – that’s the intention and that’s the experience of prayer. [1]

Now, we live in a world divided, whose leaders speak of unity but build their empires on creating divisions – in 2016 Donald Trump, in a campaign speech, said, ‘The only important thing is the unification of the people, because the other people don’t mean anything.’ [2] And 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.

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 and of enemies to be slaughtered. The people had divorced tithing and religious observance from issues of justice and mercy, sinners were stoned not welcomed, and the chosen people saw themselves as superior to Gentiles. [3]

So, yes, a world very much like ours. But 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!’. 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.

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.

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. [4]

So, the good news for us, in these broken times 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.

Paul and Silas were in a place of prayer in prison on that night where by a miracle of God an earthquake flung the prison doors open. The prayerful prisoners might have united together acting against the jailer to make their escape but instead they united with the jailer, saving him from taking his own life and instead opening to him a new life of faith in Christ. 

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.

 

 

Notes

This sermon borrows substantially from I know this is the way the world is, because Donald Trump told me / Lord, teach me how to pray preached in Somerset in 2016. In turn it quotes heavily from the excellent chapter Jesus the mystic in Andrew D. Mayes’ excellent book ‘Another Christ, Re-envisioning ministry’ (SPCK 2014). So this sermon is thus substantially Andrew’s, to whom I am extremely grateful. Thy Kingdom Come global prayer initiative.

[1] “ 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. The prayer which Jesus taught us begins with a sense of God being beyond us: ‘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.” Andrew D. Mayes, Another Christ, Re-envisioning ministry, p.45-46, referencing John MacQuarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism.

[2] Trump quoted in Jan-Werner Muller, Populism and the People. London Review of Books, 23 May 2019.

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

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