Month: August 2021

Ephesians 6.10-20 , John 6.56-69 

 The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 22 August 2021: Austwick

‘Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’

Week by week the Church celebrates in prayer some of its saints of the past. This weekend we’re invited to recall William and Catherine Booth, the founders of the Salvation Army. So my theme today is the Booths and their struggles with the powers. 

William Booth was born in Sneinton, Nottingham to Samuel Booth and Mary Moss. His father was wealthy for the time, having successfully engaged the powers of the banks to set himself up that way. But – as you know – investments can go down as well as up. When the powers turned against Samuel, the family descended into poverty. In 1842, he was bankrupt. His school fees now unaffordable, aged thirteen, William was apprenticed to a pawnbroker. 

At the pawnbrokers, the youthful William Booth saw again how the same powers which built up wealth for some sent many others into poverty, and began to understand the struggles and the needs of the poorest in society. Having found salvation in Methodism, Booth trained himself in writing and in speech, became a Methodist lay preacher, and followed a calling to be an evangelist: his one desire was to take up his armour as a soldier of God in the battle against the powers. 

The powers-that-be in the Methodist Conference knew that William Booth’s passion and his best work was in running evangelistic campaigns, but despite this they kept assigning Booth to pastoral jobs he was unsuited for. In 1861, his request to be freed for full-time evangelism being refused yet again, Booth resigned from the Methodist ministry to become an independent evangelist. William  described this as ‘a heartbreaking business’ for he and his wife Catherine, going out into the world with their four little children, ‘not knowing what to do or where to go’ or where their income would come from, but, he said, they ‘trusted in God’ as they went in the direction he led them.

Catherine’s struggle against the powers embraced a cause which is still a leading issue in our day: that of women’s equality. A Methodist by upbringing, having married William in 1855 Catherine became active in the work of the church he led at Brighouse, speaking in children’s meetings, and, with William’s encouragement, publishing a pamphlet, Female Ministry: Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel, which powerfully argued for women’s natural and moral equivalence with men, asserting that there was no scriptural reason to deny women a public ministry and maintaining that ‘what the Bible urged, the Holy Spirit had ordained and blessed and so must be justified’. 

Partnering her husband in their work Catherine became a powerful preacher, reportedly ‘eloquent and compelling in speech, articulate and devastatingly logical in writing’. Many have agreed that no man of her era, including her husband, exceeded her in popularity or in spiritual impact. In her celebrated work with alcoholics she wore the helmet of salvation; in her work with converts the shield of faith; in her campaigning on women’s civil rights the belt of truth; and in her lobbying of Queen Victoria to seek legislation for safeguarding females, in the form of the Parliamentary Bill for the Protection of Girls – there Catherine displayed the breastplate of righteousness.

In the early 1860s William and Catherine set up The Christian Revival Society in London’s East End, their struggle against the powers taking on a new form as they fed, served and preached to the city’s most derided, forgotten and powerless people, including alcoholics, criminals and prostitutes. The general public, the Methodist churches, and their new evangelistic peers, might each have empowered, supported and encouraged the Booths, but they scoffed at them, turned their backs on them, and chose to disagree with their methods and distance themselves from their ministry. 

Still, the Booths were not defeated by the obstacles others placed in their way. Dressed for the battle against the spiritual forces of evil in that time, they formed the Salvation Army. 

William’s best selling book In Darkest England and the Way Out compared what was considered ‘civilised’ England with ‘Darkest Africa’ which in 1890 was considered poor and backward. Booth observed that much of the population of London and greater England were no better off in quality of life than those in the underdeveloped world.  In this we find William wearing the belt of truth.

William proposed a strategy to apply the Christian Gospel to society’s social problems. We might call it his breastplate of righteousness. This involved establishing homes for the homeless, fallen women and released prisoners, agricultural training for the urban poor and emigrants, aid for the poor and alcoholics, poor men’s lawyers, banks, clinics, industrial schools and even a seaside resort.

Always clear that the movement they founded was not a socialist or communist society, the Booths were unambiguous about their mission being inspired and grounded in the gospel; that, in walking the way of Christ, they wore shoes to proclaim the gospel of peace.

And they wore the shield of faith, to quench the flaming arrows of the evil one. Through the lean early years of their mission, against much opposition, The Salvation Army persevered. And their faith brought growth: by the early 1880s, the Army’s operations had begun to extend worldwide. 

Wearing the helmet of salvation the Booths were clear that the only hope for mankind’s deliverance from misery, either in this world or the next, was ‘salvation by the power of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ’, and that their work relieving temporal misery was just a means ‘to make it possible for men and women to find their way to the Cross of our Lord.’

And finally, wearing the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, William Booth wrote of how he judged his own character ‘by the standard of truth set up in my soul by the Bible and the Holy Ghost’, which helped him test against hypocrisy and the temptation to follow his own route, not God’s.

Will you be encouraged by the story of the Booths? You and I may not see ourselves as warriors for the Lord battling each day against the powers of the world. But the struggles of life they encountered are the same sorts of struggles which engage us. Our world with its challenges big and small, is little different from the world in which they lived. And the faith which inspired them is the same faith we share. The armour of God – truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, the word of God – these are God’s gifts to us, which will save and protect us as we try in our own ways, in our own places, to live our lives faithfully and well. We can pray for them daily and they will come. 

Yes, the power of God which gave the Booths strength for their struggle is the same power which is available to us, which we can receive as we pray – in whatever way we pray. For the gospel which the Booths declared boldly, is the same gospel through which Christ offers us salvation. 

 

Note

This sermon is a rewrite of Ephesians 6: William Booth and his struggle with the powers, preached in Liverpool in 2009. I lament my exclusion of Catherine from that talk, for her struggle against the principalities and powers speaks at least as strongly as William’s into the challenges of our present time. Source materials: 

• The Authoritative Life of General William Booth, by George Scott Railton, Chapter III: Lay Ministry, and Chapter V: Fight Against Formality (online).
• Wikipedia: William Booth.
• Wikipedia: Catherine Booth.
• Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, PROPER 16B.
• Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium and all of Wink’s writings on ‘the powers’: for an introduction to his vital work see Ted Grimsrud, Transforming the powers: the continuing relevance of Walter Wink. Open Democracy, 23 January 2018.

Proverbs 9.1-6, John 6.51-58 

 The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 15 August 2021: Clapham, Eldroth

Wisdom has built her house. She calls us:  ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed. Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’

In a rapidly-warming world, Wisdom has built her house. 

In these very moments of our receiving the sobering news of the intergovernmental report confirming the widespread and “unprecedented” changes to the climate that are “unequivocally” the result of human actions: Wisdom has built her house. [1]

In those very places where extreme weather is worsening, where temperatures are rising, where storms, heatwaves, droughts and floods increase and sea levels rise – in this very world, right now, Wisdom has built her house.

If you are wondering how we can find a way through these times, to whom can we and the coming generations turn for direction, then scripture reassures us of the offer of the gift of Wisdom. 

If we step away from the noise of the news and social media reducing discussion of this most vital of topics to an opposition between the deniers and the doomsters – those who refuse to believe what is plainly before us and those who can see in this nothing but destruction for humankind – if we step away from this in search of a deeper, kinder, hopeful, practical wisdom then we will be assured: that Wisdom can be found. She has made her home among us and she has an open door.

Many seeking wisdom in a time of climate change are finding it in the indigenous peoples of the earth: those who ‘despite centuries of political, social and ecological upheavals, have maintained their deep, ancient relationships with their historic lands and waters’. [2] The conservation biologist Gleb Raygorodetsky, after two decades of work with indigenous peoples worldwide, finds wisdom in these people’s “sort of intimate, spiritual relationship with the land, with the planet… a more holistic way of relating to the land, the animals and our place in this planet.” [3]

Likewise, Christian Aid are finding wisdom in the words of partners and theologians from the global South, publishing a paper on a global theology of climate change featuring voices including that of Uruguayan Guillermo Kerber. He believes that climate change is an urgent question of justice and that it’s about our three-way relationship with God, the vulnerable ones of the earth, and the earth itself.

Together with the cry of the poor, people, and Christians in particular, should listen to the cry, the groaning, of the earth and respond effectively,’ he says. [4]

Wisdom may be found when we open our hearts, minds and ears to God – in prayer and together seeking understanding of the scriptures; to the poor – by listening to what those voices from the South have to say about our world, its patterns and systems, and our relationships within them; and to the earth itself – by understanding the deep web of connections between flora and fauna and our place, our roles, within that.

This brings me to someone closer to home to whom I often turn for practical and spiritual wisdom: Alastair McIntosh, who describes himself as a ‘human ecologist’, studying the ‘relationships between the natural environment and the social environment.’ McIntosh says that ‘To do human ecology, like doing theology, is to pull on a tangled ball of string. You cannot unravel one loop until you’ve understood the network of connections.’ This requires a deepening of spiritual vision. ‘Science gives outer sight, but spirituality complements this with in-sight,’ he says. [5]

McIntosh’s search for wisdom embraces all kinds of spiritual practices and traditions, but is firmly rooted in his upbringing as a Presbyterian in the traditions and time-honoured ways of life of the Isle of Lewis. In his current book Riders on the Storm he addresses the global themes of climate change by taking a walk along the shore of his home village of Leurbost to closely observe  how the relationships between people and nature have shaped that particular landscape and how they are now changing. A deep conversation arises on the Leurbost shore, enriched all the more by the companions he has invited on that walk, a delegation of visitors from Papua New Guinea. [6]

This causes me to think that if we are seeking Wisdom’s house in our place, then our place is the best place to begin. To rightly assume that Wisdom has built her house in our particular patch of land.  Whilst we may – and we must – learn a lot from the world’s indigenous peoples and those of the global South, and from the earth itself, we must also be confident that we can find the wisdom we need for this time of climate change in our own ‘indigenous’ ways, in the old ways in which we have related to our own soil and each other, those traditional practices on the land and in the home which may have been eclipsed in recent decades by industrial agricultural practices and all the fripperies and distractions of the consumer boom, but which we still value. Making do and mending as an antidote to consuming and discarding. Collaborating as community as an antidote to ploughing on alone. 

Through a fatal misreading of the Genesis story Christianity has often justified the ravaging of the earth by presenting it as God’s gift to humankind for us to dominate and exploit. But within our scriptures there is also the Wisdom tradition, found in the books of Proverbs, Job, the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, which ‘are about everyday life. About how to keep going.’ The Wisdom tradition in scripture ‘focusses on things like misbehaving children and mischievous gossip. It’s about chronic illness and how to cope with it. It’s about keeping your temper and keeping to time. It’s about the perils of making money and the joys of making love. … It is obviously and immediately relevant to the concerns of ordinary people.’ [7]

Where has Wisdom built her house? Here – where our everyday duties meet the life of faith. Wisdom has built her house here – in our world of work and of getting on with other people. Wisdom has built her house here – as we draw on our experiences of life in nature, and our life in this land. Wisdom has built her house here – as we recall the instructions our forebears gave us as to how to live our lives in tandem with nature and its ways. And finally, Wisdom has built her house right here in this very place of worship – as we practice the old religion which is always aligned to the seasons of the year and the ways of people on the earth, as we share in the bread and wine, ‘the ordinary things of the world which Christ makes special’ to us [8], renewing our hearts and minds by allowing ourselves to be reminded of the love God has for us, receiving God’s Wisdom to refresh us in living in the way of that love in our everyday lives. 

Here’s a thought. This summer, why not spend time with the Bible’s books of wisdom: 

‘Come, eat of my bread, says Wisdom, and drink of the wine I have mixed. 

Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’ 

 

Notes 

[1] Fiona Harvey, Worst polluting countries must make drastic carbon cuts, says Cop26 chief. Guardian, 9 August 2021.

[2] Emily Gertz, How the World’s Oldest Wisdom Is Informing Modern Responses to Climate Change. The Revelator,  8 November 2017.

[3] Emily Gertz, ibid. Raygorodetsky’s work with indigenous peoples is fully described in Gleb Raygorodetsky, The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change. See also https://archipelagohope.com. 

[4] Susan Durber, Song of the Prophets: a global theology of climate change [PDF]. Christian Aid, November 2014, p.11-12.

[5] Alastair McIntosh’s Home Page, http://www.alastairmcintosh.com. 

[6] Alastair McIntosh, Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being. p.1-2.

[7] John Pridmore, ‘What’s right with wisdom’, Church Times, 18 August 2006. See my earlier sermon Proverbs 9 – Wisdom’s house, for a fuller discourse on this.

[8] Adapted from Iona Community, Liturgy for Holy Communion B,  A Wee Worship Book: Fourth Incarnation, p.96.

 

Ephesians 4.25-5.2, John 6.35-51

 The Tenth Sunday after Trinity 8 August 2021 

Austwick, Keasden 

Someone in the Warwickshire village of Water Orton has been anonymously delivering poems and charms through people’s letterboxes. At least one household on every street in the village has received a package from the mysterious sender. One resident said the gifts delivered a “feel-good factor” during lockdown in the village. “They lift your spirit a bit,” he said. The do-gooder posts the charms, along with a poem titled “Just a little gift to brighten up your day”, under cover of darkness. “I think at these times it’s lovely to think someone’s thinking of you,” said Sharon Arnold, who lives in the village. “I thought it was a lovely idea.” [1] 

In Bridport, Dorset, Pinque Lawes hobbled into Waitrose to grab herself some tea and the lady behind the till asked her if she was ok. She wasn’t, for she was feeling low after a terrible week during which she had had two seizures, both times falling and hitting her head, and she’d also fallen  off her electric scooter, breaking three ribs and pulling several muscles in her leg.

Pinque said: “It had been an absolute nightmare week. I was feeling pretty miserable when the lady behind the till asked me if I was ok. She seemed very interested and sympathetic and couldn’t do enough for me really. I’d seen some flowers I really liked and I asked her how much they were and she responded saying ‘they’re on the house’. Very occasionally staff are at liberty to use some gift vouchers and she used hers to give me these really lovely flowers. I almost burst into tears, it completely changed my day.’ [2] 

They probably happen a lot more often than we hear about them: random acts of kindness, stranger to stranger: the elderly lady who leaves a thank-you note for the cafe waitress who had served her, the bus driver who stops to help a struggling passenger not just off the bus but across the road, the teenager fundraising to buy food to give to homeless people. Being kind to one another is human nature. Contrary to the belief ‘sunk deep into Western thought, [that] human beings are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest’, what many behavioural scientists say, and what we saw abundantly during the first months of last year’s lockdown, is ‘that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. The instinct to cooperate rather than compete, trust rather than distrust, goes right back to the beginning of Homo sapiens.’ [3]

In his bestselling book Humankind Rutger Bregman illustrates this by telling the story of the real Lord of the Flies. William Golding’s influential portrayal of the darkest depths of mankind is a story which never actually happened.  What did actually happen when a group of six schoolboys were marooned on a Pacific island for fifteen months between 1965 and 1966 was that they cooperated together to provide each other with food and shelter in a daily routine which sustained them; and when one fell and broke his leg the others worked together to first rescue him, then set his leg using sticks and leaves and tend his injury, so that after they were finally rescued the local physician expressed astonishment at that boy’s perfectly healed leg, and at the healthy physiques of all the boys. [4] 

Of this, and many other similar examples in his book, Bregman says, ’By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too. But if we believe in human kindness and altruism then we can achieve true change in our society.’ [5] 

This has always been a theme in Christianity, of course, from the earliest writings of St Paul, who told the believers in Ephesus to ‘Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.’ [6]

Now, we might say, with some justification, that it’s easier to be kind to random strangers than it is to people who we’re around all the time. Those next-door neighbours with their irksome noisy habits which we can’t get off our minds; that person in our social group who annoyingly always wants to be the centre of attention; we may find it harder to find ourselves speaking or acting kindly towards them.  

One way to overcome our reticence towards such people is to learn empathy: to try to ‘always be kind to others, for we never know what someone is going through’; [7] to recognise that ‘There’s a story behind every person. There’s a reason why they’re the way they are. [To] think about that before we judge someone.’ It all depends on the lens we use – so if we look on others with beautiful intentions then kindness can arise. [8] 

But it’s notable that our scriptures don’t even teach us empathy. They give just one reason why we should act kindly towards others: to imitate the way that God in Christ acts towards us.

Those who may dismiss this as ‘bleeding-hearted’ might recall where that phrase comes from: the iconographic image of Christ’s wounded heart, which symbolises his uninhibited compassion and love for a world he knows to be broken. In a famous sermon Martin Luther King Jr said that 

I am thankful that we worship a God who is both tough minded and tenderhearted. If God were only tough minded, he would be a cold, passionless despot sitting in some far-off Heaven “contemplating all,” as Tennyson puts it in “The Palace of Art.” He would be Aristotle’s “unmoved mover,” self-knowing but not other-loving. But if God were only tenderhearted, he would be too soft and sentimental to function when things go wrong and incapable of controlling what he has made. He would be like H. G. Well’s loveable God in God, the Invisible King, who is strongly desirous of making a good world but finds himself helpless before the surging powers of evil. God is neither hardhearted nor soft minded. He is tough minded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted enough to live in it. He does not leave us alone in our agonies and struggles. He seeks us in dark places and suffers with us and for us in our tragic prodigality. [9]

As Christ gave himself as ‘a sacrifice to God’ [10] so we are called to imitate him by giving of ourselves towards others without inhibition – whoever they are, whatever they’re like.

Thus there’s a toughness about kindness just as there is a toughness about love, and about speaking truth in love. To cultivate it requires a prayerful self-awareness and self-discipline. To practice it can transform our world. 

 

Notes

[1] Mystery ‘charmer’ delivers lockdown lifts in Water Orton. BBC News: Coventry and Warwickshire, 7 March 2021

[2] Bradley White, Women’s ‘nightmare week’ turned around by ‘act of kindness’. Bridport and Lyme Regis News, 21 March 2021.

[3] Rutger Bregman, Humankind, A Hopeful History. 

[4] Rutger Bregman, The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months. Guardian, 9 May 2020.

[5] Rutger Bregman, Humankind, A Hopeful History. 

[6] Ephesians 4.31-32.

[7] Unattributed but popular quote.

[8] Pip Wilson’s blog, 22 May, 2012.

[9] Martin Luther King Jr.,  A Tough Mind And A Tender Heart. Penguin Great Ideas Series.

[10] Ephesians 5.2