Galatians 6:1-16, Luke 10.1-20

The Third Sunday after Trinity, 3 July 2022, Eldroth, Clapham

Christ’s disciples walk in a world of acceptance or rejection. Every day they experience being either embraced or expelled. Jesus sent out seventy-two of them to the Gentile towns of Judea as he had previously sent out twelve to the towns of Galilee in Israel, to heal the sick and proclaim the coming of the Kingdom of God. He led them to expect welcome in some places, and opposition in others, but promised them peace whatever they found; he told them to accept whatever came their way and to leave him to deal with the consequences; and he condemned all the towns who sent his disciples packing.

And Christ’s disciples today, you and me, baptised into a lifetime’s journey with our Lord, in a world of rejection we have been given acceptance, in a world of expulsion we have been lovingly embraced. In our uncertain times, where previously fixed-points in our world are wobbling, many Christians long to find ways to tell this wonderful Christian story, to share its joy with others. 

Today’s gospel passage is a helpful starting point. For Luke chapter 10 offers us a unique expression of the meaning of the cross. There, in verse 18, as nowhere else in scripture, Jesus describes his crucifixion experience. In just one brief, astonishing, line he projects himself forwards in time to tell us what he sees at the moment of his death:

‘I see Satan fall from heaven like lightning,’ he said. [1]

If you want a definitive description of the most powerful moment in history, then this is it. Here is Jesus describing what his eyes see from the cross, at that pivotal moment of his death. ‘I see Satan fall from heaven like lightning.’ It is so intense an image, like a scene from a motion picture, that it is likely to become fixed forever in our own mind’s eye once we’ve visualised it for the first time. 

Jesus, crucified by brutal enemies, whilst hanging there utterly engaged in a cosmic battle between the powers, at the very moment of his death ‘sees Satan fall from heaven like lightning’, and in a flash the world is changed substantially, for ever. What changed? How did that work?

Before this moment the world knew only one way of encountering acceptance or rejection, embrace or expulsion. People longed to belong and strove to be chosen, and belonging to a group was everything; whether Roman or Jewish, whether Pharisee or Sadducee, every group’s identity depended on their not being like the group next door, every group’s integrity depended on their not being tainted by the presence of others unlike them. In this world those who upset the balance of things were accused of wrongdoing, and expelled. 

Religion was key to this process, the practice of sacrifice was central to humanity’s sense of well-being. And so the high priest Caiaphas said, ‘It is better that one man should die for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed.’ [2] and so the innocent victim Jesus was accused, condemned and crucified.

And in this world, in ancient folklore, Satan is the Accuser. He is the one who brings accusations against people. He is the High Court Judge, if you like, charged to bring a conviction against the bad people of the world. Satan divides the world between the chosen people and those who are accused of evil-doing and therefore rejected. Satan makes those who think they are the chosen to gang up against those who they accuse. This a world of unjust victims, of scapegoating, and as I’m sure you’ll recognise, is not just the ancient world, it is today’s world too. [3]

But the good news of the meaning of the cross speaks to people who walk in a world of acceptance or rejection, whose everyday experiences are of being embraced or expelled. It is that Satan, the Accuser who is at the heart of each rejection and every expulsion, has been overcome by Christ, who embraces us in unconditional love, and enables us to step away from that cycle of violence which is the way of the world.

The moment of Jesus’ death was also the moment of Jesus’ triumph. It was a moment of  illumination in which the watching world plainly saw an innocent victim, the unjustly accused, punished, and for the first time the world had its eyes opened to every innocent victim, every unjustly accused person, punished throughout history. In that moment of revelation Satan the Accuser lost his power, his grip on human society slipped, and he fell. 

‘I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning,’ Jesus told his followers. And that energy charge which sent Satan crashing from the skies was the Holy Spirit of God. The gospel of John refers to the Holy Spirit as the paraclete – a legal term, meaning the defender of the accused, and it was his vital energy which forced Satan the accuser to go spiralling to the ground, draining the former ruler and judge of the world of his power to convict.

Christ sees Satan fall to earth. This does not mean the end of Satan, sadly, for we know that our world of rejection and expulsion continues. But it does mean that this world has been drained of its power: because that once-and-for-all-time lightning strike illuminates the truth at the heart of the problem of human violence. 

Because of what the cross reveals, we no longer need believe the myth that the idea of violence is divine; for on the cross God himself is our victim. We no longer need believe the myth that to put things right in our world we must expel those who are unlike us and eliminate so many innocent people; for on the cross Christ holds out his arms to embrace the world in love. [4]

That lightning flash of the Spirit still electrifies us today. Because of this power of Christ in us, his disciples can show acceptance in a world of rejection. Because of this power of Christ in us, his disciples can embrace with love those whom the world expels. 

Notes

A rewrite of Christ’s disciples in a world of acceptance or rejection, preached at Whitegate, 2013.

[1] This sermon owes a great deal to the concluding chapter of Rene Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, p.182-193, and to Paul Nuechterlein’s notes on Luke 10.1-11, 16-20 in his Girardian Lectionary, Proper 9C. 

[2] John 11.50.

[3] See my sermon Mark 8 – Satan the Accuser and God the Chooser from 2006, and the source sermon of the same title by Paul Nuechterlein. 

[4] Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, p.184 (altered)

Galatians 5.1,13-25, Luke 9.51-end 

The Second Sunday after Trinity, 26 June 2022, Austwick, Keasden

“Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.”

As you know, many preachers over the centuries have browbeaten their listeners with St Paul’s long explicit list of fleshly sins, and some seem to have relished particularly emphasising those which have something to do with sex and excessive partying. We might feel that these are easy targets, for of course such behaviour ought to be challenged and moderated by anyone of any faith or tradition seeking to live a modest, moral life.

But Paul is talking about something much more than that. He’s talking about the ‘desires of the flesh’. And the key word is desire. The crux of what St. Paul is trying to teach us about ourselves, when he talks about it as the flesh, is the desires of this world. [2]

What does Paul mean by desire? Is it like the woman watching all the TV commercials for beauty products, fashionable clothes, etc. When her husband turns the telly over to the sports channel, she turns around and says, “Now how will I know what I want?”.

The woman’s story reminds us that we get our desires by imitating one another. The adverts make her want to copy the glamorous women she sees on screen. What they want – the hair conditioner, the face cream – she wants. We copy each other’s desires, or we wouldn’t really know what to desire. Faced with a large supermarket shelf full of hair conditioners, how do we know what we want to buy? We buy the one we know from the telly, the one which Claudia Winkleman likes to use.

Now, that’s the way we are made, so it’s not bad in itself. God created good. In fact, we are created in God’s image. In other words, we have the ability to copy, to imitate, to image God’s desires. The problem is that instead of imaging God’s desires, we image each other’s desires.

And when we do that we end up desiring many of the same things. I want the car my brother’s got. I want the marriage my sister’s got. And when we end up desiring the same things, what happens to us? We compete with one another, we envy one another, and we can easily get caught in the conceit of thinking that we deserve what we desire more than the next person.

It’s that old story about two children in a room full of lovely toys and which toy does the one child want? The one toy which the other child is playing with.

Or it’s that story about the man who has known a particular woman as a friend for a very long time, and never thought about her as anything else than a friend, until his best male friend starts a relationship with her, and then that first man starts to desire her: a classic love triangle like you see in the films all the time, and in real life.

So that’s why verse 26 is important. ‘Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.’ St. Paul ends this chapter about freedom and love by telling us to watch out not to get caught up in comparing and competing and envying each other. He is telling us to watch out for desire, the desires of the flesh, the works of the flesh. [3]

Having recently reached my 60th birthday I now think that those desires of youth – the ones Paul lists as fornication, licentiousness, drunkenness – the sins of the party animals – have probably mostly passed me by by now, and in reality I was never much of a carouser anyway. But I know that I can still become consumed by wanting what other people have, desires which can get me into things like enmities and envy, anger and quarrels, dissensions and factions. 

Notice that Paul also includes in his list idolatry and even sorcery, as if to underline that when we become consumed wanting what other people have, we stop desiring what God desires for us and start following other sorts of gods altogether.

In the deepest part of our souls, integral to that which is most truly us, we are able to copy, to imitate, to image God’s desires. And whilst we’re drawn by strong temptations towards other kinds of desires, Paul is keen for us to know that Christ has set us free from all that into a life whose fruit is ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.’ 

‘Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,’ Paul writes. ‘If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.’

It all boils down to the crucial choice that Paul lays out for us: either we desire God’s desire, which is what he calls living in the Spirit, living by the commandment to love another as we love ourselves. Or we can live by the desires of other people, which Paul calls living by the flesh. [4]

How can we cultivate the desire to live by the Spirit so that our cravings for what other people want can fade and diminish?

There’s a discipline involved. It might be that we determine to spend less time with those things which feed our desires to have what others desire – in other words to fast-forward through Claudia Winkeman’s shampoo adverts, or to stop reading the new car reviews in the weekend supplements – and to use that time instead to reflect on people we admire for being good examples of living out those fruits of the Spirit Paul names: people who exude love, joy and peace;  people who display patience, kindness and generosity; faithful, gentle, self-controlled folks. Using them as our models, we’re increasingly likely to share their desires to live in the Way of God.

I think old St Patrick also had a good strategy for keeping his desires aligned with God’s. In his beloved prayer known as St Patrick’s Breastplate he begins his day by saying – or singing – 

I bind unto myself today / The strong name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same / The Three in One and One in Three. [5]

Rather than being bound by what Paul would call worldly desires, this prayer of St Patrick looks to ‘the power of God to hold and lead, His eye to watch, His might to stay, His ear to hearken to my need. The wisdom of my God to teach, His hand to guide, His shield to ward; The Word of God to give me speech, His heavenly host to be my guard.’ 

What a way to start each day, and to walk through hour by hour: frequently reminding ourselves of the presence of Christ with us; Christ who in each moment is able to open our hearts and minds to discovering Godly desires in what we hear others say and see others do. This is the unceasing prayer of those who seek to live by the Spirit:

Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. [6]

Notes 

[1] A rewrite of Galatians 5, Luke 9: Family misfortunes –  the difficulties of desire, preached in Croxteth, 2010. 

[2] Paul J. Nuechterlein, Thinking We’re Right: the Ultimate Conceit, delivered at Emmaus Lutheran, Racine, WI, June 27-28, 1998. 

[3] Paul J. Nuechterlein, Thinking We’re Right: the Ultimate Conceit.

[4] Paul J. Nuechterlein, Thinking We’re Right: the Ultimate Conceit.

[5] Wikipedia: Saint Patrick’s Breastplate.

[6] This extract of Saint Patrick’s Breastplate is from the translation by Cecil Frances Alexander, 1889.

Galatians 3.23-29, Luke 8.26-39 

The First Sunday after Trinity, 19 June 2022

Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth

“My name is Legion,” he said. “Because an army of demons has entered me.”

You may recall me having preached on the Gerasene demoniac in the past, explaining how this story shows that mental health is not simply a personal matter, that it cannot be reduced to just a problem which individuals must suffer alone, something we have brought on ourselves and which can only be treated in isolation. By contrast, the healing of the Gerasene demoniac drives home the truth that our mental sickness and our mental well-being are both a community effort. [1]

Now, I am using the term ‘mental heath’ here to embrace a person’s spirituality too. For it is what a community puts into people which creates Legions in them. This is about how a society demonises people. It is the circumstances we are placed in outside our control which can bedevil us, the expectations others place on us and the names that we’re called by those who judge us. Our spiritual and mental sickness and well-being are inseparable, and are both a community effort.

As one example, consider our society’s attitudes towards work. We associate work with self-worth but those we regard as doing the most socially valuable jobs we reward the least, and we highly reward those whose work is barely, if at all, necessary for the well-being of society. This creates anguish at every level. The low-waged struggle to survive whilst carrying the extra burden of society’s expectations that knowing they’re performing valuable tasks ought to be reward enough; whilst those in well-paid work which nevertheless feels pointless or unnecessary to them, find themselves frustrated, unfulfilled; those in jobs which offer good compensation and ample free time but who know they just do not contribute to the common good, find themselves diminished. All of this is psychologically damaging. All of this bedevils people. All of this creates Legions. [2]

The story of Jesus and the man of Geresa shows that the first step in exorcising the demons in our society is in naming them; the second step is casting them out; then can the previously troubled ones return to their ‘right mind’; then can those who have been set adrift in the world return, with thankfulness, safely to their spiritual home. Whilst all of this applies to troubled individuals – like the Gerasene demoniac – it can also apply to whole communities. For we well know that our society is ever-ready to demonise certain other groups who we think don’t fit. 

We are blessed to be living in a well-loved area of the country where people enjoy holidaying and some who can, choose to make their home here because of the general sense of well-being they find in this place. But some of you, like me, will have at other times in our lives lived or worked in communities which were regarded in quite different ways, looked down on, sniffed at, even feared and avoided at all costs. 

One parish I happily served in for a number of years used to suffer outsiders calling it a ‘sink estate’ and other injurious names, bedevilling us, making Legions, whilst the reality was far more nuanced: sure, there were all the social problems related to poverty, particularly connected with the rapid demise of all the large factories in the area, which for generations had been the foundation of the community’s social and family lives; and of the intentional dismantling of the welfare system driven by an ideology which explicitly demonised those seeking assistance from it… creating Legions… [3]

But despite all this there was also much to celebrate in the way that people continued to value that place and pulled together to support the vulnerable and to build it up over and over again, as they still are doing. [4]

A clergy colleague in this deanery this week told me of her surprise at the reaction she got from some of Bradford’s civic and church leaders when she moved there some years ago, having previously lived in rural North Yorkshire. ‘Why would you want to come here?’ they asked, shockingly demonstrating how they had become possessed by a negative spirit about the city they were placed to serve, dismayingly showing how they felt themselves to be lesser than their professional peers in other parts of the country because of somehow being tainted by Bradford. 

This is just like the behaviour of the Gerasene demoniac who each time he broke his bonds, never tried to make his way back home: he went in the opposite direction, out into the wilds, lacking the self-esteem to try to reconnect with his people, instinctively sensing that because of his condition of bedevilment he could not belong with them any more.  

‘Why would you want to come here?’ – sounds just like the demoniac asking Jesus, ’What have you to do with me?’ The truth is, of course, that in the gospels we find Jesus again and again drawn to places which have been bedevilled. Why would he want to go there? To uplift and renew them. And in the gospels we see Jesus again and again drawn to people whose spirits are in torment. What had he to do with them? He intended to release and restore them.

This vital gospel passage which rewards rereading, time and again, can encourage us that just as it is those spiritually oppressive attitudes that a society puts into people which bedevils them, so also our society, our community, may share in the joyful work of exorcising those demons and creating space for new beginnings and mutual flourishing. Creating circumstances for people to feel and be in control of their destinies, placing healthy, supportive expectations on people and calling them good names … All of this can renew, revitalise, resurrect us, people and places alike. Our spiritual liberation and our mental well-being are a community effort.

Jesus’ exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac invites us to consider the deep spiritual forces at work in our world, forces which operate on the personal level and that of whole communities, institutions, and nations, and which interact in complex ways between all these.  

This story invites us to consider our own spiritual condition, and to try to name those different elements of it so that the good ones can be nourished and the bad ones cast out. 

It invites us to consider the spirituality of the place or places to which we belong and to do the same with those – what are the spirits at work in Austwick / Clapham / Eldroth? 

And where would we place ourselves in that conversation about Bradford? For this scriptural tale, so resonant today, also invites us to bring to mind those people and places who may be demonised by us, our community and our society, and provokes us, where we need to, to turn ourselves around to help restore good relations with them. 

Having met Jesus this man of Geresa appeared ‘clothed, and in his right mind’. And, as Paul told the Galatians, ‘As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.’ So that like him, we too may spend our days ‘declaring how much God has done for us’; and by living in that spirit of thankfulness, we too may drive all evil away from ourselves and those around us.

 

Notes

[1] The Gerasene demoniac – our mental well-being is a community effort, preached at Austwick and Keasden in 2019; also Overcoming Legion in our village, preached at Little Budworth, 2013 and Queen Camel, 2016. Important texts behind these talks include Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? p.36 (quoting Oliver James, The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza), and Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Reflections, Year C Proper 7, with his notes and quotes from Rene Girard, The Scapegoat’, Chapter 13, ‘The Demons of Geresa’.

[2] Wikipedia: Bullshit Jobs; David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work, and What We Can Do About It.

[3] ‘Tim Nichols from the Child Poverty Action Group said his organisation believed government rhetoric on the issue was changing, having a real effect on those claiming benefits. He said: “It’s without doubt got worse. It is very much linked to the fact they’ve got a major programme of cuts to social security under way, and are seeking a narrative to justify this. It’s becoming increasingly hard for us to find people in poverty or receiving benefits who are happy to speak about their situation in the media. They fear the effect of this stigmatisation if they put themselves in the spotlight – how it might affect them and their children. They really are scared.”’ Peter Walker, Government using increasingly loaded language in welfare debate. Guardian, 5 April 2013.

[4]  See for instance the work of Triple C (Liverpool), a community action charity founded in 2004 by the three Anglican churches of Norris Green and Croxteth, and thriving today.

Churches Weekly Newsletter, 12 June 2022

Bradford is to to be the UK City of Culture in 2025. Are you pleased?

“In the welfare of the city shall you find your welfare,” Jeremiah wrote to God’s people exiled in Babylon. The Area Bishop of Bradford Dr Toby Howarth quotes this in a Church Times article celebrating Bradford’s successful bid to become UK City of Culture 2025. “Now, as we prepare for 2025 and beyond, we are asking, as religious communities and specifically as the Church, what this welfare means for us.”

“Bradford is where Yorkshire meets 170-plus cultural heritages from around the globe,” writes Dr Howarth. “City of Culture will tell stories of individual and community journeys that have contributed to Bradford’s story. Historical and contemporary, these are stories of trade and empire, grinding poverty and spectacular wealth, the breaking up of old identities and the forging of new ones.Part of that global heritage is about religious faith.” 

Bradford has a strong religious heritage, played out in its cultural and social life; think of the devout Congregationalist Titus Salt applying his form of compassionate capitalism to his relationships with his workers; think of the creativity emanating from the Parsonage at Haworth; consider the latter-day religious influences involved in the work of Peace Studies at Bradford University and the multi-faith relationships developing  with sensitivity and enthusiasm between the people of the modern city’s churches and mosques. 

Bishop Howarth along with the President of the Council for Mosques sit on the district’s senior leadership team, along with colleagues from the council, health, education, police and fire services, business, and the voluntary sectors. He sees Bradford’s winning bid as an opportunity for us in the city-region’s churches to consider what this means for us, and how we might share in the celebrations. 

For me, I’ll start with my great-grandparents and grandmother, shoemakers of Shipley; and what are your Bradford connections, what’s your take on the region’s contributions to culture and the place that faith plays in all that?