Author: Stephen Craven

The Bible in a Year – 26 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

26 November. Ephesians chapters 4-6

By pure coincidence, today’s bible reading includes one of the two passages on which I preached in church this morning (Ephesians 5:21-30), so I will share here the text of that sermon.  That is why this is a rather longer blog post than usual.  The theme was “safeguarding Sunday” with a focus of the work of the Mother’s Union; the other Bible text was John’s gospel, chapter 8 verses 1-11.

 

Today is Safeguarding Sunday.  And if you groan inwardly when I say that, I can understand why.  Safeguarding is something we hear a lot about in church these days, and rightly so.  But it is a rather unglamorous subject for a sermon, a bit like when the lectionary comes round to the verse about God loving a cheerful giver, and the treasurer gets up and asks people to put a bit more in the plate each week.

Given what we hear in the media in the moment about certain celebrities, we can easily think that safeguarding is only about protecting children from the unwanted attention of men.  That’s part of it of course, but it’s much more.  We talk about “vulnerable adults” too. And this year, we have been asked by the Mothers Union to look at a particular aspect of safeguarding vulnerable adults.  The sixteen days each year leading up to the 10th December which is International Human Rights Day are when the MU focuses on the issue of gender-based violence.  So that’s our theme today. Gender-based violence, or GBV for short.

Let’s start by making sure we know what we are referring to.  The definition that the MU uses is “any act of violence or abuse which is directed at someone because of their gender” noting that it “most commonly affects women and girls.”  Most obviously, GBV includes the sort of relationship problems that affect people in most cultures across the world: domestic violence, stalking, sexual harassment and rape. These are nothing new. All of them can be found in the Bible, if you look in the right place.  Coming right up to date it also includes new problems such as people-trafficking for prostitution, cyber-harassment and revenge pornography.

The effects of these forms of abuse are not just scars, bruises and unwanted pregnancy.  They include mental, psychological and emotional wounds that are not visible on the outside but can take years to heal.

You might well ask, why am I as a man giving this talk when this type of violence is suffered by ten times as many women as men?  Because it affects us all, even if we ourselves are neither victims nor perpetrators.  When I did jury service, one of the cases I heard involved a man who beat his wife and daughter for not giving him the respect he thought he deserved as the head of the house.  The other was a case of sexual assault by a shopkeeper on one of his female customers.   Also, five women (not in this congregation) who have known me well enough to confide in me have told me of the violence or controlling behaviour they have suffered from their present or previous partners.  The chances are I have known many other women in a similar situation but who did not know me well enough to say anything.   This is for their sake.

The particular effect of GBV that the Mothers Union want us to think about this year is Stigma. If it becomes known that a woman is being abused by her partner, people around her may say “I don’t understand why she stays with him”. But many women who experience domestic violence and abuse are made to feel that somehow it is their fault, or that what they are experiencing is not abuse, because it hasn’t involved physical violence.  The Mothers Union has a threefold challenge in response to this unnecessary stigma – “Break the silence, Lift the shame, Shift the blame.”  Break.   Lift.   Shift.   Let’s see what that might involve, and listen for what you might be able to do.

Why is this an issue for the Church?  Let me give you three good reasons.  Firstly, look at our Gospel story.  This could be titled “Jesus breaks the silence”. A woman caught in  adultery is brought along for him to say whether she should be stoned.  “Moses commanded us to stone such women”, say the religious leaders.   Oh no he didn’t!  Or at least, that is only a half truth.  In Leviticus it says this: “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”  So where is the guilty man?  Is it more likely in a male-dominated society that the woman seduced her neighbour’s husband, or that he forced himself on her?   And where is God’s concern for justice or mercy in the way these so-called guardians of morality react to this situation?

Jesus, we are told, writes something on the ground before inviting any of her accusers who is without sin to stone her.  This is one of those bits of the Bible where you really wish the writer had given us a bit more detail. Go on, John, tell us what Jesus wrote.  Was it the whole of the Leviticus verse that made the man just as deserving of death as his victim?   Was it the names of men in the community known to be two-timing their own wives? Was it all the ten commandments, meaning that no-one could claim to have kept all of them?  Whatever he wrote, it had the desired effect.  Not one of them could bring himself to cast the first stone and risk the charge of hypocrisy.  Jesus alone had the moral authority to call out men’s sexism.  And while he did not condone the woman’s part in the affair, he merely told her to sin no more.  After that experience, I’m sure she didn’t.

Secondly, Jesus also lifted the shame. The unnamed woman had faced a death sentence.  He effectively commuted that to a challenge not to be in such an inappropriate situation again.  But he did as much as he could, within the religious law that he had come to fulfil, to remove from her the stigma of being called an adulteress.  As with the other people he healed, he sent her back into the community as evidence of the transformation that his gospel of love and mercy could bring.

The Church is a channel for God’s unconditional love, a place of wholeness, healing and new beginnings. You might ask, don’t we have police, hospitals and social workers to deal with domestic violence?  Yes we do, but they can only deal with serious crime and physical wounds.   We cannot expect hard-pressed police, NHS staff or social workers to spend the time it takes getting alongside someone to help them overcome the stigma of violence and its mental and psychological scars. But the Church is – or at least should be – an army of volunteers with Christ-inspired compassion who can provide that kind of support.

The Mothers Union in England is doing good work in Christ’s name.  They support women’s refuges, provide food and clothing for women and their children who have had to flee from a violent home situation.  And they use all the available tools of democracy – lobbying, marches, conferences and social media – to raise awareness of these issues and try to influence political decisions.

The third reason why the Church should get involved is that we believe that God made men and women in God’s own image – “male and female he created them”.  God’s intention was for men and women to live as equals – maybe sharing out the duties of a home in different ways, but respecting each other as equally God’s child and an equal partner in relationship.

This is reflected in our first Bible reading, which could be titled “Paul shifts the blame”.  Certain male church leaders like to quote this verse from Ephesians: “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.”  They are less keen on quoting the previous one: “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.”  Nor a few verses later, “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”.  In other words, if Christ was prepared to die for us, you should be prepared to give up anything, even your life if necessary, for the sake of your wife.  Then, and only then, will it be appropriate for her to show the same level of submission as she would to Christ himself.   If the culture we live in does not reflect God’s intentions in this respect, if men treat women as sex objects or slaves rather than God-given equals, then it is the mission of God through his redeemed people to do something about it.

We, the Church, are the ultimate worldwide body, and the problem is a global one.  As well as the common forms of GBV that I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, there are other forms of violence prevalent in certain cultures. You may be aware of some of these. So-called ‘honour killings’; forced marriage, child marriage, FGM; and infanticide or selective abortion (where girls are killed at or before birth because only boys are valued).   These are issues among certain immigrant communities in the UK, as well as in their home countries. According to the World Health Organisation, taken together these various forms of violence affect one in three women, and globally, women under 45 are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.  For comparison it is estimated that only two or three percent of men are victims of gender based violence.

The Mothers Union is a worldwide organisation with a mission to support families.  Across the world, the MU is tackling the problem of gender based violence in two ways.  At a local level they work with women directly to provide emotional support, housing, training in employable skills, literacy and general education. For a woman who is capable of making her own living and can read and write is more likely to be able to escape from domestic violence than someone who has to rely on her husband or father or everything.

When a woman suffers violence, her children also suffer.  Here is a story of a woman they met is South Sudan, who we are calling Grace:

Grace was abducted by members of an armed group from her home at night. She was raped in front of her husband and children, taken to the bush and given as a sex slave to one of the armed group commanders and forced to stay with him for four years. During that time she bore two children by the Commander. She was eventually rescued with her two children and was initially welcomed joyfully in to her community, however after some weeks they started to despise her. Her husband would not take her back as his wife, and her family were afraid of her because of her experiences, and what she had been exposed to. The community abandoned her.

At a national and international level, the M.U. works with the United Nations and governments to tackle some of the really big issues such as FGM which require nationwide education programmes to change attitudes.

Sometimes the opportunity arises for church and secular authorities to work together.  Let me tell you a story from our own experience.  When Linda and I went to India in 2006, we attended the official opening of a new housing development. It had been built by a Christian development agency to house hundreds of people from two villages who had been made homeless by the Tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, but the local secular authorities were involved with a development on that scale.   The church leader, welcoming families to their new homes, told them that this was to be a new start in their lives. New homes were to mean a new way of living. “I want this to be a village”, he told them, “where husbands no longer beat their wives.”  And after a dramatic pause, he went on “and a village where wives no longer beat their husbands”.  That got a laugh, but it was true – domestic violence works both ways, and often it can be even harder for a man to admit to being a victim of it than for a woman.

So let’s recap on how the Mothers Union is tackling gender based violence, and what we might be able to do in our own small way.

Break the silence – when people are suffering, silence is not an option, and Jesus was willing to stand up for them.  Remember the story of the Good Samaritan – it was the person who did something, not the pious passers-by, who was commended for loving his neighbour.  The MU is acting by supporting individual victims, by education to make both women and men aware of the issues, and by campaigns at national and international level. Safeguarding policies now require us to report our suspicions that someone is being abused to an appropriate person.

 

 Lift the shame – let it be said again, someone who is physically or sexually assaulted or coerced into doing something they do not want to do, bears no blame but is in need of help. Nor should she have any reason to feel ashamed of what has happened.   By providing safe havens, counselling and practical help, the MU helps women to regain their dignity and lose the shame and fear. If you or I come across someone in the grip of gender based violence, we might feel helpless to help them, but we can at least point them to agencies with the expertise to help.  “I know a woman who can” should be our response.

Shift the blame – Jesus made it clear that his anger was against those who victimised the woman and let her partner in adultery off scot-free.  Laws in many parts of the world still need changing to make scandalous behaviour such as FGM and forced marriage a crime, or to enforce such laws where they already exist but are ignored.  The MU is working towards that goal.  But even in our own culture, where equality laws are much stronger, we men still need to be made more aware of our own attitudes and the effects of our actions.

In preparing this talk I realised that I cannot honestly say that I have always treated girls and women with the full respect they deserve. You may feel the same. In a few moments we will have the opportunity to confess collectively any way we may feel we have been complicit in any form of abuse.  Later in the service we will also be invited to make a commitment to take safeguarding seriously.  But before we stand to declare our common faith, an then confess our sin, let’s have a few moments of silence to reflect on what we have heard.

Full details of “16 days of activism against gender violence” can be found on the M.U. website.

“Grace’s story” is  © Mothers Union 2017

The Bible in a Year – 25 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

25 November. Ephesians chapters 1-3

Paul addresses this letter to a Christian congregation which, as he makes very clear, consists of Gentiles (non-Jews). For those of us in a 21st century democracy, the distinction does not seem so great.  We are used to the idea of religious diversity, of tolerance of different views, of the freedom of the individual to accept or reject the faith into which their families brought them up – or indeed any other.  Or not to be religious at all.  While some religions (especially Islam and Christianity) do claim to have the “final revelation” of God and to be the only way to him, the boundaries are still fluid – some people born into Christian families convert to Islam, or declare themselves atheists, and vice versa.

For Jews in the time of Jesus and Paul, that was not so. The Jews (in their own view) were the chosen people, the only ones blessed by the God of the universe.  Not only were the Roman and Greek gods false ones whose worship would be punished by God as idolatry, but there could be no forgiveness, no salvation for them.  Therefore the Jews separated themselves from other people, regarded them as ritually unclean, would not even share a meal with them.  I’m not talking about today’s Jews of course, but those of Bible times.

Then came the Resurrection of Jesus, the giving of the Holy Spirit, and revelations to several of the apostles including Paul himself.  Out of these grew the conviction that the Jews had got it wrong, they had misunderstood their own scriptures, they had failed to hear the true message of the prophets.  God was actually calling the whole world to be reconciled to himself. The role of the Jewish people as his chosen race was not to set themselves against the rest of the world but to be the channel through which God’s grace and favour could flow.

Thus, Paul realised that his mission was not so much to the Jews to tell them about Jesus, as to spread the message as far as possible into what others would regard as hostile territory, pagan peoples.  This was a total about-turn from what he had preached previously as a Pharisee, so it is not surprising that the Christians initially received him with suspicion.

Just look at some of the things Pauls writes in Ephesians 2:11-22:  “you were … aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, … without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. …He has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. … He came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

There can therefore be no excuse for any Christian group to view the whole Christian church, let alone one denomination of it, as having exclusive access to God or being the only ones to receive his favour. Our religion is a world one, not only in its geographical spread, but in its target audience. Whoever lives on this earth is a child of God, to be called back to him by the reconciling love and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

The Bible in a Year – 24 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

24 November. Luke chapters 23-24

And so we come to the end of Luke’s account of the life of Jesus, with the trial, crucifixion and resurrection. He also starts here, with the appearance of Jesus p the Emmaus Road, his account of the beginnings of the Christian church. It ends with Jesus instructing the disciples to “proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations” (24:27), a task which Luke’s second volume (Acts of the Apostles) records.

From all this, the heart of the Christian Gospel, I will take the references to Christ as King, for that is the focus of Catholic and Anglican worship  this Sunday (the 5th Sunday before Christmas) .

First, the Jewish “assembly” takes Jesus before Pontius Pilate and lays charges against him, including that of claiming to be a king. Pilate asks for Jesus to respond to this charge, and Jesus says “you say so”, perhaps meaning, “if you are prepared to believe that I am a king as these people say, then I am”.  But Pilate does not consider any of the charges against Jesus to merit a death sentence, only a flogging.

Then, on the cross, the Roman soldiers also mock him “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” (23:27). Maybe they were the same people who had mocked him in the same way with a purple robe at his trial.  And finally, there was an inscription over him, attributed in John’s gospel to Pilate, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’”

It seems that this was the most controversial title for Jesus in his day.  The Jewish people had not had a king of their own since before the Exile over 500 years earlier, and the Roman Emperor represented by the governor was the head of state in his day.  It does not seem from the Gospel stories that Jesus went about calling himself King: it was a title possibly given to him by his followers out of admiration, but mainly as a controversial political claim by his enemies in order to try and provoke Pilate or Herod to try him for treason.  The fact that neither of them did so shows that they did not consider him a political threat.

In Luke’s account of the Emmaus road and the subsequent appearance to all the apostles, Jesus still does not use this title about himself, preferring “Messiah” (although as that means ‘the anointed one’ it carries much the same meaning). Christians do call Jesus the King, though – but not “King of the Jews” for we believe his reign is over not just the Jewish people or the state of Israel, but all of creation.  Jesus’s kingship really only started with the Resurrection.    When we celebrate Christ the King and then move into Advent, we remember not only the fact that he reigns invisibly on earth now, but also the centuries of waiting that preceded his coming, and the faith that he will come again in visible form to take up his rightful place among us.

The Bible in a Year – 23 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

23 November. Luke chapters 21-22

The best known Christian prayer is, of course the Lord’s Prayer or Our Father.   It does not appear in these chapters as such, but one of its phrases does.  The one that in the traditional English translation reads “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” and is rendered in Scottish English as “do not bring us to the time of trial, but deliver us from evil”.   I prefer that version and use it in my own prayer times.

“You are those who have stood by me in my trials”, Jesus tells his disciples (22:28). Twice, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus tells them “Pray that you may not come into the time of trial.’” (22:40, 46)   And before that, in the Temple, after predicting the destruction of the Temple and the Jewish way of life, he tells them “Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place” (21:36).

The “times of trial” that Jesus foresaw were many and varied.  From mocking and slander, to discrimination and prejudice, to persecution and martyrdom, his true followers would never have an easy life. For the people of Jerusalem as a whole, he predicted warfare, siege, looting, and fleeing in haste as refugees, never to return.  More than that, he foresaw the eventual end of human civilisation following a time of natural disaster and warfare as nation fights against nation.

Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether any of the signs of the last days are being fulfilled in our time – people have thought so before and been proved wrong – what Jesus is asking of his disciples is a commitment to follow him through these times of trial, whatever happens. They may face poverty – but he sent them out with no money before, and they were fine (22:35). They may be tempted to deny Jesus, as Peter was – and gave in – but for those who repent there is always forgiveness. They would face evil in the form of foreign armies, homelessness (with all the disease and despair associated with refugee camps) and for some, the lions of the Roman amphitheatre.  But Jesus promised to be with them in all of this. Elsewhere he explains that the words would be given to people at the right time by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

For Judas, there was to be no repentance.  He was tempted by the love of money to betray his master, and ended his own life rather than face the consequences. Don’t be like him – pray for the strength to resist temptation, stand up to evil, and turn back when you fail (22:31).

The Bible in a Year – 22 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

22 November. Luke chapters 19-20

This is the turning point in Luke’s story of the life of Jesus – what is called the Triumphal Entry.  Every year on Palm Sunday, churches re-enact his ride into Jerusalem on a young donkey, with crowds cheering him on with shouts of “Hosanna!” (“Please save us!”). We even keep small crosses made of palm leaves to remind us for the rest of the year both of his joyful entry to the holy city, and also his crucifixion a few days later.

After entering the city, Jesus goes straight to the temple (did he ride the donkey into it? – we don’t know) and begins to drive out “those who were selling things there” (other gospel writers say it was the money changers – probably both).   He was angry with them for turning what was supposed to be a “house of prayer” into a commercial enterprise.   This passage is sometimes used to criticise those cathedrals that charge an entry fee, although I don’t think it’s a fair comparison, as the cathedral chapter is only trying to cover its running costs from visitors who otherwise might not make a donation at all.

So we have Jesus being acclaimed by the crowd in great joy, then maybe an hour later angrily confronting the temple merchants.  What made him change his mood so swiftly?

In between these two passages are a few verses that get less attention in Holy Week observances.  “As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (19:41-44).

It seems that as he approached the city walls, he was given a prophetic insight into the spiritual truth behind the immediate events around him.  He saw the Roman army marching against the city, laying siege, conquering, looting and setting fire to it.  His own act of driving profiteering merchants from the temple court was nothing to the sacking of the city that the Romans would accomplish a generation later, driving all the Jewish people from the city. It would be nearly 2000 years before the city was once again the City of David, and even then the temple site would be in the control of others.

Jesus also understood that this would happen because his own people had rejected him, rejected his peaceful path, passed up an opportunity to turn back to God.  Instead their desire for independence and their love of money and power would lead to their destruction, where he offered salvation.  No wonder he wept.

Probably only those closest to Jesus in the crowd noticed his weeping, as the praise continued around him. Sometimes we find our own emotions at odds with the people around, when we are aware of circumstances beyond the immediate events that give us concern. We might wish that those who are rejoicing at some trivial matter would share our understanding that there are deeper and graver issues at stake.  But like Jesus, we find ourselves alone.  In such circumstances, take heart, for he is with you, and he understands.  Jesus weeps with those who weep, and mourns with those who mourn.

The Bible in a Year – 21 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

21 November. Luke chapters 17-18

People are always fascinated by the idea of the Apocalypse.  Or something like it.  A time when human society with its conflicts between good and evil, with all its joys and sufferings, will be transformed into something vastly different, and usually better (at least for “good” people).  It is a desire born of the frustration that even the best human leaders are far from perfect, and even the best systems of government leave many injustices unrighted.

There has rarely been a time in human history without at least one person who claims either to be the key figure in that transformation – the Messiah, the final prophet, the enlightened one, the immortal one – or at least to know exactly when that day will come.   The fact that no-one who has predicted the date of the Apocalypse has (yet!) been right, and that no-one other than Jesus has ever lived up to claims of immortality, does not stop many people from believing the next man who comes along with such a claim (and it does always seem to be a man).

In Jesus’ day there seem to have been lots of self-proclaimed messiah figures and prophets.  John the Baptist had been the most recent, and in Jesus’ estimation, the greatest, because he called people not to “get rich quick” but to a simple life and to repentance.  But John himself had been quick to point to Jesus as “the One who was to come”.

So it was, that people were asking Jesus such questions.  In chapter 17 it was the Pharisees. Their question was phrased as “when [is] the kingdom of God coming?”   Jesus told them that “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed … the kingdom of God is among you.” It sounds as if they have missed out on its coming.  But a few verses later Jesus describes what was clearly to be a future event, as unmissable as when “the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other”, which he calls ‘the day of the Son of Man’.

Are those answers contradictory?  No.  Jesus is talking about two things.  For him, “the Kingdom of God” meant any situation in which God’s will was truly done, as he was doing it.  His disciples, indeed anyone who tried then or tries now to follow him, would be able to experience something of the Kingdom.  “The day of the Son of Man”, as he described it, was something else, and closer to what the Pharisees had in mind – the time when God’s rule on earth would overthrow imperfect human rule.  But he warns that it would not be something for most people to look forward to.  It would be as catastrophic as Noah’s flood, he says, or the destruction of Sodom – both of which were seen as God’s punishment of human sin and evil.

“One will be taken and another left” on the day of the Son of Man. It is not clear whether that means the righteous would be taken away to heaven and the unrighteous left to suffer destruction, or the righteous would be left to enjoy life on earth while the unrighteous are carted off to hell.  It probably does not matter, for apocalyptic language like this is not intended to be taken literally.

What does matter is that we learn from the parables that follow in chapter 18. We should be like the widow who never ceases asking God for justice, like the tax-collector who continually seeks God’s mercy, like Simon Peter who was willing to leave his wife, home ad business to follow Jesus, and like the blind beggar who asked Jesus to make him see – metaphorically, to see the Kingdom of God that is already all around us, if only we will look with the eyes of faith.

 

The Bible in a Year – 20 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

20 November. Luke chapters 14-16

The first ten verses of chapter 15 comprise the two short parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.  They go together, two ways of making the same point, which is: “there is joy in heaven over one person who repents”.  Why does Jesus make this point about joy?  Because the “scribes and Pharisees” – those full-time theologians who became the bane of his life – were grumbling again.  “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them”.

What was the motivation of the Pharisees for their grumbling? I think it was jealousy, for they saw people coming to Jesus, finding forgiveness, and responding joyfully.  They themselves, caught up as they were in their own detailed commentaries and interpretations of Jewish law, had no time for joy.  Joy, in the sense that Christians use the term, is not physical pleasure but the deep contentment and happiness of a fulfilled life, something that God always intended for us.  It’s easy to lose that sense of joy in the busyness and troubles of this life.  Sin, self-centredness and materialism (all of which characterised the Pharisees) work against a joy-filled life. But Jesus saw it as part of his mission to restore it.  In John’s Gospel he says, “I speak these things so they may have my joy made complete in themselves” [John 17:13].

There’s nothing like a sense of guilt for making people joyless, and nothing like having that guilt removed for restoring joy. That is why repentance is more than merely praying for forgiveness.  Saint Paul experienced this, as he writes to Timothy.  He may not be using the word “joy”, but “the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:14) surely describes such joy.  This “joy in the Lord” comes when someone experiences, as Paul did, the assurance of forgiveness and being made at one with God.

Looking again at the second of Jesus’ short parables, the lost coin, he is describing the joy, the relief, of finding something that we knew all along was missing.  The coin was not additional income, but something that already belonged to the woman.  In the same way, repenting and finding peace with God through Christ is restoring a relationship that we all should have had in the first place.

For that reason, it’s more than just a matter for the individual.  Christianity is never a closed shop, our mission is always to help people see what they are missing and find it.  The shepherd, or the housewife, in the parables represents not only Jesus, but each one of us. Jesus says there is “joy in heaven”, or “joy in the presence of the angels of God”, over one sinner who repents.  It is a matter of rejoicing for the whole Christian community when another person understands what Christ has done for him or her, and turns to him.

How might we express joy when we see someone coming to faith?  The charity “Christians Against Poverty” work with churches throughout the country to offer debt counselling.  Each local church is encouraged to celebrate when someone is set free from debt, after the counsellor has negotiated cancellation of some of their debts and a repayment plan for the rest that they can afford.  But more than that, along with debt counselling, CAP advisers take any opportunity they can to share their faith and tell people of Jesus who can set them free from sin as well as financial debt.  In CAP head office in Bradford there is a bell, and that bell is rung whenever it is reported by a local church that one of their clients has decided to become a Christian.

Have you found a lost sheep recently?  Helped another person along the way back to God?  Or experienced joy when he found you? Then meet up with with other Christians and rejoice together.

Extracts from a sermon for Holy Trinity, North Greenwich, 15 September 2013

The Bible in a Year – 19 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

19 November. Luke chapters 12-13

Today’s passage starts with what sounds like a stark warning from Jesus. “Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops” (12:2-3)

This is one of those verses that makes me feel uncomfortable.  As the old cinema adage has it, “be afraid, be very afraid!”  Not because I have some terrible crime to hide that would have me sent to prison if found out, but because like most people there are things that I say or do “in secret” that would be embarrassing or compromising if said in public.  You will know what your own secrets are and it is not for me to enquire about them.

But as someone said to me this morning, one test of someone’s integrity is their reaction to a note slipped to them that simply reads: “Flee! All is known!”  Just witness the shock that goes round a place of work, or a church, when someone everybody thought was trustworthy turns out to have been defrauding the organisation, or giving away industrial secrets, or abusing their position of power to sexually harass younger or less influential members of the organisation.

Jesus might have been warning about this sort of public disclosure, things that would be made public in the lifetime of his hearers, that would make people’s life difficult.  But it is more often interpreted as referring to the last judgement, that unknown day on which everyone’s deeds will be weighed in God’s balance.   The Biblical image of the day of judgement is often a very public one, in which the souls of all who have ever lived will be gathered together or the truth to be revealed.  And like one of Hercule Poirot’s denouements, what is revealed may surprise everyone gathered.   On that day, those people who might have been held up as paragons of virtue in their lifetime might be revealed as the worst of sinners – but the opposite might also apply, that those vilified in their lifetime may turn out to have repented and to have done good deeds that outweigh the bad.

But what if Jesus was talking about a different type of disclosure?  What if his words were addressed not to those who have something shameful to hide, but to his disciples who at that time (and certainly immediately after his death) were frightened to share the “good news”?   Maybe he is saying to those who would hide in their rooms for fear of their persecutors in the early days of the Church that there would come a time when it is the glorious Gospel of Christ that is “heard in the light”, and the stories of his faithful followers that are “proclaimed from the housetops”?

For that is the alternative understanding of the day of judgement that Jesus brought.  Not an occasion of weighing good deeds against bad and hoping that the former will be judged greater, but one of vindicating all those who have been oppressed for doing the will of God, of raising up those whose acts of love and mercy were done in secret and lifting them high as victors for Christ.

So if “what you have said in the dark and what you have whispered behind closed doors” refers to the unknown ways in which you have spoken to other people of your faith, the times you have said a kind word to someone in distress, the prayers you have offered in private for individuals or groups of people, then be encouraged, be very encouraged.

 

The Bible in a Year – 18 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

18 November. Luke chapters 10-11

When people ask for a “sign” to prove that Jesus was truly the Son of God, he refers them to the story of Jonah.  Why Jonah?  He shares some things in common with Jesus: perhaps most obviously in the storytelling, as Jonah slept in the boat, a great storm blew up and his fellow passengers woke him, believing that he could calm the storm, just as Jesus did.  But Jonah was not the Messiah, in fact we are told that he was sinning by running away from God, and far from being able to calm the storm, only by being thrown overboard, apparently to certain death, could it be abated.  So when Jesus calmed the storm with a single word, he was reckoning himself greater than a prophet.

That explains Jesus’ next comment, “The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!” (11:32). How else was Jesus greater?  Well he rose from the dead.  Jonah was in the darkness of the fish until the third day when it miraculously spewed him up, alive and unharmed, on dry land.  Likewise Jesus lay dead in the tomb until the third day, but he was resurrected.

Jonah was very unlike Jesus, though, in one respect. He loved the idea of preaching doom to the people of Nineveh but hated it when they obeyed the message and repented, and God spared them from destruction.  Jesus on the other hand wept over those who refused his message of salvation, and told of the joy there would be in heaven over one sinner who repents.  Which are you?  A Jonah who loves bringing bad news, or like Jesus, one who delights in bringing good news?

The Bible in a Year – 17 November

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

17 November. Luke chapter 8-9

These chapters are “bitty” – they consist of about twenty short anecdotes or recollections of the words and works of Jesus in different places. I can however see a common theme in five of them:

In explaining the parable of the sower, Jesus says “The seed is the word of God. The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved” (8:11-12).

In sending out his twelve closest disciples, Jesus tells them among other instructions, “Wherever they do not welcome you, as you are leaving that town shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them’” (9:5).

Likewise, when the inhabitants of a Samaritan village refused to accept him, Jesus criticised his disciples for praying against those people, but merely moved on to the next village (9:53-56).

In speaking of those who feel unable to “carry the cross” (I.e. to experience rejection or hardship of any kind because they follow him), he says “What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?” (9:25).

Finally, when people made excuses for not following him (such as being recently bereaved, or having family ties that they were reluctant to break) he said “No one who puts a hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (9:62).

What all these have in common is that not everyone who saw Jesus perform miracles and heard his incomparable teaching about the meaning of life actually believed in or followed him.  Some turned away, some were indifferent and some actively opposed him.

So it is not surprising that the same is true today.   Seeking new disciples (witnessing, evangelism, nurture, outreach, mission  – whatever you call it) will always be disappointing if we expect instant results.   The majority of people will always either fail to understand the Gospel message, or  be too busy with other things to really engage with it, or may even feel threatened by it and reject it (and thereby reject Jesus himself).

Jesus’ reaction to that seems to along the lines of “keep calm and carry on” – if one village rejects you, try another.   If one person doesn’t engage with what you are trying to tell them, speak to someone else. The fault is theirs, not yours, and it is for God to decide, ultimately, whether they have chosen to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.