Tag: humility

Building deep friendships

Sermon for St Peter’s Bramley, 2 October 2022

Readings: 2 Timothy 1:1-14 and Luke 17: 3-10

It was the first week of a new school term, and the teacher had realised during the holidays that not many of her class seemed to be friends with each other. So she set them a challenge: not to make the most friends themselves, but to see how many other students they could get to form friendships among themselves, by the end of term.

Paul and Tim were friends already, and competitive about everything, from who could run fastest to who could eat the most pizza without being sick. They enjoyed the challenge, but went about it in different ways.

Paul was the technology wizard of his class. Within days he had set up a new Whatsapp group, ClassFriends, and used every means he could to advertise it. Through texts, tweets, posts and e-mails he tried persuade everyone to join ClassFriends.

Tim was no good with phones and computers. He was also very quiet. But for the next two weeks, at lunchtime and in the playground, whenever he found a classmate on their own he stopped to talk to them for a few minutes. After a couple of weeks he started introducing those boys and girls to each other. And in the last week of term when it was Tim’s birthday, his mum let him invite them all to his party. They ate plenty of pizza, and they played the sort of game where players answer trivial questions about themselves.

On the last day of term the teacher asked how everyone had got on. Only Paul and Tim had anything to report. Paul proudly announced that eight people had joined ClassFriends and were now messaging each other. Tim asked how many others in the class could say what someone else’s pet was called and the name of their favourite pop star. Sixteen hands went up.  The teacher awarded Tim the prize – as much pizza as he could eat without being sick.

* * *

Churches, of course, are not quite the same as schools. Our purpose is different, but there are some similarities. Just as passing exams is not the only point of being at school, so learning the Bible is not the only point of coming to church.  The friends we do or don’t make at school will shape our experience there for better or worse, and may last for life. Just so, the friendships we make at church will do the same.  Paul Bayes, the former Bishop of Liverpool, wrote this:

“[Since the 1990s], community, one of honest and supportive friendship, has emerged as more and more important. … Evangelism can only be built on a commitment to friendship.”

At this time when we start to see two groups coming together – the existing congregation from St Peter’s and the grafting team from St George’s, it will be important for all of us to make the effort to extend our existing friendships, to include new people into the networks we already have, and to find new ways of building friendships.  As our story showed, one-to-one conversations are a more effective and lasting way of doing that than some hi-tech solution that only creates online connections.

In his book, Paul Bayes goes on to explore the different types of friendship we find in the church: the friendship offered to newcomers that goes beyond merely welcoming them at the door; the friendships built outside the walls of the church by people inviting others into their homes for coffee or food; and the sense of shared community grown through small groups.

Deep friendships, because in reality they will need to survive and thrive in the ups and downs of church life. In the first verse of our Gospel reading, when the disciples say to Jesus “increase our faith!”, that is their response to his instruction to forgive a friend who sins against them seven times a day and each time asks for forgiveness. If his own disciples often annoyed each other, it’s no surprise if it happens here, and our friendship needs to be deep enough to accept that.

There is a wider purpose of such deep friendships, beyond the value they have of themselves. They are the foundation for what we are trying to build together as a church. As friends, we can have a more effective mission to our community, reaching out together to draw more into our circle of friendship. What sort of people do we need to be to enable that to happen?

* * *

The Church of England, it must be said, loves nothing more than a new slogan. The book I quoted from was called ‘Mission-shaped Parish’ which was a slogan of the Noughties, but much of the thinking then is still valid. More recently, the church nationally has adopted a new slogan, a new strategy: ‘Simpler, Humbler, Bolder’.  In the words of the present Archbishop of York, “These three words are not strategic aims, they are virtues that we believe God is calling from us at this particular point in our history. They run through our vision and shape all we do and all that we are.”

We can see these three virtues of simplicity, humility and boldness throughout the Bible, including in today’s readings.   When Paul writes to Timothy of the ‘sincere faith that lived in your grandmother and your mother and now lives in you’, he is praising the sort of simple but deeply-rooted faith in Jesus that is passed down from one generation to another, the kind of sincere faith that many people recently have commended in our late Queen.   When the disciples ask Jesus to ‘increase their faith’, they are asking for that same simplicity of deeply held trust in him that enables them to live in deep friendship with others.

When Jesus tells those same disciples to fulfil their duty in the spirit of ‘unworthy servants’, he is commending a particular form of humility, one that recognises God’s presence in even trivial or unwelcome tasks.  Martin Luther once called humility “the greatest of Christian virtues”. This isn’t the humility of Uriah Heap, it’s the humility of the monastery, where tilling the fields and chanting the psalms are equally holy activities. As the poet George Herbert put it, ‘who sweeps a room as for thy laws, makes that and the action fine’.  But it’s also the humility of Moses, who we are told was the humblest man on earth, despite having led a whole nation out of slavery and met God face to face.

But simplicity and humility, although essential values for the Christian life, will not enable us to fulfil God’s call to mission without the balancing value of boldness. In the story of the two schoolboys, it was shy and humble Tim who had the boldness to reach out and start to bring strangers together as friends.  In our Bible reading, when Paul writes to Timothy of God giving us a spirit of power, love and self-discipline, perhaps that combines all three: the simplicity of love, the humility of self-discipline and the boldness that comes from the power of the Holy Spirit.

Paul also urges his friend Timothy to ‘fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of hands’.  Most of us in this room will at some point in our lives have had our faith confirmed by a Bishop, with the laying on of hands. While Bishop Arun won’t be laying hands on each of us physically this Thursday evening when he comes to induct Julia into her post as Rector, it will be a suitable occasion for each of us to renew the vows we made at baptism or confirmation: to come to Christ, to turn to Christ, and to trust in Christ.

We might also wish to recommit ourselves to building deep friendships within the congregation. And to consider what gifts God might have given each one of us for his service, that he now wishes to fan into flame as we enter into a new phase in God’s mission to Bramley though us, his Church. We can ask the Holy Spirit to come and make us simpler, humbler and bolder, or in the words of our closing hymn today, ‘kindle the flame of sacred love, on the mean altar of my heart’.

Amen.

May we, O Holy Spirit, bear your fruit

Today’s Pentecost hymn from Sing Praise is “May we, O Holy Spirit” by Paul Wigmore. Whereas some of the hymns this week have been about the Spirit’s power, or the way s/he communicates God’s peace and presence to us, this one is very much about the way that the Spirit builds our character.  For personal reasons that I can’t go into here, this is particularly relevant to me at present.

In the first verse we ask that we may bear the Spirit’s fruit. In fact the three verses list all the “fruits of the Spirit” from the book of Galatians: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-restraint” (or similar words, depending on which translation of the Bible you use).  The words of the hymn expand on what these fruits are meant to achieve: joy and peace to accompany our words, love becoming deeper and stronger, patience to prevent us saying or doing harm, kindness to look for the good in other people, goodness to be seen in action, faithfulness as a quality of endurance, gentleness to “lend courage to the weak” (an interesting phrase) and finally self-restraint to “help us know the grace that made the King of Heaven meek”.

That memorable phrase about making the King of Heaven meek comes in the last line of the hymn, but to me it says a lot not only about Jesus but about how He wants us to live by the Spirit.  The Christian life is not only about what we achieve but about the quality of our character (and as I hinted at the start, I write from a position of knowing that I very much need that character-building work of the Spirit). The character God looks for is not that of the high-flyer but of those who, in the words of Romans 12:16, “are not haughty but give themselves to humble tasks” (NRSV footnote).

John chose to sing this hymn to the tune “Ellers” rather than the one provided in Sing Praise. That tune is also used for a setting of the Methodist Covenant prayer, the final verse of which is “Go with us, Lord, from hence; we only ask that thou be sharer in our daily task; So, side by side with thee, shall each one know the blessedness of heaven begun below”.  That is the true work of the Spirit, as much as signs and wonders.

The Bible in a Year – 28 November

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

2 November. Philippians 

I wrote yesterday how Paul used the language of cosmology (of his day) to try to explain just how great Jesus Christ is – not only for humanity but for the whole creation.  In his letter to the Philippians Paul then inverts this concept by showing how truly humble Jesus was when limited by a human body:

 “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (2:5-8)

Paul goes on to explain how this “emptying” that Jesus undertook, discarding anything of his divinity that would make him feel superior to other people while retaining the power to work miracles for the benefit of others, led to his being “exalted” or made more important in the cosmic scheme than anyone or anything else.

He also uses it to challenge his Christian readers to show humility, holiness and innocence in their own lives as Jesus did in his, and to be willing like him to be sacrifices if necessary for the greater cause of the Gospel.  Such challenges do not come easily, and I will not pretend I live up to them myself.   These verses, with their challenge to act as though dead in order to be truly alive, have been a frequent challenge to me throughout my Christian life:

“I want to know Christ, and the power of his resurrection, and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (3:10-11)

The Bible in a Year – 9 November

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

9 November. Mark chapters 10-11

From the point yesterday where Jesus talks about ‘taking up the cross’ and ‘giving up one’s life’ to follow him, events move swiftly.  Within a couple of pages of Mark’s Gospel he teaches his disciples more about the servant nature of ministry, faith and forgiveness, during which time he also arrives in Jerusalem with them, then confronts the money-changers and traders in the Temple that was supposed to be a place of prayer.  Finally, he is challenged by the “priests, scribes and elders” about the source or authority of his teaching.  Authority was a big matter for them – Jewish rabbinical tradition is based on tradition, precedent and the moral authority of one rabbi over another.

Jesus once again answers their question with another: “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” It was a trick question, and Mark explains their reason for being reluctant to answer it by saying it was of human origin, for “they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet” (11:31-32). I think they did really know it was from heaven, but were too embarrassed to say so.

There is an English saying that dates from the 16th century if not earlier, and particularly popular in Yorkshire: “There’s none so blind as those who won’t see”.  In other words, if we have a reason for finding a certain truth “inconvenient” (as Al Gore might say) then we will deny it, at least outwardly to other people; and if we deny it often enough to others we will convince ourselves that it is not true as well.  The priests and scribes would have found it very inconvenient at this point to acknowledge to others or even themselves that John’s baptism was from God, because in that case they would have had to accept that Jesus who did more miracles than John ever did, and whom John called the “[sacrificial] lamb of God” was also sent from God.  But they had spent the last couple of years publicly criticising Jesus’ teaching, doubting his miracles and denouncing his authority.

When someone is in this “denying something they know in their heart to be true” mode, there is no point trying to argue further, as the more you convince them of the rightness of the argument the more they will argue against it – just look at the climate change deniers today.  All you can do is leave them alone until they convince themselves inwardly and “eat humble pie”. If they eventually stop opposing the obvious truth, then they know they have lost the argument and there’s no point humiliating them further by saying “I told you so”.    Unfortunately Jesus didn’t have time on his side to wait for this to happen.

The Bible in a Year – 19 October

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

19 October. 2 Corinthians chapters 10-13

In these final chapters of his last letter to the Corinthians, Paul is not giving any new teaching, but rather is exploring the nature of his relationship with them.  In many different ways he explains that Jesus has called him, appointed and equipped him to spread the Gospel, a charge which he has been faithful to keep despite all the hardships and punishments that he says he has experienced.  That, he says, would be enough to justify having authority over them.  But instead he has taught them with humility. Only reluctantly does he go into detail of his qualifications and experiences, in order to prove that he is no less qualified as a teacher of the faith than certain other men (never named in these letters) who have been teaching an incompatible approach to Christianity – probably based on Jewish law.

We also learn here something of Paul’s personality.  He says he is bold in his writings, but weak when speaking. He quotes some of them as saying ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible’ (10:10).  Paul seems to have been a very well educated and wise man, but small, unattractive and not a powerful speaker.  The written word was his best way of communicating.   And then there is the mysterious ‘thorn in the flesh’ (12:7), also described as a ‘messenger from Satan’.  Many people have tried to guess what this may be, from something as simple as a stammer or some physical disability, to some kind of mental illness, or sexual temptation.

God does indeed call many different people, widely different in age, physical and intellectual ability, temperament and personality.  He gives them a wide variety of gifts, as explained in the first letter to the Corinthians.  But no-one is ‘top trumps’ having every possible advantage.  In each person there are some weaknesses, maybe only known to themselves like Paul’s “thorn”, or maybe all too obvious.  The important thing is that any pride (or ‘boasting’ as Paul calls it) should be pride in the gifts that God gives, and never in ourselves.  Also, it is never helpful to compare ourselves with others, as Paul does only reluctantly to show that he is more worthy of being listened to than the ‘false’ teachers.