Month: July 2007

Sunday Morning’s Sermon: Prayer (1): The Lord’s Prayer

Luke 11:1-4

Introduction
Today is one of those rare Sundays when you have the misfortune to hear me
preach twice. Not only do we have this morning service, I am also the preacher
at tonight’s united service. That means two things: firstly, you have advance
notice, and if I see fewer than usual Methodists present this evening, I shall
guess why! Secondly, it means I have to write two sermons for today!

Now since both services are taking today’s Lectionary Gospel
reading of Luke 11:1-13, I
have decided to divide the passage in the following way. This morning I shall
explore the first four verses, where we have Luke’s account of the Lord’s
Prayer. This evening I shall look at verses five to thirteen, where Jesus gives
further teaching on prayer: the parable of the friend at midnight, and the
ask-seek-knock poem.

I feel encouraged to spend two sermons exploring prayer
after comments someone made last Monday night at our open meeting. I gather
several preachers have been mentioning prayer recently. Prayer has also been an
important theme in our discussions about mission, and we agreed on Monday
evening to set up regular gatherings for prayer, and explore occasional church
‘quiet days’.

So, then, this morning, to the Lord’s Prayer. But how can
you deal with the Lord’s Prayer in one sermon? In the past I have preached a
series of sermons on it; I have given a seminar on what it might mean in
today’s [post-modern] culture[1];
and I have given an academic lecture
on one petition in a series. There is so much in the Lord’s Prayer, and perhaps
we shall never plumb all its depths before glory!

However, the approach I am going to take this morning is
simpler. Much as I would like to preach a series on it, that is not practical
when I only get to preach here once a month. And I can’t split the Lord’s
Prayer into two halves, one this morning and the second tonight: that wouldn’t
be fair on the Anglicans and Salvationists this evening. I have opted to do
this: I simply want to examine what Luke’s account of the Lord’s Prayer tells
us about the character of God. I have identified six characteristics of God in the
Lord’s Prayer. That means only very brief comments about each of them!

1. Father
‘When you pray, say: Father’ (verse 2).

You can’t read the word ‘Father’ as applied to God in the
New Testament without the background of knowing that Jesus and Paul interpreted
this as the Aramaic word abba, the
affectionate word a small child used for their father. ‘Daddy’ might not quite
capture it in English, but it’s as close as we might get.

So for me, as one who came to fatherhood later than most, I can’t
help but think of a smiling daughter or son exclaiming, ‘Daddy!’ and running to
kiss me, throw arms around my legs or jump on my lap. Sometimes I think there
is nothing better in the world than those moments.

In that respect, I see Jesus introducing prayer as an
address to ‘Abba/Father’ as a sign that prayer is not a duty but a welcome. Not
that prayer is always exciting, but it is a place of warmth, a place of the
Father’s embrace.

But sometimes prayer to the Father does mean joy and
excitement. On Friday morning, Rebekah came back with Debbie from the end of
her weeklong summer holiday swimming crash course with two certificates. Her progress
had been fantastic. We decided to reward her with chocolate for one certificate
and an ice cream for the other. So, too, when members of God’s family come to
the Father, it is a place to celebrate joy, to weep together in pain and to
embrace mundane things. In that simplicity prayer begins.

2. Holy
Just because we begin with the welcoming nature of the Father does not mean
that we reduce prayer to a chatty mateyness:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
(verse 2)

To hallow God’s name of ‘Father’ is, perhaps, the positive
New Testament restatement of the Old Testament prohibition of blasphemy. God’s
name is to be honoured, not defamed. For that we pray.

What exactly are we praying, though? It’s more than our
upset when someone uses the name of God as a swearword. It’s more than the
casual way in which we might attribute something to God without being careful: ‘God
said this’ – are you sure?

We pray that God’s name will be hallowed in our lives and
among us as a Christian community. It is thus prayer that we might have a
credible witness. It is prayer that we might be more worthy ambassadors for God’s
kingdom, that we will bring credit to his name, not dishonour.

And it is prayer for God’s name to be hallowed by others. In
that sense, this is a prayer for evangelism. As I said, it isn’t simply a
prayer against blasphemers; it is a
prayer for blasphemers and others – a
prayer that will find the joy of this wonderful Father. And when they do, they
will want to honour him in word and deed.

If we want to hallow God’s name, we shall want to be people
who are good news to others, good news in the name of the Father. Can we pray
that for our lives? Who are the people in our orbit for whom we are praying
that they might find the Father?

3. King
Let’s take it a bit further:

When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name.
   Your kingdom come.
(verse 2)

The Father whose name we honour because it is holy is also a
king. He has a kingdom. He is the focus of the kingdom of God. The kingdom,
which we long to see coming, is not so much about us as about the king acting
with kingly power.

This is to say, Lord, there is nothing we desire more than to
see everything in creation line up with your will. (Which is why in Matthew’s
version, ‘Your kingdom come’ is paired with ‘Your will be done on earth as in
heaven.’)

‘Your kingdom come’ is language of petition and intercession.
We petition the Father that we might have the grace to do his will. And of course,
he answers that! He does not call us to do something and leave us without the
spiritual resources in his Holy Spirit to fulfil his desires for us. To pray ‘Your
kingdom come’ and mean it is to take our oath of allegiance to our Father who
is also our King.

Granted, ‘kingdom’ language may be more difficult today when
monarchs have only symbolic power. Brian
McLaren has
suggested we speak instead of the ‘revolution
of God’. We are signing up for the revolution. That is a revolution in our
lives, and a revolution for the whole of creation. It is prayer for healing,
justice, and an end to poverty and war. The kingdom has begun to come in Jesus
himself, and we see it coming more when God performs his will; we pray for its
fuller coming.

4. Giver
Next we pray,

Give us each day our daily bread.
(verse 3)

Daily bread?
Surely God isn’t that concerned with physical and material things, is he?
Shouldn’t we just pray about ‘spiritual’ affairs? Should we not see this as a
request for the bread of heaven, the bread of life?

If you think that, let me take you to a village rubbish tip
just west of the River Nile, at a place called Oxyrhynchus. A hundred years
ago, some papyri were discovered. In 1925, a Swiss professor found the word
translated ‘daily’ here on a shopping list that also included chickpeas and
straw. As Jesus called people to pray for their daily bread, mothers were
sending teenage boys on errands to the baker’s, telling them to make sure they were
sold today’s bread, not yesterday’s stale bread.[2]

Jesus and the Father are very
interested in our material needs being met. Do not be ashamed about bringing
those basic needs to God. It is all part of his fatherly concern. I would not
see my children lack food or clothes. The heavenly Father feels the same, if
not more.

And in that respect, he often enlists us in answering these
prayers in others. Therefore, as we
struggle to
find good news in the midst of the current floods in the UK,
it was heartening to see news footage the other night of a church giving out
free bottled water. The Father longs to meet the needs of his children, so he
encourages us to pray. However, he also enlists us as his agents to take what others
need to them, and to change those structures and policies in the world that
prevent others receiving what they need.

5. Forgiver
And so to perhaps the hardest words Jesus ever uttered (and there is plenty of
competition for that accolade):

And forgive us our sins,
     for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
(verse 4)

I could spend a whole sermon on these words. I find it
curious but understandable that it is easy for us to pray, ‘forgive us our
sins,’ and we do that regularly – not least in confession during public
worship. However, rarely do we connect our confession with our commitment to
forgive others. Although one is sure to exist, I have yet to find a liturgy for
confession that ties the two together.

How do we tie our desire for forgiveness together with the
call for us to forgive? Our forgiveness is not just something we experience in
the present: it is something we shall hear at the Last Judgment. Because we
know we shall be forgiven, we forgive now.

But that still needs grace! How many of us find it easy to
forgive? Few of us, I would guess. ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive’ can be a
way of asking the Father to show us things from his perspective. When we look
at the Cross of Christ, and when we think of what God has forgiven us, then the
barriers begin to tumble. So we pray for that divine insight, that heavenly
revelation that puts our petty refusals to forgive into the perspective they
deserve. And when we forgive, we are a sign of God’s grace to the watching world.

6. Deliverer
The final petition is,

And do not bring us to the time of trial.
(verse 4)

I think that’s a preferable translation to ‘Lead us not into
temptation’ (which at very least requires the corresponding ‘But deliver us
from the evil one’ that is missing from the best manuscripts of Luke). However,
even these words have their problems. What kind of trials? Are we always
delivered from them? Clearly, Christians do go through trials in their lives,
and some of them quite vicious – note the missionary nurses and teachers from
South Korea being held hostage
by the Taliban in Afghanistan. One of the twenty-three has already been executed.

Certainly, God sometimes allows us to face trials we would
have ruled out beforehand, but he graciously sustains in ways we could not have
imagined. Perhaps this prayer is that we might not face trials beyond our
ability to endure. If so, it is a salvation prayer – not salvation from our
sins, but salvation from being sinned-against.

God our Deliverer is in process of bringing a comprehensive
salvation as he ushers in his kingdom. Deliverance is not only in terms of
forgiveness, it also comes in the shape of holiness, as we are delivered from
the practice of sin, and in terms of justice and righteousness as he delivers
his creation from the presence of sin and its effect on victims. ‘Do not bring
us to the time of trial’ unites us with Christians around the world and down
the centuries, the majority of whom have suffered for their faith, but who one
day will be vindicated by God.

Conclusion
And that is where it ends: the prayer that began with a child sitting on Daddy’s
lap ends with the new creation, where there will be no more mourning or crying
or pain. May it be so soon. Come, Lord Jesus.

[1]
Seven pages of outline notes can be found here.

[2] On
this, see Eugene Peterson, Eat
This Book, p149f.

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The Religious Right And Conservative Christianity

Pam BG has an excellent post on the deeply sub-Christian nature of the Religious Right (hat-tip to Dave Warnock). She rightly delineates the differences between the North American and British scenes. (I guess Pam has a special take on that, as an American who has long been resident here.)

If

the ‘Religious Right’ hold as core
to their belief system that human beings have a God-given right to
life, liberty and private property

then that needs a lot of questioning. ‘Life’: well, as an evangelical Christian (in the historic sense) I am pro-life. My basic stance on abortion is that it is generally wrong: it is the taking of life, not surgery on part of a woman’s anatomy. But to be in favour of life more widely puts one at odds with much of the Religious Right’s agenda. While I am no longer a pacifist, the easy promulgation of war and covert operations against rogue states is hardly pro-life. Nor is the support of economic policies that cause extreme poverty in nations where our TV news operations don’t regularly have cameras and reporters. Nor is the denial of global warming combined with an approach to creation that sees it as purely for our benefit, leading to environmental rape and further damage in the first instance for developing nations. So exactly how pro-life is the Religious Right? Not much, in my opinion.

‘Liberty’: well, that word needs careful nuancing. All too often its meaning is taken from Enlightenment roots in the French Revolution and American Constitution, and tends to mean ‘the freedom to do what I want.’ In contemporary consumer culture that makes an idol of the self (as I point out in my comment on Pam’s post). I am sovereign. But in biblical terms Christian liberty is something entirely different. It is being set free from these very things! It is to be set free from the self-centredness which is sin, so I can use my liberty in the service of God and humankind. If the Religious Right in the States and other places were promoting an agenda that saw thousands and millions of Christians waiving their own rights in order to transform the lives of others, I’d find them more credible. In fairness, too, ‘rights’ language is also misused by liberals and the left: witness the growing disillusionment in this country over the frequent invocation of Human Rights laws since the Government signed up to the European Convention (although also conversely, note how those who bemoan its use by others like to invoke it for themselves).

‘Private Property’: there is a thoughtful exchange of views between Pam and one of her commenters, Peter Kirk, on this one. It comes down to an issue that even if we do believe property or possessions are ours to make decisions about, they are not ultimately ours. They are a gift of God’s ‘common grace’ (if an Arminian can gladly use a Calvinist phrase!) and we are but stewards of them.’All things come from you, and of your own do we give you.’ I’d love to believe the Religious Right endorsed this, but I’d need some convincing.

All of which makes me glad for the diversity of evangelical Christianity in the UK. I am delighted to see TEAR Fund play a major rôle in campaigns against poverty, third world debt, climate change and so on.

Am I saying that no evangelical Christian should hold right-of-centre views? Absolutely not. I think of two friends who are active in the Conservative Christian Fellowship, and it makes sense, because they have particular passions about the sanctity of life and family issues. To my mind, biblical ethics cannot be confined to modern views of left and right. They tend to splurge across a range of political convictions. God is neither left nor right, as Jim Wallis has reminded people. Evangelical (as well as liberal and catholic) Christians are found across the political spectrum in the UK, and that makes sense to me.

But my limited experience of the North American scene is rather different. In 1995, when I visited the Toronto Airport church, I encountered one American who was shocked when I said I supported the idea of a welfare state. I quoted Genesis, about being my brother (and sister)’s keeper. Incredulously to me, he claimed that Scripture reserved the duty of care for the poor to the church – as if the church had the reserves to meet all society’s social needs, and non-Christians were not under any moral obligation in the eyes of God! Similarly, an English friend of mine moved to work in the States a few years ago. He is a scientist researching treatment for HIV/AIDS, and an evangelical-charismatic Christian. He found a church where he felt at home theologically, but was staggered by the assumption that it was an evangelical duty to vote for George W Bush, and almost tantamount to heresy even to comtemplate voting differently.

Pam, thank you again for such a thoughtful piece.

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God Willing

Two stories. Number one: in a recent sermon I referred to the fact expectation that my wife was going to take over as chair of our children’s pre-school. For reasons that are not appropriate to mention on a public source such as this blog, she isn’t going to do so. She has withdrawn her acceptance of the nomination, and she has also resigned from the committee.

Number two: on Monday afternoon I visited a ninety-two-year-old saint in hospital. Her conversation was liberally seasoned with phrases such as, ‘God willing.’ I saw her on the day when she had been told that she was not going to be discharged today, as she had been led to believe, because they could not yet find the staff or budget (not sure which) to put in place the care package she will need at home. ‘God willing’ seemed appropriate language.

Yet expressions like ‘God willing’ are ones I have been hesitant to use. They have been too much like religious catchphrases. I have bracketed them alongside tacking ‘If it be your will’ onto the end of a prayer. However, I really should have spoken of my wife’s aspirations in ‘God willing’ terms rather than absolute ones. In the New Testament James reminds us of the importance of this approach.

Might it be more than just an aversion to the language of Zion that has seen ‘God willing’ language slip out of our vocabulary? Might it be a reliance on science, technique and technology in our culture that has changed us? They delude us into thinking we have more power than we truly do. It is the weaker and more vulnerable who resort more habitually to qualifying their aspirations along the lines James commend: ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that’ (verse 15). We are seriously lacking in omnipotence, contrary to our regular delusions. The recent floods in the UK have brought this home in devastating fashion.

Having said that, many people yearn for certainty. ‘God willing’ is altogether too provisional for them. They prefer life to proceed with mechanical certainty. I think the words point us to considering that our security is not in our actions and decisions but in God. And even when I say that, it is not about a security in expecting God to behave in a particular way – we can be blown off course when prayers are not answered according to our expectations. The firm foundation of Christian hope and faith is in the character of God.

This coming Sunday I have to preach twice, and both will be on the Lectionary Gospel of Luke 11:1-13. With such a passage the theme of prayer is central, and thus I may well be touching further on the question of ‘God willing.’

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links for 2007-07-22

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Tomorrow’s Sermon: A Template For Missional Church

I’m doing something slightly different tomorrow: I’m splicing up the sermon with two DVD clips from Fresh Expressions: the first, from their DVD 1, is of ‘Messy Church’, and the second, from DVD 2, is from the chapter on rural mission about ‘The Gathering’ in the Whitby Methodist Circuit. We’re then showing as much of DVD 1 as we can get through while people have coffee after the service. Then folk are invited to a ploughman’s lunch, where we hope they will discuss what they see at their tables, and record their thoughts (anonymously, if so desired) on small wipeable whiteboards.

John 1:1-18

Introduction
Sunday 22nd July: can I be the first this year to wish you a very
Happy Christmas?

You probably think I’ve finally lost it – if indeed I ever
had ‘it’. Did you wonder why we heard a ‘Christmas’ Bible reading – the first
eighteen verses of John chapter one? What has that to do with a morning when I
shall give over two quarters of the sermon to DVD clips from Fresh Expressions about new ways
of mission and church with children and families? Wouldn’t it have made more
sense if we had read Jesus’ words about letting the children come to him?

Well, it might have done – but some words in that famous
Prologue to John’s Gospel are central to the different way of doing mission and
church that I have been emphasising ever since coming here. You can find it
distilled in verse 14:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have
seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The Word became flesh and lived among us. Here are two other
ways of translating it. More literally, it is, ‘The Word became flesh and
pitched his tent among us.’ Or Eugene
Peterson paraphrases it, ‘The Word became flesh and blood and moved into
the neighbourhood.’ Simply put, I believe those words do two things: they
change our focus, and they change our order of priorities. We’ll briefly
consider the change of focus first, and then see the first DVD clip; then we’ll
think about the changing of our order of priorities, and then see the second
DVD clip.

1. Change Of Focus
The change of focus is from ‘come’ to ‘go.’ We have assumed that mission is
about getting people to come to us. But Jesus didn’t do that: ‘the Word became
flesh and lived among us.’ He moved into the neighbourhood. Relying on a ‘come
to us’ approach to mission brings fewer and fewer people into the orbit of
God’s love. In a passage where he explains that eighty per cent of people find
faith in Christ through friendship with Christians, Jeff Lucas summarises the futility of the
‘come to us’ approach to mission this way:

It’s like a fisherman spreading his expensive net on the side
of the riverbank, and then inviting the fish to jump out of the water and get
caught.
(Gideon:
Power From Weakness, p61)

Yet we persist in getting out our ever-more-fancy fishing
nets every week. Yet not only did Jesus himself model a mission based on
‘going’, he told his disciples to model their involvement in mission on his:
‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’ (John 20:21). Mission involves being
part of the community, researching its culture and needs, and then finding appropriate
ways of sharing the Good News in word and deed.

So, although Christian mission will occasionally involve the
use of a church building (as it does in the two clips we’re going to see) it
mostly happens away from our gathering place. Mission is not about bringing
people into the increasingly unfamiliar culture of the church and expecting
them to fit our shape: it’s about being in the world, finding the points where
the Gospel makes contact and the points where it challenges. You’ll see a lot
of examples in the clips we’re going to run over coffee between the end of the
service and our lunch together, but for now let’s see our first clip.

2. Changing The Order
Of Our Priorities
Put these three words in order of priority: Jesus, church and mission. It’s a
fair bet that most of us would put them in that order: Jesus first, then
church, and finally mission. But it’s not the way it happens in John’s Gospel,
or in the New Testament generally.

Everything begins with Jesus. Christianity is centred on a
personal and shared knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ and his saving
love. If we don’t start with Jesus, we’re in trouble. Those who might put
‘church’ first tend to be devoted to the institution and its rituals, not to
its Founder. Without making the connection with Jesus personal, there is no
Christian faith. It all starts with him, as it does here: ‘the Word became
flesh.’

But ‘church’ doesn’t come second. ‘The Word became flesh and
lived among us.’ ‘Mission’ comes next. The result of Jesus coming was mission.
He brought God’s love into the world. Anyway, you can’t have church if mission,
hasn’t happened, where people find the God’s love for themselves.

‘Church’ comes third. It is the fruit and consequence of
mission. When we place church ahead of mission we just end up with church as a
therapeutic community where the important thing is for me to have my needs met
(see Mike
McNichols  and Brother Maynard).
In such places, mission becomes the preserve of the enthusiastic few, and not
central to the life of the church. When we focus on church, we don’t usually
manage to build community; often, we destroy it. When we focus on mission, we
gather together as a group and end up functioning as the community we were
always meant to be. (See Michael
Frost, Exiles,
for further on this.)

So the community of the church arises both as the fruit of mission – people are gathered
together under the reign of God – and the passion
of mission – a shared commitment to mission draws people together into deep
Christian community.

So we need to reorder our priorities. Our priorities cannot
be about the building. Nor can they be about so filling up people’s diaries
with meetings that they can spend little meaningful time in the community. Our
church priorities are simple: gathering for worship, a small group where we
challenge one another to grow in discipleship, and only as much other business
as is absolutely necessary.

In fact, that small group might most profitably be people
who come together to work on mission – sharing God’s love in word and deed with
those yet to find that love. Within that you find the fellowship to sustain you
in Bible study, discipleship and mutual pastoral care.

You’re probably bored with me talking about it, but my best
experience of this was when I was involved in my first appointment with
ecumenical youth worship and outreach. As a team we met in three different
configurations, each with slightly different memberships. We were a group that
met to pray and strategise for this ministry. We were a fortnightly home group,
where we studied the Bible and supported one another. And we hung out as a
bunch of friends on Friday nights, with pizzas, videos and some non-Methodist
liquids. The mission energised everything else.

But enough from me: time for our second DVD clip.

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0

Tomorrow’s Sermon: A Template For Missional Church

I’m doing something slightly different tomorrow: I’m splicing up the sermon with two DVD clips from Fresh Expressions: the first, from their DVD 1, is of ‘Messy Church’, and the second, from DVD 2, is from the chapter on rural mission about ‘The Gathering’ in the Whitby Methodist Circuit. We’re then showing as much of DVD 1 as we can get through while people have coffee after the service. Then folk are invited to a ploughman’s lunch, where we hope they will discuss what they see at their tables, and record their thoughts (anonymously, if so desired) on small wipeable whiteboards.

John 1:1-18

Introduction
Sunday 22nd July: can I be the first this year to wish you a very
Happy Christmas?

You probably think I’ve finally lost it – if indeed I ever
had ‘it’. Did you wonder why we heard a ‘Christmas’ Bible reading – the first
eighteen verses of John chapter one? What has that to do with a morning when I
shall give over two quarters of the sermon to DVD clips from Fresh Expressions about new ways
of mission and church with children and families? Wouldn’t it have made more
sense if we had read Jesus’ words about letting the children come to him?

Well, it might have done – but some words in that famous
Prologue to John’s Gospel are central to the different way of doing mission and
church that I have been emphasising ever since coming here. You can find it
distilled in verse 14:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have
seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The Word became flesh and lived among us. Here are two other
ways of translating it. More literally, it is, ‘The Word became flesh and
pitched his tent among us.’ Or Eugene
Peterson paraphrases it, ‘The Word became flesh and blood and moved into
the neighbourhood.’ Simply put, I believe those words do two things: they
change our focus, and they change our order of priorities. We’ll briefly
consider the change of focus first, and then see the first DVD clip; then we’ll
think about the changing of our order of priorities, and then see the second
DVD clip.

1. Change Of Focus
The change of focus is from ‘come’ to ‘go.’ We have assumed that mission is
about getting people to come to us. But Jesus didn’t do that: ‘the Word became
flesh and lived among us.’ He moved into the neighbourhood. Relying on a ‘come
to us’ approach to mission brings fewer and fewer people into the orbit of
God’s love. In a passage where he explains that eighty per cent of people find
faith in Christ through friendship with Christians, Jeff Lucas summarises the futility of the
‘come to us’ approach to mission this way:

It’s like a fisherman spreading his expensive net on the side
of the riverbank, and then inviting the fish to jump out of the water and get
caught.
(Gideon:
Power From Weakness, p61)

Yet we persist in getting out our ever-more-fancy fishing
nets every week. Yet not only did Jesus himself model a mission based on
‘going’, he told his disciples to model their involvement in mission on his:
‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’ (John 20:21). Mission involves being
part of the community, researching its culture and needs, and then finding appropriate
ways of sharing the Good News in word and deed.

So, although Christian mission will occasionally involve the
use of a church building (as it does in the two clips we’re going to see) it
mostly happens away from our gathering place. Mission is not about bringing
people into the increasingly unfamiliar culture of the church and expecting
them to fit our shape: it’s about being in the world, finding the points where
the Gospel makes contact and the points where it challenges. You’ll see a lot
of examples in the clips we’re going to run over coffee between the end of the
service and our lunch together, but for now let’s see our first clip.

2. Changing The Order
Of Our Priorities
Put these three words in order of priority: Jesus, church and mission. It’s a
fair bet that most of us would put them in that order: Jesus first, then
church, and finally mission. But it’s not the way it happens in John’s Gospel,
or in the New Testament generally.

Everything begins with Jesus. Christianity is centred on a
personal and shared knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ and his saving
love. If we don’t start with Jesus, we’re in trouble. Those who might put
‘church’ first tend to be devoted to the institution and its rituals, not to
its Founder. Without making the connection with Jesus personal, there is no
Christian faith. It all starts with him, as it does here: ‘the Word became
flesh.’

But ‘church’ doesn’t come second. ‘The Word became flesh and
lived among us.’ ‘Mission’ comes next. The result of Jesus coming was mission.
He brought God’s love into the world. Anyway, you can’t have church if mission,
hasn’t happened, where people find the God’s love for themselves.

‘Church’ comes third. It is the fruit and consequence of
mission. When we place church ahead of mission we just end up with church as a
therapeutic community where the important thing is for me to have my needs met
(see Mike
McNichols  and Brother Maynard).
In such places, mission becomes the preserve of the enthusiastic few, and not
central to the life of the church. When we focus on church, we don’t usually
manage to build community; often, we destroy it. When we focus on mission, we
gather together as a group and end up functioning as the community we were
always meant to be. (See Michael
Frost, Exiles,
for further on this.)

So the community of the church arises both as the fruit of mission – people are gathered
together under the reign of God – and the passion
of mission – a shared commitment to mission draws people together into deep
Christian community.

So we need to reorder our priorities. Our priorities cannot
be about the building. Nor can they be about so filling up people’s diaries
with meetings that they can spend little meaningful time in the community. Our
church priorities are simple: gathering for worship, a small group where we
challenge one another to grow in discipleship, and only as much other business
as is absolutely necessary.

In fact, that small group might most profitably be people
who come together to work on mission – sharing God’s love in word and deed with
those yet to find that love. Within that you find the fellowship to sustain you
in Bible study, discipleship and mutual pastoral care.

You’re probably bored with me talking about it, but my best
experience of this was when I was involved in my first appointment with
ecumenical youth worship and outreach. As a team we met in three different
configurations, each with slightly different memberships. We were a group that
met to pray and strategise for this ministry. We were a fortnightly home group,
where we studied the Bible and supported one another. And we hung out as a
bunch of friends on Friday nights, with pizzas, videos and some non-Methodist
liquids. The mission energised everything else.

But enough from me: time for our second DVD clip.

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Tomorrow’s Sermon: A Template For Missional Church

I’m doing something slightly different tomorrow: I’m splicing up the sermon with two DVD clips from Fresh Expressions: the first, from their DVD 1, is of ‘Messy Church’, and the second, from DVD 2, is from the chapter on rural mission about ‘The Gathering’ in the Whitby Methodist Circuit. We’re then showing as much of DVD 1 as we can get through while people have coffee after the service. Then folk are invited to a ploughman’s lunch, where we hope they will discuss what they see at their tables, and record their thoughts (anonymously, if so desired) on small wipeable whiteboards.

John 1:1-18

Introduction
Sunday 22nd July: can I be the first this year to wish you a very
Happy Christmas?

You probably think I’ve finally lost it – if indeed I ever
had ‘it’. Did you wonder why we heard a ‘Christmas’ Bible reading – the first
eighteen verses of John chapter one? What has that to do with a morning when I
shall give over two quarters of the sermon to DVD clips from Fresh Expressions about new ways
of mission and church with children and families? Wouldn’t it have made more
sense if we had read Jesus’ words about letting the children come to him?

Well, it might have done – but some words in that famous
Prologue to John’s Gospel are central to the different way of doing mission and
church that I have been emphasising ever since coming here. You can find it
distilled in verse 14:

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have
seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

The Word became flesh and lived among us. Here are two other
ways of translating it. More literally, it is, ‘The Word became flesh and
pitched his tent among us.’ Or Eugene
Peterson paraphrases it, ‘The Word became flesh and blood and moved into
the neighbourhood.’ Simply put, I believe those words do two things: they
change our focus, and they change our order of priorities. We’ll briefly
consider the change of focus first, and then see the first DVD clip; then we’ll
think about the changing of our order of priorities, and then see the second
DVD clip.

1. Change Of Focus
The change of focus is from ‘come’ to ‘go.’ We have assumed that mission is
about getting people to come to us. But Jesus didn’t do that: ‘the Word became
flesh and lived among us.’ He moved into the neighbourhood. Relying on a ‘come
to us’ approach to mission brings fewer and fewer people into the orbit of
God’s love. In a passage where he explains that eighty per cent of people find
faith in Christ through friendship with Christians, Jeff Lucas summarises the futility of the
‘come to us’ approach to mission this way:

It’s like a fisherman spreading his expensive net on the side
of the riverbank, and then inviting the fish to jump out of the water and get
caught.
(Gideon:
Power From Weakness, p61)

Yet we persist in getting out our ever-more-fancy fishing
nets every week. Yet not only did Jesus himself model a mission based on
‘going’, he told his disciples to model their involvement in mission on his:
‘As the Father sent me, so I send you’ (John 20:21). Mission involves being
part of the community, researching its culture and needs, and then finding appropriate
ways of sharing the Good News in word and deed.

So, although Christian mission will occasionally involve the
use of a church building (as it does in the two clips we’re going to see) it
mostly happens away from our gathering place. Mission is not about bringing
people into the increasingly unfamiliar culture of the church and expecting
them to fit our shape: it’s about being in the world, finding the points where
the Gospel makes contact and the points where it challenges. You’ll see a lot
of examples in the clips we’re going to run over coffee between the end of the
service and our lunch together, but for now let’s see our first clip.

2. Changing The Order
Of Our Priorities
Put these three words in order of priority: Jesus, church and mission. It’s a
fair bet that most of us would put them in that order: Jesus first, then
church, and finally mission. But it’s not the way it happens in John’s Gospel,
or in the New Testament generally.

Everything begins with Jesus. Christianity is centred on a
personal and shared knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ and his saving
love. If we don’t start with Jesus, we’re in trouble. Those who might put
‘church’ first tend to be devoted to the institution and its rituals, not to
its Founder. Without making the connection with Jesus personal, there is no
Christian faith. It all starts with him, as it does here: ‘the Word became
flesh.’

But ‘church’ doesn’t come second. ‘The Word became flesh and
lived among us.’ ‘Mission’ comes next. The result of Jesus coming was mission.
He brought God’s love into the world. Anyway, you can’t have church if mission,
hasn’t happened, where people find the God’s love for themselves.

‘Church’ comes third. It is the fruit and consequence of
mission. When we place church ahead of mission we just end up with church as a
therapeutic community where the important thing is for me to have my needs met
(see Mike
McNichols  and Brother Maynard).
In such places, mission becomes the preserve of the enthusiastic few, and not
central to the life of the church. When we focus on church, we don’t usually
manage to build community; often, we destroy it. When we focus on mission, we
gather together as a group and end up functioning as the community we were
always meant to be. (See Michael
Frost, Exiles,
for further on this.)

So the community of the church arises both as the fruit of mission – people are gathered
together under the reign of God – and the passion
of mission – a shared commitment to mission draws people together into deep
Christian community.

So we need to reorder our priorities. Our priorities cannot
be about the building. Nor can they be about so filling up people’s diaries
with meetings that they can spend little meaningful time in the community. Our
church priorities are simple: gathering for worship, a small group where we
challenge one another to grow in discipleship, and only as much other business
as is absolutely necessary.

In fact, that small group might most profitably be people
who come together to work on mission – sharing God’s love in word and deed with
those yet to find that love. Within that you find the fellowship to sustain you
in Bible study, discipleship and mutual pastoral care.

You’re probably bored with me talking about it, but my best
experience of this was when I was involved in my first appointment with
ecumenical youth worship and outreach. As a team we met in three different
configurations, each with slightly different memberships. We were a group that
met to pray and strategise for this ministry. We were a fortnightly home group,
where we studied the Bible and supported one another. And we hung out as a
bunch of friends on Friday nights, with pizzas, videos and some non-Methodist
liquids. The mission energised everything else.

But enough from me: time for our second DVD clip.

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