Author: Dave Faulkner

I'm a British Methodist minister, married with two adult children. I blog from a moderate evangelical-missional-charismatic perspective. My interests include digital photography (currently using a Nikon Z8), contemporary music, and watching football (Tottenham Hotspur) and cricket. For my photography, please visit www.flickr.com/photos/davefaulkner

Sermon: People At The Cross – Judas Iscariot

This weekend, we start a new sermon series for Lent and Easter, in which we meditate on the characters who inhabit the Passion and Easter stories. I get to begin with Judas Iscariot.

John 13:1-5, 18-32

Miss Duffell was my English teacher. Despite my goody-goody image at school, she was the only teacher I ever wanted to wind up. It wasn’t the way she tipped her cigarette ash into her coffee cup when having a discussion with pupils at break time, it was the fact that she taught English Literature. To my teenage male way of thinking, that was the most useless, irrelevant subject in the curriculum. Especially if you favoured the sciences, as I did.

It was only when I reached adulthood that I saw the worth of all those essays where we had to write character studies of people in the plays we were studying – Bluntschli in ‘Arms and the Man’, Falstaff in ‘Henry IV Part 1’, and so on. When I began to understand the power of the narrative in the Bible, then I started to appreciate the value in appreciating the characters. I learned that we might identify with a person or see ourselves in opposition to them, and through either reaction be caught up more in what the message the author of the story had for us. I might also end up going further than the original author intended, of course!

It’s with that experience in mind that I begin this new sermon series about the people we encounter in the gospel stories of Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection. If reflecting on a character in a novel or play can have a powerful effect, how much more so when we dwell on those we find in the Holy Spirit-supervised words of Scripture? Especially when we also believe that the same Holy Spirit is here to help us hear, understand, believe and respond.

So this morning I have not given myself an easy task by starting with Judas Iscariot. As with several people in this series, there were several Bible passages I could have picked. But these verses from John 13 get us to the core of what I want to share about him.

The first reference to Judas in this account comes in verse 2:

The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.

Our first reflection, then, is on Judas and the devil. Nothing like starting with a difficult and contentious theme, then!

Whenever I reflect on anything to do with the devil, I go back to the famous words of C S Lewis in his Preface to The Screwtape Letters, where he wrote:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight.

Although I know it is difficult for some people to believe in ‘the devil’, I cannot disbelieve in ‘his’ existence, given Jesus’ belief in him. I cannot reduce Jesus merely to a child of his time, however much he constrained himself in the Incarnation. He is still Lord, and what he says, goes. So rejection of the reference to the devil prompting Judas Iscariot is out for me.

But on the other hand, I know too many Christians who make too much of the devil. One Anglican rector friend of mine used to put every mishap and setback down to ‘the devil’, as if by a reflex reaction.

So when we read John’s careful words that ‘the devil had already prompted Judas’ (my emphasis), let us take particular note of that word ‘prompted’. It is not that the devil made Judas do what he did, but that he had sown thoughts in his head. Judas could then choose what he did about those promptings. Although John clearly portrays demonic activity at work here, human responsibility is still in play. We cannot absolve ourselves of our actions by saying, “The devil made me do it.” Neither could Judas.

We may find ourselves under pressure to sin through persistent temptation. In one respect, we can do nothing about that. It is the lot of all people. Being tempted is not a sin: Jesus was, especially in the wilderness. But in another respect, we sometimes lay ourselves open to those promptings, those temptations. We put ourselves in situations where we know we could be vulnerable to our weaknesses. The devil will exploit that. We deliberately sail close to the wind. The devil will exploit that. Later in this sermon, we’ll see how Judas did precisely that. But for now, let’s simply note that while yes, the devil prompts us with temptation, we still have a responsibility for our actions and we need to do what we can to put ourselves at a distance from circumstances where we know we are weak.

The second reference to Judas comes in the second half of the reading, in the conversation Jesus has with his disciples which begins with him saying,

I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfil this passage of Scripture: ‘He who shared my bread has turned against me.’ (Verse 18)

It continues with Jesus’ troubled admission that one of the Twelve will betray him, and when pressed about who that will be says,

It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish. (Verse 26)

So this second reflection is about the astonishing fact that Jesus shared table fellowship with his betrayer.

I have often heard people observe, then, that Jesus even gave the bread to Judas at the meal where he instituted the Lord’s Supper. They then take it that we should not be judgmental (fair enough, in one sense) and that there should be no boundaries at the Lord’s table. However, that last statement is patently incorrect from a biblical point of view. Paul was at pains in 1 Corinthians 11 to remind his readers that self-examination was important before taking the bread and wine. Lax discipline at Holy Communion is not good practice.

I would rather see Jesus’ sharing of table fellowship with Judas this way. My current reading is the memoirs of a man who has written more profound books in recent years on what it means to be a pastor than anyone else I have come across. His name is Eugene Peterson, and he is better known for the popular paraphrase of the Bible called The Message. In his latest book, The Pastor: A Memoir, he talks about how when he began the Presbyterian church in Maryland that he went on to lead for thirty years, his early vision was to gather together a group of visionary Christians who were all passionate for what it really meant to be disciples and to be church in a New Testament sense. Instead, he found himself with a rabble, rather as David did at Ziklag when he was on the run from King Saul.

And I observe that I have seen some friends fall away from faith over the years. Each time, they have been those whom I might consider the least likely. In at least two cases, it was weakness to sexual temptation that began their decline. It reminds me that Paul warned his readers in 1 Corinthians 10 that any of us who believe we are ‘standing’ in faith should beware lest we fall. It could be you. It could be me.

Therefore, when we too come to eat bread with Jesus this morning, let us pray that we will, in the words of Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘Soldiers of Christ, arise’ ‘leave no unguarded place’. Let us not simply be aware of our weaknesses so that we do not put ourselves in places where the devil might prompt us with temptation. Let us also positively ‘put on the full armour of God’, those godly qualities that are the very opposite of sin.

So what was Judas’ particular weakness? We get a hint later in the story, and this is my third reflection on him. After Jesus tells him, “What you are about to do, do quickly,” (verse 27), we read how the disciples misunderstood (verse 28) that statement:

Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. (Verse 29)

Anyone who has read John’s Gospel cover to cover rather than in short segments will go back to chapter 12, when Mary anoints Jesus with a pint of expensive nard. There, Judas objected that the perfume would have been better used if it had been sold and the money given to the poor, but John reports that Judas didn’t care about the poor: he looked after the disciples’ common purse and wanted to dip his hands into the cash (John 12:4-6).

Judas’ weakness, then, was money. Here is where he failed to guard himself against the devil’s promptings to temptation. Here is where he thought he could stand in faith, but fell. No wonder his reward from the enemies of Jesus was thirty pieces of silver. That would have attracted him.

When the great contemporary spiritual writer Richard Foster wanted to publish a book about the major sins, is it any accident that he wrote about the ‘big three’? He called his book, Money, Sex and Power. These, he said, were the areas of human life with the greatest power to bless or to curse. Perhaps it is no surprise that monastic orders have taken vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience – in direct contrast to these three great temptations.

And perhaps for some of us the way to avoid our weakness will be by a strategy of avoidance. A friend of mine knows that he is incapable of drinking alcohol in moderation. If he has one drink, he will end up having a lot, and getting drunk. So his strategy is to be teetotal. In doing so, those who choose to avoid weaknesses can also be witnesses to a world that believes you can’t be happy unless you’re smashed out of your mind, sleeping around, buying all the latest consumer goods or climbing the greasy pole at work.

However, avoiding our besetting sins is not always possible. And we can also be good witnesses by facing temptation and avoiding it. That, though, requires not a spiritual gung-ho attitude but prayer, dependence upon the Holy Spirit and fellowship. And by ‘fellowship’ here, I mean deep Christian relationships where we regularly hold ourselves accountable to one another. It’s exactly what some of John Wesley’s small groups did. They talked each week about which sins they had been struggling with.

There are similar approaches today. We can form ‘accountability groups’. We can do it in other ways, too. One way that people facing the temptation of internet pornography cope with it is to install a program on their computer called Covenant Eyes which reports to a friend the details of every website the person looks at.

Fellowship is more than camaraderie at the Christmas Bazaar. It’s a vital tool in avoiding the trap that snared Judas.

But, of course, all of this is to some extent rather gloomy. Temptation, sin, avoidance. All necessary to consider for Christians, but is there any good news here? I believe there is, and it comes in the fourth and final reflection. Allow me to introduce it with an illustration.

When I was young and suffering bullying at school, my Dad tried to teach me some Judo. He had learned it in the RAF, and had kept his instruction manual. He argued that the virtue of Judo was that it was not itself violent, but you used your opponent’s strength against them in order to win.

In the light of  that, consider Jesus’ words at the end of our reading:

Now the Son of Man is glorified and God is glorified in him. (Verse 31)

Isn’t this what is going on here? Even the evil power at work as Judas gives in to his weakness and responds to the devil’s prompting is something God uses against his enemy for good, to win the victory over sin and death. Judas does not have the last word. Jesus does – in the forgiveness of sins through the Cross, and in the new life of the Resurrection.

Yes, here, in the murky, shabby story of Judas God the Father works his Gospel. He does not inflict violence, but he uses the violence and betrayal rendered against his only begotten Son to bring the salvation of the world. It is the truth of which Paul was to write,

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

In ‘all things’, even the treachery of Judas, God works for good. In ‘all things’, even the darkness of Calvary, God works for good.

And in all things today, God still works for good. The friends or acquaintances who betray us – God can turn it for good. The evil that affects us – God can even use that for good, as he uses the enemy’s force against him.

Allow me to conclude with a story. Members of the Church Council have already heard this, so I hope they will excuse hearing it again. Tomorrow, I return to a previous circuit to conduct a funeral. Sid was a proud Welshman – and his pride was not always his most attractive feature. He was married to Rita, an East German Lutheran Christian, whose response to Sid’s fierce Methodism was to vow never to become a Methodist, otherwise Sid would have won, in her words.

When I arrived in the circuit, he had just retired from a career in the Army and then some years in Civvy Street. That army background made him stiff and – yes – regimented. On one occasion when I had prepared an act of all age worship only to find the Junior Church not ready for it and going out after the second hymn, I received a stern lecture!

One thing Sid had never done, despite a lifetime in Methodism, was make a personal commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. I told him that one day he would have to get off the fence.

Well, one Saturday night he did. Sid and Rita attended a concert by a Christian band and choir. He heard one of the musicians give a testimony, and he suddenly thought, “If it can be true for him, it can be true for me.”

The next morning at church, he took Holy Communion for the first time. The look of joy on his face as he knelt at the rail and looked at me is an image that will remain with me for ever.

In the wake of that commitment, he started to soften. He lightened up. He began to forgive, and to become more humble.

In January, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and his health declined fast. Yet during his hospitalisation and treatment, he renewed his commitment to Christ, thanks to the witness of another Christian patient at the hospital.

Tragically, he had become alienated from one of his two daughters a few years ago, due to a terrible misunderstanding in a phone conversation. While he was in hospital, his other daughter said to him, “Dad, if you’re a Christian you’ve got to put things right with my sister.” The daughter in question lived in Germany, and Sid picked up a hospital phone and rang Germany. On his knees he sought reconciliation.

Sid’s suffering and death also led to another reconciliation – between his wife and the next door neighbours. When I visited, one of them was in the house, offering comfort.

The last sentence Sid uttered to his family was this. “You’re not going to like what I’m about to say, but I’m glad I’ve got cancer.”

I don’t know if I could ever say that, but I will say this. That is the testimony of a man who knows that the Judas in his life – in his case, a terminal disease – was something that God was using to overcome evil with good.

For the Judases of this world and the devils do not get the last word. God does.

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David, A Saint For Today

I’m not big into saints’ days – in fact not at all, really. But today I am taking assemblies at our children’s school and as it’s a church school I’ve been asked to speak about St David.

So I’ve had to do some research. Shortness of time has meant the Internet, and I was impressed by the careful article on Wikipedia – it cautiously avoided hagiography. And what I read made me think he is ‘a saint for today’. That is, not merely for the First of March, but for our times.

Here is a famous quote from the great man:

Be joyful, and keep your faith and your creed. Do the little things that you have seen me do and heard about. I will walk the path that our fathers have trod before us.

This man who recommended joy lived a simple lifestyle.  Monastic to the point of extremes – a diet of water only to drink and bread and herbs (bread and watercress) only to eat. No technology – his monks had to plough the fields without the help of animals. Emphasis on doing ‘the little things’, despite the miracles associated with him. A sort of sixth century Amish, in a way.

It was all rather radical, and yes, as I said, extreme. But this man clearly knew what brought true joy. Not money, possessions, comfort, adulation or anything else: his joy was connected with ‘[his] faith and [his] creed’. Is it reasonable to assume that David’s deep joy came from Christ alone?

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Rob Bell, Universalism And The Christian Blogosphere

Before reading on, may I invite you to watch this video teaser for Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins?

Now tell me how that proves Bell is a universalist? He may be, or he may not. This is far too ambiguous. This video raises the questions. It doesn’t give Bell’s answers. To be precise:

Unambiguously stating that Gandhi is in Hell does raise concerns. If you are an exclusivist (only those who have personal faith in Christ will be saved) you might well say that. But if you believe the biblical evidence leads in another direction, you will be bothered by this. That doesn’t simply apply to universalism (all will be saved, regardless of faith in Christ); it also applies to inclusivism (God will deal justly and mercifully with those who never get the chance to respond to Christ). And there is plenty of evidence for inclusivism in the Bible: take Melchizedek the priest of Salem in Genesis, for example. Take Job, possibly. And besides, Bell at very least may only be raising the questions our culture asks and which need answering.

Likewise, Bell’s portrayal of the Gospel as preached by some that a loving Jesus rescues us from an angry God. What kind of Trinity is that, where Christ is love but the Father isn’t? That certainly should be up for debate.

And as for the slogan ‘Love Wins’? Well, if Christians don’t believe that in some form or another, we’re in big trouble. There is something deeply troubling about a brand of Christianity that is more certain about who is going to Hell than who is going to Heaven – after all, Calvinism has always had a problem with knowing how you are one of the elect.

Oh, and by the way, the publisher’s blurb is correct: eternal life does start now. Read John’s Gospel, especially chapter 17 verse 3: ‘eternal life is knowing you’ (emphasis mine).

As I say, it is possible that Bell might be a universalist. But there is nothing in these two minutes and fifty eight seconds to establish that with any certainty. Therefore it is pretty unworthy for the new Calvinist militants to go after him like this. I say this as one who takes doctrine very seriously – this shouldn’t be the way a Christian theme ends up in the top ten trending topics on Twitter, as this did on Saturday.

I guess someone who commented on Christianity Today’s blog about the controversy got it about right:

Kudos to HarperOne’s marketing team. Job well done. I’d imagine this kind of buzz before the book’s release can only improve sales.

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A Collaborative World?

 

Apparently, the revolution will be tweeted,

says Jason Gardner in an article which begins by reflecting on the use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter in recent people movements in North Africa. You may have read about the Egyptian who called his newborn child ‘Facebook’ in tribute to the way that site was used to spark potential social change.

So Gardner asks us to pay attention to Web 2.0, which

is about customisation and collaboration … That means that the story of the world is no longer dictated to us: we write it together.

Even powerful dictators’ efforts to use kill switches on the Internet have run into trouble as international people movements such as Avaaz have solicited funds from tens of thousands of people around the world to provide satellite links and other means for the previously disempowered citizens to keep communicating with each other and the outside world.

When I have written about this before, I have quoted Rex Miller‘s maxim that it isn’t that the medium is the message; rather, the medium is the worldview. Collaborative media mean collaborative approaches to life. And Gardner rightly says the church needs to take heed.

His particular application is in involving youth, and he makes the point that God is involving us collaboratively in his kingdom.

However, it’s worth thinking about for the whole church. While we have a long way to go, it gives me great pleasure to be involved in leading a church that already has signs of taking this seriously. I have a Leadership Team that meets weekly at Knaphill, and although I’m seen as the overall leader we take counsel together.

Or for another example, you’ll notice this is one of those weekends when there is no new sermon on the blog. That’s because it’s All Age Worship Sunday, and we have a team that plans these services. While I might bring a general overarching theme or message, I couldn’t possibly put together the services we lead. The creative gifts present among the team are amazing, and the worship is all the richer for it.

OK, if I get round to it, I might put up the short PowerPoint presentation that accompanies my brief talk on a site like Slideshare, but it isn’t a conventional sermon. It’s a talk on the theme of ‘belonging’, because we’ve just had Founders’ Day for the Scouts and Thinking Day for the Guides. And actually, did I come up with the theme this time? No. I couldn’t make the planning meeting, due to an emergency. Two other people prayed and set the theme, and I have attempted to fit in.

Of course, we need to go much further, but one thing is for sure. However much I am set aside to pray and discern, there is no going back to the world where an Anglican rector friend of mine saw his calling as to come down from the mountain with the tablets of stone, and for the people simply to accept his word to that effect.

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Community Feasting

A press release from the Methodist Church reports that only 17% of people would invite neighbours to share a meal if they had spare food. If anything were a sign that we’ve reduced Shrove Tuesday to Pancake Day, this is it.

All we seem to do on that date (8th March this year) is eat pancakes. It’s another festival where we’ve lost sight of the meaning. Families used to use up spare food and have communal activities (hence even today Mardi Gras) on the day before the sombre fasting of Lent began. Although let us remember that even in Lent the Sundays are still feast days – otherwise you’ll get confused in counting the forty days!

Hence the unwillingness (if it is that) to invite neighbours to a community feast is another tragic loss of our inheritance. It is both a sign of the loss of a Christian value, and a loss of community.

So all praise for the way the Methodist Relief and Development Fund wants to reclaim Shrove Tuesday as not only a community feast, but one that promotes Fair Trade. Their Fair Feast project, endorsed by celebrity chef Gary Rhodes, who has supplied a recipé for pancakes with wild mushroom sauce, is well worth looking at. You can even dovetail Bible study in with a local Mardi Gras event.

How are you going to celebrate Pancake Day Shrove Tuesday this year?

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Organisational Barriers To Spiritual Transformation

Renewal is never merely private and personal, says Ruth Haley Barton in this taster of her forthcoming book on leadership discernment. The culture / ethos / ‘spirit’ / assumptions, both named and tacit of the organisation in which we function has an effect upon us, and it can be negative. The leadership group of the organisation needs to work on transforming the group from the inside out.

What do you think?

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Sermon: Love Your Neighbour As Yourself

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

I wonder whether you have heard the story of the churchgoer who wanted to abolish the Old Testament. His argument was that Jesus said, “Hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Well, Jesus did say, “Hang all the Law and the Prophets”, but the problem with the argument was that the man quoted Jesus out of context. Jesus says these words when he is asked what the greatest commandment is, and his reply goes like this:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. [Emphasis added]

You can’t abolish the Old Testament, then. Jesus said it contained the two greatest commandments.

And today’s Lectionary takes us to the second of these commandments: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’

So, for only the second time in over thirty years of preaching, I find myself preaching on a text from Leviticus! It might not be a book we would rush to preach from usually, but whatever its reputation for obscure Jewish dietary laws and the like, it also contains this commandment and a host of other commandments that enshrine God’s commitment to compassion and justice. And it all gets summed up at the end of our first reading with these words: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (verse 18).

How, then, do we explore these famous words? I suggest that if the basis of loving our neighbour is the way we love ourselves, then I’m going to start with what it means in biblical terms to love ourselves and work back to loving our neighbour from there.

First of all, then, loving ourselves. It seems to me there are two equal and opposite errors into which we can fall in appreciating the assumption that we love ourselves. One is the assumption often made in our society today, and perhaps encapsulated by that dreadful series of adverts from the world’s largest cosmetics company, L’Oreal. Beginning with famous actresses closing the ads with the words, “Because I’m worth it”, they changed it in the middle of the last decade to “Because you’re worth it.” Then in 2009 they modified it again to “Because we’re worth it.”

You get the message? I am so good and so deserving that I should have the very best. It’s something that in a different way politicians have picked up on. They talk about welfare benefits as something that the right people deserve. It makes me out to be so good and perfect that the last thing you would dare to do is criticise me. The Christian notion of sin is entirely absent. There is nothing about responsibility, it is all about rights. As such, it’s unreliable as a gauge for understanding how God loves us, and we can only base love for ourselves on the way God loves us.

The opposite error takes this to the other extreme. It is what some people have called ‘worm theology’. It is the approach that says, “Lord, I am worth no more than a worm, because I am only a terrible sinner.” It is an attitude to life that leads to low self-esteem and even self-hatred, quite the opposite of ‘Because I’m worth it.’

At first glance this might seem to take seriously the Christian doctrine of sin, but it actually distorts the Christian view of God’s love for people. It makes it sound like the Cross of Christ is no more than the appeasing of an angry God, and not an expression of God’s sacrificial love in Christ.

So – loving ourselves can neither be based on “I’m wonderful”, nor on “I’m terrible.” What can it rest on, then? I believe it requires a big picture of the way God views us, and when we appreciate that, we shall be free to love ourselves healthily.

I believe it goes something like this. It begins not with sin, but with the fact that God made human beings in his image. Now whatever it means to be made in the image of God, and I’m not going to touch that this morning, what is clear is that it means that God accords human beings a special, indeed unique, dignity. It speaks of the amazing value that God puts on us.

Yes, we go on from there to speak about sin and the rupture it causes in our relationship with a holy God. But we also bring into play the fact that this holy God sets out on the journey of redemption, because his love is not incompatible with his holiness. He even gives up his only begotten Son for us. He draws us to himself by his Holy Spirit, and when we respond in faith to him through Jesus Christ, that Spirit comes to dwell within our lives.

All in all, it’s very Trinitarian: we are loved by the Father, redeemed by the Son and indwelt by the Spirit. This is the measure of God’s love for us.

Now when we know we are deeply loved, what does that do for us? A friend of mine who has suffered for much of her life with depression once told me that nothing boosted her sense of self-worth more than remembering that her husband had wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. In the midst of her illness, that knowledge gave her dignity.

So it is with the love of God. Because we are so wonderfully loved by God – extravagantly and sacrificially – we may love ourselves. It isn’t that self-love becomes self-indulgence, for then it would stand contrary to the love of God. But it is that we have an amazing sense of wonder and value. It is a firm foundation for life. We can begin to achieve a balance of taking proper care of ourselves, but also being ready to show that same sacrificial love of God to others.

All of which leads to the second part of our thinking, the part where the rubber hits the road – loving our neighbours. Now I don’t know about you, but when we are faced with something as stark and absolute in the Scriptures as ‘love your neighbour’, this is probably the time I want to start wriggling about the meaning. We know that some of the rabbis set complicated definitions about who was a neighbour and who wasn’t. In today’s Gospel passage Jesus is clearly aware of people who want to distort the plain meaning of Leviticus. He talks about those who twist the verse to say, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’ (Matthew 5:43), thus adding something to Holy Writ in order to undermine its meaning. We know, too, that this wasn’t the only time he faced this issue, since the lawyer who heard him proclaim the need to love one’s neighbour then wanted to justify himself by asking, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ and in response he tells that most shocking of parables about the Good Samaritan. Leviticus puts it bluntly, and Jesus won’t let anybody get out of the implications.

Why should it be that Leviticus and Jesus allow no limitations or exceptions on the definition of ‘neighbour’? Could it be ultimately that the same things which apply to us about God’s love for us also apply to every single human being? I think so.

In other words, it is not just me who is made in the image of God. You are, and everyone is, even our enemies, whoever they may be. All people are offered redemption in Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit is wooing all people to find faith in Jesus and follow him. Everyone has the same extraordinary dignity in the sight of God.

And that means anybody in need is our neighbour when it comes to the command to love. We can’t pick and choose simply the people who appeal to us, or who are like us. It includes the people we are ambivalent about, and even those we actively dislike. Our neighbours include our enemies.

However, that is not to say that we should be glib about the question of offering neighbour love to enemies. I receive a weekly devotional email from an American pastor called Brian Jones. In this week’s email, he talked about this very issue. He described the problem of reconciling all the Psalms that display anger and ask God to wreak vengeance on enemies with Jesus’ command to love our enemies. He talked of an occasion when he preached a sermon about it, one of his best, he thought, in showing how in his opinion the words of Jesus trumped the angry words of the Psalms.

After the service, though, he was brought down to earth with heavy bruising. A man spoke to him and said, ‘What would you say to me, then? This week I have pressed charges against a man who molested my son.’

Brian Jones said he realised that sometimes we can only get through to that point of loving even our enemies when we have fully felt our anger first.

You may consider this ‘love of enemies’ talk a bit of a detour from the basic ‘love your neighbour’ theme, but in fact it’s like what some people call the ‘worst case scenario’. It’s the hardest variation on love of neighbour. If we can work on this, other aspects of loving our neighbours will fall into place.

What all this talk of loving our neighbour as ourselves comes down to in the end is about being Christlike. Loving our neighbour as ourselves is about seeing people as Christ sees them. It is about having Christ’s heart for them. It is about thinking and acting like Christ. The plastic bracelets with the initials ‘WWJD’ – ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ – may have seemed cheesy, but they make a point.

So if we want to know what love of neighbour looks like, then view Jesus healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law. Or see him crossing boundaries to talk to a Samaritan woman or heal a Roman centurion’s servant.

If we want to know what neighbour love looks like, go more than anywhere else to the Cross. See him caring for his mother and the disciple he loved, while dying. See him forgiving the penitent thief. See him asking the Father to forgive those who put him on the Cross – and all the while dying for their sins, for your sins and for mine.

Yes, Jesus looks on people as made in God’s image. He sees the damage caused by sin and by being sinned against and sets out on his mission of redeeming love. When he returns to heaven from that mission, he bestows the gift of the Holy Spirit on those who put their faith in him and follow him.

He has the right, then, to tell us not to resist evildoers, to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. He had the right to remind us not only to greet only our own brothers and sisters.

Walking this way may seem uncongenial and even impossible. But Jesus gives us the power to do so through the gift of the Holy Spirit. And he gives us motivation to love neighbours, even our enemies, when we consider how much he loves us and how much he has forgiven us.

Thus may we have the grace to live differently in our world.

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Sermon: Money And Possessions

Sorry it’s been a while since I posted. Three major things have been going on. Firstly, there has been a major pastoral situation. Although it eventually became public, it would not be good for me to allude in any way to its nature here. Furthermore, some of the decisions I had to take in relation to this matter led to me leading worship but not preaching, in order to be free to take particular essential courses of action. Hence there were no new sermons anyway for a couple of weeks.

Secondly, around the same time we had a major gas leak at the church, at one time with gas levels high enough for us to be at the risk of an explosion. That entailed several days of having to drop everything at short notice to sort things out with the engineers.

Thirdly, as you will gather below, I also suddenly lost the use of my car. I was driving at 70 mph on the M25 when the cam belt malfunctioned. Repair of the consequent damage would have cost more than the value of the old car. So I was then thrust into an urgent search for a new car.

However, I can now belatedly bring you the sermon I preached this morning. I hope you find it helpful.

Matthew 6:19-34

Peter used to sort the post and bring it to everyone’s desks in the office where I used to work. A bit of a lad, you wouldn’t have marked him down as the most likely to become interested in God and religion.

Not until his girlfriend became a Christian. She enthusiastically joined a local evangelical church, and Peter started going with her to the church young adults’ group. They went to the Greenbelt Festival together, and he began attending the Sunday evening youth fellowship with her.

It was one Monday morning at the office after he had been to the youth group the previous night that he started a conversation about how uneasy he had been about the youth group leader. This man had invited everyone to his home for the meeting. Peter said that the man couldn’t stop going on about all his lovely furniture and other household comforts.

“That’s not what you Christians are supposed to be like, is it?” he asked me.

Peter was right. Jesus says far more about topics such as money and possessions than he does about some of the issues that frequently obsess the church. Which is not to say I don’t believe matters such as sexual ethics are – they touch on who we are at the deepest level, and I hold fairly traditional views on them. But Jesus also knew that the way we handle material things would be critical if we aim to be the whole-hearted disciples he wants us to be.

So we come to this week’s section in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus puts this question up front and centre, even when teaching a group of people in a culture full of peasants living at subsistence level. How much more relevant is it to us, in a society that depends upon us buying plenty of ‘stuff’? Indeed, much of our culture is defined by an addiction to consumer goods.

Let’s dive in, then, and see whether by following Jesus’ teaching here we can offer a distinctive witness to him in our world.

Firstly, let’s recognise that our attitude to money and possessions is a matter of the heart: ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ (verse 21). But what does this mean?

On Monday, people’s lives will be flooded with hearts – on cards, on balloons, chocolate-shaped ones, and so on. The heart will be the visual logo for Valentine’s Day. In our culture, we take the heart to be symbolic of the emotions and the affections.

But it would be dangerous to transfer our use of the word ‘heart’ to the world of the Bible. For Jewish people, if you wanted to talk about the emotions, the body part you symbolically used was … the bowels. When Jewish people referred to the heart, they meant something far deeper than we do: the heart represented the very core of a person’s being. So when Jesus says your treasure is where your heart is, he isn’t merely referring to the emotional pull of certain things, he’s talking about giving complete allegiance to them.

And to take that further, if Jesus is telling us that our treasure needs to be ‘treasures in heaven’, he is calling us to an undiluted commitment to him. Those who treasure money and possessions are those who devote their lives to them. Our devotion is to Jesus and his kingdom.

How do we work this out in the life of faith? One thing I recommend is that we ensure we do not simply make assumptions about our spending habits and our lifestyle decisions. We can do that by submitting every major decision about finances or possessions to God in prayer. And when I say ‘submitting’ I do so deliberately, because we must be willing for God to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the plans we propose.

So it came as an encouragement last week when my old car suddenly gave up the ghost that Debbie and I had separately come to the same conclusion about the budget we should set for a replacement. We kept within that budget – the car I chose was £25 under the budget, and fits well what I need for ministry.

This, then, is Jesus’ first command about money and possessions. Ensure you are wholeheartedly committed to his cause, and judge everything in the light of that.

Secondly, Jesus sees our attitude to riches as a test of our spiritual health. Why on earth does he suddenly start going on about healthy and unhealthy eyes (verses 22-23)? I mean, obviously a healthy eye means good sight and a diseased eye causes poor sight, but why on earth does that suddenly appear in the middle of teaching about wealth rather than health?

There is a simple explanation, and the footnotes in some Bibles point you towards it. When Jesus refers to healthy eyes, the word translated ‘healthy’ can also be translated ‘generous’. Does it begin to make sense now? A healthy attitude is a generous attitude. Generosity is a hallmark of a disciple.

And how important that is today. The other day I found myself in a conversation with a young man just in from work who glibly talked about the way he spent £30 to £40 a day on himself, and how he was partly funding that from an additional job that paid ‘cash in hand’. His approach may be crude, but it is more typical than we might like to think.

But Jesus says that the symptoms of true health are not acquisition, but generosity, not getting but giving. It is more blessèd to give than to receive. If you want to see like Jesus sees, then let him open your eyes to the needs you can meet by generous giving on your part. And yes, as well as your finances and your material possessions, consider too generosity in the giving of your time, skills and most of all your love.

Of course you will need discernment, because while the need constitutes the call, the need may not constitute your call. But those with generous eyes are open to what God directs them to see.

So far, then, we’ve seen that our attitude to wealth and property is about our allegiance to Christ and our willingness to be generous is a measure of our spiritual health. The third thing Jesus says is very similar. In fact, you could say Jesus repeats himself from a different angle. The way we treat material possessions says something about what we worship. We cannot serve two masters, he tells us. We either worship God or we worship Mammon (which is more than just money: it seems to be the spiritual force behind the love of money).

The point Jesus is making is this: God believes in monogamy. Not just in marriage, but in the life of the spirit, too. Only one can hold our adoration. Whatever commands our worship requires so much of us that we cannot possibly have anything left over for anything or anyone else in the same way. However much we attempt a spiritual version of bigamy by trying to retain an allegiance to money alongside devotion to God (rather like the youth group leader I mentioned in the introduction), in the end it just won’t work. We’ll have to choose.

Yet at the same time, we need money and material things for life. How do we decide what to do? What is an acceptable standard of living? Is it the same for everyone? Didn’t God make the material world good? How do we know when we’ve crossed the line from using something good as a servant into adoring it as an idol?

Here is where I return to the point I made in the first section about prayer. If prayer helps tease out issues of undiluted commitment, it will help here in distinguishing whether we are using something responsibly while retaining our devotion to God or trespassing in the land of idolatry.

As you know, I enjoy gadgets, and this can be a particular temptation for me. Some years ago, I was wondering whether to replace the computer I had. The one I had was getting old, and there was a good case for a new one. However, I was wary, because I knew I could deceive myself and come up with all sorts of reasons to buy a new PC, when really I might just have been lusting after the latest technological advances. So I prayed, and I left it with God.

What I didn’t know was the way one of my church members was praying for me at the time. One Saturday, she went down to the church building and prayed everywhere around it. while praying for me there, she distinctly heard the Holy Spirit speak to her and say, “Tell Dave he can have what he wants.” She relayed this message to me a day or two later. She had no idea I was thinking of buying a new computer: I had told nobody.

So I underline the point again: make it a habit to commit your financial and lifestyle decisions to God in prayer. Be willing to hear him say, ‘Yes’, ‘No’ or ‘Wait’. If your worship is for Christ, you will want to do this.

The fourth and final aspect that Jesus addresses here is a practical one. He realises that some of his listeners will be thinking, “It’s all very well calling me to undiluted commitment, to generosity and to ensuring that I only worship God, but that all sounds expensive. How will I ever have enough to live on?” Jesus knows he needs to address the question of worry.

Sure enough, he reassures us about God’s special love and care for us. As human beings made in the image of God (unlike the rest of creation), we are worth more than ‘the birds of the air’ or ‘the flowers of the field’.

After that, you would expect the punch line to be about chilling out and trusting God. Jesus wants us to have faith, doesn’t he?

But it isn’t what he says. Or at least the kind of faith and trust Jesus calls us to is not of the quiet, serene, ‘let go and let God’ variety. His application is different: ‘seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well’ (verse 33). Sure, don’t worry and obsess about your basic needs, because your heavenly Father will look after you. But neither should you just sit back: God is looking for those who are radically committed to his kingdom. The kingdom comes first, says Jesus. Concentrate on the great purposes of God. Yes, he will take care of us, but he isn’t our sugar daddy, he’s our Lord. We owe him our prime allegiance.

To return to the subject of my car: when my old car dramatically gave up the ghost last weekend – at 70 mph on the M25, near the Heathrow exit – it came at a bad time for us. We are still adjusting to the shock of the cost of living in Surrey. So many things are more expensive here, from DVD lending fees in the library to swimming lessons for the children. We are having to trim our spending, regardless of the recession. For the car to give up at this juncture was not the kind of timing we would have preferred.

Part of our praying, then, was not only about how much to spend. Even before that, it was about our desire to fulfil the will of the God who had led us here. Did I need a car to fulfil that will? Yes. What kind of car? A small one would be fine. Even within those parameters, we were still looking at spending more than we were keen to do. Yet God worked through various people who heard of our need and gave us gifts that considerably mitigated the negative effect upon our finances. He honoured our desire to be about his kingdom business.

I could tell you plenty of other stories. CAMEO heard on Wednesday an account of how God provided my funds to go to theological college. But I don’t have time to repeat that this morning, or to give other testimonies.

I do have time to say to you that it makes Jesus sense to put God at the centre of our lives. It makes Jesus sense to be generous givers, rather than mean takers. It makes Jesus sense to worship God rather than consumerism. And it makes Jesus sense to follow the kingdom passionately while we entrust the provision of our needs to our heavenly Father.

So why not live like this? We know it makes sense. Jesus sense.

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Permission To Struggle With God In Prayer

Today, I attended for the first time a Leaders’ Forum at Waverley Abbey House, home of CWR. These days (free, gratis and otherwise at no cost) had been recommended by a new ministerial friend here. The theme was The Leader’s Vital Breath – Prayer. I thought I would share one insight that came in this afternoon’s session led by Philip Greenslade.

Giving us an extended treatment of Psalm 73, he contrasted Islamic treatment of the Abraham story with the Jewish and Christian approaches. Referring to the incident where Abraham bargains with God for the salvation of the righteous in Sodom, he noted that the Qu’ran deletes the bargaining and Abraham is basically told to shut up. In other words, it’s pure Islam: ‘submission’ (which is what the word ‘Islam’ means). On the contrary, both the Jewish and Christian approaches allow for honest struggle with God in prayer (hence Psalm 73). Quoting Abraham Heschel, who said that for the Jewish prophets, ‘Thy will be done’ involved effectively praying ‘Thy will be changed’, he said that any proper understanding of ‘Thy will be done’ has to include Gethsemane.

Does not all true prayer involve struggle, he asked? If prayer is only submission (and some Christian traditions are guilty of this, too), then is it true prayer? Good question.

I think we are learning this lesson of being able to be honest with God in prayer more and more in today’s church, but it was good to have such a thought-provoking underlining of it.

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