Category: Current Affairs

Sunday’s Sermon: Don’t Worry, Be Faithful

Matthew 6:24-34

Introduction
Petrol
prices up, up, up: a
barrel of oil has doubled in a year. Gas and electricity up. Food prices
up. And the official inflation figures? Not up very much at all. Of course,
governments never fiddle statistics …

I paid
my credit card bill this week, and it looks like we’ve just eked out the money
to the end of the quarter[1].
It had been an expensive quarter. I had needed two new pairs of glasses. The vacuum
cleaner had become so unreliable it needed replacing. My car required an
expensive annual service, not least because the garage discovered that the
front brakes were in advanced state of wear.

You
may well be able to write your own version of this – not least if you are on a
limited or fixed income. Financially, things are becoming tighter for many of
us.

And
in a world like that, we hear Jesus telling us not to worry about money, food
and clothing. ‘Don’t worry?’ we wonder, ‘How can we not worry?’

So
how can we receive Jesus’ words today? Is he hopelessly unrealistic, or does
his teaching here help us to face an uncertain and rocky world with faith and
hope? Well, there aren’t too many Christian preachers who will say Jesus is
unrealistic (there shouldn’t be any!). I think he helps us to face uncertain
times with confidence in him. He does so by giving us a mixture of challenges
and encouragement.

1. Loyalty
‘You cannot serve God and wealth,’ says Jesus (verse 24). God versus Mammon:
choose. Mammon seems to have been the god of wealth in ancient Carthage[2].
God versus wealth is a choice of gods: whom will we serve? Who will have our
loyalty? Only one can have our devotion, and to the extent, says Jesus, in
typically colourful Jewish language, that all else will seem like hatred.

If we
are to face financial matters with peace and not worry, the first thing we have
to do is settle the issue of our loyalty. If Mammon is our god, then our moods
will swing more violently than the stock market. If the Lord is our God, then
our trust is in the One called The Rock. God is dependable.

It’s
easy to see the ways in which the gods of wealth – modern-day Mammons – are worshipped
today. Remember Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan when he was first elected to the
White House: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. But wealth is a created thing: if it
is worshipped in place of the Creator, then it must be an idol, a false god. It
should not command our ultimate loyalty.

Yet
do we get our loyalties twisted, too? In another context, I recently read a
book where the author was saying that one of the problems in certain sections
of the church was that people invited Jesus to be part of their story, when true
conversion was about saying we were becoming part of Jesus’ story[3]. Jesus
is no optional extra to be added to life. Jesus is Lord.

This
is not necessarily a call to take a vow of poverty, although God may call some
to that. We still need money. We should still be sensible with it. Nor is God a
spoilsport: he does allow us to enjoy good things from his creation, just so
long as we remain more attached to him than to things. For times will come when
our loyalty to Christ is tested by our attitude to finance. It may be about a
major purchase, or the expectations we have about our lifestyles. It may be
about what we budget for in our outgoings.

However,
it will be rare to find there is a biblical passage that explicitly tells us
what to do. No verse tells me what quality of car I may drive, how much I should
spend on a new computer or a reasonable amount to spend on a meal out with my
wife.

It’s
more subtle than that. The test of loyalty is a test of the heart. We answer it
by listening to the promptings of the Spirit, seeking advice from others and doing
that most difficult of things, listening to the true motives of our hearts. When
we can discern our motives, we shall know whether our desire is to please the
Lord or serve the idol of Mammon.

2. Value
If you’re anything like us, one of the things you’ll have thought about in the
current financial climate is your major outgoings. What is your biggest
expenditure, and where can you trim? Not having a mortgage, our biggest regular
expense is the weekly food bill. We try to be careful not to buy those impulse
purchases that bump up the bill.

Then
Jesus tells us not to worry about food, drink and clothing! Yet they are some
of our biggest expenses! And don’t worry about how long we might live – even though
our nation spends billions on the National Health Service. Isn’t this advice
financial suicide? It sounds like it.

It isn’t
when you consider why Jesus tells us not to worry about these things. He tells
us to look at God’s care for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. In
God’s eyes, we are more valuable than either of these is. The people who spend
their time worrying and striving after these things are ‘the Gentiles’ – that is,
in this context, those who do not believe in the Lord. (Verses 25-32)

Therefore,
it’s an action of unbelief to spend all our time worrying about money and
possessions. What is it we don’t believe? We don’t believe that God loves us. We
don’t believe that God values us like nothing else on earth.

So stop
for a moment and consider just how much God does love and value us. God is
love, and created everything in love. Human beings are the only part of that
creation to be made in God’s image. In love, God still sought us out when we
turned our backs on him. Ultimately, in love, the Father sent his Son. Jesus
was born in poverty and humility. He died a terrible death and was raised from
the dead to reconcile us to God. God then comes by his Spirit to dwell within
and among his disciples. God wants to be with us; God is with us! That is how
much God loves and values us.

When
worry and stress come our way, we tend to forget important things. It’s time to
remember that God has placed an extraordinary value upon us. No transfer fee for
a footballer can match God’s valuation of us. He values us by the life of his
Son. No riches or possessions can compare with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling
within us.

So am
I advocating a reckless attitude to money? No – and yes. No, because we should
still plan our income, our spending and our giving carefully. Yet however
wisely we do that, we may still feel the pressure. Then it is time to remember
the great love God has for us, and the enormous value he places on us. A God
who views us like that will give us peace; he will look after us and provide for
our needs.

But
yes, there is a sense of recklessness about this, too, because on top of everything
else, God may challenge us in prayer to do something with our finances or
possessions that may seem crazy. God may lead us to do something that humanly doesn’t
make sense. Then, even more, is the time to remember the value God places on us,
and the immense love he has for us. If God clearly leads us in an unusual
direction with our wealth, we can be sure he will provide. The missionary
pioneer Hudson Taylor
once said, ‘God’s will done in God’s way will never lack the mean or the means.’[4]

3. The Kingdom
If we have an unqualified loyalty to our Lord and we believe he loves and
values us immeasurably, then what should our attitude be? Jesus says that instead
of striving for money and possessions, we are to ‘strive first for the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to [us] as
well’ (verse 33). Put simply, commit yourself above all things to the will of
God and he will supply your needs. Here’s how that happened once for me.

As you
know, I have been to two theological colleges. I applied to my first college at
a time in my life when I knew God was calling me to something, but I didn’t
know what, so I couldn’t ‘candidate’ for the ministry. Trinity College, Bristol offered me a
place. I applied for a grant (this was before student loans), but my education authority
turned me down. The college gave me a deadline by which I could guarantee them I
had the funds for my first year, and I appealed against the decision the
education authority made.

Forty-eight
hours before the college deadline, I learned that I had lost my appeal. What now?
Had I misread God’s guidance? However, it was at this stage that things started
to happen. My parents rediscovered some old funds they had forgotten. A student
who had taken a gap year between A-Levels and college and had worked to save
money for a car gave those savings to me. Her boyfriend also gave me some
money. Two elderly women at church gave me large sums of money. One wrote a
covering letter. She said, ‘It seems that God is asking you to trust him to
supply your needs. He will supply ours, too.’

By the
deadline, I had three quarters of the money required for that first year. I phoned
the Vice-Principal. He said they would take me, and help me with applications
to charities and trusts when I got there. He didn’t know I’d tried that and got
nowhere.

I preached
a sermon at a church other than my own in my circuit where I told how God had
provided for my needs. I didn’t explain that I still needed some more money. Afterwards,
a friend invited me back to his flat for coffee. He explained that he had been
planning a big holiday to New Zealand to see his auntie, but she had since died
and he saw no point in going. He had exchanged his sterling for New Zealand
dollars. However, the dollar had since fallen in value against the pound and he
had held onto the currency in hope that the exchange rates would go back in his
favour. They had worsened, and the money was annoying him. Would I like to take
this annoyance off him? Into my lap he threw two plastic Thomas Cook envelopes.
They contained NZ$2310. At the time (1986) this was worth £741, and I realised
he had originally exchanged £1000.

Later,
a friend at church who was a bank manager set up an account so that anyone
could give anonymously towards my support. With that and other gifts, all my
needs were provided for three years at college.

It all
felt like something out of a paperback testimony. Yet I felt very ordinary. I was.
I still am. I was no superhero of the faith. Jesus meant it when he said, ‘Seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well.’

Conclusion
This morning we are offering prayer for healing during the intercessions after
the next hymn. However, healing is not merely about our bodies. It is about
every aspect of life. Perhaps your fear or anxiety needs a healing touch from
God. If so, then let me invite you – just as much as anybody else – to come to
the communion rail for anointing with oil. Come to declare your unqualified
loyalty to Jesus Christ, and find an assurance from him that God loves you and
values like nothing else, and that when you commit yourself to his will, he
will meet your every need so that you may fulfil his kingdom purposes in your
life.

[1]
Methodist ministers are traditionally paid quarterly, not monthly (although the
latter option may now be chosen).

[4] An
apology for the exclusive language, but Taylor was a man of his time.

0

Sunday’s Sermon: Don’t Worry, Be Faithful

Matthew 6:24-34

Introduction
Petrol
prices up, up, up: a
barrel of oil has doubled in a year. Gas and electricity up. Food prices
up. And the official inflation figures? Not up very much at all. Of course,
governments never fiddle statistics …

I paid
my credit card bill this week, and it looks like we’ve just eked out the money
to the end of the quarter[1].
It had been an expensive quarter. I had needed two new pairs of glasses. The vacuum
cleaner had become so unreliable it needed replacing. My car required an
expensive annual service, not least because the garage discovered that the
front brakes were in advanced state of wear.

You
may well be able to write your own version of this – not least if you are on a
limited or fixed income. Financially, things are becoming tighter for many of
us.

And
in a world like that, we hear Jesus telling us not to worry about money, food
and clothing. ‘Don’t worry?’ we wonder, ‘How can we not worry?’

So
how can we receive Jesus’ words today? Is he hopelessly unrealistic, or does
his teaching here help us to face an uncertain and rocky world with faith and
hope? Well, there aren’t too many Christian preachers who will say Jesus is
unrealistic (there shouldn’t be any!). I think he helps us to face uncertain
times with confidence in him. He does so by giving us a mixture of challenges
and encouragement.

1. Loyalty
‘You cannot serve God and wealth,’ says Jesus (verse 24). God versus Mammon:
choose. Mammon seems to have been the god of wealth in ancient Carthage[2].
God versus wealth is a choice of gods: whom will we serve? Who will have our
loyalty? Only one can have our devotion, and to the extent, says Jesus, in
typically colourful Jewish language, that all else will seem like hatred.

If we
are to face financial matters with peace and not worry, the first thing we have
to do is settle the issue of our loyalty. If Mammon is our god, then our moods
will swing more violently than the stock market. If the Lord is our God, then
our trust is in the One called The Rock. God is dependable.

It’s
easy to see the ways in which the gods of wealth – modern-day Mammons – are worshipped
today. Remember Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan when he was first elected to the
White House: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’. But wealth is a created thing: if it
is worshipped in place of the Creator, then it must be an idol, a false god. It
should not command our ultimate loyalty.

Yet
do we get our loyalties twisted, too? In another context, I recently read a
book where the author was saying that one of the problems in certain sections
of the church was that people invited Jesus to be part of their story, when true
conversion was about saying we were becoming part of Jesus’ story[3]. Jesus
is no optional extra to be added to life. Jesus is Lord.

This
is not necessarily a call to take a vow of poverty, although God may call some
to that. We still need money. We should still be sensible with it. Nor is God a
spoilsport: he does allow us to enjoy good things from his creation, just so
long as we remain more attached to him than to things. For times will come when
our loyalty to Christ is tested by our attitude to finance. It may be about a
major purchase, or the expectations we have about our lifestyles. It may be
about what we budget for in our outgoings.

However,
it will be rare to find there is a biblical passage that explicitly tells us
what to do. No verse tells me what quality of car I may drive, how much I should
spend on a new computer or a reasonable amount to spend on a meal out with my
wife.

It’s
more subtle than that. The test of loyalty is a test of the heart. We answer it
by listening to the promptings of the Spirit, seeking advice from others and doing
that most difficult of things, listening to the true motives of our hearts. When
we can discern our motives, we shall know whether our desire is to please the
Lord or serve the idol of Mammon.

2. Value
If you’re anything like us, one of the things you’ll have thought about in the
current financial climate is your major outgoings. What is your biggest
expenditure, and where can you trim? Not having a mortgage, our biggest regular
expense is the weekly food bill. We try to be careful not to buy those impulse
purchases that bump up the bill.

Then
Jesus tells us not to worry about food, drink and clothing! Yet they are some
of our biggest expenses! And don’t worry about how long we might live – even though
our nation spends billions on the National Health Service. Isn’t this advice
financial suicide? It sounds like it.

It isn’t
when you consider why Jesus tells us not to worry about these things. He tells
us to look at God’s care for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. In
God’s eyes, we are more valuable than either of these is. The people who spend
their time worrying and striving after these things are ‘the Gentiles’ – that is,
in this context, those who do not believe in the Lord. (Verses 25-32)

Therefore,
it’s an action of unbelief to spend all our time worrying about money and
possessions. What is it we don’t believe? We don’t believe that God loves us. We
don’t believe that God values us like nothing else on earth.

So stop
for a moment and consider just how much God does love and value us. God is
love, and created everything in love. Human beings are the only part of that
creation to be made in God’s image. In love, God still sought us out when we
turned our backs on him. Ultimately, in love, the Father sent his Son. Jesus
was born in poverty and humility. He died a terrible death and was raised from
the dead to reconcile us to God. God then comes by his Spirit to dwell within
and among his disciples. God wants to be with us; God is with us! That is how
much God loves and values us.

When
worry and stress come our way, we tend to forget important things. It’s time to
remember that God has placed an extraordinary value upon us. No transfer fee for
a footballer can match God’s valuation of us. He values us by the life of his
Son. No riches or possessions can compare with the Holy Spirit of God dwelling
within us.

So am
I advocating a reckless attitude to money? No – and yes. No, because we should
still plan our income, our spending and our giving carefully. Yet however
wisely we do that, we may still feel the pressure. Then it is time to remember
the great love God has for us, and the enormous value he places on us. A God
who views us like that will give us peace; he will look after us and provide for
our needs.

But
yes, there is a sense of recklessness about this, too, because on top of everything
else, God may challenge us in prayer to do something with our finances or
possessions that may seem crazy. God may lead us to do something that humanly doesn’t
make sense. Then, even more, is the time to remember the value God places on us,
and the immense love he has for us. If God clearly leads us in an unusual
direction with our wealth, we can be sure he will provide. The missionary
pioneer Hudson Taylor
once said, ‘God’s will done in God’s way will never lack the mean or the means.’[4]

3. The Kingdom
If we have an unqualified loyalty to our Lord and we believe he loves and
values us immeasurably, then what should our attitude be? Jesus says that instead
of striving for money and possessions, we are to ‘strive first for the kingdom
of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to [us] as
well’ (verse 33). Put simply, commit yourself above all things to the will of
God and he will supply your needs. Here’s how that happened once for me.

As you
know, I have been to two theological colleges. I applied to my first college at
a time in my life when I knew God was calling me to something, but I didn’t
know what, so I couldn’t ‘candidate’ for the ministry. Trinity College, Bristol offered me a
place. I applied for a grant (this was before student loans), but my education authority
turned me down. The college gave me a deadline by which I could guarantee them I
had the funds for my first year, and I appealed against the decision the
education authority made.

Forty-eight
hours before the college deadline, I learned that I had lost my appeal. What now?
Had I misread God’s guidance? However, it was at this stage that things started
to happen. My parents rediscovered some old funds they had forgotten. A student
who had taken a gap year between A-Levels and college and had worked to save
money for a car gave those savings to me. Her boyfriend also gave me some
money. Two elderly women at church gave me large sums of money. One wrote a
covering letter. She said, ‘It seems that God is asking you to trust him to
supply your needs. He will supply ours, too.’

By the
deadline, I had three quarters of the money required for that first year. I phoned
the Vice-Principal. He said they would take me, and help me with applications
to charities and trusts when I got there. He didn’t know I’d tried that and got
nowhere.

I preached
a sermon at a church other than my own in my circuit where I told how God had
provided for my needs. I didn’t explain that I still needed some more money. Afterwards,
a friend invited me back to his flat for coffee. He explained that he had been
planning a big holiday to New Zealand to see his auntie, but she had since died
and he saw no point in going. He had exchanged his sterling for New Zealand
dollars. However, the dollar had since fallen in value against the pound and he
had held onto the currency in hope that the exchange rates would go back in his
favour. They had worsened, and the money was annoying him. Would I like to take
this annoyance off him? Into my lap he threw two plastic Thomas Cook envelopes.
They contained NZ$2310. At the time (1986) this was worth £741, and I realised
he had originally exchanged £1000.

Later,
a friend at church who was a bank manager set up an account so that anyone
could give anonymously towards my support. With that and other gifts, all my
needs were provided for three years at college.

It all
felt like something out of a paperback testimony. Yet I felt very ordinary. I was.
I still am. I was no superhero of the faith. Jesus meant it when he said, ‘Seek
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be
given to you as well.’

Conclusion
This morning we are offering prayer for healing during the intercessions after
the next hymn. However, healing is not merely about our bodies. It is about
every aspect of life. Perhaps your fear or anxiety needs a healing touch from
God. If so, then let me invite you – just as much as anybody else – to come to
the communion rail for anointing with oil. Come to declare your unqualified
loyalty to Jesus Christ, and find an assurance from him that God loves you and
values like nothing else, and that when you commit yourself to his will, he
will meet your every need so that you may fulfil his kingdom purposes in your
life.

[1]
Methodist ministers are traditionally paid quarterly, not monthly (although the
latter option may now be chosen).

[4] An
apology for the exclusive language, but Taylor was a man of his time.

0

Chelmsford Explosion

Yesterday, I was looking after our son while Debbie went to
Matalan to buy some children’s clothes. Mark was happily watching a DVD of Dora
The Explorer when, at 1:20 pm, the power went off. Frustrated and not
understanding a power cut, he kept pressing the on/off switch of the TV.
Everything was dead, our phones included, for twenty minutes or so.

Debbie rang my mobile, having tried to ring the landline. Power had gone in the
centre of town. Traffic lights were out, and there was black smoke. Matalan
could only take cash payments and provide handwritten receipts. She had
presented three items at £4 each and one at £5. The cashier had needed a
battery-operated calculator to work out it came to £17.

Once power was restored, we had an email alert come in from the Essex Chronicle. There had been
an explosion at an electricity substation in town, near the Rivermead campus of
Anglia Ruskin University. At this point, we started surfing for information. It
was an interesting, if disturbing, exercise is watching coverage develop.

The Chronicle was probably first,
but commenters there (more on them in a minute) said they had heard from
reliable sources that there had been a fatality. The paper wasn’t reporting
this initially. However, the East
Anglian Daily Times confirmed this first. Later, the BBC reported on
the fire, complete with video footage. Essex Fire And Rescue’s report is here (incident
7967). The commenters on the Chronicle’s story showed the power of contemporary
citizen journalism, in reporting the tragic death. Other stuff was speculative:
one person claimed the explosion was caused by someone trying to commit suicide
by dangling from two high voltage wires. This allegedly was the fatality, and the
cause of the fire and power outage.

The explosion had been at around 12:20 pm, so our power cut
was an hour later, which seems a little strange to someone like me who doesn’t
understand these things. Other parts of north Chelmsford were out for longer. Our
church cleaner phoned to say that she hadn’t been able to complete her duties,
because the power cut had put the vacuum cleaner out of action. Others were
certainly without power until about 4:30 pm, and some weren’t restored until
this morning.

But I want to return to the commenters on the Essex
Chronicle story. When I looked a few minutes ago, the story had 160 comments. Yesterday,
I had been shocked by many of them. Some people clearly wanted to feel they
were in the middle of great earth-shaking drama, hence the idiot who said it
was like 9/11 in Chelmsford. That seems appallingly insensitive to those who
lost three thousand loved ones.

But others were cruel, if not obscene. Today, there is an extended
comment from the paper’s assistant editor, Matt Adams. Here his his post:

IT’S a peculiarly British trait to find humour in the face of
doom and gloom, but it takes a certain kind of person to laugh at the loss of a
human life. This week the town of Chelmsford was plunged into chaos when a man
was killed in an explosion at a sub-station near Anglia Ruskin University. At
the time of going to press we have no idea as to his identity or motivation,
and it will be up to an inquest to determine whether he did in fact take his
own life. As part of our remit to bring you the news as it happens, the
Chronicle published breaking details about this story on our website –
http://www.thisistotalessex.co.uk – something we do on a daily basis for other items
without cause for concern. But for inexplicable reasons, the tragedy of a man
losing his life in a terrible, horrific fashion, proved stimulus for a barrage
of sick humour and mindless insults posted as comments in relation to this
story. As literally hundreds of these comments began filtering through, our
website team deleted the most extreme and offensive, but ultimately chose to
allow freedom of speech to the twisted individuals who decided to make mockery
of this tragedy. Why? Because we believe in the fundamental decency of the
majority of our readers to shame these few offenders into ceasing their abuse.
Your outrage at their lack of common decency was just as inspirational as their
comments were offensive. Had we simply deleted everything posted on the site we
would have been accused of censorship, rather than allowing freedom of debate
between two such dichotomous viewpoints. Maybe as a consequence those who
posted the more unpleasant comments will be suitably humbled to never do so
again. We can but hope.

I endorse much of what he says. However, I find some of it
puzzling, if not worrying. I don’t see why the paper is worried about the
accusation of censorship. It isn’t about censorship, it’s about editorial
judgment. The foul comments would never have made their way to the letters page
of the print edition. Even some of those that were let through are still
profoundly offensive. Just what is it that makes us worry about censorship when
we are on the Internet, but happily accepts editorial judgments in print? Internet
users are in any case used to the idea of comment moderation, and a set of
terms and conditions to accept before entering a discussion on a website. So the
censorship argument doesn’t wash with me.

I can leave our copy of the Essex Chronicle around the house
without worry, even if I might need to explain some stories to our children. Yet
there is no way I would have read out to them some of yesterday’s comments. Not
only were the sentiments foul and bereft of what Matt Adams calls ‘common
decency’, some even worked offensiveness into their user names and alleged home
towns. However, there were clearly no filters in place to prevent the
appearance of profanities on the site. On this basis, I’ll have to include the
Chronicle’s site in the appropriate restricted list for parental control.

Apart from that, it seems a futile hope to me to think that
outraged comments will shame these people into better behaviour. They can
perpetrate their filth from behind a computer screen and it all feels so
remote, which is why they wouldn’t make these statements face to face. But for
the same reason, outrage will not humble them. Matt Adams says, ‘We can but
hope.’ I am sure he is genuine. But the tone of his final sentence gives away the
sense that this is a weak hope (if not a forlorn one, in my opinion). I think
it’s time to question the libertarian ethos behind much Internet philosophy. You
don’t have to become the Chinese government to believe in decent comment
moderation.

UPDATE, 4:40 PM: Our weekly copy of the Essex Chronicle has arrived this afternoon. It transpires that Matt Adams’ post reproduced above now constitutes one of this week’s two leader articles.

5

Tomorrow’s Sermon: Resurrection Now

Matthew 28:1-10[1]

Introduction
Two weeks ago, Reuters reported this story:

The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that “all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.”

It added: “Offenders will be severely punished.”[2]

Sounds like Mayor Lalanne could do with the resurrection of the dead now! Confounded by a court decision forbidding his village from buying some private land to extend the cemetery and doubtless complicated by traditional Catholic preference for burial over cremation, the seventy-year-old mayor said, “It may be a laughing matter for some, but not for me.”

Today, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection that promises the emptying of cemeteries and with it God’s kingdom with new heavens and a new earth. It gives us vision and hope for the future.

But it also affects the way we live now. What did it mean for Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, those first witnesses of the empty tomb, according to Matthew?

1. Promise
One of the things we’ve tried hard to teach our children is that it’s important to keep your word. If you make a promise, you keep it. I can’t say we’ve always been successful, and sometimes it has been hard to live up to our ideal, but we have wanted to teach them that it is good to be known as someone whose word can be trusted.

The Resurrection is the event where God supremely shows his people that he can be trusted. He gives his word. He keeps his promises. Notice how the angel’s first word to the women is one that says, look, God has kept his promise in raising Jesus from the dead:

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” (Verses 5-6)

Wow! What kind of promise keeping is that? It’s the fulfilment of a promise that has gone down to the wire – and beyond. It’s a promise made in the teeth of death. What faith it took from Jesus to give himself up to death, knowing that his Father had promised to raise him up on the third day. And it is that promise Jesus himself had relayed to his friends several times as they headed for Jerusalem.

How many of us have struggled to believe in the faithfulness of God, because everything has gone pear-shaped? The Resurrection is testimony to the fact that nothing can stop God keeping his promises, not even death. God is faithful. He makes and fulfils his promises.

Our friends in the circuit at Christ Church, Braintree are facing that very challenge, to believe in such a promise-keeping God right now. As some of you know, next to their building is a doctor’s surgery. The surgery is moving to a different part of town, and the premises have been up for sale. The location means it would be an ideal opportunity for them to expand their ministry, especially as they want to implement a lot of social care and community initiatives. After a lot of heart-searching and prayer by the leadership team and the congregation, they put in a sealed bid for the property. They were certain God had led them to do so. They based their bid on a survey they had commissioned. It was a huge amount for the size of their congregation.

However, they lost the sealed bid auction. So are they giving up? No. they believe God spoke to them, so they are holding on. They believe in a God who keeps his promises. The God of the Resurrection can certainly raise up a property deal, if it is his will. The church has not thrown in the towel. Who knows what God will do?

Are there aspects of our lives where we are waiting and longing – perhaps in desperation – for God to intervene? Yet is that situation still tending towards a cold tomb? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God of Resurrection. That means he is the God who keeps his promises. The Easter message says that it is always worth holding onto our trust in him.

The evangelist D L Moody had a list of people for whom he prayed that they would find faith in Christ. Many of them did. When he died, two of them still had not. But after he died, they did. Death can never have the final say in the face of the promise-keeping God. That’s what it means to believe in the Resurrection.

2. Proclamation
Something flows from the angel’s assurance that God in Christ has kept his wonderful promise:

“Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.
(Verses 7-8)

‘Go quickly and tell his disciples.’ Which they did. They have good news – no, amazing news – for downhearted, discouraged disciples. Jesus is back, and he is still interested in those who denied him. He wants to see those who didn’t believe his word, and who failed him out of fear. The Resurrection is Good News to be proclaimed. Whatever our fear, whatever our failure, ultimately the Resurrection of Jesus brings us the joyful truth that Jesus still loves us. How is it each one of us has let him down? Whatever it is, whether it seems serious or trivial, we hear the Easter proclamation that he is going to meet us. Jesus counters the lie of the enemy that our sins mean God no longer cares about us, and we might as well sin boldly and make a complete wreck of our lives, and those of others. The Resurrection is the turning point. Receive and believe the Gospel!

So in that sense, the Easter Proclamation is something to be received. It is healing news for failed disciples. But the proclamation of the Resurrection is not only to be received: it is also to be shared. Perhaps our fear sent us undercover, and that is the reason for our shame. When we receive the Good News of Christ risen from the dead that heals our failure, we are also liberated from behind closed doors to share that Gospel with others, to be public about our faith, just as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were on that first Easter morning.

This last week, the newspapers have reported[3] the story of one famous person who kept his faith secret for years. However, now he has gone public about his belief in Jesus. He visited the tomb of his spiritual hero, Francis of Assisi, and prayed there silently on his knees for half an hour. He said that Francis had brought him to the church, and had played a fundamental part in his life.

Whom do I mean? Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union.

Ben Witherington, the American Methodist New Testament scholar, made an Easter connection with the story of Gorbachev’s faith. He quoted a communist who had once said, “I’ll believe Jesus rose from the dead when the atheist leader of the Soviet Union becomes a Christian.”

Gorbachev has gone public. It’s an Easter thing to do. That’s why I can never use part of the intercessions in our Easter communion service. The liturgy prays for ‘those who have confessed the faith, and those whose faith is known to you alone’[4].

What might happen with us if we truly heard the Easter Gospel again, and it quickened our hearts? Would it not be the first step in the reinvigoration of our witness? Let us pray that we may receive the healing knowledge of the risen Christ who forgives our failures, and inspires our testimony.

3. Presence
Off go the women. According to Mark’s Gospel, they went away from the empty tomb afraid. But Matthew has a punch line:

Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Verses 9-10)

The Resurrection means that the disciples will meet the risen Lord. He wants to meet with his friends. The Resurrection means that our faith is not a theory or a philosophy. It is about a real experience of the living God. We can come up with all sorts of reasons to believe the Christian message, and it is good to engage the brain in the service of Christ. However, if it remains no more than an intellectual conviction, then it is not the Gospel. The Gospel is that the risen Lord is present to meet with his followers. A recent survey shows that thirty percent of Britons believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. But whether that same thirty percent claim a personal experience of Christ is, I suspect, rather doubtful.

No, the Easter Good News is not simply that Jesus rose from the dead bodily. It is that when he rose, he sought out his followers. The Easter faith is that Jesus is alive, he is present, and he meets us. Don’t accept any account of Christianity that is less than a meeting with the risen Christ.

So where might we experience his presence? In church? Well, I hope so! I believe we hear his voice in the preached word as it seeks to interpret Scripture. I believe we meet him at the Lord’s Table when we come in obedient faith. I believe we meet him in the midst of our fellowship, and especially as we pray together.

But is that the only place we meet him? Is the gathering of God’s people the exclusive or even the privileged place of finding the presence of our risen Lord? No. All the angel asked the women to tell the male disciples was that they would see Jesus in Galilee. Yes, Galilee. Not only Jerusalem, the religious and political capital, but backwater Galilee, the ordinary place from which they came. The location of their upbringing and their working lives as fishermen. ‘There they will see me.’

Why should we expect it to be any different for us? At school: ‘there they will see me.’ At the office: ‘there they will see me.’ In a conversation with a neighbour: ‘there they will see me.’ At the petrol station, the newsagent’s and even in the supermarket: ‘there they will see me.’ Jesus is alive, and he cannot be restricted to church gatherings and buildings. Where is Jesus going ahead of us? Where might he surprise us with his presence? Can we open up our expectations and our vision so that we encounter him in more places where he wants to meet us? Places where he is on mission, and he is inviting us to join him, not just our religious events. He isn’t sending us to do his mission: he’s already on the job, and is calling us to participate. The risen Christ’s presence in the world is the primary strategy of God’s mission. As one minister puts it:

Heaven forbid we should ever do community in such a way that our main avenue for people coming to Christ is hearing the Gospel preached from the mouth of one person, rather than hearing the Gospel preached from the mouths (and lives) of the whole community. If, in your community, more people are becoming Christians on Sunday than during the rest of the week, I think you may have a problem.

Conclusion
So let us hear the Good News again this Easter Day. Be encouraged in your dark times that ours is the promise-keeping God who keeps his word, even in the teeth of death. The grave cannot thwart his promises. If we are failures, receive the Good News and go public with it to others. Finally, expect to meet the risen Christ everywhere, as much in the world on mission as in the gathering of God’s people at corporate worship.

I might not like the intercessions in our Easter communion service, but I like the way it ends. I say, ‘Alleluia! Go in joy and peace to love and serve the Lord’, and you reply, ‘In the name of Christ. Alleluia!’[5] However, I want to go further: don’t just go in joy and peace to love and serve the Lord. Go in joy and peace to meet the risen Lord.

[1] Regular readers will know I normally link to the NRSV at Oremus. However, when I needed to do so this week, the site was down. This link is to the TNIV at Bible Gateway.

[4] Methodist Worship Book, p 166.

[5] Ibid., p 173.

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Tomorrow’s Sermon: Resurrection Now

Matthew 28:1-10[1]

Introduction
Two weeks ago, Reuters reported this story:

The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that “all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.”

It added: “Offenders will be severely punished.”[2]

Sounds like Mayor Lalanne could do with the resurrection of the dead now! Confounded by a court decision forbidding his village from buying some private land to extend the cemetery and doubtless complicated by traditional Catholic preference for burial over cremation, the seventy-year-old mayor said, “It may be a laughing matter for some, but not for me.”

Today, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection that promises the emptying of cemeteries and with it God’s kingdom with new heavens and a new earth. It gives us vision and hope for the future.

But it also affects the way we live now. What did it mean for Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, those first witnesses of the empty tomb, according to Matthew?

1. Promise
One of the things we’ve tried hard to teach our children is that it’s important to keep your word. If you make a promise, you keep it. I can’t say we’ve always been successful, and sometimes it has been hard to live up to our ideal, but we have wanted to teach them that it is good to be known as someone whose word can be trusted.

The Resurrection is the event where God supremely shows his people that he can be trusted. He gives his word. He keeps his promises. Notice how the angel’s first word to the women is one that says, look, God has kept his promise in raising Jesus from the dead:

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” (Verses 5-6)

Wow! What kind of promise keeping is that? It’s the fulfilment of a promise that has gone down to the wire – and beyond. It’s a promise made in the teeth of death. What faith it took from Jesus to give himself up to death, knowing that his Father had promised to raise him up on the third day. And it is that promise Jesus himself had relayed to his friends several times as they headed for Jerusalem.

How many of us have struggled to believe in the faithfulness of God, because everything has gone pear-shaped? The Resurrection is testimony to the fact that nothing can stop God keeping his promises, not even death. God is faithful. He makes and fulfils his promises.

Our friends in the circuit at Christ Church, Braintree are facing that very challenge, to believe in such a promise-keeping God right now. As some of you know, next to their building is a doctor’s surgery. The surgery is moving to a different part of town, and the premises have been up for sale. The location means it would be an ideal opportunity for them to expand their ministry, especially as they want to implement a lot of social care and community initiatives. After a lot of heart-searching and prayer by the leadership team and the congregation, they put in a sealed bid for the property. They were certain God had led them to do so. They based their bid on a survey they had commissioned. It was a huge amount for the size of their congregation.

However, they lost the sealed bid auction. So are they giving up? No. they believe God spoke to them, so they are holding on. They believe in a God who keeps his promises. The God of the Resurrection can certainly raise up a property deal, if it is his will. The church has not thrown in the towel. Who knows what God will do?

Are there aspects of our lives where we are waiting and longing – perhaps in desperation – for God to intervene? Yet is that situation still tending towards a cold tomb? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God of Resurrection. That means he is the God who keeps his promises. The Easter message says that it is always worth holding onto our trust in him.

The evangelist D L Moody had a list of people for whom he prayed that they would find faith in Christ. Many of them did. When he died, two of them still had not. But after he died, they did. Death can never have the final say in the face of the promise-keeping God. That’s what it means to believe in the Resurrection.

2. Proclamation
Something flows from the angel’s assurance that God in Christ has kept his wonderful promise:

“Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.
(Verses 7-8)

‘Go quickly and tell his disciples.’ Which they did. They have good news – no, amazing news – for downhearted, discouraged disciples. Jesus is back, and he is still interested in those who denied him. He wants to see those who didn’t believe his word, and who failed him out of fear. The Resurrection is Good News to be proclaimed. Whatever our fear, whatever our failure, ultimately the Resurrection of Jesus brings us the joyful truth that Jesus still loves us. How is it each one of us has let him down? Whatever it is, whether it seems serious or trivial, we hear the Easter proclamation that he is going to meet us. Jesus counters the lie of the enemy that our sins mean God no longer cares about us, and we might as well sin boldly and make a complete wreck of our lives, and those of others. The Resurrection is the turning point. Receive and believe the Gospel!

So in that sense, the Easter Proclamation is something to be received. It is healing news for failed disciples. But the proclamation of the Resurrection is not only to be received: it is also to be shared. Perhaps our fear sent us undercover, and that is the reason for our shame. When we receive the Good News of Christ risen from the dead that heals our failure, we are also liberated from behind closed doors to share that Gospel with others, to be public about our faith, just as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were on that first Easter morning.

This last week, the newspapers have reported[3] the story of one famous person who kept his faith secret for years. However, now he has gone public about his belief in Jesus. He visited the tomb of his spiritual hero, Francis of Assisi, and prayed there silently on his knees for half an hour. He said that Francis had brought him to the church, and had played a fundamental part in his life.

Whom do I mean? Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union.

Ben Witherington, the American Methodist New Testament scholar, made an Easter connection with the story of Gorbachev’s faith. He quoted a communist who had once said, “I’ll believe Jesus rose from the dead when the atheist leader of the Soviet Union becomes a Christian.”

Gorbachev has gone public. It’s an Easter thing to do. That’s why I can never use part of the intercessions in our Easter communion service. The liturgy prays for ‘those who have confessed the faith, and those whose faith is known to you alone’[4].

What might happen with us if we truly heard the Easter Gospel again, and it quickened our hearts? Would it not be the first step in the reinvigoration of our witness? Let us pray that we may receive the healing knowledge of the risen Christ who forgives our failures, and inspires our testimony.

3. Presence
Off go the women. According to Mark’s Gospel, they went away from the empty tomb afraid. But Matthew has a punch line:

Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Verses 9-10)

The Resurrection means that the disciples will meet the risen Lord. He wants to meet with his friends. The Resurrection means that our faith is not a theory or a philosophy. It is about a real experience of the living God. We can come up with all sorts of reasons to believe the Christian message, and it is good to engage the brain in the service of Christ. However, if it remains no more than an intellectual conviction, then it is not the Gospel. The Gospel is that the risen Lord is present to meet with his followers. A recent survey shows that thirty percent of Britons believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. But whether that same thirty percent claim a personal experience of Christ is, I suspect, rather doubtful.

No, the Easter Good News is not simply that Jesus rose from the dead bodily. It is that when he rose, he sought out his followers. The Easter faith is that Jesus is alive, he is present, and he meets us. Don’t accept any account of Christianity that is less than a meeting with the risen Christ.

So where might we experience his presence? In church? Well, I hope so! I believe we hear his voice in the preached word as it seeks to interpret Scripture. I believe we meet him at the Lord’s Table when we come in obedient faith. I believe we meet him in the midst of our fellowship, and especially as we pray together.

But is that the only place we meet him? Is the gathering of God’s people the exclusive or even the privileged place of finding the presence of our risen Lord? No. All the angel asked the women to tell the male disciples was that they would see Jesus in Galilee. Yes, Galilee. Not only Jerusalem, the religious and political capital, but backwater Galilee, the ordinary place from which they came. The location of their upbringing and their working lives as fishermen. ‘There they will see me.’

Why should we expect it to be any different for us? At school: ‘there they will see me.’ At the office: ‘there they will see me.’ In a conversation with a neighbour: ‘there they will see me.’ At the petrol station, the newsagent’s and even in the supermarket: ‘there they will see me.’ Jesus is alive, and he cannot be restricted to church gatherings and buildings. Where is Jesus going ahead of us? Where might he surprise us with his presence? Can we open up our expectations and our vision so that we encounter him in more places where he wants to meet us? Places where he is on mission, and he is inviting us to join him, not just our religious events. He isn’t sending us to do his mission: he’s already on the job, and is calling us to participate. The risen Christ’s presence in the world is the primary strategy of God’s mission. As one minister puts it:

Heaven forbid we should ever do community in such a way that our main avenue for people coming to Christ is hearing the Gospel preached from the mouth of one person, rather than hearing the Gospel preached from the mouths (and lives) of the whole community. If, in your community, more people are becoming Christians on Sunday than during the rest of the week, I think you may have a problem.

Conclusion
So let us hear the Good News again this Easter Day. Be encouraged in your dark times that ours is the promise-keeping God who keeps his word, even in the teeth of death. The grave cannot thwart his promises. If we are failures, receive the Good News and go public with it to others. Finally, expect to meet the risen Christ everywhere, as much in the world on mission as in the gathering of God’s people at corporate worship.

I might not like the intercessions in our Easter communion service, but I like the way it ends. I say, ‘Alleluia! Go in joy and peace to love and serve the Lord’, and you reply, ‘In the name of Christ. Alleluia!’[5] However, I want to go further: don’t just go in joy and peace to love and serve the Lord. Go in joy and peace to meet the risen Lord.

[1] Regular readers will know I normally link to the NRSV at Oremus. However, when I needed to do so this week, the site was down. This link is to the TNIV at Bible Gateway.

[4] Methodist Worship Book, p 166.

[5] Ibid., p 173.

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Tomorrow’s Sermon: Resurrection Now

Matthew 28:1-10[1]

Introduction
Two weeks ago, Reuters reported this story:

The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that “all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.”

It added: “Offenders will be severely punished.”[2]

Sounds like Mayor Lalanne could do with the resurrection of the dead now! Confounded by a court decision forbidding his village from buying some private land to extend the cemetery and doubtless complicated by traditional Catholic preference for burial over cremation, the seventy-year-old mayor said, “It may be a laughing matter for some, but not for me.”

Today, we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection that promises the emptying of cemeteries and with it God’s kingdom with new heavens and a new earth. It gives us vision and hope for the future.

But it also affects the way we live now. What did it mean for Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, those first witnesses of the empty tomb, according to Matthew?

1. Promise
One of the things we’ve tried hard to teach our children is that it’s important to keep your word. If you make a promise, you keep it. I can’t say we’ve always been successful, and sometimes it has been hard to live up to our ideal, but we have wanted to teach them that it is good to be known as someone whose word can be trusted.

The Resurrection is the event where God supremely shows his people that he can be trusted. He gives his word. He keeps his promises. Notice how the angel’s first word to the women is one that says, look, God has kept his promise in raising Jesus from the dead:

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” (Verses 5-6)

Wow! What kind of promise keeping is that? It’s the fulfilment of a promise that has gone down to the wire – and beyond. It’s a promise made in the teeth of death. What faith it took from Jesus to give himself up to death, knowing that his Father had promised to raise him up on the third day. And it is that promise Jesus himself had relayed to his friends several times as they headed for Jerusalem.

How many of us have struggled to believe in the faithfulness of God, because everything has gone pear-shaped? The Resurrection is testimony to the fact that nothing can stop God keeping his promises, not even death. God is faithful. He makes and fulfils his promises.

Our friends in the circuit at Christ Church, Braintree are facing that very challenge, to believe in such a promise-keeping God right now. As some of you know, next to their building is a doctor’s surgery. The surgery is moving to a different part of town, and the premises have been up for sale. The location means it would be an ideal opportunity for them to expand their ministry, especially as they want to implement a lot of social care and community initiatives. After a lot of heart-searching and prayer by the leadership team and the congregation, they put in a sealed bid for the property. They were certain God had led them to do so. They based their bid on a survey they had commissioned. It was a huge amount for the size of their congregation.

However, they lost the sealed bid auction. So are they giving up? No. they believe God spoke to them, so they are holding on. They believe in a God who keeps his promises. The God of the Resurrection can certainly raise up a property deal, if it is his will. The church has not thrown in the towel. Who knows what God will do?

Are there aspects of our lives where we are waiting and longing – perhaps in desperation – for God to intervene? Yet is that situation still tending towards a cold tomb? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the God of Resurrection. That means he is the God who keeps his promises. The Easter message says that it is always worth holding onto our trust in him.

The evangelist D L Moody had a list of people for whom he prayed that they would find faith in Christ. Many of them did. When he died, two of them still had not. But after he died, they did. Death can never have the final say in the face of the promise-keeping God. That’s what it means to believe in the Resurrection.

2. Proclamation
Something flows from the angel’s assurance that God in Christ has kept his wonderful promise:

“Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples.
(Verses 7-8)

‘Go quickly and tell his disciples.’ Which they did. They have good news – no, amazing news – for downhearted, discouraged disciples. Jesus is back, and he is still interested in those who denied him. He wants to see those who didn’t believe his word, and who failed him out of fear. The Resurrection is Good News to be proclaimed. Whatever our fear, whatever our failure, ultimately the Resurrection of Jesus brings us the joyful truth that Jesus still loves us. How is it each one of us has let him down? Whatever it is, whether it seems serious or trivial, we hear the Easter proclamation that he is going to meet us. Jesus counters the lie of the enemy that our sins mean God no longer cares about us, and we might as well sin boldly and make a complete wreck of our lives, and those of others. The Resurrection is the turning point. Receive and believe the Gospel!

So in that sense, the Easter Proclamation is something to be received. It is healing news for failed disciples. But the proclamation of the Resurrection is not only to be received: it is also to be shared. Perhaps our fear sent us undercover, and that is the reason for our shame. When we receive the Good News of Christ risen from the dead that heals our failure, we are also liberated from behind closed doors to share that Gospel with others, to be public about our faith, just as Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were on that first Easter morning.

This last week, the newspapers have reported[3] the story of one famous person who kept his faith secret for years. However, now he has gone public about his belief in Jesus. He visited the tomb of his spiritual hero, Francis of Assisi, and prayed there silently on his knees for half an hour. He said that Francis had brought him to the church, and had played a fundamental part in his life.

Whom do I mean? Mikhail Gorbachev, former leader of the Soviet Union.

Ben Witherington, the American Methodist New Testament scholar, made an Easter connection with the story of Gorbachev’s faith. He quoted a communist who had once said, “I’ll believe Jesus rose from the dead when the atheist leader of the Soviet Union becomes a Christian.”

Gorbachev has gone public. It’s an Easter thing to do. That’s why I can never use part of the intercessions in our Easter communion service. The liturgy prays for ‘those who have confessed the faith, and those whose faith is known to you alone’[4].

What might happen with us if we truly heard the Easter Gospel again, and it quickened our hearts? Would it not be the first step in the reinvigoration of our witness? Let us pray that we may receive the healing knowledge of the risen Christ who forgives our failures, and inspires our testimony.

3. Presence
Off go the women. According to Mark’s Gospel, they went away from the empty tomb afraid. But Matthew has a punch line:

Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Verses 9-10)

The Resurrection means that the disciples will meet the risen Lord. He wants to meet with his friends. The Resurrection means that our faith is not a theory or a philosophy. It is about a real experience of the living God. We can come up with all sorts of reasons to believe the Christian message, and it is good to engage the brain in the service of Christ. However, if it remains no more than an intellectual conviction, then it is not the Gospel. The Gospel is that the risen Lord is present to meet with his followers. A recent survey shows that thirty percent of Britons believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. But whether that same thirty percent claim a personal experience of Christ is, I suspect, rather doubtful.

No, the Easter Good News is not simply that Jesus rose from the dead bodily. It is that when he rose, he sought out his followers. The Easter faith is that Jesus is alive, he is present, and he meets us. Don’t accept any account of Christianity that is less than a meeting with the risen Christ.

So where might we experience his presence? In church? Well, I hope so! I believe we hear his voice in the preached word as it seeks to interpret Scripture. I believe we meet him at the Lord’s Table when we come in obedient faith. I believe we meet him in the midst of our fellowship, and especially as we pray together.

But is that the only place we meet him? Is the gathering of God’s people the exclusive or even the privileged place of finding the presence of our risen Lord? No. All the angel asked the women to tell the male disciples was that they would see Jesus in Galilee. Yes, Galilee. Not only Jerusalem, the religious and political capital, but backwater Galilee, the ordinary place from which they came. The location of their upbringing and their working lives as fishermen. ‘There they will see me.’

Why should we expect it to be any different for us? At school: ‘there they will see me.’ At the office: ‘there they will see me.’ In a conversation with a neighbour: ‘there they will see me.’ At the petrol station, the newsagent’s and even in the supermarket: ‘there they will see me.’ Jesus is alive, and he cannot be restricted to church gatherings and buildings. Where is Jesus going ahead of us? Where might he surprise us with his presence? Can we open up our expectations and our vision so that we encounter him in more places where he wants to meet us? Places where he is on mission, and he is inviting us to join him, not just our religious events. He isn’t sending us to do his mission: he’s already on the job, and is calling us to participate. The risen Christ’s presence in the world is the primary strategy of God’s mission. As one minister puts it:

Heaven forbid we should ever do community in such a way that our main avenue for people coming to Christ is hearing the Gospel preached from the mouth of one person, rather than hearing the Gospel preached from the mouths (and lives) of the whole community. If, in your community, more people are becoming Christians on Sunday than during the rest of the week, I think you may have a problem.

Conclusion
So let us hear the Good News again this Easter Day. Be encouraged in your dark times that ours is the promise-keeping God who keeps his word, even in the teeth of death. The grave cannot thwart his promises. If we are failures, receive the Good News and go public with it to others. Finally, expect to meet the risen Christ everywhere, as much in the world on mission as in the gathering of God’s people at corporate worship.

I might not like the intercessions in our Easter communion service, but I like the way it ends. I say, ‘Alleluia! Go in joy and peace to love and serve the Lord’, and you reply, ‘In the name of Christ. Alleluia!’[5] However, I want to go further: don’t just go in joy and peace to love and serve the Lord. Go in joy and peace to meet the risen Lord.

[1] Regular readers will know I normally link to the NRSV at Oremus. However, when I needed to do so this week, the site was down. This link is to the TNIV at Bible Gateway.

[4] Methodist Worship Book, p 166.

[5] Ibid., p 173.

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Taking The Pulse

is the name of a Bible Society survey of attitudes to the Bible by leaders and non-leaders in the British church. The Executive Summary is available here. It covers the following topics:

1. The Bible in terms of society and churches;
2. The Bible and spiritual growth;
3. Bible resources;
4. Bible literacy and application.

Overall, church leaders are more positive about the Bible than non-leaders. The most sceptical leaders, though (generally Liberal, Catholic, Methodist and URC), are also those most dissatisfied with congregational understanding.

Blood and gore makes the Old Testament the biggest challenge to teaching the Bible, and more resources are needed here. The OT seems to be a greater concern for affecting faith than Richard Dawkins is.

There is a welcoming of multimedia approaches, but a scepticism about the reliability of Internet sources.

For more, click the link above.

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Rowan Williams And The Sharia Kerfuffle

While so many others in the Christian blogosphere have been
posting on this subject over the last two weeks, I’ve stayed silent. Mainly,
that’s been pressure of work. Probably this is too little, too late now: isn’t
one of the blogosphere’s curses something it shares with our culture, namely
the pressure for everything to be instant? If someone doesn’t offer an instant
opinion, there’s something wrong with him or her. If they do, and it is later
shown to be faulty judgment, that is held against them.

And that in itself is part of the difficulty here. We have a
culture that has marginalised the place for considered reflection. In an age of
near-instantaneous communication possibilities, we also expect
near-instantaneous wisdom. It’s a fallacy. Wisdom is gained over what Eugene Peterson called ‘a
long obedience in the same direction’, not something you expect of red-top
tabloids. The Sun’s terrible headline ‘Bash the bishop’, a crude reference to
masturbation, tells you more about their journalists and readership than
anything else.

A particular issue has been that of handling a serious and
nuanced academic debate, when given by a public figure. Some have argued that Rowan Williams should have
known that even though he was speaking to an academic audience, there was a
wider constituency for his speech, precisely because of who he is. They have
suggested he should not speak in such an intellectual way. (Certainly, the
tabloids can’t handle it.) The cry is for him to ‘dumb down’ or return to
Oxford. Others suggest his PR staff are at fault.

After a few days’ on-and-off reflection on this, my mind
went back to Neil Postman’s
seminal book on television, ‘Amusing
Ourselves To Death’. In it, he argues that television is not a good conduit
for serious debate. By its very nature, it reduces all exploration to simple
clashes between two diametrically opposed parties. There is no space on the
spectrum for views that fall in between. In politics, for example, everything is
reduced to ‘left’ versus ‘right’. This has caused problems for many years for
the Liberal Democrats, and in more recent years for New Labour (because they
are not ‘socialist’ but a mixture). It now affects David Cameron’s Tories.

My suggestion is this: Postman’s analysis is correct, and
the television mindset he describes has affected wider public discourse in
other media, now including the press. Newspapers that used to be able to
discuss things more subtly now live in the light of the sound-bite 24-hour news
channels and the near-instantaneous Internet. To compete, they drop the
subtlety and over-simplify. An academic paper by Rowan Williams never stood a
chance.

However, does that mean we should give up and dumb down? Not
in my opinion. James Emery White has
just written a paper that does not refer to the Williams/Sharia controversy,
but is pertinent. It is called ‘Big Brains, Small Impact’.
White laments the absence of the ‘public intellectual’. In past generations, he
argues, there were many more such people who maintained high academic
standards, but who still communicated with the public without sacrificing
intellectual integrity. Christianity had C S
Lewis; American society in general had Gore Vidal. Yet these
figures are rare today, he argues. What has changed? Today’s intellectuals more
often become professional academics, at home on the campus and writing for
journals. This is just as apparent in the Church, he says. You get either
mindless populist hogwash, or obscure academics writing for a niche audience. The
latter has been important, especially in conservative Christian circles, where
it has been essential to react against a prevalent anti-intellectualism. However,
it is no use if the academy is impressed with something so original it
qualifies as a PhD thesis, but is detached from reality.

It’s hardly uncommon for an Archbishop of Canterbury to hold
a doctorate. The position calls for someone who will – amongst other things –
be one of White’s public intellectuals. Rowan Williams, like C S Lewis, has
been an Oxford don. It is not an impossible call. The question is whether
Williams can make the transition.

Even if he does, the Church should be prepared for different
criticisms. Mockery will always come. Williams’ predecessor, George Carey, was no intellectual slouch,
with a PhD from King’s College, London, on the Shepherd of Hermas. (I should
declare that I studied under George for a year or so.) He had more of the
common touch. The media seized on that. He was the working-class boy from
Dagenham, with a charismatic spirituality. The TV satire show Spitting Image
caricatured him as spending his time singing ‘Kumbaya’ with the Scouts. George might
not have been a Lewis, but he had an ability to speak about faith to ordinary
people. But Christians should know ever since Jesus warned us that people would
paint a target on our chests and fire.

Williams didn’t help himself on one level. He knew there was
more to Sharia Law than cutting off the hands of thieves or stoning adulterers.
His immediate audience did. He didn’t take account of the wider audience, both
those inflamed by bigotry and those more nervous than ever of Muslims ever
since the attempts to bomb Glasgow Airport, apparently led by ‘respectable’
doctors. I have heard more than one ‘ordinary’ person say that before that
incident, they knew there were decent, quiet, law-abiding Muslims. However, from
then on, they didn’t know whom they could trust. Bigoted newspapers like The
Sun knew how they could easily tap into that. They knew popular sentiment. Rather
than address it, they exploited it.

Maybe some of the Church hasn’t helped itself in the
controversy, either. Williams had a good point for us in his lecture. We have
been used to asking for exemptions to allow for our conscience in society. Years
ago, medical staff got exemptions from involvement in abortions if it offended
their beliefs. More recently, however, members of the current Government have
seen the sexuality issue as a chance to hurt the church, especially the
Catholics: witness the agony over adoption agencies. There is a Christendom
mentality still operating in our midst that expects favours for the Church, but
for nobody else. If we want our exemptions (and on these issues, I for one do),
then we need to extend a generous spirit to other parties in a diverse society
like ours. Social cohesion is the buzz phrase: there are politicians who prefer
to treat it as social coercion. It is even more surprising (except when you
allow for this Christendom mentality) to hear Christians say there is one law
for everybody, when we have wanted a different law. Some of us are living in
the past, and it’s dangerous to do so. As a free church Christian, I am nervous
about Williams’ claim that as a pastor of the Church of England he should speak
up for other religious groups. It may be well intentioned, but it smacks of
Anglican imperialism. Would it not be better for us to help other parties get
their voice heard on their own terms – if they need the help, that is?

In summary: let us pray for more ‘public intellectuals’ from
the Church. Maybe Tom Wright and John Sentamu could step
into the rôle. However, let us still be prepared for ridicule. In the meantime,
let us contribute to the social cohesion debate, while recognising that we Christians
are not the only group in our society that will want exemptions on grounds of
conscience.

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