Category: Religion

Tomorrow’s Sermon: Recalibrating Christian Mission

Acts 17:16-34

Introduction
Voting. However cynical we are about politics, our culture is saturated with
it. We are a democracy, and we vote for our leaders. Local elections are
looming in many parts of our country. Opinion polls attempt to predict who will
win a General Election, and politicians pay close attention to them.

Voting is present in the epidemic of reality shows on the
TV. We decide the fate of a wannabe singer on The
X Factor. We judge the aspirations of someone who wants to be famous for
being famous on Big Brother.
We choose between desperate has-beens, trying to resuscitate their careers on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.

Now, if I asked you to take a vote on the Book of Acts, as
to which passage had led to the most discussion, I doubt you would choose today’s
reading. Perhaps you would choose chapter 2, with its account of the first Christian
Pentecost. Maybe you would go for chapter 9, dramatically recounting the
conversion of Saul on the Damascus Road. Both those stories are popular and
controversial. But among the scholars, Paul in Athens wins the vote:

‘In fact, it has attracted more scholarly attention than any
other passage in Acts.’[1]

Apart from the question of how Paul’s speech here relates to
his teaching in his epistles (which I won’t bore you with in a sermon),

‘Luke has presented us here with the fullest example of Paul’s
missionary preaching to a certain kind of Gentile audience (namely, an educated
and rather philosophical pagan one without contacts with the synagogue)’[2].

In that respect, this story commends itself to us, if we are
to have a missionary engagement with our world. It is to some extent a pagan
one, and has little contacts not with the synagogue but with the church. For several
years, I have referred to this passage in that respect. Indeed, I chose to preach
on it only a month after starting here, when I did a series of sermons about
our missionary relationship with a changing world. Today, the Lectionary brings
me back to these verses[3],
and the chance to reflect again on how we exercise our missionary calling
today. What does missionary commitment require of each one of us?

1. Passion
Paul is waiting for some friends. Rather than idle his time away, the first
thing Luke tells us is that

‘While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply
distressed to see that the city was full of idols.’ (Verse 16)

‘Deeply distressed.’ The Greek is the word from which we get
our word ‘paroxysm’. It’s a word for strong negative emotions. The city was
full – no, weighed down – with idols. That it would be upsetting for someone
Jewish like Paul is obvious on one level: the Ten Commandments prohibit graven
images of God, so idols are out. But it was worse in Athens. Jews often alleged
that there was a link between idolatry and immorality. The content of some
Athenian idols would have backed up that claim.[4]
As it’s Sunday morning, I’ll spare you the tawdry details.

We too face a culture that is ignorant of the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are many reasons for this, some of them our
fault as the Church, but the desire (need?) for worship persists, and so we
have idolatry today, some of which is connected to immorality.

We can list today’s idolatries easily: sex, shopping, money,
possessions, and so on. But there are bigger questions for us: does seeing
people worship in this way arouse passion in us as Christ-followers or not? And
if it arouses passion, is it a godly passion?

There are several reactions we can have to contemporary idolatry.
One would be apathy. We see false and unhealthy worship, but can’t be bothered
to make a stand. Either that, or we’re more worried about people’s reactions if
we say something, so fear keeps us quiet.

Another is that we can react passionately, thinking we are
doing so for God, but being quite ugly. Passion turns to judgmentalism.

Or we can be passionate for the wrong reasons. We look at
the numbers flocking to sporting events or the shops on a Sunday, and bewail
our own small numbers. If we’re not careful, our real reason is not a desire to
honour Jesus Christ, but the fear that our little religious club might close. ‘Can
we fill all the vacant jobs here?’ is a poor reason for evangelism.

The passion Paul had was a passion for the glory of Jesus.
If the worship due to his name were being directed elsewhere, even if out of
ignorance rather than deliberate choice, that moved him. He challenges us to
leave behind apathy, anger and selfishness as reactions to idolatry, and
instead react out of a heart full of love for Jesus. I believe Paul could only
have reacted as he did in Athens if he regularly remembered how much God in
Christ had done for him who once had been a sworn enemy of the church.

We don’t have to have had dramatic ‘Damascus Road’
conversions like him, but a sense of how wonderful God is, how much he has done
for us, how gracious and loving he is in contrast to us will do more for
mission than a thousand training programmes. It’s a passion that comes from God’s
grace, and which is nurtured in worship, prayer, fellowship, Bible meditation
and getting on with the life of a disciple. In other words, God has acted in
extravagant love towards us, and we receive and respond. Then we have a passion
for Jesus and a passion for those who do not love him.

2. Engagement
If you have a passion for Jesus and for those who don’t know him, then the
last thing you can do is sit around and moan. Nor can you bury your head in the
sand and say, ‘It’s all hopeless.’ Passion will drive you to engage the love of
Jesus with those yet to know him.

And that passion drives people out into the world to engage
with the idol worshippers and others. It doesn’t say, ‘We’ve got an interesting
event on here, why not come and join us?’ Those happily worshipping idols see
no reason to do so, and nor did the Athenians. Paul went to them to engage them
with the Gospel; he didn’t set up camp and invite them onto his territory. So –
he went to the synagogue (not that he considered his fellow Jews idolaters, but
he believed Jesus was the fulfilment of all their hopes), where he didn’t get
up and give an altar call: he ‘argued’ (debated) with the Jews and the Gentile
God-fearers (verse 17). That is, he was in conversation with them. He didn’t
solely use set-piece speeches.

He did the same in the mainstream Athenian culture, because
he also went to the market place to debate with whoever was there each day. Here,
we need to understand that the market place wasn’t simply where you went to buy
your strawberries and potatoes: it was the centre of civic and cultural life in
Athens. If you wanted to make an impact upon the life of the city, you went to
the agora, the market place and
started networking with people there. Therefore, we have our priorities out of
kilter when we are happy that someone answers a call to preach or offers for
the ministry, but we are less impressed when somebody becomes a bank manager, a
teacher, an artist, a musician or a secretary.

Yesterday, I read the
words of a Canadian businessman
who had been reflecting on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, where he
tells his disciples they are the salt of the earth. Here is just one of his
thoughts:

‘Salt NEVER serves its purpose staying in the shaker.
The purpose of the Christian life is found when “shaken out” to flavour the
world. Too often the highest vision of ministry given to Christians is to be on
the church platform, rather than changing the flavour of the world.’

If disciples are the salt of the earth, then, the church is
the saltshaker. Our purpose is not to create an alternative social life and
entertainment menu for Christians: it is to shake the salt out into the world,
where it will do its work of engagement. Yes, we are here to heal, comfort and
encourage, but never by keeping the grains in the saltshaker.

3. Contact and
Conflict
Paul causes a stir in Athens. Some find him intriguing, others are disparaging.
Still others are confused: he is advocating a god called Jesus, and a goddess
called Anastasia (the Greek for ‘resurrection’, which is a feminine noun). The
Areopagus, the city council that decided which gods were acceptable to be
worshipped, decides almost to put him on trial – or at least put his views
under their microscope.

How does Paul respond? Much of his speech follows the
conventions of ancient rhetoric. He speaks in their style. Unlike when he is in
a synagogue, he doesn’t quote the Scriptures – but his content is scriptural. His
only direct quotes come from Greek cultural sources such as poets – but he uses
them to support his argument and bring the challenge of the Gospel to his
hearers.

And his point is this: the Athenian approach to God is plain
wrong. God the Creator doesn’t need idols, nor is he dependent upon what human
beings do. You’re muddling around in the dark, he tells his listeners. God
excused that in the past, but not any longer: he will judge the world. His
promise that he will do so is that he has raised Jesus from the dead. This isn’t
comfortable stuff. Paul is under suspicion. In response, he criticises Athenian
beliefs, and ends by proclaiming the Resurrection, and Athenians didn’t believe
anyone would be raised from the dead[5].

Paul, then, knows the Gospel, and has taken the trouble to
know the society to which he is proclaiming that Good News. The Gospel is his
foundation, but how he shares it depends on the people with whom he is
engaging.

It’s this knowing the Gospel and knowing our world that is
important for us. Some of us know one far better than the other. There are
those Christians who spend so much time in Bible study, but they wouldn’t have
a clue how to relate to non-Christians. But there are others who wrap
themselves up in the world and are ignorant of the faith. The world easily squeezes
them into its mould[6]. They
are barely distinguishable from their non-Christian friends.

Let me pose this as a challenge, then: do I fall into one of
these extremes? Am I so caught up in Bible study and Christian books that I can’t
connect with people who need the Gospel? If so, will I take the time to listen
and understand our world? We can do this by nurturing conversations with
friends, reading newspaper leader columns and paying attention to popular
culture, such as music and television. While we do this, we look for the
underlying assumptions and subject them to Gospel scrutiny.

Or am I so absorbed by the world that I am losing my
Christian distinctiveness? If that is me, then I have a different challenge. I may
need the discipline of daily Bible reading. Good quality Christian books may
help me. (Ask me if you want recommendations about books or Bible study notes.)
I may well find it helpful to join a fellowship group where we spur one another
on in our discipleship.

Conclusion
Sometimes in a world that seems increasingly ignorant of the Gospel, if not
hostile to it, the task of Christian witness seems daunting, if not hopeless.
But when we read of Paul taking the Good News to pagan Athens, we realise that
nothing is impossible with God. No, he didn’t see masses of converts, but he
did make some headway.

The change requires a degree of recalibration for us as
Christians from what we have been used to. We can’t rely on commonly accepted
beliefs or the idea of a ‘Christian country’: we need a passion for Jesus and
for people not yet in the community of faith. Nor can we expect to do things on
our terms and our territory: we need to move out in engagement. Finally, we
need to bring the Gospel and the world together, not only in our actions but
also in our thinking, so that we can shape our missionary task appropriately.

Are we up for the challenge?

[2] Ibid,
main text.

[3]
Although it only includes Paul’s speech from verses 22 to 31. I think you need
the whole story for the context.

[4]
Witherington, p 512f.

[5]
Witherington, p 532.

[6]
See J B Phillips’ translation of Romans 12:1-2.

0

Tomorrow’s Sermon: Recalibrating Christian Mission

Acts 17:16-34

Introduction
Voting. However cynical we are about politics, our culture is saturated with
it. We are a democracy, and we vote for our leaders. Local elections are
looming in many parts of our country. Opinion polls attempt to predict who will
win a General Election, and politicians pay close attention to them.

Voting is present in the epidemic of reality shows on the
TV. We decide the fate of a wannabe singer on The
X Factor. We judge the aspirations of someone who wants to be famous for
being famous on Big Brother.
We choose between desperate has-beens, trying to resuscitate their careers on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.

Now, if I asked you to take a vote on the Book of Acts, as
to which passage had led to the most discussion, I doubt you would choose today’s
reading. Perhaps you would choose chapter 2, with its account of the first Christian
Pentecost. Maybe you would go for chapter 9, dramatically recounting the
conversion of Saul on the Damascus Road. Both those stories are popular and
controversial. But among the scholars, Paul in Athens wins the vote:

‘In fact, it has attracted more scholarly attention than any
other passage in Acts.’[1]

Apart from the question of how Paul’s speech here relates to
his teaching in his epistles (which I won’t bore you with in a sermon),

‘Luke has presented us here with the fullest example of Paul’s
missionary preaching to a certain kind of Gentile audience (namely, an educated
and rather philosophical pagan one without contacts with the synagogue)’[2].

In that respect, this story commends itself to us, if we are
to have a missionary engagement with our world. It is to some extent a pagan
one, and has little contacts not with the synagogue but with the church. For several
years, I have referred to this passage in that respect. Indeed, I chose to preach
on it only a month after starting here, when I did a series of sermons about
our missionary relationship with a changing world. Today, the Lectionary brings
me back to these verses[3],
and the chance to reflect again on how we exercise our missionary calling
today. What does missionary commitment require of each one of us?

1. Passion
Paul is waiting for some friends. Rather than idle his time away, the first
thing Luke tells us is that

‘While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply
distressed to see that the city was full of idols.’ (Verse 16)

‘Deeply distressed.’ The Greek is the word from which we get
our word ‘paroxysm’. It’s a word for strong negative emotions. The city was
full – no, weighed down – with idols. That it would be upsetting for someone
Jewish like Paul is obvious on one level: the Ten Commandments prohibit graven
images of God, so idols are out. But it was worse in Athens. Jews often alleged
that there was a link between idolatry and immorality. The content of some
Athenian idols would have backed up that claim.[4]
As it’s Sunday morning, I’ll spare you the tawdry details.

We too face a culture that is ignorant of the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are many reasons for this, some of them our
fault as the Church, but the desire (need?) for worship persists, and so we
have idolatry today, some of which is connected to immorality.

We can list today’s idolatries easily: sex, shopping, money,
possessions, and so on. But there are bigger questions for us: does seeing
people worship in this way arouse passion in us as Christ-followers or not? And
if it arouses passion, is it a godly passion?

There are several reactions we can have to contemporary idolatry.
One would be apathy. We see false and unhealthy worship, but can’t be bothered
to make a stand. Either that, or we’re more worried about people’s reactions if
we say something, so fear keeps us quiet.

Another is that we can react passionately, thinking we are
doing so for God, but being quite ugly. Passion turns to judgmentalism.

Or we can be passionate for the wrong reasons. We look at
the numbers flocking to sporting events or the shops on a Sunday, and bewail
our own small numbers. If we’re not careful, our real reason is not a desire to
honour Jesus Christ, but the fear that our little religious club might close. ‘Can
we fill all the vacant jobs here?’ is a poor reason for evangelism.

The passion Paul had was a passion for the glory of Jesus.
If the worship due to his name were being directed elsewhere, even if out of
ignorance rather than deliberate choice, that moved him. He challenges us to
leave behind apathy, anger and selfishness as reactions to idolatry, and
instead react out of a heart full of love for Jesus. I believe Paul could only
have reacted as he did in Athens if he regularly remembered how much God in
Christ had done for him who once had been a sworn enemy of the church.

We don’t have to have had dramatic ‘Damascus Road’
conversions like him, but a sense of how wonderful God is, how much he has done
for us, how gracious and loving he is in contrast to us will do more for
mission than a thousand training programmes. It’s a passion that comes from God’s
grace, and which is nurtured in worship, prayer, fellowship, Bible meditation
and getting on with the life of a disciple. In other words, God has acted in
extravagant love towards us, and we receive and respond. Then we have a passion
for Jesus and a passion for those who do not love him.

2. Engagement
If you have a passion for Jesus and for those who don’t know him, then the
last thing you can do is sit around and moan. Nor can you bury your head in the
sand and say, ‘It’s all hopeless.’ Passion will drive you to engage the love of
Jesus with those yet to know him.

And that passion drives people out into the world to engage
with the idol worshippers and others. It doesn’t say, ‘We’ve got an interesting
event on here, why not come and join us?’ Those happily worshipping idols see
no reason to do so, and nor did the Athenians. Paul went to them to engage them
with the Gospel; he didn’t set up camp and invite them onto his territory. So –
he went to the synagogue (not that he considered his fellow Jews idolaters, but
he believed Jesus was the fulfilment of all their hopes), where he didn’t get
up and give an altar call: he ‘argued’ (debated) with the Jews and the Gentile
God-fearers (verse 17). That is, he was in conversation with them. He didn’t
solely use set-piece speeches.

He did the same in the mainstream Athenian culture, because
he also went to the market place to debate with whoever was there each day. Here,
we need to understand that the market place wasn’t simply where you went to buy
your strawberries and potatoes: it was the centre of civic and cultural life in
Athens. If you wanted to make an impact upon the life of the city, you went to
the agora, the market place and
started networking with people there. Therefore, we have our priorities out of
kilter when we are happy that someone answers a call to preach or offers for
the ministry, but we are less impressed when somebody becomes a bank manager, a
teacher, an artist, a musician or a secretary.

Yesterday, I read the
words of a Canadian businessman
who had been reflecting on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, where he
tells his disciples they are the salt of the earth. Here is just one of his
thoughts:

‘Salt NEVER serves its purpose staying in the shaker.
The purpose of the Christian life is found when “shaken out” to flavour the
world. Too often the highest vision of ministry given to Christians is to be on
the church platform, rather than changing the flavour of the world.’

If disciples are the salt of the earth, then, the church is
the saltshaker. Our purpose is not to create an alternative social life and
entertainment menu for Christians: it is to shake the salt out into the world,
where it will do its work of engagement. Yes, we are here to heal, comfort and
encourage, but never by keeping the grains in the saltshaker.

3. Contact and
Conflict
Paul causes a stir in Athens. Some find him intriguing, others are disparaging.
Still others are confused: he is advocating a god called Jesus, and a goddess
called Anastasia (the Greek for ‘resurrection’, which is a feminine noun). The
Areopagus, the city council that decided which gods were acceptable to be
worshipped, decides almost to put him on trial – or at least put his views
under their microscope.

How does Paul respond? Much of his speech follows the
conventions of ancient rhetoric. He speaks in their style. Unlike when he is in
a synagogue, he doesn’t quote the Scriptures – but his content is scriptural. His
only direct quotes come from Greek cultural sources such as poets – but he uses
them to support his argument and bring the challenge of the Gospel to his
hearers.

And his point is this: the Athenian approach to God is plain
wrong. God the Creator doesn’t need idols, nor is he dependent upon what human
beings do. You’re muddling around in the dark, he tells his listeners. God
excused that in the past, but not any longer: he will judge the world. His
promise that he will do so is that he has raised Jesus from the dead. This isn’t
comfortable stuff. Paul is under suspicion. In response, he criticises Athenian
beliefs, and ends by proclaiming the Resurrection, and Athenians didn’t believe
anyone would be raised from the dead[5].

Paul, then, knows the Gospel, and has taken the trouble to
know the society to which he is proclaiming that Good News. The Gospel is his
foundation, but how he shares it depends on the people with whom he is
engaging.

It’s this knowing the Gospel and knowing our world that is
important for us. Some of us know one far better than the other. There are
those Christians who spend so much time in Bible study, but they wouldn’t have
a clue how to relate to non-Christians. But there are others who wrap
themselves up in the world and are ignorant of the faith. The world easily squeezes
them into its mould[6]. They
are barely distinguishable from their non-Christian friends.

Let me pose this as a challenge, then: do I fall into one of
these extremes? Am I so caught up in Bible study and Christian books that I can’t
connect with people who need the Gospel? If so, will I take the time to listen
and understand our world? We can do this by nurturing conversations with
friends, reading newspaper leader columns and paying attention to popular
culture, such as music and television. While we do this, we look for the
underlying assumptions and subject them to Gospel scrutiny.

Or am I so absorbed by the world that I am losing my
Christian distinctiveness? If that is me, then I have a different challenge. I may
need the discipline of daily Bible reading. Good quality Christian books may
help me. (Ask me if you want recommendations about books or Bible study notes.)
I may well find it helpful to join a fellowship group where we spur one another
on in our discipleship.

Conclusion
Sometimes in a world that seems increasingly ignorant of the Gospel, if not
hostile to it, the task of Christian witness seems daunting, if not hopeless.
But when we read of Paul taking the Good News to pagan Athens, we realise that
nothing is impossible with God. No, he didn’t see masses of converts, but he
did make some headway.

The change requires a degree of recalibration for us as
Christians from what we have been used to. We can’t rely on commonly accepted
beliefs or the idea of a ‘Christian country’: we need a passion for Jesus and
for people not yet in the community of faith. Nor can we expect to do things on
our terms and our territory: we need to move out in engagement. Finally, we
need to bring the Gospel and the world together, not only in our actions but
also in our thinking, so that we can shape our missionary task appropriately.

Are we up for the challenge?

[2] Ibid,
main text.

[3]
Although it only includes Paul’s speech from verses 22 to 31. I think you need
the whole story for the context.

[4]
Witherington, p 512f.

[5]
Witherington, p 532.

[6]
See J B Phillips’ translation of Romans 12:1-2.

0

Tomorrow’s Sermon: Recalibrating Christian Mission

Acts 17:16-34

Introduction
Voting. However cynical we are about politics, our culture is saturated with
it. We are a democracy, and we vote for our leaders. Local elections are
looming in many parts of our country. Opinion polls attempt to predict who will
win a General Election, and politicians pay close attention to them.

Voting is present in the epidemic of reality shows on the
TV. We decide the fate of a wannabe singer on The
X Factor. We judge the aspirations of someone who wants to be famous for
being famous on Big Brother.
We choose between desperate has-beens, trying to resuscitate their careers on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.

Now, if I asked you to take a vote on the Book of Acts, as
to which passage had led to the most discussion, I doubt you would choose today’s
reading. Perhaps you would choose chapter 2, with its account of the first Christian
Pentecost. Maybe you would go for chapter 9, dramatically recounting the
conversion of Saul on the Damascus Road. Both those stories are popular and
controversial. But among the scholars, Paul in Athens wins the vote:

‘In fact, it has attracted more scholarly attention than any
other passage in Acts.’[1]

Apart from the question of how Paul’s speech here relates to
his teaching in his epistles (which I won’t bore you with in a sermon),

‘Luke has presented us here with the fullest example of Paul’s
missionary preaching to a certain kind of Gentile audience (namely, an educated
and rather philosophical pagan one without contacts with the synagogue)’[2].

In that respect, this story commends itself to us, if we are
to have a missionary engagement with our world. It is to some extent a pagan
one, and has little contacts not with the synagogue but with the church. For several
years, I have referred to this passage in that respect. Indeed, I chose to preach
on it only a month after starting here, when I did a series of sermons about
our missionary relationship with a changing world. Today, the Lectionary brings
me back to these verses[3],
and the chance to reflect again on how we exercise our missionary calling
today. What does missionary commitment require of each one of us?

1. Passion
Paul is waiting for some friends. Rather than idle his time away, the first
thing Luke tells us is that

‘While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply
distressed to see that the city was full of idols.’ (Verse 16)

‘Deeply distressed.’ The Greek is the word from which we get
our word ‘paroxysm’. It’s a word for strong negative emotions. The city was
full – no, weighed down – with idols. That it would be upsetting for someone
Jewish like Paul is obvious on one level: the Ten Commandments prohibit graven
images of God, so idols are out. But it was worse in Athens. Jews often alleged
that there was a link between idolatry and immorality. The content of some
Athenian idols would have backed up that claim.[4]
As it’s Sunday morning, I’ll spare you the tawdry details.

We too face a culture that is ignorant of the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are many reasons for this, some of them our
fault as the Church, but the desire (need?) for worship persists, and so we
have idolatry today, some of which is connected to immorality.

We can list today’s idolatries easily: sex, shopping, money,
possessions, and so on. But there are bigger questions for us: does seeing
people worship in this way arouse passion in us as Christ-followers or not? And
if it arouses passion, is it a godly passion?

There are several reactions we can have to contemporary idolatry.
One would be apathy. We see false and unhealthy worship, but can’t be bothered
to make a stand. Either that, or we’re more worried about people’s reactions if
we say something, so fear keeps us quiet.

Another is that we can react passionately, thinking we are
doing so for God, but being quite ugly. Passion turns to judgmentalism.

Or we can be passionate for the wrong reasons. We look at
the numbers flocking to sporting events or the shops on a Sunday, and bewail
our own small numbers. If we’re not careful, our real reason is not a desire to
honour Jesus Christ, but the fear that our little religious club might close. ‘Can
we fill all the vacant jobs here?’ is a poor reason for evangelism.

The passion Paul had was a passion for the glory of Jesus.
If the worship due to his name were being directed elsewhere, even if out of
ignorance rather than deliberate choice, that moved him. He challenges us to
leave behind apathy, anger and selfishness as reactions to idolatry, and
instead react out of a heart full of love for Jesus. I believe Paul could only
have reacted as he did in Athens if he regularly remembered how much God in
Christ had done for him who once had been a sworn enemy of the church.

We don’t have to have had dramatic ‘Damascus Road’
conversions like him, but a sense of how wonderful God is, how much he has done
for us, how gracious and loving he is in contrast to us will do more for
mission than a thousand training programmes. It’s a passion that comes from God’s
grace, and which is nurtured in worship, prayer, fellowship, Bible meditation
and getting on with the life of a disciple. In other words, God has acted in
extravagant love towards us, and we receive and respond. Then we have a passion
for Jesus and a passion for those who do not love him.

2. Engagement
If you have a passion for Jesus and for those who don’t know him, then the
last thing you can do is sit around and moan. Nor can you bury your head in the
sand and say, ‘It’s all hopeless.’ Passion will drive you to engage the love of
Jesus with those yet to know him.

And that passion drives people out into the world to engage
with the idol worshippers and others. It doesn’t say, ‘We’ve got an interesting
event on here, why not come and join us?’ Those happily worshipping idols see
no reason to do so, and nor did the Athenians. Paul went to them to engage them
with the Gospel; he didn’t set up camp and invite them onto his territory. So –
he went to the synagogue (not that he considered his fellow Jews idolaters, but
he believed Jesus was the fulfilment of all their hopes), where he didn’t get
up and give an altar call: he ‘argued’ (debated) with the Jews and the Gentile
God-fearers (verse 17). That is, he was in conversation with them. He didn’t
solely use set-piece speeches.

He did the same in the mainstream Athenian culture, because
he also went to the market place to debate with whoever was there each day. Here,
we need to understand that the market place wasn’t simply where you went to buy
your strawberries and potatoes: it was the centre of civic and cultural life in
Athens. If you wanted to make an impact upon the life of the city, you went to
the agora, the market place and
started networking with people there. Therefore, we have our priorities out of
kilter when we are happy that someone answers a call to preach or offers for
the ministry, but we are less impressed when somebody becomes a bank manager, a
teacher, an artist, a musician or a secretary.

Yesterday, I read the
words of a Canadian businessman
who had been reflecting on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, where he
tells his disciples they are the salt of the earth. Here is just one of his
thoughts:

‘Salt NEVER serves its purpose staying in the shaker.
The purpose of the Christian life is found when “shaken out” to flavour the
world. Too often the highest vision of ministry given to Christians is to be on
the church platform, rather than changing the flavour of the world.’

If disciples are the salt of the earth, then, the church is
the saltshaker. Our purpose is not to create an alternative social life and
entertainment menu for Christians: it is to shake the salt out into the world,
where it will do its work of engagement. Yes, we are here to heal, comfort and
encourage, but never by keeping the grains in the saltshaker.

3. Contact and
Conflict
Paul causes a stir in Athens. Some find him intriguing, others are disparaging.
Still others are confused: he is advocating a god called Jesus, and a goddess
called Anastasia (the Greek for ‘resurrection’, which is a feminine noun). The
Areopagus, the city council that decided which gods were acceptable to be
worshipped, decides almost to put him on trial – or at least put his views
under their microscope.

How does Paul respond? Much of his speech follows the
conventions of ancient rhetoric. He speaks in their style. Unlike when he is in
a synagogue, he doesn’t quote the Scriptures – but his content is scriptural. His
only direct quotes come from Greek cultural sources such as poets – but he uses
them to support his argument and bring the challenge of the Gospel to his
hearers.

And his point is this: the Athenian approach to God is plain
wrong. God the Creator doesn’t need idols, nor is he dependent upon what human
beings do. You’re muddling around in the dark, he tells his listeners. God
excused that in the past, but not any longer: he will judge the world. His
promise that he will do so is that he has raised Jesus from the dead. This isn’t
comfortable stuff. Paul is under suspicion. In response, he criticises Athenian
beliefs, and ends by proclaiming the Resurrection, and Athenians didn’t believe
anyone would be raised from the dead[5].

Paul, then, knows the Gospel, and has taken the trouble to
know the society to which he is proclaiming that Good News. The Gospel is his
foundation, but how he shares it depends on the people with whom he is
engaging.

It’s this knowing the Gospel and knowing our world that is
important for us. Some of us know one far better than the other. There are
those Christians who spend so much time in Bible study, but they wouldn’t have
a clue how to relate to non-Christians. But there are others who wrap
themselves up in the world and are ignorant of the faith. The world easily squeezes
them into its mould[6]. They
are barely distinguishable from their non-Christian friends.

Let me pose this as a challenge, then: do I fall into one of
these extremes? Am I so caught up in Bible study and Christian books that I can’t
connect with people who need the Gospel? If so, will I take the time to listen
and understand our world? We can do this by nurturing conversations with
friends, reading newspaper leader columns and paying attention to popular
culture, such as music and television. While we do this, we look for the
underlying assumptions and subject them to Gospel scrutiny.

Or am I so absorbed by the world that I am losing my
Christian distinctiveness? If that is me, then I have a different challenge. I may
need the discipline of daily Bible reading. Good quality Christian books may
help me. (Ask me if you want recommendations about books or Bible study notes.)
I may well find it helpful to join a fellowship group where we spur one another
on in our discipleship.

Conclusion
Sometimes in a world that seems increasingly ignorant of the Gospel, if not
hostile to it, the task of Christian witness seems daunting, if not hopeless.
But when we read of Paul taking the Good News to pagan Athens, we realise that
nothing is impossible with God. No, he didn’t see masses of converts, but he
did make some headway.

The change requires a degree of recalibration for us as
Christians from what we have been used to. We can’t rely on commonly accepted
beliefs or the idea of a ‘Christian country’: we need a passion for Jesus and
for people not yet in the community of faith. Nor can we expect to do things on
our terms and our territory: we need to move out in engagement. Finally, we
need to bring the Gospel and the world together, not only in our actions but
also in our thinking, so that we can shape our missionary task appropriately.

Are we up for the challenge?

[2] Ibid,
main text.

[3]
Although it only includes Paul’s speech from verses 22 to 31. I think you need
the whole story for the context.

[4]
Witherington, p 512f.

[5]
Witherington, p 532.

[6]
See J B Phillips’ translation of Romans 12:1-2.

0

Funeral Poetry

Kim opines about that awful funeral poem, ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep.’ Yes, the closing words ‘I am not here, I did not die’, are dreadful. They play to the denial that happens in the face of death. The loved one did die: that is why we are here.

Worse for me is Henry Scott Holland’s, ‘Death is nothing at all.’ Holland was, I believe, a canon of St Paul’s Cathedral. Of all people, he should have known that (please forgive the double negative coming) death is not nothing. It is the last enemy.

Such poems provide false comfort. Sometimes I have had to have them included in a service, often because the family has already told the undertaker what they want in the service before I have been contacted. In such situations, I have found diplomatic ways of explaining in the service why I see things differently. I have never had poor feedback from doing so.

Ironically, in the face of all the denial these poems propagate, W H Auden’s bleak ‘Funeral Blues’ (popularised in ‘Four Weddings And A Funeral’) seems more honest, even if it is tragically devoid of hope.

And from a Christian perspective, I am happier with ‘What Is Dying?’, the piece about a ship sailing away out of sight over the horizon, but being greeted in another port.

What do others think?

9

Wedding Music

My new favourite blog, Stuff Christians Like, had this post a few days ago: Stuff Christians Like: #161. Refusing to make songs you can slow dance to.

In the comments, several people riff on the theme of (un)suitable music for first dances at weddings. Debbie and I only had a wedding reception with food. We’re both allergic to dancing, but not to food. We were more – ahem – creative with our choice of entry music and exit music for the wedding service itself. For the bulk of the ceremony, we were trad. Hymns included ‘Be thou my vision’ and ‘And can it be’. I’m sure there was a third, but I can’t remember it.

But as I say, the entry and exit music were not quite what you would expect at a Christian wedding. Debbie, having been a biker in her youth, wanted to walk down the aisle with her Dad to Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be wild’ (that’s from the hippie biker film ‘Easy Rider’, young people). We had timed it at the rehearsal so that she would arrive by my side just as the chorus came in for the first time. My mother was in the row behind me. As we stood for the entrance of the bride, she poked me and said, ‘What is this song, darling?’ Our Chair of District also came to the service. As an accomplished classical musician, I have no idea what he thought of the choice.

But I had the choice of exit music. I brought two possibles, and we experimented to see which one had the better rhythm for walking out to. In the end, the theme tune to the 1960s TV show Thunderbirds won out over The Simpsons main theme. We hadn’t told my two young nephews, who were page boys. They were delighted.

As a minister, then, I have little room for argument when couples don’t come up with the usual Mendelssohn and Wagner requests (or Widor’s Toccata, but that depends on the organist’s competence). Perhaps my favourite memory was an African-Caribbean wedding in Chatham. The bride came in, not only with her father and bridesmaids, but a whole long procession, American-style. As a song by Eric Benet played, they danced down the aisle, their forerunners scattering petals. When she left with her new husband, they went out to live African drums.

The one shame about that wedding was that the bride had, as a young woman in Wolverhampton, been a babysitter for Beverley Knight, now a famous British soul singer. Ms Knight was supposed to turn up at the wedding and sing. Unfortunately, recording commitments (she was recording her ‘Who I Am’ CD at the time) prevented her. Instead, an anonymous female singer from a black-majority Pentecostal church sang an a capella solo of Al Green’s ‘Let’s Stay Together’ (and – yes – Al Green, not Tina Turner). On the spur of the moment I dropped my standard wedding sermon and somehow linked that song with the Bible passage from Ruth that the couple had chosen for the ceremony.

Does anyone else have fun stories about wedding music?

0

Tomorrow’s Sermon: Going To The Father

John 14:1-14

Introduction
‘Are we there yet?’ If you have ever had small children in a car, you will
be familiar with that persistent question. ‘No,’ you say, and try to encourage
them not to be impatient, even though you know you’ve only just set out and
have hours to go. You will have planned a route, knowing where you are starting
and where you intend to arrive. Perhaps you will also have thought about
stopping places on the way.

And life is a long journey, too. Noticing the Old Testament
language of pilgrimage, we speak of the Christian life as being on a journey. However
certain we are of our faith, we have not arrived yet. We are still travelling. In
the spiritual journey, we again need to know where we are going, where we might
stop and how we get there.

I believe these verses from John 14 are to some extent about
that journey. These days in the Church, we don’t spend so much time thinking
about our ultimate destination. We so focus upon the ‘now’, with our concerns
for social transformation and the like, that we forget something important
here. Where we are going, the stopping places and the overall route will all
affect how we travel now. So this passage – which overlaps so much with the
main Gospel reading at a funeral – should give us direction, as well as the
comfort it provides at funerals. I want to bring together, then, both what we
do now with where we are going for eternity.

1. Destination
Jesus says he is going to the Father. It’s important to get the destination
right. You will go off course if you plan to head for the wrong place. If I think
I have booked a summer holiday in the Mediterranean, but end up in Moscow, I am
going to have all the wrong clothing with me!

In the spiritual journey, I want to suggest we sometimes
mistake the final destination. Just to say we expect to go to heaven when we
die is not to anticipate our final
destination. That may sound strange, if not a downright heresy, but let me
explain – and let me also assure you I am still going to talk in this sermon
about where we go when we die.

According to that great New Testament scholar Tom Wright, the current Bishop of
Durham, John has in view in his Gospel the death, resurrection and ascension of
Jesus[1].
And something similar is what the New Testament has in vision for human beings
and the whole creation. The Book of Revelation looks forward to new heavens and
a new earth, with a new holy city where resurrected human beings will worship
God.

Our overall destination, then, is not simply heaven: it is
an utterly recreated universe. We shall have resurrected bodies, just as Jesus
had. The idea that the body is just a shell and that the real person is inside
is not a Christian one, however much we repeat it. Historically, it comes from
strains of Greek philosophy, which disdained the body. If the body had little
or no value, then it didn’t matter what you did with it. Abusing it didn’t
matter. Infidelity and perversion were of no consequence. Only the soul
mattered.

But the biblical hope is different. It sees people as
integrated bodies, souls and spirits. What we do in the body is a spiritual
issue. That’s why many Christian ethical issues are about physical actions. The
body matters to God. He created it, and he made it good. Fallenness and sin
have damaged it. It rots in the grave, or is burned in cremation. But God’s
plan is to restore it. We believe, as the Creed says, in the resurrection of
the dead. We shall have what Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 calls a ‘spiritual body’ –
not just a spirit, but a spiritual body, a body animated by the Holy Spirit[2],
again just as Jesus did at his Resurrection.

And in a sense, God plans something similar for creation –
there will be new heavens and a new earth. The new holy city will come down out
of heaven from God. The Bible may begin in a garden, but it ends in a city. You
can understand the appeal of the rhyme that says you are closer to God in a
garden than anywhere else on earth. In the city, the dirt, noise and violence may
make you feel far from God. But God is in the business of renewing and
redeeming cities. Our ultimate destination is citizenship of God’s new holy
city!

Now is this pie in the sky when we die? Only in the sense
that we are eating some of the pie now! It is cake on a plate while we wait! My
point is this: if our ultimate destination is resurrection to a body animated
by the Holy Spirit, and citizenship of the new holy city in God’s new creation,
then that has practical implications now. The pie and the cake are not all in
the future. We anticipate them now, by our lifestyle. This is why we care about
healing and social justice: because God will make all things new. It is about our Christian hope.

Not for us the bleak vision of a Dylan Thomas who wanted to
rage against the dying of the night and urged us not to go gently into that
dark night. For Christians, we pray for healing knowing that even God heals
someone, they will die later. But that is not the end. There is the new
creation to come. Healing is a foretaste of the resurrection body. Likewise, we
may campaign to correct social injustice, and we may or may not succeed. Even if
we do, our achievements may later be reversed. But again, we are anticipating
God’s ultimate future. Social justice is a foretaste of the new earth. Our final
destination motivates our action today.

2. Wayfaring Stations
Every now and again, Rebekah brings up the subject of death. She knows I deal
with it quite a lot, given the number of funerals I take – especially recently.
She doesn’t want anyone to die, although we explain to her that God will bring
them all back to life one day. It’s our equivalent of when I asked similar
questions as a boy of my parents. My Dad would say, ‘Imagine the bank [he
worked for NatWest] sent me to work in Australia. I might have to go there
ahead of you, but one day you, your Mum and your sister would all join me in
the house I had been living in, and had been preparing for all of us.’

His answer was reminiscent of what Jesus says in John 14,
when he promises to go and prepare one of the many dwelling-places in his
Father’s house for us, and then come back to take us there (verses 1-4). But
what does Jesus mean by his Father’s house and the dwelling-places? After all,
isn’t this where we get the idea about going to heaven when we die?

‘My Father’s house’ is an interesting figure of speech. Can
you remember what Jesus also called his Father’s house? It was the Temple in
Jerusalem[3].
The Temple, where Jews believed heaven and earth met, had many apartments in
its complex. Pilgrims used these apartments as temporary dwellings when they
arrived in town. Jesus uses these ‘dwelling-places’ as an image of

‘safe places where those who have died may lodge and rest,
like pilgrims in the Temple, not so much in the course of an onward pilgrimage
within the life of a disembodied ‘heaven’, but while awaiting the resurrection
which is still to come.’[4]

So the dwelling-places in the Father’s house signify not our
ultimate destination, but a wayfaring station, a place of rest before we reach
the end of our journey. This would be, then, what Jesus meant when he told the
penitent thief at Calvary that on that very day they would be together in
Paradise. They would be at the divine wayfaring station. It is what Paul says
with different metaphors, when he talks of going to be with the Lord, or when
he and Jesus both refer to death as being asleep. Death is a place of rest
before the resurrection of the dead. Blessèd are the dead, for they rest from
their labours.

What is the practical significance of this for us today? Obviously,
it gives us some comfort to know that our loved ones who are disciples of Jesus
are at peace – especially if their life had been unhappy, they had suffered from
a cruel disease, or the manner of their death was distressing. However, there
is more. In a world filled with strife, friction, argument, bitterness and war,
God wants to grant rest and peace. Again, this gives us a vision for how we may
live in partnership with God’s purposes. Is there a situation where we could
please God by helping to bring rest in place of strife? Is there something we
can do to bring reconciliation in place of fighting, justice instead of war?

3. Route
More and more I find that if people want to come and visit us for the first
time, they don’t ask for directions, they ask for our postcode. Why? Because they
have satellite navigation in their car. They can type in the postcode from which
they are beginning their journey, and our postcode as their destination. Then the
device will guide them through pictures and voice instructions from door to
door. Hopefully, it won’t take them the wrong way down a one-way street, or
down a jetty to a river. Even with perfect sat-nav, we still tell our new
visitors about our house being up a hidden drive.

Our route is also guided by a voice. ‘I am the way,’ says
Jesus (verse 6). He doesn’t simply show the way, he is the way. It is by
listening to his voice and by walking with him that we find the route he has
opened up to our initial temporary resting-place after death, and to our
ultimate destination of bodily resurrection in the new creation. He has already
travelled through death to the temporary wayfaring station of Paradise, and the
Holy Spirit has raised him from the dead. His death and resurrection have
opened up the way to the Father, as he was condemned in our place, freed us
from accusation and brought us new life. Not only that, he shows us the Father
to whom we are going, because if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father
(verse 9). If we want to know what the God to whom we are going is like, we
look at Jesus.

Jesus is the route, then. He has cleared the blockages on
the road by his own death and resurrection. The same death and resurrection are
also models for the way we shall travel. And to travel with him, we need to
listen to his voice. The route we take is the way of discipleship. Fundamental to
living in hope in the face of death is that we are committed to listening to
Jesus. Listening to him does not mean we listen and then weigh up whether we
fancy doing what he wants, as if God just made the Ten Suggestions and we can
arbitrate the rights and wrongs. Listening to Jesus only works with a prior
commitment to following him and imitating him. In John 7:17 he says,

‘Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether
the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own.’

We need to resolve to do God’s will, if we are to be true
listeners to Jesus who is our route, our way. There is no point in hearing the
voice on a sat-nav telling us to take a particular road and then ignoring it. The
sat-nav will recalibrate the route in a few seconds, and give some revised
instructions, just as if we fall away from the will of God, Christ will
graciously find a way to get us back on our travels with him. But if we
persistently disregard or disparage the voice of Jesus telling us his way, then
eventually we shall no longer hear the voice.

Our ultimate destination, then, is the bodily resurrection of
the dead to live in God’s new creation. This involves a commitment to social
justice and healing now. Before we get to the resurrection, we rest in death at
the wayfaring station of Paradise. This means a commitment to peace-making now.
To make the journey means a commitment to following the voice of Jesus, who has
built the road and travelled it. And as we follow obediently, we call others to
join with us on the pilgrim way.

[1] N
T Wright, The
Resurrection Of The Son Of God, pp 445-7.

[2] I
owe this insight to my research supervisor many years ago, Richard Bauckham.

[3]
Luke 2:49; John 2:16.

[4]
Wright, p 446.

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0

Tomorrow’s Sermon: Going To The Father

John 14:1-14

Introduction
‘Are we there yet?’ If you have ever had small children in a car, you will
be familiar with that persistent question. ‘No,’ you say, and try to encourage
them not to be impatient, even though you know you’ve only just set out and
have hours to go. You will have planned a route, knowing where you are starting
and where you intend to arrive. Perhaps you will also have thought about
stopping places on the way.

And life is a long journey, too. Noticing the Old Testament
language of pilgrimage, we speak of the Christian life as being on a journey. However
certain we are of our faith, we have not arrived yet. We are still travelling. In
the spiritual journey, we again need to know where we are going, where we might
stop and how we get there.

I believe these verses from John 14 are to some extent about
that journey. These days in the Church, we don’t spend so much time thinking
about our ultimate destination. We so focus upon the ‘now’, with our concerns
for social transformation and the like, that we forget something important
here. Where we are going, the stopping places and the overall route will all
affect how we travel now. So this passage – which overlaps so much with the
main Gospel reading at a funeral – should give us direction, as well as the
comfort it provides at funerals. I want to bring together, then, both what we
do now with where we are going for eternity.

1. Destination
Jesus says he is going to the Father. It’s important to get the destination
right. You will go off course if you plan to head for the wrong place. If I think
I have booked a summer holiday in the Mediterranean, but end up in Moscow, I am
going to have all the wrong clothing with me!

In the spiritual journey, I want to suggest we sometimes
mistake the final destination. Just to say we expect to go to heaven when we
die is not to anticipate our final
destination. That may sound strange, if not a downright heresy, but let me
explain – and let me also assure you I am still going to talk in this sermon
about where we go when we die.

According to that great New Testament scholar Tom Wright, the current Bishop of
Durham, John has in view in his Gospel the death, resurrection and ascension of
Jesus[1].
And something similar is what the New Testament has in vision for human beings
and the whole creation. The Book of Revelation looks forward to new heavens and
a new earth, with a new holy city where resurrected human beings will worship
God.

Our overall destination, then, is not simply heaven: it is
an utterly recreated universe. We shall have resurrected bodies, just as Jesus
had. The idea that the body is just a shell and that the real person is inside
is not a Christian one, however much we repeat it. Historically, it comes from
strains of Greek philosophy, which disdained the body. If the body had little
or no value, then it didn’t matter what you did with it. Abusing it didn’t
matter. Infidelity and perversion were of no consequence. Only the soul
mattered.

But the biblical hope is different. It sees people as
integrated bodies, souls and spirits. What we do in the body is a spiritual
issue. That’s why many Christian ethical issues are about physical actions. The
body matters to God. He created it, and he made it good. Fallenness and sin
have damaged it. It rots in the grave, or is burned in cremation. But God’s
plan is to restore it. We believe, as the Creed says, in the resurrection of
the dead. We shall have what Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 calls a ‘spiritual body’ –
not just a spirit, but a spiritual body, a body animated by the Holy Spirit[2],
again just as Jesus did at his Resurrection.

And in a sense, God plans something similar for creation –
there will be new heavens and a new earth. The new holy city will come down out
of heaven from God. The Bible may begin in a garden, but it ends in a city. You
can understand the appeal of the rhyme that says you are closer to God in a
garden than anywhere else on earth. In the city, the dirt, noise and violence may
make you feel far from God. But God is in the business of renewing and
redeeming cities. Our ultimate destination is citizenship of God’s new holy
city!

Now is this pie in the sky when we die? Only in the sense
that we are eating some of the pie now! It is cake on a plate while we wait! My
point is this: if our ultimate destination is resurrection to a body animated
by the Holy Spirit, and citizenship of the new holy city in God’s new creation,
then that has practical implications now. The pie and the cake are not all in
the future. We anticipate them now, by our lifestyle. This is why we care about
healing and social justice: because God will make all things new. It is about our Christian hope.

Not for us the bleak vision of a Dylan Thomas who wanted to
rage against the dying of the night and urged us not to go gently into that
dark night. For Christians, we pray for healing knowing that even God heals
someone, they will die later. But that is not the end. There is the new
creation to come. Healing is a foretaste of the resurrection body. Likewise, we
may campaign to correct social injustice, and we may or may not succeed. Even if
we do, our achievements may later be reversed. But again, we are anticipating
God’s ultimate future. Social justice is a foretaste of the new earth. Our final
destination motivates our action today.

2. Wayfaring Stations
Every now and again, Rebekah brings up the subject of death. She knows I deal
with it quite a lot, given the number of funerals I take – especially recently.
She doesn’t want anyone to die, although we explain to her that God will bring
them all back to life one day. It’s our equivalent of when I asked similar
questions as a boy of my parents. My Dad would say, ‘Imagine the bank [he
worked for NatWest] sent me to work in Australia. I might have to go there
ahead of you, but one day you, your Mum and your sister would all join me in
the house I had been living in, and had been preparing for all of us.’

His answer was reminiscent of what Jesus says in John 14,
when he promises to go and prepare one of the many dwelling-places in his
Father’s house for us, and then come back to take us there (verses 1-4). But
what does Jesus mean by his Father’s house and the dwelling-places? After all,
isn’t this where we get the idea about going to heaven when we die?

‘My Father’s house’ is an interesting figure of speech. Can
you remember what Jesus also called his Father’s house? It was the Temple in
Jerusalem[3].
The Temple, where Jews believed heaven and earth met, had many apartments in
its complex. Pilgrims used these apartments as temporary dwellings when they
arrived in town. Jesus uses these ‘dwelling-places’ as an image of

‘safe places where those who have died may lodge and rest,
like pilgrims in the Temple, not so much in the course of an onward pilgrimage
within the life of a disembodied ‘heaven’, but while awaiting the resurrection
which is still to come.’[4]

So the dwelling-places in the Father’s house signify not our
ultimate destination, but a wayfaring station, a place of rest before we reach
the end of our journey. This would be, then, what Jesus meant when he told the
penitent thief at Calvary that on that very day they would be together in
Paradise. They would be at the divine wayfaring station. It is what Paul says
with different metaphors, when he talks of going to be with the Lord, or when
he and Jesus both refer to death as being asleep. Death is a place of rest
before the resurrection of the dead. Blessèd are the dead, for they rest from
their labours.

What is the practical significance of this for us today? Obviously,
it gives us some comfort to know that our loved ones who are disciples of Jesus
are at peace – especially if their life had been unhappy, they had suffered from
a cruel disease, or the manner of their death was distressing. However, there
is more. In a world filled with strife, friction, argument, bitterness and war,
God wants to grant rest and peace. Again, this gives us a vision for how we may
live in partnership with God’s purposes. Is there a situation where we could
please God by helping to bring rest in place of strife? Is there something we
can do to bring reconciliation in place of fighting, justice instead of war?

3. Route
More and more I find that if people want to come and visit us for the first
time, they don’t ask for directions, they ask for our postcode. Why? Because they
have satellite navigation in their car. They can type in the postcode from which
they are beginning their journey, and our postcode as their destination. Then the
device will guide them through pictures and voice instructions from door to
door. Hopefully, it won’t take them the wrong way down a one-way street, or
down a jetty to a river. Even with perfect sat-nav, we still tell our new
visitors about our house being up a hidden drive.

Our route is also guided by a voice. ‘I am the way,’ says
Jesus (verse 6). He doesn’t simply show the way, he is the way. It is by
listening to his voice and by walking with him that we find the route he has
opened up to our initial temporary resting-place after death, and to our
ultimate destination of bodily resurrection in the new creation. He has already
travelled through death to the temporary wayfaring station of Paradise, and the
Holy Spirit has raised him from the dead. His death and resurrection have
opened up the way to the Father, as he was condemned in our place, freed us
from accusation and brought us new life. Not only that, he shows us the Father
to whom we are going, because if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father
(verse 9). If we want to know what the God to whom we are going is like, we
look at Jesus.

Jesus is the route, then. He has cleared the blockages on
the road by his own death and resurrection. The same death and resurrection are
also models for the way we shall travel. And to travel with him, we need to
listen to his voice. The route we take is the way of discipleship. Fundamental to
living in hope in the face of death is that we are committed to listening to
Jesus. Listening to him does not mean we listen and then weigh up whether we
fancy doing what he wants, as if God just made the Ten Suggestions and we can
arbitrate the rights and wrongs. Listening to Jesus only works with a prior
commitment to following him and imitating him. In John 7:17 he says,

‘Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether
the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own.’

We need to resolve to do God’s will, if we are to be true
listeners to Jesus who is our route, our way. There is no point in hearing the
voice on a sat-nav telling us to take a particular road and then ignoring it. The
sat-nav will recalibrate the route in a few seconds, and give some revised
instructions, just as if we fall away from the will of God, Christ will
graciously find a way to get us back on our travels with him. But if we
persistently disregard or disparage the voice of Jesus telling us his way, then
eventually we shall no longer hear the voice.

Our ultimate destination, then, is the bodily resurrection of
the dead to live in God’s new creation. This involves a commitment to social
justice and healing now. Before we get to the resurrection, we rest in death at
the wayfaring station of Paradise. This means a commitment to peace-making now.
To make the journey means a commitment to following the voice of Jesus, who has
built the road and travelled it. And as we follow obediently, we call others to
join with us on the pilgrim way.

[1] N
T Wright, The
Resurrection Of The Son Of God, pp 445-7.

[2] I
owe this insight to my research supervisor many years ago, Richard Bauckham.

[3]
Luke 2:49; John 2:16.

[4]
Wright, p 446.

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Tomorrow’s Sermon: Going To The Father

John 14:1-14

Introduction
‘Are we there yet?’ If you have ever had small children in a car, you will
be familiar with that persistent question. ‘No,’ you say, and try to encourage
them not to be impatient, even though you know you’ve only just set out and
have hours to go. You will have planned a route, knowing where you are starting
and where you intend to arrive. Perhaps you will also have thought about
stopping places on the way.

And life is a long journey, too. Noticing the Old Testament
language of pilgrimage, we speak of the Christian life as being on a journey. However
certain we are of our faith, we have not arrived yet. We are still travelling. In
the spiritual journey, we again need to know where we are going, where we might
stop and how we get there.

I believe these verses from John 14 are to some extent about
that journey. These days in the Church, we don’t spend so much time thinking
about our ultimate destination. We so focus upon the ‘now’, with our concerns
for social transformation and the like, that we forget something important
here. Where we are going, the stopping places and the overall route will all
affect how we travel now. So this passage – which overlaps so much with the
main Gospel reading at a funeral – should give us direction, as well as the
comfort it provides at funerals. I want to bring together, then, both what we
do now with where we are going for eternity.

1. Destination
Jesus says he is going to the Father. It’s important to get the destination
right. You will go off course if you plan to head for the wrong place. If I think
I have booked a summer holiday in the Mediterranean, but end up in Moscow, I am
going to have all the wrong clothing with me!

In the spiritual journey, I want to suggest we sometimes
mistake the final destination. Just to say we expect to go to heaven when we
die is not to anticipate our final
destination. That may sound strange, if not a downright heresy, but let me
explain – and let me also assure you I am still going to talk in this sermon
about where we go when we die.

According to that great New Testament scholar Tom Wright, the current Bishop of
Durham, John has in view in his Gospel the death, resurrection and ascension of
Jesus[1].
And something similar is what the New Testament has in vision for human beings
and the whole creation. The Book of Revelation looks forward to new heavens and
a new earth, with a new holy city where resurrected human beings will worship
God.

Our overall destination, then, is not simply heaven: it is
an utterly recreated universe. We shall have resurrected bodies, just as Jesus
had. The idea that the body is just a shell and that the real person is inside
is not a Christian one, however much we repeat it. Historically, it comes from
strains of Greek philosophy, which disdained the body. If the body had little
or no value, then it didn’t matter what you did with it. Abusing it didn’t
matter. Infidelity and perversion were of no consequence. Only the soul
mattered.

But the biblical hope is different. It sees people as
integrated bodies, souls and spirits. What we do in the body is a spiritual
issue. That’s why many Christian ethical issues are about physical actions. The
body matters to God. He created it, and he made it good. Fallenness and sin
have damaged it. It rots in the grave, or is burned in cremation. But God’s
plan is to restore it. We believe, as the Creed says, in the resurrection of
the dead. We shall have what Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 calls a ‘spiritual body’ –
not just a spirit, but a spiritual body, a body animated by the Holy Spirit[2],
again just as Jesus did at his Resurrection.

And in a sense, God plans something similar for creation –
there will be new heavens and a new earth. The new holy city will come down out
of heaven from God. The Bible may begin in a garden, but it ends in a city. You
can understand the appeal of the rhyme that says you are closer to God in a
garden than anywhere else on earth. In the city, the dirt, noise and violence may
make you feel far from God. But God is in the business of renewing and
redeeming cities. Our ultimate destination is citizenship of God’s new holy
city!

Now is this pie in the sky when we die? Only in the sense
that we are eating some of the pie now! It is cake on a plate while we wait! My
point is this: if our ultimate destination is resurrection to a body animated
by the Holy Spirit, and citizenship of the new holy city in God’s new creation,
then that has practical implications now. The pie and the cake are not all in
the future. We anticipate them now, by our lifestyle. This is why we care about
healing and social justice: because God will make all things new. It is about our Christian hope.

Not for us the bleak vision of a Dylan Thomas who wanted to
rage against the dying of the night and urged us not to go gently into that
dark night. For Christians, we pray for healing knowing that even God heals
someone, they will die later. But that is not the end. There is the new
creation to come. Healing is a foretaste of the resurrection body. Likewise, we
may campaign to correct social injustice, and we may or may not succeed. Even if
we do, our achievements may later be reversed. But again, we are anticipating
God’s ultimate future. Social justice is a foretaste of the new earth. Our final
destination motivates our action today.

2. Wayfaring Stations
Every now and again, Rebekah brings up the subject of death. She knows I deal
with it quite a lot, given the number of funerals I take – especially recently.
She doesn’t want anyone to die, although we explain to her that God will bring
them all back to life one day. It’s our equivalent of when I asked similar
questions as a boy of my parents. My Dad would say, ‘Imagine the bank [he
worked for NatWest] sent me to work in Australia. I might have to go there
ahead of you, but one day you, your Mum and your sister would all join me in
the house I had been living in, and had been preparing for all of us.’

His answer was reminiscent of what Jesus says in John 14,
when he promises to go and prepare one of the many dwelling-places in his
Father’s house for us, and then come back to take us there (verses 1-4). But
what does Jesus mean by his Father’s house and the dwelling-places? After all,
isn’t this where we get the idea about going to heaven when we die?

‘My Father’s house’ is an interesting figure of speech. Can
you remember what Jesus also called his Father’s house? It was the Temple in
Jerusalem[3].
The Temple, where Jews believed heaven and earth met, had many apartments in
its complex. Pilgrims used these apartments as temporary dwellings when they
arrived in town. Jesus uses these ‘dwelling-places’ as an image of

‘safe places where those who have died may lodge and rest,
like pilgrims in the Temple, not so much in the course of an onward pilgrimage
within the life of a disembodied ‘heaven’, but while awaiting the resurrection
which is still to come.’[4]

So the dwelling-places in the Father’s house signify not our
ultimate destination, but a wayfaring station, a place of rest before we reach
the end of our journey. This would be, then, what Jesus meant when he told the
penitent thief at Calvary that on that very day they would be together in
Paradise. They would be at the divine wayfaring station. It is what Paul says
with different metaphors, when he talks of going to be with the Lord, or when
he and Jesus both refer to death as being asleep. Death is a place of rest
before the resurrection of the dead. Blessèd are the dead, for they rest from
their labours.

What is the practical significance of this for us today? Obviously,
it gives us some comfort to know that our loved ones who are disciples of Jesus
are at peace – especially if their life had been unhappy, they had suffered from
a cruel disease, or the manner of their death was distressing. However, there
is more. In a world filled with strife, friction, argument, bitterness and war,
God wants to grant rest and peace. Again, this gives us a vision for how we may
live in partnership with God’s purposes. Is there a situation where we could
please God by helping to bring rest in place of strife? Is there something we
can do to bring reconciliation in place of fighting, justice instead of war?

3. Route
More and more I find that if people want to come and visit us for the first
time, they don’t ask for directions, they ask for our postcode. Why? Because they
have satellite navigation in their car. They can type in the postcode from which
they are beginning their journey, and our postcode as their destination. Then the
device will guide them through pictures and voice instructions from door to
door. Hopefully, it won’t take them the wrong way down a one-way street, or
down a jetty to a river. Even with perfect sat-nav, we still tell our new
visitors about our house being up a hidden drive.

Our route is also guided by a voice. ‘I am the way,’ says
Jesus (verse 6). He doesn’t simply show the way, he is the way. It is by
listening to his voice and by walking with him that we find the route he has
opened up to our initial temporary resting-place after death, and to our
ultimate destination of bodily resurrection in the new creation. He has already
travelled through death to the temporary wayfaring station of Paradise, and the
Holy Spirit has raised him from the dead. His death and resurrection have
opened up the way to the Father, as he was condemned in our place, freed us
from accusation and brought us new life. Not only that, he shows us the Father
to whom we are going, because if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father
(verse 9). If we want to know what the God to whom we are going is like, we
look at Jesus.

Jesus is the route, then. He has cleared the blockages on
the road by his own death and resurrection. The same death and resurrection are
also models for the way we shall travel. And to travel with him, we need to
listen to his voice. The route we take is the way of discipleship. Fundamental to
living in hope in the face of death is that we are committed to listening to
Jesus. Listening to him does not mean we listen and then weigh up whether we
fancy doing what he wants, as if God just made the Ten Suggestions and we can
arbitrate the rights and wrongs. Listening to Jesus only works with a prior
commitment to following him and imitating him. In John 7:17 he says,

‘Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether
the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own.’

We need to resolve to do God’s will, if we are to be true
listeners to Jesus who is our route, our way. There is no point in hearing the
voice on a sat-nav telling us to take a particular road and then ignoring it. The
sat-nav will recalibrate the route in a few seconds, and give some revised
instructions, just as if we fall away from the will of God, Christ will
graciously find a way to get us back on our travels with him. But if we
persistently disregard or disparage the voice of Jesus telling us his way, then
eventually we shall no longer hear the voice.

Our ultimate destination, then, is the bodily resurrection of
the dead to live in God’s new creation. This involves a commitment to social
justice and healing now. Before we get to the resurrection, we rest in death at
the wayfaring station of Paradise. This means a commitment to peace-making now.
To make the journey means a commitment to following the voice of Jesus, who has
built the road and travelled it. And as we follow obediently, we call others to
join with us on the pilgrim way.

[1] N
T Wright, The
Resurrection Of The Son Of God, pp 445-7.

[2] I
owe this insight to my research supervisor many years ago, Richard Bauckham.

[3]
Luke 2:49; John 2:16.

[4]
Wright, p 446.

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Tidying Up

It’s my day off, and I did some long overdue tidying up of the blogroll this morning. I’ve dropped the news and technology feeds (although I do look at them), and made the general blogroll focus more specifically on the Christian and ministry blogs I read. I’ve also arranged them in alphabetical order. Do click on some of those you don’t recognise. I’ve by no means included everything I look at in Google Reader, the list is mostly the current favourites.

You can tell it’s my day off, though – my brain is more switched off than ever. This morning, Debbie and I forgot two vital things, but were reminded of them both in time. Firstly, we forgot we were going to start attending a numeracy class at our daughter’s primary school. Not that we’re innumerate: here speaks one who would have read Computer Science or Maths first, had he not injured his neck aged 18, and my wife is professionally an auditor. No, the school is showing parents how Maths (note the extra ‘s’, American friends!) is taught today, so we can support our kids. Fortunately, another mum reminded us!

Then, as we were walking back, Debbie suddenly remembered that today was the day we had tickets for after school to take the kids and see some CBeebies characters at a theatre in Southend. A great time was had by all, and a good fun presentation of the virtues of recycling formed the narrative. It was our son’s third visit to the theatre, and our daughter’s fifth or sixth. It is wonderful that these high quality children’s shows exist, so that we can introduce them to the joys of this cultural delight.

Now it’s just a case of preparing for tomorrow. It brings probably the most pointless requirement in a Methodist minister’s diary: District Synod. Only useful for meeting old friends, the business is usually rubber-stamped or dominated by those few who like the sound of their own voices and think everybody else loves their vocal cords as much. I have often taken a magazine or a good book with me. I cannot understand the devotion to Synod shown by lay representatives and older ministers. It is a fundamentally inefficient way to conduct church business. Theological debates, when they occur, are sterile, because they simply break down along predictable divisions. I could be doing something worthwhile. Usually, the weather is good, and you are stuck inside (although tomorrow’s forecast isn’t good). Worse, tomorrow our circuit is hosting. Must arrive early, not out of enthusiasm, but to bag an inconspicuous seat at the back.

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