Sermon: The Noble Woman Of Faith

Proverbs 31:10-31

It’s interesting to read this account of the ‘wife of noble character’ (verse 10) or ‘woman of valour’, as some translations have it this week, in the wake of the Anglican General Synod’s vote on women bishops. Proverbs 31 describes an amazing woman: trusted by her husband, managing businesses, providing for the servants, running the household, and all the while speaking words of wisdom.

Does such a woman exist? I know women are always telling us men how they can multi-task and we can’t, but the answer is ‘no’. The question with which this begins, ‘A wife of noble character who can find?’ is clearly rhetorical, and expects the answer ‘no.’ Or at least, ‘Only once in a blue moon.’

The Proverbs 31 woman does not exist, for an obvious reason: this is a poem made up in praise of women. We can tell that not only from the fact that it is written in a poetic form, but also because it is an acrostic. There are twenty-two lines here, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each line starts with the next successive letter of that alphabet. It is entirely a poetic device.

But to what end? In some church traditions, Proverbs 31 has been so held up as the exemplary pattern of Christian womanhood that it has become a burden to women, an impossible plumbline to attain. Yet if it is about one imaginary woman I do not think it should be used that way.

I think we should take note of this:

‘Pious Jewish husbands still recite this poem every Sabbath eve in praise of their own wives.’¹

In other words, we should see Proverbs 31 as an opportunity to praise women of faith, not to burden them. Not every section of the poem will apply to every woman: not all of you are married, not all of you run businesses, few (if any) of you have servants – although you might be keeping some secrets from me! But there will be some parts of this poem which affirm you and encourage you as you live each day for Christ. Men: this is a chance for us to make sure we value and support every area of life where the women we love are called to make a difference for Christ. And that will go a long way beyond us donning a cookery apron for them once in a while.

Firstly, let us praise the strong wife. If you know Debbie and me at all, you cannot miss what different personalities we are. If you wanted the traditional image of the demure minister’s wife (if ever such a person truly existed), then you certainly didn’t get that in Debbie. Indeed, a couple of years ago, a single female friend of ours who is also a rather feisty person said to me that she admired the fact I hadn’t been afraid to marry a strong woman. I got the impression that our friend had been on the end of some nonsense from some young Christian men who clearly expected a potential wife to be meek and mild in all the wrong ways. I’m sure she is rightly frustrated if this is the case.

What has this to do with Proverbs 31? It isn’t immediately obvious from the verses about a wife at the beginning of this poem, but it is hidden there:

A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
(Verses 10-12)

Here in Proverbs is a book which contains much instruction to young men on the cusp of marriage. Whatever the differences in the nature of marriage between the ancient world and ours, there is so much here that the writer holds before young men about good wives. You want someone in whom you can have ‘full confidence’, he says. Now, granted, trust can take time. It’s so easy in a marriage when you don’t understand what your spouse is doing to start asking anxious questions that betray a low level of trust. Sometimes trust takes time, but it’s worth having. Without it, the foundations of a marriage begin to crumble. Everything is under suspicion.

But where is the strong wife in this this? After all, you could have a relationship of trust with a traditional, submissive wife. Well, note that the trustworthy wife ‘brings [her husband] good, not harm all the days of her life’. One of the Hebrew words used here is the one used elsewhere for booty brought home from victories in wars². Does that sound like the ‘little woman’? Not to me it doesn’t!

Some people will object to this, saying that elsewhere the Bible tells wives to submit to their husbands. Well, yes it does, but in that passage in Ephesians ‘submit’ seems to be parallel to the word ‘respect’, all Christians are told to respect each other and the husband is told to be willing to sacrifice himself for his wife. So any idea that ‘submission’ should ever be used as a way of keeping women down is monstrous.

Proverbs 31 is not an excuse for men to wimp out, but it is a call to celebrate women who rise up into their destiny as fully gifted participants in life. To celebrate the strong wife is also to praise the God who distributes his gifts among all, women as much as men. I am glad I belong to a denomination that believes that, and I hope it is something we shall honour in a local congregation, rather than merely seeing women as church mice.

Secondly, we praise women who acquire and provide (verses 13-20). Again, we are far from the territory that some fundamentalists would tell us is ‘biblical womanhood’. They would tell us that the husband is the provider and that he takes all the initiative. Proverbs 31 knows nothing of this distortion. Here is a craftswoman, a businesswoman who acquires materials for her work and provides for a large household that includes not only her husband and children but also female servants. It may be miles away from the experience many of us have, but while we do not inhabit the same lifestyle, there is much we can take from this example from a different culture and background.

What I love about this section of the poem, though, is that if we just talked about acquiring and providing, we would not be very different from many people in our society. They work to gain as much money as they can, and to live as high a material standard of living as it is possible for them to attain. However, the women praised in Proverbs 31 are better than that. Look how this section of the poem ends at verse 20:

She opens her arms to the poor
and extends her hands to the needy.

The godly woman who acquires and provides does not do so simply in order that her family becomes more materially prosperous. She acquires and provides, not only so that her family has what it needs, but so that she may reach out to the poor and make a difference.

In 1998, Mark and Cheryl Frost were among three thousand wealthy Californian Christians listening to a sermon by a preacher called Dr Jack Reese. He made it clear that Jesus had dire warnings for the rich and the wealthy had obligations to the poor. Afterwards, as Mark anticipated a tasty lunch, Cheryl said to him, “I know what I’m going to do about that sermon. And it’s going to cost you a lot of money.”

Cheryl knew that another American state, Michigan, had passed a law requiring all able-bodied welfare recipients to seek employment. As a result, single parents were having to leave eight-year-old children looking after three-year-old siblings. The social consequences were dire. With a friend called Emma who had told her about the need, she founded a ministry called Children’s Outreach, providing small day care facilities in the poorest part of Detroit. Eventually she recruited some of the women from these projects and trained them to work there. One reason the ministry survived is that for ten years Cheryl didn’t draw a salary.

In March this year, Cheryl Frost died of pancreatic cancer. But this ‘noble wife’ left a legacy through having opened her arms to the poor. Cheryl and Mark’s daughter Caren is now the Director of Business Development at a charity which seeks to empower Burmese women. And who is the Executive Director of that organisation? Jessica Reese, daughter of Dr Jack Reese, whose sermon transformed Cheryl.

Women of KMC, are you open to acquiring and providing so that you can open your arms to the poor in Jesus’ name? Let us have an opportunity to praise God for what you do.

Thirdly and finally, we praise women of wisdom. If you’ve picked up anything from this sermon series on Proverbs, it’s the importance of godly wisdom. We began with it in chapter 1, where the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Now, as we arrive at the final chapter, the book closes with an example of wisdom in the woman who is praised in this poem.

How so? You will remember that wisdom here is not intellectual knowledge but the ability to live a good and godly life. The woman of Proverbs 31 is depicted in just such terms in the final verses of the poem. Take verses 21 to 27: here we see her living a righteous life, in doing her part to look after her family, as she provides clothing and bedding, and generates income from her business by selling to merchants. It is epitomised in verse 27:

She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.

Idleness’ is the opposite of wisdom in Proverbs. In passages we haven’t looked at, the sluggard is unwise because he is lazy. Hence here, because the woman is not idle, we assume her particular industry makes her wise.

And we also see wisdom pouring forth from her mouth:

She speaks with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
(Verse 26)

Is this imaginary woman not an example to all who believe? Her hands are full of godly deeds, not necessarily in the most spectactular ways but in the ordinary and necessary routines of life. And her mouth is full of godly deeds. Word and deed, belief and action are in harmony. This is true wisdom. What is the clue to her wisdom?

Well, just as chapter 1 introduced us to that revelation that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the same is hinted at here. This final section from verse 21 onwards is enveloped by ideas of fear. On the one hand, the godly woman has no fear for her household when it snows, because they are all clothed in scarlet (verse 21). And on the other hand we read in verse 30,

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

She knows what to fear and what not to fear. Honouring and revering the Lord, she lives appropriately and consequently has no need to fear. This balance of awe for God and faith in daily life (not just the obviously religious bits) makes her wise in word and deed.

This woman is praised by her children and her husband for all the right reasons (verses 28-29). If you long to he honoured for all your hands have done (verse 31) – if indeed you long to hear Jesus say one day, “Well done, good and faithful servant”, that is, if you long to be praised for your godliness rather than your star quality, the woman of Proverbs 31 epitomises all this book has wanted to tell us from the beginning.

The Irish poets Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady got it right in their hymn ‘Through all the changing scenes of life’ when they wrote,

Fear Him, ye saints, and you will then
Have nothing else to fear;
Make you His service your delight;
Your wants shall be His care.

1Raymond C van Leeuwen, ‘Proverbs’, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume V, p 260.

2op. cit., p 261.Proverbs 31:10-31

November 24, 2012 1

Sermon: It’s Not The End Of The World

Sorry for blog silence this week: some difficult and painful family news to deal with. However, I’ve managed to ready tomorrow morning’s sermon for publication. It’s based on the Lectionary Gospel reading, and there’s a big Tom Wright influence to my interpretation. For me, he makes huge sense of a difficult passage.

Mark 13:1-8

If we’re not careful, reading a passage like this can make us complacent. We are so used to reading these accounts of ‘wars and rumours of wars … but the end is still to come’ (verse 7) that we assume this is one of those texts about the end of the world, and so we get smug about those Christians who foolishly predict when the end is coming. We sit back saying, “How silly,” and don’t allow the text to have any force with us.

But what if our interpretation is wrong? What if Mark 13 isn’t fundamentally about the end of the world and the Second Coming? Let me make a case that it’s about something else. And while that ‘something else’ doesn’t at first seem to affect us, actually it does. Allow me to explain.

How does the passage start? It begins with one of Jesus’ disciples admiring the Jerusalem Temple.

‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ (Verse 1)

It’s all about the Temple. Jesus answers the comment in those terms. He prophesies the destruction of the Temple (verse 2), and it is about this that Peter, James, John and Andrew ask him for signs that it is about to happen (verses 3-4). I know some will point to later in this chapter (beyond today’s reading) where Jesus quotes Daniel about ‘the son of man coming in glory’ but that is not a prophecy about the Son of Man coming to earth, but coming to God. It prophesies Jesus’ vindication in his resurrection, his ascension and the fulfilment of these prophecies.

Essentially, Jesus tells his closest disciples not to be too impressed by the grandeur of the Temple. It was thought at the time to be the most beautiful of all ancient buildings, and so on a human level you can understand how impressed they are. Further, as good Jews going up for a festival, you can expect them to be favourably disposed towards it. And if they didn’t see it all that often, there here are devoutly religious men who are blown away by an act of sincere religious tourism, just as we might be if we visited a location that had key associations with our faith, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which stands on the most likely site of Jesus’ tomb.

But then you think a bit more. Did the disciples really expect Jesus to be as awestruck by the Temple as they were, so soon after he had cleared the moneychangers out in a profound act of religious vandalism? Had they not learned a lesson from that? Evidently not.

What are we to take, then, from Jesus’ prophecy of the Temple’s destruction, a prophecy which would come true just forty years later when Rome crushed a Jewish rebellion?

I think we should clear out one wrong conclusion. This does not give us permission to hate Jewish people, any more than the crucifixion does. If we start to argue that the destruction of the Temple was God’s judgement on the Jews for their part in the death of Jesus, then what are we to make of the many Christian church buildings that have been destroyed over the centuries? Should we automatically assume that all such actions are a sign of God’s displeasure?

And should we assume that Jesus’ prophecy gives us reason to be opposed to all religious buildings? Again, probably not. If a group of people gathers for worship, they will usually need a building. It is a moot point whether they need to own the building or whether they can borrow one, but you cannot avoid the need for buildings.

I think that rather than concentrate on what I might call ‘negative’ interpretations of this story, we need to seek positive interpretations. I don’t say that because I want everything to be nice and happy and to paper over cracks – you will see that positive interpretations carry a considerable challenge.

This story is about true worship. Let me tell you a story. When I arrived in my first appointment as a probationer minister, I was told that my main church had a catchphrase: ‘Flo won’t like it.’ And it was true. Flo never did like it, whatever ‘it’ happened to be. On one occasion when I had announced in advance that the annual Free Churches Good Friday service would include someone hammering nails into a cross – surely unexceptional for such an occasion – I was summoned to the farm where she lived, plied with tea, cake and copies of John Wesley’s Journal, and then asked me to rescind this terrible decision.

It transpired that Flo’s late husband had been the major financial contributor to the purchase of both the manse I lived in and the church building. Her whole life was about preserving his heritage. Flo never did like ‘it’. Her ‘temple’ had to be preserved along its original lines.

And this raises the question about who, what or where we truly worship. Devotion to a building is wrong. A temple is never an end in itself for worship. A temple is where heaven and earth meet. Supremely for Christians, Jesus is where heaven and earth meet, being both divine and human. Indeed, when it comes later to his trial, he will effectively claim to be the true temple when he says, ‘Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.’

In other words, the positive challenge from the beginning of this passage is to make sure that Jesus is the focus of our worship. To stress Jesus as the object of our worship probably sounds so obvious, so central and perhaps even so trite that you might wonder why I would even bother to emphasise it.

But the reality is, we can easily take our eyes off Jesus. We can worship religion rather than him. Like Flo, we can become obsessed more with the vehicles that help us worship than the One who is the worthy object of our devotion.

I say this, having heard recently that some members of the church at whose building Debbie and I were married fear that they will be closed down. I will feel desperately sad if that happens (which is not to comment on whether it will happen, or whether it is right or wrong). But it will be a reminder to me that my focus must be on Jesus, not a building.

And perhaps this is an important reminder for us all. Just as Jesus was warning his disciples that tumultuous and catastrophic times were coming upon the Jewish people, so we live in a time when it seems like the outlook for the Christian faith in our culture seems bleak. Just as the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed, so we too see cherished religious institutions collapse and fail. Churches close and denominations even get close to being unviable. This is a critical time to remember that we are to concentrate on Jesus more than the organisations or traditions we dearly love. Might it even be that just as the Jerusalem Temple, with its elaborate sacrificial system and the opposition of its leaders to Jesus, became redundant, so some of our religious systems and structures are also no longer fit for purpose? Now more than ever is a time to make sure our first loyalty is to Jesus and not to some human construction.

But we find all these social convulsions troubling, distressing even. That leads to the second of two themes I want to share with you this morning. Jesus knew his disciples would be upset by the thought of wars and rumours of wars, and he had a word of hope for them. It wasn’t a sugar-coated word of hope, it was one set in the harsh realities that were coming. But hope it was, nevertheless.

That hope comes right at the end of our reading:

‘This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.’ (Verse 8b)

Birth pangs. Last week a friend gave birth to a little girl. After a long labour she lovingly scolded a friend who had told her that giving birth was just like ‘doing a big poo’. Need I tell you the deluded friend was male?

Birth pangs are painful, intensely so. What a mother goes through in order to bring new life into the world is excruciating – and even that word seems too weak to describe the experience. But they bear the pain for the sake of the outcome.

By talking about birth pangs, Jesus tells his disciples that the forthcoming traumas, horrendous as they will be, will be the prelude to new life. To quote Tom Wright

‘The picture of birthpangs had been used for centuries by Jews as they reflected on the way in which, as they believed, their God was intending to bring to birth his new world, his new creation, the age to come in which justice and peace, mercy and truth would at last flourish. Many writers from Jesus’ time whose works have come down to us spoke of the Jewish hope in this fashion. Since … Jesus believed that his kingdom-mission, his message, was the divinely appointed means of bringing this new world to birth, we shouldn’t be surprised that he sometimes spoke of it in this way as well.’¹

Despite the pain, God is doing something new. Despite the upheavals, God is at work. When you see the tribulations of the church in decline today, do not simply stop and blame our society for turning its back on Christianity, however much that is true. Go further in your thinking. Ponder the thought of why it is God might want to do away with the forms of religion we have had for many years. Could it be that he is judging us? Could it be that the things we cling onto instead of Jesus are the things God is making redundant?

But more than all that, do you dare think that the pain the church is undergoing is that of birth pangs? Could it be that God is bringing something new to birth? As the old ways of doing things falter and crumble, could God be inviting us to experience a death so that we might embrace a resurrection? Can I dare you to believe in the God of new beginnings? The God who says in Isaiah 43, ‘Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. Behold, I am doing a new thing’? The God who says in Revelation 21, ‘I am making all things new’?

Friends, is it not time to recognise the ways in which we have become too attached to our religious institutions and repudiate that as the false worship – yes, the idolatry that truly is? Is it not time to renew a radical commitment and devotion to Jesus as the true object of our desires?

And is it not time to trust God in the shaking of our times, believing him for another act of new creation?

1 Tom Wright, Mark For Everyone, p177f Kindle edition.

November 17, 2012 4

A Brief Sermon For A Memorial Service 2012

It’s time for our annual All Souls service, and this is what I plan to preach tomorrow night:

Revelation 21:1-7

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

If you’ve ever seen Four Weddings and a Funeral, I’m sure you remember the powerful funeral scene where John Hannah’s character Matthew recites this W H Auden poem Funeral Blues, desolate at the loss of his lover Gareth, played by Simon Callow. It picks up that bleakness we feel in bereavement, and I’m sure that’s why the film made the poem so popular again in recent years.

You might expect that at a Christian service, especially one where we have announced that the theme is one of hope, I would jump straight from that to a happy picture of heaven, all lit up with LEDs and shown on retina screens.

But no. I shall talk about hope in a few moments. However, Christians are not immune from the bleakness of bereavement. However much we believe in a future full of hope, we feel that loss now. When C S Lewis wrote his book A Grief Observed about the death of his wife Joy Davidman after only four years of marriage, he said,

The death of a beloved is an amputation.

I wonder how many of you have felt like that since your bereavements? You haven’t just lost someone you love; you’ve lost part of yourself. Elsewhere, in similar vein, Lewis says,

At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again.

With those feelings in mind I chose the reading from the Book of Revelation. It’s a book some people think is weird and troubling, but at heart it’s something written to suffering Christians, and couched in code-like terms so that those causing the pain of the Christian recipients didn’t understand it. Their suffering was perhaps different from ours in that it was religious persecution. However, that persecution led to the deaths of loved ones, and in that respect we can find common feeling with them, and thus draw comfort and hope along similar lines to them.

Revelation sees a world torn apart by sin and evil, and a God who wants to put it right. He will judge the wicked and make a new world free from injustice and sorrow for those who love him. You could describe God’s project as like the renovation of a house. Our reading promises ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (verse 1), a ‘new Jerusalem’ (verse 2), the end of ‘the old order of things’ (verse 4) and indeed ‘everything [made] new’ (verse 5).

I invite you to think of it something like this. Friends of mine have been describing recently on Facebook the renovation of an old house they own in Northumberland. Footings and block work needed to be done. The gas supply needed to be disconnected, moved and reconnected. However, if I read their accounts rightly, that didn’t happen as quickly as they would have hoped, and they had a cold night wearing extra layers of clothing. They got chilly again when the porch and utility room were demolished, and they were left without heating from 9:30 one day. They finally got gas and hot water back after three days.

God, I believe, is promising a cosmic renovation project, including the heavens and the earth, a new order of community in which to live (the ‘new Jerusalem’) and new order of life, free of sin and pain. He has already done it for his Son Jesus, in raising him from the dead on that first Easter Day. He promises renovation for our bodies after our deaths at a great resurrection of the dead.

Outside one of the chapels at Oxford Crematorium, you will find a plaque that C S Lewis had made for his late wife. He wrote an epitaph for her that is displayed on the plaque. It reads:

Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hope that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In Lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.

The hope we share by faith in Jesus Christ is that an Easter Day is coming for us. As Jesus was raised from the dead, his body renovated by God, so too shall we.

Renovation projects sometimes take longer than we would like. Anyone who has had a new kitchen fitted may understand that. They can also be pretty uncomfortable, as my friends who lost their gas for three days discovered.

But they do reach completion. And in the great cosmic renovation, we can be sure that God is not a cowboy builder. We have seen his work already in the resurrection of Jesus, and he promises the same craftsmanship to us.

Meanwhile, though – what? It’s a long time to wait with that void in our lives, that amputation of a limb that C S Lewis spoke about. Is there nothing to do but wait around in our loneliness for God’s great renovation?

I think the answer is that we can actively anticipate what is to come. If we have a sense that God is going to make all things new and wipe away every tear, then we can prepare for that world. When grief comes stealthily sneaking up behind us and mugs us unawares, we can remember that life will not always be this way.

We can also live by the values of God’s new world in small ways. We can seek to bring hope to others, comforting other grieving people with the comfort we have received. We can play our little part in building for a new world where hatred and suffering do not always win.

May the peace and hope which come from trusting in Jesus Christ risen from the dead be your light in your darkness and a light for your path.

October 27, 2012 2

A Church Anniversary Sermon

Matthew 16:13-20

Too many churches want nothing to do with Jesus.

Wait a minute! Isn’t that a bit judgemental? And what a thing to come and say as the visiting preacher at a Church Anniversary!

What I mean is this: many of the assumptions Christians make about the church bear only the most meagre resemblance to what Jesus teaches about the subject.

This morning, I want to contrast many of our popular suppositions about the church with what Jesus says here. There are great riches in our short reading, but I shall confine myself to verse 18 for a text:

And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

We’re going to start in the middle of the verse and work our way outwards. Firstly, church. We may protest when the world assumes that ‘church’ means ‘building’ and say, “No, it’s the people,” but what is the reality? How much of our time do we spend talking about property and finance? How often do we say we want to get more people through the doors? Have we not got locked into this idea that church is a building and an institution?

But what did the word ‘church’ originally mean? It did indeed mean ‘the people’ and they didn’t have their own buildings, gathering instead in the larger homes owned by the more wealthy believers.

More specifically than that, ‘church’ comes from a word used in the early Greek democracies to indicate the calling out of a people to assemble together. Split down very literally, it is ‘the called-out people’ and that came to mean ‘the assembly’ of people.

We are a ‘called-out people’. We assemble together for worship because God in Christ has called us out to be distinct from the world. The church is the people who have heard the call to follow Christ, and that means gathering together (the assembly) as a holy people (we are called out from the world and set apart for a special purpose).

This, then, is church. Our prime concerns are all located in that single word. Does our worship reflect the Christ who calls us out? Are living as a distinct, called-out people? How are we co-operating with the Holy Spirit who is calling other people out of worldliness to join us as Christ’s new community?

And if all the discussions about property and finance were related to those issues, we’d be in a healthier position.

Secondly, my church. There is a healthy way in which people can say ‘my church’. They can mean, this is the congregation where I can love and be loved, and work out my discipleship.

The trouble is, too many churchgoers say ‘my church’ and mean something else. They act as if they own the church, or as if church solely exists for their benefit, and that it should conform to their tastes and prejudices. Such people throw wobblies when an act of worship does not sit nicely with their tastes in music.

But it’s Jesus here who says ‘my church’. The church belongs to him. It is his. In Paul’s terms, it is the Body of Christ and Jesus is the head.

Not so many years ago, it was popular in some Christian circles to hear preachers declare this claim: “Jesus wants his church back.” You know what? I think we could do with hearing that again. It’s his church, not ours. How many of our worship wars would be different if we were more concerned about what Jesus likes than what we like? How many of our petty arguments would fade in the brilliant light of knowing that the church belongs to Jesus? Aht do we need to hand back?

Thirdly, I will build my church. An evangelist I used to know said that whichever town he went in the UK, the local Christians always told him the same thing: “This is the hardest place in the country for the Gospel.” Now some of that might reflect the general difficulty we have in the present climate for sympathy to Christianity, and I can understand that. But what is the alternative? If you were to believe some Christians, it is to batten down the hatches and simply ensure that my local congregation will see me out. Once I’m dead, it can close.

If that attitude shocks you, let me assure you that it is widespread among churches.

Yet whatever the difficulties, it has to be clear that Jesus has a big vision for his church. It is to be built. Let’s not have any arguments about quality versus quantity, Jesus wants both. He wants to build both the quality of our spiritual lives – holiness – and he wants to build the quantity of those who follow him – evangelism.

It is therefore only right to ask whether questions of holiness and evangelism are central to our conversations and our meeting agenda. I fear we avoid them and major on minors. Where are the class meetings where we hold one another accountable for our growth in grace? Where are those who are making sure we focus on how we shall reach out into the local community?

Fourthly, I will build my church. Some people who have got to know me well know one of my pet peeves. It’s the idea that churches and Christians run after the latest techniques and fads in order to turn around their fortunes. If someone else has made something work, then this is what we must do. If this is what we have learned at this conference, then it must be right for us. If this is the latest big-selling Christian paperback, then we must put it into practice here as soon as possible and as much as possible.

Now I don’t have any problem learning from the best of what is happening. I happen to be an avid reader. I told our daughter’s teacher at a parents’ evening last week that you can’t be a Faulkner if you aren’t a reader.

But what does this attitude do? It assumes a kind of technological, push-the-button approach to the spiritual life. Follow these five steps and everything will be all right. Practise this technique and your troubles will be over.

As if.

For God is not a machine who responds to us programming him. God is sovereign, and if that means anything it means that he has more free will than we do. It is Jesus who promises to build his church. We want to see it grow, too, but Jesus will be the one who makes that growth take place.

What does that mean for us? We may or may not use popular programmes such as the Alpha Course, but our attitude is to ask Jesus what he wants to do and what he is doing. We then seek to join in. Rather than us try to control or even manipulate things with our religious techniques, we instead place ourselves in a position of vulnerability rather than of control. Instead of taking charge ourselves, we ask Jesus to take that position. If he is to build his church, then that requires us to be dependent upon him, and therefore to seek to hear his voice and respond.

Fifthly, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church. Here’s another challenging thought, something that goes against many of our natural instincts – something ‘counter-intuitive’ to use a popular fancy word these days. If we want the church to grow more, then wouldn’t it be obvious that to be able to include more people in the church we should lower the bar for entry? Shouldn’t we make church membership easier? Besides, we don’t like to ask embarrassing or intimidating questions, nor do we want to appear judgemental. That should start to increase our numbers.

But, no, Jesus sees it differently. When he says, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church,” he is surely responding to what Peter has just done. Peter has just confessed his faith in Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus grows his church by confession of faith in him. If you lower the bar, you stop being the church, because the church is the body of people who have faith in him. You might inflate your numbers in the short term, but in the long term you will no longer be the church. You might just about be a religious club, but you will no longer be the church of Jesus Christ.

So what about the people on the fringe whom we are nurturing? Are we discriminating against them? Are we excluding them? There is still room for them. John Wesley had a number of small group meetings, not just the famous class meeting. Some of them were reserved for those who had made a clear commitment of faith and obedience to Jesus Christ. Others were open to both those who believed and those who were enquiring about the faith – or, in Wesley’s words, ‘desired to flee from the wrath to come’.

Church holds an aspiration before people, namely to become radical disciples of Jesus Christ. Set the bar high. Make it worth the leap.

Sixthly and finally, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Let’s call in the doom and gloom merchants again. The church is under attack. Christians in this country are now being persecuted. (Goodness knows how they would describe what happens to Christians in some other countries, then.) Everything and everyone is against us. It’s time to pull up the drawbridge and defend what we’ve got.

Well, let’s not deny that the climate is not so positive towards Christianity in our society anymore. That much is obvious. But is it really faithful to Jesus’ vision of the church to conceive of the battle as all being one way, the forces of darkness rampaging against the church? I don’t think that stands up to the words of our Lord here.

Did you notice I didn’t read the old translation, ‘the gates of Hell will not overcome it’? The association with Hell makes people think this is about evil forces assailing the church of Christ. But the translation I read is better: the gates of Hades. That is, the place of the dead. Death will not prevail against the church. Certainly, individual churches close and many decline, but Jesus is asserting the indestructible nature of his church. Can death ever conquer a community of faith founded in the Resurrection? Not a chance!

And specifically, there is no need to be negative here for this reason. ‘The gates of Hades’: when was the last time you were assaulted by a set of gates? It’s ridiculous! Gates are defensive tools. They are used to protect against invasion. But Jesus is saying that his church invades and conquers the forces of death. Where death attempts to reign, we proclaim resurrection. Where the forces of sin lead to death, we proclaim forgiveness. Where death is at work in the world, we proclaim the kingdom of God. The gates of death tremble as the gospel community, the church, preaches the good news of her Saviour and Lord!

In conclusion, then, yes, the church faces all sorts of challenges and difficulties today. But part of our problem is that we have allowed ourselves to believe distorted accounts of what the church is. When we return to the teaching of Jesus about the church, we have every reason to believe that God has given us a hope and a future. Let us put our house in order. Let us be humbly dependent upon Jesus Christ. And then let us face the world with confidence in him and his Gospel.

October 20, 2012 7

A Brief Sermon For A Wedding

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

I want to begin with a story that I am sure will not happen at this wedding. It did, however, happen at a wedding that a friend of mine took.

The happy couple were posing for their photos outside the church after the service. They had all the usual groups in the pictures: bride and groom, bride and bridesmaids, groom and best man, happy couple with her family, happy couple with his family, bride and groom with his friends, bride and groom with her friends, happy couple with anyone else who didn’t fit any of the categories, and so on.

They went off to their wedding reception, and the photographer went away to work on what he had done. He then came to the evening reception, hoping to sell copies of his photos to the guests.

There was only one problem: behind the bride and groom in every photo was the church noticeboard. It prominently displayed a Bible verse: there, just for the happy couple, were the words of Jesus on the Cross: ‘Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.’

Now I suspect you do know what you are doing, or as much as any couple on their wedding day can know. No-one knows for sure, because the future is full of surprises, some of them delightful, others we’d really rather not know about. But you have taken time to test your love and commitment to each other before making your promises today. You have taken your relationship seriously. Debbie and I have noticed from a difference how you have matured as a couple, and today, as we celebrate love in the setting of Christian worship, I want us to pause for just a few minutes and think about love from a Christian perspective.

Here are three thoughts for you today:

Firstly, love is unconditional. Somebody once joked that the agenda of the bride on her wedding day is ‘aisle-altar-hymn’ (think about it!). ‘I’ll alter him’ may be necessary, but to go into love on the assumption that love is conditional upon someone changing is quite dangerous. Love becomes carrot and stick. Love becomes something that is policed by ‘good cop, bad cop’. Love eventually gives way to fear and distance.

But the love of God is not like that. There is a beautiful verse in the Bible which says, ‘We love, because he first loved us.’ God’s love for us is seen in him sending Jesus before we ever loved him. It’s unconditional love. He loved us before we responded to him.

And I suggest to you that this unconditional love is a healthy model for marriage. While it is right to long for your spouse to change, they are best loved into changing. If they know they are loved regardless, they will want to change. Make no mistake, it’s important to change over the years. If I still loved Debbie the way I loved her on our wedding day eleven years ago, I don’t believe we would still be together. My love for her will always have to grow. And what brings that out the best is that the knowledge that she loves me unconditionally.

Secondly, love is forgiving. When I was a child, a slogan in an advert for a wildly popular film was this: ‘Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’ Do any of the older people here recognise it? It was Love Story.

And wouldn’t it be great if love really were like that? Never having to say you’re sorry.

If only.

But for us frail human beings, love is rarely like that. Rather than ‘Love is never having to say you’re sorry’, I suggest ‘Love is saying you are sorry and hearing you are forgiven.’

Much as today we celebrate the enjoyable side of love with its chemicals and hormones, the fact is those things won’t make a marriage last. What will make a marriage last is the willingness to seek forgiveness, and to forgive. That’s why in the Bible reading Paul says that love ‘keeps no record of wrongs’ (verse 5). It’s easy to keep a record of wrongs. If you’re not careful, you keep a chart, a list, a running tally of all the times you’ve been hurt or offended. I encourage you not to do that. Forgive, because that’s what Jesus does.

I don’t know what the father of the bride is going to say later today, but at my sister’s wedding, when my Dad gave his ‘father of the bride’ speech, he gave one piece of advice to her and my brother-in-law. He had another Bible verse as a motto, the one had he and my Mum have kept close to their hearts: ‘Do not let the sun go down on your anger.’ I commend that to you. Find your ways of resolving your conflicts, forgiving each other – and of then enjoying the making up!

This all means that thirdly and finally, love is sacrificial. What does it mean to forgive? It means to set the other person free by absorbing pain into yourself that should rightly be theirs.

And thus love isn’t quite what we sometimes think it is. How many of you guests today turned up, expecting the bride and groom to say ‘I do’ to each other? But did you notice they didn’t say that? Only one person said ‘I do’ in the service: the father of the bride. At least he didn’t say, ‘Take her, please!’

The bride and groom didn’t say ‘I do’, they said, ‘I will.’ And that’s important. Because ‘I do’ is just in the present tense and it might change in the future. ‘I will’ is a promise for now and for the future. It also recognises that sometimes love will be an act of will rather than a feeling. Sometimes love will be the actions we do in spite of how we feel. Somebody once said, ‘It isn’t true that love will keep your marriage alive. Rather, marriage will keep your love alive.’ It is your commitment of will to keep those promises that will see through the dark tunnels and out into the light at the other end.

But that’s hard to do. And in truth I’ve told you a half-truth in reminding you that the bride and groom said ‘I will.’ What they actually said was, ‘With God’s help I will.’ God is available to help us keep those promises, promises that on occasion will hurt, promises that will mean we make sacrifices.

But the God who promises to help us at these times is one who knows how to show sacrificial love. This the God who forgives – and who does so from the arms of Jesus stretched wide in love on the Cross. Jesus knows sacrificial, forgiving, unconditional love. He has modelled it in dying for us. He is ready to help all those who call on him.

Take the words we read from 1 Corinthians again. Instead of ‘love’, substitute your own name. This is how it would sound for me:

David is patient, David is kind. He does not envy, he does not boast, he is not proud. He does not dishonour others, he is not self-seeking, he is not easily angered, he keeps no record of wrongs. David does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I feel rather sheepish reading that, because I am so very far from that picture of love.

But now take out your name or the word ‘love’ and substitute instead ‘Jesus’:

Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind. He does not envy, he does not boast, he is not proud. He does not dishonour others, he is not self-seeking, he is not easily angered, he keeps no record of wrongs. Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

That is the Jesus who is available to you this day and every day to make your love for one another and for others grow that will touch others with joy.

May God bless you both.

October 17, 2012 25

Sermon: The Revolutionary CV Of Lady Wisdom

Proverbs 8:1-36

For the most part, classical music is a realm of closed-off mystery to me. I cannot understand it or appreciate it. A Local Preacher in my first circuit tried to educate me with the beauties of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, and while I did indeed think it was beautiful and even bought a CD of it, Wolfgang Amadeus didn’t open the doors of heaven for me.

Nor did a girlfriend who loved classical music. When I tried to show an interest and started to like some baroque music, she scorned that style because it wasn’t as demanding as her beloved Sibelius. I tried him too, but beyond Finlandia it all washed over me.

Yet there are other areas of life which I enjoy but which remain a strange land to others. Cricket, for example. To me it is the sport of heaven, especially in the glory of its full five-day Test Match version. Innovations like Twenty Twenty are to me a dumbing down into crash bang wallop territory that lose the subtlety of the game in its fullest expression.

What is the difference? When it comes to classical music, I have never truly learned an instrument or had a mentor. But with cricket, I had a mentor and I used to play. As a child, I watched my father play every time his club team had a home fixture in the summer. I picked up the bug from him. When I started to play, he would take me over the park and place a ten pence piece on the ground to show the exact place where I as a bowler should pitch the ball. When I was slightly older, he took me with him to winter nets practice with his club. Only as an adult did he tell me that the batsmen couldn’t read my Chinaman. If only I’d known that as a teenager, I would have developed as a spinner, not a seamer.

And yes, I realise that the last couple of sentences are gobbledygook to some of you.

What about wisdom, though? What if wisdom is – as I said in the all-age service a fortnight ago – the ability to live well for God? Is that not something we all desire? Yet do we not struggle with it? Is the competence to live for God’s glory a mystery to some of us? Could we not do with a mentor to help us play?

Step forward Lady Wisdom herself. In Proverbs chapter eight she presents her CV for guiding people in the way of wisdom[1]. Is she someone you would take on? Let’s compare the way things are with what she can offer. Of course, this being an ancient document her CV won’t tally exactly with how we write them today, but we do see how she presents herself as qualified for the position.

Firstly, Lady Wisdom offers her skills to everyone. Imagine the dilemma like this. Could it be that the average person is short on wisdom, lacking in the ways to live a life that pleases God? Could it be that many a typical Christian earnestly longs to please God but struggles to do so? And might it also be that the same typical Christian thinks, “I can’t be wise, because I don’t have the theological education or the special gifts that others do”? If so, we face a situation where those who would love to be wise in the biblical sense feel unable to meet their good and godly aspirations.

I wonder whether that is how you feel at times. Do you long to please Christ, yet regard yourself as some kind of second-class Christian?

If you do, Lady Wisdom has something on her CV for you. She is everywhere, and therefore available to everyone. She calls out at the meeting of the paths and at the entrance to the city (verses 2-3). She calls out to ‘all humanity’ (verse 4), including the ‘simple’ and the ‘foolish’ (verse 5). Lady Wisdom’s special attributes are not for the élite but for all. Why? Because they are not about cleverness, talent or charisma. Lady Wisdom empowers all and sundry to live for God’s pleasure. She doesn’t require you to gain alphabet soup after your name, she only requires a heart of obedience and a willingness to depend on God’s Spirit.

Secondly, consider some of the reasons we as Christians feel uncomfortable with the values and priorities of our society. An emphasis on wealth and possessions. An undue attachment to celebrity. Lies, deception and spin. Do we not get frustrated and disheartened by the shallow and tawdry things that capture the imagination of our world?

Lady Wisdom says, I bring qualities of true value. If you want something truly precious, she says, I have it, and I can give it to you. Her words are ‘trustworthy’ (verse 6), ‘true’ (verse 7), ‘just’ (verse 8), ‘right’ (verse 9) and more valuable than silver, gold or rubies (verses 10-11).

She says we can have a choice between a culture that is tone deaf to goodness[2] and one that rejoices in her pure and beautiful teaching. Which do we want?

Thirdly, Lady Wisdom invites us to think about the civil and social order and imagine what it could be like. Christians are not immune to the popular perception of politicians as only being in their profession for the amount of gravy they find on the train. We are used to viewing them as having their fingers in the trough and their ducks in the moat.

And of course in the wider public culture we have the corruption of journalism. We await Lord Leveson’s report into the role of the press and the police in the phone-hacking scandals.

However much we also know that in truth there are many decent politicians, journalists and police officers, it’s hard to evade the conclusion that smell of rotting vegetables in our public life.

That is where Lady Wisdom offers her gifts again. Verses 12 to 16 centre on the place of wisdom in public life. Wisdom brings prudence, knowledge and discretion to the public square (verse 12) and evicts evil, pride, arrogance and perverse speech (verse 13). Instead, she says,

Counsel and sound judgment are mine;
I have insight, I have power.
By me kings reign
and rulers issue decrees that are just;
by me princes govern,
and nobles – all who rule on earth. (Verses 14-16)

It’s a common thread from the ancient world, applied here in terms of Israel’s God:

In the ancient Near East, kings ruled, judged, waged war, protected the weak, and gave laws by means of the authority and gifts of the gods. They mediated divine blessings to the people and ensured peace and prosperity.[3]

I’m not simply saying we should always vote for Christian politicians, but I am saying this: Lady Wisdom invites us to dream of a different social and political order from the one we have.

Fourthly, and related to this, do we not also dream of a society where righteousness and justice are rewarded? Goodness is sometimes rewarded in our culture, but we also witness the way the unrighteous gather power for their own benefit and use it against others. If the allegations about the late Jimmy Savile are true – and the Met Police seem to be talking as if there is clear evidence – then we have a case of someone who garnered fame and fortune and then used his power base and his connections with those in authority to carry out and cover up great wickedness.

It is Lady Wisdom who says that a society which rewards goodness is possible. When wisdom is exalted, truth, righteousness and justice receive their reward. It is not celebrities and entertainers who flourish; rather, it is the wise, who walk in the ways of God, are recognised. Verses 17 to 21 describe a place where wisdom receives riches and honour. Surely we long for a world like that.

Fifthly, let me suggest that we long for a world that needs more than science as an explanation. Science cannot tell us whether anything has a purpose. It can only analyse cause and effect. The trouble is, we have people so committed to science as the answer to everything that they speak about a world that is only explained by cause and effect. They rule out any sense of purpose. The logical end product of this is the claim of Richard Dawkins that the universe displays what he calls ‘pitiless indifference’. It is a cold, purposeless, pointless place.

I am not denigrating science. I am saying it cannot explain everything. It is one important discipline among many. And although the ancients did not conceive of science in the way we do, in our passage Lady Wisdom alerts us to the fact that there is purpose in the universe. We see this from the extended description of Wisdom as having been present before all things in verses 22 to 31 (‘given birth’ in the NIV may be misleading). Not only that, wisdom was involved in creation itself. It is a rich passage that I cannot examine in detail this morning. But if the wisdom of God was present before all things and involved in creation, then we have a guarantee that God baked purpose into the universe.

So – is this what you want? Do you reject a world where only the élite are candidates for wisdom and long instead for a world where wisdom is open to all who wish to live well for God? Do you despair of a culture that values vacuous celebrity and long instead for one where wisdom is prized? Are you sick of the corruption of the powerful and pray for a society where wisdom rules with justice? Are you fed up with a world where the influential use power for themselves and earnestly desire instead a place where goodness is rewarded? And do you say ‘no’ to those who insist on describing life as meaningless, mocking those who disagree as stupid, because you know deep down there is purpose ingrained into life?

And if this is what you want, then what to do? The concluding five verses of this chapter urge us to get familiar with wisdom, the wisdom of God. Ultimately in New Testament terms that means Jesus Christ. What we need to do is embrace the teaching of Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit. It is Jesus, God’s true wisdom, who turns the values of our world around. His is what one author called ‘The Upside-Down Kingdom.’ He reverses the priorities of this world. He is ‘making all things new.’

To follow God’s wisdom in Jesus will likely never win a majority at the ballot box. It will not be widely popular, except in versions so diluted they lose their power. We are likely to be a minority, operating at the margins of society rather than in the corridors of power.

How, then, can this change the world? It’s a curious thing, but often the most powerful social movements are those who which are minorities operating on the margins. Jesus certainly works this way.

Does anybody want to start a revolution?

[1] Raymond van Leeuwen describes verses 6-21 as ‘Wisdom’s self-presentation. Self-praise seems strange to Westerners today, for whom it seems immodest and naïve. But the function of such speech is like a modern résumé, in which people present their qualifications for such a position.’ (New Interpreter’s Bible Volume V, p90.)

[2] op. cit., p91.

[3] op. cit., p92.

October 13, 2012 1

Sermons On Mark 10:2-16

I noticed last week that a lot of people were coming to this site to look for sermons on last Sunday’s Lectionary Gospel passage of Mark 9:38-50. If people want to find what I have preached in the past on this coming Sunday’s Gospel passage, they may struggle with conventional Google searches. The assigned passage is Mark 10:2-16. However, when I preached on it six years ago, I preached on Mark 10:1-16, because verse 1 makes a significant difference to understanding this difficult passage. So if you want to know what I’ve said on the painful subject of marriage and divorce, you need to go here.

October 3, 2012 1

Repeating A Sermon

You may have noticed that in recent weeks there have not been many new sermons on the blog. There has been a variety of reasons:

I’ve simply forgotten to post them
I’ve repeated old ones.

Last weekend and this weekend, the latter reason applies. Last week, I sat down to write a sermon on a passage I’ve expounded a few times. I struggled all week. Eventually on Saturday I slogged down word after word, having found what I thought was a decent way into the passage. And although by some time gone midnight I had finished it, I was uneasy all day about it. I didn’t have a problem with the content, but it didn’t seem to catch fire. In desperation the next morning, I printed off one of my old sermons on the reading, read it through and scribbled some amendments in the margins. It helped that I was not preaching at one of my two churches, and I felt much happier with it. Certainly it seemed to connect with people.

This week, my feet have hardly touched the ground. It’s harvest festival this weekend; early in the week I looked up suggested Lectionary passages, and settled on one. However, I’ve had no chance for decent, sustained reflection on it. I don’t think it’s right to note down some quick, gut-level scattershot ideas and waffle them into a sermon. I know some people have very quick thinking processes, but one of the things I know about myself is I’m generally a better decision-maker when I take my time. So again, I’m calling up one of my older sermons and amending it for Harvest. I know there are some of you out there who like to read my sermon on Saturday night before Sunday morning worship, even if you’re going to be in the congregation, but I’m sorry, it just hasn’t been possible.

There was a time in my preaching life when I never would have done this. As a young Local Preacher, I once remember my minister saying to me, “When you need to repeat a sermon …”. I told him confidently (well, I thought it was confidently at the time, perhaps it was arrogantly) that I would never do such a thing. I thought that to repeat a sermon was to compromise the prophetic nature of that word to the congregation for whom it had been prepared. That same minister said to me that regular preaching was often more about the ‘eternal’ word rather than the ‘now’ word.

Actually, I think it’s a bit of both. Preaching needs to be rooted in God’s word for all time. Pastorally, this is the food with which the flock is nourished. But it also needs to have an edge for today, for living here and now under the reign of God. So I don’t think there’s any harm in prayerfully taking an old sermon where I have spent time seriously dwelling on the meaning of the Scriptures and retooling it for a new congregation.

I wouldn’t put it like another of my ministers did, when he said he never wrote a new sermon from scratch. He had a good reason: he said that if he couldn’t improve on an old sermon, then there was something wrong with his own growth in Christ. Commendable as that is, I think that’s taking things too far. It assumes you have already covered all the bases, and you just need to find the one that needs finessing this time.

But what do you think? Is it justifiable to repeat a sermon? If so, under what circumstances and in what ways? If not, why?

Over to you.

September 23, 2012 3

Covenant Service Sermon: Body And Mind

Finally getting back to posting sermons. My church at Knaphill holds its annual covenant service today, where we renew our promises to God. Here is the sermon.

Romans 12:1-2

Henry Gerets was the American padre appointed as a chaplain to those Nazis who were put on trial at Nuremberg after World War Two. It was not a job he wanted. His only son had been killed by the Germans in the war, and so you can imagine his feelings towards these evil people.

But eventually he accepted the post. He went to Nuremberg, and he set about visiting every notorious Nazi held there. Gerets went from cell to cell, sharing the Gospel with men who were about to pay for their crimes by being hanged. Some went to the gallows, proudly defying the God of whom Henry Gerets spoke.

But some got down on their knees, and begged for mercy.

And mercy is a fundamental quality of the Gospel. ‘Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy,’ says Paul in Romans 12:1. It is the mercy of God that has brought us to this Covenant Service. We, too, are the ‘tax collectors and sinners’ beloved of Jesus and brought into his Father’s presence by grace.

In fact, it’s better than ‘mercy’. What Paul really says is, ‘in view of God’s mercies’. How many of us have known God only to be merciful once to us? Is it not our testimony that God is merciful to us over and over? Like the author of Lamentations, we know that his mercies are ‘new every morning’. Mercy upon mercy, grace followed by more grace, love poured out over more love – is that not the God of the Gospel?

And we come to make our promises today ‘in view of God’s mercies’. Paul has given his readers eleven chapters about God’s mercies. We know many years of God’s mercies. In view of all he has done for us in Christ, we offer ourselves.

How are we going to do that? Paul says it’s going to take all we are and all we have. He calls us to make two responses – one with our bodies and one with our minds.

Firstly, then, our bodies:

‘offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship’ (verse 1)

‘Sacrifice’ – for Paul as a Jew, this is the language of worship. It is appropriate to use our bodies as expressions of our worship. Some Christians do this quite naturally. They may do in set liturgical ways such as kneeling for prayer. I have to say, that I have found that simple bodily act of kneeling for prayer in, say, an Anglican church has been a profound reminder for me of my need to be humble before God. Similarly, I remember asking one Anglican friend why she signed herself with the cross before worship. She told me it was a particular reminder to herself that the Cross was the reason she could be in worship at the first place. It therefore prevented her from approaching worship casually.

Some Christians, especially those of a charismatic of Pentecostal spirituality, use their bodies more spontaneously in worship, perhaps most notably when lifting their hands in praise. It is, of course, an ancient Jewish practice to lift up holy hands to God in the sanctuary. It is mentioned in the Psalms. The Jewish tradition is more to raise hands in intercession, whereas the charismatic-Pentecostal style is more about praise. It’s as if to say, ‘I am already lifting my voice to God in praise. What else can I raise as a sign of how much I want to worship God?’

One thing that strikes me about prayers in worship and before worship is that a common theme is this: ‘Lord, we thank you that we are free to worship you in this country.’ Now that’s a laudable sentiment, and we should not take that freedom lightly. But I wonder whether it morphs for some of us into, ‘Thank you, Lord, that we don’t have to pay a price in order to worship you.’ Because if it does, then we have lost sight of the fact that worship is a sacrifice, and that surely means it will cost us something.

How, then, are we going to offer something costly with our bodies as an act of worship to God? It may not be in terms of persecution, but if worship costs us nothing then it is barely on the level of a hobby or a pastime. They probably cost us more than worshipping our God of mercy does.

That cost may come for some of our more elderly and frail family in the physical effort it takes to be at worship, and to participate. Their faithful commitment to worship is something the rest of us will only understand when we get to their age and condition.

But of course this is not all about Sunday services. This call to use our bodies sacrificially in worship is also about our expression of devotion every day. Think of how the old marriage service contained the promise, ‘With my body I worship thee’ – it says, ‘With my body I honour you’ in the modern service. is that not what we are to do? God created our bodies. They are not empty shells for the ‘real person’. They are part of who we are. Tomorrow morning, you will see there are ways in which you can make a physical effort with your body as a way of honouring God. There will be something you can do that will be ‘holy and pleasing to God’ with your body.

I’m sure you have little problem with the idea that worship is ‘holy’ – that is, it is something we set aside for God’s service. When we do something that is specifically for our Lord – whether it is explicit or implicit – the fact that we have made it for him means it is holy.

But what about the idea that Paul tells us here that this offering of our bodies is ‘pleasing to God’? Will you just take a moment to reflect on the fact that we can give God pleasure with what we offer him? Our images of a solemn, severe old-fashioned Headmaster God need tempering with these words. Right now, I believe God is looking forward to what we can offer him. Why? Because it will be what Paul calls here our ‘true and proper worship’. That is, when we have reasoned how we should respond to the mercies of God, it will become apparent that the offering of our bodies is an appropriate response.

Let us each think this morning, especially as we renew our covenant promises: how are we going to offer our bodies in worship to God?

Secondly, our minds:

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Verse 2)

This may sound like a negative question to get into this point, but bear with me: what do we think the effects of sin are? I would suggest that we have underplayed the effect of sin upon our minds, because our society has for the last three hundred years placed such value upon the powers of human reason. We sometimes overlook the effect of sin upon the mind. So, for example, we rightfully laud the achievements of scientists, whose use of their minds have brought wonderful benefits to our lives. But we miss the way scientific minds have been used to bring terrible harm to our world – nuclear weapons, environmental damage, climate change and so on.

I suggest we are all like that. Our minds are capable of great things, but they are also corrupted. They are as much affected by sin as any other part of us. Earlier in the epistle, Paul spoke about the ‘unfit mind’ (1:28) and that is what we have. So our minds need renewing, because as Christians we are not finally to be part of this sinful age but of the glorious age to come, the kingdom of God.

So if we are grateful for the mercies of God, we shall submit our minds to the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. What does this renewal of our minds look like? We get some idea when we realise that the end product, according to Paul, is that we ‘will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will’. In other words, having renewed minds is not a matter of just reading a list of rules and following them. That is what machines and computer programs do. It is impersonal. No: the renewed mind can ‘test and approve what God’s will is’. That implies personal involvement, a journey of discovery.

And so I suggest to you that the Holy Spirit renews our mind not by filling them with rules but with the mind of Christ. The Spirit shows us more of Christ – his person, work and teaching. This becomes the matrix by which we are guided into evaluating what the will of God is. We are involved in working out what that will is – it isn’t simply dropped into our empty minds.

How, then, do we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit’s renewing work in our minds? Well – if it means getting in touch with the mind of Christ, then yes, this is another time when I need to urge us to engage in those spiritual disciplines that soak us in the Scriptures, particularly the New Testament and especially the Gospels. It may be daily reading of the Bible using Bible reading notes. It may be taking a reading and using our imagination to get inside the story by wondering what our five senses would tell us or how we would feel if we were one of the characters. It may mean taking a passage, looking for the one thing that particularly strikes us and then chewing that over. Whatever methods we use, we need to be as diligent about our Bible reading as we are about nourishing ourselves with food, and we certainly need to respond prayerfully to whatever we have encountered. We shall also do this not only on our own but in conversation and fellowship with our sisters and brothers in Christ. For the mind of Christ will come in exploration with them as well as individually.

And I must also remind you that none of this is a quick fix. In a society that is addicted to instant solutions (so says he whose Internet connection speed is about to double!) the renewal of our minds is a long process. If the old mind is, as I said before, an ‘unfit mind’, then the renewal that makes our minds spiritually fit for the kingdom of God is a long training process, much like the years of training our Olympic and Paralympic heroes of recent weeks have had to follow.

But … it’s worth it. Because this leads us to discern ‘God’s will – his good, pleasing and perfect will.’ Did you notice that? His will is ‘good, pleasing and perfect’. Although our Covenant promise will balance the ideas that some things we are called to will be enjoyable and others will be difficult, it is common among some Christians to assume that the will of God will automatically be hard, if not unpleasant and maybe downright tortuous. Yet Paul says it is ‘good, pleasing and perfect’. Yes, of course sometimes following God’s will can be painful – in talking about our bodies we used the word ‘sacrifice’ – but it can also be a joyous thing. Our faith is resurrection as well as death.

So let us embrace the call to dedicate our bodies and minds to God, in the light of his never-ending mercies. Let us be willing to sacrifice, yes, but let us also relish the thought that discovering his will and walking in it may bring joy not only to our Lord but also to us.

September 9, 2012 0

Sermon: The Majesty of God in Creation

Psalm 8

Last Sunday evening, I got in after Richard Goldstraw’s farewell service and tea at Addlestone to find that we had a new temporary resident in the manse.

The Queen.

OK, it was a life-size cardboard cut-out of her, and apparently it is doing the rounds of every house in our road that will have her, ever since the Diamond Jubilee street party.

Jokingly, I put up a comment on my Facebook page, saying that this had happened, and asking any of my friends if they had any messages they would like me to relay to her. These included one friend who had recently been to a Buckingham Palace garden party asking me to give her a cheery wave and say ‘thanks’ for the tea. Another thought I could ask her to whip up a sermon for today. Somebody wanted to know if she had changed her mobile number. And another saw the opportunity for a lucrative business opening. I could advertise my services to parents who are regularly nagging their children over their manners by offering a practice Royal Garden Party. They could ‘meet the Queen’ and ‘have tea with the vicar’.

Of course, I wanted to have some fun with this, but our concept of a ruler’s majesty has declined over the years. The Psalmist, on the other hand, has a rich view of God’s majesty. Yet even then, the way in which that majesty is expressed on earth and in the heavens (verse 1) is surprising at times.

Firstly, God shows his glory in weakness.

Recently I had to take our daughter Rebekah on a Brownies’ trip to the dry ski slope at Aldershot, where the girls had an hour of ‘donutting’ – that is, coming down the dry ski slope in a glorified large rubber tyre, while wearing helmets for safety. As we arrived at the car park, Brown Owl suddenly got very excited and shouted to everyone, “Look! A Vulcan!”

I should explain that this was not a reference to Star Trek but to a Vulcan bomber that could be seen in the sky. The Farnborough Air Show was about to start.

And maybe an air show like that is what we expect in terms of rulers showing their power and might. They use displays of military hardware or force. Think back to all those parades of the Soviet Army through Red Square that we used to see on the news.

But God goes explicitly against this in the display of his majesty:

Out of the mouths of babes and infants
you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
to silence the enemy and the avenger. (Verse 2)

What could contradict military might much more than ‘the mouths of babes and infants’? Those who claim might and majesty by force are those God treats as enemies. He shows his glory instead in a tiny, fragile life.

The Psalmist wasn’t to know this, but several hundred years later God would show this explicitly. His majesty would be seen not in the palaces of Rome or Jerusalem, but in a manger in Bethlehem. Supremely Christians see this in the incarnation of Jesus. There is God’s upside-down majesty. Wonder at his glory in, say, the words of Charles Wesley:

Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.

For me, this is captured in the words of a contemporary Christian poet and singer, Bruce Cockburn, in two of his songs. One is called ‘Cry of a Tiny Babe’.

The chorus says:

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe

Why does ‘redemption [rip] through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe’? Because this is how God shows the splendour of his glory – his majesty. He does so in a reversal of the world’s ways and the world’s values. In the scandal of humility, God reveals his glory.

What does that mean for us? Go to another Cockburn song, one called ‘Shipwrecked at the Stable Door’.

The stable door of the song is the stable in Bethlehem. In the lyrics of the final verse, Cockburn connects the frailty of the Incarnation with the revolutionary words of the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit –
Blessed are the meek
For theirs shall be the kingdom
That the power mongers seek
Blessed are the dead for love
And those who cry for peace
And those who love the gift of earth –
May their gene pool increase

Cockburn took inspiration here from a wonderful spiritual writer called Brennan Manning. The final chapter of one of his books, ‘The Lion and the Lamb’, is called ‘The Shipwrecked at the Stable’. Manning makes the case that it is the poor and the weak who find hope in the infant Christ:

The shipwrecked at the stable are the poor in spirit who feel lost in the cosmos, adrift on an open sea, clinging with a life-and-death desperation to the one solitary plank. Finally they are washed ashore and make their way to the stable, stripped of the old spirit of possessiveness in regard to anything. The shipwrecked find it not only tacky utterly absurd to be caught up either in tinsel trees or in religious experiences – “Doesn’t going to church on Christmas make you feel good?” They are not concerned with their own emotional security or any of the trinkets of creation. They have been saved, rescued, delivered from the waters of death, set free for a new shot at life. At the stable in a blinding moment of truth, they make the stunning discovery that Jesus is the plank of salvation they have been clinging to without knowing it!

All the time they are battered by wind and rain, buffeted by raging seas, they are being held even when they didn’t know who was holding them. Their exposure to spiritual, emotional and physical deprivation has weaned them from themselves and made them re-examine all they once thought was important. The shipwrecked come to the stable seeking not to possess but to be possessed, wanting not peace or a religious high, but Jesus Christ.

The God who comes to us in weakness and vulnerability can only be encountered in weakness and humility. Strutting pride and forceful power are not the entry tickets to the kingdom of God. The vulnerable God of Bethlehem meets those who are weak, who admit their need of him, and in doing so reveals his majesty.

Secondly, God shows his glory in insignificance.

I grew up as the son of an amateur astronomer. Even now, my father still belongs to the British Astronomical Association. One Saturday, Dad took me to London for a BAA lecture given by Patrick Moore. I didn’t understand it, but I noticed how he spent as much time afterwards answering the children’s questions as he did the adults’. Conversations at home were punctuated with Sirius, Orion, the Plough, the Pleiades, Aldebaran and the star I as a child called Beetlejuice. Television meant the Apollo missions, Tomorrow’s World and James Burke science shows. To learn that the nearest star outside our solar system was four light years away – that’s 23 trillion miles – was mind-blowing and awe-inspiring. Later, when I came to faith in my mid-teens, although I had not kept up the interest in astronomy, to gaze up at a clear night sky was to engender a spirit of worship:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? (Verses 3-4)

The Psalmist didn’t know what we know about the night sky, but what we know gives these words even greater force: our Sun is but one star among between two and four hundred billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy. There are one hundred and seventy billion known galaxies in the observable universe.

In a world like that, don’t you feel tiny and insignificant? No wonder some people say our own planet Earth is just ‘the third stone from the Sun’.

No wonder others say that humans are just ‘dust in the wind’.

The contemporary atheist movement makes a lot of this. It says that the scale of things are such that it is ludicrous to see human beings as in any way special. We are just an impersonal consequence of the Big Bang and evolution.

What is difficult for these arguments is the evidence for the fine-tuning of the universe. An apologist for the Christian faith called Andrew Wilson lays out some of these in his recent book ‘If God, Then What?’ According to Wilson, there are fifteen different mathematical constant numbers that all have to be right to one part in a million (or even more precisely) for life to exist. If the ratio between the strong nuclear constant and the electromagnetic constant were different by one part in ten million billion, we would have no stars. If the balance between the gravity constant and the electromagnetic constant altered by one part in 10⁴⁰, the stars would not be able to sustain life. And there are many others. Wilson quotes scientists who say that it is like ‘the universe knew we were coming’ and laid out a ‘cosmic welcome mat’.

But more than this, the Psalmist sees human beings as having a specific status and dignity in creation:

Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honour. (Verse 5)

And not only that, this special status comes with a particular function on God’s behalf:

You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
(Verses 6-8)

Instead of being meaningless, human beings have dignity and responsibility in creation. In the face of feeling insignificant amidst the vastness and power of creation, God grants to the human race the moral management of creation on earth. This is our calling as a race, and it has huge implications.

For one, this is a restatement of Genesis chapter one, where the function of human beings made in God’s image was to look after this planet. That is far from insignificant. It is humans who feel insignificant. That is not how God regards us.

‘Looking after this planet’ implies our daily work. One sadness I encounter in pastoral conversations is with Christians who think that because they are not ordained or do not work for the church, what they do is of little value to God. I think this is a legacy of our past. The Catholic understanding of vocation was indeed something like this. You had vocations into the priesthood, or into a religious order as a nun or a monk. The Protestant Reformation widened this, and so we began praying for people in the healing, caring and education professions.

But there are all sorts of opportunities for Christian vocation if our calling as people made in God’s image is to look after his world. Graham Dow, who was Bishop of Carlisle until three years ago, wrote a booklet on ‘A Christian Understanding of Daily Work’. He argued that there were three purposes of work for Christians:

Creative management of God’s world.
Moral management for the good of all.
A community of good relationships.

While he didn’t go as far as Martin Luther, who once said that if the job of village hangman fell vacant, the conscientious Christian should apply, we can see from these three purposes of work that we have many opportunities to give glory to God in everyday life and work.

Although it would take a whole sermon to explore the three purposes of work, I want you to see that tomorrow morning, you have an opportunity to give glory to our majestic God in your work. Whether you are in paid employment, doing unpaid work, unemployed or retired, God has set us in a world where we may work to his praise and glory, whether what we do is overtly religious or not.

Yes, in weakness and in work, we can live our lives in ways that reflect the words with which the Psalmist both begins and ends here:

O Lord, our Sovereign,
how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Verses 1 and 9)

July 28, 2012 1

Category: Sermons