Tomorrow’s Sermon: Going To The Father
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.
Technorati Tags: death, resurrection, heaven, TomWright, NTWright, Paradise, RichardBauckham, DylanThomas, healing, socialjustice
Tomorrow’s Sermon: Going To The Father
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.
Technorati Tags: death, resurrection, heaven, TomWright, NTWright, Paradise, RichardBauckham, DylanThomas, healing, socialjustice
Tomorrow’s Sermon: Going To The Father
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.
Technorati Tags: death, resurrection, heaven, TomWright, NTWright, Paradise, RichardBauckham, DylanThomas, healing, socialjustice
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.
Technorati Tags: blogroll, GoogleReader, Cbeebies, theatre, Southend, Methodist, Synod
Tomorrow’s Sermon: Healthy Communities, Toxic Communities
Introduction
I have in my congregation at Broomfield a man who is a Freeman of the Borough
of Chelmsford. He thoroughly deserves it, as for decades he has gone out in
rain and snow to collect for worthy local causes.
I don’t know what rights were conferred upon him with the
honour, but it is well known that if you receive the freedom of other towns or
cities, you are entitled to drive your herds or flocks without hindrance across
bridges.
However, although I drive past one or two farms on my way
here, I’ve never noticed anyone expecting to conduct their sheep without let or
hindrance along the A130. And even what farmland we have near here will be
under threat as the housing expansions near Broomfield, Beaulieu Park and
Boreham are built.
All of which means that we are further isolated from
biblical metaphors about shepherds and sheep, making it difficult to enter the
world from which Jesus spoke. Even our culture’s approach to herding sheep is
different: we drive from behind and use a sheepdog, Palestinian shepherds lead
from the front.
And not only that, Jesus mixes his metaphors! One moment he’s
the gate to the sheepfold, the next he’s the shepherd.
So without spending too much time discussing ancient farming
methods, how can we connect with John 10? At the very least, we can set it in
context and look for the points Jesus is trying to make.
Why should we explore it, though? That’s where context comes
in. To state the obvious, John 10 comes straight after John 9. In chapter 9,
Jesus has healed a man born blind. To the disgust of the religious leadership,
he has done it on the Sabbath. For that terrible act, Jesus has been condemned
and the healed man has been excommunicated. For Jesus, this raises the issue
about proper leadership of God’s people. That’s what John 10 is about: what
kind of leadership is healthy, and what is toxic?
And it applies not only to the leaders, it applies to the
whole Christian community. What is a healthy Christian fellowship, and what is
an abusive one? Some of us have known in other places what it means to be in a
damaging church, and have wanted to escape. It’s all very well putting some
distance between ourselves and an unhealthy congregation or leader, but
sometime we need to be part of a life-giving community. I believe John 10 helps
us in the discerning process. And even if we haven’t had that painful history,
it is still important to give ourselves a health check. So what does John 10
say to us about healthy churches and leaders?
1. Life
In verse 10 Jesus says,
‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have
come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’
Many years ago, the house church leader Gerald Coates
once said that we have so re-ordered the church that we have replaced Jesus’
words that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly with the
idea that he came that we might have meetings and have them more abundantly!
There is a choice, says Jesus, between the kind of community
that gives life and the kind that destroys. Life versus death. We talk of the
Gospel, the Good News. If Jesus came to bring life, then the Good News needs to
look, sound and feel like Good News. The American Christian writer Philip Yancey recently told the Church Times,
If it doesn’t sound like good news, it’s not the gospel. If
it’s not setting you free and enlarging life, then it’s not Jesus’s message.
There is a sense in which the Gospel proclamation starts not
with Good News, but bad news – the bad news that we all are sinners, and that
our sinfulness cuts us off from God. But the poisonous church or leader dwells
mostly on sin and making people feel bad or worthless. You come away from their
company feeling you are a miserable and worthless worm. Worse than that, the leader
and the congregation manage to come over as effortlessly superior to mere
mortals like you or me.
The healthy church or leader is different. The bad news isn’t
absent. They are clear about the seriousness of sin and judgment, because it’s false
good news to couch the message in terms of ‘I’m OK, you’re OK.’ We’re not OK,
and the healthy church knows this. But the people of the healthy church also know
that God is rich in mercy and generous with grace. God’s grace is more
plentiful than human sin. The healthy church is therefore a safe place for the
wounded. To quote Philip Yancey again from that Church Times interview:
If you had asked what I’d like my influence to be, I’d answer
that I would like to give companionship to those who doubt, sympathy to those
who suffer, and grace to those who have felt little of it from the Church.
If we are a healthy church, then wounded people will find
life and love here. We will find healing for our own wounds. We will know pain,
but will not be miserable wretches. We will have strong commitments to certain
ethical standards, but even the actions we refuse to do will not be a dour,
black-suited ‘Thou shalt not’, but a grateful recognition that God knows best
for us.
No, there will be a joie
de vivre about us. We will even laugh. As Oswald Chambers, who wrote the
devotional classic ‘My
Utmost for his Highest’, said,
When God makes you holy He gives you a sense of humour.[2]
2. Sacrifice
As some of you know, I suffered a (then) mysterious neck injury when I was
eighteen. I remember sitting one night at a renewal meeting. I was in such pain
that I looked for the most comfortable chair in the room. I felt a long way
from God and his purposes. An elderly, kind Baptist woman called Peggy read
words from John 10 to me that evening. I remember the ‘good shepherd’ material,
and had to ask the biblical reference.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life
for the sheep. (Verse 11)
It meant a lot to me that evening to know that Jesus was a
good shepherd. Now, as I read those words, I recognise that the particular way
in which I know him to be a good shepherd is in sacrifice – in his willingness
to lay down his life.
How do we know the love of the Good Shepherd? By his
sacrifice. And the approach to sacrifice tells us a lot about which communities
and Christian leaders are healthy, whole and spiritual, and which ones are
snakes filled with deadly venom.
The difference is this: the healthy churches are willing to
sacrifice, but the poisonous ones will not. They are the ‘hired hand[s] [who]
care nothing for the sheep’ (verse 13). They, on the other hand, will demand
sacrifice of others. This, then, is how Jesus regarded the religious
establishment of his day.
About eight years ago, I watched a television documentary
about healing evangelists. It followed two of them. There was a bit of a slant
against them from the outset, but one came over as well-intentioned if
misguided but largely harmless. The second, however, was portrayed negatively,
and I believe rightly so. When one poor family brought a terribly sick child to
him for healing and the child was not cured, the evangelist told them the child
had not recovered because they did not have enough faith, and they should give
a further donation of a thousand dollars to his ministry. Did the child become
well? What do you think? The same evangelist flies the world in Lear Jets and
employs bodyguards. I’m not surprised he needs the bodyguards.
That may seem an obvious and easy example, and it is far
from most of our experiences. However, we need to guard against those
tendencies we might have to expect everyone else in the church to make the
sacrifices while we continue jogging along, just the same as we always have
done.
But let’s not only be negative here: what does a healthy
church look like in this respect? One gladly spends and gives up for others. It
is one where people barely have to be prompted to look out for their neighbours’
needs. I often think of an incident at my
first theological college. One of the international students, a Singaporean
woman, suddenly and unexpectedly lost her mother back home. She did not have
the airfare to go home. But the student community soon raised it – students on
very limited incomes made sure Christina got home to her family. No-one had to
tell the student body to do this, it happened almost instantly and
spontaneously. It was a case of Acts 2, where the disciples sold their
possessions to meet the needs of the poor.
3. Embrace
One other statement to explore, and it occurs in the middle of all the verses
about the Good Shepherd’s willingness to lay down his life for the flock. It raises
the question about how broad the flock is:
I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must
bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock
and one shepherd. (Verse 16)
The sacrifice, then, is not simply something that
characterises the existing community: it is something that expands it. Christians recognise this as being to do with the Cross
as the way into the kingdom of God.
Therefore, the healthy church or Christian leader will have
a passion for those who have not yet experienced the love of God in Christ. They
will not be content to stay as a private religious club: that is a crude
distortion of their fundamental purpose.
No, healthy Christians and communities will be committed to
outreach, including to people much unlike themselves. Nor will it be because we
need to raise more offertory to keep the building going, or to fill vacant
church jobs: both of those reasons suggest we do not love the people we are
trying to reach, but are only trying to manipulate them for our sake. And manipulation
and self-centredness are at the heart of toxic faith, not life-filled faith.
Healthy disciples and leaders will know that outreach,
embracing others with the love of God, is fundamental to the life of the
church. The theologian Emil
Brunner famously said that ‘The church exists by mission as fire exists by
burning’. This doesn’t mean merely that we need mission in order to keep the
numbers up. It means that mission is at the heart of what it means to be
church. The Resurrection stories have mission as central themes. In Matthew,
the risen Jesus gives the Great Commission to make disciples. In Luke, he tells
the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit and then they will be his witnesses. In
John, Jesus sends his followers in the way the Father sent him.
There is no mistaking it. Mission is not for the
enthusiasts. It is not the deluxe optional extra. It is the overflow of hearts
bursting with God’s love. Filled with the life given by the Good Shepherd and
imitating his sacrificial love, it is a travesty to keep Good News to
ourselves.
Thus, shepherds cannot spend their entire time with the
existing pen, working only to meet their needs. True shepherds look to expand
the pen, and the flock welcomes this. It is healthy church life not to obsess
about ourselves, but to prioritise showing the love of God in word and deed in
the wider community. When our business meeting agenda are consumed only with
internal matters, something is out of balance. But when our priorities are
based on the embrace of those not yet in the fold, then the life and sacrifice
of the Good Shepherd have soaked into us, and we cannot be the same.
[1] Using
the TNIV at Bible Gateway again, as Oremus played up once more.
[2]
David W Lambert, Oswald
Chambers: An Unbribed Soul, p 7f.
Technorati Tags: GoodShepherd, spiritualabuse, GeraldCoates, PhilipYancey, ChurchTimes, OswaldChambers, missional, EmilBrunner, DavidWLambert
Tomorrow’s Sermon: Healthy Communities, Toxic Communities
Introduction
I have in my congregation at Broomfield a man who is a Freeman of the Borough
of Chelmsford. He thoroughly deserves it, as for decades he has gone out in
rain and snow to collect for worthy local causes.
I don’t know what rights were conferred upon him with the
honour, but it is well known that if you receive the freedom of other towns or
cities, you are entitled to drive your herds or flocks without hindrance across
bridges.
However, although I drive past one or two farms on my way
here, I’ve never noticed anyone expecting to conduct their sheep without let or
hindrance along the A130. And even what farmland we have near here will be
under threat as the housing expansions near Broomfield, Beaulieu Park and
Boreham are built.
All of which means that we are further isolated from
biblical metaphors about shepherds and sheep, making it difficult to enter the
world from which Jesus spoke. Even our culture’s approach to herding sheep is
different: we drive from behind and use a sheepdog, Palestinian shepherds lead
from the front.
And not only that, Jesus mixes his metaphors! One moment he’s
the gate to the sheepfold, the next he’s the shepherd.
So without spending too much time discussing ancient farming
methods, how can we connect with John 10? At the very least, we can set it in
context and look for the points Jesus is trying to make.
Why should we explore it, though? That’s where context comes
in. To state the obvious, John 10 comes straight after John 9. In chapter 9,
Jesus has healed a man born blind. To the disgust of the religious leadership,
he has done it on the Sabbath. For that terrible act, Jesus has been condemned
and the healed man has been excommunicated. For Jesus, this raises the issue
about proper leadership of God’s people. That’s what John 10 is about: what
kind of leadership is healthy, and what is toxic?
And it applies not only to the leaders, it applies to the
whole Christian community. What is a healthy Christian fellowship, and what is
an abusive one? Some of us have known in other places what it means to be in a
damaging church, and have wanted to escape. It’s all very well putting some
distance between ourselves and an unhealthy congregation or leader, but
sometime we need to be part of a life-giving community. I believe John 10 helps
us in the discerning process. And even if we haven’t had that painful history,
it is still important to give ourselves a health check. So what does John 10
say to us about healthy churches and leaders?
1. Life
In verse 10 Jesus says,
‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have
come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’
Many years ago, the house church leader Gerald Coates
once said that we have so re-ordered the church that we have replaced Jesus’
words that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly with the
idea that he came that we might have meetings and have them more abundantly!
There is a choice, says Jesus, between the kind of community
that gives life and the kind that destroys. Life versus death. We talk of the
Gospel, the Good News. If Jesus came to bring life, then the Good News needs to
look, sound and feel like Good News. The American Christian writer Philip Yancey recently told the Church Times,
If it doesn’t sound like good news, it’s not the gospel. If
it’s not setting you free and enlarging life, then it’s not Jesus’s message.
There is a sense in which the Gospel proclamation starts not
with Good News, but bad news – the bad news that we all are sinners, and that
our sinfulness cuts us off from God. But the poisonous church or leader dwells
mostly on sin and making people feel bad or worthless. You come away from their
company feeling you are a miserable and worthless worm. Worse than that, the leader
and the congregation manage to come over as effortlessly superior to mere
mortals like you or me.
The healthy church or leader is different. The bad news isn’t
absent. They are clear about the seriousness of sin and judgment, because it’s false
good news to couch the message in terms of ‘I’m OK, you’re OK.’ We’re not OK,
and the healthy church knows this. But the people of the healthy church also know
that God is rich in mercy and generous with grace. God’s grace is more
plentiful than human sin. The healthy church is therefore a safe place for the
wounded. To quote Philip Yancey again from that Church Times interview:
If you had asked what I’d like my influence to be, I’d answer
that I would like to give companionship to those who doubt, sympathy to those
who suffer, and grace to those who have felt little of it from the Church.
If we are a healthy church, then wounded people will find
life and love here. We will find healing for our own wounds. We will know pain,
but will not be miserable wretches. We will have strong commitments to certain
ethical standards, but even the actions we refuse to do will not be a dour,
black-suited ‘Thou shalt not’, but a grateful recognition that God knows best
for us.
No, there will be a joie
de vivre about us. We will even laugh. As Oswald Chambers, who wrote the
devotional classic ‘My
Utmost for his Highest’, said,
When God makes you holy He gives you a sense of humour.[2]
2. Sacrifice
As some of you know, I suffered a (then) mysterious neck injury when I was
eighteen. I remember sitting one night at a renewal meeting. I was in such pain
that I looked for the most comfortable chair in the room. I felt a long way
from God and his purposes. An elderly, kind Baptist woman called Peggy read
words from John 10 to me that evening. I remember the ‘good shepherd’ material,
and had to ask the biblical reference.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life
for the sheep. (Verse 11)
It meant a lot to me that evening to know that Jesus was a
good shepherd. Now, as I read those words, I recognise that the particular way
in which I know him to be a good shepherd is in sacrifice – in his willingness
to lay down his life.
How do we know the love of the Good Shepherd? By his
sacrifice. And the approach to sacrifice tells us a lot about which communities
and Christian leaders are healthy, whole and spiritual, and which ones are
snakes filled with deadly venom.
The difference is this: the healthy churches are willing to
sacrifice, but the poisonous ones will not. They are the ‘hired hand[s] [who]
care nothing for the sheep’ (verse 13). They, on the other hand, will demand
sacrifice of others. This, then, is how Jesus regarded the religious
establishment of his day.
About eight years ago, I watched a television documentary
about healing evangelists. It followed two of them. There was a bit of a slant
against them from the outset, but one came over as well-intentioned if
misguided but largely harmless. The second, however, was portrayed negatively,
and I believe rightly so. When one poor family brought a terribly sick child to
him for healing and the child was not cured, the evangelist told them the child
had not recovered because they did not have enough faith, and they should give
a further donation of a thousand dollars to his ministry. Did the child become
well? What do you think? The same evangelist flies the world in Lear Jets and
employs bodyguards. I’m not surprised he needs the bodyguards.
That may seem an obvious and easy example, and it is far
from most of our experiences. However, we need to guard against those
tendencies we might have to expect everyone else in the church to make the
sacrifices while we continue jogging along, just the same as we always have
done.
But let’s not only be negative here: what does a healthy
church look like in this respect? One gladly spends and gives up for others. It
is one where people barely have to be prompted to look out for their neighbours’
needs. I often think of an incident at my
first theological college. One of the international students, a Singaporean
woman, suddenly and unexpectedly lost her mother back home. She did not have
the airfare to go home. But the student community soon raised it – students on
very limited incomes made sure Christina got home to her family. No-one had to
tell the student body to do this, it happened almost instantly and
spontaneously. It was a case of Acts 2, where the disciples sold their
possessions to meet the needs of the poor.
3. Embrace
One other statement to explore, and it occurs in the middle of all the verses
about the Good Shepherd’s willingness to lay down his life for the flock. It raises
the question about how broad the flock is:
I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must
bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock
and one shepherd. (Verse 16)
The sacrifice, then, is not simply something that
characterises the existing community: it is something that expands it. Christians recognise this as being to do with the Cross
as the way into the kingdom of God.
Therefore, the healthy church or Christian leader will have
a passion for those who have not yet experienced the love of God in Christ. They
will not be content to stay as a private religious club: that is a crude
distortion of their fundamental purpose.
No, healthy Christians and communities will be committed to
outreach, including to people much unlike themselves. Nor will it be because we
need to raise more offertory to keep the building going, or to fill vacant
church jobs: both of those reasons suggest we do not love the people we are
trying to reach, but are only trying to manipulate them for our sake. And manipulation
and self-centredness are at the heart of toxic faith, not life-filled faith.
Healthy disciples and leaders will know that outreach,
embracing others with the love of God, is fundamental to the life of the
church. The theologian Emil
Brunner famously said that ‘The church exists by mission as fire exists by
burning’. This doesn’t mean merely that we need mission in order to keep the
numbers up. It means that mission is at the heart of what it means to be
church. The Resurrection stories have mission as central themes. In Matthew,
the risen Jesus gives the Great Commission to make disciples. In Luke, he tells
the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit and then they will be his witnesses. In
John, Jesus sends his followers in the way the Father sent him.
There is no mistaking it. Mission is not for the
enthusiasts. It is not the deluxe optional extra. It is the overflow of hearts
bursting with God’s love. Filled with the life given by the Good Shepherd and
imitating his sacrificial love, it is a travesty to keep Good News to
ourselves.
Thus, shepherds cannot spend their entire time with the
existing pen, working only to meet their needs. True shepherds look to expand
the pen, and the flock welcomes this. It is healthy church life not to obsess
about ourselves, but to prioritise showing the love of God in word and deed in
the wider community. When our business meeting agenda are consumed only with
internal matters, something is out of balance. But when our priorities are
based on the embrace of those not yet in the fold, then the life and sacrifice
of the Good Shepherd have soaked into us, and we cannot be the same.
[1] Using
the TNIV at Bible Gateway again, as Oremus played up once more.
[2]
David W Lambert, Oswald
Chambers: An Unbribed Soul, p 7f.
Technorati Tags: GoodShepherd, spiritualabuse, GeraldCoates, PhilipYancey, ChurchTimes, OswaldChambers, missional, EmilBrunner, DavidWLambert
Tomorrow’s Sermon: Healthy Communities, Toxic Communities
Introduction
I have in my congregation at Broomfield a man who is a Freeman of the Borough
of Chelmsford. He thoroughly deserves it, as for decades he has gone out in
rain and snow to collect for worthy local causes.
I don’t know what rights were conferred upon him with the
honour, but it is well known that if you receive the freedom of other towns or
cities, you are entitled to drive your herds or flocks without hindrance across
bridges.
However, although I drive past one or two farms on my way
here, I’ve never noticed anyone expecting to conduct their sheep without let or
hindrance along the A130. And even what farmland we have near here will be
under threat as the housing expansions near Broomfield, Beaulieu Park and
Boreham are built.
All of which means that we are further isolated from
biblical metaphors about shepherds and sheep, making it difficult to enter the
world from which Jesus spoke. Even our culture’s approach to herding sheep is
different: we drive from behind and use a sheepdog, Palestinian shepherds lead
from the front.
And not only that, Jesus mixes his metaphors! One moment he’s
the gate to the sheepfold, the next he’s the shepherd.
So without spending too much time discussing ancient farming
methods, how can we connect with John 10? At the very least, we can set it in
context and look for the points Jesus is trying to make.
Why should we explore it, though? That’s where context comes
in. To state the obvious, John 10 comes straight after John 9. In chapter 9,
Jesus has healed a man born blind. To the disgust of the religious leadership,
he has done it on the Sabbath. For that terrible act, Jesus has been condemned
and the healed man has been excommunicated. For Jesus, this raises the issue
about proper leadership of God’s people. That’s what John 10 is about: what
kind of leadership is healthy, and what is toxic?
And it applies not only to the leaders, it applies to the
whole Christian community. What is a healthy Christian fellowship, and what is
an abusive one? Some of us have known in other places what it means to be in a
damaging church, and have wanted to escape. It’s all very well putting some
distance between ourselves and an unhealthy congregation or leader, but
sometime we need to be part of a life-giving community. I believe John 10 helps
us in the discerning process. And even if we haven’t had that painful history,
it is still important to give ourselves a health check. So what does John 10
say to us about healthy churches and leaders?
1. Life
In verse 10 Jesus says,
‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have
come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’
Many years ago, the house church leader Gerald Coates
once said that we have so re-ordered the church that we have replaced Jesus’
words that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly with the
idea that he came that we might have meetings and have them more abundantly!
There is a choice, says Jesus, between the kind of community
that gives life and the kind that destroys. Life versus death. We talk of the
Gospel, the Good News. If Jesus came to bring life, then the Good News needs to
look, sound and feel like Good News. The American Christian writer Philip Yancey recently told the Church Times,
If it doesn’t sound like good news, it’s not the gospel. If
it’s not setting you free and enlarging life, then it’s not Jesus’s message.
There is a sense in which the Gospel proclamation starts not
with Good News, but bad news – the bad news that we all are sinners, and that
our sinfulness cuts us off from God. But the poisonous church or leader dwells
mostly on sin and making people feel bad or worthless. You come away from their
company feeling you are a miserable and worthless worm. Worse than that, the leader
and the congregation manage to come over as effortlessly superior to mere
mortals like you or me.
The healthy church or leader is different. The bad news isn’t
absent. They are clear about the seriousness of sin and judgment, because it’s false
good news to couch the message in terms of ‘I’m OK, you’re OK.’ We’re not OK,
and the healthy church knows this. But the people of the healthy church also know
that God is rich in mercy and generous with grace. God’s grace is more
plentiful than human sin. The healthy church is therefore a safe place for the
wounded. To quote Philip Yancey again from that Church Times interview:
If you had asked what I’d like my influence to be, I’d answer
that I would like to give companionship to those who doubt, sympathy to those
who suffer, and grace to those who have felt little of it from the Church.
If we are a healthy church, then wounded people will find
life and love here. We will find healing for our own wounds. We will know pain,
but will not be miserable wretches. We will have strong commitments to certain
ethical standards, but even the actions we refuse to do will not be a dour,
black-suited ‘Thou shalt not’, but a grateful recognition that God knows best
for us.
No, there will be a joie
de vivre about us. We will even laugh. As Oswald Chambers, who wrote the
devotional classic ‘My
Utmost for his Highest’, said,
When God makes you holy He gives you a sense of humour.[2]
2. Sacrifice
As some of you know, I suffered a (then) mysterious neck injury when I was
eighteen. I remember sitting one night at a renewal meeting. I was in such pain
that I looked for the most comfortable chair in the room. I felt a long way
from God and his purposes. An elderly, kind Baptist woman called Peggy read
words from John 10 to me that evening. I remember the ‘good shepherd’ material,
and had to ask the biblical reference.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life
for the sheep. (Verse 11)
It meant a lot to me that evening to know that Jesus was a
good shepherd. Now, as I read those words, I recognise that the particular way
in which I know him to be a good shepherd is in sacrifice – in his willingness
to lay down his life.
How do we know the love of the Good Shepherd? By his
sacrifice. And the approach to sacrifice tells us a lot about which communities
and Christian leaders are healthy, whole and spiritual, and which ones are
snakes filled with deadly venom.
The difference is this: the healthy churches are willing to
sacrifice, but the poisonous ones will not. They are the ‘hired hand[s] [who]
care nothing for the sheep’ (verse 13). They, on the other hand, will demand
sacrifice of others. This, then, is how Jesus regarded the religious
establishment of his day.
About eight years ago, I watched a television documentary
about healing evangelists. It followed two of them. There was a bit of a slant
against them from the outset, but one came over as well-intentioned if
misguided but largely harmless. The second, however, was portrayed negatively,
and I believe rightly so. When one poor family brought a terribly sick child to
him for healing and the child was not cured, the evangelist told them the child
had not recovered because they did not have enough faith, and they should give
a further donation of a thousand dollars to his ministry. Did the child become
well? What do you think? The same evangelist flies the world in Lear Jets and
employs bodyguards. I’m not surprised he needs the bodyguards.
That may seem an obvious and easy example, and it is far
from most of our experiences. However, we need to guard against those
tendencies we might have to expect everyone else in the church to make the
sacrifices while we continue jogging along, just the same as we always have
done.
But let’s not only be negative here: what does a healthy
church look like in this respect? One gladly spends and gives up for others. It
is one where people barely have to be prompted to look out for their neighbours’
needs. I often think of an incident at my
first theological college. One of the international students, a Singaporean
woman, suddenly and unexpectedly lost her mother back home. She did not have
the airfare to go home. But the student community soon raised it – students on
very limited incomes made sure Christina got home to her family. No-one had to
tell the student body to do this, it happened almost instantly and
spontaneously. It was a case of Acts 2, where the disciples sold their
possessions to meet the needs of the poor.
3. Embrace
One other statement to explore, and it occurs in the middle of all the verses
about the Good Shepherd’s willingness to lay down his life for the flock. It raises
the question about how broad the flock is:
I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must
bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock
and one shepherd. (Verse 16)
The sacrifice, then, is not simply something that
characterises the existing community: it is something that expands it. Christians recognise this as being to do with the Cross
as the way into the kingdom of God.
Therefore, the healthy church or Christian leader will have
a passion for those who have not yet experienced the love of God in Christ. They
will not be content to stay as a private religious club: that is a crude
distortion of their fundamental purpose.
No, healthy Christians and communities will be committed to
outreach, including to people much unlike themselves. Nor will it be because we
need to raise more offertory to keep the building going, or to fill vacant
church jobs: both of those reasons suggest we do not love the people we are
trying to reach, but are only trying to manipulate them for our sake. And manipulation
and self-centredness are at the heart of toxic faith, not life-filled faith.
Healthy disciples and leaders will know that outreach,
embracing others with the love of God, is fundamental to the life of the
church. The theologian Emil
Brunner famously said that ‘The church exists by mission as fire exists by
burning’. This doesn’t mean merely that we need mission in order to keep the
numbers up. It means that mission is at the heart of what it means to be
church. The Resurrection stories have mission as central themes. In Matthew,
the risen Jesus gives the Great Commission to make disciples. In Luke, he tells
the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit and then they will be his witnesses. In
John, Jesus sends his followers in the way the Father sent him.
There is no mistaking it. Mission is not for the
enthusiasts. It is not the deluxe optional extra. It is the overflow of hearts
bursting with God’s love. Filled with the life given by the Good Shepherd and
imitating his sacrificial love, it is a travesty to keep Good News to
ourselves.
Thus, shepherds cannot spend their entire time with the
existing pen, working only to meet their needs. True shepherds look to expand
the pen, and the flock welcomes this. It is healthy church life not to obsess
about ourselves, but to prioritise showing the love of God in word and deed in
the wider community. When our business meeting agenda are consumed only with
internal matters, something is out of balance. But when our priorities are
based on the embrace of those not yet in the fold, then the life and sacrifice
of the Good Shepherd have soaked into us, and we cannot be the same.
[1] Using
the TNIV at Bible Gateway again, as Oremus played up once more.
[2]
David W Lambert, Oswald
Chambers: An Unbribed Soul, p 7f.
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