Sermon: Acts – Healing And Blessing

Acts 9:32-43

This summer at Knaphill, we return to the Book of Acts two years after spending a previous summer in it. And we return with a bang, starting with this story about the healing of Aeneas and the raising of Dorcas. Just the sort of incidents we encounter every day? Maybe not …

And perhaps that’s both one of the reasons these stories are in Acts and also one of the reasons they can be a problem to us. These are not exactly everyday occurrences. I want to tackle the passage by looking both the specific issue of healing and the general issue of blessing.

Google God
Google God by David Woo on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Firstly, then, the specifics of healing – and by ‘healing’, I am including the raising of Dorcas alongside the healing of Aeneas.

Perhaps where the place many of us begin is with our experiences. This week we have witnessed someone having a heart attack combined with brain damage, then not coming out of the induced coma, and having the life support machines turned off. I bring the experience of my Mum’s death in February and my Dad’s on-going health troubles. Should I have prayed for Mum to be healed? When she died, should I have prayed that she be raised, like Dorcas?

One of my college friends was confronted with a question like that when he was on a summer placement. A much-loved member of the church died, and somebody told my friend that they should go to the hospital mortuary and pray for this person to come back to life. My friend didn’t know what to do. There are a few biblical stories of people being raised back to this life, but at the same time the final enemy of death has not yet been ultimately defeated, and in those circumstances it seems wise to pray for a ‘good death’.

Certainly that is what we did when we knew my Mum didn’t have long. We prayed that her passing would be quick, peaceful and painless. God answered all those prayers. She declined rapidly in a few days, a community nurse stepped in to manage her pain control when she could no longer swallow tablets, and she slipped away peacefully in the early hours of the morning with a Christian nurse by her side as she took leave of the church militant to join the church triumphant. It wasn’t a raising from the dead, but it was an answer to prayer.

Or what about other experiences that we bring to these miraculous stories of healing and restored life in the Scriptures? How many people have you seen healed in answer to your prayers? To my knowledge, I have only seen one person healed when I have prayed for them.

Perhaps you have seen more healings than me when you have prayed. Or maybe in your disappointment you have lapsed back into tacking the words ‘If it be your will’ onto the end of your prayers as a catch-all clause that protects you from feeling let down when what you want to happen doesn’t occur.

And it is true that not everyone is healed in answer to prayer. We are dealing with the fact that the kingdom of God has come, but it has not come fully yet. In God’s kingdom there will be no more suffering or pain, and so we can expect healed bodies. Sometimes that does indeed happen in this life when we pray – as well as what the God-given skill of medical professionals achieves. But on other occasions, we see no healing. The kingdom of God has not yet come in completeness, and thus some suffer and struggle with chronic illness.

Against all that, let me set the testimony of one man whose approach to the healing ministry affected the Christian church for good in the late twentieth century. I refer to the American pastor John Wimber. He became famous for healings and for other ‘signs and wonders’ when he preached, and amongst the Christian denomination he founded, the Vineyard Churches. Back in 1984 I was one of thousands who crammed into Westminster Central Hall to hear him preach and lead prayer ministry for those present.

But it wasn’t always a smooth ride for John Wimber, either before his ministry became so popular or later, when he was diagnosed with cancer and died at the age of just 63 in 1997. Wimber’s healing ministry started with frustration, discouragement, and – dare I say – a spoonful or two of unbelief.

What happened was this: Wimber was converted from a life of drinking, smoking and drug-taking as a rock musician. (He had been the pianist for the Righteous Brothers.) When he found Christ, he heard the Bible stories about Jesus performing great miracles, and innocently asked at church, “When do we get to do this?”

Upon being told that they didn’t go in for such things at church and only held Sunday services, Wimber replied, “You mean I gave up drugs for that?”

Sometime later, he felt challenged by God to preach about healing from Luke’s Gospel. So he did. And faithfully every week, not only did he preach on the subject, he offered prayer ministry to anyone who had a need, especially those who were sick.

And nothing happened. Nobody was healed. If anything, some people got worse.

Wimber argued with God in prayer about this. God challenged him: “Are you going to preach your experiences or my Word?” So he kept on preaching the stories of the healing miracles. He continued to offer prayer ministry for anyone in need after the services. And then it all changed. Healings began to happen. The trickle became a stream became a river.

Might it be, then, that for all our disappointments, it is the right and worthwhile thing to do to keep praying for people to be healed, even if we don’t see those answers to prayer? When people told John Wimber that they were afraid to pray for people to be healed in case it didn’t happen, he had a wise response. “What’s the worst thing that could happen to someone who is prayed for? The very worst,” he said, “is that they will get blessed!”

Let us continue, then, to pray for people to be healed, and to believe that God will do what is blessed. At least we can ensure that people are blessed.

Bless Talks
Bless Talks by BLESS_PICTURES on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Secondly, having mentioned blessing, I want to talk about the generalities of blessing. As I said, the least that can happen when we pray in faith, even if we don’t see our desired outcome, is that people will be blessed.

And this gives us a way of finding stories like this one relevant when we don’t have the relevant spiritual gifts. Yes, we should pray and ask for people to be healed, but we also know that not everyone has the spiritual gift of healing. What about those of us who fall into that category?

Well, it seems to me that our lack of an appropriate spiritual gift should not stop us praying for people and blessing people. “I don’t have the gift of healing” should never be a cop-out clause. Every single Christian has the ability to bless people. Why? Because we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we have the divine resources with which to affect people for the better.

If I am unable to bring about God’s healing through my prayers, then although I do not have that specific gift to offer, I do have the general gift of blessing. People can experience love – God’s love – through me. Do you believe that? What does it look like?

Well, it is unconditional. There is no hint in our story that Aeneas had to do anything in order to receive God’s blessing (of healing) through Peter. The apostle turns up, finds the paralysed man, and speaks God’s word to him. The miracle happens. There is no sense of Aeneas doing something to deserve this. He doesn’t receive healing because he is a good man. He is blessed simply because God loves him, and God’s servant shows that.

Can we look around and say, I may not have the gift of healing, but who needs a blessing? We are not to worry whether they deserve the favour of God – after all, none of us does! We look not at the earning of God’s favour, but simply on the need. Sometimes those who need a blessing will be those who straightforwardly evoke our compassion because of their desperate situation – as doubtless Aeneas did with Peter. But on other occasions, they will be difficult people, prickly people, the awkward squad, the annoying types. But they have a need, and the answer is the blessing of God’s love. We have a calling to offer unconditional blessing. It’s the way of Jesus. He scandalised the religious leaders of his day by blessing the undeserving, and it is our call today also to risk upsetting the pious by pouring out God’s love not on those who deserve it but on those who need it. A scandal! But it’s what Jesus would have done. You don’t need a WWJD bracelet to know that.

And not only do we ask, ‘Who do we bless?’, we also ask, ‘Where do we bless?’ Dorcas (or Tabitha) may be the greater miracle – a raising from the dead, not ‘merely’ the healing of paralysis, but it happens within the family of the church. According to verse 36, she is a disciple. Her miraculous blessing comes rather in the way we pray for one another in the church. Aeneas? Well, he  may be part of the church, too, given that Peter encounters him when he comes to Lydda ‘to visit the Lord’s people’ (verse 32). This healing stuff is challenging enough as it is, so let’s keep it within church structures! We’ll pray, we’ll have a prayer list for our intercessions, and we might put on the odd healing service (although we might feel rather awkward if someone from outside the church turns up – what will do or believe then?). But let’s keep it there.

The trouble is, the news gets out in both cases, which must mean that the disciples of Jesus at Lydda were well connected with their wider society. They cannot have been like many modern Christians whose only friends are other church members. They are plugged into the wider world, and when people get blessed – healed, or raised from the dead, even – their society gets to know that in both cases, Luke tells us that many people ‘turned to the Lord’ (verse 35) or ‘believed in the Lord’ (verse 42).

Isn’t it the case that too often we settle for some kind of soft life as Christians, a set of easy options where we enjoy one another’s company and do good things for each other, but make nothing like as much effort to bless the world as we do to bless one another? Yet if we were to give the sort of priority to blessing people in the world that we do to socialising with fellow Christians, or arguing about church politics, or rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic (which is what a lot of church structures and hierarchies want to do), then I do believe we would see a change in the public perception of the Christian faith. Ultimately we would see a softening of people’s hearts to Jesus Christ, and our willingness to let blessing leak out from the church to the world might just begin a spiritual transformation in our society.

You know, it’s quite common before a service in the vestry for a church steward to pray a prayer with the preacher that asks for the service to bring a word that will connect with what people will do in serving God on a Monday morning as well as on a Sunday. Well, the way in which the astonishing news of Aeneas’ healing and Dorcas’ raising break out beyond the community of Jesus’ disciples in this story gives us such a word with which to climax this sermon. Whether we have the gift of healing or not, will we go out into the world this week and ask this simple question: who is God calling me to bless, regardless of whether they deserve it, and only giving regard to whether they need it?

If the Christian church did that consistently, I truly believe things would begin to change in the long term.

7

Sermon: Staying In Touch

Knaphill Methodist Church is exploring John chapters 14 to 16 between Easter and Pentecost. These chapters contain teaching by Jesus about the transition from his time with his disciples on earth to the era after his ascension when the Spirit has come. This weekend I get to preach on the first half of chapter 15, the famous ‘I Am’ saying about the vine.

John 15:1-17

On the morning that Mum died in February, my sister and I offered to contact all the people who needed to know quickly. We discovered that Mum and Dad had kept two different address books. One seemed to be more current than the other. How did they stay in touch with old friends when they had moved house? Letter-writing and phone calls.

One reason Debbie and I use a service like Facebook is also stay connected with friends when we move from one circuit to another. We know it isn’t the same as seeing people face to face, but then letters and phone calls don’t give you that, either. But at least we can remain in contact. Lately it has involved keeping up to date with news about the ill health of friends’ children, and the speed of the Internet enables us to keep up to date and pray in an informed way.

All of this, then, is about that basic question: how do you keep in touch with someone after you part from them? We know the promises to write to people we met on holiday that rarely last, but when we’re dealing with people we’ve known for a considerable time, or people who have been a major influence upon us, then usually we are motivated to keep in communication with them.

Something like that is happening in John chapter 15, and indeed in chapters 14 to 16 generally. Jesus will be going to the Father, not only in his death but later in his ascension. This is about how Jesus and his disciples stay in active fellowship with each other after he has gone. However, rather than come up with an elaborate mechanism for communication – be it the Royal Mail, the telephone, or the Internet – Jesus instead deploys an extended metaphor. It’s a metaphor that would resonate with his Jewish followers. For hundreds of years, the prophets had compared Israel to a vineyard, and Jesus deploys that image, adding his own twists to it, in order to show what a healthy relationship between God and the people of his Messiah would look like after that same Messiah had returned to heaven.

The metaphor runs in three parts, depicting Jesus, his Father, and the disciples.

Vine Leaves
Vine Leaves by Patrick Emerson on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Firstly, Jesus is the Vine. From Isaiah 5 and other texts, the vine was a prophetic image of Israel. God’s people were his vine. He longed to make beautiful wine from them, but tragically the prophets often used this image to make the point that Israel did not live up to her calling as the holy people of God.

Now, Jesus claims, by calling himself ‘the true vine’ (verse 1), to be the true Israel, the true model of the people of God. It isn’t something that is solely claimed in this New Testament verse: it is something that is implied elsewhere in the Gospels. It comes in that common title for Jesus of ‘Son of God’. Although we use that much of the time to designate his divinity (and we use ‘Son of Man’ to stress his humanity), these two titles actually belong the other way round. ‘Son of God’ is an Old Testament title that was originally used of Israel – it’s a way of marking out the special identity of God’s people. ‘Son of Man’ was in places such as Daniel 7 a divine title.

So if Jesus is ‘the true vine’ (or, elsewhere, the ‘Son of God’), he is claiming to be the true people of God. God’s people Israel had failed him persistently over the centuries, and even when Jesus instituted the church, that failure would continue in many shameful and pathetic ways. Effectively, Jesus says, if you want a model for how to be the people of God, then remember me. Imitate me. Look out for my example, and seek to copy it. I show you what the people of God are truly meant to look like.

Or, to put it another way, although the branches are not themselves the vine, the branches are to imitate the vine. There is an ancient doctrine in Christianity that true holiness is found in imitating Christ. Some say it goes back to great teachers of the Church such as Thomas à Kempis six hundred years ago, but its basis comes from the Jewish rabbis. When they selected bright young men to be their disciples, they encouraged their followers to imitate every part of their lives. And I do mean every part.

So when Jesus acts like a rabbi and calls young men to be his disciples with the famous words, “Follow me,” he is not just urging them to follow him geographically wherever he travels. He is calling them to imitate his whole way of life.

And that, implicitly, is the challenge here. If Jesus is the true vine, then he is showing truly how the people of God are meant to be. We are called to be his disciples, his imitators.

Wait a minute, though – that’s daunting, if not impossible, isn’t it? Which one of us can imitate the life of Christ? Not me, for a start. Can any of you? Anyone at all?

Gardener raking foliage
Gardener Raking Foliage by Hartwig HKD on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

If this is our reaction, then there is good news, and it comes in the second part of the metaphor, when Jesus says, ‘my Father is the gardener’ (verse 1). The imitation of Christ is not something we are left to do on our own. In our own power we cannot achieve it. God knows this, and does not leave us alone to attain the impossible.

Rather, God is at work in us. He is the gardener who cuts off the fruitless branches (those who are not staying in vital connection with Christ) and prunes the fruitful branches to make them more fruitful in the future (verse 2).

Put like that, it all sounds rather painful. Who wants to be pruned? Our modern pruning shears can be quite vicious implements: imagine what the equivalent first century tools were like, then.

But, again, hold on. The matter is illuminated by knowing the name of God. And God’s name is … George.

I’m being irreverent, aren’t I, to say that God’s name is George? Actually, I am being half-serious. Only half-serious, I should add. The word translated ‘gardener’ (or ‘farmer’ in some translations) is the Greek word from which we get the name ‘George’, namely georgos. And what does Georgos do to make his cherished vine grow? He goes in for a spot of kathairo, which is the word translated ‘to prune’ here.

Except it can also mean ‘to clean’. So which is it here, pruning or cleaning? The context tells us in the next verse:

You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. (Verse 3)

God cleans us up by the word of Jesus. God knows we are dirty, and that we look nothing like Jesus. Few people would mistake us for him, sadly. So he cleans us up in a number of ways, as he speaks to us through the gospel message of Jesus.

It begins with the word of forgiveness. God’s word, promising the forgiveness of our sins through the Cross of Christ, sets us free from condemnation and cleans us with the knowledge that God’s grace accepts us in Christ.

Then it is Christ’s word, calling us to follow him, that empowers us to walk in his ways. We do not seek to do this alone, but in response to him and dependent upon his power through the Holy Spirit. Slowly, the family likeness develops. We begin to show signs of imitating Christ, as we know we are loved, forgiven and empowered – all of them gifts of God.

This, then, is the good news: Jesus says, ‘Be my disciple, and therefore imitate me,’ but we cannot. Yet there is grace in the word of forgiveness and the word of transforming power. What Christ calls us to do, the Father by the Spirit enables us to do.

But what does imitating Christ with the help and power of God look like? Some of you have heard me tell a story how when our son Mark was born, one of the worshippers in the church where Debbie based herself said to me, “Don’t you ever take out a paternity suit against Debbie over Mark, because the judge will take one look at him, then one look at you, and laugh the lawsuit out of court!” You cannot mistake that Mark and I are son and father. He may not have the glasses yet, but I didn’t until I was eleven, and even the red hair comes from my own Dad’s family. He has inherited his love of Maths from me. There are similarities in our temperaments.

Vines
Vines by Savage Freedom on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

There are, then, certain specific ways in which Mark takes after me. And the third part of the metaphor, ‘You are the branches’, looks at some particular ways in which Jesus calls us to imitate him.

From the outset, before Jesus gives the examples, he continues to emphasise that this isn’t something we can do on our own. He calls us to remain in him (verses 4, 5). It requires a vital relationship with Christ so that we can hear his word and receive his power in order to do his will. Any professing Christian who sets out to do great things for the kingdom of God while putting all the emphasis on their deeds and none on the devotional life of prayer, Scripture, fellowship, the sacraments, worship and so on is as deluded as the car driver who thinks it’s unimportant to fill up with petrol, all you need to do is drive.

So that remains the foundation. The very specific things we are called to do are all based on what we receive from God. And to receive the word and power of God, we need to take some responsibility for putting ourselves in a place where we can receive, which means nurturing our relationship with Christ.

But what are the specific examples? Well, Jesus seems to circle around, gradually getting closer. Having talked about his and the Father’s love for his followers, Jesus calls them to remain in his love by obeying his commands (verse 10). What commands? Ah, now comes the specific:

My command is this: love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (Verses 12-13)

You want to imitate Jesus? It’s simple. Love. You have received love, now give love. If we want the world to see living, breathing imitations of Jesus, then the church needs to be a community of love. The Methodist Church is stressing something like that in a national campaign at present. It’s called ‘A Generous Life’. It dwells on just how unbelievably generous God has been to all of us. How can we not respond generously in all areas of our lives? Yes, it’s about generosity with our money. But it’s also about being generous with our time, generous to God in our worship, generous in evangelism and outreach, and so on. This is what God’s gracious word, deed and power enables us to do.

Let’s return to where we began, and answer our original question: how do we keep in touch with the risen and ascended Lord? We imitate him, especially his love. We can do that, because God speaks forgiveness to us and empowers us by the Spirit. We access that by maintaining the lines of communication with God. And we live it out.

So – no more poison comments against other members of the church. No more cliques. No more judgmentalism. No more superiority complexes. Just love. Jesus-shaped love.

As Thomas à Kempis, who I mentioned earlier, put it in his classic book The Imitation Of Christ,

At the Day of Judgement we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.

1

Sermon: No Thank You, I’m C Of E (Low Sunday)

Today I preach at one of the churches in our circuit that isn’t in my pastoral charge. It gives me an opportunity in the sermon to use one or two favourite pieces of material when it comes to today’s Lectionary Gospel reading, and to make the odd point that will be familiar to long-term friends or readers. Still, whether you recognise some of the content or not, I hope you enjoy this sermon.

John 20:19-31

Pass The Peace
Pass The Peace by Vrede Van Utrecht on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

A friend of mine had a book of cartoons about the different approaches Christians have to sharing The Peace at Holy Communion. In one of the cartoons, a worshipper approaches another man, only to be rebuffed from sharing The Peace with the words, “No thank you, I’m C of E.”

In our reading today, the risen Jesus says, “Peace be with you” three times to his disciples. They don’t reject the offer of peace like the “No thank you, I’m C of E” man, in fact I’m sure they need it – one of the things that has struck me repeatedly this Easter season is just how scared the disciples were. Not just at the thought of arrest by the authorities, but the genuine fear they experience when they encounter the angel, the empty tomb and finally the risen Lord himself. They need peace!

But I am also struck in this reading – and it’s one of my favourite passages in the Bible – how the repeated gift of peace is accompanied each time by another gift.

The first gift is joy. The first time Jesus appears behind locked doors, says “Peace be with you”, shows them his hands and side, and ‘then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord’ (verses 19-20).

Not only is this a favourite passage, I also have a favourite story that I love to tell. It concerns the first Christian missionaries to the Inuit people of the Arctic. They were translating the Bible into the local language, but hit a problem when they came to these verses, and in particular, ‘Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.’ Their difficulty? There was no Inuit word for ‘joy’ and its related words. What could they do?

Running huskies
Running Huskies by Tambako The Jaguar on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

One day, a missionary went out with the Inuit hunters and their dogs. Upon return, the hunters fed the dogs with meat, and the missionary observed the evident happiness of the dogs as they tucked into their feast. He thought, “There’s a picture of joy. I’ll ask them what their word is for that.” As a result, the first Inuit translation of John’s Gospel reads at this point, ‘Then the disciples wagged their tails when they saw the Lord’!

Jesus is alive. He brings peace. That fills us with joy. Normally you cannot miss the sense of joy at Easter, can you? We have been through the self-sacrifice of Lent and the ever darkening shadows of Holy Week, only for light to burst forth on Easter morning and fill our hearts with joy.

Why are we joyful? Biblically, it isn’t that this is the ‘happy ending’ to the story – in fact, this is more like the beginning than the end. Nor is it only the promise that there is life after death and that we shall be with him forever after death. And as someone who lost his own mother just two months ago, believe me I don’t belittle that hope.

We are joyful because the resurrection shows God’s new world. As the Father has made his Son’s body new by the Spirit, so he is making all things new. It is the first event in the work of new creation. It is the foretaste of the new heavens and the new earth. You could say it is heaven on earth. Rejoice! God is not leaving things as they are. The resurrection says otherwise.

Look at it from the disciples’ point of view, before you get to any subsequent New Testament scriptures that make this point, such as Revelation 21. Think about how those good Jewish disciples expected the resurrection of the dead to happen at the end of history as we know it, when everyone would be raised back to life, either to blessedness for the righteous or judgement for the wicked, as Daniel 12 taught them. Well, suddenly this end time event has happened in their midst – a resurrection! Therefore God is bringing heaven to earth, and this is reason for great joy.

Let us also rejoice this Easter, because the life of heaven is coming to earth. We do not have to wait until death to experience at least a foretaste of God’s kingdom.

The second gift is mission. The second ‘Peace be with you’ is a preface to Jesus saying, “As the Father sent me, so I send you” (verse 21), and is followed by his [prophetic? Proleptic?] gift of the Holy Spirit (verse 22).

San Francisco - Mission District: Mission Street
San Francisco – Mission District: Mission Street by Wally Gobetz on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Mission makes sense after joy. We cannot keep quiet about the joy of knowing that God is bringing heaven to earth. God isn’t simply doing this for us, he is doing it for the whole world. It must not only be the subject of Joy, it must also be shared. Resurrection people are good news people.

And furthermore, it makes sense to talk about mission only after having received the peace of Christ. For how many of us get nervous about mission? It is a challenge, but Jesus offers us peace so that we may exercise the gift of mission.

But – what is this mission? Is it the much-feared door-knocking and button-holing? Before we make assumptions, let’s remember how Jesus described it. ‘As the Father sent me, so I send you,’ he said. Which begs the question: how did the Father send Jesus? And for that we have to go back from John 20 to John 1, to a verse we often read at Advent or Christmas, but which we need to hear all year round: ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14).

In other words, Jesus’ mission was not hit and run, however much he sometimes moved from place to place. It involved being with and living in the midst of the people to whom he was called. His life was visible to them, as well as his words and mighty deeds.

Likewise, we are not called to hit and run mission. We are called to costly involvement with the people among whom we live. We are meant to be present for the long haul. We are meant to be known for the kind of people we are as a result of our faith, sharing God’s love unconditionally, so much so that people want to know what it is that makes us tick. And that gives us the opportunities to talk about Christ. Most mission, Jesus style, is among our neighbours. If we know the peace of the risen Christ, then it is a natural act of gratitude to pay it forward by pouring our lives into the communities where we are situated, demonstrating God’s love and looking for the chance to speak about the One who leads us this way.

Not only that, our peace-based mission is exercised in the same power as Jesus. Here he tells his disciples to receive the Holy Spirit. We’ll put aside this morning the question of how we relate this command to receive the Spirit with the delay until Pentecost in Luke’s writings, for which there are various explanations. But let us note that this is another case of doing mission just like Jesus himself. His public ministry did not start until he received the power of the Holy Spirit at his baptism. Similarly, we are to seek the Spirit’s power in order to engage in his mission. There will be no signs of heaven coming to earth through our ministry in our own strength. We too must rely on the Holy Spirit. Too often we look for the latest techniques in order to revitalise our churches. These are dead ends. The only revitalisation will come from the life of God himself, and that means looking to the Spirit.

The third and final gift of peace is faith. When Thomas is present a week later, again Jesus turns up suddenly in their midst out of nowhere. Again, the disciples need to hear his greeting, “Peace be with you” (verse 26). This time, what follows is the invitation to Thomas to check him out and to believe.

Love And Trust
Love And Trust by Mike Baird on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

It is of course from this story that we get the nickname ‘Doubting Thomas’. He has said that he will not believe unless he examines for himself the wounds of the crucifixion in Jesus’ body.

But why do we regard Thomas as worse than the other male disciples? Is he really so different from the other apostles who doubted the women’s initial report of the resurrection according to the other Gospels? They too wanted strong evidence. I think my father was the first person to say to me that Thomas had had a rough deal from the church over the centuries, and I am inclined to agree with that assessment. The other men had no reason for a superiority complex: they had held the same attitude.

I don’t therefore see Jesus being any more censorious with Thomas than he was with any of the other apostles. He has just offered peace, after all. Yes, he points to the greater blessedness of those who believe without seeing him, but he still gives Thomas the gift of faith. And if early church tradition is to be believed, then although we don’t read of Thomas in the Acts of the Apostles, he most likely founded Christianity in India, where to this day there is a denomination named after him – the Mar Thoma Church.

I suspect that if we compared notes among us as a congregation, we would find a wide range in our experiences of faith. Some of us may find faith quite easy and serene, and others only find deeper faith after much wrestling with deep questions. And some of us individually oscillate between serene faith and questioning faith in different phases of our lives. The good news of peace from the risen Christ is that he invites us all on the journey of faith and trust in him, whether that comes easily to us or only with much struggle. The resurrected Lord comes to all his disciples, those who find it easy and those who don’t, with the gift of his presence and the bestowal of his peace. Just because you or I may be wrestling with some deep questions about God does not preclude us from the gift of his peace.

And because Christ still offers his peace to those who think they are bumping along the bottom of belief, that very gift can make the difference which allows faith to flourish and to be exercised with boldness. If the traditions about Thomas going to India are true, then maybe that is what happened to him. Did the peace of the risen Christ invigorate his faith, not only in the Upper Room but for the rest of his life? It is certainly possible for him, and it is for us, too.

As we conclude, then, let’s come full circle back to our ‘No thank you, I’m C of E’ man. There are people in our churches who don’t like The Peace. Maybe some present today are uncomfortable. But regardless of what we think about it as a formal practice, we cannot receive and keep the peace of Christ as solitary Christians. Since his peace brings joy, that most naturally overflows to others. Since his peace leads us into mission, that leads us to share Christ’s peace in word and deed with others. And as his peace leads us to deeper faith, we observe that is something that cannot solely be exercised in isolation.

This Easter season, then, let us say ‘Yes please’ to the risen Christ’s gift of peace. And may it enable our lives as disciples to grow and flourish to the praise of his name in the church and in the world.

2

Sermon: Two Kinds Of Fear (Easter Day)

Here is today’s sermon. It’s slightly shorter than usual, because it was preached in an all age communion service. I have left in the references to where the PowerPoint slides fall. If you would like to see the PowerPoint, please email me via the contact page.

[SLIDE 1]

Matthew 28:1-10

There’s one word that stuck out for me in the Easter story this year. It’s not a word you would expect when Easter usually makes us happy.

[SLIDE 2] The word is ‘fear’. What makes us afraid? Suggestions?

There are two groups of people who are afraid in the reading. The soldiers are afraid when the angel appears, rolls away the stone and perches on top of it (verse 4). And the women who go to the tomb are afraid when they arrive (verse 5) and afraid when they leave (verse 8).

Today we’ll think about those two groups of people – the soldiers and the women – and why they were afraid. This will help us understand the importance of the Easter story for us.

Firstly, the soldiers. You can’t blame them for being afraid, can you? It’s not every day that an angel shows up at your place of work and undoes everything you are trying to protect.

Think about what the angel did. In the verses of Matthew’s Gospel just before today’s reading, we hear how the religious authorities asked Pontius Pilate to make the tomb of Jesus secure so that the body could not be stolen. Pilate agrees, and as well as posting some soldiers to guard the tomb, he has a seal put on the stone (Matthew 27:62-66).

We need to think about that seal. What kind of seal was it? Was it this kind of seal? [SLIDE 3]

No: it was a wax seal, like this one [SLIDE 4]. It was the seal of the Roman Emperor, rather like the way even today we put wax seals on legal documents. The seal of the Roman Emperor was not to be broken. Effectively it said, “No-one should tamper with this – on pain of death!”

Well, it’s a good job angels aren’t too worried about the laws of the empire and the penalties for breaking them. And the fear of the guards isn’t just their fear at this sudden, unexpected supernatural act. It’s the fear of empires. It’s the sign that governments and powerful institutions need to fear the kingdom of God.

What do I mean? Well, all sorts of organisations and institutions behave as if they have the final say in the world. Dictators. Governments. Armies. Powerful companies. The media – television stations, newspapers, Internet giants. They think they run our world. They think they can’t be stopped.

[SLIDE 5] Kim Jong-Un can do his worst in North Korea. He can even send his henchmen into a London barber’s shop that mocked his instruction that all men have to have the same haircut as him. But one day he will answer to God.

[SLIDE 6] Rupert Murdoch can run his media empire. His journalists can listen to people’s private mobile phone messages, and his newspapers can print photos that degrade women, but one day he will have to bow down to the God who bursts open sealed tombs.

[SLIDE 7] So will Richard Branson. [SLIDE 8] And Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

You name them. If they have power in this world – even and especially big power – then the angel at the tomb reminds them that their power will not last forever. They can do all sorts of things now, but on Easter Day we laugh at their power, because we know who has ultimate power and who gets the last laugh.

Secondly, the women. They are afraid, too, but unlike the soldiers, the angel says to them, ‘Do not be afraid’ (verse 5) and he invites them to view the tomb. He hasn’t rolled away the stone for Jesus to walk out: he has rolled away the stone so the women can go in and realise that Jesus is risen. When they leave, their fear isn’t completely cured, but it is at least mixed with joy (verse 8). [SLIDE 9]

You can’t blame the women for being completely weirded out by the movement of the stone, the presence of the angel, and the absence of Jesus’ body. They never expected any of this. Now they are completely spooked.

But they get to hear the good news: ‘Do not be afraid.’ The resurrection might be bad news for the powerful, but it’s good news for those who follow Jesus. The women get to be the first witnesses of the resurrection. [SLIDE 10]

And you have to stop and think for a moment about how amazing that is. The women are the first witnesses. That might not sound remarkable to us, but two thousand years ago that was revolutionary. Women were not allowed to be witnesses. Only men. In fact, if you want another sign that the Easter story is true alongside what we heard in the Question Time sketch after the reading, this is an additional piece of evidence.

Don’t be afraid, says the angel to the women – people who don’t count in their society, people on the margins, people that the powerful would rather were invisible. These invisible people get the call to take on the most important job on the planet – being witnesses to the risen Jesus. [SLIDE 11]

Yes, before anyone else they get to learn that the risen Jesus will go ahead of his followers – a great promise when we do not know what lies ahead. They get to know that the risen Jesus will meet his followers – the promise that we are never alone in this world.

And it gets even better. The risen Jesus makes them jump out of their skin by suddenly meeting them while they are on their way to tell the disciples (verse 9).

The resurrection, then, turns our world upside-down. [SLIDE 12] Sure, we have to be aware of the powerful, but we don’t need to pay them the respect that many do, because the angels of the risen Jesus are rolling the stones away from their places of death. And when God one day raises all the dead from their graves, their time will be up. Let’s not pretend that the powerful have the last say in this world.

Instead, Easter entrusts the good news to the nobodies. Those who will never gain political power. Those who will never found a multinational company. Those who will never have influence in the media. They get to know that the risen Jesus goes ahead of them and with them. They get to tell the whole world this good news.

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Sermon: Jesus Will Disappoint You (Palm Sunday)

Matthew 21:1-11

Disappointment
Disappointment by Dee Ashley on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

The great Christian writer Philip Yancey wrote a book a few years ago called ‘Disappointment With God’. He recognised that people ask at times, is God unfair? Is God silent? Is God hidden?

And when we face those experiences, the last thing we need is to hear Christian clichés and pious platitudes. In a web article called ‘God Has Let Me Down. There. I Said It’, a woman called Joy talks about having one daughter with heart defects, brain injury and cerebral palsy who died young, other children who are bullied, and one child who says to her, “I have tried praying, but I get no answer. People say they hear God, but I don’t.” In the face of all this, Joy has little patience for those who tell her, “People will let you down, but your Father God will never let you down,” or “God’s ways are not our ways,” and so on.

So my theme for Palm Sunday this year is, Jesus Will Disappoint You.

Now you may think that’s outrageous. We’ve just read the story of the so-called ‘Triumphal Entry’. He has been welcomed with palm branches, crowds have laid their cloaks on the ground like first-century Walter Raleighs, they have sung his praises and acclaimed him king … what could possibly go wrong?

I may not agree with Samuel Crossman, the author of the hymn ‘My Song Is Love Unknown’, who posits that the very crowd who praised Jesus on his entry to Jerusalem is the same mob that called for his crucifixion in place of Barabbas – I think that’s a different group of people – but the Palm Sunday supporters of Jesus will be disappointed by him. He comes in peace, not war. He takes on the religious establishment, but not the occupying Roman forces. He ends up on a cross.

I think we can safely say that isn’t what they were expecting when they sang Jesus’ praises.

When I went to Spring Harvest in its earliest years, there was always a seminar on the final full day before going home that tackled the issue of what to do when you got home. The organisers in those early days knew that while it was uplifting to worship for a week in a big tent with four thousand other Christians, led by a team of crack musicians and inspiring preachers and teachers, it would be very different back home. There would be rickety Mrs Smith on the harmonium, a boring preacher in the pulpit, and a few dozen scattered around a stone edifice from which the brown and green paint is peeling.

Or we have wider disappointments. Perhaps we have great hopes for the church. They might be simply for our own congregation, when we think we are entering a new phase where great strides will be made for the kingdom of God, or we may anticipate a new Spring for the church generally, such as in the 1990s, when on the back of certain dramatic events attributed to the Holy Spirit, many church leaders confidently predicted a spiritual revival in .

Our disappointments, then, may be personal or communal, but there is no doubt we shall have them, and there is no doubt that many of them will not be fixed by Jesus in the way we want.

Well, that’s all pretty bleak, isn’t it? You’ve come to church looking to taste something of the Good News of Jesus Christ, only to be told by some Eeyore in the pulpit that there is none.

Not exactly. But we Christians are too quick to jump to the happy ending, like people who give up reading a novel and skip to the last page. We don’t stay with the tension of the story as we wait for problems to be resolved. We came for good news, and if we can skip all the intervening messy stuff and just go to the good bits. We need the reminder the little girl received when she asked her mother, “Mummy, do all fairy tales end with the words, ‘And they all lived happily ever after’?”

“No,” replied Mum, “some say, ‘When I became a Christian all my troubles were over.’”

We live out our faith in Jesus in a broken, sin-cracked world. And yes, we do know the ‘happy ever after’ ending, and yes, that is the basis for our hope. But we do people a disservice when we minimise their present troubles by rushing to the end of the story.

Imagine Gethsemane, but envision it differently from the way you know the story. See Jesus praying in agony, needing the support of his friends. But instead of them falling asleep and letting him down, can you conceive of Jesus coming to them, asking them to watch and pray even though ‘the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak’, and Simon Peter leaping to his feet, saying, “I don’t know what you’re worried about, Master. I know you predicted that you would be betrayed, suffer and die, but you also prophesied that you would be raised from the dead! Everything’s going to be fine!”

Do you suppose that was the kind of support Jesus was looking for in the Garden? Somehow I don’t think so. Yet it’s the kind of encouragement we sometimes offer to people in the church. And when we do this, we let people down. We trivialise their present suffering. We dissolve their current questions. It doesn’t exactly affirm them, does it? Of course the future brings light into darkness, but the road to the empty tomb is riddled with stones and potholes. As the Anglican bishop Nick Baines wrote five years ago at this season,

On Easter Day it is traditional for the service to begin with the vicar proclaiming: ‘Alleluia, Christ is risen!’ The congregation responds: ‘He is risen indeed. Alleluia!’ I think this might be a bit wrong. If we are faithful to the Gospels, the congregation should really respond to the proclamation of resurrection: ‘What?! Don’t be so ridiculous!’ Why? Because the disciples of Jesus did not respond to his resurrection with unbridled joy, but rather with bewilderment and suspicion and doubt.

Even on Palm Sunday, Matthew whispers to us, disappointment can be detected in the atmosphere. As the crowd spread cloaks for him, reminiscent of what people did when Elisha anointed the warrior Jehu king over Israel, and as they acclaim him ‘Son of David’, a messianic title, they fail to notice his mode of transport. He is coming in peace to establish the kingdom of God. Therefore to engage in conflict the powers and authorities as he soon will is more or less to guarantee a grisly fate. Institutions don’t easily release their grip on power, and will often do all sorts of things – scrupulous and unscrupulous – to keep their talons clinging on. That is what they will do with Jesus, and he knows it when he selects a donkey and a colt.

This, though, tells us that although Jesus will disappoint the hopes of his most ardent supporters, he will let them down in order to do something deeper and more wonderful than they could ever have imagined. It cannot be revealed by jumping past the unpleasant parts. It can only come as Jesus journeys all the way into the darkness. And we need to take that same trip with those who today are suffering or disappointed.

But at the same time, the hope is there for those who will not look for a short-cut but who will embrace the disappointment of Jesus in order to find his purposes. It is indeed true that ‘his ways are not our ways’, but we do not learn that by repeating it as a platitude, we learn that by going into the depths with him.

And we need to be ready for the fact that the way he will deliver us in the end will be something we could not possibly have imagined, let alone requested. Just as none of Jesus’ followers expected the Cross as central to salvation, so they also did not expect the Resurrection. If they were good Jews (and provided they were not Sadducees, which none of his disciples seems to have been) then they believed that God would raise the dead at the end of time, following the prophecy of Daniel 12. But not one of them was looking for an empty tomb, despite Jesus’ own predictions of it. Those times when Jesus foretold of his suffering and resurrection simply didn’t register in their minds at the time, because it didn’t fit with their sincere but limited understandings of God’s ways.

The disappointment of Jesus, then, opens us to new ways of God’s working in the world. I don’t mean that in order to give licence to the kind of people who jump onto the latest cultural bandwagon and say it’s what God is doing in the world, but I do mean that our vision of God is limited, and our understanding of his ways – however faithfully we study the Scriptures – will always be finite. Sometimes we get so caught up in our own assumptions and our spiritual short-sightedness that we miss what God is doing.

Remember, for example, George Whitefield challenging John Wesley to preach in the open air to the miners at Kingswood in 1739. Wesley was convinced it was a sin to preach anywhere except in a church building! But God used Whitefield to lead Wesley into what would be central to his life’s work.

Or consider those who object to musical instruments other than the organ in church worship. Guitars and drums are apparently unholy. But such people forget that at one stage in church history that was exactly how people thought of organs in church! It used to be a requirement in Methodist churches that hymn-singing be unaccompanied, and until recent times even the singing at the annual Methodist Conference was without musical instrumentation, facilitated rather by a precentor.

Or think about those who have witnessed the decline and death of a church, or even suffered such hostility in an existing church, that they have gone outside the existing patterns, grieved for their loss, and then started something new with a small group of friend in their living room, or maybe in a pub. Oh, wait – that last example would be Knaphill Methodist Church in 1866, wouldn’t it?

Yes, the God who disappoints is also the God who re-creates, the God of new creation. I think of one of Paul’s prayers in Ephesians where he praises ‘him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine’ (Ephesians 3:20). Or I think back to last week’s Lectionary and my sermon at Addlestone on John 11, the raising of Lazarus, where Jesus causes immense disappointment by refraining from visiting Bethany where Lazarus and his sisters lived until after he had died. But then, having allowed Mary and Martha to begin a journey into grief, he does something extraordinarily beyond their expectations in raising their brother back to life.

I don’t know whether you see Palm Sunday as frothy or as joyful. But either way, I urge you not to let the emotional ecstasy of the crowd mislead you. Start this year’s Holy Week journey as a trajectory downwards into darkness and disappointment. Our God does answer prayer, but he doesn’t have a white beard and he doesn’t wear a red costume. At some point either his answers will disappoint you, or his lack of an answer will disappoint you. it’s even how he treated his Son.

But then, when all hopes have been dashed to pieces on the rocks, witness what God does instead. It may well not be what you originally desired. But it will be new, transforming, and far better than you dared imagine.

This is the faith we embrace as we enter Holy Week. Let us open our arms to greet it.

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Sermon: The Resurrection Of Broken Dreams

John 11:1-45

The Raising of Lazarus
The Raising Of Lazarus by Fr Lawrence Lew on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

I want to tell you about a book I have just finished reading. It is one of the best I have read in many a year. It isn’t one of the academic theological books I read. It’s one I want to recommend to my congregations. Unfortunately, I can’t wave my copy in front of you, because I read an electronic version on my Kindle. I could wave my Kindle at you, but that wouldn’t make much sense.

The book is called ‘Resurrection Year’, and it is by an Australian author called Sheridan Voysey. He is a successful radio presenter who has achieved his dream of broadcasting a talk show about life and faith across his native land. But his wife Merryn, a medical statistician, longs to start a family. It is their unfulfilled dream. The opening chapters of the book are a journal of ten years in their marriage when they hope to have a child. They are told they are exceptionally good prospects as adoptive parents, but no phone call about a child to adopt ever comes. When they tell the adoption authorities they want to try IVF again, they are told they cannot remain as potential adopters.

Several rounds of IVF fail. They take one last chance, and all the tests indicate that Merryn is pregnant. They tell their friends and family that a baby is on the way. But it’s one last false dawn. Yes, a gestational sac is growing, but there is no foetus. They have to let their dream of having children die.

The rest of the book chronicles their questions and struggles in faith. God never answers their ‘why’ questions. It also tells how they rebuilt their lives with new hopes – their ‘resurrection’.

For many of us – perhaps most, possibly even all of us – the life of faith bumps up at one or more times in our lives with broken dreams. We hoped for something big. It never happened, or it did but it was taken away from us. Since Mum’s death six weeks ago, our daughter has been asking question after question about why God couldn’t have done things differently for Nanny, or why we will have to wait so long before being reunited with her in Heaven.

I am sure you can add your own examples. In some cases, I know what they will include. For others of you, I do not necessarily know.

But of this I am sure: the Bible knows of this very dilemma, and we do so in today’s Gospel reading as Jesus approaches Jerusalem. The death of Lazarus is a broken dream. And Jesus just seems to make it worse. He knows Lazarus is ill, and he stays away. Not much of a pastoral visitor, was he? Lazarus is a friend. Mary and Martha are friends (verse 5). But still – in a culture where medicine was so primitive – he stays away two more days (verse 6).

So the first thing I want us to appreciate this morning is a painful, yet hopeful truth: Jesus is involved in our broken dreams. Broken dreams do not mean the absence of God, even if they do mean a loss of hopes. We do not understand why Jesus’ work in our broken dreams is what it is – Mary and Martha don’t really receive much of an explanation – but that doesn’t change the fact that he is still here.

It’s rather like the Book of Job. Lots of people are under the misapprehension that the story of Job gives us an explanation for the existence of suffering and of a good God. But it doesn’t. Job only answers one question: ‘Is there such a thing as innocent suffering?’ Its answer is ‘Yes’. When Job finally comes before God towards the end of the book with his questions, God doesn’t answer them. In fact, God more or less says, ‘Where were you when I created the world?’

If Jesus is still involved in our lives when he doesn’t answer our prayers for the fulfilment of our dreams, then what is our response? In one respect, our response is simple, but probably not what we want to do. We simply hang on to him in the disappointment.

That can be tough. But if it is, then remember these things. When we are screaming at God for not bringing to pass the things we have cherished in our hearts, we are not complaining from a position of unbelief. Rather, we are like the child beating their fists against their father’s chest, all the while being held in his arms. God is still holding us in our pain. He may not be answering us for reasons that are inscrutable to us, but he is still holding us.

And moreover this: when God is holding us, his grip on us is stronger than our grip on him. When our world has fallen apart, we may well feel like we cannot hang onto God. But he is stronger than us. As we cry out in our agony, he does not intend to let go of us. He wants to hold us close to him, even if that does mean we punch him in the chest. Remember how many of the Psalms are written by people calling out to God when life is dark. Like Jesus using Psalm 22 on the cross, saying, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’, we have that sense of abandonment but we can still call the Lord ‘my God’.

And this links with the second thing I would like to say from the passage: the faith we exercise is faith in Jesus. I know, I know: this is another of those times when I say the obvious in a sermon. But that’s what happens for Mary and Martha: when Jesus finally arrives in Bethany, called by some ‘God’s favourite place on earth’, he hears them both say, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died’ (verses 21, 32).

But there is a difference in their responses. Mary, who is held up as the paragon of faith in Luke’s Gospel for sitting at Jesus’ feet and learning from him, is not the faith-filled one here. Martha, whom Luke depicts as distracted and frantic, is the one who shows glimmers of faith in this story.  Mary doesn’t say any more – although we should note that Jesus is not judgemental about this, he is moved by her tears (verse 33).

But Martha does. Listen again to her exchange with Jesus:

20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home. 21Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.22But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.”23Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” 27She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”

She still believes Jesus can do something for her. Her faith is still at one level that of a typical devout Jew, believing that the resurrection of the dead will happen ‘on the last day’. You know and I know that her faith is about to be elasticated, but there is basic faith in God and in Jesus going on here.

And sometimes that’s all we need. That is the raw material God uses to make something beautiful that we had never imagined.

Rolf Harris
Rolf Harris by Nico Hogg on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

It all puts me in mind of Rolf Harris. It may be contentious to mention him now, given the criminal charges he is facing, but his many talents were a large part of my childhood. An LP of his greatest hits was the first record I bought with my own money (actually a Sunday School prize), and we always watched his television shows. I am sure you recall his catchphrase when he was painting something: ‘Can you guess what it is yet?’ What looked like a few random brush strokes was the beginning of a work of art.

When our dreams are broken, the only faith we may be able to offer Jesus might be just a few random brush strokes, just some basic faith. But God too is able to work with that and create something beautiful.

And that leads on to the third and final strand of what I want to say this morning. Jesus can transform our broken dreams. Mary and Martha wanted their brother Lazarus healed. It didn’t happen. When he died, Martha could still at least believe God would answer Jesus, and that her brother would be raised at the last day. But what Jesus actually did was far more than they could ever have imagined. He goes to the tomb, has the stone rolled away, defies the retching stench, and says, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ (verse 43) He has promised Martha she will see the glory of God (verse 40), and in this miraculous sign she does. He told her he was the Resurrection and the life (verse 25), and now she knows he is.

But the thing about resurrection is that it comes after a death. For Jesus himself to be the resurrection and the life will have to follow his crucifixion.

Yet this does at least mean that if our dreams have died, then the stage is set for new life. Death is not the end for us. It is the end of one act and the curtain closes, preparing us for the next.

Sheridan and Merryn Voysey never did get to have children. And their ‘resurrection’ involved not only the death of that dream, but the burial of Sheridan’s radio career in Australia. They came to the UK, where Merryn was offered a job at Oxford University, and new opportunities began to present themselves to Sheridan in writing and speaking – but not yet in radio again, I believe.

In my own life, I could think about some of the dreams I had for ministry when I set out that have never been fulfilled. Ordination has never opened up doors to the new vistas I hoped it would. Early in my ministry, I was a seminar speaker at two big Christian conferences, but that side of my calling has never taken off. Sometimes ministry has been less about my dreams and more about my nightmares. But at the same time, I have found myself doing other things that I never imagined I would. Things that I never thought would bring me contentment and fulfilment do indeed bring those blessings.

So I want to encourage you this morning if you have broken dreams in your life. Consider today an invitation – an invitation to bring those broken dreams to the altar of God. Remember that an altar is a place where living things are placed in order to be sacrificed. I dare to invite you to lay down your dreams to die, to place what questioning faith you have in Jesus, and enter into your grieving.

But wait for God to bring new life from the tomb. It is what he promises, and it is what he does. You may be tempted by the thought that laying down your unfulfilled dreams on the altar will lead only to a future filled with regret, but we believe in the God who makes dry bones live, the God who brings life out of a cave used as a tomb.

In short, we believe in a God whose Son said, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

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Sermon: Conflict And The Church Community

Acts 15:1-41

Moses
‘Moses’ by Ludie Cochrane on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

So we come to this passage for the second time in our series on conflict (which finishes next week). And this time we come at the story from a different angle. It would be nice for me to get out the sermon from a few weeks ago and repeat it, but not so nice for you!

This time, our theme is about the rôle of the Christian community in transforming conflict. The story features both leaders and regular community members, and various Christian traditions see the relationship between them differently.

So, I could introduce you to a friend of mine who was an Anglican rector. He told me once that he saw his task in the church as being like Moses, going up the mountain and coming back down with the will of God for the community to obey. It didn’t leave much room for the rest of the church family to discern the will of God.

And that was rather like the couple who joined one of my previous churches from an Anglican parish church, where the husband had been on the PCC, but had become disillusioned with a vicar whose attitude to the PCC members was, “When I say ‘Jump’, your only response is to ask, ‘How high?’” This husband was a man of strong opinions, and his face didn’t fit anymore.

At the other end of the spectrum are some Baptist churches, where their belief in the ‘priesthood of all believers’ is so strongly combined with their convictions about every member of the Body of Christ having a gift that the pastor cannot lead at all. He or she is regarded as just one member of the congregation with a specific gift to offer.

Of course, the problem for all parties – as it often is with any conflict – is one of power, and if one person or group can gain or keep some power, then sadly it is not always used for the common good, but for personal gain and protection. What principles, then, will enable a Christian community to work through tough issues?

Firstly, I believe Acts 15 models for us a safe community. When the dispute flares up in Antioch, Paul and Barnabas end up in ‘sharp dispute and debate’ (verse 2) with those who want all the male Gentile converts circumcised. What proceeds from there in the discussion and argument in Jerusalem is a context where any person feels safe to make their contribution. People on both sides are passionate, yet both the traditionalists and Paul and Barnabas can have their say. There is no mud-slinging, and there are no so-called ‘ad hominem’ attacks where someone attacks an opponent’s character rather than their argument. ‘The whole assembly’ (verse 12) is involved, and the issues are thoroughly aired. Nothing descends to the juvenile behaviour of a Prime Minister’s Question Time.

The church doesn’t always behave as well as that. I have seen various forms of bullying in church life – or at least subtle intimidation – where it is made clear that unless you hold a certain view you are unwelcome. To do what the early church does in Acts 15 in creating a safe requires high levels of love and trust.

That is going to involve a lot of challenges to our attitudes and to our default reactions. How easy is it, for example, to think of our brother and sister Christians as our enemies when we think they are terribly wrong? I have sometimes listened to character assassinations and assaults on the integrity of other Christians at Church Councils and other gatherings. I knew a Church Council where members turned up each time, with some of them asking, “Who will so-and-so attack tonight?” And we may believe that people are doing things badly or standing for the wrong things, but we cannot allow the situation to degenerate like this – not if we want conflict dealt with healthily. We need to remember what Paul told the Ephesians in chapter six, namely that our conflict is not with flesh and blood but with spiritual forces. A simple remembering that we are sisters and brothers in Christ is one step on the way to creating a safe community.

Within that, we can resolve to think the best about the people on the other side of the debate from us. I confess I’m not always as good at this I would like to be, because sometimes I am searching in my mind for all sorts of hidden, devious motives that those who take a contrary point to me must hold. And while I am not calling for us to be naïve – remember Jesus called us to be ‘wise as serpents’ as well as ‘harmless as doves’ – there is a real case for believing that people have disputed with us for what they perceive to be good and honourable reasons.

Debbie recently went for a job interview at Christ’s College, Guildford. One of the things that impressed her was the slogan printed on every sheet of paper:

At Christ’s College everyone is special, made in the image of God and needs to be treated with respect.

That gets to the heart of the issue. That biblical approach is core to creating a safe community where even conflict can be dealt with in a positive, healing way.

Secondly, I believe Acts 15 models for us a listening community. When the apostles and elders meet to consider the question (verse 6), there is ‘much discussion’ (verse 7) before Peter speaks up. There is ample opportunity for all to have their say. That requires not only the speaking of the contributors from all parts of the community, but tenacious listening from the apostles and elders who are charged with making the final decision.

We have thought about listening earlier in this series, and I offered a definition that ‘listening is not thinking about what you are going to say when the other person finishes talking’. I stand by that, and I want to add some words to it this morning. They come from someone I met on my Bridge Builders course on conflict transformation last September. Chris is an Anglican priest who specialises in reconciliation, and he was on the course seeking further skills. On Friday, he put these observations on Facebook:

Take time and space to listen – I mean, really listen to the other person. Not just to rebut them or defend your self or your belief, but to understand what values are really motivating them and what their needs may be, regardless of agreement or disagreement. The relationship you establish will be richer for it.

It’s challenging, isn’t it? I think I said to you before that like many people, the first thing I want to do in a conflict situation sometimes is defend myself. To be an ‘undefended’ person is scary, but we have to listen in many ways to what others are saying.

The Cantonese word for ‘listen’ is one of those Chinese pictograms made up of a number of elements that contribute to a more complete notion of listening:

The Cantonese pictogram for 'listen'
The Cantonese pictogram for ‘listen’

Some of us just listen with our ears, accumulating the other person’s words in order to establish the facts. This is important, but it isn’t the whole story.

Some of us use our eyes in listening, watching for body language that tells us things the person’s words don’t – sometimes even contradicting their words. This takes us further.

Some of us listen with our heart, paying attention to the underlying feelings of the speaker. This also helps the process in a partial way.

Finally, some of us listen with undivided attention. It’s so much harder to do that today, when we can be distracted by the portable computer that we call a mobile phone in our pockets.

It is indeed difficult to practise listening on all these levels. And not just difficult, it can be exhausting. But a Christian community that desires to see conflict transformed is one that will commit to costly listening. So will we seek the help of the Holy Spirit in order to become a community of listeners?

Thirdly and finally, Acts 15 shows us a growing community. By ‘growing’ here, I do not mean ‘numerical growth’, I mean growth in grace, development in faith. How so?

A lot of good things happen in this story. It starts with people causing trouble, agitating young Christians (verse 1, cf. verse 24). It is contained in a safe community where there is mutual acceptance and good listening, before the leaders (who describe themselves merely as ‘your brothers’) make their final decision, resulting in an encouraging and diplomatic letter to the younger believers in Antioch (verses 23 to 29). All should be well. The new church is glad, the messengers strengthen them and some of them are sent back with a blessing of peace while Paul and Barnabas remain to preach and teach (verses 30 to 35). Happy Ever After?

No. There is a sting in the tail. Of all the people you don’t expect to fall out with one another up until now, it’s Paul and Barnabas. They have stood together in this crisis. They go back several years: Barnabas supported Paul when others were wary of him. But now they have a bust-up over John Mark. Paul says John Mark has shown he’s not up to missionary work and takes Silas as his new partner, while Barnabas does still trust John Mark and continues to work with him (verses 35 to 40). From now on, Acts follows the Paul narrative, and Barnabas and John Mark disappear from view.

You could read this incident in more than one way. You could say that Paul and Barnabas have failed to learn the lessons of the Council of Jerusalem in transforming conflict. Or you could say that sometimes life presents us with situations where there isn’t simply a right answer and a wrong answer. The rest of Acts seems to vindicate Paul, with its remarkable stories of his subsequent missionary journeys. But although Barnabas and John Mark vanish from the narrative of Acts, they are not erased from Christian history. There appears to have been a later reconciliation. In 2 Timothy, attributed to the time just before Paul’s death, the great apostle says to his young lieutenant,

Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, because he is helpful to me in my ministry. (2 Timothy 4:11)

Not only that, we have a tradition from soon after the biblical era that John Mark wrote down the reminiscences of the Apostle Peter. We know that document as ‘The Gospel According to Mark’. Paul may have had a dynamic ministry after Acts 15 with Silas and others, but Barnabas’ decision to encourage John Mark, just as he had previously encouraged Paul, seems to be vindicated.

Am I just offering a history lesson here? No. I think this shows the early church in all its immaturity and imperfection, getting things right but also slipping back. However, there was the commitment to growth, the intense desire to go the right way and follow Jesus together.

I expect we can identify with that sense of imperfect community, where one time we seem to do things gloriously well and put a smile on the face of God, yet the next day behave collectively in such a crass, immature way that you wonder whether we are the same bunch of people. And when we do that, we hurt others, as well as making God weep.

The question for us, then, is whether, in the midst of all our failures and foibles, we can radically commit ourselves to growth in the life of the Spirit. The reality is that we are not going to be the perfect community where no-one suffers as a result of our foolishness. We will cause one another pain, however much we may want to be a safe and listening community. Let us not be under any fanciful delusions.

But are we willing to grow? That is, are we willing to repent of our sins and learn from our mistakes when we have hurt others? Are we willing regularly to examine our spiritual lives, and let others hold us accountable, perhaps in a small group? If so, then just such a growing community will more truly become a safe and listening community, where conflict is not only managed, it becomes an occasion for grace and for the spiritual transformation of those affected.

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Sermon: Jesus Our Example For Mission

John 4:4-42

Jesus?
Jesus? by Isaac Torrontera on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

I once heard the great Australian mission leader Michael Frost tell a story of how he had once spoken to a gathering of six hundred Christians. He had retold to them one of the Gospel stories about Jesus, and invited them to imagine themselves as one of the characters in the account. Afterwards, he asked them which characters they had taken on.

To his disappointment, only twelve of the six hundred had imagined themselves as Jesus.

Now I can see why many Christians would be reticent to identify themselves with Jesus. We feel unworthy to do so. But Michael Frost’s point was this: aren’t we called as Christians to imitate Jesus? Isn’t Jesus supposed to be our example? That was how he was hoping people would take his invitation.

And that’s what I hope for us this morning, too – that we shall take Jesus as our example from our reading. Specifically with John chapter four, we are going to take Jesus as our example on the question of mission. We hear a lot about the importance of the church to emphasise mission these days – well, where better to take our model than from Jesus himself? One passage won’t give us an exhaustive treatment of how Jesus models mission for us, but it will give us a good start.

Wind
Wind by Shamin Mohamed on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Firstly, Jesus operates by the wind of the Spirit. I don’t suppose that’s a contentious claim, but let me justify it from the passage. The Lectionary this week starts officially at verse 5, ‘So he came to a Samaritan  city called Sychar’, but I asked for the reading to begin at verse 4, where John writes, ‘But he had to go through Samaria.’

Did Jesus have to go through Samaria? No. If he were a devout Jew, he could have avoided Samaria. Yet he felt a compulsion to go there. I can’t help thinking back to last week’s Lectionary Gospel reading from John chapter three, where Jesus himself tells Nicodemus that ‘The wind blows wherever it wills. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’ Jesus has said that his true followers are blown by the wind of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit takes them on all sorts of adventures, detours and strange, unexpected directions.

But Jesus doesn’t just say this about his followers. He lives that way himself. He had to go through Samaria – when really, he didn’t. I suggest to you that Jesus is living out what he had taught Nicodemus – the life of discipleship is one of being led by the Holy Spirit. It is not predictable, it is not conventional; discipleship is not about accepting the norms by which the rest of society lives. It is not about adopting the expectations of wider society in the way we set the course of our lives. It is about being open to the ‘God of surprises’ who may well want to do unexpected things with us. Paul, the great expert on the Jewish Law, becomes an apostle not to the Jews but to the Gentiles. John, nicknamed by Jesus one of the ‘Sons of Thunder’, becomes the apostle of love. And so on.

Could it be, then, that one reason why we have not been effective in Christian mission in today’s church is that we have not allowed ourselves to be blown into places we would never have anticipated by the Holy Spirit? Could it be that we have so swallowed our culture’s norms that that we have not been in the places God intended us to be? Isn’t it so easy to be sucked into the regular expectations of everyday Surrey? I must get the best education. I must get the best paid job. I must live in the nicest neighbourhood. Not that these are always bad things in themselves, but to default to them without being open to the leading of the Holy Spirit is a huge spiritual mistake with potentially massive consequences.

So – is God challenging any of us not just to accept the expectations of our culture but to be ready to go wherever the Holy Spirit leads us?

England World
England World by Doug Wheller on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Secondly, Jesus conducts mission in the world. The action happens at Jacob’s Well – and I don’t mean the location near Guildford where you might pick up the A3. Jesus is weary and sitting by the original Jacob’s Well (verse 6), and that is where the story unfolds.

How remarkable is that? Remember that Jesus conducted much more of his mission in the world than in the synagogue. And then contrast that with us. We conceive of mission in terms of people coming to us, attending our events at church. We’d rather not get out into the world with our faith, because that makes us nervous. If we really do have to engage in Christian mission, then can we at least please cajole people into coming along to something we’ve arranged ‘at church’, where we feel safe?

Jesus would never have got the woman to a synagogue. She wasn’t a Jew. She was female. She was probably regarded as a ‘sinner’.  There was no hope. Operating by the strategies we adopt where we hope people turn up at church would never have reached this woman with the love of God. And increasingly, as fewer and fewer of our population are used to the church environment, the hope that we might just get people along to the place where we feel safe is more and more a misplaced strategy that has more to do with our fears than it has to do with our desire to overflow with God’s love.

Jesus is again acting out something from earlier in John’s Gospel. Not simply the previous chapter, as with following the wind of the Spirit, but the first chapter, with its great Prologue about the Incarnation, where we read that ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (1:14). Jesus is dwelling not in the safe religious space but in the world. And if we are to imitate him, then we must do something similar.

So when a person tells me that they aren’t playing any part in the life of the church because they don’t have a job in the church, I don’t believe them. They are being sent to practise their faith in the world.

I say this as a minister where the expectations of many church members in various churches I have served would cage me inside the church. I have to work at making my connections outside the church. For some while now, that has been in our children’s school community, but that is lessening as the children get older. It is increasing on a Saturday morning as I stand on the touchline watching my son play football, and as I talk with other parents. But as the children’s independence increases, I shall have to be quite intentional about finding my contacts outside the church.

What of us, then? Are we willing to spend time outside the safe environs of the church community for the sake of the Gospel? Some of you have ready-made communities in the work place. Others of you will have to look harder. But please don’t build your whole life around this building.

It's a drag
It’s A Drag by MTSOFan on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Thirdly, Jesus goes to the weak and the marginalised. Why did the Jews despise the Samaritans? Go back to 2 Kings 17 and you see. Samaria was more or less the northern kingdom that had so betrayed the faith of Israel that it had been conquered by Assyria in the eighth century BC. After that conquest, Assyria had placed members of other races and faiths there. As a result, faith in Samaria became no longer concentrated exclusively on Yahweh but a compromised mixture. They included idol worship in their religious practice. Anyone with a devotion to ‘pure’ Judaism would find these elements distasteful, if not horrifying.

And not only is Jesus talking to a Samaritan, he is talking to a Samaritan woman. Remember that the pious daily prayer of many a devout Jewish man went like this: ‘Blessèd art thou, King of the universe, who hast not made me a slave or a Gentile or a woman.’ Second class just doesn’t seem to cover it.

Furthermore, this particular Samaritan has a reputation. She has had five husbands, and is now living with a man outside marriage (verses 17-18). Now I used to think this meant John was painting for us the picture of a deeply immoral woman – I remember preaching on this passage as a young Local Preacher and saying she was someone who would go for anything in trousers. But later I realised that wasn’t fair on her – not in a culture where only the men could initiate divorce. She is a broken woman. Men have treated her like an object to be tossed away when no longer required. She can have no reasonable expectation that this devout Jewish man will treat her as anything more than dirt. She is socially and religiously unacceptable.

Except this is Jesus we’re talking about. Jesus, who did not live in fear that he would be contaminated by those who did not meet the highest standards of ritual purity. Jesus, who knows that his following the wind of the Spirit and his commitment to mission in the world have on this occasion led him to this woman – this broken, hurting, rejected woman.

And here is the application for us. Isn’t it easy for us to stay with the nice, clean, safe people – the good churchgoers and if not that, then the pillars of the community? Isn’t it simpler to mix with people from Horsell but not those from Sheerwater?

Actually, no. It isn’t a question of it being ‘easier’ to mix with the ‘right’ types. When we do that, we’re not simply taking the easy option, we’re giving in to temptation.

And neither do I want to see us succumb to patronising other people. This is, after all, the week in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us that ‘hard-working people’ (that favourite expression of politicians) like beer and bingo.

What I’m calling for is genuine love for those who are different. I’m saying that Jesus went to the wounded with a message of God’s love for them. To the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well he offers ‘living water’. She is dry, and he offers her divine refreshment (verses 10-15). She is interested in worship God aright, and he promises the help of the Holy Spirit (verses 20-24). She longs for the Messiah, and unlike many other people he meets, Jesus is open with her about who he is (verses 25-26).

While we accept the conventions of society rather than allowing ourselves to be blown by the wind of the Spirit, our faith will atrophy, just like muscles in our body that are never used. While we stay safe and warm, huddled up in the church community, rather than venturing into the world that God loves, we shall never encounter the people God has called us to serve in his name. And while we ignore or despise the weak and the troubled, we shall not have the privilege of encountering many people whom God loves so dearly that his Son Jesus Christ was born, died and was raised from the dead for them. In short, without following the example Jesus sets for us in John 4, our faith is dead, and our churches wither.

But when we are open to being led by the Spirit, God will take us to new, surprising and fruitful places for his mission. When we are willing to go into the world and meet people where they feel secure, God has us beginning to act in faith, and he can use that. And when we are willing to share and demonstrate God’s love in Christ with people who don’t meet our standards of respectability, then God may well be taking us to the very people he has prepared to respond to the Gospel.

So – which of us is willing to follow the example of Jesus?

And to do it this week?

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Sermon: Conflict In Action – Negotiation

Well, long time no see. I had a couple of sermons it seemed diplomatic not to publish here. I have also been dealing with the suffering and decline of my mother, who eventually died a fortnight ago. Tomorrow I come back from some annual leave and compassionate leave. Below is what I plan to preach.

Acts 15:1-41

Negotiation
Negotiation by Nick Thompson on Flickr. Some rights reserved.

Conflict is regularly in the news, and especially at present with the dispute between Russian and Ukraine over Crimea. We have a Russian President in Vladimir Putin who clearly wants to flex his muscles as if the Cold War were still going on, just with changed national boundaries. He can threaten both Ukraine and the EU with reduced gas supplies. We have lofty moral statements from British and American leaders, who of course would never contemplate illegally invading another country. Hopefully at some stage the sabre-rattling will end and negotiation will begin.

And we are not immune to major conflict in the church. I am thinking here less of the individual conflicts in a congregation when people upset each other, but more about the major arguments that happen across the wider church. The media loves to report on the convulsions of the Church of England over women bishops and gay rights. It mocks the church, because these issues seem settled in the wider society, and because the world just doesn’t understand the care and caution with which churches try to handle their disagreements, in an attempt to reflect the Spirit of Christ. (Or at least that’s the theory.)

Now you may think this isn’t so relevant to you, as a regular Christian who doesn’t get involved in wider church politics. But it does affect you. The decisions made affect you. The media coverage affects you. information is available at hand for you to have an opinion on these things, and they become topics of debate and even of division in local churches.

So let us look at Acts 15, where we come to the first major dispute for the whole church in her history. There had been small, local disagreements before, but the question here about Gentiles joining the People of God went to the heart of the Gospel. How did they handle their negotiations between parties that started out so far apart in order to come to a common mind?

Firstly, let us look at the content of the arguments presented by the differing parties. We have a number of authoritative sources to which the different campaigners appeal. They look to a number of different authorities that we still use today.

We begin by hearing those who want the Gentiles to be circumcised. They call on tradition: ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to keep the Law of Moses’ (verse 5). This is what has been handed down to us, they say, and this is how we have understood it.

Next, when the apostles and elders meet to consider the issue, Peter addresses them using reason. He points to the way he knew God had accepted the Gentiles by faith and then says, ‘why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear?’ (Verse 10)

After that, Barnabas and Paul give an account of their experience: ‘telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them’ (verse 12).

Finally, James speaks up and quotes from Scripture: he cites the prophet Amos and comes to a conclusion from there.

These are the four building blocks of Christian truth – the tradition of God’s people (that is, what has been handed down to us), the use of human reason in a holy and wise way, the appeal to experience in the sense of saying, this is what we believe the Holy Spirit has been doing, and finally comes the authority of Scripture.

Each of these plays a part in the early Church’s decision here, even tradition, which you might think they reject, given that the final decision goes against the traditionalists. But no, because although the tradition is changed, there is a sensitivity to those who value tradition in the letter sent to the Gentile believers at the end – hence asking them to abstain from certain foods and from sexual immorality (verse 29).

Reason is important, too. The old Sunday School song was not ‘Jesus wants me for a zombie’, God wants people who will love him with their heart, soul, mind and strength. Provided we seek to use our minds worshipfully they will make a vital contribution. And that isn’t just for intellectuals: the one who uses reason in this passage is Peter, the former impetuous fisherman.

Experience counts for a lot, too – not in the sense that my experience always trumps your argument, but in the sense that we believe God is active and at work in his world, and so we want to know what the signs of the Holy Spirit’s activity are. That’s what Barnabas and Paul describe.

But Scripture is the ultimate yardstick. While it is too crude to treat it as ‘the owner’s manual’ or as a much neater and more systematic collection of books than it actually is, it nevertheless serves as the framework for God’s authority in Christ, and hence that is decisive for the Christian. ‘O make me a man of one book,’ prayed John Wesley. He used the other sources – reason, tradition and experience – but Scripture was the most important source of knowing God’s authority for him.

Secondly, we need to look at the method used. It’s one thing to talk about these four sources of truth – Scripture, reason, tradition and experience – and to suggest that Scripture is the most decisive for the Christian, but it’s another to put it into practice. You don’t have to be around the Christian church to know how this can go all wrong. Bible verses can be used insensitively, taken out of context and you can pick different verses that seem to support contradictory positions.

To take just one example I could offer among many, I recall being away on a Christian holiday, where one person joyfully (perhaps thoughtlessly) sang along to a song based on a verse from the Book of Malachi which says, ‘God hates divorce.’ The singer had no idea we had a divorcee among us, and still less of a clue that some of God’s displeasure at divorce was about the pain inflicted on people when relationships break down.

Add your own stories – I’m sure you have them.

So how do we use the Bible wisely in negotiating our way to God’s path for us when we are in dispute? The answer I was given when I was a young Christian was about always interpreting the teaching of the Bible in its original context. There is much to be said for the old saying that ‘a text without a context is a pretext’. The apocryphal story of the man who played ‘Bible bingo’ to determine God’s will illustrates this. He opened his Bible, stuck his finger on a verse, and it said, ‘Judas went out and hanged himself.’ Being rather unnerved about this, he opened his Bible elsewhere and again put his finger down randomly. The verse said, ‘Go and do likewise.’ All this could have been guarded against by taking the verses in context and not in this random way.

But even then, interpreting the Bible in context is not enough. It’s not even how the New Testament treats the Old Testament. Think about the Scriptures quoted by the Gospel writers as being fulfilled by the birth of Christ. They generally did not mean in their original context what Matthew or Luke take them to mean when they tell us about the coming of Jesus. ‘A virgin shall conceive’ was originally ‘A young woman shall conceive’, and referred to the coming of a ruler eight centuries before Christ.

But what those writers do there – and which James does when quoting Amos in Acts 15 – is that they interpret the Scriptures in the light of Christ. Amos could not have known that his prophecy about ‘the Gentiles who bear [the Lord’s] name’ (verse 17) had anything to do with faith in the Messiah and the observance of the Jewish Law. But James sees it that way.

And something like that should be our aim, too. When we are working out with other Christians what the way forward should be, and what the Bible above all is saying to us, we need to handle it in what one scholar calls a ‘redemptive’ way. We need to interpret Scripture in a Christ-like way. What does a passage mean in the light of Christ? How does this fit with the climax of God’s revelation to us in Jesus? These kinds of questions will be our method, rather than just thinking, what Bible verses can I shoot at my opponents?

And that leads us to the third and final element of Christian negotiation in conflict: attitude. One way and another, we keep coming back to this, and it’s vital. There is no gloating when the conflict is resolved in Jerusalem. The different parties have come to a common mind without there being any sense of winners and losers. Christian negotiation is not what the world calls a ‘zero sum game’, where victory for one side is balanced out by defeat for the others. It is a common pursuit of God’s will, even if we come from different perspectives – and we must all be open to the Holy Spirit changing us.

Furthermore, the tone of the letter from Jerusalem to the Gentile converts is what some Christians call ‘irenic’ – that is, peaceable. It isn’t a lecture from know-alls to know-nothings. Rather, it says, this is what we have concluded. We would ask you to do this, and we would advise you to do that.

The whole debate and the consequent letter are framed in humility, gentleness and grace. This is a group of Christians living out what Paul described about the humility and servanthood of Jesus in Philippians 2:1-11.

And we need to aspire to this. It isn’t always easy in the middle of passionate debate, but it is vital that humility, servanthood and grace are the dominant tones of our conversation, even of our disagreement. It’s the lack of such things that leads to division and to the demonising of our brother and sister Christians.

For instance: while I’m not in this sermon going to talk about my views on the whole sexuality debate, I will just observe that it is one that could have been conducted in a much more Christ-like way in the church. When pro-gay activists label everyone who disagrees with them ‘homophobic’ or (in one individual case ‘morons’), then what hope do we have? When those who wish to preserve traditional teaching smear homosexuals with the idea that they are latent paedophiles, then that is just as bad. There are dreadful people and dreadful arguments on both sides, to be sure. But there are also people in both camps who want to preserve something important about Jesus and the Gospel. One party is concerned to welcome those who have been pushed to the fringes of society, the other wants to maintain Christian holiness. Both are important to retain.

Can we, when we are tempted to get hot under the collar ourselves about major issues, still retain that humble, gracious attitude that the church leaders in Acts 15 displayed? Can we make sure we are drawing on what each of the sources of Christian truth – Scripture, tradition, reason and experience – tell us? Will we give a priority in all this to biblical teaching, but do so in a way that is in harmony with what we know of Jesus Christ? And can we negotiate our differences in a spirit that is different from the combative, blood-letting approaches of the world – in a style that looks more like the character of the Lord whom we serve?

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