Covenant Service Sermon: The Renewal Of God’s Purposes

Deuteronomy 29:10-15

We come to our Covenant Service today, faced with a big problem. That problem is a word. The word ‘covenant’ itself. It is one of those words that has slipped from people’s language and understanding. So much so that our first task today is to ask, what is a covenant?

Consider how we used to use the word ‘covenant’, and why it has slipped from our conversation. In the days before Gift Aid was introduced in 2000, you had to take out a covenant with a charity if you wanted them to benefit from tax refunds on your giving. At one stage, the covenant lasted for seven years, then the commitment was reduced to four years. Now – in order to benefit those one-off gifts we make – you don’t need to be committed to the charity at all.

Another area in which we have previously talked about ‘covenant’ is marriage. And while I don’t generally believe the idea that many people go into marriage today casually, saying, “Well if it doesn’t work out we can always divorce,” I do think we have lost the notion of covenant. Marriage has slipped between two stools, due to experiences of pain coupled with a sense of personal rights. One stool is the idea of it as a legal contract, and hence we see the fashion for pre-nuptial agreements.

The other stool is how we cope with disliking people in a very individualised society where we have lost the notion that we and other people need forgiving. James Emery White puts it like this:

If relationships become too uncomfortable, we disengage. We change jobs, move out of a neighbourhood, find a new church or leave our marriage. We minimize relational life as portable and disposable.[1]

But to Christians, relational life is not portable and disposable. People are made in the image of God – even the ones we dislike. And they are just as loved by the God who brings forgiveness through the pain of the Cross.

A covenant, then, is a solemn and mutually binding commitment, framed by an understanding of love that is about commitment to the other party rather than self-fulfilment. That is why ‘the covenant of the LORD your God’ in Deuteronomy 29:12 is ‘sworn by an oath’. It is made by God’s acts of salvation for us, and we enter into it when we respond. Which is why in the same verse Moses tells Israel this is a covenant ‘which the LORD your God is making with you today’.

Just as yesterday we celebrated forty years of David and Arline’s mutual and continuing commitment in love to each other, so today in the Covenant Service we celebrate God’s commitment of love to us since the dawn of creation. He has promised unfailing love to us. He has kept that promise. He continues to keep that promise. And we enter into his covenant of love by our own solemn promises in response. Just as the Covenant in Deuteronomy was in response to God’s deliverance of his people from Egypt, so ours is a response to God’s salvation in Jesus Christ.

If this is the nature of our covenant renewal today, the first thing we need to do is meditate on our salvation. Let us recall the humbling gift of a baby in a manger. Let us recall the obedience of Christ. Let us remember his teaching and miracles. And let us focus on his sufferings and death, his conquest of his death, his reign at the Father’s right hand, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the promise of his return.

Then let us say – this God deserves my unswerving allegiance. And let us renew that commitment today.

But then there is a second question to ask about covenant in this passage: why does God make a covenant?

To answer this, let’s notice a misconception we sometimes have about God’s covenant with us, and our Covenant Service. When we say the Covenant Prayer, it is full of ‘I’ and ‘me’ language. ‘I am no longer my own but yours’. The modern prayer then follows with a lot of uses of the word ‘I’. The old version of the prayer, on which many grew up, uses ‘me’ a lot: ‘Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will, put me to doing, put me to suffering’, and so on.

And with language like that, it’s tempting to think that the covenant is between God and me. Well it is, and it’s essential that everyone makes their own personal commitment of faith and obedience to God in Christ.

But … God has bigger purposes. This is not just about me and my private relationship with God (as if it could be private). The ‘why’ of the covenant is this: God’s purpose is making a covenant is to form a people for himself. In Deuteronomy, God has the assembly of Israel together before him: leaders, elders, officials, men, women and children, plus the aliens in the camp (verses 10-11). It’s done together, because, as Moses explains in verse 13, the covenant is ‘in order that [the LORD] may establish you today as his people’.

God, then, uses his covenant to make and establish us as his people. We are to be a community of people, radically committed together to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church was never meant to be an accidental aggregation of whoever coincidentally turned up in the same building on Sunday.

And why is God so keen to form us into his covenant community? Because he made human beings to live in community, not isolation, and that has gone badly wrong due to sin. He calls us to be the light of the world together. He calls us to show how it is possible to live in committed love together in a society where break-ups, unforgiveness, prejudice and other diseases ravage people all the time.

No wonder God wants every part of the Israelite community before him for the covenant, and those not present are included, too. This is his serious project. It is the one plan he has had since Abraham. The reference in verse 15 to ‘those not here with us today’ is ‘not those accidentally absent but those as yet unborn’[2]. We may as Christians operate under a ‘new covenant’ in Christ, but the goal is the same: a redeemed community as a corporate witness in the world to God’s holy love.

So this morning, let us not see ourselves as private individuals in separate booths, renewing our covenant. Let us recognise that we are doing this together as the people of God for the sake of the world. Before we say the Covenant Prayer together, I shall say the words, ‘We are no longer our own, but yours.’[3] Let us renew our covenant, not only in terms of our personal commitment to Christ, but our commitment to one another in him, and our commitment together in his Name for the world.

A recap: we have said that the covenant is a solemn mutual commitment that God initiates and to which we respond. We have said that God does this in order to form a people for himself who will be a witness as a community to a broken world. Finally, a third question: when do we make the covenant?

Well, the simple answer is ‘today’, isn’t it? We renew our commitment today in this service. And our reading is littered with references to ‘today’. One commentator says:

The emphasis in this passage is upon the present (today is used five times), not in the sense that a new covenant was being initiated, but rather in the sense that the renewing of the covenant was a revitalizing of the relationship.[4]

‘Today’ is not just about urgency, frequency or regularity. It is about revitalising our relationship with God. How many of us could do with that? I know I could. I know what it is to go through spiritually dry seasons in my life. I imagine that many or all of you do, too.

But what do we do when we find faith dull, dry and uninspiring? Some just plod on and hope things will work out or change of their own accord. Others seek the latest religious fads and fashions. Or we might hold out for a dramatic spiritual experience.

There can be virtue in all those approaches. Sometimes, just to continue doing what we know is what we are called to do. On other occasions, new approaches to faith may help us. And it is also possible that the Holy Spirit may intervene in a powerful way.

However, sometimes the revitalisation that comes ‘today’ happens through basic decisions of obedience. Canon Michael Green, a well-known charismatic Anglican, hardly shy of welcoming dramatic spiritual experiences, once said that he knew far too many Christians who were refusing to get on with the Christian life until God did something extraordinary in their lives. He said they should just simply make the decision to obey Christ.

Let’s compare it to a marriage again. It isn’t always the flowers, the box of chocolates or the diamonds that make a difference. A dry marriage is watered when each spouse takes the trouble to think what their beloved would most appreciate them doing. That can win the heart and bring back the spark as much as anything else.

Today, then, may be the ‘when’ for saying another simple ‘yes’ to Jesus. ‘Yes’ to walking in his ways. ‘Yes’ to pleasing him – as Paul says, ‘Find out what pleases the Lord’, implying of course that if we find out what pleases the Lord, the natural thing is then to do what pleases him. Today, as we say another ‘yes’ to Jesus, it may just be that as we do so from the heart, it so delights the Lord that there is a new spark in our relationship with him.

So if the finely crafted words of our promises today are met by finely crafted acts of devotion and obedience, who knows what might be around the corner? As we respond to God’s committed love of us with our own committed actions of love for him, might we just see God renewing his purposes for the world in our neighbourhood? Might we then be on the brink of a renewal in our life and witness?

May the Holy Spirit so empower us that it is so.

[1] James Emery White, Wrestling With God, p140.

[2] Christopher Wright, Deuteronomy (New International Biblical Commentary), p287.

[3] Methodist Worship Book, p290.

[4] Peter Craigie, Deuteronomy (NICNT), p357.

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A Brief Sermon For A Renewal Of Wedding Vows

Forty years! How on earth does someone like me, who has been married one fifth that length of time dare to speak some words to you on this day?

As I pondered that question, I felt led back to a particular memory of our own wedding service. No, not Debbie entering the church building to the accompaniment of ‘Born to be wild’ in memory of her past as a biker, with my mother whispering in my ear, “What is this music, dear?”

Nor did I think about us leaving the service to the strain of the Thunderbirds theme music, to the evident delight of my two young nephews who were our page boys. International Rescue might be a metaphor sometimes needed in marriage, but it didn’t occur to me in relation to you two!

Instead, I recalled that the Anglican rector friend of mine whom we asked to preach chose a surprising reading, we thought, for a wedding. It was Luke 24:13-35, the story of the two friends who walked to Emmaus, not believing yet that Jesus had risen from the dead. I didn’t dust down his sermon – besides, I couldn’t find the tape of the service! But it did make me think that I would offer my own thoughts on this story in connection with your own marriage.

As I say, it’s a surprising reading, but it is one about two friends, two companions. My rector friend said that some people think that Cleopas and his companion are a married couple. I’m not sure about that, but whether they were or not, I think there are some encouragements we can draw from the story on this wonderful occasion today.

Firstly, I see a couple talking about Jesus. Cleopas and his friend or companion are exercised about Jesus in the story. Granted, there are things they don’t know and major issues on which they are wrong, but nothing matters more to them than to talk together about Jesus.

And that’s something I appreciate about you as a couple, too. We can talk about all sorts of things, such as the way we compare notes about young children. David and I can talk about computers or football. But what is most important and utterly natural in your presence is that we talk without any sense of being forced or nervous about the central aspect of our lives, faith in Jesus.

In my four years here, I have seen it grow and grow in you. It was always there – our early conversations often centred on your experiences in the past with the Campers and Caravanners’ Christian Fellowship, and particularly the things you learned through your friend Mike Dominy.

But I have seen it increase. I think the decisive time was when you went on the (this is ironic with this text) Walk To Emmaus weekend. Something went up a gear in you then, especially in David!

There are all sorts of helpful things we can learn about what makes a healthy marriage. But for a Christian couple, this is critical. How sad it is when Christians find it hard to talk about their faith, even with their loved ones. But you can do that, and because you can, you have a way of getting to foundational issues about life and faith which surely holds you in good stead in your marriage. If you talk about Jesus, you will be talking about self-giving sacrificial love. You will be talking about forgiveness. You will be talking, therefore, about matters absolutely critical to the health of a marriage.  I see this as a work of the Holy Spirit within and among you. I pray it is something to which all Christian couples would aspire.

Secondly, I see the presence of Jesus with you. Jesus came and joined the couple as they walked to Emmaus. They weren’t aware for quite a while that he was with them. They were unable to identify the mysterious stranger who accompanied them and made sense of the Scriptures. Only in the breaking of the bread were their eyes opened to his identity.

And similarly, you may not be aware all the time that Jesus is with you. I am sure you know it in theory, but there will be times when you do not feel his presence or circumstances will be dire and you imagine he is distant or absent. You would be only human if you were not to have those thoughts and feelings as you live with Arline’s health.

But let me tell you something. People see Jesus in you. They see it in how you live out your lives in the face of joy and pain. They experience something of him, simply by coming into contact with you. Some will be able to say, ‘That’s Jesus’. Others will merely know there is something special about you.

And you may be surprised to learn this is the case. However, it is my experience that it is often other people who notice things like this. I know of a story where a student vacated his room at the end of a term and someone stayed in it for a conference during that vacation. That latter person experienced a particular sense of peace that they put down to the faith of the student who normally lived there.

Likewise, I know a story where the house where a Christian family had lived in was sold. The new residents were Christians. They had an unmistakable sense that they had moved into a property that had been full of prayer over the years.

Today, then, many of us here celebrate the fact that you are a couple through whom we encounter Jesus.

The Rector who preached at our wedding lifted five points from this story. I am going to confine myself to three. My third is about hospitality.

Cleopas and his companion offered hospitality to the stranger who had joined them on the road. It was a natural thing to do in Middle Eastern culture, and indeed still is. It is not something so natural in our society.

But it is something I – and others – have experienced from you. One piece of advice we were given when training for the ministry was that if you are going out visiting for a few hours, save for last a visit to some people who are positive, and who refresh you just by being with them.

Often when I’ve called on you unannounced, you have been my last call of the afternoon for that very reason. Whether times have been good or you have been going through further adversity, I have always been glad that I have had time with you. If it were ever inconvenient, you have never let on. You seem to know that definition of hospitality which goes like this:

Hospitality is making people feel at home when you wish they were at home (Michael Baughen).

It is something we know you have practised in the way you have welcomed international students into your home.  In the New Testament, it is a gift of the Holy Spirit in the case of some people. why? Because it’s a Jesus thing again. The offering of love. The giving of self, of time, of possessions. All these are implied in the act of hospitality. Christians, therefore, can offer hospitality as a witness to their faith. I believe you do.

As I conclude, then, you may think I have described you as far better people than you feel you are. Well – let a friend have this public opportunity to say kind things about you! I am sure you know dark and broken things that I and many others here have no idea about.

But – today we celebrate the love you have shared in forty years of marriage, and which you continue to share. In particular, those of us here who are Christians rejoice in the way you put that love into practice in such distinctively Jesus-shaped ways. I pray that many of us will learn from your example and be inspired by you.

And in doing so, may the Jesus you love and serve gain all the glory.

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I Was Hungry And You Fed Me

He was new in town, out of money and hungry. He had turned up at my church building, hoping to find me and receive help. A neighbour had directed him to our manse, which is two miles from the church premises. Having walked that distance in the heat, he was now also thirsty.

The gentleman’s opening request was for me to give him work so he could earn money to pay for what he needed. Sadly, I couldn’t offer him that. We had just finished a project on the church hall. But Debbie offered him sandwiches, drinks and a food parcel. All these he gratefully accepted. I Googled details of the local Citizens’ Advice Bureau and printed off details for him. I showed him the map on the print-out, and described how he might find their office from where he lived.

It is part of a minister’s lot to deal time to time with such requests. I have no doubt that this caller was utterly genuine. If he had wanted money for ulterior reasons, he would have been shifty when Debbie offered him food and drink. But of course at other times we are faced with people whose motives are less clear. They may be honest, or they may be feeding something like a drug habit. They may just be common or garden conmen. (And they usually are men, not women.)

Knowing we would face such dilemmas, I remember us discussing it at theological college. We were offered no wisdom by a tutor, we were just left to get on with thrashing out some ideas for ourselves. I felt we could have done with the wisdom of experience, whether we agreed with the tutor’s opinion or not. But we did not receive that privilege.

It is an emotive issue. The Gospel clearly calls us to care for the poor and needy. Jesus himself commands it. Hospitality, too, is a virtue, if not a spiritual gift. Yet at the same time, if we wonder whether the person before us is honest, we are worried about good stewardship of either our own personal resources or a fund which has been built up by contributions from the faithful at communion services. We wonder whether we are being fooled, and whether it matters. We may wonder sometimes about personal or family safety.

My policy has generally been to prefer offering gifts in kind rather than money. Food, a train ticket, whatever. But some would think I am being unreasonable, and that I should grant every request for money, even if I am foolish. They would suggest I was being mean, but that has never washed with me. I think it’s about stewardship.

Even within that policy, there are a few things I don’t feel comfortable with buying for a caller. The obvious one would be cigarettes, and I’d probably add alcohol to that. Again, some would disagree with me and buy these things (or give the caller the money) so they might have something that makes them feel good. I cannot cope with giving something destructive. I can’t see how that is Christian. That may sound patronising, but to me it is about honest conviction.

One old friend of mine would take homeless people she met on the streets in central London where she worked to a café where she would buy them a meal. She would also eat with them. However, she rather made it a condition that they listened to her testimony before eating! Much as I want people to hear the Gospel, I would never make the receipt of practical help conditional. The Gospel is about unconditional love and grace. I would not wish to be shy or ashamed about my faith, but I would hope that my actions were the starting point of witness.

Those are some of my thoughts on the subject. What are yours? You might manage to change my mind.

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On Youth And The Aging Of The Church

Trawling through the emails that accumulate while we are away on holiday is a massive task upon return. This time the inbox had inflated to 1400. It’s therefore a task I undertake in several phases over a period of days. That meant it wasn’t until a couple of days ago that I saw one that had come in before holiday but which I had left: the fortnightly Serious Times Update from James Emery White. And his 30th July column was a great thought-provoker. Following a report on his own denomination, he ventured into the debate about why the Christian Church in the West is aging. He listed the usual suspects:

Some blame a secular society; some blame traditional approaches to ministry; some blame new forms of individualism that lead Christian young adults away from institutions in general; some blame the lack of evangelism.

Then he added something to the conversation from his own experience:

The natural flow of the church is to skew old. Left to itself, that is what it will do. It will age. You take your hand off of that wheel, and that is what will happen. This is not the only natural flow of the church. Left to itself, the church will also turn inward and become outdated.

He describes how he has seen this happen in churches previously (and still) seen as ‘hip’, including his own. He goes on to outline some of the intentional steps churches must take to model the importance of younger generations. Some of them are only applicable to larger churches with several people on staff. To attract young adults, you have to hire young adults, platform young adults and acknowledge young adults. But even if some of these do not work in small churches with just the one minister (who may also be shared with other churches), White’s main theory is that churches must deliberately model the acceptance of younger generations by using them in leadership. It also means embracing some of their technology, an idea that greatly appealed to me!

And that’s where I thought it might be worth having a debate on this blog. No-one can doubt the problems many churches have reaching younger generations. While I am not sure White would necessarily approve of some positive discrimination or affirmative action description of his suggestions because I’m sure he’d still only want to hire and platform young adults of suitable gifting and character, should there be some kind of bias towards them? Would it help to invest a disproportionate amount of energy in young adults?

On the one hand I have seen churches where everything had to be tested by whether the elderly would accept it and could participate in it. If they could not take part, an event did not happen – even though there might already be other activities in the church programme that catered for older generations.

Furthermore, it was not so surprising to see the growth in the 1990s of youth churches, especially given that some of them arose out of historic denominations where the emphasis on tradition had alienated younger Christians.

But on the other hand, our wider society is arguably one biased towards youth and it could be said that by valuing the elderly, the church is making a prophetic statement about a marginalised group. Unless, of course, that is the only group the church is dealing with.

I have a gut feeling that White is telling us something important. What do you think?

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Sermon: Pharisees, Disciples and Tradition

Mark 7:1-23

“Who has used up all the handwash in the bathroom?”

Debbie asked the question, but she knew the answer.

“I did!” said Mark.

We should be pleased that our son is very good at washing his hands after going to the toilet. It’s just that he doesn’t think one squirt from the liquid soap dispenser is enough. He doesn’t accept that with water its effects will multiply. So he pumps the dispenser about three times on each occasion.

Our only problem on hand washing with Mark comes when I have to take him in a public toilet and he thinks the electric hand dryer is going to be too noisy. Only one thing is allowed to be loud in this life, and that is his voice! So confronted by a noisy hand dryer, he may want to dry his hands on his t-shirt instead, and complain vigorously if I don’t do likewise.

It’s easy to read today’s Lectionary Gospel with modern eyes and think it’s a story about hygiene. In which case, we would be as offended as the Pharisees and the scribes at the actions of Jesus and his disciples. In a time when we are even more concerned about safe, healthy practices in our churches due to swine flu – witness Anglicans and Catholics not using a chalice for communion and some Christians not wanting to share The Peace – this story may seem even more disturbing.

But the background is different. The religious lawyers of Jesus’ day had taken the Old Testament laws, imposed their own interpretations on them, and then made those interpretations a binding tradition on all Jews. Washing your hands before eating bread was not about physical cleanliness but about  avoiding ritual defilement. And that seems to be something that never worried Jesus too much. After all, he shared table fellowship with ‘sinners’, making him unclean in the first place.

So the issue here is this: what shall we do with tradition? Is there still a place for it? Do we overturn it, like angry teenagers? What is its place, if any, for the disciples of Jesus?

What, then, is tradition? Put simply, tradition is the wisdom and truth that generations hand down to succeeding generations. Here’s an example. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul’s great chapter on the Resurrection, he speaks of passing on what was handed down to him. You could more literally translate it not simply as what was ‘handed down’ to him but as what was ‘traditioned’ (to coin a word) to him.

At its best, then, tradition is a good, helpful and even necessary thing. Truth and wisdom is handed down to us. Then it is our responsibility to hand it on to the following generations.

But because tradition is the means by which we hand something on, it cannot be the be-all and end-all in itself. If you like, tradition is a goods train, but it is only the train, and not the goods. What is important is that the goods get to their destination.

And that’s why when the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day made so much insistence on the regulations they had devised, they were putting all the stress on the train and not on the goods.

John Wesley said there were four sources of truth for Christians. They were Scripture, tradition, reason and experience. But he was clear that Scripture trumped all the other three. Tradition, then, for Methodists, has to be about the ways we hand on scriptural truth. If it faithfully conveys the biblical gospel, though, then tradition has done its job.

The problem comes when tradition gets ideas above its station. There was a story that illustrated this in the new issue of Christianity Magazine:

A church I know is dying from hypocrisy. And although I’m watching it from a distance, it’s still painful. The congregation is small, though very faithful, and the minister is a natural evangelist. But whenever someone is converted through an Alpha course or pub ministry they don’t stay in the church for long. The members soon show them that they are inadequate for their new faith: they know nothing about the depth and traditions of Christianity; the fumble their way round the Bible and prayer book; they don’t have the gravitas or decorum for respectful worship; and those who have children can’t control them properly. The old faithful, who are becoming fewer in number, can’t understand why the new believers don’t make more effort to be like them and to support the church like they do. They can’t see that they are suffering from that peculiar form of hypocrisy identified by Jesus – doing all the ‘right’ things for all the wrong reasons. And this results in repelling people from God.[1]

What are we to do, then, if we are to stop tradition being used to damage people, as Jesus clearly thought was happening in his day, and was obviously happening in the church I have just mentioned?

I think there are two measures we must take. I have hinted at the first, but to underline it, let’s return to the Bible passage. Hear the words of Jesus again:

He said to them, ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
“This people honours me with their lips,
   but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
   teaching human precepts as doctrines.”
You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.’
 Then he said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!’ (Verses 6-9)

Jesus quoted the Scriptures and accused his opponents of abandoning Scripture (‘the commandment of God’) in favour of human tradition. So our first remedy must be to place tradition under Scripture, not outside or above the Bible.

If we’re going to place tradition under Scripture, then we need to do two things. The first is that we need to soak ourselves in the Bible. The second is that we then need to subject our traditions to biblical teaching, and ask whether they do indeed carry the Gospel into our world, or whether they contradict it.

That’s why I’ve spent much of the last four years urging people into spiritual discipline, including Bible reading. It may be using daily Bible reading notes as I do. It may be using our imagination to enter the situation and the characters as Ignatius of Loyola taught. It may involve persistent chewing on whatever grabs us in a particular passage. But whatever approaches we take, the bottom line is that if we are serious about following Jesus, we will be serious about immersing ourselves in the Bible.

Then, when we do, we can examine our traditions. Do they convey the Gospel on a two thousand year journey into today’s world, or do they turn ‘human precepts [into] doctrines’ (verse 7b)? You could raise a lot of embarrassing questions about the way we do church without a lot of difficulty. A lot of the things that consume our time or tie us down have very little to do with the Gospel and should be open to all sorts of criticism. Are we in danger of Jesus quoting the same words from Isaiah about us that he did about the Pharisees and scribes: ‘In vain do they worship me’ (verse 7a)? Would he tell us that we ‘abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition’ (verse 8), even ‘rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep [our] tradition’ (verse 9)?

So – the first thing we need to do is place tradition underneath Scripture. This means we soak ourselves in the Bible and then examine our traditions carefully in the light of the Gospel.

But I said there were two measures. It’s not enough only to place tradition below Scripture. Why? Because you will have come across those kinds of Christian who know their Bibles well but lob verses of Scriptures at others like hand grenades. You’ll know how people have been wounded by other Christians cutting them to shreds with the Bible. So while, for example, I hold a traditional Christian view that the only place for sexual relationships is in marriage and that marriage is between a man and a woman, I am also aware of the way homosexual people have been damaged by the church.

Our second measure, then, is this. Having placed tradition under Scripture we must then guard our hearts. Jesus, in quoting Isaiah, says it’s a matter of the heart:

This people honours me with their lips,
   but their hearts are far from me (verse 6b).

Where were the hearts of those who criticised Jesus and his disciples? Far from God. It’s the danger we face, too. If we do not stay close to God, then it doesn’t matter whether we are issuing edicts of tradition or firing bullets of Scripture, if we are not in close and vital contact with God, we’ll achieve nothing for the kingdom of God, however zealous we are. More likely we shall cause pain and put people off church, rather like the elderly people at the church I mentioned earlier whose actions have driven new converts away.

So how do we guard our hearts and draw near to God? I am reading a book called ‘Wrestling with God’ by an American pastor, James Emery White. On Friday, I read the chapter entitled ‘The Distance of God’ where he discusses many reasons why people may feel far from God. By no means all of them are our fault, but he asks some people, ‘What are you doing to stay close?’ and suggests some basic activities that will draw us closer to God:

  • Are you praying?
  • Are you spending time reading and reflecting on the Bible in order to apply it to your life?
  • Are you involved in worship?
  • Are you connecting with people whose relationship with God challenges and encourages your own?
  • Are you engaged in some kind of ministry to others?
  • Are you carving out time for spiritually oriented reflection?

    • If the answer to any of these queries is ‘no’, then there’s no wonder that God feels distant. Our relationship with God must be nurtured and developed. We can begin a spiritual life, but we must also develop it. God continues to ask the question, ‘Who is he who will devote himself to be close to me?’ (Jeremiah 30:21)[2]

Most or all of us are people who have begun a spiritual life, mostly many years ago. What is each one of us doing to develop it? We cannot be complacent. We cannot stand still – because we won’t remain where we are, we shall slide backwards, further away from God. There is great danger to our souls if we do not develop our spiritual lives. I have to challenge myself and say, just because I have followed certain spiritual practices for many years, am I still in a vital, living relationship with God, or have I drifted into stagnant water?

We are faced with a challenge, then: those who fail to nurture their spiritual lives become Pharisees. Not only do they waste away spiritually themselves, they hurt others by their harsh application of tradition.

On the other hand, those who do develop their life in the Spirit are disciples of Jesus. Feeding on Scripture and intentionally growing their relationship with God, they are like the image  in Psalm 1 of a tree by the water.

Which, then, are we: Pharisee or disciple? It’s our choice.

 

[1] David Instone-Brewer, ‘New Testament Scandals #9 Hypocrisy’, Christianity, September 2009, p52.

[2] James Emery White, Wrestling With God, p53.

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links for 2009-08-28

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Today, I Have Mostly Been Thinking About Buildings …

… because two issues have been on my mind. The first is that a major upgrade to our church hall should be finished in time for rededication on Sunday. We have spent a lot of money bringing it more than up to scratch for disabled access, and implementing some necessary refurbishments at the same time. We shall have good reason to say a public thank-you to the man who has seen the scheme through from vision to completion.

But finding a form of words to use for rededication is difficult. There is an order of service in the Methodist Worship Book for the dedication of a new church building, but it doesn’t fit what we need here. (Not that the denomination should provide a liturgy for absolutely everything.) Even if that service did have some resonances, much of the wording assumes that church = building. And I don’t think so.

The second also revolves around some joyful news. I have been asked to conduct a wedding. However, the couple requested they have a low-key informal wedding in a country house or similar property. The trouble is, English and Welsh law won’t allow that. As an ‘Authorised Person’, I can only conduct Christian weddings in registered religious buildings. The law that allowed weddings in public places other than register offices and places of worship specifically limited those ceremonies to civil weddings, that is secular ones where no religious content is allowed. I’m fairly sure that’s because the Church of England saw the move as a threat to their ‘business’, but it means I’ve had to disappoint the couple concerned. As far as they were concerned, if their Christian friends were present, then wherever they were, they were ‘in church’, because church = the people.

Before the last General Election there was a White Paper before Parliament proposing changes to marriage laws, where the deciding factor would not be registered buildings but registered celebrants. As a minister in a mainstream denomination, I would have become a celebrant, and if I deemed a venue suitable (and it met certain otehr minimum criteria), then I could have conducted a wedding there, rather like the Scottish system. The White Paper died at the election, and hasn’t been resurrected. We are thus left with a church = buildings assumption built into the marriage law of the land.

None of this is to deny the necessity of buildings, or to romanticise the church = people equation. I know of churches planted in Uganda that have been desperate for their own buildings for the pragmatic reason that they needed to get their people out of the intense heat. And just as I know what a burden it can be in an historic denomination to have to maintain a building, I also know of issues with ‘new churches’ that find  the hiring of buildings difficult. Lugging equipment in and out of a school every Sunday can be a drain. That isn’t viable with the predominantly elderly congregations I serve – although neither is it easy for them to find enough able-bodied people to take care of everyday maintenance.

The other side of the coin, is of course, the idolisation of buildings. I have seen church communities so devoted to their bricks and mortar that you wondered who or what was being worshipped.

And maybe worship is the issue. Buildings are not masters but servants. Where we worship them, God is not worshipped – whatever religious activities we conduct within them. When we recognise them as servants, they are in their proper place. Treating buildings as servants becomes a healthy framework for our decisions about them. Is what we are proposing to do a way in which the building is used to serve God and serve other people?

Even then, we have to watch our hearts for additional or ulterior motives. There is no doubt on Sunday morning that when we rededicate our church hall there will be a major element of service about that. It is used by many community groups. At the same time, the fact that it is brings in necessary income for us. I like to presume that the offering to the community takes predecence in our thinking over our need to raise money. (We have invited our hirers to the service, and we shall pray God’s blessing on them – the dancers, the pre-school, the silver band and all the others.)

For if it were to be the latter motive of balancing the books, then we would need to think seriously about our motives. If our overall aim was about our finances, then I’d start thinking of Jesus’ words in Mark 8 that those who want to save their lives will lose them. I don’t see why they can’t be applied corporately, to churches, not just individually. Many churches are obsessed with self-preservation, and how they view their buildings can be one sign of this sickness. However, those aiming for self-preservation, and whose reasons for using their building reflect this, are the churches most likely, according to Jesus here, not to be preserved at all.

So by all means let’s have buildings. We need them. Let’s ensure they are our servants, not our masters. And when they are used as inanimate servants, let’s be careful to watch our motives. May God search our hearts.

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