Tag: William Temple

Worship In The Midst Of The World (Isaiah 6)

Isaiah 6:1-13

I expect you’re aware of the custom whereby just before the Sunday service starts, the duty steward prays for the preacher in the vestry. Over the years, I have heard a variety of such prayers, the worst being one Good Friday where in his prayer the steward called the death of Jesus a mistake.

But another common one starts something like this: “Dear Lord, we gather here today to leave the world outside behind and concentrate on you.” Now I guess that could be interpreted more than one way. But is our worship really an escape from the world?

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord (verse 1a).

Is that just a date in Isaiah’s diary? I don’t think so. If all he wanted to tell us was the day on which he had a powerful experience of worship and commissioning, he would surely just have named the month and the day of the month. ‘On the twenty-third day of Nisan,’ or something like that.

No. Locating his divine encounter as happening ‘In the year that King Uzziah died,’ Isaiah affirms that worship takes place in the middle of what is happening in the world. The events of history do not drive our worship, for sure, but worship is located in the midst of politics, economics, and every power that competes to shape our lives.

What does this worship look like?

Firstly, glory:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
    the whole earth is full of his glory.’

4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.

I once arrived at a church as a visiting preacher and was greeted by a member of the congregation who said, “I hope you’re going to entertain us today.” This brought out my Mister Grump side, and I replied, “Well, I hope we’re going to worship.”

We must get rid of this idea that worship is entertainment. It is a prominent heresy across all sorts of Christian traditions and worship styles. Worship is to give glory to the triune God, who is holy, holy, holy. We are here to honour his name and to give thanks for all he has done. Worship is God-centred or it is not worship at all.

Archbishop William Temple gave a famous definition of worship:

Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty; the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose–all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.[i]

None of this is an escape from the world, for God is the greatest reality there is. Moreover, as the Creator of this world and its Redeemer, God is where our focus needs to be, without having an escapist mentality.

So while it’s not true to say that ‘the world sets the agenda’ – that was one of the heresies from liberals at the World Council of Churches – it is true that we come to focus our energies on God, who created the world we live in through Christ and by the Spirit, and who also redeems the world through Christ and in the power of the Spirit.

Secondly, confession:

5 ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’

If we truly encounter the living God in his glory in worship, then we shall realise quickly that we do not match up. That’s what Isaiah realises, and not only for himself. He admits not only his personal sin, but the sin of the nation. A true encounter with God will blow away once and for all the idea that we’re all good, decent people who merely make the occasional error in life. It will relieve us of the comfortable illusion that we are good enough for eternal life.

Furthermore, here our lives are calibrated not by the popular standards of the world but by God and his holiness alone.

Initially, this leaves Isaiah with a sense of hopelessness. He cannot get beyond ‘Woe is me! I am ruined!’ That’s desperate.

But God can get beyond it. A seraph brings a live coal from the altar, the place of sacrifice. It is God who provides for Isaiah and God’s people to know forgiveness and the removal of their sin.

If you remember the painful story in Genesis where God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, you may recall how Isaac asks his father who will provide the lamb for the sacrifice. Abraham replies that God will provide the lamb. And he does – mercifully not in the way he was expecting.

Ultimately, we believe that is what God supremely did with Jesus at the Cross. The Lamb of God was provided. Now our sins are removed as we confess them. They have already been atoned for at Calvary.

The regularity of our failure is why we confess and receive assurance of forgiveness in every Sunday service. It is God’s free gift. We have not earned it. God has reached out in love to the world at the Cross. Will we look at the worldly horror of the Cross and allow it to cleanse and transform us?

Thirdly, God’s word:

8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’

Following confession and forgiveness, the way is clear for us to hear God’s word. That’s why the reading of Scripture and the preaching come next in a typical Sunday service, by the way.

There’s no reading of Scripture in the Temple for Isaiah. It’s questionable what, if anything, they had in written form at this point – not much, for sure. But in any case, God speaks directly on this occasion.

If we are to be worshippers in the midst of the world, we need to hear God’s marching instructions to us. ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’

Therefore, the reading and proclaiming of the word is to have an honoured and central place in our worship. It is not that with a variety of preachers we get to hear a whole host of different opinions, because the job of the preacher is not to foist their sentiments or even prejudices on the congregation; it is rather to proclaim what the Word of God says.

Therefore, there is another steward’s vestry prayer that both encourages me for its meaning but also humbles me by reminding me of the expectation on my task. It is when the steward prays that the congregation may hear your word through me. That is profoundly sobering!

This is not to say that a congregation should be uncritical of what the preacher says, although I do note the old joke which asks what the favourite Sunday lunch in a Christian household is. The answer is, ‘Roast preacher.’

But it is to say that we should be like the Berean Jews, whom Paul encountered on his missionary travels. In Acts 17:11 we read of them,

Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.

In some old pulpits, the preacher was confronted by a small plaque. On it were the words of the Greeks who came to meet Jesus before the crucifixion, where they told the disciples, ‘Sir, we would see Jesus.’ Our prayer and aspiration for worship needs to be that we see and hear Jesus, so that we know what he is expecting of us in the world.

Fourthly and finally, response:

And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’ (verse 8b)

Isaiah responds to God’s word. He is willing to go into the world on behalf of his God. We learn in the subsequent verses that he can’t necessarily expect people to respond positively to what he has to say, but nevertheless someone must go, and then if there is no redemption there will be no excuse. People will not be able to say they were not warned.

How does this play out in our worship? Within the service, it comes in the intercessions, which are meant to be a response to the word. (I’m not sure they always are, but that is the theory.) If you were used to services where the sermon was the climax of the service before the final hymn and blessing, but then noticed a change, where the intercessions followed the sermon, well, this is why.

And so it’s right that in our intercessions we pray not only for ourselves and the church, but for those in power, authority, or influence. If you read the Bible carefully, you will realise that the divine commands are not limited to God’s people. You will hear prophets speaking to kings and nations and all in authority.

This is a holy task. In the early church, those who had not yet been baptised and professed faith and who were undergoing catechism classes would leave the worship before the intercessions. Why? Because intercession is a priestly task, and they were not yet part of what we later called ‘the priesthood of all believers.’ But for those of us who believe, we are acting as God’s priests when we intercede in response to the word.

But the response doesn’t stop with the end of the prayers or with the blessing at the conclusion of the service. The genuineness of our response to the word is tested by what we do when we leave. At the end of the Latin Mass, Catholics were effectively told in the liturgy, ‘The Mass is over: now go out!’

Isaiah did that. It’s our calling, too. Like him, we may or may not see success in response to our bearing God’s word to the world in word and deed. But Isaiah kept faithfully doing it in response, because to do so in the world was intrinsic to true worship. May we do the same.

[i] William Temple, Readings In St John’s Gospel, on John 4:24.

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The J.O.Y. of Following Jesus, Luke 4:21-30 (Ordinary 4 Epiphany 4 Candlemas Year C 2025)

Luke 4:21-30

When I became due for my second sabbatical from ministry, I was serving in an appointment where no previous minister had had a sabbatical. The circuit tried to do lots of explaining to the senior church steward at my main church, but he only had one question:

‘What’s in it for us?’

There was no concern for my well-being, only for what they could get out of it.

Such was the attitude that when I then had to have surgery ten days after returning from the sabbatical, the response was, why didn’t you have the operation during the sabbatical?

Soon after that, my re-invitation came up for consideration, and you won’t be surprised to know that a faction organised against me. They didn’t try to throw me off a cliff as the Nazareth mob attempted with Jesus, and I would agree I made some mistakes in my ministry there, but you might understand why today’s passage resonates with me.

To treat the reading more positively, I would say it encapsulates that old Christian saying that the letters of the word ‘JOY’ stand for Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last.

So – Jesus first:

There is a wonderful episode in the book of Joshua chapter 5, just before the Israelites are preparing to take Jericho:

13 Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’

14 ‘Neither,’ he replied, ‘but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.’ Then Joshua fell face down to the ground in reverence, and asked him, ‘What message does my Lord have for his servant?’

15 The commander of the Lord’s army replied, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.

I think Jesus’ words to the Nazareth synagogue have a similar effect. They have heard all about his wonderful words and deeds. We read last week how the news had spread throughout the countryside about him, and how people in various synagogues had praised his teaching (Luke 4:14-15). Now the local lad made good has come home, but it doesn’t go to their plan, because if the words of Isaiah have been fulfilled in their hearing (verse 21) then who is he?

Oh.

He is making a proclamation that he is the long-awaited Messiah, even if he avoids the specific word. He is the prophet greater than Moses who has been expected according to Deuteronomy.

And if he is, then he is the One to whom they must bear allegiance. It’s not enough to take pride in what they regard as home-grown talent, like football supporters chanting when a young player has come through their academy and scored for the first team, ‘He’s one of our own.’ Like the mysterious character Joshua encountered, as commander of the Lord’s army he has come – and then some.

Our first call, then, is to pledge allegiance to Jesus. We do that in a big way each year at our Covenant Service, but there is a sense in which we do that every time we take communion.

For we call Holy Communion a ‘sacrament’, and that word comes from the Latin ‘sacramentum’, which was the oath of allegiance that a Roman soldier took to the Emperor. When we come to the Lord’s Table, we pledge our allegiance again to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

There is a slogan on the Methodist website that says, ‘God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.’ But that’s a very partial description of the good news. Because when John the Baptist and then Jesus came preaching what they called the good news, it came with the requirement of a response. And the first response is to pledge allegiance to Jesus as Lord. After all, the first Christian creed was simply the words, ‘Jesus is Lord.’

Next – Others second:

On Thursday, an American Christian friend of mine posted to Facebook with some disgust words of the new Vice President, JD Vance as reported by Fox News:

“I think there is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”

These are appalling words for someone like Vance to say, when he is a convert to Roman Catholicism. They so contradict the New Testament, where all believers are a family, where social distinctions are dissolved in the Gospel, and where Jesus redefines our neighbour as anyone at all who is in need and says that neighbour love of that kind is one of the greatest commandments.

And it may be that we can make an easy poke at the Trump administration for such blatant heresies. Certainly, JD Vance’s parish priest needs to call him to repentance.

But what is the difference between that and the way many other Christians turn religion into a consumer exercise? When our faith is about the style of worship I like, the music I prefer, and mixing with people just like me, we have gone far from the ways of Jesus.

What has Jesus just been reading about from Isaiah? Good news to the poor. Recovery of sight for the blind. Freedom for the captives. The Jubilee year. When we pledge allegiance to Jesus, these are the things that follow next.

If we are to follow Jesus and not the mob, we will be thinking, who can I bless today? Who can I serve this week? Where can we make a difference for good in our neighbourhood? What are the social issues that need a Gospel witness? Who have we excluded from hearing the Good News, especially among the poor, and what will we do to right that?

It may be a stark statement and possibly an over-statement, but you may know the famous words of William Temple, who was Archbishop of Canterbury during World War Two, about the Church. He said that the church was the only institution that existed for the benefit of those who were not its members. It is good that this congregation already takes that seriously. Let us always remember that such things are not peripheral to the church, but central to our calling.

Finally – Yourself last:

It’s important to hear that I said ‘Yourself last’ not ‘Yourself not at all.’ For this is the Jesus who taught, love your neighbour as you love yourself. And in doing so he assumed we would love ourselves. There is a distinction to be drawn between a proper loving of ourselves and indulging ourselves, always gratifying ourselves, or thinking the universe revolves around us.

No wonder we read in the Gospels of Jesus going away on his own to pray, and of him encouraging the disciples to come aside from all the activity to rest awhile. Is it what he did when he walked through the crowd here?

There is a proper self-care that is not the same as self-centredness. It is a looking after ourselves so that we are fit and able to live with Jesus at the heart of our lives and with the strength to show God’s love to all, especially those on the margins. Yes, Charles Wesley wrote in one of his hymns the line, ‘To spend and to be spent for those who have not yet my Saviour known.’ But where does the energy come from that we spend? And what do we do when we are spent? We need to tend to ourselves for the sake of the Gospel.

Yourself last, but this is self-care in order to be able to serve, and thus we distinguish it from self-pampering.

Much of this is a challenge to me, because I do not always look after myself as well as I might for the sake of all I am called to. Last year, I read a memoir by the great scholar who supervised my post-graduate research in Theology, Richard Bauckham. It was mainly a book about his struggles with poor eyesight, but in passing he made a comment about how he has always ensured he gets eight hours of sleep a night in order to be in a good state to pursue his calling as a scholar, even in retirement.

That is something I have not been good at, especially since a phase in my ministry ten years ago, when two of my three circuit colleagues curtailed their appointments, and the other retired. I ended up getting into the bad habit of doing late nights.

The Methodist Church has been on a learning curve with this. When I entered the ministry, the official guidance was that on our six working days a week, we ministers could take up to an hour off each day. That’s all. Somehow we were also meant to cultivate a hobby! Is it any surprise that in 2017 a nurse at our doctor’s surgery told me that working 8 am to 10 pm six days a week was bad practice for anyone?

Then, a few years ago, the Connexion woke up to the fact that there was a well-being crisis among ministers. Well, fancy that! Now they tell us to divide each of our working days into three sessions – morning, afternoon, and evening – and work two of the three. They also tell us to remember the provisions of the European Working Time Directive, under which workers normally do not start another day’s shift until at least eleven hours after their previous one has finished.

These are examples from my world. There will be approaches you can take in your circumstances. There will be other matters to consider, too. But the principles are the same.

So – Jesus first: in response to his love for us, we pledge our allegiance to him.

Others second: we have a Gospel to proclaim in word and deed.

Yourself last: self-care for the sake of that Gospel.

This is a Christian way of living. It rejects the ‘What’s in it for me?’ line. It doesn’t throw Jesus off a cliff. Instead, it exalts him and brings JOY to him and to us.

And that’s what we’re about.

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Video Teaching: First Principles of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 5:6-17)

2 Corinthians 5:6-17

In my O-Level Physics class there once came an occasion where our teacher set us a problem for homework that none of us could solve. When my parents saw me struggling with it my Dad decided to write a letter to the teacher, asking him why he had set homework that none of the pupils could do.

In response to that letter the teacher phoned my Dad. He explained that all we needed to do to solve the problem was go back to the first principles we had learned in that topic.

When I heard that, I learned an important life lesson. Always go back to the first principles.

There is something of ‘first principles’ in our reading from 2 Corinthians. It’s a strange selection of verses in the Lectionary – but hey, what’s new there? But even despite that and the fact that we’re reading these verses out of context, we can pick up on some first principles. Because like my old Physics teacher, the Apostle Paul also always went back to first principles.

So today we are going to think about some of the First Principles of the Gospel. What are the first principles Paul talks about here, and how do they affect the way we live?

Number one first principle is that we live by faith, not sight.

Paul tells us that in the life to come we shall be at home with the Lord and shall see him, but right now we are away from home and do not see him, so we have to live by faith, trusting in the God whom we do not yet see. But when we do see him, he will call us to account for all that we have done while away from home (verses 6-10).

What does that mean for us? To live by faith means that we trust that even though we don’t yet see God, one day we shall. And in the meantime, we are to live as those who know we shall see God one day. That’s what living by faith is here: trusting that we shall meet God face to face in the life to come, and letting that reality direct the way we live now. The Gospel promise of meeting God face to face one day is meant to change us on this day.

So for one thing, living by faith means that we consider our attitudes and our actions now. Would we act the way we do if we had to live our every moment before the visible face of God? How does the fact that we shall one day see him face to face affect how we live today? What would we be happy doing in that knowledge? What would make us ashamed?

For another thing, we know that the Lord has entrusted us with resources, gifts, and talents in this life. So another part of living by faith is to consider how we use these things. From the abundance of creation to our natural talents, how would we use these if we were doing so before the face of God? How would we use our brain, our artistic abilities, our work skills, our homes and gardens, our possessions? The answers to questions like these will show how much we are living by faith – or not, as the case may be.

We often restrict the expression ‘living by faith’ to those Christians who have to trust God to supply their financial needs. I have no quarrel with that: I have had to do that at times. But Paul tells us to expand our vision of living by faith, because he tells us here that all Christians live by faith. How are we going to live now, knowing that we shall one day see God face to face?

Number two first principle is that Christ’s love compels us.

Paul talks about the love of Christ being a compelling motive in the Christian life, and he links it to his death on the Cross. If you hadn’t heard the whole reading but were just hearing his letter read out in public for the first time you might have thought that the link from the love of Christ to the Cross was going to be the forgiveness of our sins through the Cross. But it isn’t.

Of course, it’s true that Christ’s love brings us forgiveness through the Cross, but Paul makes a different point here. His punchline comes in verse 15:

15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

Christ’s love compels us, because his example shows us that we are to live for Jesus and for others, not primarily for ourselves.

That’s why a church that gets hung up on just wanting the things that the members themselves like is an unhealthy church: it’s not modelled on Christ’s love.

In fact, were I to choose a church to be part of based on my own preferences it almost certainly wouldn’t be the Methodist Church. There are so many things in Methodism that I find tedious, frustrating, or annoying. But God called me to serve here. He loves me in Jesus, and calls me to return that love in the context of Methodism.

You may know the famous comment of Archbishop William Temple, when he said that the church is the only institution that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members. It’s not a perfect statement, but it does capture some of this idea: Christ’s love means we live for him and for others.

Each and every one of us needs to be asking ourselves, how am I imitating the love of Jesus by serving him and serving others?

Number three first principle is the new creation.

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!

Following Jesus makes us treat people differently, says Paul. But it’s that final verse where I need to give you this week’s episode of Bible Trivia.

‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,’ said many older translations. Some newer translations say, ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.’ That’s bit different.

So which is it? Is it that the convert is a new creation? Or is it that conversion promises the general new creation of all things?

If you go back to the Greek you’ll see why we have this problem. It’s ambiguous. A literal translation would be, ‘If anyone is in Christ – new creation!’ For us English speakers there are missing words. To translate it into English, we have to add words. Whether we opt for ‘the person is a new creation’ (favoured by those Christians who emphasise personal conversion) or ‘there is a new creation’ (favoured by those who care about the environment and social justice) depends largely on our existing theological preferences.

But what if the words ‘If anyone is in Christ – new creation!’ are deliberately ambiguous and cover both of these possibilities? I think both are true biblically.

When we are united with Christ, God makes us new by his Spirit, and starts a work of holiness and healing in us that will not be complete until glory. He calls us to co-operate with his Holy Spirit in this work.

But our union with Christ also shows God’s project to make the whole creation new, just as he makes us new. He is not content to leave the world as it is and calls us to join with his Spirit in the renewal of all things.

So he will send us into the world both to call people to conversion and to make a social difference.

Therefore, if any of us prefers personal piety to social justice, we have sold the Gospel short. And if any of us is willing to campaign for social justice but not seek personal conversion and holiness, then we too have diluted the Gospel.

To sum up, the three Gospel first principles we’ve looked at today all lead to transformed lives and transformed society. When we live by faith, not by sight, we live as if we were doing so in the presence of God, and that surely changes our actions and our priorities.

Christ’s love compels us through the Cross to live for him and for others, rather than for ourselves.

And the new creation is both personal with our conversion and our journey of holiness but also social as we anticipate God making all things new.

Each of us needs to ask: in what way is the Gospel changing me? And in what ways am I serving the kinds of change God longs to see in his world, as a result of the Gospel?

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Worship

John 4:5-26

‘God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ (verse 24)

That’s an obvious verse to pick for this circuit service on the theme of worship. But sometimes, however much I like to be obscure, obvious is OK!

There are several valid ways you can read this verse. Worshipping in spirit and truth can be about the fact that you can worship God anywhere. That’s true, and in the context, the woman has just raised the question of physical locations for worship.

You can also read the ‘spirit’ aspect as being about the need for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in order to worship. That has some merit, too, because there is much in John’s Gospel about the ministry of the Spirit.

Worshipping in ‘truth’ can be about the importance of basing our worship on the truth of God, rather than our own preferences or fantasies. That, too, would be valid.

But I want to offer a different – if complementary – approach to Jesus’ teaching that we are to worship in spirit and in truth. I think it also means our worship is to be Christ-centred. Why? The work of the Spirit in John’s Gospel is to point to Christ. And Jesus himself is the way, the truth and the life in John. Spirit and truth both focus on Christ. I’m going to use Christ as our framework for worship.

Incarnation
My sister is an Occupational Therapist. At the end of her college training in 1988, she had to take a final elective placement. With the support of her college Christian Union, she went out with a missionary society to Gahini Hospital in Rwanda.

One of her most interesting cultural experiences (apart from African driving!) was Sunday morning worship in the hospital’s Anglican church. People were not called to worship by the ringing of bells, but by drums. All well and good. 

But when worship began, it was the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. Seventeenth century England, transposed to twentieth century Africa. Crazy.

Why is that crazy? Jesus is the Word made flesh, who dwelt among us. He took on human flesh, and lived in his context as a first century Jew. Might it be that when it comes to worship, our worship has to live in the cultural forms in which we live, and of the people we desire to reach with the Gospel?

Can I bring that insight to the worship wars that often rip apart our churches? We need to drop the nonsense talk that hymns and choral music are somehow morally superior. And those who argue for contemporary music need to quit the notion that others are fuddy-duddies. The issue is this: who has God called us to reach?

The American pastor Rick Warren, who planted Saddleback Church in California, has a useful approach to this. He says that if you are going to plant a church, then the way you decide the musical style of the worship is this: find out what the most popular radio station in the area is, and model the musical aspect of your worship on that style of music. 

So never mind what we like: incarnation demands we live in the culture of the people where God has placed us on mission. And that will shape our worship – from music to other elements, too.

Cross
In my  last appointment, I was part of a team that put on a weekly Wednesday lunch-time prayer and worship event entitled Medway Celebrate. At one team meeting, I remember the founder of the event say he had asked all visiting worship leaders to put a particular emphasis on ‘celebration’ in the tone they set. 

Inwardly, I winced. What about people suffering pain or troubles? How would they cope with relentless joy and happiness? And at first glance, anchoring our worship to the Cross of Christ would support my reaction. In worship, the Cross leads us to confession of sin. It puts us in touch with the pain of the world, and so it also informs our intercession. And the central act of Christian worship, Holy Communion, is directly linked to the Cross: ‘This is my body … this is my blood.’

Not only that, something like one third of Israel’s hymn book, the Psalms, are the so-called ‘Psalms of Lament’, where the psalmists bring their pain and complaints to God in worship. So surely it’s right that worship is not persistently happy-clappy.

There must be room in worship to express pain. But – it’s only half the story. Even when the Cross shows us our need to confess, we don’t stop there: we receive forgiveness. When we intercede about the pain of the world, we do so expecting that God will answer. When by faith we take the tokens of Christ’s body and blood in the sacrament, we are renewed.

I was once at a Good Friday united service at the Baptist Church in my home town. Our own minister was preaching. He had chosen a song that was popular at the time: ‘I get so excited, Lord, every time I realise I’m forgiven‘. As a congregation, we sang it in the most drab way. Michael stopped us and berated us. How could we not be excited that God had forgiven us in Christ?

As we come to the foot of the Cross in worship, yes we bring our pain at the sin that put Christ there. We also bring the pain of the world. But we come for healing and restoration. Making the Cross central to worship is a matter of joy as well as pain.

Resurrection
I referred to Holy Communion a moment ago when talking about the Cross and worship. But it’s the Resurrection that makes sense of the sacrament.

‘What? Isn’t the Lord’s Supper about the death of Christ?’ you may object.

Yes, but it’s OK to stop there if you only believe communion is a symbolic memorial of a past event. If it’s remotely more than that, you need the Resurrection to explain it. How many memorial services have you attended where the deceased was present? How many funeral wakes have you been to where the one you were remembering served you the food? Jesus is alive! And our worship is filled with hope. Whatever discourages or depresses us, Jesus is risen from the dead and there is a new world coming.

So my friend who wanted celebratory worship had a point. Just so long as it wasn’t escapism, celebration is the proper tone for those who know the Christian hope. We experience suffering and we witness suffering, but in the Resurrection we know it won’t have the final word and our worship is an act of defiance based on Christian hope. In the words of Steve Winwood, we’re ‘talking back to the night‘. But we talk back to the night because the dawn is coming.

And when the dawn comes, God will no longer feel distant or remote. God will always be close. Thus if Resurrection characterises worship in spirit and truth, our worship will have a sense of intimacy with God. We cannot use hymns about the majesty of God to make him distant, even if we also avoid songs that make Jesus sound like a boyfriend.

Ascension
If there’s one curse in all the worship wars that occur in church, it’s the way we use sophisticated arguments to hide the fact that what we’re really campaigning for is ‘what we like’. The Ascension of Jesus puts paid to that.

Why? Because the Ascension is the enthronement of Jesus at the right hand of God. It is the confirmation that Jesus is King over all creation, including the Church. When we treat worship as what pleases us, worship becomes idolatry, for we worship ourselves. When we recognise the kingship of the ascended Christ, I cannot ask what pleases me. I can only ask, what pleases you, Lord?

It also means we must stop treating worship as spiritual escapism. When a steward prays in the vestry before the service about us ‘turning aside from the world for an hour’, I cringe. When we sing an old chorus like ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus‘ with its line about ‘The things of earth will grow strangely dim’, I wonder what some people are thinking when they sing those words.

If worship is in spirit and in truth – if that means it’s Christ-centred – and if that includes the Ascension – then worship cannot be used to escape from the world. It can only be used in preparation to face the world. For the king of the Church is on the throne of creation.

There is a church building in Germany, which has over the exit doors these words: ‘Servants’ Entrance’. Worshipping the ascended Christ thrusts us into the world. It’s why the Roman Catholic Mass is called the Mass – after the Latin ‘Eta misse est’: ‘Get out!’ Our feeble version is, ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’: perhaps that should be ‘Go in boldness to love and serve the Lord’! The test of worship isn’t Hymns And Psalms versus Mission Praise versus Songs Of Fellowship. It’s whether we continue to worship by our lifestyles in the world where Christ reigns.

Conclusion
Archbishop William Temple wrote a classic devotional commentary on John’s Gospel. I can do no better in concluding this sermon than quoting some of his most potent words on this very verse:

For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of mind with His truth; the purifying of imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of will to HIs purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. Yes – worship in spirit and truth is the way to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin. [p 65]

May we worship like that.

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Sermon: Missional God

Matthew 20:1-16

Introduction
What kind of book is the Bible? Some see it is a book as rules. Others say it is God’s love letter to us. 

Me, I see it increasingly as the story of God’s mission. (Which means that any rules tell us what pleases the God who loves us and has saved us. And which means that if it is a love letter, it is addressed to the world, not just God’s favoured ones.)

No, right from the beginning, God is on mission. And he is on mission in a particular way. God does not shout from a distance, expecting us to come where he is. From the start, he comes onto our territory. He is the first missionary, coming walking in the Garden of Eden, calling out, ‘Where are you, Adam?’ In the Incarnation, Jesus is ‘the Word … made flesh [who] dwelt among us’. In this parable, the landowner keeps going to where the workers are, rather than expecting them to turn up at his vineyard.

So God is a missional God, and this sermon attempts to explore some characteristics of our missional God.

1. Sovereign
The missional God is the sovereign God. ‘Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?’ he says to those who complain (verse 15a).

What do we mean when we talk about God being sovereign? Some of us get nervous, because we know how this has been used in history. In the Calvinist tradition, affirming the sovereign God has been used to advance the idea that God chooses some people to be saved and others to be damned. That’s not what I mean.

The sovereign God can do what he chooses, but what does he choose to do? It will be consistent with his character. The sovereign God wants his reign to be accepted everywhere, and so he reaches out to all. If he is truly sovereign, then he wants that reign to be embraced universally. Not all will accept the summons to his kingdom. Some will resist and face eternity without him. But it is his will that none should perish. And so, just as the landowner in the parable keeps going back to hire more labourers, so God keeps searching for more people who will turn from their former ways to follow his Son.

What does this mean for us? We are called to share in God’s mission. If God wants his reign to be embraced by all people in all places, then this is fundamental to the nature of the Church. Christianity is a missionary faith. Mission is not something we leave to those who are keen. It is something for all of us.

Yesterday, I was at Synod. The President and Vice-President of the Methodist Conference were with us. Our current President, Stephen Poxon, is Chair of the North Lancashire District. His District has twinned with three overseas Methodist Conferences. One of them is the Methodist Church in Uruguay. There are only six hundred Methodists in Uruguay, spread across twenty-five congregations. A Uruguayan Methodist visiting the UK said to Stephen Poxon, ‘There’s something I don’t understand about British Methodism. Back home, every single Methodist church has a community project. Why isn’t that so in British Methodist churches?’

I think that Uruguayan Methodist had a point. If the missional God wants to see his sovereignty acknowledged everywhere, then mission has to be our top priority, even our defining characteristic as the church. 

Some of the famous quotes from the last century really come into their own here – like when William Temple said the church was the only organisation that existed for the benefit of those who weren’t its members. Or when the theologian Emil Brunner said that the church exists by mission as fire exists by burning. We are a missionary church, or we are no church at all. That much is certain if the missional God is sovereign.

2. Generous
The missional God is generous. ‘Or are you envious because I am generous?’ he says to the moaners (verse 15b). 

What does it mean for the missional God to be generous? In the parable, it’s quite clear. He has promised a day’s wages to everyone who comes and works for him. The surprise comes at the end when he gives just as much to those who have worked for less than a day. He doesn’t give them what they’ve earned – which wouldn’t be enough to live on – but what they need – namely the rate for a whole day.

On the surface, this makes it sound like God is a socialist: ‘From each according to their means, to each according to their needs.’ But capitalists like this parable too, because the landowner is free to do what he likes with his wealth. Jesus didn’t tell this parable in order for people to fit it into the political philosophies that would come two thousand years after his hearers.

No, the Gospel is a message of divine generosity. All we need for salvation has been provided for us in Christ. In his Incarnation, he lived our life. In his death, he took away the sins of the world. In his Resurrection, he began God’s New Creation. We have everything we need in Christ. It has been generously provided in Christ, at immense personal cost.

God is on a mission to share his generous love. We are called to share the message of divine generosity to all people. But here’s the issue: the spirit of the message needs to fit the content of the message. So a message of God’s generosity needs to be couched in a generous spirit.

However, is that how we are perceived by non-Christians? One thing the Vice-President of Conference said at yesterday’s Synod was this. He talked about having visited the Greenbelt Festival for the first time. While he was there, he encountered a seminar led by a cross-party group of Christian MPs. Together, they explained to their sorrow that in Parliament the Christian Church is generally assumed to be a critical organisation. We are known far more for what we are against than for what we favour.

Might it be that if we want to encourage people to embrace the generous love of God, we need to adopt a generous attitude towards them? Debbie and I try to get involved in the community that centres around our children’s primary school. We have tried to befriend two or three single mums, who have each had two children by different fathers, and they have not married the fathers. Then there are two families where the husband and wife have recently split up. In one case, we can understand why the wife kicked the husband out. In the other case, we can’t. But we have tried to be available and demonstrate Christian love to them.

There are some Christians who think the first thing we should have done was condemn sex outside marriage and divorce in these cases. I want to make clear that Debbie and I believe very strongly in the sanctity of marriage. There is a time and a place for talking about right and wrong. But how will people have a chance of believing in a generous God if we do not offer a generous spirit towards them? Believing that our missional God is generous calls all Christians to undertake acts of selfless, sacrificial and unconditional love in the name of Christ for those yet to discover his love.

3. Merciful
Our missional God is merciful: ‘So the last will be first, and the first will be last.’ (verse 16)

Mercy is at the heart of the Gospel message. It is a message of God’s loving mercy for sinners. In Christ and Christ alone we have the forgiveness of sins and new life. Such is the mercy of God that he sends his Church everywhere in his Name to proclaim and demonstrate the mercy he longs to extend to all. 

I expect we’re all used to speaking about the mercy of God like that. But when Jesus has the landowner say that the last will be first and the first will be last, the culture of mercy is extended further. That mercy is so fundamental to God’s kingdom that notions of order and rank are outlawed. One commentator on the parables puts it this way:

‘Earlier Jesus taught that there are degrees of punishment in hell (Lk 12:47-48); now he makes plain that there are no degrees of reward in heaven. The perfection of the life to come, by definition, does not allow for them.’

No superiority, no rank in the kingdom: we all need the mercy of God in Christ to enter the kingdom of heaven. The idea that because I am a minister I am more important is anathema to the Gospel. I should not expect to sit at the front of church like some worldly dignitary.

The early Church recognised this radical application of the Gospel: they even elevated slaves to the rank of bishop. They did not care for the world’s way of status. The Good News changed all that. Sometimes I see it in today’s Church, other times I don’t.

What does this have to do with mission? When we are obsessed with title or power, we start valuing some people less than others. While there may be certain ways in which the older approaches to rank and status are passing away today – such as the decline in respect for the Royal Family – other forms of the problem rise up to take its place. So we have an obsession with celebrity that seems to be about the kind of people our culture claims to be more important than others.

Now giving people differing value undermines the Gospel. God’s love in Christ is every bit as much for the least and the lowest as it is for the most and the highest. A true proclamation and living-out of the Gospel will have nothing to do with mimicking the world’s love of status. Nor will it fall into that contemporary trap, the making of Christian celebrities.

Rather, it will be counter-cultural. God loves all people, and that means he loves the poor and the obscure every bit as much as the rich and the famous. The Gospel is for our neighbours and the poor of the world.

One last example from yesterday’s Synod. Stephanie and I attended a workshop about mission opportunities in schools. It was led by a young woman from the Luton Churches’ Education Trust. Forty churches in Luton support this trust. It employs over twenty staff to work in secondary schools and with local teenagers. They don’t just do the normal schools work of RE lessons and assemblies. They also work with the sort of young people who are shunned or despised – those with ADHD, or who self-harm. As far as they were concerned, these children were as valuable as the gifted ones with the A* grades. That makes Gospel sense.

Conclusion
This parable leaves us in no doubt that God’s heart beats a missionary rhythm. If we are truly to be the Church of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, then mission will define what we are about. We shall have a passion to take the Gospel everywhere. We shall proclaim God’s generous love in Christ with a generous spirit. And God’s mercy for all will mean we are as interested in sharing that love with the broken as with the headline-makers.

I nearly included today’s Old Testament lesson from Jonah in the service. It’s the part of Jonah’s story where he complains to God that the sinners of Nineveh have repented at the sound of his preaching, and received the grace of God. If we have the heart of Christ, then may we not be moaners like Jonah. May we be people who rejoice when the missing find their way back to God. And may we press on with the Gospel, that there may be many more occasions for such rejoicing.

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