Remembrance

Remembrance Sunday

“Do this in remembrance of me.”
There are lots of little deaths along our individual roads to death. And eventually the weight of them simply becomes too much and, sometimes with relief, we slip through death to a deathless life.

The commonest human experience is the little death of parting: of children leaving parents until, we hope in the fullness of years, they leave us.

The parting of friends and lovers, although it leaves us later more deeply alive, at the time feels like death.

And all the movings on: the leaving of a home, a church, where we have been happy; the forsaking of patterns that have sustained us; the passing of childhood; the loss of youth; the realisations that dreams will never be fulfilled: a thousand little wounds of death, intimations of mortality.

A Solemn Requiem reminds us of the Christian understanding of the nature of things. That it is only through death that we can enter more profoundly into life.

TS Eliot’s Magi are haunted by these little deaths which leave them longing for the death of death. His poem, The Journey of the Magi ends:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.
I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

What makes all these little deaths so enriching to our ongoing life? Why, in the words of our Lord, must we lose our life if we are to save it?

Well part of the answer is bound up in memory.

Memory is a strange thing. It creates the substance of our being. There can be no ‘What I Am’ without the memory of ‘What I have been.’

It is the foundation of all our relationships. Shared history. Shared memories. How often in our conversations with friends do we start a sentence with ‘Do you remember?’

We always remember, but less frequently do we speak of, the little deaths in our own lives and those of our friends. But they are implicit to the depth of our relationships.

It is only wounded healers that can heal. It is only those who have suffered little deaths who bring comfort.

In Oscar Wilde’s children’s parable, The Selfish Giant, the Christchild welcomes the reformed Giant through the gates of death and into paradise by holding out his little scarred hands: ‘the wounds of love’, he says. There is memory in the Godhead.

So memory plays a vital part in making our little deaths an opportunity for life and growth.

The short-term memory is the most vital and sometimes the most fragile. Sentences begun but unended with ‘what was I saying?’

And music has no beauty without the memory of what was. (In case our memories should fail. Mozart often reminds us of what was…) The resolution of the chord or the conclusion of the book is meaningless without the retention in your memory of what has gone before.

I was looking through some old family photos while trying to unpack yesterday. And there is a 17 year old me, in braided jacket with a school prefect’s badge. But how is that me? I’m a stranger to myself. Every cell in my body has changed many times since then and half my brain cells have already died - and the other two are feeling distinctly queasy.

The Bible and the Church have always placed a strong emphasis on the integration of our memory - commonly owned history - into the present reality. Indeed, there can be no present reality without a sense of what was. The postmodern assertion that yesterday is another country, is a denial of the Christian view of personhood and Heilsgeschichte - Salvation History.

These vestments, the liturgy, the art and symbols of recent and long past centuries, the blood red poppies - these all give greater reality to the now.

I remember going to a service in Los Angeles to hear a famous housechurch founder, John Wimber, preach. There were a couple of thousand people on folding chairs in a converted warehouse - an orderly Stansted airport on a busy day. There were no Christian symbols in the building. No vestments but designer jumpers. The lively songs had all been written in the previous months. There was no liturgy but warm and friendly west-coast-speak. Theologically there was nothing outrageous. But the whole thing was somehow insubstantial. It was not rooted in remembrance. A change of social climate and it would evaporate like the morning dew.

Why has Remembrance Day become arguably of greater significance over recent years than, say, in the 60s and 70s? Many of us now have no direct memories of great wars, yet the act of remembrance - the liturgy of the Cenotaph, the poppies, the veterans, the engraved walls, the war poems - all these give substance to the reality of the war dead, and a poignancy to the new wars and the war dead who trickle through our TVs day by day.

I was at the Menin Gate in Ypres last month and joined with hundreds of others for the nightly ceremony of prayers and Last Post. There are hundreds every night. (http://au.geocities.com/fortysecondbattalion/level2/memorial/01-menin.htm ) By usage, and because for most of us they are removed from any personal experience of war, these ceremonies enshrine a reality that we dare not forget. They help to give expression to our inner longings for peace and a better society; for an end to violence and hatred. They are a shared history which helps to shape the present.

And of course none of us have direct and experiential memories of the man Christ Jesus; who lived and died and rose again these two millennia past - 50 generations ago. Yet our remembrancing deeply affects our present and future.

Catherine Pickstock at Cambridge wrote a startling but difficult book five years ago entitled After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy. (Gordon Dulieu wrote a very good appraisal of it in a recent edition of our magazine Salve.) The book is an attack on the floating, postmodern self, detached from history and memory. It is based on a detailed reading of Phaedrus and the medieval Roman Rite of the Mass. Pickstock wrote:

The worshipper’s forward journey is precisely its journey towards memory: the occasion of our meeting God is our memory of him. (p.231)

And nowhere is that more clearly seen than in these Holy Mysteries: these daily little deaths that incorporate us with the One Great Death.

’Do this in remembrance of me.’

Here is Catherine Pickstock again:

Thus, as regards the Eucharist which realizes the maximum possibility of mystery, sacrality, and signification, human rationality becomes less an attempt to make logically consistent, and more a recognition of an intimation of secret intelligibility, or luminous invitation, stimulating a contact of desire, will, and memory.

At the Mass, every Sunday is Remembrance Sunday.

So, a deep understanding, a deep sense of who we are; what we are doing on this war-riven planet; why our relationships have any value; how the suffering and death of God in Christ nearly two thousand years ago affects us today; the conviction that the Risen Lord is with us now, and that we will be with him and all those who have gone before, forever, and our own little daily deaths…

…these are all bound up in the profound utterance of our Lord which we and the church universal repeat in every hour, of every day, of every century:

’Do this in remembrance of me’

Loving God & Neighbour

Loving God & Neighbour
(Boys' Brigade Founder Day - St Paul's Cathedral)

“Above all, clothe yourselves with love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Col 3.14)

To dwell above with those we love
O that will be glory;
But to dwell below with those we know
Is quite another story.

You would think from the press over the last few weeks, that all Christians ever do is squabble and fall out with each other. Of course there are genuine issues to debate. And it is no use pretending that we all agree when we don’t.

But the attitude of Christians, even when they disagree, must be that of love. So Paul reminded the church in Colossi, in the part of his letter that was read earlier, that they should ‘clothe themselves in love’.

Today, the last Sunday in October, is Founder’s Day for the Boy’s Brigade. William Alexander Smith was born 149 years ago tomorrow, in Scotland. In 1883 he formed the first company in Glasgow. By 1909 it was a world-wide movement and Edward VII knighted him for his work among young people.

He died just around the corner here in St Bartholomew’s hospital in 1914, and although he was buried back in Glasgow, there is a memorial plaque here beneath us in the crypt. BB officers will lay a wreath there after this service.

In the 1950s and 60s I was one of the thousands of boys, mainly from large working class families like my own, who was in the Bruin Boys, the Life Boys and then the Boys Brigade.
The uniform was a very important part of belonging. I can still remember having to whiten my landyard with blanco; brasso my badges and buckles, and spit and polish my shoes.

The uniform was to remind me that although I was just a snotty nosed schoolboy, I belonged to something bigger, with high Christian ideals.

So Paul tells the Colossians that they should be clothed, uniformed, in love. This was to cover all their natural human failings and petty jealousies. It was their mark of belonging to Christ.

As our Lord himself said - “by this shall all know that you are my disciples, in that you love one another”. (John 13.35) Paul adds, that it would bind them together in perfect harmony. Love is the uniting principle of Christian living.

Our Lord makes this the central plank of his ethical teaching, and like Paul, he gives it practical content.

In Matthew’s Gospel we read of the Pharisees testing Jesus by trying to pose such a question about The Law that any answer would put him in the wrong.

They ask “What is the greatest commandment?”.

Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, bringing together two well known Jewish commandments. He replies: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (22.37f)

Christ turns this sterile academic wordplay into a lesson on practical religion and life. And then later, he turns the same weapon of sterile academic wordplay back on the pharisees and silences them.

In fact the account ends with a verse which must be every Prime Minister and certainly Ian Duncan Smith’s dream: “neither from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

There was to be no more trying to catch him out.

So what do these two great Judaeo-Christian commandments mean?

Loving God with all our heart. In the Anglican tradition in Britain we’re not very good at fervour and enthusiasm. Like the man at Evensong who kept shouting out ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Praise the Lord’. Eventually an exasperated verger sidled up to him and asked him if he wouldn’t mind being quieter. The man replied: “I can’t help it, I got religion!” To which the verger responded: “I don’t know what you’ve got sir, but you didn’t get it here!”

The very word ‘enthusiasm’ was originally an insult, meaning ‘possessed by a god’. The church has usually expelled the lovers of God who display too much emotional zeal for the faith, like Luther and Wesley.

Sometimes we need to recapture that enthusiastic love for God which is a hall mark of the saints, and of many of the growing parts of the church around the world. We will do it in a way that is culturally appropriate, but we should love God with all our heart.

But on it’s own, emotional, enthusiastic love without content and depth produces simply sentimentality. God falls into the same category as puppy dogs, old church buildings Harry Secombe and Cliff Richard. And this is not enough.

So we must love God with all our soul. “Out of the depths my soul cries out to you” says the psalmist. De profundis. Profound love of God can come out of those experiences of life which furrow deep into our psyche, into our very being: extreme pain, or mental anguish; inconsolable grief. The suffering which CS Lewis called ‘God’s megaphone’.

But also existential moments of bliss; the unbearable lightness of ‘being’; the palpable pain of overwhelming beauty; the moments of supreme well-being flowing from human love and affection.

But this too has its dangers. Deep love which never looks outward produces introspection and self-absorption. It can even induce pride and a sense of superiority.

That’s why, on its own, however profound the love of God, it is not enough. So we must love God with all our mind.

Some of us are more at home here. We enjoy discussions about the existence of God and the finer points of doctrine. Although as Lady Bracknell reminds us in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’, it is not quite respectable in polite society to be too intelligent. Perhaps Britain is the only country in Europe where the expression “too clever by half” is an insult.

I am alarmed sometimes when talking with students to find that their understanding of Christian theology has not gone much beyond their understanding of Father Christmas and the Teletubbies. And what they do know they have learnt from the Vicar of Dibbley or Father Ted.

My Church Primary School children know more about Pokemon than they do about the Christian heritage that founded their school.

Part of our Christian devotion to God is to read, to study, to think hard about our faith and love for God. But loving God, purely as an academic idea without emotion or depth simply produces a sterile formula, devoid of spiritual power. And at worst, dogma to be fought over.

Plato did great damage to the development of Christian thought by his splitting of the human into two parts - body and spirit. For the Jews at the time of Christ, any one of these three things - heart, soul, mind - would have sufficed to indicate the whole person. We are one complex, integrated human being.

The command, then, was to love God with our whole being: the affective, reflective and intellective; heart, soul and mind. Strong love with checks and balances.

If we love God in this way, then we cannot but help love our neighbour as ourselves.

This is the second commandment, inextricably linked with the first. And it is not an easy command to keep. CK Chesterton once remarked that the Bible tells us to love our neighbours and to love our enemies - because they are generally the same people!
This love of God means we will care for the homeless and the refugees; we will protect the weak; we will look out for one another. As William Smith did, we will reach out to help children and young people to grow up into mature and loving men and women.

And we will build societies and churches which do this. If we do not, then we deceive ourselves, and we do not genuinely love God, with heart and soul and mind.

John adds a further dimension to this in his epistle where he writes ‘perfect love casts out fear’.

I have always remembered this verse in 1 John 4.18. ‘Perfect love casts out fear’. At a wedding where I was best man a pious absentee sent simply that reference in a telegram. But without checking, I quickly turned to John 4.18 and read out: “Jesus said to her, ‘You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband!’"

The result of loving God and neighbour in this way is freedom from fear: the irrational fears that haunt us. As Paul reminds the Colossians in the next verse, when they clothe themselves in love, then the peace of Christ will rule in their hearts.

In our troubled and uncertain world, if we would be free from fear and full of inner peace, then we must love God and neighbour. Or as St Paul puts it:

“Above all, clothe yourselves with love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts” (Col 3.14)

Deep Church

Deep Church

From today’s Epistle: “ that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3.17-19

In America - this could never happen in England! - there was a feud between a good Catholic priest and his very evangelical organist, who loved Moody and Sankey Gospel hymns.

The first hint of trouble came when the priest preached on the need for change and the organist chose to sing "I Shall Not Be Moved."

Trying to believe it was a coincidence, the priest put the incident behind him. The next Sunday he preached on the need for increased giving, and was not amused as the organist led them afterwards in the hymn "Jesus Paid It All."

Sunday morning attendance swelled as the tension between the two built. A large crowd showed up the next week to hear his sermon on the sin of gossiping. The organist struck up with "I Love To Tell The Story?"

There was no turning back. The following Sunday the priest told the huge congregation that, unless something changed, he was considering resignation. The atmosphere was electric as the choir set out on the old Gospel standard "Why Not Tonight."

Other local churches were empty the following week as people crowded into the church to hear the resignation sermon. The priest explained that Jesus had led him to the church and now Jesus was leading him away. The organist could not resist it: "What a Friend We Have in Jesus."

Divisions in a church and divisions between churches are all too common and, despite the jokes, are really very sad. They are a major hindrance to the mission of the church.

In 1952, CS Lewis wrote a letter to The Church Times standing-up for the supernatural basis of the Gospel which he felt strongly was being undermined by what was then called modernism.

To a layman it seems obvious that what unites the Evangelical and the Anglo Catholic against the "Liberal" or "Modernist" is something very clear and momentous, namely, the fact that both are thoroughgoing supernaturalists, who believe in the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, and the … Last Things. This unites them not only with one another but also with the Christian religion as understood ubique et ab omnibus.

The point of view from which this agreement seems less important than their divisions … is to me unintelligible. Perhaps the trouble is that as supernaturalists, whether "Low" or "High" Church thus taken together they lack a name. May I suggest "Deep Church", or if that fails in humility, Baxter’s "mere Christians"’.

Lewis's understanding of ‘Deep Church’, or ‘mere Christianity’, was not limited simply to a concept of supernaturalism.

The Latin tag ubique et ab omnibus alerts us to the fact that to talk of Christianity as believed ‘everywhere and by everyone’, is to appeal not only to the miraculous foundations of the Christian faith, but also to a common historical tradition of belief and practice that has been for centuries normative for Christian experience.

The Anglican church in London has grown fairly steadily over the past ten years, and the two major players are the broad Anglo-Catholics and the open evangelicals. As always, these groups have their fringes.

There’s the Black Mafia who carry out a weekly inquisition of the Catholic faithful over their gins and tonics, weighing up the relative unsoundness of All Saints Margaret Street compared with St Mary’s Bourne Street.

And there are those evangelicals who have such a perfect grasp on the interpretation of Scripture that they are happy to consign to the flames the majority of the church for the majority of the Christian era. They are definitely not sure about Holy Trinity Brompton, have serious reservations about All Souls Langham Place and would like Our Lord to clarify one or two points before they can accept him into the ranks of the faithful.

For many of us, like CS Lewis, all this seems nonsense: fiddling while Rome burns; rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.

Bishop Richard has encouraged Professor Andrew Walker of King’s College - a Russian Orthodox layman who grew up in the pentecostal church, and others of us from the Anglo-Catholic grouping and the evangelical constituency, to explore together Deep Church.
The name doesn’t really matter, although it is intended to be an evocative title, even if, as Lewis thought, it might suggest a lack of humility. Another name suggested is ‘generous orthodoxy’.

Professor Walker has written:

“Deep Church, as its name implies, is spiritual reality down in the depths – the foundations and deep structures of the Faith – which feed, sustain, and equip us to be disciples of Christ.”

It is about engagement with God, and not just engagement with forms of worship that we like. In our own Catholic tradition, it is the acknowledgement that ascesis, spiritual discipline and denial is part of the joyful mystery of our faith. As we said the Rosary yesterday, we were remembering the joyful mysteries of faithful Mary - all tinged by suffering and self-denial.

And it is about concern for those outside the church and for broken communities and hurting people. This is how and why all these Anglo-Catholic churches around here were ‘planted’ in the 19th century.

I remember visiting the first Vineyard Church in Anaheim, Los Angeles, back in the 1980s. It was a lively charismatic ‘new church’ that has since replicated itself around the world - there are a number in Locoman.

There were about 5,000 people in a warehouse, presided over from an electronic keyboard by the charismatic and loveable John Wimber; there was an excellent 5-piece band, made up of ageing hippy session musicians (not a bit like our own choir,,,); no Christian symbols (if you exclude the overhead projector); no sacraments at most services, no historic liturgy, nor hymns older than a decade.

It was ahistorical. Apart from a brief Bible reading there was nothing obvious to link this church with 2,000 years of history. It was deep in the Spirit and existential fervour, but shallow in its connection to the sustaining flow of God’s salvation history.

Many evangelicals, including Vineyard leaders and Holy Trinity Brompton church planters, have come to realise that there is an enormous reservoir of deep Christian experience in the fathers and mothers of the church; in the Celtic tradition; in the saints before and after the reformation; in orthodoxy; in liturgy and music.

But sadly, at just a time when we need them, too many within our own tradition have only kept these historical insights alive by becoming curators of a museum - rearranging the lace and polishing the thuribles. Anglo-Catholicism has lost its spiritual edge, and in many places, its spiritual nerve.

In other words, we need each other in this broad alliance of Deep Church. Not to merge into some lowest common denominator - Anglo-Catholics in designer jumpers will never work! - but to reinvigorate and deepen our distinctive traditions.

God has seen fit to suggest to us, that in the longer term - say 50 years from now - unless we move on together we will become but another footnote in history.

This has become increasingly clear to many Anglo-Catholics. Evangelicals, on the other hand, now account for over 70% of ordinands training for the priesthood in England. They are generally in buoyant mood.

But many of those evangelicals who have been round the block once or twice, recognise that this growth is unsustainable without a development in spiritual formation and without being more firmly rooted historically in the Christian story.

Unless all of us are part of the co-operative venture of Deep Church or generous orthodoxy - or whatever we call it - we stand in danger of missing the opportunities before us here in London, where there is at present an open door.

If we will move on and deeper into our faith, both Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, then we have an exciting future as we fulfil our Lord’s mandate to take the Good News of the kingdom to all people.

This was the Apostle Paul’s longing for the church:

“ that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3.17-19

Ecclesiastes

Introduction to Ecclesiastes
(Willesden Clergy Conference October 2003)

A church member who was a devout golfer came to talk to his priest one day and said “Father, I have one really Big Question about the faith. Are there going to be golf courses in heaven? I have to know."

"Well," said his priest, "I'm not really sure, but tonight I'll say a special prayer and see if God will tell me the answer."

The next Sunday, when the service ended and the congregation was shaking hands with the priest on the way out, the golfer cornered him again. "Did you get the answer, Father? Are there going to be golf courses in heaven?"

Well, George," the priest replied, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

"Tell me the good news first," George said.

"The good news is that, yes, there are golf courses in heaven. Beautiful courses, where the sun is always shining, the rough is not too deep, there are no sand traps, and you never have to wait to tee off."

"Hey, that's great!" exclaimed the golfer excitedly. "But what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is that St Peter has you down to tee off this coming Tuesday morning at 8."

Ecclesiastes deals with the one Big Question - the Meaning of Life, the Universe & Everything. (42 - v 42 of Eccles).

And it comes up with Bad News (quite a lot of it actually) and Good News.

There will be two parts to this Bible Study this morning: a general introduction; and a short sermon on one verse that attempts to recontextualise Ecclesiastes for the present Western culture.

The Offices - take you through the great sweep of Scripture: the good bits, boring bits, bloodthirsty bits - and the puzzling bits. Ecclesiastes is one of the puzzling bits that nearly didn’t make it into the canon.

Scholars have suggested a number of different authors (they would wouldn’t they) from Solomon (unlikely - no mentions of King of Jerusalem are probably a literary device to emphasise the wisdom of the preacher) to as many as 9 different authors within the book. (JEPD chant at Div Faculty.) Qoheleth - Hebrew root, to assemble. So assembler of wise sayings or (more likely) assembler of the people, the president, the one who calls the ecclesia together (hence Ecclesiastes).

Yet despite these supposed diverse authors and themes, at it’s simplest, there is an underlying unity to the book: Qoheleth looks at our puzzling, repetitious lives, that relentlessly and universally lead to death, and says: “Even if we do not clearly understand, there is something deeper going on.”

Or put in another way: the Bad News is that there is not much point looking for meaning “under the sun” (a phrase used 39 times); the Good News is that by implication there is a God and meaning “beyond the sun” (the unknown God, a common theme in ANE religion - talk to John Chapman about wife’s PhD) (Shemesh - Gen 1 etc)

Lady Helena Levy story from last Parish Mission: lady with cocktails answers door: “I’m afraid I’m an atheist.”
“O my dear, I am so terribly sorry.”

Qoheleth could not have been that modern and strange aberration, ‘the atheist’. He was a theist, trying to make sense of things.

Stephen Pinker & Fraser Watts interview in Third Way (Oct 2003) - still discussing Eccles (Pinker’s favourite Bible book - some have mischievously argued that Eccles 10.2 is Blaire’s favourite verse...) - Pinker & Watts trying to make sense of the brain and human consciousness. Pat of Qoheleth’s Bad News is that we are just like the animals (3.12-21). Pinker on the contrariness of atheism quote.

So in a way, Qoheleth is in a similar position to us - not dealing with people who don’t believe there is something else there
- but dealing with people who act as if the only important things are those that make them secure in secular society, here under the sun
- this he asserts is vanity, futility and a chasing after the wind.

But at the same time, like most of the Wisdom literature, Job and Jonah, Proverbs and some of the Psalms - he won’t let us get away with trite, easy answers. (5.1f)

My faith became more credible to my siblings when it became messier!

Qoheleth raises two other, ever contemporary problems:
The Problem of Knowledge & Wisdom (1.17f) He moves from enlightenment pursuit of knowledge to the madness and folly of Dada-ism, absurdism, the trippy 60s - drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll. And it is all a painful dead end.

The Problem of Evil - oppressors prosper! (4.1f) Postmodernity has no answer to the jackboot. One of the problems facing the West today, and Christians in particular - we do not know the answer of how to deal with violent evil. (Iraq & terrorism etc)

For Qoheleth, all these puzzles and mysteries, all these disturbing realities of life under the sun, leave no other choice than (12.13f): “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.”

Thank goodness that we have more to go on than Qoheleth; that like Paul we can say” “What a wretch I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Rom 7.24f)

George Herbert toyed with some of these issues in his poem The Pulley that plays on the Pandora’s box theme - but instead of chaos being unleashed and only hope remaining in the box, God keeps ‘rest’ in the bottle - there is never a complete and satisfactory answer to Life, the Universe and Everything - we can never be wholly at rest.

The Pulley

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) pour on him all we can:
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

So strength first made a way;
The beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honour, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.

For if I should (said he)
Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.

ETERNITY IN THEIR HEARTS

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Eccles 3.11)

Why do so many 20 somethings still live at home with their mum? My two nephews, 20 & 23 are prime examples.

Well, there are probably lots of perfectly good reasons, but Douglas Coupland’s book Generation X has a little cartoon of a 20 something son talking to his clearly exasperated father: “It’s like this dad. You can either have a mortgage, or a life. I’m having a life.”

Although written two and a half thousand years ago Ecclesiastes is a fascinating book. It’s famous opening words could be paraphrased: “Vanity of vanities, all is postmodernity.”

This captures something of the mood of contemporary society. It is meaninglessness with attitude; emptiness covered up by all the good things money can buy. Tesco ergo sum - I shop, therefore I am. The loneliness and ennui is eased by friendships and music, sex and sometimes drugs; and lashings of humour.

“Yet” says the Preacher, “they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Postmodernity is one of the most exciting, painful, challenging, opportunity-filled, anxiety ridden, faith building, depressing, faith destroying, enjoyable and contradictory of times to be alive. Postmodernity is the cultural climate that is increasingly pervading the world, spreading like a virus through TV, the arts, popular culture, ‘new’ politics and designer religion.

What would the Preacher of Ecclesiastes make of it all?

He would most certainly speak from the point of view of identifying with, and being part of, the culture. This can be one of the church’s biggest stumbling blocks, because most Christians are firmly locked into modernism, the outgoing philosophical climate; yesterday’s weather.

Worse still, many of us feel that there is something inherently Christian about modernism, despite the fact that it has only been around for a few centuries, although the Judaeo-Christian faith has been around for at least 35 centuries.

“She who marries the spirit of the age is sure to be a widow in the next”. So we must not ‘marry’ either modernity or postmodernity. But we must be so in touch with our culture that we feel its pain and know how to apply the balm of the Gospel.

Increasingly in our society, purpose is giving way to play; design to chance; founts of wisdom to pools of knowledge; Reason to reasons; the metanarrative, the Big Picture, to the micronarrative, the local story - the soaps, Big Brother. My primary school children know far more about the world of Pokemon and Harry Potter, than they do about the Christian Gospel that shaped their culture and gave them their school.

Dominic Crossan puts it this way in The Dark Internal:

“There is no lighthouse keeper. There is no lighthouse. There is no dry land. There are only people living on rafts made from their own imaginations. And there is sea.”

But eternity is firmly set in our hearts, says the Preacher: a divine uncomfortableness, a dis-ease with what is.

Postmodernity is a way of coping with that dis-ease. It does not make sense of life, but it helps you cope.

Christianity is also a way of coping and making sense of life. Not complete sense, for now we see through a glass darkly.

So we need to let God grasp people’s hearts and imaginations before God can transform their minds. And we must learn to live with uncertainty. Evangelism has never been easier; discipleship has never been harder.

How then should we live?

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts.”

As Christians we believe that we are not alone in the universe, because the Bible, the Church and Reason call us to believe that there is a ‘transcendent’ God, who is before and beyond all things.

Many postmoderns are sick of themselves. But where can they look but to themselves if there is no ‘Other’? We must present clearly the intimations of transcendence which God has planted throughout his universe - the eternity in our hearts:

Beauty and love, order and satisfaction, suffering and meaninglessness, the mystery of the Mass, the splendour of music and liturgy, the depth of Christian fellowship - all point to an Utterly Other. We believe that the ‘eternity within’ is no less than ‘Christ in us’, the hope of glory, the imago Dei, the image of God.

God, the Holy Trinity, is community, and in that community of love we find our identity in the postmodern sea of shifting images and personal fragmentation. Jesus’ command has never been more relevant: “Love one another as I have loved you… by this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” If we cannot demonstrably love one another, then we are failing the Christ whom we seek to follow.

It is as we worship and love in our Christian communities that we mirror, albeit imperfectly, the eternal God.

At best, the Church’s response to whatever intellectual climate it has found itself immersed in, has been - not a renewed set of dogma - but a renewed love of God through our worship, and a renewed effort to love and serve one another.

The death of dear friends and our own failing powers remind us that “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” But it’s time to fade comes.

Yet “He has also set eternity in their hearts” and in it’s time it will blossom into a newer and fuller life which starts now and which will grow on into the eternity of paradise.

Future of Christianity

The Future of Christianity
(Guest prescher - Revd David Coffey at St Mary's Bourne St)

‘Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you’ (Matthew 6:33)

Thank you for the privilege of sharing with you at St Mary’s today. As a regular reader of the Friends of St Mary’s emails-I feel at home among you. It is a further sign of your kind hospitality that you have included for the Communion Motet, Ave verum corpus by my beloved Edward Elgar. You will be aware that Nick Mercer is a good friend of our family dating back to our days together in ministry in Torquay. In our circle of friends Nick represents the highs and lows of life. High church worship and low life culture!

We rejoice with you in Nick’s new appointment within the diocese of London and we pray that he will know God’s blessing on his life and ministry for this challenging ministry.

You have given me the subject of The future of Christianity and I find this a daunting task for two reasons. First it’s a presumptuous undertaking for anyone to speak on the future of Christianity. Second it’s normally impossible for a Baptist to say anything significant in 11 minutes. The Baptist doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is grounded in our congregations enduring very lengthy sermons!

But given that what emerges in the future of Christianity is always configured out of the fragments of its past and the divine promises for the future , I think there are three significant indicators to draw upon this morning.

The first is that Christianity does not seem to plant churches that last for ever-so we must expect the death of some churches as well as the birth of new ones. Kenneth Scott Latourette in his magisterial work A history of the expansion of Christianity concludes that the story of Christianity through two thousand years is not one of steady progression, It’s a story of advance and recession-not irreversible progress. Andrew Walls supports Latourette when he observes: ‘The homelands of Tertullian and Augustine are no longer thriving Christian centres’. In our own country urban churches have become furniture stores and rural chapels are sold as holiday homes. It is a sombre reminder that whilst the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church, the local and national expression of the community of Christ has no divine right to survival.

The second indicator is that the geographical centre of gravity for Christianity is always shifting-so we may anticipate the continuing marginalization of the Western Church in the global family of Christianity. Philip Jenkins has chronicled that in our own life time there has been a massive shift of numerical influence from the northern to the southern hemisphere. The growth in Africa has been relentless. In 1900 Africa had just 10 million Christians out of a continental population of 107 million—about nine percent. Today the Christian total stands at 360 million out of 784 million, or 46 percent. In the same century church going and Christian commitment plummeted in Western Europe. It is estimated that by 2025, 50 percent of the Christian population will be in Africa and Latin America, and another 17 percent will be in Asia.
Those proportions will grow steadily. By about 2050 the leading nations for Christianity, apart from the USA, will all be Southern: Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and the Philippines. Reverse flow mission will probably be the norm and the United Kingdom could be re-evangelized by missionaries from the southern hemisphere.

The third indicator for the future of Christianity is more positive. The Church at all times and in places is always made up of people. Christianity thrives on people gathering in the name of Jesus Christ and believing his promise to be present among believers when they gather for worship in his name. The church thrives where people gather in order to be scattered. Gathered by Christ around word and sacrament in order to be scattered in the power of the Spirit as salt and light in the service of the Gospel.

I have seen this principle at work in every part of the world and remember with deep admiration the courageous witness of disciples of Jesus in every conceivable cultural context. I remember Daniel a village pastor in Namaroi, Mozambique where the country had been ravaged by fifteen years of civil war and ten years of drought. I said to Daniel, ‘what did you do when faced with another year of famine and warfare? . He replied ‘I prayed’. ‘And the next year’, I enquired. ‘I prayed with tears’, he said. I gently pushed him further by asking- ‘And the next year’? ‘I prayed with tears and waited in hope’, was his strong response.

The discipleship church is the most vibrant evidence of Christianity and I suggest that the followers of Jesus in a violent world hold the key to the future of Christianity. The death of the Christian West and the global shifts of Christianity may be beyond our control, but Christian discipleship is indelibly our calling and vocation, but we will to need to redefine discipleship for the future of Christianity. John Howard Yoder suggests there four essential marks of the 21st century disciple which he summarizes as baptism, discipline, holiness and martyrdom.
Baptism-, because in an age which revels in self-fulfilment, we proclaim a Gospel of self-denial.
Discipline-because in a permissive and individualistic age, we proclaim a Gospel which gathers us into an accountable community.
Holiness- because in a command free culture we proclaim a Gospel of grace which simultaneously enslaves us to Christ and liberates us for a life of freedom
Martyrdom- because in a therapeutic culture that seeks to eliminate pain and discomfort, we proclaim a Gospel that empowers us for cross bearing and suffering.

Discipleship has been the underlying theme of our lectionary readings this morning and a close study reveals they support the Yoder quartet of essential marks. The passage from Joshua is about wholehearted faith- ‘choose this day whom you will serve’.





Walter Brueggemann has framed a prayer around this theme of what God expects from those in covenant fidelity with him:
We will be your faithful people-more or less
We will love you with all our hearts-perhaps
We will love our neighbors as ourselves-maybe
We are grateful that with you it is never more or less, perhaps or maybe
With you God it is never yes and no-but always yes
Clear direct unambiguous and trustworthy

The passage from Galatians draws out another aspect of discipleship- namely the need for a disciple to die in order to live: ‘I bear in my body the marks of Jesus’ writes the Apostle Paul. Eugene Peterson suggests that the language of circumcision and uncircumcision in Galatians represent two ways of life. The morally earnest life loaded with rules and regulations and the fun loving carefree spirit that wants to release potential in whatever way feels best at the time. Both lifestyles are arguing for freedom and they are both unfree because they are so desperate to hold on to life at any cost. Petersen says, ‘They are not free to die because their own life is all they know and all they believe in’. This is the heart of what Yoder means by ‘martyrdom’. We can be empowered by the Spirit to live a Gospel lifestyle within our culture that includes self denial, cross bearing and suffering.

The gospel reading from Matthew is about single minded discipleship: ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness’. The passage is a contrast of competing ambitions between the basics of life (money food drink and clothing) and the prior claim of the Kingdom. The ambition to acquire the basics of life exposes the disciple to a twin challenge: What is it I value above everything else? And what are the things I worry about? The challenge to be single-minded and seek God first above everything else is the distinctive badge of discipleship. This is the call to holiness which Yoder included in his quartet. To be holy is to be different for God’s sake. We can retain our expansive ambitions, but they are secondary to our prime ambition to seek the reign of God’s Kingdom. After all, as John Stott observes,’ there is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambitions for God’.

As to the future of Christianity in our Western society, the numerical strength of the institution may go on declining; the social influence of the church may weaken; but the presence and witness of vulnerable disciples will always be the sign and foretaste of God’s eternal Kingdom which one day will be seen in its fullness. Meanwhile, let us go forward into the world knowing, in the words of Peter Taylor Forsyth, ‘there is nothing in all the raging valley-neither the devilry of the world, nor the impotence of the Church-that can destroy our confidence ,quench our power or derange our peace’ in God’s eternal purposes which are assured in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Peace - St Bartholomew

Peace

From the prophet Isaiah in today’s communion motet: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” Isaiah 26.3

When I was a child, I used to look at pictures I really shouldn’t have looked at. And I don’t mean the underwear section in my mum’s Freeman’s catalogue.

I’m not very good with gory pictures, with blood and guts, and when I saw things like that as a child, the images would haunt me for weeks.

The lives of the saints are littered with gory pictures, and none are much gorier than the martyrdom of St Bartholomew. Of course we know precious little about this Apostle.

He comes in at number six in the lists of Apostles given in the synoptic Gospels, Matthew (10.3), Mark (3.18) & Luke (6.14). He has dropped to number seven in the listing by the time we get to the Acts of the Apostles. (1.13).

The Gospel of John doesn’t mention him, but appears to replace him with Nathaniel, who is not mentioned in the other Gospels.

(This, by the way, is why the Old Testament reading today is Jacob’s ladder with the angels descending and ascending - it ties in with the Gospel reading of Nathaniel under the fig tree - a reading we don’t use because it is not the Prayer Book reading - an intelligent congregation is supposed to make these connections...)

So he is often referred to as Nathaniel Bartholomew, which means Nathaniel son of Talmai (or Ptolemy).

In church history he doesn’t get a citation till Eusebius in the early fourth century, who mentions that he preached in India and gave the church he founded there a Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew.

According to legend, he was either beheaded or flayed alive and then crucified upside down.

Which brings us back to those gory pictures.

One of the least bloody representations is found in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement painted on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. St Bartholomew is portrayed in the usual form, holding his own skin and with a skinner’s knife. (As a little conceit, Michelangelo makes the skin the Apostle is holding look like himself, the artist.)

With that fine mediaeval penchant for devotion to saints who died particularly horrible deaths, he is patron saint of many gilds, including Skinners and Tanners.

Thomas Traherne, the mystic Anglican poet of the seventeenth century, wrote a poem entitled An Hymn upon St Bartholomew’s Day, and it was reading this that led me to the theme for the sermon.

Traherne is musing about the way his soul seems, so loosely, to inhabit his body. It is perhaps a reflection of the bemused look on St Bartholomew’s face as he regards his owed flayed body.

In the spiritual context, Traherne is exploring the ability of the Christian to live in the world below, while finding his true home in the world above. Here is the fourth stanza:

Dull walls of clay my Spirit leaves,
And in a foreign Kingdom doth appear,
This great Apostle it receives,
Admires His works and sees them, standing here,
Within myself from East to West I move
As if I were
At once a Cherubim and Sphere,
Or was at once above
And here.

And that brings us back to our text: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” Isaiah 26.3

Peace of mind is not a modern obsession, although contemporary adverts play heavily on it to prize open our wallets. It appears to be a concern running through the millennia of human consciousness.

As soon as we developed the ability for self-reflection, we became anxious, or more importantly, we knew we were anxious. Animals appear to demonstrate anxiety, although presumably without reflecting on it.

The baboon pacing up and down in his cage and showing all the signs of worry, is unlikely to be pondering universal angst and the pointlessness of existence without a fixed cosmic referent. Indeed that particular issue doesn’t keep many of us awake at night. It is more likely to be the gas bill, or as I have found out more recently, the dentist’s bill.

The Bible, in both Old and New Testaments, constantly addresses the tendency of the human spirit to be anxious. And its message is consistent although expressed in different ways.

The changes and chances of living in a frail body, on a delicate planet, in an unpredictable society, are enough to make anyone anxious. And there is no fixed point in this earthly realm which can give us security.

But, as the Apostle Paul puts it, ‘our citizenship is in heaven’. (Phil 3.20) Our point of reference is heaven. Isaiah expresses it in a different way - ‘whose mind is fixed on thee’ - our point of reference is the eternal and unchanging God. That is our fulcrum, our anchor.

And this is part of the mystery of faith, testified to by the lives of countless millions down through the ages: that such a seemingly ephemeral thing - belief in God - can provide so firm a foundation that it gives us peace of mind.

One of the purposes of liturgy and Bible reading, of mass and the daily offices, of priests and the religious; is to bring us back to that quiet centre; to recall us to the peace of God which passes all understanding.

But of course, nothing is ever as simple as that. There’s a dialogue between Lucy & Good Ol’ Charlie Brown which illustrates the dilemma.

Charlie Brown is irritable and restless and Lucy says to him: “I thought you had inner peace.” “I do” replies Charlie, “but I still have outer obnoxiousness”.

There is an inbuilt tension in our human make-up. The strength of that tension will vary with our personality and with the circumstances of our life.

The degree to which we can be at perfect peace and show it by our outward demeanor, is moderated by another probably evolutionary force which disturbs our equilibrium and leaves us dissatisfied with the cheap answers of religion.

It is probably this creative tension which urges the human spirit to it’s greatest feats of love, beauty and creativity, as well as its depths of destruction and depravity.

This is the life force which constantly we need to temper by trying to reflect the goodness of the Giver of life.

George Herbert picks up this tension in the title of his poem The Pulley - will we be lifted up to God and peace, or drawn down to earth - to Pandora and chaos - for there is also a Christian reworking of the Pandora myth in the poem.

At risk of turning this sermon into an edition of Poetry Please let me read you The Pulley.

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by—
"Let us," said he, "pour on him all we can;
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span."

So strength first made a way,
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour,
pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

"For if I should," said he,
"Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in nature, not the God of nature:
So both should losers be.

"Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.
(George Herbert 1593-1632)

Those words of Augustine readily spring to mind: “Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee.” (Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions of Saint Augustine, Chapter 1)

As we pursue God, and try our best to trust in him, we do indeed achieve a good measure of peace of mind. But in order to keep alive the divine spark within us, we will also experience a divine restlessness.

If we don’t want the restlessness to overwhelm us, then we must put in place those structures that enable our inner life to come back, again and again to the hope of the Gospel; to be stayed on God.

Let this Bread & Wine be such a recollection for you.

“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” Isaiah 26.3

For interest of readers I add the poem

An Hymn upon St Bartholomew’s Day
By Thomas Traherne (?1636–1674)

WHAT powerful Spirit lives within!
What active Angel doth inhabit here!
What heavenly light inspires my skin,
Which doth so like a Deity appear!
A living Temple of all ages, I
Within me see
A Temple of Eternity!
All Kingdoms I descry
In me.

An inward Omnipresence here
Mysteriously like His within me stands,
Whose knowledge is a Sacred Sphere
That in itself at once includes all lands.
There is some Angel that within me can
Both talk and move,
And walk and fly and see and love,
A man on earth, a man
Above.

Dull walls of clay my Spirit leaves,
And in a foreign Kingdom doth appear,
This great Apostle it receives,
Admires His works and sees them, standing here,
Within myself from East to West I move
As if I were
At once a Cherubim and Sphere,
Or was at once above
And here.

The Soul’s a messenger whereby
Within our inward Temple we may be
Even like the very Deity
In all the parts of His Eternity.
O live within and leave unwieldy dross!
Flesh is but clay!
O fly my Soul and haste away
To Jesus’ Throne or Cross!
Obey!

Transfiguration

The Transfiguration

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

‘Weighed down with sleep...’ We all know that feeling: in front of the television late at night; frighteningly at the wheel of a car on a long journey; or with a dear friend who nevertheless bores for England. Had Peter, James & John succumbed to sleep, we would not be celebrating this great Feast of the Church tonight.

Although it has only been celebrated in the western church in recent centuries.

It was on this day in 1456 that the news that the Turks had been chased out of Belgrade, reached Rome. So the Borgia pope, Callistus III, in honour of the victory, declared that the church should observe August the 6th as the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord.

But what actually happened?

Well, as with many of the pivotal events in the life of Jesus, it is not clear exactly what happened. And even more of a mystery is why John’s Gospel, perhaps the one you would expect to make most of it, is the only one of the four not to mention it.

There have been attempts to ‘explain it away’. Bultman suggests it was a post resurrection appearance transferred back to this point in Christ’s ministry by the Gospel writers. How this ‘explains it away’ I’m not quite sure…

Then others have called on the vision hypothesis. The disciples were drowsy and stressed and misinterpreted a mystical experience of praying with Jesus. Professor Morna Hooker seems to favour this approach.

Or perhaps Mark made up the story as a vehicle for some special teaching that Jesus gave to the three: Peter, James and John. It was the best way of explaining things in a pictorial fashion?

Or maybe it was just a plain old Gospel miracle! I don’t have a problem with occasional miracles, although I can’t quite join my Pentecostal friends who think nothing of a hundred impossible things before breakfast.

So I assume it happened more or less as the three synoptic Gospel writers remember it. The veil between this world and the other became gossamer thin and the disciples were caught up in a nexus of spiritual realities and blurred frontiers.

They saw Moses and Christ as the fulfilment of the Law. They saw Elijah and Christ as the One to whom all the prophets pointed. They heard the voice of Almighty God, reiterating Christ’s Baptismal affirmation that this was his beloved Son and that they should listen to him.

And they saw the Shekinah cloud, a theophany of the God of glory, and the reflection of that glory in the face of their teacher, Jesus the Messiah.

And they saw all this because they stayed awake, despite the lateness, after a long day and a climb up the hill.

There is a little Jewish joke here as well - a sort of pun.

Some of you will remember in another sermon how we saw that the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ was the word for weight, heaviness, gravitas. Here the disciples are weighed down with sleep, Luke tells us, but they remained awake and so were weighed down with glory.

If we are to celebrate the Glory of God, then we must stay awake, or be vigilant. For it is too easy to be so weighed down with the sleep of this world that we miss the glory of the other.

It struck me as we read tonight’s OT passage from Exodus, that after Moses went up the mountain to be enveloped in the glory of the Lord, he waited 6 days for anything to happen. Most of us, I suspect, would have given the Lord an hour at most and then been off to the next engagement.

Celebrating the Glory of God takes time. I remember inviting the local Pentecostal pastor to preach at my church in Camberwell and explaining that the service had to finish by noon. He looked at me as if I were mad and exclaimed: “But sometimes the Holy Ghost don’t get there till 12.30!”

Whether it be in Church or at Glyndebourne, in reading a book or watching a film, in a walk in the country, or looking at the stars - so many places where we can glimpse the glory of God who created all things for our enjoyment; if we will but stay awake spiritually and let the weight of God’s glory settle on us, then we begin to celebrate life in its fullness - and this is the glory of God.

The spiritual disciplines, and the daily offices are not there to stop us enjoying the world too much (although reading some of the Fathers you might suppose this); they are there to slow us down and help us to savour the world, the moments of each day.

What use are all our ‘havings’ if they are weightless - without glory. What use is a life packed full of experience if - ichabod - the glory has departed.

As Jesus goes down the mountain with the disciples, he speaks to them of his impending suffering and of his resurrection. And he has already told them, although they do not understand, that his Passion will be the greatest display of God’s glory.

We celebrate this Mass to the Glory of God. As we bring the gifts of the world at the offertory - our bread and wine and money - so we celebrate God’s glory in all he has given to us.

And as we lift up our Lord’s broken body, so we celebrate his victory over death and the glorious hope he has given us.

It is hard to celebrate the glory of God when we are suffering, in body mind or spirit; or watching those whom we love suffer. Yet as we look at the suffering of God in Christ, and remember that we will share in his resurrection glory, then even suffering and death become part of the path to glory.

The Westminster Catechism reminds us that “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever.”

Secular drowsiness, the stupor of 21st century life, must not rob us of seeing God’s glory and delighting in his creation.

And here at this mass, as Christ is again transfigured in this bread and wine, let us be awake to the presence of the Glory of God.

“Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory” Luke 9.32

True Righteousness

True Righteousness

From today’s Gospel: “except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5.20

And from my holiday reading, Euphemia MacFarrigle & the Laughing Virgin (Christopher Whyte, Indigo,1995 p144 - a refreshing and scandalously funny book especially for those who feel the Church has messed up their life):

Her old beliefs and way of praying were obsolete, and she was uncertain whether this new force was an emanation of the devil or whether a saner, more mischievous and playful deity had entered her life.

“the devil... or a saner, more mischievous and playful deity”

One of the frightening but commonplace observations about religion, is that it is sometimes hard to tell whether it is good or bad; whether it reflects the character of the devil or the character of God.

I have been a pastor for too many years not to know that people use Christianity constantly to screw themselves up - or others - or usually both!

And such people are usually quite unable to see in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, “a saner, more mischievous and playful deity.“ Indeed, for many of them the very idea is blasphemous. God is austere and demanding, and never laughs. They are the sort who take the swing out of the budgie’s cage on a Sunday.

And those who worship this humourless God, constantly misinterpret the Bible’s call for righteous living.

They listen to the typically Jewish, hyperbolic language of our Lord in the Gospels, and are unable to supply the undercurrent of mirth which is present in all God’s dealings with the pride of man.

In taking themselves too seriously, they fail to take God seriously.

I think Jesus might have agreed with Malcolm Muggeridge that: “Next to mystical enlightenment [laughter] is the most precious gift and blessing that comes to us on earth.”

So how does this assertion that the pervading humour in our human condition is a reflection of the playful creativity of God help us to interpret our text today?

“except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.”

“Righteousness” here in Matthew means faithfulness and obedience to the law of God. Our Lord said as much in the previous verse: “Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments… shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven…” (v19)

The Scribes (some of whom were also Pharisees) were the legal eagles: the solicitors and lawyers who developed the law and practised it in court.

The pharisees, on the other hand, made the law’s demands less demanding and the law’s permissions more permissive. They were casuists. They were spinners. They were like most of us. And they were not popular with Matthew who probably agreed with the Qumran sect that they were ‘the seekers of smooth things’.

Nonetheless, they still only managed to narrow the Mosaic law down to 248 commandments and 365 prohibitions. And they kept most of them.

So what did Jesus mean when he told his followers that their righteousness was to exceed that of the scribes and pharisees? That we should add a few extra prohibitions - Number 366: musicians may not slip out for a drink & a ciggy during the sermon… Or that if the Pharisees broke 5 commandments, we should go for a maximum failure rate of say, 4?

If this is what he meant, then what hope is there for any of us? Like the man standing in church looking at the Ten Commandments on the Wall, we should have to mutter: “well at least I haven’t coveted my neighbour’s ox…”

Jesus goes on to illustrate what he means by a ‘greater righteousness’ with six antitheses; six contrasts introduced with the formula: “You have heard that it was said… But I say…”

You will be relieved to hear that we are only looking at the first antithesis illustrated in four ways by today’s Gospel.

“You have heard it said - thou shalt not kill (better - commit murder)…”

Now there’s a box we can probably all tick.
“But I say… Do not be angry with one another without cause”

This is not just getting angry. Our Lord became angry at times. This is that anger that stems from pride and malice, selfishness and spite, frustration, revenge and jealousy… It’s a killer and destroys families, communities, churches… not to mention the disintegration of the self.

And then there is the matter of insults: “Whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”

Raca - the commentaries are full of possible translations of this Aramaic word: nitwit, blockhead, numskull, bonehead - I think most of the commentaries are too polite to use the obvious contemporary phrase for a man who thinks with an inappropriate part of his anatomy.

‘Fool’ is from the same root as moron. In fact the pair of words perhaps refer to someone’s intelligence and character. “You’re a stupid scoundrel.”

So may we not call each other names? How dull life would be. And lovers’ tiffs would be so colourless and unsatisfactory.

No. This is name-calling that stems from arrogant sneering. This is verbal abuse that wounds the soul. This is linguistic sadism. It corrupts both speaker and hearer.

Our Lord goes on to give two other illustrations about living peacably with one another in the family of God; and about living sensibly and charitably with one another in the wider community.

So what is this obedience that outdoes the pharisees?

It is a deeper obedience of mind and motive with a constant undercurrent of self-mockery, to save us from the deadly pride.

This is what Jeremiah pointed to as the Law of God written on our hearts. Like the little boy who kept standing up on his seat in the restaurant despite his father’s insistence that he ‘sit down!’. Eventually the father physically forces him to sit down and the child petulantly declares - “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m still standing up on the inside!”

The business of holiness is learning to sit down on the inside. It is not the abolition of the law. The Mosaic law informs many of our decisions and legal codes and is still the well-spring of our ethical choices. But in Christ’s fulfilment of that law, and with the help of his promised Holy Spirit, we enter more deeply into the loving heart of God and of his laws. And he enters more deeply into us to bring healing and wholeness.

We see that the way we live in a world still torn and disfigured with evil, is important. And it must be Christlike, especially in our relations with one another.

The true righteousness which our Lord calls us to, is a deep inner orientation to love God and neighbour; and knowing that even then, in our human frailty, we will sometimes get it wrong, it requires a deep inner humility which is fuelled, in all the greatest saints, by the gift of laughter.

Let me end with a creation poem by Paul Bunday.

In the beginning… God laughed
And the earth was glad.
The sound of laughter
Was like the swaying and swinging of thunder in mirth;
Like the rush of the north on a drowsy and dozing land;
It was cold. It was clear.
The lion leapt down
At the bleating feet of the frightened lamb and smiled;
And the viper was tamed by the thrill of the earth,
At the holy laughter.
We laughed, for the Lord was laughing with us in the evening;
For the laughter of love went pealing into the night;
And it was good.

“except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5.20

Abiding in Love

Abiding in Love

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” 1 John 4.16

I’m spoilt for choice today in what to preach upon. I have scanned through the new Harry Potter and can exclusively reveal that it is about the struggle between good and evil. But you already know I am against evil.

Or following the other big media story I could preach upon the demise of the Church of England as she shatters into a thousand pieces and sinks without trace. After 500 years of wrangling over deep theology, politics and the nature of reality, she is, apparently, to flounder over what a bishop used to do in his bedroom.

But you already know I believe in an inclusive view of the Church. Remember the little verse from Edwin Markham that I quoted when I preached on the future of Christianity back in February?

They drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle that took them in

Love is the powerful theme of today’s epistle and at this Corpus Christi tide, we do well to remind ourselves of this axis of good which is, despite appearances sometimes, the true axis of our world.

John takes the two great apostolic foundations of the Christian faith - the incarnation and the atoning death of Christ - and clothes them in love. He uproots them from the realm of pure doctrinal necessity and plants them in the fertile soil of God’s great love for us.

Listen to his words: “In this is love - not that we loved God - but that he loved us - and sent his Son - to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (v10)

And then he draws the blindingly obvious conclusion from this: “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” (v11)

Now we might have expected him to conclude “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love him.”

But no! Since God is love, both in essence and attitude - both in who he is and in what he does - then the fact that he is in us, through the mystical union of his Holy Spirit; this finds expression in our love for one another.

This is God’s ultimate purpose, the perfection of love as John calls it. He wants to reproduce his love in us so that we can pour out our love to others and so bring them into the circle of God’s embracing kindness.

People are often concerned that they don’t believe the right things. And it’s good to study and to expand our understanding of the faith. But John brings it all down to earth.

He presents a simple test. Is what you believe about God enabling you to love others, with kindness and good deeds? Is it leading you to a place of personal freedom?

Or is what you believe leading you deeper into self-absorption; an inability to give yourself in love to others; an underlying fear of life?

Of course it’s never quite that simple. There will always be our daily failures and inadequacy.
There will always be room for improvement. There will always be adverse circumstances and impossible people. But if our belief in, and love for God results in a practical love for others, then we will not fear God or man.

I’m sure that I’ve told you before that I have always remembered this verse in 1 John 4.17. ‘Perfect love casts out fear’. At a wedding where I was best man a pious absentee sent simply that reference in a telegram. But without checking, I quickly turned to John 4.17 and read out: “Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’"

John urges us to believe in the evidence we see with our own eyes: our love for one another. He urges us to believe that we need have no fear. God is at work in us.

On the other hand he gives stark warning to those who would ignore the Christian’s primary mandate to love God and love others. There is no peace for the loveless heart. It is doomed to the turmoil of fear and distrust.

This first epistle of John is an open letter to the church, calling for Christian loyalty, love and understanding as they try to work out their faith. The gnostic deviations of the first century had led to various groups who seceded from the apostolic band. They often claimed that they loved God more than those they had left behind.

Although John admits debate on certain issues, he makes it clear that in one area, and one area alone, there is no room for compromise. There is nothing to debate. And this area was certainly not the authority of Scripture.

For the first 300 years the church had no canon of Scripture as we understand it today. That was to emerge from the heated discussions of the fourth century. And of course Roman Catholics and Protestants still disagree today about what is in the canon.

John makes it clear that there is only one area not for debate. He writes: “Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” (vv 20f)

Here is one commentator on this passage

to the man out of fellowship with his brethren; to the man who nurses revenge, or spite, or contempt, or simple indifference, towards other Christians; to the man whose assumption of intellectual superiority makes him careless of others’ needs, opinions, feelings and faith, John offers no encouragement. (REO White, An Open Letter to Evangelicals, p119)

It is the merciful who will know that God will be merciful to them. It is those who forgive who know that they are indeed forgiven. But there is no peace for the loveless heart.

George Bernard Shaw gave a series of lectures on the English Language in the early days of radio. He happened to mention that there were only two words in English which begin with the sound ‘sh’ although they are only spelt with a single ‘s’.

An indignant listener wrote him a letter saying there was only one word - ‘sugar’.
The listener received a simple postcard by return which said: “Madame, are you sure?”

Being too sure of too much is a dangerous thing. We must always remember that the opposite of faith is certainty, not doubt.

But being too sure of too little is also a disorienting position.

In following Christ we were never promised by our Master an easy life, or a successful life. But we were promised a life full of inner peace and unspeakable joy. And in those rare moments when this is clearest to us, we are overwhelmed by the love of God. By the assurance that we are loved and accepted, and that all will be well.

And in those multitude of more ordinary moments of everyday living with all its messiness and uncertainty, still there is a quiet music in our soul that reminds us that we are loved by the creator of the universe. He came among us in Christ; died for us; rose for us and left us this bread and wine, tangible earnests of his love.

And it is enough.

That God is for us, in all circumstances, against all enemies, in face of all needs, in answer to all accusations and despondency, is sufficient for courage, for hope, and for great endurance. (White p115)

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” 1 John 4.16

Review - Liquid Church

Liquid Church

Pete Ward
Paternoster Press, 2002, £9.99
1-84227-161-X

Sometimes a book doesn’t live up to a good title, but Ward’s stimulating and occasionally annoying material swirls about in Liquid Church to produce a provocative and generally encouraging analysis. It was one of postmodernity’s great commentators, Zygmunt Bauman, who came up with Liquid Modernity (Polity Press, 2000) and this provided the metaphor to examine the postchurch realities of a Britain where 72% describe themselves as Christian, although only 5% regularly sit in the pews.

Ward recognises what others have called the McDonaldization of the church. It has become a spiritual commodity in the postmodern marketplace and some church growth ‘methods’ have capitalized on that. Many Christians not only shop for the style of church they like, but they also choose the time, place and degree of involvement that suits their fluid lifestyle. So some of these “72%” are part of a network of relationships rather than a gathered assembly on a Sunday morning. The commodification of spiritual resources becomes the means of sustaining the life of this decentred and unstructured Christian network. Liquid church ‘will need to develop commodities that can circulate through networks’ asserts Ward. (p.47)

Solid Church (some will be glad to hear) doesn’t disappear in Liquid Modernity, for there are still islands of Solid Modernity floating in the postmodern sea. Ward suggests that this solid church mutates into three different expressions of traditional congregational church: heritage site, refuge (and sometimes holiday resort), and nostalgic community. Most of us will recognise ourselves in these descriptions.

If all this is completely new to you, then the last chapter of ‘Dreams’ about Liquid Church is a fascinating insight into postmodern and premodern ways of being church and of worshipping God, with lots of actual examples.

The challenge is how we adapt church structures to service and in some ways guide this growing manifestation of ‘being church’, if indeed we accept it as genuinely ‘church’. A moot point, which although the book is not heavily theological, Ward does spend a couple of chapters discussing in the light of traditional ecclesiology.

Not all will agree with Ward that as part of the continual reformation of the church, there needs to be a conscious shift from solid church to liquid church. But we will all find food for thought and action and perhaps a melting of our too solid views.

Church Times

Inclusion, exclusion, creed

Inclusion & Exclusion

“Whoever is not against you is for you.” Luke 9.50

So the man rushes to stop this forlorn figure from throwing himself off Chelsea Bridge.

‘Why are you killing yourself?’
‘I’ve nothing to live for!’
‘Don’t you believe in God?’
‘Yes I do.’
‘What a coincidence - so do I! Are you a Jew or a Christian?’
‘A Christian.’
‘What a coincidence - so am I! Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?’
‘A Protestant.’
‘What a coincidence - so am I! Anglican or Baptist?’
‘Baptist.’
‘What a coincidence - so am I! Strict & Particular or General?’
‘Strict & Particular.’
‘What a coincidence - so am I! Premillennial or Amillennial?’
‘Premillennial.’
‘What a coincidence - so am I! Partial Rapture or full Rapture?’
‘Partial Rapture.’
‘Die heretic!’

Christians disagree and fall out about nearly anything and everything. Although to be fair, this could be said about any group of people who hold strong religious, political or philosophical views.

It is part of the process by which fallible human beings come to hold some common group identity. A key part of this process is the way in which we handle the differences, and the degree to which we demand conformity. Like cliffs, the real dangers come at the edges.

The history of Christianity over 2000 years, running parallel to the development of the modern democracy, has demonstrated a growing degree of inclusiveness in handling differences, and a lessening concentration on exclusiveness.

Fundamentalists regard this as the rottenness at the heart of liberal Christianity. They think that General Synod will soon be including the Devil in the Holy Trinity so as not to make the Satanists feel excluded.

Thoroughgoing liberals interpret any demand for conformity as an affront to the great god of individual freedom.

In today’s Gospel, Our Lord unwittingly set a controversy going within Christendom that flared into major schism in the 11th century and is still rumbling on today.

In John 15.26 Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as ‘the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father’. In a few minutes, we shall sing in the Nicene Creed of the Holy Ghost ‘who proceedeth from the Father and the Son’ - now where did that ‘and the Son’ come from?

The Latin word ‘filioque’ (‘and the Son’) was not in the Nicene Creed formulated at Nicaea in 325, nor in the expanded version of Constantinople in 381 - more or less what we sing today.

But in Spain in the 6th century there was a particular heresy which accepted that the Holy Spirit was fully God, but denied the full deity of Christ. In order to counter this heresy, the Spanish church started using what is called the Double Procession in the creed - ‘proceedeth from the Father and the Son’.

It was probably the Synod of Toledo in 589 which promulgated this and it soon spread to Gaul and then the rest of the Western church.

Time does not permit on a humid summer Sunday to trace the politics of the ‘filioque’ clause over the next two centuries: the battles, and intrigue the plotting and murder.

Here is Charles Williams summing up the final terrible stages in his book The Descent of the Dove; a history of the Holy Spirit in the Church. (The irony of the ‘dove’!)

An uneasy peace settled down for two centuries; then suddenly Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, provoked the storm. He accused the West of heresy; he closed the churches of the Latin rite. The Popes asserted the orthodoxy of the West and the primacy of Rome; they maintained open in Italy the churches of the Byzantine rite. The Patriarch removed the name of the Pope from the prayers. The Papal legates, entering the Church of the Holy Wisdom in Byzantium, just before the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, ascended through the crowd to the altar, and laid on it the solemn excommunication of the Patriarch and all his followers from the co-inherence of their Christendom. The frontier of a thousand years was drawn on 16th July, 1054.

Of course, there were other issues underlying the Great Schism, but in reality, from the ninth century, the Eastern and Western Churches have gone along different paths.

The appellations which they appropriated for themselves speak of the aims they pursued: the Eastern Church began to call herself Orthodox, underscoring by this that her main aim is to preserve the Christian faith unharmed. The Western Church began to call herself Catholic (universal), underscoring by this that her main aim is the unification of the whole Christian world under the authority of the Roman pope.

The present Pope would like to be the first Pope ever to visit Russia, but the Russian Orthodox Church has so far prevented any such symbolic gesture, and I imagine he will be seeing St Peter before he sees St Petersburg.

This is all a long way from the prayer of Jesus ‘that they may be one’. Our Lord himself points the way forward in all our disagreements.

In the teaching of Jesus there seems to be a breadth of inclusion for all imperfect disciples (and we all are) who nonetheless do good. So in Luke 9.46-50: An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and made him stand beside him. Then he said to them, "Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all--he is the greatest." "Master," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us." "Do not stop him," Jesus said, "for whoever is not against you is for you."

On the other hand, there is a renunciation of all who do evil however doctrinally correct they see themselves. Luke 11.23 “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.”

When we see exclusion in Our Lord’s teaching, it is based on ethical issues. Thus in the sermon on the mount, Our Lord is looking for Kingdom living among his followers, for "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?' Then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.' (Matthew 7.21-23)

Even then, the ethical issues are broadly-based, and come under Our Lord’s summary of all ethics: ‘Love God and love your neighbour.’

For you and me this means that in our relationships with other Christians, other political persuasions, other religions, and so on; we should be generous and inclusive wherever possible. At St Barnabas School, where the majority of children are from Muslim homes, I teach and pray the Gospel in a way that will make as many as possible feel included. But as a priest of a Christian School I also want to make sure that at appropriate times they hear the unique message of the Christian Gospel.

It is a scandal that the church becomes preoccupied with, and hostile towards other Christians because of, the filioque clause, or styles of English prose, or gay relationships, or women bishops.

The world has every right to become bored with us for acting like petulant children.

The Old Testament and the teaching of Jesus urges us to be preoccupied with poverty, oppression, injustice, abuse; and to exclude from society those who foster these scourges.

The General Synod took the inclusive way forward when it authorised the new Common Worship. The creed still has the filioque clause, but there is in the appendix, an alternative Nicene Creed, for use ‘on suitable ecumenical occasions’, which omits the filioque.

Sadly, there are not usually such simple solutions to complex issues. But in all our debating, and airing of opinions and differences, there must be a desire to include rather than to exclude; to welcome with the generosity of Our Lord, rather than to turn away with self-righteous bigotry; indeed, to remember the words of Jesus that:

“Whoever is not against you is for you.” Luke 9.50

Redeemer

Redeemer

“I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Job 19.25

I was looking through John Cleese and Robin Skynner’s now rather dated book, Families and How to Survive Them this week. Not that I’ve fallen out with my siblings, nor is there trouble in the Presbytery.

But it reminded me of how very diverse the practice of family life has become in the West. Some seem so close that it is nauseous to be in their company for too long. You feel you are playing gooseberry.

Others casually remark that they haven’t spoken to their brother for five years and ought to ring sometime, ‘if he’s still in Saskatchewan...?’

Throughout the period of the biblical authors, kinship, the clan, or for Israelites, the tribe, were the backbone of social structure, law, community care, and religion.

And as an integral part of that structure, the concept of the go’el, the kinsman redeemer, became deeply ingrained in Jewish and Christian theology.

The go’el, the kinsman-redeemer, usually translated simply as ‘redeemer’, had a number of responsibilities within the ordering of daily life.

He (and it was a he, often the brother, or uncle, or male cousins) - the kinsman was responsible for avenging the death of a murdered relative. The network of ‘cities of refuge’ grew up in Israel to protect people from an overzealous, or overhasty interpretation of this function of the redeemer. This allowed for the differentiation between murder and manslaughter.

Then the kinsman-redeemer was also responsible for ‘buying back’ (this is the Latin root of the English word ‘redeemer’) a clan member sold into slavery, often because of bad debts.

Land ownership was particularly important in this society and so the go’el was also responsible for buying back land that had gone from the traditional holdings of the family.

In the case of Ruth, it was the go’el’s responsibility not only to buy back the land that Naomi was selling, but also to marry the widowed Ruth. The go’el was unwilling to do this and so Boaz gladly stepped in as the next kinsman-redeemer in line.

You can see why, very early on, the Lord became known as Redeemer of the house of Israel - his kinsfolk. He redeems his people from slavery in Egypt and avenges their persecution. So the Psalmist says: From oppression and violence he redeems their life; and precious is their blood in his sight.” (Ps 72.14)

And all this redeeming effort flows from a sense of love and responsibility for the family. “You shall be my people, and I shall be your God.”

But in Job this is given a new twist. Because there is no obvious redeeming work going on in poor Job’s life, as his world crashes down around him, and his body is eaten up with disease.

So Job takes a leap forward, perhaps not really understanding what he is articulating, but asserting that, in the end, ‘at the last day’, he will see God.

For he knows that his Redeemer is alive, even if presently he appears to be inactive in Job’s troubles.

It is not difficult to see how Christians have always interpreted these words as pointing forward to Christ, our loving Redeemer. This is how Handel famously uses them in his oratorio.

And in the words of consecration later, this blood sacrifice of Christ is referred to as redemption - we are ‘bought back’ from sin and death by the precious blood of Jesus.

Let me end with an extract from that great nineteenth century preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, preaching on this verse in 1863 and combining all these aspects of the go’el, the kinsman redeemer.

“Now, our Lord Jesus Christ, who once has played the kinsman's part by paying the price for us, liveth, and he will redeem us by power. O Death, thou tremblest at this name! Thou knowest the might of our Kinsman! ... he slew thee, Death, he slew thee! He rifled all thy caskets, took from thee the key of thy castle, burst open the door of thy dungeon; and now, thou knowest, Death, thou hast no power to hold my body... Insatiable Death, from thy greedy maw yet shall return the multitudes whom thou hast devoured. Thou shalt be compelled by the Saviour to restore thy captives to the light of day... The Most Mighty in majesty girds on his sword. He comes! He comes to snatch by power, his people's lands from those who have invaded their portion.
Oh, how glorious the victory! No battle shall there be. He comes, he sees, he conquers. The sound of the trumpet shall be enough; Death shall fly affrighted; and at once from beds of dust and silent clay, to realms of everlasting day the righteous shall arise.” (CH Spurgeon, Met Tab 504, 12/4/1863)

As we come to this altar of death and resurrection, covered in the righteousness of Christ, our next of kin, may we have the confidence of Job to affirm:

“I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Job 19.25

Honour the King

Honour the King

“Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honour the king.” 1 Peter 2.17

One of the advantages or disadvantages, depending on your point of view, of visiting America, is that you catch up on royal gossip. The USA may be a republic, but that doesn’t prevent millions of Americans from being obsessed with the British monarchy.

I found out more about Camilla Parker Bowles during a week in New York than I learned in five years in this royal deanery. Mind you, much of that information I guess, would be news to Camilla Parker Bowles as well.

Peter’s injunction in today’s epistle to ‘honour the king’ is part of an early Christian civil code. There were two problems about the first Christians’ approach to the state and society. Many of them tended to opt out, usually because they regarded the Lord’s return and the culmination of all things as just around the next corner.

So some stopped working altogether, which Paul addresses very bluntly in his letter to the Thessalonians - “if a man will not work, he shall not eat” (2 Thess 3.10) With an eye not only on church finances, but on the civil authorities, Paul says directly: “Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.” (2 Thess 3.12)

Combined with this attitude, was a tendency to see the occupying Roman government as the anti-Christ, the satanic Babylon. Even before any widespread state persecution, this was not an outlook that was going to give much of a future to the missionary enterprise of the Gospel.
Paul in Romans (13.1-7), 1 Timothy (2.1-3) and Titus (3.1-3, 8) and even Clement (1st letter, chs 59- 63) whose letters didn’t make it into the New Testament, all urge obedience and submission to the civil authorities.

With a high regard for the omnipotence and providence of God, they argue that pagan rulers are set on their thrones by God, and that maintaining the hierarchical structure of society is a Christian duty.

Furthermore, even by the end of the first century, when the church was beginning to wonder whether Christ would ever return again, there was also a subtext to the instructions: ‘as this wicked world is about to be destroyed, you might as well play along with it anyway’.

So what does it mean to ‘honour the king’? Peter spells it out in the earlier verses: “Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.” (13,14)

Does this mean that Lord Pilkington and the rest of her majesty’s loyal opposition should resign? (Some think they already have!) Does it mean we should be unquestioningly loyal to Tony as appointed by God? (Although left wondering, perhaps, as to who appointed Alastair Campbell...)

This morning I want us to reflect for a few minutes on monarchy, and in particular, monarchy as it is in the United Kingdom - we pray for the Queen at every mass here. And then to see how this may help us in our worship of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The divisions at the root of the English Civil War are probably as much a part of the political and ecclesiastical landscape now as they were four hundred years ago. Although I would guess that republican sentiments have probably waned over the last 40 years. Let’s think about the monarchy from four different perspectives: scriptural, historical, mystical and emotional.

Scripturally, there is nothing prescriptive about forms of government in the Bible. In fact it is not a good text book for directing societal structures, although it does give excellent moral guidelines for those who govern. We all know that monarchy got off to a shaky start in the Old Testament in King Saul, with prophetic warnings about oppressive monarchs.

But once established, it became accepted by the prophets and royal language was adopted to describe the coming Messiah. Christ himself hardly mentions kingship, although he seems to adumbrate Paul and Peter’s stance in his memorable dictum - ‘ render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s’.

At another level, the New Testament and Early Church both unashamedly use regal symbolism for underlining the majesty of the Risen Christ.

Historically, the world is full of monarchies and republics and those countries that have tried both. In practical, governing terms, presidential democracies seem no better than titular monarchies, and in the present day are arguably as expensive.

For us, it is a fact that monarchy is inextricably bound up in the history and heritage of the British peoples.

Totalitarian states have always tried to eradicate or re-write history, and good democracies know how important it is to learn from and be inspired by our history, without being bound by it. The monarchy gives us a strong sense of continuity, and politically can bring a long-term view and oversight denied to short-lived presidencies - the late Queen Elizabeth referred to George Carey as ‘my eighth Archbishop’.

But there is also, and more controversially, a mystical element to monarchy. Ian Bradley in his rather quirky but interesting book God Save the Queen (DLT 2002) “argues that the monarchy has a key role to play in the recovery of the metaphysical imagination and the revaluing of religion in contemporary Britain.”

Postmodernity is fascinated by the transcendence it implicitly denies. And monarchy and its trappings are designed to point to a transcendent Other. It is why the symbolism has been so exploited by Christian writers and the liturgical tradition.

So there is in the West a resurgence of interest in religion, symbol, ritual, mystery and magic, and even monarchy. And these can be features that redeem society from the secularisation and materialism that sprang out of the 1960s. Eighty percent of our population now claim allegiance to some faith community; seventy two percent to the Christian church.

Finally, there is what I have called an emotional or affective aspect to our relationship with the monarchy in Britain. As we grow older, it seems to anchor us into an historical time-line, and thereby give a sense of security.

There are inexplicable resonances between the royal family and our own sense of worth and ‘place in history’. Perhaps this is yet another reason why Diana’s funeral, or that of the Queen Mother, affected so many within the nation.

All the vox pop of the past few years bear this out. There appear to be patterns of human sociology which are instinctive, and which like so many paradoxical aspects of our faith, can be either destructive or constructive. This mythopoeic power of monarchy is exemplified in Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (with its more socialist overtones) or in the Legends of King Arthur.

There is often something coldly rational about presidential democracy which therefore always has a tendency to edge towards monarchy by any other name.

So in what ways does our understanding of how we should ‘honour the king’ within our own 21st century British context, reflect on how we honour our heavenly King? For Peter reminds us at the beginning of this passage that we are but aliens and strangers in this present world (11). Our true and eternal home is in the celestial court.

The answer is in the passage. Peter reminds us that our fealty to God and monarch, is demonstrated by right living, charitable action, and a contagious love and loyalty to one another within the household of the church.

It is the same old story of the patriarchs, prophets and Gospel writers. Right belief must lead to right action. There is no orthodoxy without orthopraxis.
If honouring the monarch means that we play a full and responsible part in our democratic society without compromising our personal freedom, then honouring Christ must mean that we are subject to his gentle rule, whose service is perfect freedom.

Or as Peter puts it in our epistle: “Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.”

And as servants of God, we follow Christ the servant King, in serving one another.

Albert Schweitzer once said: “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

May we all be such.

“Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honour the king.” 1 Peter 2.17