Living in Between

Living in Between

"the end of all things is near..." 1 Peter 4.7

A church member who was a devout golfer, getting ready for retirement, came to talk to his priest one day. "Tell me, Father," he demanded, "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."

Christians are arguably always caught up in the 'in-between times'. They never arrive. It is in the nature of our faith. And although we would sometimes like to know our future, it is better that we should not know. The Bible tells us all we need to know about the future and about living 'in between'.

First there was the time between the Garden of Eden and the giving of the Law to Moses.

Then between the giving of the Law and the coming of the Messiah, the fulfilment of the Law.

And for the early disciples there was the wait between the events of Holy Week, and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.

And some years after Pentecost Peter is able to announce that the Church was still 'in between', but that the end was nigh. The apparent delay of the Lord's Second Coming was always a problem for the early church which Peter and Paul sought to address.

So here we are on an 'in-between' Sunday - with Ascension last Thursday and Pentecost still a week away. In the drama of the liturgical year we are to wait until the Spirit comes.

When I was but a young man in Sussex I went with my Pentecostal friends to 'tarrying meetings' - from the words of our Lord to his disciples in Luke's Gospel: "but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." (Lk 24.49)

- we were to pray and wait for the Spirit to fall - or for 9pm - whichever came earliest.

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 here till 12.30!"

So was the Holy Spirit inactive until the day of Pentecost? Or to put it another way, did God the Son do nothing until he was born in Bethlehem?

The revelation of God in Trinity has had particular foci - historical events - over the past five thousand years. But the work of Father, Son and Holy Spirit has been evident, retroactively if you like, throughout all of history.

So before the Law was itemised on Mt Sinai, men and women still had consciences, and societies drew up their own laws. St Paul talks about this in the opening chapters of his letter to the Romans.

And before the saving work of Christ's passion, men and women were still saved through faith in a merciful God. The letter to the Hebrews makes it clear.

And before the day of Pentecost, God's Holy Spirit was at work through prophets and kings, through harlots and pagan dictators. Scripture bears witness to it.

Now on this Sunday in the year of our Lord, 2004, we are in between that first Pentecost nearly 2000 years ago, and the end of the world, or our own death, whichever comes sooner.

Does that mean that we will see nothing of the kingdom of heaven until 'the end of all things', the consummation of the age, the dissolution of the cosmos?

No! Before that time, retroactively, the kingdom of God is the ideal towards which we must struggle. As we will say in a moment: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven."

This was the objective of Adam and Eve as they were cursed and expelled from the garden. They would not re-enter the kingdom of heaven through the garden gate, guarded by the angel with the flaming sword.

They would only move towards paradise regained through the passion of Christ and with the help of the Holy Spirit.

It's not as if God was holding out on everyone until the day of Pentecost. As if he commanded them to love God with heart and soul and mind, and neighbour as self, way back in Deuteronomy; but had no intention of giving them the means to do so for a thousand years!

The in-between times have always been as potent as the special events. Becoming is every bit as important as arriving. All of our life, as human beings, is caught up with 'in between', which is one reason that we are so preoccupied with the passing of time. When we are young we cannot wait till the next event. When we are old we wait with some apprehension for the one and only event left for us.

Peter puts it in these practical words of wisdom: "The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins." (1 Peter 4.7,8)

A consistent theme through Scripture is to live as if life matters; to make our life count for God and for others. In the words of our Lord: "I have come that ye might have life, and have it more abundantly."

Peter's little summary here may be paraphrased that we are to live thoughtfully, prayerfully and lovingly. This will cover a multitude of sins. Sin is that destructive agent at work in our life and in our world. It is trapped in the 'in between' time with us.

But Christ has dealt with sin, and if we will live by the Spirit, then sin will not have dominion over us.

So Peter calls for 'fervent charity'. This is Paul's song as well - without charity, Christian love, all is a waste of time. If we are thoughtful, and spiritual, then we should judge our words and actions by love. To neglect this divine injunction is to live in a way that leads to destruction - both personal and social.

A policeman stops a man driving the wrong way up a one way street. "Didn't you see the arrows?" he asks. The driver replies "I didn't even see the Indians!"

What is important about living in between time, is seeing the arrows. It is knowing where we have come from and where we are heading. Of course we don't always get it right, which is why we need the constant reminders of which way the arrows are pointing.
The whole of this mass is a restatement of the saving acts of God which punctuate our history and motivate our day by day living 'in between'. And the mass points us to the future - Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

It is the future, whose power is present now, that draws us on, to the time when there will be no more 'in between'; to the eternity of God.

Meanwhile, we are the 'becoming' ones, always growing and moving on. I'm reminded of that now rather quaint desription of this process as it is described in the 1920s children's story The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams:

"The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Margery Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit, Heinemann 1989 (1922)

In the 'in between' we are becoming - drawing closer to Christ personally, and trying to shape our society on the coming kingdom principles of justice and mercy.

Christian hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.
Faith is the courage to dance to it in the present.

In the power of the risen Lord Jesus, may we live wisely in these 'in between' times.

Ascension Day 2004

Ascension Day

"until the day in which he was taken up, he spoke of the things, pertaining to the kingdom..." Acts 1.3

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

There will always be these either/or people, who operate rather like computers. I sit at my keyboard sometimes and with my mathematical background I think, all this is done with the two numbers 0 & 1; or more simply, with 'off' and 'on'. There is an electric current, or there is not. The computer knows nothing of nuances; there are no middle positions; there is no New Labour in the CPU.

The scourge of good theology has often been this cybernetic polarity; the simple either/or which is rarely illuminating, but can at least serve to point us towards the both/and; the media via for which true Anglicanism is both famous and famously mocked.

At the Ascension of our Lord, the disciples fell into two opposing errors:

The Political Error: "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (v.6)

Calvin comments scathingly on this enquiry from the disciples: "there are as many errors in this question as words." (And there are 12 words!)

The disciples still thought, after these three years and all the events of Easter, and Christ's teaching during the past 40 days about the kingdom, that he was to establish an earthly Utopia, with himself as Messiah King.

But if anything, the exact opposite was true. Christ came to show the futility of any notions of rule by absolute authority and power. Power always corrupts.

So as long as human nature is flawed - that is until the end of the cosmos - there will be the need for some form of democracy. Democracy, like the police force, only exists because of human sin.

Democracy is the political way in which we recognise the limits and weaknesses of all human institutions, whether in society or in the church. There can be no Theocracy. Jesus did not stay - he left. And the Pope is but a man, fallible like the rest of us.

Frustrating and imperfect as they are, synods and councils are the safest way forward.

For since Christ has ascended, there can be no heaven on earth. Humanity is not perfectible. Nature and human nature will always be 'red in tooth and claw'.

The Pietist Error - "why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" (v.11)

There are those who are so disillusioned with the Big Bad World, and so daunted by its challenges, that they would rather stand gazing into heaven, hoping for a glimpse of the heavenly Jesus, hoping he will come back to establish an earthly kingdom.

They call people to devotion at the expense of action. They look to the 'then', and endure the 'now' - what 'has to be'..

Like the Calvinist who fell down stairs, got up and said 'well that's got that over with!'

Or in our own tradition, sometimes like the early Gnostics, they make heaven so spiritual and earth so carnal, that it ceases to matter how they live here on earth - for only the spiritual counts. Eat, drink and be merry because all the really important stuff is the other side of death.

Whichever way - excessive piety or careless indulgence - it is not the way of Christ. Since he has ascended, there is a better way.

It is the way of the Spirit. The way of the kingdom. The disciples were sent to wait for the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost he is to give them heavenly power for earthly responsibility.

I was reading that little booklet today by Canon Donald Gray about Percy Dearmer (British Museum Religion) - you can tell I have 101 unpalatable tasks to do when I'm reduced to reading tracts about Percy Dearmer.

He was a great Anglo-Catholic activist at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Like FD Maurice, he was one of the rare High Church left-wingers. We remember him most for his hymns such as 'Jesus good above all others', or translations such as 'He who would valiant be...'.

And I was struck by this sentence about Dearmer: "At Oxford the art master's son began to realise that there were social, political and religious implications behind his natural instinct to celebrate beauty." (p.4)

Dearmer struggled to follow the media via between these two extremes - pious beauty and social action - the same root errors which plagued the disciples on the mount of ascension.

So he pursued God through the beauty of Anglo-Catholic liturgy - his Parson's Handbook was a guide for many twentieth century Catholics. And at the same time, he worked for social justice and to establish the kingdom of God on earth - he became a Canon of Westminster Abbey and set up a soup kitchen there.

Christ, our warrior-king, the priest-victim, returns into his own kingdom. He ascends triumphant, leading captivity captive, commanding us to wait with bated breath for the gift of the Spirit, who will save us from error, lead us into all truth and enable us to live on earth as citizens of the eternal kingdom.

We must be pious and political. We must attend to our prayers and attend to the needs of a broken world. Then we will follow our ascended Lord and his kingdom agenda.

"until the day in which he was taken up, he spoke of the things, pertaining to the kingdom..." Acts 1.3

Doers of the Word

Doers of the Word

“Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” James 1.22

Last century, when I was but a callow youth, I remember being taken aside by one of the elders after I had preached a particularly humorous sermon. He admonished me with words which have stuck with me throughout my ministry: “You were called to feed the sheep, not tickle the ears of the goats.”

Well I’ve done quite a bit of ear tickling during my 6 years here at St Mary’s. But I hope I have also given both the sheep and the goats something to chew on.

This will be my last sermon from this pulpit for some respectable length of time, and as I pondered on the readings today, I thought back over the years to see what the burden of my preaching has been.

I suppose it could be summed up in three words: love, enjoy, and, understand.

Hardly surprisingly, the commonest refrain has echoed the words of our Lord when asked what is the most important commandment: love God and love your neighbour.

It’s such a simple statement, yet takes a lifetime to work out.

We love God because he first loved us and gave himself for us. That is what we proclaim and rehearse in the mass, day after day.

And if we are to be doers of the word and not hearers only, then that love must be demonstrated by the inconvenience of loving those we would rather not.

We come to mass to celebrate the forgiveness of God in Christ, and whenever we do so we are reminded that we must be forgiving of others.

Part of the function of ‘the peace’ given and exchanged just before we come to receive the bread and wine, is to remind us that we must be living in peace and forgiveness with each other.

And this is not always easy. In the words I have often quoted of the neo-metaphysical poet:

To dwell above with those we love,
ah that will be glory.
But to live below with those we know
is quite another story.

Sometimes all we can manage is to say honestly to God: ‘Lord I want to forgive, help my unforgivingness.’

But if we are generous of spirit then we will, by practice, learn to forgive.

Living any other way is not only contrary to the Gospel and pattern of Christ, but it does deep damage to the psyche, and prevents us from fully entering into the other two imperatives: enjoy, and, understand.

No wonder then that love is Christ’s primary command to his disciples; the glue of the spiritual universe; the gravity of the Cosmos.

Gravity
The apple, unlike Adam, had no choice but to fall
Speeding to fulfil its creator’s call.
But what force drew him down to us?
He, with a starlit infinity to explore,
He, who could peer into a neutron’s core,
He, who had spoken a thousand million times
And know the sulphuric spit of our self-vaunting crimes
He, whom we had called murderer, liar, thief
And left for dead with enlightened relief.

What force drew him down from above
To reap the grim harvest of rebel pride,
Hammered with nails of truth denied?
What force drew him down from above?
What force but this: the gravity of love.
(Mark Green, November 1994)

And the second word and command with which I have often enjoined you is ‘enjoy!’ Preaching at St Mary’s is rarely of the kill-joy variety. We are not those who take the swing out of the budgie’s cage on a Sunday. Indeed we are more likely to add a drop of gin to its water bottle.

In the Westminster shorter catechism you will remember the answer to the question: “What is the chief end of man?” It is “to glorify God and enjoy him for ever.”

Today’s Gospel contains one of the many examples of our Lord’s express desire that our life should be lived to the full. “Ask, and ye shall receive,” says our Lord, “that your joy may be full.”

And listen to these words from Deuteronomy 14 talking of what to do with the tithe money on the festivals:

“And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household.”

And I’m glad that you have heeded the next verse regarding the priests:“And the Levite that is within thy gates; thou shalt not forsake him; for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.” (26f) I am a much bigger man after my sojourn with you!

However, this command to ‘enjoy’ God’s world has a caveat. We must always hold lightly to the world’s pleasures, or they will take a grip on us which draws us from God and fills our souls with unrequitable longing for more.

As Paul says to the Romans: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools... [and] changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever.” (1.22,25)

The danger is always there that we will begin to love things and use people, instead of loving people and using things.

And this can be true of our peculiar worship here at St Mary’s. We enjoy it and take care to preserve it. But it must never become the object of our love. The liturgy must always serve as a channel for the love of God, in which he reveals his great love for us and we in return, pour out our hearts in wonder, love and praise.

And so the third word, ‘understand’.

Augustine reminds us that our reason should be applied as ‘faith seeking understanding’. God’s word helps us week by week to put the world in context, to understand the times - even postmodernity.

And of course the word helps us to understand God - never fully - but a little more intimately as we enter into the holy mysteries time and time again.

But as James reminds us in our epistle, it helps us to understand ourselves.

We are all prone to self-deception. So we mistake joining a gym for actually going to a gym. We keep half our wardrobe full of clothes that we will wear again when we’ve lost a little weight...

Or as James says here, we look in the mirror of God’s word when we come to church, and then go out to do exactly as we please with no reference to it. We have not learnt, in the words of the prophet, that ‘the heart is deceitful.’

We have to learn that our capacity to love and be loved is marred. We have to remember that our ability to enjoy without clinging on to that which we enjoy, is impaired.

And indeed we have to learn that our particular understanding of the way things are will never be perfect and Godlike. We are fallible and so should walk before God and one another with humility.

So love, enjoy, understand and then you will be

“... doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” James 1.22