Pentecost 9: Espoused Theology vs Lived Theology

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 15:1-6, Hebrews 11:1-3,8-16, Luke 12:32-40

The first words in the funeral service after the greeting are these: ‘We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal.’  Which is the echo of the letter to the Hebrews we just heard: ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ At funerals, I think, more than anywhere, we’re aware of the tensions between our espoused theology and our lived theology. Let me explain that. Our espoused theology is the theology we learn. If someone asked you what do Christians believe? You’d perhaps tell them what you recall from Sunday School, if you remember a creed, some personal flourishes perhaps.Our lived theologyis what you’re really left with when you’re cut to the quick; the parts your espoused theology cannot reach. If a terminal friend asks you, do you really believe in an afterlife? If someone who’s been terribly harmed asks you if he should forgive the perpetrator.

Our espoused theology is shared. It’s in our services each week and through the year. The creeds –  essentially a list of things the Early Church decided were essential for people to believe, in order to be Christian. And a major source of our theology is our hymns. We sang earlier that we are ‘ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven’; the basis of our praising the King of heaven. And just a minute ago that we come to Jesus in prayer as a place of rest for our souls.

But how much of those hymns translates to what you really personally believe if asked directly? The final verse of ‘Praise my soul’ asks ‘angels [to] help us to adore him’. The first verse of our last hymn will list all the angels, traditionally held, to occupy heaven already in praise; but if some godless sceptic cornered you, would you feel confident defending the existence of angels?

Now you’d not be alone if you were a little agnostic about aspects of our faith; but what about something more personal? Each week we confess together where we have sinned against God and our neighbours in thought, word and deed. In the silence you perhaps reflect on some of your less good decisions, the things you wished you’d had time to get to which would have helped others; if you’re a churchwarden probably the string of people you’ve recently defrauded, slept with or murdered. 

It’s helpful to get these things off your chest.

We then hear the words of absolution. Our sins are forgiven. In our espoused theology, the faith of the church, the work of grace means that we’re released from the judgement of everything in our past. But do we return to these sins? In your lived theology are there things for which you’re not forgiven; where you do not yet feel or know forgiveness? Is your lived theology demanding that you must do something to atone? Sometimes we’re unaware of the heresies of the theology that lurks beneath our good espoused theology; our inability to accept the grace that’s offered to us. And it’s our lived theology that actually shapes who we are and how we pray.

So at funerals we’re confronted with our lived theology. When the reality of life and death is before us, we will find ourselves truly praying or spiritually shutting down. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 

I heard on the radio recently that ‘living funerals’ have become a thing. You may already be planning your own or your partners, especially if you’re a churchwarden. The idea is based on that sentiment sometimes expressed at funerals that ‘she would have loved this’, and the rather peculiar truth that it’s often only after a person’s death that family and friends come to visit. Essentially, it’s a sort of goodbye party, though with a formal element, perhaps your favourite reading and a couple of songs. The woman on the radio was very clear that she didn’t think much of hymns. I suppose the thing I struggle with most is how would you leave that event? A firm handshake and an ‘all the best’? ‘Have a good death’? I spend a lot of energy trying to avoid social awkwardness and, speaking personally, for me this would be a bit of a nightmare.

But actually the more alarming aspect of this trend is that having been to the living funeral you would surely not go to an actual funeral. You’ve said goodbye. So while a body is at a distance, processed out of existence, there’s nowhere to express the actual and unpredictable aspects of grief. There’s no place to comfort one another. And, there’s nowhere to register hope.

We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; 
for the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal.  

Funerals are liminal places. There is absence and presence. They are a kind of place in-between worlds.Like the most primal experience of life, the birth of children, war, these near-death experiences cut through the comfortable platitudes, whether we’re Christian or a materialist atheist, and call us out on what we really think.

That’s when you know your lived theology.

Over the last seventy years death has been quietly, step by step, removed from society to sterilised professionals and institutions. The intention is to focus on the positive, to make it easy for people, to shield us from the nastiness, the messiness of it all. 

It’s strange that for most of human history religion has focused on where humanity is most rational, most educated, most reflective. Now I think one of the things that most threatens our natural sense of the divine is that in Britain we are losing our connection with ourselves as animals. The experience of death helps us understand what it is to be alive, 

And there’s nothing more likely to produce the instinct to praise God as our first hymn led us, than to see our child born, to find that person who seems to meet our every need, to find ourselves in desperate peril or to drag ourselves to the funeral of a loved one. Because in all these instances, when we see our createdness, our natural finitude – both our tiny insignificance and the incredible wonder of self-conscious life – we are also looking towards the things that are hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. And it’s not the well-worn creeds and favourite hymns of our espoused theology; it’s in the blood, sweat and tears of our lived theology.

I know that I’m not alone when I tell you that whenever I come to worship, I am as mindful and as much in the presence of those who are no longer with us, than of those whom I can currently see. Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 

So Abraham, counting stars in the assured hope of children, the unseen conviction of God’s promise; the Hebrews who are newly come to the promises of God in Jesus, who are strangers and foreigner in this world, hoping for, convicted by the reality of the unseen city of which they are members; the disciples who eschew the goods of this world, for the unseen, hoped for goods of the world to come; whose hearts desire the treasures of an unseen reality. These are those whose lived theology is built on faith. Faith which hopes. Faith which looks on death and is not afraid. 

Our time of trial may come at any point. And that is when we will know our lived theology,how honest we have been with our faith; and whether we have taken the time to build up the reserves of faith and hope needed to help us endure; our unfailing treasure in heaven. Amen.

Pentecost 8: life in God is where we are wealthy.

Sermon by Anne East
Readings: Luke 12: 13-21, Colossians 3: 1-11

There’s a cartoon from the comic strip ‘Peanuts” that has been doing the rounds recently on social media. It shows Charlie Brown and Snoopy sitting by the side of a lake, with their backs to us, looking out over the water. Charlie Brown is saying, “Some day, we will all die, Snoopy.” And Snoopy says, “True, but on all the other days, we will not.” It all depends how you look at it! The parable Jesus tells of the  rich fool and his barns, is not about death, but about life: about the way to live, not about the need to die.

Jesus is talking to his disciples about his mission and his identity when someone interrupts him and asks him to arbitrate in a property dispute, to sort out a family squabble. He asks Jesus to tell his brother to divide an inheritance with him. According to Judaic inheritance practices, an older brother would receive two thirds of an estate while the younger would receive one third. The questioner in this case is asking Jesus to help him possess his rightful share.

Jesus doesn’t get drawn into the details of this case, but says, “Well, let’s look at this differently – life is about more than possessions.” So, as he often did, Jesus tells a story, but unlike the stories of the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep, the Prodigal Son, this one doesn’t involve a last minute rescue and a happy ending. A rich man harvests a bumper crop, more than he can deal with. He plans to tear down his old barns, build larger ones to store his crops in and then sit back and enjoy the excess. He stands as a negative example, this is how not to live as a follower of Jesus. In the end, the man’s days are numbered, and death separates him from his overflowing barns.

Note that the man in the story is not just a simple farmer with a small plot of land, but someone who controls much of the agricultural produce of the whole district. And he doesn’t see his plentiful harvest as a generous blessing from God, but as something of a dilemma, because he doesn’t have enough storage space.

Of course it is prudent to gather in the bountiful harvest and save it for the future, that is exactly what Joseph instructed Pharaoh to do when the dreams showed that seven years of plenty would be followed by seven years of famine. But this particular rich man is no Joseph acting wisely for the benefit of those in need. This is about Greed, the desire for more, where enough is not enough. This rich man had enough and to spare - he had so much that he couldn’t store it all. Did others around him have enough food? Did he bother to find out? Did he call to mind God’s frequent insistence that we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give to the poor? No, he didn’t. He was only thinking of himself, of having all the good things stored up for years to come. And in future times of scarcity, of course, he would become even richer, as others became dependent on him and the price he sets for food.

There is nothing wrong with prudent planning for the future – we have to do that here at St Margaret’s to look after and repair our building, pay our bills. But we know it is important that we do more than that – we need to make provision for supporting other poorer churches, our local communities and charities.

Greed applies to more than money, it can be a craving for the things that our culture sees as bestowing status and privilege: this house, this car, this latest gadget.

Greed can give rise to oppression and exploitation. For example - I want to wear nice clothes, to feel smart and be well-dressed, but what if those clothes are made, packed and despatched by people working in dreadful conditions? Clothes are among the items most at risk of being produced through modern slavery, it’s an industry where women make up a staggering 80% of the global workforce. Does my greed allow me to think of that when I’m looking at a pretty shirt I want to buy? This challenges me.

When is ‘enough”? The text doesn’t tell me that! It doesn’t give specific answers to our questions about possessions, it doesn’t provide rues that define how much is ‘enough’, what I should limit, where I should draw the line. But it prods me to think about these things.

Paul offers some suggestions to the people of Colossae. He lists the things that we should get rid of: anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language and lying. He offers the image of stripping off our old self and putting on a new self. Paul encourages us to see that God is so near to us it’s like being newly clothed. I am reminded of that wonderful image from the writings of Julian of Norwich, “He is our clothing”. For Julia, it is an image of the closeness of God: “He is our clothing, He wraps and holds us. He enfolds us for love and will not let us go.” Here is treasure, here are riches. Our life in God is where we are wealthy.

Our Gospel reading ends with Jesus commenting on those who ‘store up treasures for themselves’ but are not ‘rich towards God’. How can we as individuals, and as a community, live richly towards God? One answer might be that it means to live as if we are already in heaven, bringing the values and priorities of God into our thoughts, our activities, our way of being in this world.

A final word on riches: The Blackfoot tribe of North American indigenous people used to have a Blanket Ceremony each year. Blankets represented wealth. They saved all the year round to buy blankets, and when the ceremony came, they gave them away. The person who was able to give away the most blankets was counted the richest. The richest person is not the one who possesses most, but who has given most away.

Pentecost 5: What must I do?

5th Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Readings: Deuteronomy 30:9-14, Colossians 1:1-14, Luke 10:25-37

What do I have to do to be a good person?

It’s the wrong question.

What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Again, you lawyers, the wrong question.

They are reasonable questions. Excellent lawyer questions. Am I good? Am I good enough? What should I be doing?

Today’s Gospel’s very familiar. Every child knows and instinctively understands it. A few times during show-and-tell when children are asked what can they do to be better, we hear “helping people when they fall over, or when they’re hurt.” Second usually to the washing up.

How well people take it in is another matter. There was a famous study done on seminarians in America.  A situation was set up where the students were gathered in a hall and given certain tasks.  They were then told to move to another building where they would give a short talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan. On the way a man had been placed slumped in an alleyway. According to the research, only 40% of the students stopped to help. When the students were told they must hurry to their next event, only 10% stopped.  One student even stepped over the prone man, on his way to give a talk on the Good Samaritan, so urgent did he feel was the need to share his insight on this important parable. But we shouldn’t judge. Should we?

The context here is important. Notice that it’s a lawyer who asks the question, to test Jesus. The question he asks, is what must I do to inherit eternal life? And his second question makes his concern even clearer “wanting to justify himself”, he asked, ‘who is my neighbour?’ The motivation of the man is concern over himself. He wants to be good. He wants to inherit eternal life. He wants to justify himself. What must I do?

If Jesus was straightforwardly answering the lawyer’s question you’d expect a different set up. You’d expect the man in the ditch to be the Samaritan. The Jews didn’t like Samaritans. They’d intermarried with the Assyrians, so weren’t fully Jewish;  and their religious practices varied from the Jews.  They had different Scripture and didn’t worship at the Temple in Jerusalem as all Jews did. They were something like the Mormons of their day. So if the guy in the ditch was the Samaritan that would give us the basic set up of: “Who’s your neighbour?” Even a Samaritan is your neighbour. Be nice.

But Jesus doesn’t do that. The Samaritan is the hero, not the neighbour. Now parables on one level, are simply illustrations. You might ask, what does forgiveness look like? I’ll tell you the Prodigal Son. Does God love even lowly old me? I’ll tell you the shepherd who left his flock to seek out the one that got away. But Jesus’ parables are more than this. They have a very specific aim. To cut through self-deception. Parables should make you uncomfortable. They want to change you; to convert you. And to do this they come through a story. Because only a story has the subtlety, the ambiguity, the openness to interpretation to challenge the hearer not just on facts, on laws, on thou should, thou should not; but to challenge your presumptions. They have to surprise. The Word is very near you. But it’s not what you expect.

So our dear lawyer, wants to be good. He wants to inherit eternal life. He wants to be a good Jew. He knows he must love God and his neighbour. He keeps the commandments so he figures he’s ticked the God box. Now he’s asking how far, how many people, do I need to love in order to tick that neighbour box. A reasonable, lawyerly approach.

Like a fairy tale we have three characters. Our first on the highway is the priest. He’s in a compromising situation. On the one hand, he has official duties, which he cannot perform for a week if he touches a dead body. Although there’s equally an argument from Jewish law that preservation of life is a first principle and that despite becoming unclean his first duty is to help the man. You might think this is an ideal opportunity to take a justifiable week off work, but I’m not totally clear on whether the Temple had a policy for “unclean-pay” while people were off duty. Anyway, there’s an argument with the priest that he has a legal responsibility to walk on by. Of course, the very clear and present threat of bandits might be enough to hasten his steps. The Levite as a layman is free from public responsibilities, but will still wish to avoid becoming unclean and ruining his holiday. He is, after all, also on his way to Jerusalem, where unlike the Samaritan Jews go to worship. But both these figures are clearly Jews, who know the Law, and you should expect them to consider this left-for-dead man, their neighbour.

Now enter the Samaritan. And we’re told ‘he was moved with pity’. Not ‘he asked himself what does it mean to be good or how might I inherit eternal life?’ ‘Not he asked himself, “Who is my neighbour - is this man my neighbour.” He was moved with pity.

And look how he responds. He knows to use oil and wine on wounds — that is he has some basic first aid understanding, and the means with which to clean the wounds. He’s not just “trying to help, looking useful or trying to be nice” He has the skill to make a difference.  And then he spends time with him, makes sure he’s recovering and pays what would be several hundred pounds for someone to look after him. So he has the means to deal with this. He’s not trying to do something for which he’s ill-equipped or untrained, that might, despite intentions, make matters worse. And he’s not bothered to stick around to seek the reward, the thanks, the praise. He’s not sacrificing his entire life and so giving himself the chance to tell everyone how good he is, at what cost, or limiting the impact of other good he can achieve. He doesn’t need to be needed. He has not then troubled himself with the question of whether he should do this? Who is his neighbour? What will he receive for his actions? He was moved with pity. He recognised the human need and responded immediately with no desire, except to help the person in need. 

*** 

Jesus has shifted the conversation. The lawyer has asked, ‘What must I do’ ‘how can I be justified?’ The Samaritan has simply connected with the injured man. He was moved with pity. He’s not done it for the Law, to be good, justified, to inherit eternal life. He is not acting for himself, out of concern for himself, but for the other person.

The lawyer has asked ‘who is my neighbour’ to ascertain the loop holes. Like the priest and the Levite he wishes to be justified but doesn’t want to take unnecessary risk; get his hands unnecessarily dirty. What must I do to inherit eternal life. He is thinking of his virtue, his salvation as something he can achieve.

Jesus has told a story about a man who is not a Jew; who doesn’t follow the same law; doesn’t worship in the temple; is not socially acceptable to these people. And in the context of ‘what must I do to inherit eternal life? How may I be saved?’ It is this Samaritan, this man of another religion, this outcast, who is the paradigm. The law, the temple fall before the fact that this man was moved with pity, and responded spontaneously to human need. Jesus is asked ‘who is the neighbour I must love?’ He responds by pointing out ‘you haven’t yet worked out how to love.’ Loving begins with the other person.

So what does this mean for us? Well, firstly, it’s a warning against thinking that we’ve got it all sewn up; that you or St Margaret’s has nailed down what it means to be good, to follow Christ, to inherit eternal life. The parables are there to surprise us; to cut through our self-deception; they are a mirror to the laziness of our moral compass.

Secondly, it’s a reminder that we don’t inherit eternal life by racking up a list of good works, by ticking off our church and charity checklist. Jesus teaches us to pray for grace, and in that to find the love that enables us to connect with other people. And so be ready to respond when we meet that need on the road.

So what must I do? Connect - see that your salvation is bound up with your brothers and sisters. Salvation is like love, it begins when two or three are gathered. Try not to rush. People who are rushing are moving too fast to see the people in the road. And be ready. Ready to offer the crucial help, to have the skills and resources needed when the moment arises. Ready to be moved with pity; to see in the people you meet on the road, that need and vulnerability that is waiting for love. Go and do likewise.

Pentecost 3: 100 years of the Dover House Estate

3rd Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Readings: 1 Kings 19. 15-16,19-21, Galatians 5.1,13-25, Luke 9.51-62

Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

There’s an expression well known in the army: there’re no atheists in foxholes. Meaning that in a tight spot people will always reach for the Bible. This is borne out in studies of war and religion, and, still today, services on operations, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, are well attended even if this doesn’t translate to garrison churches on returning home. One bishop during the First World War reported from the trenches: ‘The soldier has got religion, I’m not sure that he has got Christianity’; without doubt, soldiers are a superstitious lot; and despite its peace and quiet, if South West London has a lot of anything, it’s foxholes.

Thinking ourselves back to 1919 (partying or not), the First World War had brought about an unprecedented upheaval across Europe and the world. The nineteenth-century had seen the coming together of Europe into blocks. In 1800 Europe contained 500 political powers. By 1900 there were just twenty. In that century the percentage of European ownership of the world rose from 35 to 85 percent. Britain claimed a quarter of the world’s land; Russia covered one sixth of it. Many of these great empires, the Romanov dynasty’s, the Hapsburgs’ Austria-Hungary, Kaiser’s Germany, and the Ottoman empire were in ruins by 1918. In 1914 there were three republics in Europe. By 1918 there were thirteen.

And by the end of the First World War, 65 million soldiers had fought. Nine million were killed, eight million held prisoner, twenty-one million were wounded — not counting the scores crushed by post-traumatic stress. Then Spanish Flu, in the year following the war, as the Dover House Estate was being planned, outdid the four years of violence, carrying off 30 million.

It’s often assumed that the War shattered confidence and belief in the British empire and humanity. In the same way people assume that the soldiers returned from the dreadful carnage atheists to a disillusioned secularized nation. The opposite is true.  Statistically, by reports and church attendance through the 20s, war returned soldiers with greater piety. It’s also striking how many, Christian or not, spoke of the presence of the ‘White Comrade’ on the battlefield, and the amount of poetry given to finding a common language for the soldiers’ experience and Christ’s passion; it seemed that in the trenches Christianity had ‘stooped from the sky… It had become incarnate’.

The war also brought about a great deal of Social change - the Archbishop of Canterbury declared field work on Sundays acceptable in 1917. Unsurprisingly for British culture, binge drinking, particularly from soldiers, became a problem. Before the war pubs were open from 5am - 12.30am on weekdays. These were shortened, particularly to prevent morning and afternoon drinking.  By 1918 illegitimacy rates had increased by 30% and divorce rates through the war tripled. While there was a set path for dealing with war widows and their children, what should be done with bereaved girls and illegitimate children? Victorian attitudes to unwed mothers now seemed heartless.

For the soldiers on the continent a different problem arose, as British chaplain Tom Pym remarked: ‘gonorrhoea is a minor discomfort compared to wounds or death cheerfully faced in battle, and is much more pleasurably obtained’. I suspect this is the Works of the Flesh St Paul talked about. Padre Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy, also known as “Woodbine Willy”, (who won the military cross for bravery helping the wounded and whose son was vicar here through the 50s) noted the number of soldiers who brought up versions of the Problem of Evil: how do you reconcile Christianity with ‘the bayoneting of Germans and the shambles of the battlefield’? It seemed to many that Christianity and war were entirely at odds. At one point Kennedy found himself in the front line when a strafe started. ‘Who are you?’ asked a Sergeant, to which Kennedy replied “I’m the church.” The sergeant countered “Then what the ****** hell are you doing here?”

Here we can see a shift in emphasis in theology also reflected in the building of the Dover House Estate. The Dover House Estate was built over a decade from 1919. It arrived as part of the ‘Homes fit for heroes’ movement, that tried to improve living conditions for the those returning from the war. The attempt to clear slums and build decent housing was as much to do with the threat of Bolshevism as social concern, and it struggled through lack of funds and skilled builders, which is why it took a decade to build; but this estate is certainly one of the success stories.

It also plays an important role in the history of St Margaret’s as although we became a Church of England church in 1912, we only became a parish in 1923, undoubtedly because of the many new souls coming to West Putney. So while the Son of Man might have nowhere to lay his head, or as we shall shortly sing: ‘In life no house, no home my Lord on earth might have’; for the returning soldiers here was a place to lay your head, and a ready built church to bring the new community together. And here is the connection.

 At the heart of Christianity is a doctrine which for some seems very strange and contradictory, but which is the whole of Christianity. That God became Man. God became Man in order to share our suffering; to teach us how to live; to place eternity is within our grasp. The kingdom of heaven is here. That as we love, we encounter and grasp something of the reality of God. And actually the doctrine makes sense. How could we connect with God if he had not already connected with us? Why would God create a universe if he did not intend in some way to be part of the fabric of it and know it from the inside out? Where is God to be found if not in the most human of experiences: in rigid fear, in life and death moments, in loyalty and service to the point of death?

The incarnation that was grasped in the war was febrile, human, it was the blood, sweat and tears that made the Passion an everyday reality. These are those who knew what it meant for fire to come down from heaven and to leave the dead to bury the dead. But there is an incarnation in a community. There is the old foundation stone that reminds us of the faith we have inherited. There is a spire that points our hope to God, an altar that gathers the people as at a feast, in brotherly love.

St Margaret’s, which became a parish as the Estate was being built, is the incarnation of West Putney’s faithful. And for those people returning home with the experience of trauma, service and sacrifice, who stood firm for freedom, not for self-indulgence, but as servants of one another; this was their church that they shaped through their faith and experience. So the choir stalls behind me are the only ones I know which are themselves a war memorial, decorated with symbols of war and peace; while Humphrey has written a piece on the crucifix above the pulpit, given by an officer who had received comfort gazing on the large wayside crosses of Northern France. His speculation was that perhaps this was given by a soldier who was recuperating at Dover House, which was used as a hospital for amputees during the war. Whatever the story, the answer to the sergeant who questioned Studdert-Kennedy on what the hell he, the Church, was doing in the middle of a strafing attack, is that that is exactly where the church should be. Incarnate in the midst of people in difficulty. That is in fact the whole of the Gospel.

We are not so far from this generation. Very likely one person here has met someone who knew our first vicar. Our first hymn this morning, All my hope on God is founded, was sung at the consecration of St Margaret’s in 1912. So for us St Margaret’s is human and divine. It bears all the marks of the many hands that have shaped it over the years, the vicars, the churchwardens, the artists, the singers, the carpenters, the youth-workers, but it is here as a work of God. It is here to remind us that between the many offerings of time and talents, the imperfect lives of the faithful, there is a work of God to be discerned. Gently raising the prayers of the people, and shaping lives to follow Christ more nearly, day by day.

The church is the visible reminder of God’s presence in the life of our community. But it is we the faithful who are truly the church, sharing God’s love as the living reminders of the Incarnate God who came amongst us in hardship and tragedy, to share our pain and teach us to love. It is we who continue to sing ‘Great is thy faithfulness’ – written in 1923, just before St Margaret’s became a parish, as a tie to that generation and as a reminder that through all the changes of time, for strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, God remains faithful and his mercies remain for evermore.

Pentecost 2: Freedom and order

2nd Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Readings: Isaiah 65.1-9, Galatians 3. 23-29, Luke 8.26-39

All of you are one in Christ Jesus.

I had an interesting chat with someone over coffee last week, considering the change that occurs between the Gospel and Acts.  In one sense there’s a very direct continuity. Both are written by Luke, and Acts deliberately runs parallel to the Gospel with Paul following a pattern of the life and ministry of Jesus. But what we’re dealing with in Acts is the setting up of an institution. Jesus is always personal – he’s always forgiving, he embodies the human, the compassionate side of teaching. He doesn’t lay down laws but looks to the spirit of them: ‘Man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for Man.’

The early church is starting to put boundaries up. Different boundaries to the Jewish faith, but the reforming Spirit of Jesus is solidifying because of the need to hold the various churches together and establish common ground. It’s a tension between freedom and order.

Now this will bother some people. For some the revelation of God is Jesus. He’s what Christianity is about and in him can be found the real thing: spirituality and not religion. The Church for them is always just one step away from being the Pharisees, the bad guys. You too can have your own personal Jesus –  the spontaneous, intuitive, human feeling for the deep things.

But for others Jesus seems anarchic, dangerously liberal: Because without boundaries we don’t know where we are. Jesus lets off the adulterous woman, despite the evidence, he goes easy on the tax collectors who oppress the people, he obeys law only when it suits him: they don’t fast, they don’t keep sabbath, where will this end? Would Jesus forgive murderers, abusers, war criminals, NAZIs?

Even in this service it’s the contrast between the personal introspection of a hymn like “Be Still” and the creed that always follows the sermon, ensuring that despite the preacher we’re all still orthodox. Freedom and order.

This impulse runs throughout the Bible. Today’s Old Testament reading is bringing the people back to orthodox worship from ‘following their own devices’. There is the threat of punishment for iniquity, and the first five books of the Bible, known as the Law, set the parameters by which God’s people should live.

But at the wedding here yesterday we had a familiar reading from the Song of Songs; a book in which there’s no mention of God at all. But even more strikingly for an apparently religious love poem, there’s no mention of marriage. And in a world that is all about male desire, probably around 300 years before Christ, we have this voice:

I am dark but desirable, O daughters of Jerusalem,
like the tents of Kedar, like Solomon’s curtains.
Do not look on me for being dark, for the sun has glared on me…
Tell me, whom I love so, where you pasture your flock at noon,
lest I go straying after the flocks of your companions.

Her skin is tanned through working outside, like the tents of Kedar, a tribe who still to this day coat their tents in black goats skins, meaning she is a peasant. Like Britain till quite recently ladies of the court would not be getting a tan. You may have seen all the many hats this week at Ascot. So for all the moral conservativism of the Bible we have these poems, featuring a young peasant girl extolling the pleasures of love, seemingly without a thought for marriage or God. It’s frequently read allegorically, but on its own terms, in its freedom, spontaneity, its humanity, it’s a surprising addition to the Bible.  A reminder that for all the Law imposes order on our desire, passion will demand its freedom.

St Paul is the person in whom order and freedom meet. Some of Paul’s more conservative views still haunt the church. He’s fighting a battle of credibility for his new churches. They’re under existential threat and the worst of Christian persecutions is still to come. The last thing he needs is for his churches to be undermined by accusations of immorality and libertinism, or of being revolutionaries or anarchists – The danger of Christianity being swept into a political movement has been a reality since they tried to make Jesus king, or like the Gerasenes in today’s Gospel are terrified by this act of power and demand he leave. While Christianity might take a view, St Paul is more interested in the souls of men and women than their political liberty. So Paul wants his new Christians to be morally impeccable and socially acceptable in order to spread the Gospel.

But this message is radical. Our New Testament reading gave us one aspect: ‘Before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law… There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female – for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’. Imagine hearing that for the first time as a slave. As a woman who has hardly left her house and been passed without question from parents to husband.

There’s an empowerment here, a freedom that will drive Christian Europe to the values of liberty, equality and fraternity, of tolerance and democracy. But always held in tension with the need for order. So Paul is frequently dealing with churches which have heard his message of freedom, but are outdoing each other in proving how free they are. Famously the Corinthians prove what sophisticated Christians they are by blaspheming and sleeping with members of their family. You can imagine his despair!

St Augustine summarized it best with his aphorism: “Love, and do what you want.” It sounds simple and easy, but the trick is in the simple word ‘Love’. For Augustine is telling you to Love like God loves, like Jesus loves, in that way that serves others and is careless of the self, and then do what you like. Which is to say, order your desires to want what God wants. Love – and do what you want.

Perhaps the most significant shift that Paul is describing here is the shift from justice to mercy. ‘The law is our disciplinarian’, we are told so ‘before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law’. The law being the instrument of justice. I think even from the time we’re children we develop this really strong sense of justice. It’s all that stamping of feet, screaming “it’s not fair”.

St Paul is here saying that by the law, by justice, none of us would really pass muster. We are all too human. But God’s love has been revealed to us as mercy and freedom. So as Shakespeare’s Portia says to Shylock:

That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

And the same is true in our everyday relationships. If you’re getting worked up about whose turn it is to do the washing up, to get up early with the child, you’re going to end up in serious arguments. Keeping score in relationships leads to resentment. And if your partner’s thrown wine all over the sofa and got three parking tickets, the neighbours are complaining and the police have been called, you’re not going to resolve the situation by working out whose fault it is. It is mercy not justice that makes life possible: forgiveness, not fairness. Generosity not balance.

Our lives, our relationships require a certain order. Loss of order leads to self-indulgence or exploitation. But the Gospel is a message about the freedom of love. That as God has gone beyond order and the law, so should we find that freedom to love, to give and forgive. Amen.

Trinity Sunday: the joy of the present moment

Trinity Sunday

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Readings: Proverbs 8.1-4,22-31, Romans 5.1-5, John 16.12-15

I am an impatient person. When we’re eating our go-to meal of Fajitas, I will be busy licking my thumbs having demolished 3, whilst Rhiannon is still tucking the corners on her first. In my defence, though, she does overstuff hers.

And I was once recognised by a girl who hadn’t seen me for 3 years from 100 yards simply by the way that I walk. I can’t tell you in a church how my Company Sergeant Major at Sandhurst described my walking, very loudly on a daily basis, but I have a peculiar tendency to lean forwards and lurch rapidly ahead— especially if I’m thinking about something serious. I also have an almost neurotic drive to rush from one thing to the next, which has run into some difficulty in having a child.  But this weekend we started pram-running together and woe betide you if you get in our way, especially with our greyhound running behind picking up the road kill. 

Now there’s a part of all of us that just can’t wait for the satisfaction of reaching the end. Whether it’s the end of a romantic comedy when the happy couple swooshing off into the sunset; or Bond, washed up on a desert island with some scantily clad woman with a preposterous name; the end when Bruce Willis’ white vest is utterly filthy and everyone is dead; or a Peter Jackson hobbit epic when the end goes on interminably an hour past it should. But these are the moments when you think:  It’s all done. Complete.  Switch off.  You’ve got that tick in your life’s to do list checked.

And it would be very frustrating to not get to the end; to get killed in some freak accident and never find out who, if anyone, actually survives to be king or queen at the end of Game of Thrones. I still have about 3 episodes to go but annoyingly they’ve taken it off Now TV so I’ll probably never find out.

But then there are those difficult moments when you wish everything would just end because it’s all so awful. Like chicken-pox. Or Brexit. Or when you turn up to your exam and realise you revised for the wrong exam - which I did once. Or when you’re dry rot keeps spreading and suddenly in a week of bad weather you look up to see that there’s water coming through the roof.

But think how different is that willing for the moment to go on forever.  When the sound of the sea and the sun on your skin demand nothing of you, or when it’s gone midnight with friends feeling perfectly understood, free and invincible; it’s another desire to stop time but as different from the former as life is from death. The poet T.S. Eliot once wrote that ‘human beings cannot bear very much reality’. He meant by this that we’re not very good at living in the present. We’re often so consumed by anxiety over what’s coming next that we stop experiencing the moment.

As with fajitas, I habitually eat too quickly.  I might have been looking forward to some smart dinner all day but I’ll gobble through because hunger makes me eat like a maniac, or simply because I’m mindlessly chatting and not thinking about it, and before I know it it’s over and I can’t remember what I’ve eaten. Or, worse, you see people who are so busy Facebooking, tweeting, blogging, Pinteresting, Instagramming and Snapchatting that actually life has passed them by and they’re fifty with a massive web presence but no personal life or memories. They say that the mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. The same is true of social media. A wonderful servant. A terrible master.

But to go back to Bruce Willis and the romantic comedies - which incidentally would be a great name for a band - you will have noticed how the ending has a false bottom. There’s always a sequel - Bruce gets a new white vest, there’s a new bond girl as the previous one is conveniently forgotten; the awkward break up ‘it’s not you, it’s the Russians’, left to the imagination; or in the case of romantic comedies we’re just left with the speculation of happiness. Surely marriage, children, old age walks in kew gardens.

My point is though that we’re usually looking for an ending. And it’s true, life is a bit more manageable if there are markers where we can say with joy and relief “this is over”.  When the guests leave and you shut the door exclaiming, “Thank goodness they’re gone”. But actually there is no “over” — the kiss becomes a relationship, the engagement becomes a wedding, the marriage, kids. Suddenly you’re out the army, but now there’s a baby and already the churchwardens are clambering at the door. No one ever says stop, take a break, you’ve earned it. No matter how many seasons of Game of Thrones there’s been, life doesn’t get any easier for Jon Snow — Don’t tell me what happens. But just as we may be fervently wishing for the end — out of terror and horror or the joy of completion — life dances on.

So we can worry away focused on the future, or we can pay attention to the present moment. But if your mind is always set on the future you may miss the present.  Whereas if you’re truly and actively engaged with the present, then the future might just look after itself.

So, perhaps, instead of looking endlessly forwards, now is the time to start appreciating the moment — the weather, your work, cricket, your friends, a leadership election, the present moment in all it has to give.  Because the moment of peace in this life is not the stationary moment, the moment at rest at the end.  Retirement which for my generation will probably simply not happen, the moment of peace is not the moment at the end — It’s when you are still moving, but moving in harmony with the world and the people alongside you. When you’re in the present and it’s easy and right. Not a moment without responsibility, but a moment without distraction.

Now Trinity Sunday is traditionally hated by preachers who feel they have to explain the Christian God, usually by some bad metaphor relying on a dead plant, poor science, bizarre family dynamics or awkward third wheel relationships. For all the confusion the helpful aspect of the doctrine lies in shattering our childhood concept of God. God is not a thing out there or up above. God is not a great judge or king in the sky.  God is neither the immovable trigger that kicks it off nor the full stop at the end of the sentence.

Dante, as he reaches the inner sanctum of heaven in Europe’s greatest poem, The Divine Comedy describes the Trinity like this: ‘In the profound and clear ground of the lofty light appeared to me three circles of three colours and of the same extent, and the one seemed reflected by the other as rainbow by rainbow, and the third seemed fire breathed forth equally from the one and the other.’ With circles Dante has found the perfect symbol that can convey both stillness and movement, for as a perfect circle spins you would not perceive its movement.  The image of God, then, is of being still and still moving. But even more memorable is the ending.  Dante writes: ‘now my desire and will, like a wheel that spins with even motion, were revolved by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars’. God is still and still moving and it’s this cosmic movement, not girls, that run the world.

It’s never at rest because Love is never at rest.  And if eternity is not one interminable ending; not one final full stop at the end of the world’s sentence, then perhaps we should stop looking for endings. Perhaps we should try living in the moment a little more, rather than recording what we’ve completed. After all, the truly interesting people are doing truly interesting things. They leave it to others to tweet about them.

Life is not a set of boxes to be ticked or a race to be finished, and even in the dreadful moment we can say, ‘this too will pass.’ But life is about discovering the joy, love and peace that suffuses and moves in every moment.  The love that moves the sun and other stars. This is the Trinity — and the God we should believe and trust in.  Amen.

Pentecost: A Christian nation before God

Pentecost

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Based on readings: Genesis 11:1-9, Acts 2. 1-21, John 14.8-17, 25-27 

The late eighteenth century philosopher Hegel wrote that “newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers”.  The comment reflects the secularising of society, but at the heart of what he is saying is that the thing that binds the nation together, the people’s common interest and experience, is the daily practice of reading the paper.  Reading the paper, or however else we catch the news, forms us in our personal and social identities. The two, I might add, are not mutually exclusive. Justin Welby at the start of his reign repeated the theologian Karl Barth’s dictum that we should have a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, if our faith is going to be relevant to the world.

Part of what is troubling about the rise of Social media is that we are no longer reading the same news, which leads to a confused and divided nation. But what I’d like to reflect on this morning how this little book gave us a new benchmark for the English nation, the English language and the modern individual.

The Prayer Book, obviously, holds God in high esteem, but the monarch comes a pretty close second. Not a service goes by without a prayer for her and usually for her family as well. Eddie Izzard was quite right in noting that, as people go, behind her big house and people with guns, she is one pretty saved queen.  This last week I have prayed and sung for her to be saved at least 20 times, so I’ve certainly done my bit, but it’s important to remember that praying for the queen is at the same time understood as praying for her government and people.

The gunpowder plot, used to provide one of the more colourful services of the 1662 Prayer Book, which was duly to be remembered each year, including the prayer to God, “who on this day, didst miraculously preserve our Church and State from the secret contrivance and hellish malice of Popish conspirators; and on this day also didst begin to give us a mighty deliverance from the open tyranny and oppression of the same cruel and blood-thirsty enemies”. The service was cut - presumably as Father Jack would have said - as an ecumenical matter.

Aside from the no doubt sincere piety of Anglican liturgists in wishing their monarchs well, the force of the Prayer book is deeply conservative, quietist and nationalistic, intended through lifelong repetition to uphold social structure that ‘we may be godly and quietly governed’.  And no surprise here. The 16th Century was still recovering from the bloody Wars of the Roses, and the Reformation and Counter-Reformation sparked political and religious wars and revolts across all of Europe. Rebellion was the great fear. 

But now for the first time, since the prior Latin rites were innumerable and diverse and incomprehensible to the ordinary folk, the people had services which would have been identical no matter where you were in the country, in a language you could understand. It was an end to parochial differences. Even the rubrics were written out so you would all be standing, kneeling or sitting at the appropriate time. It is the ideal form of ideology, even more than cricket and afternoon tea, the prayer book united the people in a common language and religion; thoroughly English.

It is particularly appropriate then that the prayer book was launched on Pentecost 1549.  The preface of the day celebrates ‘the gifte of diverse languages’ the tool of evangelism, suggesting that truth is to be pursued through the vernacular and understood by the people; against the tyrannous opacity of Latin. Being called Brutus that is a very difficult thing to say. It also brings to mind all those bad Latin jokes, like how you can decline Brutus but you can’t conjugate him. 

The point is that while in our Old Testament reading Zephaniah wants the undoing of the curse of Babel in a new ‘pure language’, the book of Acts, read through the Reformers, celebrates the gifts of different tongues praising God as the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so the hankering for a barely understood single holy language of Latin is read as the denial of the Spirit.  The use of Latin in liturgy was outlawed from Pentecost 1549. 

The nation state was not the only winner from the Prayerbook, however.  As part of the Reformation movement, a significant impetus in the new liturgy was to make the individual accountable before God. Under Catholic Latin it is the Church that is the guardian of Truth.  It is a matter beyond the competence of ordinary people. The inability of the majority to understand what is being said maintains a sense of transcendence and the radical difference of the divine. The Prayer Book, on the other hand, has a rubric that it must be “read distinctly with a loud voice”. It demands that it is understood and transparent before the people. No more secret prayers and cult practices.

And with the Prayer Book, services were laid open for the first time. The interpretation of Scripture and liturgy was suddenly open to everyone.  What had been sacred mystery and priestly power had become personal engagement and intellectual access.  This required the ordinary people to be involved in the service.  All of a sudden the service was actually about them. But all of a sudden they had to work a bit harder. 

The nation in worship moved from watching a transubstantiatory rite (try saying that after three gin and tonics) in a foreign language (1547), to a doctrinally ambiguous but inclusive and fully English service (1549), to forthright Protestantism in the second Book of Common Prayer (1552), back to Latin in the Catholic retrenchment of bloody Mary, before the compromise Prayer Book of the religious settlement of 1559.  A troubling couple of decades. The Prayer Book had two main purposes, to unite a nation in language, loyalty to the crown and uniformity of religion, and to legitimize the individual as a man or woman unmediated before God, able to work out their salvation in fear and trembling. 

The first Queen Elizabeth said “I would not open windows into men’s souls” and that has preserved a liturgy which might properly be called inclusive in its theology, and the good luck of the Church of England was to have for its liturgist a poet, Thomas Cranmer, who was able to lay the basis for a beautiful liturgy.  The same queen, however, was also to say, "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm."

And this is the other side of the Prayer Book, a fierce nationalistic ideology, built on the humble origins of a the troubling and ambivalent character of Henry VII and a generation of religious persecution. It's an historical and cultural document which is worthy of celebration, but it also is in perpetuity, the official Prayer Book of this land, and for all its faults incredibly important in being a Book of Common Prayer, the first book of prayer for the common people of these isles.

We too can enjoy its beauty in prayer and music, reminded that we are still (just about) a Christian nation before God, but also an individual before God, called to learn his love and participate in building his kingdom.

Easter 7: Connection and belonging

7th Sunday of Easter

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Based on readings: Ezekiel 36.24-28, Acts 16.16-34, John 17.20-26

“May they be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me.”

Today’s Gospel reads strangely. It’s a prayer. But it’s written in very formal language. It’s almost like a philosophical treatise in its phrasing. As such it seems quite unemotional, withdrawn. Despite the fact that Jesus is praying that his disciples be one; that they love one another like he has loved them. The translation doesn’t necessarily convey that this is a heart-felt speech, made on the eve of execution, that his vision be carried on and his friends look after each other. 

Unless you have completely withdrawn from society; having heard the same news stories every day for the last three years and with the optimistic billing of the England cricket team, you may have decided you cannot bear the inevitable disappointment, and cut yourself off from the world; but not completely. After all you’ve still made it to church. So if you haven’t gone Crusoe, or retired to senility in the attic; you will be a member of certain groups.

At street level it might be a playgroup, a lunch club, or a poker night; a dysfunctional family; but you might still work or have ties to your old company. You might belong to a club on Pall Mall, or a book club, or the Society of Charles King and Martyr. You might, and perhaps contrary to your actions on your last trip to the polling booth, belong to a political party; or formerly belong to a political party; or be a patron or trustee of some charity or foundation. Your balloon is likely attached by several such strings. We are social animals. We belong. And belonging tells us who we are. 

But belonging seems less fashionable today, loyalty less a la mode. Institutions are in decline and in constant suspicion of abuse, corruption and being out of touch. Perhaps the French President will not go to the D-Day commemorations on Juno Beach.  How very French I hear you say. And even to say you’re English suggests colonial paternalism. Thus Elton John’s recent tweet: ‘I am a European — not a stupid, imperialist English idiot’. To be a “woman”, I’ve always said, is to participate in an outdated, binary, oppressive normativity.

And we could easily imagine Jesus walking into the Conservative party HQ right now and declaring: “Father, I wish that they might be one, even as we are one,” Or bringing together Jeremy Corbyn and Alastair Campbell and praying, “May the love with which you have loved me be in them, and I in them.” It seems more likely that he might offer some other just counsel like: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The desire to belong, to have a social mooring is as strong as ever, but in a culture, addicted to the heady cult of individualism, and a political situation which has abandoned collaboration, where is it that we come together?

I talked some weeks back about the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber and his book I and Thou. I’d like to bring it up again because it very neatly encapsulates two very different ways we inhabit the world, and the difference between worldly relationships and what Jesus calls us to.

So there are two sorts of relationship. I-it relationships: where we treat others as objects; an instrumental view of the world. And I-thou relationships: where we treat others as a relationship in which we’re involved; where I’m less sure where I finish and you begin.

So if you walk into a room and you’re thinking, what can I get out of this, how can these people help me, which people do I need to avoid, what is the most I can get from this. That is the I-it relationship. A room full of bumper-cars. 

If you walk into a room and you’re asking yourself, how can I connect with these people, how can we understand each other better, how can we grow together, how might we together benefit the world, then we’re somewhere closer to I-thou.

Now even the most generous minded person cannot be fully engaged all the time. The queues in Tried and True are long enough. And actually having a little professional distance from your dentist is usually a good idea. But to merely treat people as objects would lead to a very lonely and very cold life. But this is not just about dealing with other people.

So perhaps you run. A few years ago I had the delight of a 5 week running course in the Yorkshire hills. Every day was a somewhat uncomfortable test with every conceivable pressure to keep up. For the most part it was mind over matter. My body was an object. Fill it with fuel, give it ice baths, exert my will over it. But every runner will know — and there were moments in those 5 weeks — when mind and body are in harmony, and running is suddenly a joy. It’s actually thrilling and you feel the endorphins rushing about in your brain like performing dolphins. mind, body, spirit, the world all in sync.  That feeling of connection within yourself is I think like a religious experience.

Or if you’ve ever moved from that stilted experience of a first-date, where the boundaries of where each of you end are so clearly miles apart that you wonder how you will ever find anything to say to this person, to that seductive rapport where you could talk all night and you’re finishing each other sentences; that intoxicating infatuation is like a religious experience.

And even if it’s more measured there are those moments where you realise there is a matching curvature between your long term partner and yourself, where your faces fit together, such that to lose that person would be to lose yourself. It has become inconceivable that you would be truly separate objects again.

Or perhaps out on a mountain top, or in a summer rainstorm, in the absolute calm of an ocean or lake; or watching the dawn send a matrix of light through the dense canopy, you have felt within the animality, the createdness of your being an absolute connection and rootedness in this planet.

Or perhaps it’s just watching your first nature documentary after the birth of a child, seeing the polar bear with her cub and realising with uncontrollable sobbing that this is your battle. You are the polar bear. That connection has the nature of a religious experience. 

Or finally in church, it may be the collective act of singing, perhaps in today’s gradual remembering the Dunkirk scene in Atonement; perhaps singing in school or college, or through 40 years of vicars coming and going, or in speaking words a realisation of their weight, spoken over 2000 years, 160 years in this building where prayer has been valid. Perhaps it is simply in a quiet moment, a breaking down of the barriers we place around our souls to find that connection with God, with the person in the next pew, the birdsong, the Putney foxes asleep in the garden. That connection is the basis of all religious experience. That is the opening of the soul to the Thou of the world. This is what Ezekiel spoke of: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you;”

The basis of almost all horror movies is to isolate each member of the group and pick them off one by one. Christianity is founded in reconciliation and this prayer that God’s people might be one, as God is one in unity, and that as one they might love each other. Britain, as a country, and as part of Europe has not looked so fractious and isolated in a long time. As Christians it is our vocation to be points of connection, and through prayer and action find ways of making our connection with nature, our neighbours and our God deeper and more numerous. It is that point of connection that fuels our charity and our impact upon world. It is that depth of connection that is the source of a living faith. 

We have for too long treated the world as an ‘it’, treated women, people of different lifestyles, foreigners, the poor as an it. Sometimes even with a general will to do good to them. To follow Christ is to realise that the animal one pew over, the taciturn man serving coffee, the stranger whose eye you would not meet walking here, the chorus of birds that woke you up, the bright garden outside all have that spark of the divine. All can be reached by thoughtfulness; all are a touching point to eternity. And in feeling that connection, to widen our hearts. In finding the Thou all around us, to love them. Amen.

The Ascension: The end from which we begin

The Ascension

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Based on readings: Ezekiel 37.1-14, Acts 16.9-15, John 5.1-9

 The first question, the question that all theologians hate is about the Ascension itself: where is Jesus’ body? In its typically pictorial language the New Testament has him going up and off like a sky rocket into the night.  Is he perhaps then to be discovered with the Father and Spirit hanging out on Mars like one evangelical I knew used to aver? Well no.

The Bible is trying to give expression to the change that occurs between the Easter resurrection appearances and the gift of the Spirit in the birth of the Church. It takes the resurrection seriously - note that ‘he presented himself alive... by many convincing proofs’ - and we should not overlook that it is the concreteness of this resurrection experience that defines Christianity as something fundamentally new and unexpected. But the ascension draws to a close Jesus’ humanly embodied presence in the world.        

As for where Jesus’ body is, it is with God.  The early church from the time of the Gospels had witnessed in the resurrection the divinity of Christ and so understood him to be not simply up in the stars - contrary to popular belief very few religions have understood God in this way - but present in the way that God is present. It’s hard for us to get our minds around this because we’re so used to a materialistic view of the universe where the world of atoms, electrons, quarks and the rest push out God with their sheer weight of matter.

Now I’m no scientist and generally hate theologians trying to do science as much as I hate scientists who think they can do theology, but if science can talk these days about superstring theory and 11 dimensions (we usually only experience 3 dimensional space and time) then the idea of a multi-layered universe doesn’t seem so implausible. Jesus’ body, then, like God, is somehow still with us.

What then are we to make of the return of this Ascended Lord? Well, in a sense, this is something that we already have experience of. Jesus, as the Word made flesh, is a paradigmatic sacrament - a visible sign of an invisible presence. So, in every Eucharist as God is made present in bread and wine, we have his return.  And that is a return we physically take into ourselves as we ask to be more loving, more Christ-like, closer to God, more a part of Jesus’ body.  And the Eucharist itself looks forward to when we will be fully present to God, though as our first reading in Acts tells us ‘it is not for [us] to know the times or periods that the Father has set’.

The point is, though, that looking towards the end will help us see and so bring to being that peace and goodness that is the kingdom of God. By seeing our end we can orient our lives. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Celebrated life coach Martha Beck offers the following exercise: ‘Think of someone whose approval you covet.  It might be your lover, someone else’s lover, your boss, a celebrity who may never even meet you, [your favourite vicar, or even Jesus,…] Get all those needy feelings front and center.  Let them fill your whole mind.  Now imagine that you get to spend an hour with the person whose approval you seek. Can you feel the desperation, the grasping, the sick sense that this hour isn’t nearly enough? Excellent.

Now begin at the end.  Imagine that you already have this person’s approval, that they adore you, that nothing on God’s green earth could ever diminish their total approval.  You are awash in approval... Letting this mental position fill your mind, picture interacting with your hero again. Can you feel the freedom, the ease, the humour that’s suddenly available to you? Can you feel yourself start to smile without trying?  Can you tell this version of you is way more likely to get approval than the version who’s always desperately seeking it?’

It kind of works doesn’t it? Really it’s a confidence trick in which you help yourself to a place in which you really believe in yourself.  It requires, though, that you can picture and believe in a positive end.  And this is important.  Because if at any point we stop believing in positive outcomes to our lives and actions we will soon find ourselves in quick sand.  When our confidence really leaves us or when the narratives we have in mind for ourselves, for society, history, the world are bleak any motivation to keep going, to seek justice, love, peace will soon evaporate. Martha Beck is right in knowing that our faith in positive outcomes is essential to our success as a person.

Which brings us back to the return of the Ascended Lord.  History, it seems continues to turn and turn in the widening gyre.  We have moved from an Age of Optimism to an Age of Anxiety, a narrative which is also replayed in cycles through different times of our own lives.  But the Christian narrative promises a happy ending: that in Jesus’ return we will lay hold of the peaceful kingdom of God for ourselves.

This is the end from which we begin.  This is the hope and confidence that our faith should give us in seeking to build a world of love and justice. Even through the anxiety of Brexit, the seven last plagues and the four horsemen, by beginning at the end, which is the glory of the risen and ascended Lord, we can move forward with hope and confidence - not anxious about oddballs claiming the end of the world is nigh - or cynics with their Jesus is coming, look busy!  But in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.

Easter 6: Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

6th Sunday of Easter

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green
Based on readings: Ezekiel 37.1-14, Acts 16.9-15, John 5.1-9 

If you happened to be at church last week, you’ll be delighted to know that I’m sticking with the classic movie references. Only this week moving from Taxi Driver to the superb 1954 film On the Waterfront. The film is less famous than one particular line in it, spoken by Marlon Brando, a boxer who is convinced by his brother under pressure from the Mob to lose fights for money. You may have never heard of the film but you’ll know the line: [I think it works better with an English accent, but this is not an accurate repetition of Brando’s working American man:] “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody.” Not ‘I coulda been a champion’, but just ‘I coulda been a contender’. Against his conscience, against his pride, with no support, Brando has become a bum, a nobody. It’s not that he failed — he never even got a chance.

I bring this up because there’s a tension throughout history, but most clearly in the twentieth century between — paraphrasing Mr Spock — ‘the needs of the many’ and ‘the needs of the few’. That conflict is at the heart of most human tragedy. For when ‘as logic clearly dictates… the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’, we are in to the language of ‘collateral damage’, of ‘necessary evils’. The evil of having to get up early every morning because the need of your partner to have half an hour more in bed, and your baby for his milk, outweigh your need to sleep. Necessary evils.

The great unsentimental wickednesses of Fascism and Socialism made no excuses here, but it also becomes the embarrassment of our own politics. Economic or ‘tough’ decisions are made regularly that even with every effort to be fair, require politicians, commanders, anyone making large-scale decisions, to set the needs of the few to one side. Decisions called ‘brave’, ‘statesmanlike’, ‘justified’. I’m sure, like me, most of you are very much looking forward to seeing which of the ‘statesmanlike’ figures, vying to be contenders, becomes our next Prime Minister.  

The novelist Arthur Koestler puts it concisely in Darkness at Noon, the book that signed him off from Communism.  He writes:

‘There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community — which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb.’

It’s not that having collective aims pursued at the cost of individuals is evil. That’s a principle inherent in all politics. But it is true that when this is pursued most rationally and ruthlessly, it’s led to some of the worst human catastrophes. Think of Javert in Les Miserables, of whom Victor Hugo says:

‘Probity, sincerity, candour, conviction, and the idea of duty, are things which, by deceiving themselves, may become hideous, but which even if hideous remain grand… they are virtues which have but one vice, error… Nothing could be more painful and terrible than this face, which revealed what we may call all the evil of good.’ 

This may be true even of politicians who have good intentions. But so much more when they do not. I hope you all voted last week.

When the mob who control the Waterfront in the Marlon Brando film start getting rid of those who threaten their control, Father Barry tells them: ‘Some people think the Crucifixion only took place on Calvary. They better wise up! Taking Joey Doyle's life to stop him from testifying is a crucifixion…  And every time the Mob puts the pressure on a good man, tries to stop him from doing his duty as a citizen, it's a crucifixion. And anybody who sits around and lets it happen, keeps silent about something he knows that happened, shares the guilt of it just as much as the Roman soldier who pierced the flesh of our Lord to see if he was dead. ‘

When the individual is crushed beneath the collective will, the powers that be, it is a crucifixion.

I was intrigued watching a 3 year old playing with some older children in the house yesterday. You could see this was very new to the 3 year old, but it was also exciting being with these older children. Despite being very unsure about the game he went along with it.  We are just naturally very sociable animals. Submitting to a group is something we do a little too easily. And a vicarage is an excellent place to play hide and seek.

It’s a theme that’s very clearly at work in the Gospel.  Power – that is – not hide and seek. As John’s Gospel moves to a close, it’s revealed to the High Priest that ‘it is expedient that one man die for the people’. He doesn’t understand why this has been revealed or what it means, but goes along with it because it seems to him a political truth. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

And we see it in certain miracles.  We’re told that the man is born blind in order that God’s power may be seen and Jesus revealed as the light of the world. Lazarus is allowed to die and Jesus delays his journey to this end, so that he may be raised from the dead and Jesus known as the resurrection and the life. Jesus’ divinity then appears to look past the plight of the individual to the higher goal of the revelation of God’s purposes.

And yet in today’s Gospel, we see Jesus, as he does so often, responding to individual need. Seeing someone struggling and not abstracting to the wider social or theological  issues, lamenting the NHS, or making a speech about social justice, but simply acting on the basis of the need in front of him. We see him breaking the Jewish interpretation of the Law, which is no respecter of the man or woman in crisis. And as with his compassion for outcasts, the vilified and unclean, and his emphasis on forgiveness, Jesus in his humanity puts the individual first.  He’s kind. So in the two natures of Christ, we see mercy seasoning justice, of the needs of the few held with the needs of the many.

This person-based ethics is infused in Christianity. In our reading from Acts we heard about the women of Macedonia and Lydia, hearing the Gospel and being baptised. And this is how Christianity went from a handful of people to a world religion. The simple sharing of stories and interpersonal relationships. The few caring for the few, despite the persecution of the many. As Lydia was baptised with her whole family, like last week, we baptise into the faith our children, as we promise to pass on the stories and bring them up with love and prayer. And as a parent loves a child, as the humanity of Christ speaks of God’s love for each of us despite our weakness and failure — so in baptism we’re reminded that nothing can separate a child from the love of God, and that we have this duty to try and replicate this love for one another, for our neighbours and those we share our lives with; despite early mornings, diva moments and an overabundance of bodily fluids. 

So yes we have collective goals, and we should pursue justice. But we also have to protect one another from the justice and indifference of the world. We have to encourage one another to become the persons we are meant to be. We can all be contenders, but not alone. We can all become collateral damage, we can all face crucifixion, if we don’t watch out for the person who has fallen the wrong side of the tracks. And as the Bible continually exhorts, we must do what we can for the widow, the orphan, the refugee, the sick and the dying. And as Spock learns, where there is love, there is no counting of costs.  Love will move time and space to meet the needs of the few, that one sheep gone astray, the prodigal and profligate, the outcast on the hill, whatever the purposes of the many.  Amen.