Sermons
Sermon preached by Mark Ashworth on 23 October 2011: You shall love your neighbour as yourself
Matthew 22:34-end
You shall love your neighbour as yourself. Do we, really? I suspect that quite a few of us are not very good at loving ourselves. We naturally recoil from wanting to consider the question. Perhaps for fear of what we may find. The fear that we will find self-indulgence, and perhaps the fear that we will also find neglect. Speaking for myself, and I can't really speak for anyone else, I either give myself too much, or I give myself too little. I give myself too much of what will harm me, and I give myself to little of what will protect me from harm. Too little respect, too little tolerance, too little understanding – in short too little love. I am at once too soft on myself and too harsh. I confess that I tend to treat myself in the way that we all know that we should not bring up children. Giving too much that is bad, and not enough that is good.
Let me take an example. I don't know, but I suspect that I'm not alone in being harsher in how I judge myself than I judge others. I find myself speaking to myself – sometimes inwardly and sometimes audibly, using words which I would not dream of using of others. I am less tolerant, and forgiving of myself than of others. Whereas I will say to others not to worry, or that all that we can do is our best – and yet I do worry, and I do condemn myself for my failures – when I would not regard others as failures.
In short, I do not love myself as I should. I – we – should treat ourselves just as we treat those who we love most. That might sound shockingly selfish – but it is how God wants us to love ourselves. Aristotle taught the ancient Greeks that that they must be their own best friends if they were to be friends with others. And Jesus teaches us that we will only be able to love others when we learn to love ourselves as God loves us. God does not judge us, let alone condemn us, or despise us. And if God does not judge us, or condemn us or despise us, why should we judge ourselves, or condemn ourselves, or despise ourselves. Indeed, how dare we judge ourselves, or condemn ourselves, or despise ourselves?
If we are not at peace with ourselves, how can we be at peace with others? If I am distracted by dissatisfaction with who I am, will I have the confidence or the energy to care about my neighbour? Will I fritter away my energy in worrying about what I could have been, and have not been, so that I have little or nothing left to make a difference to what others are, or could become?
Our love for ourselves and others flows from glimpsing, and our heart catching sight of just who, and just what God is – that God is love. And from glimpsing that part within us that has always been there – the part that we began with, and that began searching for and loving our Creator. Glimpsing, that long before any human being saw us, we were seen by God's loving eyes. Glimpsing that long before any person spoke to us in this world, we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love. Glimpsing the One who has chosen us, and who loves us with a love that existed from all eternity, and that will last through all eternity.
This perception is nurtured and enabled by our prayer and our worship and our fellowship. And this inner knowledge – fragile, but fundamental – enables us to trust. To trust that all shall be well, and that all manner of things shall be well. The trust which enables us to escape the inner affliction and distress which would otherwise overwhelm and drown our spirit. And the trust which enables us to see that which is well and that which is good despite all the apparently overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I would like to share with you one of the most powerful testimonies I know of the life transforming effect which the realisation of just what God is can have upon a human being. Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch victim of Nazi hatred, wrote these words on 18 August 1943 whilst incarcerated in the concentration camp at Westerbork: “You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with you, oh God, one great dialogue. Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised towards Your heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and gratitude. At night, too, when I lie in my bed and rest in you, O God, tears of gratitude run down my face, and that is my prayer. I have been terribly tired for several days, but that too will pass. Things come and go in a deeper rhythm, and people must be taught to listen; it is the most important thing we have to learn in this life. I'm not challenging you, O God, my life is one great dialogue with you… Sometimes I try my hand at turning out small profundities and uncertain short stories, but I always end up with just one single word: God. And that says everything, and there is no need for anything more. And all my creative powers are translated into inner dialogue with you. The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches.”
Etty left the camp on the 15 September of that same year. She threw a postcard – her last written message - from the cattle truck which transported her and her family to Auschwitz and to their death, on which she wrote: “ … we left the camp singing, Father, Mother firmly and calmly, Mischa [her brother] too.”
If the transforming realisation of God can reach into the dark hell of a concentration camp, it can reach anywhere. It can reach into the bleakest situation and in to the bleakest heart. It does not do this by making us compare our trials and tribulations with those who have experienced far greater trial and far greater tribulation. No, this testimony and these examples work by inspiring us to trust enough to let God carry out this transforming work – or dialogue as Ette called it - deep within us.
This is not an exercise in amateur psychology or self-help. No. God is bound up in this. We are not in dialogue with ourselves. Our Lord wants to have the chance to talk with us. We are not working on ourselves. Christ is at work within us. We are caught up in a love far broader than the scope of human mind.
There are many situations well short of those experienced by Etty Hillesum which would make it entirely understandable to despair. But with the realisation of God's love for us, and of Christ’s presence within us, we are given the opportunity to see the positive, the good in anything; yes in anything. There are always two ways of looking at anything. Anything can remind us of what we have and what we have been given, just as we can be tempted to let it remind us of what we have not, and of what we have not been given. We can, and far, far too often do imagine that there are prison bars between us and the world which prevent us from delighting in the company of others, and in the beauty and the miracle of this created world that we are passing through.
But we can be freed from those bars that would otherwise imprison us. We can be released from the prison that we would make of this world and that this world would make of us. Our Lord stands in the light just outside our opened cell, beckoning us to walk out and to walk on, side by side together along the road, wherever it may lead.
Etty Hillesum (1914-1943)
Sermon preached by the Vicar on 'Back to Church Sunday', 25 September 2011. Mark 2. 1-12
Picture the scene. It is Capernaum, nearly two thousand years ago, it is hot and dusty outside but you are one of the lucky ones who has got a seat inside. You are there because you have heard that Jesus is going to be there and you want to hear what is going on. But lots of others have had the same idea and the house where Jesus is has become more crowded than the Crib Service at St Paul’s Winchmore Hill. Still, you’re in and you’re listening.
But then there is a strange noise coming from above, perhaps you shift slightly uncomfortably, not wishing to be the first person to say something. When bits of debris start to fall from the ceiling this becomes a little more difficult. By the time the daylight starts to come in through the ceiling any thought of even Jesus holding the attention of the crowd has gone out of the window and everyone is looking up.
Down from the ceiling is lowered a stretcher and on the stretcher a man. We heard the story. Jesus tells him his sins are forgiven. When challenged on whether he should be saying this Jesus says ‘pick up your mat and walk’ and up he gets and walks. I have always rather suspected that Jesus, the former carpenter, would have soon got up on the roof to mend the damage – but that is not recorded in the Gospel.
This is a familiar story. And as we think about it let us direct our thoughts to the various characters in the story: the paralytic, his friends, the crowd and, at the centre of it all, Jesus himself.
We know that there was a large crowd that came to hear Jesus, and we know that in that crowd were representatives of the scribes – along with the Pharisees the default fall guys of the gospel stories – who were probably there to check out whether Jesus was theologically sound and to try to catch him out. When they came to the house they came in a sceptical or suspicious frame of mind, ‘Go on then, convince me’ written all over their faces.
Others in the crowd were different – eager to come, eager to hear, looking for the wisdom that Jesus would impart, longing for his touch, longing for him to notice them. Some of them were close to him, others further away, but all pleased to be there with him. Then there’s the paralytic himself. We don’t really know much about him. He may have been brought without really knowing where he was going or what was happening to him. He may have actively requested to be taken to Jesus. Whatever happens he found himself lowered down, in the face of the crowded congregation right at the feet of Jesus himself. And then, up above, on the roof, four friends lowering down their friend to be healed by Jesus. Not subtle, I grant you, but Jesus saw in them great faith. They knew that the best thing for their friend was Jesus – that an encounter with Jesus could transform him and that was why they brought him.
And at the centre of all of these people is the person of Jesus himself. Whoever they were and however they got there and wherever they were inside, outside or on top of the house, it was Jesus that was the focus of their attention. And what does Jesus do? When he responds he responds to each individual according to their need.
On any particular Sunday at any particular service those of us gathered here will be here with a whole collection of different motives. Today on Back to Church Sunday perhaps more so. And the characters in our story might help us to understand where we are coming from and why we are here. Which one are we? Some of us may well be here under sufferance or possibly unconvinced, like the people of Israel we heard about in our Old Testament reading, we may be asking ‘is the Lord amongst us, or not?’ There were many people who, at the time of Jesus, were not convinced by his claims. From time to time some of them surface in the gospel story. Jesus addresses their worries – as he did in this story with the scribes – but rarely do we hear how they responded. They may have gone away unconvinced but by the same token they may have found what they were looking for in the place they least expected to find it.
Others of us may have come here bringing a guest, a friend or a family member. It is unlikely that you have brought them on a stretcher or lowered them through the roof, but here you are with them, perhaps without you they would not have been here today. The fact that you have brought them is a testimony both to your faith in God and your care for your friend. Others of us have come like the crowd, of our own volition, to meet with God through Jesus Christ and to join in worship with the rest of the church gathered here.
And others of you may have been brought by someone, like the man brought by his friends to Jesus. This might be a familiar place to you, it might be your first time here. It is difficult to come into a new place, or to come back to somewhere you have not been for a while. It is difficult to take that step across the threshold, perhaps not knowing what to expect. It would probably be worse if you had been lowered through the roof, but, just as Jesus welcomed that man so everyone, however they arrived, is welcome here.
So all of us come to Church today from our different backgrounds and with our different expectations, just like that scene in Capernaum. And in the midst of us, just as he was in the midst of the crowd there, is Jesus. We come into the presence of Jesus and into the presence of God the Father here in Church. We come close to him in prayer, we hear about him in the readings from scripture and we meet him in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. So what of him? Who is this we meet and what does he say to us?
In the second reading this morning we heard the words of a very ancient Christian hymn. This hymn tells of the humility of Jesus. Though divine, though God, he becomes human, taking the form not of a ruler but of a servant. He becomes like us and he knows and understands us. We see this in his reaction to the different people in that room in Capernaum. He understands the suspicion and scepticism of the scribes and addresses it, not with anger but with gentleness. He teaches the crowds who are gathered there, giving to them the words that they want and need to hear. He sees and rewards the faith of the four friends who have risked so much with the healing of their friend. And then there is the paralytic. We don’t know what his illness was, or what his background was, we don’t know what he truly needed or desired in his heart but we can be sure that this was what Jesus addressed. ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’ he said. Your sins are forgiven. Whatever it is that worries us, whatever stands in the way of our coming before God, coming into the presence of Christ, this is wiped away, it doesn’t matter any more, it is overwhelmed by the love and acceptance that comes from God through Jesus to all of us. If we take only one thing away from today it is the message that God loves us, me, you, all of us, each of us, every one of us.
And knowing that we are loved leads us to want to be in the presence of Jesus, to be lowered into his presence. And here in Church is the place, maybe not the only place, but a good place and an easy place to meet Christ in the Gospel, in the eucharist and in one another.
And as we come into Christ’s presence so we can be transformed. I suspect, or rather hope, that the scribes were transformed by their encounter with Jesus just as much as the paralytic was even though that transformation was not physical. The disciples were transformed by their encounter with Christ just has countless millions have been since then. As we come into his presence week by week we stand in that tradition, of those who hear the call of Christ, experience the love of Christ, are transformed into the likeness of Christ and go out to take the good news of Christ into the world.
Sermon preached by Mark Ashworth on 18 September 2011: The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16)
Jesus told the parable which we have just heard to help the disciples understand their place in God's kingdom. Immediately before, Jesus said that it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. This teaching had disturbed the disciples who had just asked what would be their reward forgiving up their jobs and leaving their families to follow Jesus. It seems that the Disciples were hoping for a material reward. Jesus told them that "many who are first will be last, and the last first". The parable in today's gospel gives an example of what this means, and to reinforce the point, Jesus ends by repeating "so, the last will be first and the first last".
The disciples were meant to see the story through the eyes of the labourers who had worked all day through the scorching heat, but who received the same pay as those who had only worked for one hour in the cool of the late afternoon.
And we should see the story though the same eyes as those who worked all day if ever, whenever, we are tempted to think that somehow we are worth more than others are worth – at home, at work, and especially at church. Because all are equal in the eyes of God. All of us are equally undeserving of God's love, and all of us are equally and unreservedly loved by God.
But there are always different ways of looking at Jesus’ parables, as there are different ways of looking at a gemstone, depending upon which facet we look through, or which character we think about. Let's think today about the labourers who were hired at the end of the working day.
The landowner went out into the marketplace at five o'clock in the afternoon. He had originally gone out right at the start of the day, at about 6 AM to find workers for his vineyard. He went out again three hours later at 9 AM. The parable does not say that he went out again because he needed more labourers, but that might have been the reason. Whatever the reason, he said to them "you go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right”. So they followed him. And the landowner went out again, and did the same thing at noon. And then yet again at 3 PM. It is most unlikely that by this time his motive could have been because he needed more labourers. He would have known how many labourers he needed right at the start of the day, and certainly after his first couple of returns he would have had ample chance to correct any miscalculation on his part. But by 5 PM, only one hour before the end of the working day, and after four earlier visits, there can't have been any need for extra hands. No, the owner of the vineyard was not going out because he needed labourers. He was going out because the labourers needed him.
And why did they need him? By 5 PM a few had been waiting all day in the marketplace – some diligently since before dawn – hoping to be hired. If they were not hired, then their families would have no income for that day, and quite possibly nothing to eat that evening. Some of those left might not have been able to get themselves organised to be there at the start of the day. Some might have had other work to do, perhaps relatives to care for. Perhaps some could not bring themselves to get out of bed in time. For whatever reason, they were all left there, standing idle. And so they waited – now knowing that there was no chance of any work, but probably depressed and reluctant to go home with empty pockets. They had failed, and almost certainly not for the first time. There was nothing to do but hang about with the others who had also failed to find work. With the others who were not the first choice, or the second, or the third, or even the fourth choice when it came to employability.
And then – after they had given up any hope for the day – the strange landowner approached them and he asked them "why are you standing here idle all day". They must have thought that a silly question, and they replied flatly with the obvious answer: "because no one has hired us". He said to them "you also go into the vineyard". They did not stop to bargain about their wages. They might have done that with vigour earlier in the day. But by now they had nothing to bargain with or for. They just followed. Anything would be better than nothing.
So they worked for an hour, perhaps hoping that they might at least be able to provide some scraps for the family meal. The end of the day came soon. Then the strange landowner did yet another strange thing. Instead of paying those who had worked for him for the whole day first, as was usual, he told his manager to pay those who had started last, first. And then, to their astonishment, he gave them a full day's wage. No doubt the surprise showed on their faces, and perhaps some asked whether there was a mistake. No they were told, no mistake. That is what they were to be given.
Jesus is not telling us how to run a vineyard. But he is telling us what God is like. God is not about just rewards. He is about much more than a fair day's pay, for a fair day's work. God's grace goes beyond our ideas of justice. God’s ways are not our ways, thank God.
And by God's grace, he gives us our pay, our reward, not according to what we have done, but according to what we set out to do. Not according to what we are, but according to what we resolved to be. Not according to the works of our hands or our minds, but according to the inspiration of our hearts. And our inspiration comes from him. That is why it is worth repenting of our sins and our natures and resolving to do better, because that is all that God asks of us, and God knows that that is all that we are capable of. That is why our confession, and our absolution made and pronounced week by week are not just vain and empty repetitions of hopeless failure.
My favourite picture of Jesus is Holman Hunt's The Light of the World. One of the three huge versions that he painted hangs in St Paul's Cathedral. It's worth visiting just to sit and gaze upon, and be gazed upon. In that picture, Christ stands outside a door in front of which brambles and weeds have grown up, which show us that the door has not been opened for many a long season. In one hand Christ holds a lantern that lightens the gloom. His other hand is raised and he is in the very act of knocking upon the door. His face is radiant and transfixing, and his enchanting, enticing eyes look out from the picture straight into the eyes of the observer. Beneath the picture are written the words from the book of Revelation: Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. In this great picture, Christ comes to find the householder who for whatever reason has ceased to open the door. Perhaps – no doubt – he has come that way, and knocked on that door many times before. And he will keep coming back, knocking with the same infinite gentleness and infinite patience in the hope that there will eventually come an answer, and that He may come in and sit down and share a meal. Share the meal we are about to share.
And the parable is like the picture. The labourers did not go knocking at the gates of the vineyard. No, the landowner came to find them in the village marketplace. And he kept coming back until he had found everybody. The parable doesn't say for sure, but I am sure that there weren't any labourers left loitering around at the end of that day.
As in the parable, all we have to do is to be where our Master can find us. As in the picture, all we have to do is to open the door when he knocks. All we have to do is to be where he can find us. All we have to do is to respond when he comes to find us. We don't have to be worth hiring. We don't have to sell our services or our selves. All we have to do is to be there, where he can find us.
I don't know about you, but that's why I am here, in church today, and that's why I keep coming back. So that I can be found. Because I believe that I will be found.
Sermon preached by Fr Marcus Walker on 11 September 2011
Grief is the price we have to pay for love.
This powerful phrase was used by the Queen in her message of support to the British relatives of the victims of what we now call “9/11”.
Grief is the price we have to pay for love.
With those words the Queen took a terrible and momentous event – easily in the top five of the previous hundred years – and put it in its proper context: the grief of those who mourn their fallen loved ones.
The shadows cast by those events cover us to this day. We live in a world where the image of planes cruising, serenely, into those glittering towers is seared into our minds.
With our soldiers still fighting - and dying - in Afghanistan, with regimes falling across the Middle East, with the vast cost of our military actions still stalking our economies, we are living in a world where the fall-out from that day has still not settled.
And yet, perhaps because of all the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who have died since that day; because of all the political analyses of these events; because of all the statistics; there is a great danger that we miss the actual story here. The story, told almost three thousand times, of a death.
The story of a father not coming home to his children ever again. Of a daughter never again to sit around the fire at Christmas.
Grief is the price we have to pay for love.
The most famous picture of the day was one which was only published once and has been the source of controversy ever since: the Falling Man.
It shows a man tumbling through the air, having thrown himself from one of the upper floors of the World Trade Centre.
Falling thousands of feet to a certain death.
We cannot know what horrors had inspired him to choose that death rather than wait for death by fire or collapse. We cannot know the fear he must have felt; the panic; the certainty of imminent death.
We can only guess.
But this picture captured something of the horror of the day more than the iconic images of the two towers with gaping smouldering holes in them can do.
And yet even this picture leaves something out. A name. The man falling is unknown. However he died, his family do not it. The same goes for thousands of families.
“I don’t know how he died,” said Patricia Bingley, an English mother whose son Kevin was working on the 101st floor of the North Tower. “We have no body. I can’t go to the graveyard.
“I find myself saying, ‘please bring him back’ but I know he won’t come back. I just want to say ‘Goodbye’.”
The real story of 9/11 is the grief; the pain of those left behind.
And with pain comes anger. And we have seen that anger in play across the world these last ten years.
For us as Christians, this begs a huge question – one which is raised today in our readings.
Peter asks, “how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Some translators have this as “seventy times seven”. Either way the idea is to express an eternity of forgiveness.
It is poignant that this is the reading – selected for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity in Year A long before the events of 2001 – that this is the reading we have today. That its focus is so firmly on forgiveness.
Our translation here does not help us appreciate the importance of what Matthew is doing here. The words that we translate as debt and forgive are exactly the same words as we find in the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us our debts, sins, trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
AS
There is the key word. It is a contingent phrase – the one half relying on the other half for completion. We are forgiven our trespasses AS we forgive those who trespass against us.
This is the terrifying warning: our forgiveness rests on our ability to forgive.
And this passage of scripture is essentially a commentary on that section of the Lord’s Prayer. The evil slave, having been forgiven an unbelievably large amount of money (ten thousand talents – which, if you consider that a talent would be about the maximum that an average worker would earn in fifteen years, you’d probably be talking an amount in the region of £3billion today if we wanted to look at it in this way)… so this slave, with all the generosity having been extended to him then turns around and imprisons another slave who has not paid back one hundred denarii – maybe a year’s savings for an average labourer. The response from the king is immediate and brutal. The slave is hauled off to the torturer.
This raises all sorts of questions for us – especially today.
How are we called to respond to events as horrific – and incontrovertibly evil – as the attacks on the World Trade Centre? A simple response is to say “we’re called to forgive”. But what actually does this mean?
I mean, how do I forgive the murderers of someone else? Is that my rôle at all? Both Muslims and Jews have a real problem with the idea that anyone can offer forgiveness except for the victims themselves. Or ask for forgiveness except for the perpetrators.
Although I might have been emotionally affected by the attacks and deeply, profoundly moved, in some ways surely it is important for me to acknowledge that it’s not me who needs to forgive.
To a limited extent that is right. We can only forgive those who trespass against us if they have trespassed against us. But there is a wider aspect to it.
We can see from the reading today that the two decisions, by the king to forgive and by the forgiven slave not to forgive, had a wider impact. The other slaves were outraged by the unforgiving slave’s actions – not because imprisoning someone for debt was unacceptable (on the contrary, it seems to have happened all the time), but because in his situation, the slave was almost duty bound to forgive his neighbour. And by not doing so, he drew the outrage of his colleagues and a swift punishment by the King.
All of our behaviour, as Christians, is affected by everyone else’s and affects everyone else.
We make up the body of Christ, and we make up the body politic. Our response to an outrage like that of ten years ago affects how we, as a society and we, as a country, respond.
And we are called, very clearly, by word and example, to forgive.
Yet forgiveness is a very interesting concept. So far we haven’t defined our terms. Forgiveness isn’t something which happens, like the turning on of a light. It is a process, not an event. It is something you have, consciously, to strive at, not something which just happens.
It also doesn’t mean forgetfulness. You don’t go back and pretend nothing has happened. On the contrary, you have to move forward, acknowledging the pain and the trauma which has occurred. And you try to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You might forgive the debts of someone who owes you money – but that doesn’t mean you’ll be quick to lend to him again!
A failure to forgive doesn’t, of course, only hurt the other person. A failure to forgive means a failure to let go; to move on; to allow the rest of your life to take place. It means that the one person who is probably actually being hurt by such a failure is you.
Forgiveness is not only for the sake of the perpetrator; to allow yourself to let go of what the other person has done to you is the only way you can recover.
And it’s the only way that you can stand with Christ and be forgiven yourself.
There is, I feel, one portion missing from the parable we heard today. The King’s son. You see, if this parable is to be a real reflection of the post resurrection Christian theology of forgiveness, we can’t miss out the Son.
Perhaps we should imagine him entering just after the King has condemned that awful slave to be sent to the torturers. No royal robes are on his back. No. He is the one who has been tortured. Brutalised. Blood running down his face and his body. Naked; his clothes having been divided among his torturers.
It isn’t that he has paid the specific price – or taken the punishment specifically on behalf of that ungrateful slave. It is that somehow he has wound up in a world where he would be tortured. And seeing the horror of the punishment inflicted on his own son, the King allows the son to lead the slave out.
And where is the Son in 9/11? I shall finish with part of a poem by Godfrey Rust called September 11, 2001:
Where was God on September the Eleventh?
He was begging
in old clothes in the subway
beneath the World Trade Centre.
He was homeless in Gaza,
imprisoned in Afghanistan,
starving in Somalia,
dying of Aids in an Angolan slum,
suffering everywhere in this fast-shrinking world;
and boarding a plane unwittingly in Boston,
heading for a meeting on the 110th floor.
When the time came he stretched his arms out once again to take
the dreadful impact that would pierce his side,
his last message on his fading cell phone
once more to ask forgiveness for them all, before
his body fell under the weight of so much evil.
Sermon preached by the Vicar on 29 May 2011
It seems that lots of people I know came into contact in one way or another last week with the President of the United States on his visit to Britain. A very excited Facebook update from a friend who works at Westminster Abbey reported that he had shared a joke with Michelle Obama, a Bishop, preaching a sermon at Westcott House, Cambridge on Thursday began the sermon by proffering his right hand and saying that this was the hand that shook the hand of Barack Obama, and Lindsay followed the endless stream of official vehicles up the M11 towards Stansted as the entourage prepared to move on.
Like countless visiting heads of state before him (and the Duchess of Cambridge not so long ago) Mr Obama laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown warrior at Westminster Abbey during his stay. This tomb contains the remains of an unknown and unnamed British soldier killed in action we don’t know where. The honour given to this soldier is symbolic. In honouring this tomb all those who have been killed in the service of the nation are honoured.
In Athens Paul and his considerably smaller entourage came across an altar with the inscription ‘to an unknown god’. We have no idea who this supposed god was, but at the time Athens had a profusion of images, altars and deities. It had become the thing to include dedications to an unknown God and Paul uses this to begin his sermon to the Athenians. He takes what is there, the cultural and religious assumptions of his audience, and uses this as a hook on which to hang his sermon on the salvation that comes from God through Christ.
This is possibly the earliest example of the technique in what we know as homiletics – or the science of preaching – of taking a cultural or other reference from the lives of the audience and using it as an example in order to get across a point of Christian truth. Whilst this might be the first such example it is certainly not the last. Paul starts with the altar to the unknown God. He tells them that whilst they may now be worshipping something unknown he can make known to them the God who made heaven and earth, who gave life to all living things, is not found in altars of stone or in gold or silver but who commands people to repent before the judgment of Jesus who was raised from the dead. Paul even goes so far as to quote a Greek philosopher – the Stoic poet Aratus on the way. ‘For “in him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own pets have said, “For we too are his offspring”’.
Since Biblical times preachers have used all sorts of innovative means to communicate the good news, to enable people to hear that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and to call people actually to do something about it. In the eighteenth century the Wesleys, founders of the Methodist Church, made an art of this sort of technique. Many early Methodist hymns were written to be sung to popular tunes. The great hymn ‘Love divine all loves excelling’ was a deliberate take off, if you like, of the popular aria ‘Fairest Isle all Isles excelling’ from Purcell’s opera King Arthur.
Today we find ourselves in a time not all that dissimilar to the world of St Paul and the world of the Wesleys. Whilst we may hark back to the time when everyone knew their Bible stories, when everyone knew what to do in Church and we could assume Christian faith in everyone we know that this is now no longer the case. For one reason or another the knowledge and understanding of the Christian faith has slipped away quietly and the church, which had lost its nerve, is now having to recover that nerve in order to bring the message of faith once more to the people we are sent to serve. An illustration of this has emerged during the celebrations for the four hundredth anniversary of the Authorised Version of the Bible: a survey last week found that 41% of people believed the phrase ‘east drink and be merry’ originated in Shakespeare as opposed to 9% who correctly identified it as coming from the Bible. Likewise ‘the writing on the wall’ where the same percentage of people believed this to come from the Beatles as from the Bible. In the same survey, when asked whether the Bible was important and whether it was a good thing to read it 12% of respondents aged 18-24 said it was a dangerous book and should be ignored.
But lest this seem to be an overly depressing there is hope – particularly here in this parish. We are blessed with people who, for whatever reason, come to us. The large number of adult confirmation candidates last week shows that people are making a commitment to Christ. But there is still work to do. In the early Church, about which we have been reading week by week in the Acts of the Apostles in the weeks after Easter, the apostles and their followers knew what they had to do. Following the command of Jesus they went out to take the good news to the nations. They found they had to come up with innovative and new ways to get their message across – but this they did.
Today we need constantly to review how it is we operate as a church. Are we meeting people where they are and enabling people to hear the good news in a language that they can understand? There is no point lamenting the fact that we can no longer assume the level of religious literacy or implicit religious faith that once we might have. Rather, we would be better served looking for ways and means to draw more people into our community of faith, worship, service and the eucharist.
There are different models on offer. I do not, however, believe that the way to go about it is to adopt wholesale the motivational processes of the WalMart group – treating the congregation as the sales force and the outside world as potential customers. Nor do I believe God and the church best served by turning Sunday worship into a religious version of a Lady Gaga concert. The Church is not a business, nor is it entertainment. Looking at what is successful in both areas, though, might help us a little.
From the world of both entertainment and business we can see that seeking excellence in what we do – teaching, worship, service and outreach is important. Good publicity is vital. The quality of the relationships that we have with one another within the church into which others can be drawn is important.
Over the last few years an initiative has developed which we are going to join in with for the first time this year. The fourth Sunday of September has been used as ‘Back to Church Sunday’. It is a fact that Churches would grow if they concentrated first on bringing back into the Church those who had been part of the Church and are no longer. This is before we begin to think about those who have never been. We see in this church that new people come through the doors in numbers of which most churches would be envious, but congregation numbers stay roughly the same. As one wise parishioner said to me the other day – we have a revolving door. Over the next few weeks we will be finding out more about Back to Church Sunday. But the key point to it is this – that people are most likely to come to church not because of good publicity or because an entertaining show is promised, but because someone they know asks them and goes with them. That is interesting is it not? We believe we have something good to offer. We believe that God in Jesus Christ is calling us to him and calling others also. Think therefore who you used to see and see no longer. Think of those who have for one reason or another dropped out of church. Who might you ask to come with you on 26th September? There is clearly room for those of us charged with the arrangement of worship, teaching and preaching to make sure that what we do is relevant and allows the good news to be heard, but the task of making sure that people are there to hear it is a shared task – shared by all of us who are part of the body of Christ.