Matthew at Christmas

Whaley Bridge Parish

December 17th 2022

Matthew 1: 18 – 25

Allow me to introduce myself; the name’s Matthew, Matthew the Gospel-writer. St Matthew, if you want to stand on ceremony.   It makes me feel very proud, when I come into a church like this, to hear my Gospel being read.  Just to think:  after all these centuries, it’s still making people sit up and listen.  It’s still making the Good News of Jesus come alive for people.  My Gran would be so proud.  She was a great story-teller, and she was the one who taught me the story-telling art.  .  And in the Christian Community I belonged to there were always stories about Jesus.  nothing much written down, of course, we all told stories from memory As I grew older I noticed that people were sometimes muddling the details of the stories and leaving bits out.  I thought the Good News of the Risen Jesus was too important to get muddled.  One day when I was praying the idea suddenly came to me:  Matthew, why don’t you get it all written down. So that’s what I did.

It took me years.  I had to go around listening to all the story tellers, sifting through all the material.   And then of course I had to find a way of joining it all up so that it made sense. But I can’t claim complete originality for the idea:  Mark wrote a Gospel, and I’d had sight of that.  But he leaves so many things out.  I wanted to write a Gospel that was true to the Jesus we worship in our Community:  a Jesus who is very close to us:  a Jesus who is with us when we share the bread and wine, the word and the prayers.   That’s what my Gospel is about.

Anyway, Gospel writing started to catch on.  Did you know that there are twenty two Gospels, or bits and pieces of Gospels.  When they started putting the New Testament together in the fourth century they just chose the four best, the ones that were truly inspired by God.  And mine was right there ahead of the queue.  The first book of the New Testament.  As I said, my Gran would be proud.

Now I haven’t come to speak to you this morning just to do a sales pitch….though if you’re short of a read at Christmas, you might just find my Gospel fits the bill. No, I’ve come for a bit of a grumble.  It’s about Nativity Plays.  And Carol Services.  When Christmas comes around, I never get a fair hearing!  It’s Luke’s Gospel every times.  Now far be it from me to criticise Luke:  I’m sure he was a godly man, and he knows how to tell a great story.  But everywhere you look at Christmastime, it’s stables, shepherds, and angels singing!  The kids love them, everyone loves them.  You can’t get away from the ox and the ass and tea-towel-headed shepherds.  But that’s not how I tell the story of Jesus birth.  In my community we didn’t have any stories like that, so I didn’t put them in.  In my Gospel, Jesus isn’t born in a stable.  He’s just born at home.  Normal home delivery.  But nobody wants to know about that.  For a start it would put the crib making industry out of business.  Tea-towel sales would fall. 

OK, I admit it.  Luke’s birth stories are a stroke of genius.  The shepherds, the stable:  they all tell us something really true about God:  how God in Christ identifies with the poverty-stricken, the outsiders.  But it’s not what I wanted to say.  It’s not the way the Good News of Jesus had come to me.  I, Matthew, wrote my gospel as I had heard it and I didn’t hear different but that Jesus was born at home in Bethlehem.

Now the wise men:  that’s a different matter.  The wise men belong to my story.  Luke didn’t know anything about any wise men.  In my story, the wise men visit Jesus at home, and they’re not tripping over any shepherds either.  It’s funny how they’ve come to be known as the three Kings. Because in my story, actually there’s aren’t three Kings, there are two.  There’s evil King Herod, and new King Jesus.  And when Herod hears from the wise men about the birth of a new King he goes ballistic.  He thinks his power base is being threatened.  Gets his henchmen to slaughter every baby boy within a mile of Bethlehem.  Pure evil.  But the angel warns Joseph and they become refugees, hide out in Egypt for a couple of years till things have cooled down. 

People fleeing their homes, hiding out to escape the grip of terror – it still happens, and people escaping from violence read my gospel they’ll know.  This good news is for them. 

But never mind my gospel:  everyone knows there are three kings at Jesus’s birth!  Any nativity play you go to, there’s be my wise men slumming it in Luke’s stable.  That’s how you folks like it. OK. It just goes to show how stories get changed over time.  People muddle things and forget bits.  Actually, that’s why I wrote my Gospel down in the first place.  But once in while, just once in a while I wish you would let me tell my story of Jesus’ birth.

You see, in my story, Joseph is a really important figure.  Luke doesn’t say anything about Joseph.  He’s all for Mary, and I can see why.  Luke’s always interested in outsiders, and so he’s interested in what women have got to say:  goodness knows women were outsiders in Jesus’ time.  No-one gave their opinions any credit.  So yes, Luke gives you the scene with Mary and the angel, and pretty good it is as well.  But I wanted to give Joseph his due.. 

You see, Joseph is the person that links Jesus with King David, with all the glories and hopes of the people of Israel.  That’s really important.  Jesus doesn’t just come out of no-where:  he’s been longed for and prayed for and looked for by Israel’s prophets for generations.  There had been ages of expectation, patiently building up.  Haven’t you read the Old Testament?  It’s all in there.  That’s why I start my Gospel with Jesus’s family tree:  David begat Solomon, and Solomon begat Rehaboam, and Rehaboam begat Abijah……….OK, I admit it’s boring, but I was making a point.  Jesus is the fulfilment of the hopes of Israel.  Don’t you sing something like that in a carol?  “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”  Hits the nail on the head, that does.

So Joseph’s important, and I start with Joseph.  It’s a dilemma for Joseph.  There he is, engaged to the girl, then all of a sudden she gets pregnant and he knows for sure it’s not his.  Imagine what’s running through his mind.  Adultery, shame, the end of his hopes.  Imagine him going to bed tossing and turning, haunted by anxiety.  And then, some how he falls asleep, and in his dream:  there’s an angel, a message from above.  It’s going to be alright.  Him, Mary and the child.  It’s going to be alright, even if the child isn’t his, because the child is God’s.  It’s going to be alright, because in this child God will come to be with us.  Immanuel, God with us.

Sometimes I wonder:  what if I hadn’t had the chance to write my Gospel?  What if only had the change to write one sentence to pass on to Christian believers of the future? What would it be?  Well, I’ll tell you.

It would be this:  God is with us. My Gospel in four words.  God is with us.  And that’s what I want you to remember when you read my Gospel:  that God is with us.  I put it in at the beginning and in the middle and again right at the end of my gospel, so you can’t miss it. The last hing Jesus says.   “I am with you always, to the very end of the age – remember?” Here in this funny and beautiful world, this tired and aching world.  God is with us in Jesus, sharing our life.  That’s what Christmas means.  Simple really. 

Frances Eccleston

December 2022

Jonah Series - Part 3

Whaley Bridge Parish

August 21st 2022

Jonah 3 and 4

Here we are in week three of our sermon series on Jonah.  Over the last two weeks we've looked together at how this short story uses comedy to tell us deep truths about God and ourselves.  We've seen how Jesus knew this story and let it illuminate his calling to be God's suffering servant. Now as we arrive at chapters three and four the whale's out of the way - it's swum off somewhere else - and we get to the heart of the matter.  We get to a really important question.  What kind of a God does Jonah believe in?  And for that matter, what kind of a God do we believe in?

As we've been finding out over the past few weeks, Jonah is not exactly a role model for us to put on a pedestal.  He's a bit hopeless, a bit unimpressive.  The commentator Eugene Peterson says we can relate to Jonah because he's  companion to us in our ineptness.  I like that.

Chapter three gives us the action.  Jonah finally girds his prophetic loins, and heads up to the big city to call them back to God.  And you know what?  It works.  The king repents.  The people repent.  Even the animals repent.  The whole city is turning itself around to God.  Jonah's preaching has hit its target, with a quite staggering degree of success. Surely this kind of a result will delight Jonah.  Surely he'd want to thank God at seeing lives changed and renewed.  But no, no a bit of it.  Jonah stomps off in a rage.

This is how the Message version puts it:

"Jonah was furious.  He lost his temper.  He yelled at God:  "God! I knew it. When I was back home I knew this was going to happen.  That's why I ran off to Tarshish!  I knew you were sheer grace and mercy, not easily angered, rich in love and ready at the drop of a hat to turn your plans of punishment into a programme of forgiveness!

So God if you won't kill them, kill me!  I'm better off dead!"

And with that, Jonah takes himself for a high level sulk

It does intrigue me that the word "biblical" is most often used in common parlance to mean really big.  We might hear about a flood of biblical proportions.  Well, Jonah chapter four gives us a sulk of biblical proportions.  Jonah's ability to sulk is truly impressive. 

And the reason for the sulk?  Jonah doesn't like what he's seen of God in action.  Jonah wanted to see the people of Ninevah punished.  He knew perfectly well what they'd been up to. Remember Ninevah was part of Assyria,  Israel's enemy.   We can imagine the script running through Jonah's head: 

"Those Assyrians, they're all the same, you can't change them, they're callous, evil, hypocritical - they may say they're turning to God, but it's just a sham.  They need to be taught a lesson.  They deserve to be punished - that might make them sit up and take notice.  So what does God do?  Does God punish them?  Take out the leaders, a bit of collateral damage with the women and children?  Some hope.  God just goes and shows mercy and forgives them.  I ask you.  Where's the justice in that?  Disgusting I call it."

Jonah is repelled by God’s mercy. His reaction reminds us of that human impulse to condemn, to judge without mercy.  Send the asylum seekers to Rwanda.  Name and shame the offenders.  Lock up the wrongdoers and throw away the key.  Why should we show mercy?

So Jonah sits there sulking, and in the course of the sulk, becomes in increasingly inward-looking and self-centred.  The sulkers among us will recognise the human truthfulness of the story here.    The tree that was providing some convenient shade is eaten away by a worm- it withers away and Jonah is unprotected from the searing Middle Eastern sun.  All he's focussed on now is his own needs for survival, for comfort.  Jonah's world has shrunk. He's lost track of what this was all about in the first place.  For Jonah now this situation is all fundamentally about his hurt feelings.  We've all been in this place. It's not fair, no-one understands, and this is all about me!  At the end of the story Jonah is a pathetic figure, a figure of pathos. We feel for him. God's last word is to gently remind Jonah that if he can feel attached to a shady tree, how much more will God care about a city and it people?  There's no resolution at the end of the story and the question is left hanging for us to ponder

So what kind of a God does Jonah believe in?

The story shows us that Jonah doesn't really want to believe in a God of mercy and forgiveness.  He wants to believe in a God of reward and punishment.  Good behaviour is rewarded, bad behaviour is punished.  Clear and simple.  That's a system we can all understand.  Everyone gets their just deserts, - surely that's fair?  So why does God have to go and mess it all up by this forgiveness thing? The reality of God's merciful love challenges Jonah's world view.

What about us? And what kind of a God do we believe in?  In our hearts and hearts, do we believe in a God of mercy, or a God of reward and punishment?

Christ Jesus came into the world to forgive sinners, writes Paul. Forgiveness, being freed from the things that weigh us down and hold us back, becoming reconciled to ourselves and to one another and to God through Jesus, being healed and made whole again - this is the heart of the Christian faith.  This is what God makes possible to us in Christ.  And we don't earn it.  It's all a free gift.  It's all grace.

Paul devotes two of his letters, those to the Romans and the Galatians, to showing what it means for Christians to live by grace, and to be freed from living under the law. We aren't bound by the Jewish Law as the people Paul were writing to were.  But we still often chose to live by a different kind of law, one of our own making.

What do I mean?  I mean the way in which we tend to make life into a contest in which we are the contestants, who can either pass impressively or fail miserably. We make a set of unwritten rules for ourselves – the rules for the contest of life.  I must make a success of my relationships.  I must excel at work, be active in the local community, must be available to my grandchildren.  Now of course these can be good things.  The trap comes when we start scoring ourselves on how we've done in the contest of life.  My relationship went wrong, the job progression never came, I’m too tired to do much in the local community.  I've failed.  I'm no good.  Or on the other hand I’m making a success of my relationship, I'm cutting it at work, hooray for me, I'm a success in the contest of life.  Living under the law means we are constantly judging and grading ourselves.  We do not show mercy to ourselves, so we imagine that neither will God show us mercy.

The Gospel of grace cuts through all this once and for all.  "Through our Lord Jesus Christ we have gained access by faith into the grace in which we stand"  writes Paul the Apostle.  The reason we are put right with God is because of what God does for us in Jesus.  It's nothing to do with what we do.  It's all God's work.  Hear this:  whether you do well at work, or simply averagely, makes no difference to your salvation in Christ.  Whether you achieve your personal goals, or whether you don't makes absolutely no difference to your salvation in Christ.  Let's hear it once again:  we do not achieve our own salvation by trying very hard and doing very well.  The Gospel of grace says:  it's all the love of God for us in Jesus.  That's the beginning, the middle and the end of the story. You are accepted and forgiven in the mess and muddle of your life as it is.  So why don't we stop being so anxious? Why don't we stop needing to congratulate ourselves and punish other people? Why don’t we simply let ourselves be immersed in the grace of God for us in Jesus Christ?

Jonah didn't find it easy to believe in a God of grace.  What about you?  In your heart of hearts is your God a stern God who is continually judging you and finding you wanting? A God who wants to punish?  Or a God of grace and mercy, who wants to forgive? What kind of a God do you believe in?

Inclusive Gospel

Whaley Bridge Parish

Acts 11: 1 - 18

John 13: 31 – 35

Acts 11: 9: “What God has called clean, you must not call unclean.

One day I was on a pastoral visit in the parish and got into conversation with a man – he was about retirement age I think – and he started asking questions about the bible.  So I stated talking about Jesus and what Christians believe, and I used the phrase “in charge” – being a Christian means having faith that ultimately God is in charge of the world. Then the conversation took an awkward turn.

“I'm not so sure, he said. "When Thatcher and Regan were in charge, then God was on our side.  But since Tony Blair was elected, God's not on our side anymore.  It's because of all these foreigners, taking our jobs, taking our homes, using our hospitals.  The devil's having a field day."  An then he continued listing the reasons why he resented the presence of immigrants in Britain.

I found this a difficult conversion.  How would you have replied?

Of course, if he did not agree with government policy on immigration he was entitled to his view.  But I could not agree it was a proper thing to do to use God and the devil in the way he was doing to bolster his personal views.

For a start what he was saying made no sense, theologically.  When we are thinking about race or ethnicity we need to remember that Bible tells us in Genesis that all people are made in God's image. Black, Asian, Slavic, and white Anglo Saxon people – all made in the image of God.  There’s no reason to give white people any kind of priority in God’s love over and above other peoples.

And then of course there’s the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was a Palestinian Jew.  He would have brown skin and brown eyes.  To white western person such as the man I was in conversation with he would look "foreign".

And it is a fact that immigration is increasing the presence of Christian belief in the UK.  A good proportion of new migrants to the UK are Christians.  In London, where there is high proportion of new migrants to the UK, the number of church goers has received a substantial boost.

Immigration remains a contentious issue in the UK. The response to Ukrainian refugees has brought to our attention the difference between our European neighbours.  Poland has 3.2 million.  Germany has welcomed 715 000. By the end of April only 27 000 had arrived in the UK.   

Immigration policy is a political issue, for political parties to decide upon.  As Christian people we need to be concerned about the moral values that underpin our nations politics.  The contribution that faith makes is to provide a moral framework within which discussion can take place.  As Christians we will want our discussion will be framed within a valuing of the equal worth of each person before God. That is fundamental.

We need to know ourselves made in the image of God – with all the responsibility and dignity that confers on us.  Equally we need to know the stranger at our gate as made in the image of God. 

Let me take you back to the conversation I started with.  As I reflected it, it seemed to me that what this person was doing was to take his world view as the norm, and then to use God as a way of backing up, or endorsing his world view.  He didn't like migrants in the UK, so that must mean that God doesn't like migrants in the UK either.

This is something that we can all be at risk of doing.  All of us have our own world view - and then we can be tempted to fit God into it.  What suits us is to use the bible, or God or religious language to bolster and support our own position.  We can invoke spiritual authority to increase our credibility or social standing, or to win arguments. We've all seen it done.  If we're honest, some of us have probably done it ourselves.  It can look and sound pretty slick. 

The problem is, that when I use God as a device to prop up my own world view I've broken at least two of the ten commandments.  I've put my own views at the centre of things instead of God, and then I've taken the name of God in vain.  File under:  sinfulness.  File under:  mis-use of religion.

Archbishop Kirrill……

This is the God of all creation we are talking about.  As the hymn writer wrote, let all mortal flesh keep silence, and in fear and trembling stand.  To be open to God is to be open to being changed.  The Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth, Jesus tells you.  Creation is ongoing, revelation is ongoing.  God has new stuff for us to find out.  We need not to get stuck.  The work of the Spirit is to unsettle us out of our fixed view of the world and lead us into a bigger vision of reality.

And that's just what is happening in this wonderful passage from Acts.  On the face of it, it seems extremely weird to us.  And yet - this is one of the explosive moments of the New Testament when an old way of seeing the world falls away and a new way of seeing the world emerges.  Jesus was a Jews, the disciples were, they were bedded into the tradition of synagogue and temple, of following the law of Moses.  And now the Holy Spirit unsettles them into a bigger reality.  It comes to Peter in a dream:  the food laws.  These laws he has abided by all his life, the good news of Jesus means they all fall away. 

As a faithful Jew, eating Kosher food, his culture has taught him to view non-Jews as dirty foreigners eating dirty food.  He doesn't need to see the Gentiles as dirty foreigners eating dirty food anymore.  "Don't call anything impure that God has made clean" comes the voice from heaven.  The familiar categories that had given his life safety and meaning are breaking down around him.  The evidence is clear:  God's Holy Spirit is poured out for non-Jew and Jew alike.  The outpouring of God's grace will own no limit of ethnicity or nationality. "God has granted even unto the Gentiles repentance unto life."

So this means the good news of grace is not only for Jews – it’s for everyone. 

What I want to suggest is that this shaking open of a fixed world view, this unsettling of certainty is not a one off, but is characteristic of the God who meets us in Jesus.  Where we are meeting with Christ in a living encounter, surely we must expect fresh insights into the mercies of God which are new every morning.  A resurrection faith has no place for nostalgia.  We need to look forwards.

For Peter, the giving of the Spirit was the clinching evidence that enabled him to shift his worldview.  "So if God gave them the same gift that he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I should oppose God." Who indeed. 

This dividing of the world into clean and unclean, of those who are like us and those who are different from us is deeply bedded into human nature.  It finds its expression in the purity codes of Judaism, but also in almost every tribe and culture.  It keys into profound psychological processes of shame and guilt, of fear and taboo. It is coded into conventions about food and eating in many cultures, and also into conventions around sexual behaviour.

For Peter, the giving of the Spirit was the clinching evidence that enabled him to shift his worldview.  "So if God gave them the same gift that he gave us, who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I should oppose God." Who indeed. 

May God who gives us his Spirit so freely, by that same Spirit lead us and all people into a fuller and richer understanding of his truth.

Conversion of Paul

Saul of Tarsus.  Just saying his name sent shivers down my spine.  It was the same for all of us Christians in Damascus.  When we met together to break to the bread and pray at someone’s house, we’d sit round the table and share the news that came to us from the brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.  So much good news:  they were sharing what they had in common, and growing in number; we’d heard about this new servant leader Stephen, how he was full of love and the Holy Spirit, with a special gift for caring for others.  Everything we heard about Stephen reminded us of Jesus.  So perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise when we heard about the accusations, the trumped up charges.  Blasphemy, supposedly.  They’d dragged Stephen out of the city and stoned him to death.  Brutal.  And that’s when the name Saul of Tarsus first started to come up.  He was the man in charge of this violent mob.  Not throwing any stones, you understand – he didn’t actually get his hands dirty – but standing there, coolly watching, nodding his approval, encouraging them to do the job thoroughly.

And then after Stephen was killed, all hell seemed to let loose.  This Saul of Tarsus became obsessed wiping us out.  It was a terrifying time for our brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.  They’d hear the knock on the door in the middle of the night and it would be Saul and his henchman, they’d batter their way in and drag them off and throw them into jail. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy. 

“It’ll be us next” someone said.  “You watch.  That Saul of Tarsus, he’s be down here in Damascus, and he’ll be after us too. “We looked at each other around the table.  I could sense the fear in the room.  “Shall we pray?” someone asked? We prayed silently for a while and then I felt moved to speak. “We are the people of the Way” I said. “Christ Jesus, whom God raised from the dead is with us by his Spirit.  As we gather now, the Lord is here.  His Spirit is with us.  Not even Saul of Tarsus can kill the Spirit of the Risen Jesus.”    We joined to pray the prayer that Jesus gave us and as we prayed “Deliver us from evil” I saw the face of Saul of Tarsus in my mind’s eye.

The next week there were rumours flying around, Saul was planning to travel to Damascus, he was secretly gathering intelligence on Christians here, he was here already undercover – we didn’t know what to believe.  We gathered as usual at our house to break the bread together.  I had thought our numbers might be down, but everyone was there.  We knew we needed one another.  There was a great sense of Jesus present with us.  There was a knock at the door.  It was my son.  His face was white.  “He’s here Dad, Saul of Tarsus, he’s here, but it’s not like you think.” The room went very quiet.  Some people started praying quietly.  Others hugged each other.  A child started to cry and was comforted.  “Tell us what you know” I said.

“He’s here, he’s on Straight Street in the house of Judas or someone, but it’s not like you think.  He’s gone blind.  Something happened as he was on the road from Jerusalem.   There was some kind of incident – Saul fell over, says there was a light that blinded him, but no one else saw anything.  They heard something, though, and Saul says it was the voice of Jesus, asking Saul why he was persecuting him.  Saul’s convinced it was our Risen Lord Jesus speaking to him. They led him down into the city – he can’t see a thing – and now he’s fasting and praying.  Hasn’t eaten or drunk for three days.”

We registered this news.  We knew of Judas on Straight Street.  He was a friend of our people. We joined hands around the table and sat in silence for some time, praying silently together.  At last I said,

“I’m going to see Saul”.

“Ananias, don’t do it!”

“It’s a trick, Ananias!  Don’t fall for it.”

“He wants to trap us, that’s all.  He knows we’ll take pity on a blind man.  He’s setting us up.”

I stood up.  “Do you remember the words of our Lord?  Love your enemies.  Bless those who persecute you.”

“You want to go and bless a murderer?  A madman who wants to rid the world of the people of the Way?”

I felt very calm in this moment.  I knew that God had spoken to me, with a clarity I had never experienced before.

“God is at work in these strange events.  He has purposes for us beyond what we can know and he has a purpose even for Saul.  I must go to him.”

As I got up to go someone called after me, “How can you betray us like this, Ananias?  None of our lives are safe if you do this.”

My heart was racing as I walked the short distance to Straight Street.  Yet the conviction that God was calling me to do this was ever clearer.  Judas let me in, and showed me to an upstairs room where a figure was hunched in a corner.  He turned towards me as he heard me enter and shuffled in my direction, arms outstretched, eyes closed.  I had imagined Saul as a big physical presence, and was surprised by this thin, unshaven man.  Love your enemies, Jesus was saying to me in my heart.  Bless those who persecute you.

Saul, I said, my name is Ananias. The Lord Jesus – he who met you on the road - has sent me to you. Saul lifted his face toward me and reached out for my arm.  Here I was, face to face with the man whom I feared most in all the world.

I laid my hands on Saul’s head and he gripped me by the shoulders and for some time we stood there praying quietly together.  At last I said aloud, Saul, be filled with the Holy Spirit.  At that he opened his eyes. I smiled at him, he blinked and his eyes filled with tears, and we gave each other a rather awkward hug.

“Baptise me” he said.

There was some water in a cup on the table so I used that to baptise Saul. 

“Saul, my brother”, I said.  “I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.”  That was the beginning.

And so Saul the persecutor becomes Paul the Apostle  -  the single most important shaper of the Jesus movement – the church – throughout its history.  Alongside the four Gospels, his letters tower over the New Testament.  His missionary energy in planting new churches has proved a lasting model and inspiration.  Paul gives us the great insight that Jesus puts us right with God through grace, not our own efforts. Paul believes his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road to be a resurrection appearance of Jesus, or its equivalent, and the great surge of missionary energy that follows it reads in acts almost like a new Pentecost, a second wave of spiritual outpouring.

Yet before any of that could happen – before Saul could become a preacher and missionary in Christ’s church, before he could become a pastor,  nurturing and growing the church, before he could become the church’s theologian and teacher and leader – before any of that, he simply needed to join the church.  He needed to become part of the family, to belong, to be baptised. And how could that happen?  How was it possible?  How could he possibly be trusted and accepted by the fragile gatherings of Christian people who he had been persecuting with such violent and murderous intent?  It was one thing for Saul to have an overwhelming personal experience of Jesus Christ.  It was quite another thing for him to cross the threshold into the community of believer.  For that he needed an outstretched hand of welcome.  He was wholly dependent. He needed another human being, another Christian.  He needed someone to be Christ to him. He needed someone with the courage to set aside his well-founded fear of this terrifying man who had done so much wrong.  He needed Ananias.

This morning I want to celebrate Ananias:  his courage, his obedience to God’s call on his life, to be in the right place at the right time, his willingness to take a real risk. What Ananias did might seem small– he blessed and baptised a stranger – but its consequences for history were infinitely huge.  Without Ananias, no Paul.

As I pondered with this story, I asked myself where I put myself in it.  I can’t put myself in Saul’s place, this man of extremes, this religious genius.  He’s out of my league.  I can’t easily identify with Paul, but maybe I can identify with Ananias.  Would I have Ananias’s courage under threat of persecution?  I pray I would, but I don’t know.  But like Ananias, I can listen to God’s call to me, to reach out a hand of welcome to someone I hardly know.  I can pray with someone who needs me to pray with them.  I can do something small, that could lead by God’s grace to something big.

Next week we celebrate something big:  Karen, Chris and Lynn and being confirmed.  They are choosing to say yes to Christ and his church, yes to his way of grace, love and forgiveness.  We pray for them and  we welcome them.

I can’t be like Paul, but maybe I can be like Ananias.  You can be Ananias too.  This week, you can take time to listen to God. You can   make someone welcome, you can pray with someone, you can share your faith with a few simple words, you can be Christ to the person next to you on the bus or in the supermarket queue. This is how God’s kingdom grows. This is how the world is changed.

Good Friday

It is noon at Golgotha, the place of the Skull. The midday sun beats down upon the man dying upon the cross.  The Romans preferred method of execution is painful and slow.  There is no relief from the heat.  His mouth is dry.  Jesus’s thirst becomes overwhelming.  He manages to find the breath to say.

I am thirsty.

Of course, Jesus is thirsty. Water to drink is the most basic human need to sustain life. A person can go without water for perhaps two days, less in the heat, but then fatal dehydration takes hold quickly.  Jesus is fully human, he experiences the discomfort thirst, the pain of the nails in the same as any of us would.

I am thirsty say Jesus from the cross.

In our time, in our world which is so wealthy, so technologically sophisticated, people are still thirsty.  1.1 billion people across the world lack access to safe drinking water.   In the shocking accounts of the siege of Mariupol over the last two weeks we have heard how residents have been forced to drink water from radiators and muddy puddles to stay alive.

Yet how can it be that Jesus is thirsty?  How can it be that the man who is God’s word made flesh, who is the very image of the invisible God, how can it be that he of all people is here, dehydrated and dying?

Perhaps a memory flashes through his mind, years ago, another hot day,  chatting  with a woman drawing water at a well.  He was thirsty then too, and she gave him a drink, and then the conversation took a new turn.  Jesus told her: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  And she says, yes, yes that’s the water I need.  I’ll have some of that.”

And then soon she’s telling everyone, I’ve met him, God’s anointed one, the Messiah, I’ve met him, he’s here. Come and see.

This Jesus who is hanging on the cross is God’s chosen one:  he is the one from whom the springs of living water flow.  And yet here he is dying on a cross, and thirsty.  How can that be? Jesus is the live giver.  “I come that you may have life, he says, and have it to the full.” Jesus comes to show us a new way of living, of sharing in the abundance of God’s life – and yet on the cross his own precious life is draining away.  He is dying, and he is thirsty.

In the last month, the war crimes in Ukraine have confronted us afresh with the shocking extent of the human capacity for violence and cruelty. This is nothing new.  Other such brutal wars have been further from the eye of the camera.  Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Palestine.   In the chaos of war the worst of human nature, the depths of human sinfulness is given free reign.   

When we cease to view human beings as human beings, and see them instead as objects, as things instead of people, then there is no end to our scope to inflict violence.

On the cross, Jesus faces this.  He faces the furthest extremity of human sinfulness.  On the cross Jesus bears the violence inflicted by evil and sin although he has done nothing to deserve this. 

On Good Friday as Christian together we affirm again the extraordinary truth that Jesus is the human face of God.  He shows us exactly what God is like. When we see Jesus face, we see God’s face. 

When we see Jesus suffering upon the cross, we see God suffering alongside us, suffering in solidarity with his people, suffering in solidarity with the people of Bucha and Kharkiv.

Jesus shows what God is like:  a God who does not retreat from human suffering but enters it, shares it, absorbs it redeems it. This is the work of grace. This is the source of life giving water to our thirsty world.  Thank be to God.

Ad yet the work of God’s saving grace continues.

Return to the Lord

Whaley Bridge Parish Lent 3 2022

Return to the Lord who will have mercy

To our God who will richly pardon.

We are living through times of change and upheaval, and the future is hard to read.  How will things be in two months, three months’ time – will peace negotiation have succeeded, and the tanks rolled back to the Russian border?  How will rises in the cost-of-living change things for our neighbours in Whaley Bridge? And what of the pandemic – will Covid have finally become an illness we live with like the flu – or will it be more complicated?

 It is a fact that we can never know what the future holds, but at this time, that seems even more acutely true.  We live in uncertain times.

 And into the uncertainty and unpredictability of our life God speaks.  God has a word for us, spoken through his prophet Isaiah. 

 Return to the Lord who will have mercy

To our God who will richly pardon.

 When our life seems secure, peaceful, predictable – was there a time when your life seemed to go along like that? – at those times it can be easier to slip into a self-sufficient mindset.  Actually, thanks God, I’m doing OK here, everything’s going fine.  It’s nice to know you’re there God, just in case there a problem, but just for now, your get on with your stuff and I’ll get on with my stuff.  And if there’s time later, maybe we’ll have a catch up?

In times of peace and plenty we can be tempted to ignore the call of God to our hearts.  But when the ground is shifting under our feet, when the peace and prosperity we had taken for granted is called into question suddenly – then things seem different.  We long for some sense of sense of meaning, and purpose for the world.  We long for a place where hope and confidence in the future is real.  We long to be lifted beyond the brokenness of the world into a different kind of realm.

This passage from Isaiah was written to a people whose world like that of the Ukrainian people, had been turned upside down.  These words were addressed to an Israel who had been roughly torn away from homes and families and were enduring an enforced stay in a foreign land. This was not the future they had in mind.  They always imagined God was restore the past glories of King David again.  Instead they were enduring exile. 

But God was speaking a word of invitation to them, and God, by his Holy Spirit continues to speak a word of invitation to us now.

Return to the Lord who will have mercy

To our God who will richly pardon.

Return to the Lord.  It’s very much the theme of Lent – to draw closer to God, to come back home to God.  Any close relationship has its ups and downs, its times of warmth and closeness and times of coolness and distance.  If perhaps our relationship with God has become a bit mechanical and loveless, a bit cold and remote – the Lent is a good time to re-calibrate. 

In Sheffield there used to be a man who sat on Fargate in the City Centre with a handmade sign saying Repent! Prepare to meet your God!  The sign was written in a large angry red letter.  I’m sure he meant well, but I used to think it was an ineffective way of sharing the good news of Jesus.  And there was something about the hard word “Repent” that seemed to carry a note of threat with it.

And of course, Jesus went around Galilee calling people to repentance – not by carrying a placard, but by sitting around the table with people, by meeting them at the point of their need.  The gospel word is for repentance is metanoia which means to turn yourself around, to change direction.  Turn yourself around, says Jesus, reorientate your life. 

I have always loved this Isaiah passage because the invitation to repentance comes with such warmth, such love.  Return to the Lord, who will have mercy.  The English word “Repent” can sound rather abrupt, a bit threatening even.  But God does not issue threats.  God is love, self-giving love, and love is never coercive or threatening.  That’s not love, that is abuse.  God is love, and God’s invitation to re-orientate our lives towards him comes to us not as  threat, but a word of love.

We so easily orientate around ourselves, our own convenience, our comfort, our prejudices, our rights, the boosting of our own status and standing in the world.  It’s the religion of me.   The worship of the false God of the ego.

Turn away from that stuff, says God in Christ Jesus.  Turn away from that and turn towards me.  Follow me. 

Return to the Lord who will have mercy

To our God who will richly pardon.

The Lord will have mercy.

Mercy is not a word we hear very much these days.  It seems to me that mercy is about demonstrating gentleness and kindness within a relationship in which one person has power over another.

This week there was shock and outrage when the 800 P and O workers were sacked over a video call with half and hours’ notice.   The Archbishop of Canterbury described this a sinful which the news media found hard to understand.  What was terrible was that the P and O boss showed no mercy in that situation.  He paid no regard to the dignity of his workforce, of their humanity, or of their vulnerability in that situation. He was without mercy.

Yet the nature of God is to be merciful.  God is a great God, almost beyond our imagining.  Isaiah captures this for us:

“As the heavens are higher than the earth

So are my ways higher than your ways

And my thoughts than your thoughts”

God is utterly other than us, utterly beyond us – and we are so very small, our lives so very short.  And yet God demonstrate mercy in dealings with us. The mercy that Isaiah describes is realised most fully as God comes down to our level and shares our human life.

Let’s imagine a different scenario.  Just imagine if, instead of sitting in his swish office, far apart from the daily reality of life working on a ship, the boss of P and O had decided that he would like to understand what life is like as a seaman.  He anonymously signed on to work in one of the ships, cleaning loos for less than the minimum wage, and had done so over years.  Just think how that would then change things in the relationship between him and the seafarers in his organisation.

That’s the way God does things.  We call it incarnation.  God comes close to us in Jesus to do as we do and live as we live.  And die as we die.

The Christian year finds its climax in Holy Week and Easter because this is the time that we home in on the suffering, death and rising from death of Jesus.  As we follow these events we discover what divine mercy and forgiveness really looks like.  We find that these are not simply warm words or a fuzzy idea.  God’s mercy will go to hell and back for us, for the world he loves, for the world he will richly pardon.  In Jesus God suffers with the suffering world. On the cross we see divine mercy made perfect in self -giving love. 

In the words of Bill Vanstone’s poem about the cross:

Drained is love in making full

Bound in setting others free

Poor in making many rich

Weak in giving power to be

Weak in giving power to be. In the cross of Christ God gives us power to be, power to be forgiven, power to be loved, power to be freed into his eternal saving love.  This is good news. So let us

Return to the Lord who will have mercy

To our God who will richly pardon.

Genesis 3

Whaley Bridge Parish

Feb 20th 2022

Genesis 3

Here’s a bible.  It’s a wonderful book.  It’s a life-giving book.  God speaks to us through its pages. 

People often struggle with the Bible and so today and so today I want to talk a bit about the Bible and how we make sense of it, and let God speak to us through it.  And I am going to take as my example the story of Adam and Eve which we heard today.  This comes from the very first book of Bible which is called Genesis. When we read the Bible we obviously want to make sense of it, and understand the implications for our lives.  This act of “making sense of what we read” is called interpretation.

I want to suggest that when Christian thinkers have wanted to make sense of the story of Adam and Eve, they have often done so in unhelpful ways, that don’t take us close to God in Christ, but actually take us further away.

Let me explain what I mean.  Steve and I love the island of Hoy in the Orkney islands.  Hoy is a wild, empty island, with just one village down in the south.  Cycling across a tract of empty moorland one day we found a grave.  We read that it was the grave of a young woman from the village who, a couple of centuries ago, became pregnant by a sailor.  She was so shamed and reviled by her community that she took her own life.  She was buried then many miles away from the village as a further sign of her utter exclusion from her family, her community and the church.

For, yes, this Scottish island this was a devoutly Christian community.

This sad story raises a question for me.  The question is this.  Given that Jesus came to announce the Good News of forgiveness, healing and salvation, how can it be that a Christian Church should twist this into a religion of condemnation, cruelty and exclusion?  How on earth did that happen?  What Bible were they reading?

Well, we can’t know for sure.  But the fact is that from the Middle Ages onwards, the church had a lot to say about human sinfulness and particularly about the sinfulness of women.  Based on the thinking of Augustine, this teaching, or doctrine became very influential.  And it took as its basis the story of Adam and Eve and a very particular interpretation – a way of making sense of this story.

So let me tell you a bit about Augustine, and his interpretation of this story.

When Augustine was around 1500 years ago - it was believed that Genesis was like a history textbook that was giving a literal account of events in history.  At that time, nothing was known about human evolution, so it was assumed Adam and Eve were literally the first human beings, and the great- great -great grandparents of everyone.  So, for Augustine, this story was particularly important.

Augustine was a brilliant man, and he was troubled by a big question:  if God is a good God, how can we explain the existence of evil on the world? (It’s an important question, and people are still asking it.)

Now if Augustine were around today, I think he would start with the person of Jesus Christ to begin figuring this out.  That’s what modern Christian thinkers do.  But he didn’t.  Augustine started – and finished really – with the story of Adam and Eve.  He put this story front and centre of the Christian thinking about sin and evil.  That was quite a controversial thing to do.  The Old Testament makes no further reference to the story, and Jesus, who quoted the Hebrew Scriptures very frequently never made reference to it in the context of sinfulness – he makes one passing reference in the context of teaching about marriage.  Be that as it may, Augustine used this story and this story alone to explain the existence of sin and evil.

Augustine’s logic was that if God’s creation is good – as it is – then all that is bad in the world must be the fault of human beings.  Augustine’s theory said the world had been perfect, and then following Eve’s decision to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, everything went wrong, and evil and suffering entered into creation. This became known as the Fall of humanity.

Augustine then went further.  He believed this original sin of Eve was passed down the generations through sexual reproduction.  Human sinfulness was essentially a sexually transmitted disease. 

This teaching led to a very gloomy view of human nature, and a particularly negative view of women.  Because Eve’s temptation of Adam was believed to result in a catastrophe – the existence of sin and evil - Eve became a kind of symbol for women’s sexuality which was seen as dangerous and deviant.  For many years of Christian history women who transgressed were treated with harshness.  I think back to the young woman on Hoy all those year ago, shamed and driven out of her community even in death.

In our Living and Love and Faith Course we have been thinking about how society’s attitudes to sexuality have changed across the year – and that there are both positives and negatives in that.  Most of us agreed that we are glad that sexuality does not carry the baggage of fear and shame in a way it used to do.

I believe that Augustine’s interpretation of the Garden of Eden story, and the teaching he based on it have cast a long shadow.  But it’s interesting to know that the Doctrine of the Fall and of Original Sin has never been part of church teaching – not in the Church of England anyway.  It’s not referred to in the creed, and there is no requirement to believe these things to be a faithful Christian.

Yet the issue that Augustine wrestled with – our human nature and the brokenness we carry within us – remains very real.  Sin is the bible’s word for it, and we don’t have to look far to see evidence of it.  Becoming a Christian starts from recognising our own inner brokenness, and the brokenness in the wider world whose systems we are inextricably tied up in.  It is that humble self-awareness that is the starting point at which we begin to dimply recognise our own need for God.

The songwriter Leonard Cohen writes:

There is a crack in everything

That is how the light gets in.

Sin is the word the Bible has for this crack in everything, and it is recognising that we live within this crack, and the crack lives within us, that enables the light that is Jesus Christ to get in, letting his grace and love redeem and transform us and our world.

The Garden of Eden story is one story that illuminates the crack of sinfulness, but the Bible has many others.   For me the most powerful image of sinfulness in the Old Testament is the story of the exile. 

This was a time when Israel had failed to live as God was calling them to do, and they were invaded and taken off to exile in Babylon, where they felt cut off from God and unable to worship.  It was hard to hold onto their sense of identity.  We often describe sin as separation from God, and exile was literally that for Israel. 

When we feel cut off from our deepest self and other people, when God seems remote, exile seems to me a good description of it.  The pandemic has been like that for many people.

And God in his grace led his people back out of exile.  Exile was not an end point, but a stage on a longer journey.

So back to the Garden of Eden, Eve and the apple.  How will we make sense of this story?

Let me come back to Saint Augustine.  He had something tremendously helpful to say about how we make sense of the Bible.

“Whoever, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbour, does not yet understand them as he ought.”

I think that is a great touchstone for making sense of the Bible.  The heart of the Christian faith is God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness to us in Christ.  Whenever we read the Bible, we need to keep one eye on that. 

Task for this week.  Take away the Genesis story and read it through, as if for the first time.  Forget anything you were told that it meant before.  Let it surprise you.  Enjoy it.  Read it in the light of God’s grace and forgiving love.  I wonder what it will say to you? 

Deeper Water

Luke 5: 1 – 11

Push out into deeper water

HT Whaley Bridge

06.02.22

What’s the deepest water that you’ve ever been swimming in?  For me, it was probably when I was about 14 and was visiting Austria on a school exchange. The family I was staying with took me to swim in a glacial lake in the mountains. It was a hot summer day in central Europe. The water was cool and inviting and a wooden platform stretched out from the bank, away from the shore. I ran along and dived in. The water was cold, but it was great. At the same time, I was aware that this was a deep, deep glacial lake, carved out by rivers of ice thousands of years before. The water was black even on a sunny day and I felt the depth of the lake stretch away beneath me. I was aware that the floor was hundreds, maybe thousands of feet beneath me. I enjoyed the swim, but I was unsettled by it at the same time. That feeling of the depth beneath me.

Luke chapter 5, verse 4: “When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” “.

Let’s remind ourselves about the reading today and what’s going on.

It’s Luke’s version of the call of the disciples, isn’t it? That group of people who were Jesus’ first followers. They lived together and learned together. And, in fact, ‘being a learner’, is really what the word ‘disciple’ means. It’s about being a learner from Jesus, so perhaps we’re just like those people that we’re reading about. We’re travelling with, and learning from, Jesus.

Luke’s version of the call of the disciples is a little different to Mark and Matthew’s. Only Luke’s version has the story of the catch of fish so perhaps we need to pay attention to what’s going on here.

In Luke’s version, this isn’t Jesus’ first encounter with Peter. He’s already healed his mother-in-law so perhaps that explains why Peter is happy to let Jesus hop into his boat and use it as a floating pulpit. We don’t get to learn what Jesus was speaking to the crowed about, that’s not Luke’s focus here. It’s the events in the boat that he wants us to pay attention to.

So, Jesus tells Peter to sail out, away from the edge into deeper water. I wonder what Peter would have thought about this new friend of his, a land lubber carpenter coming along and giving him advice about where to fish? To make matters worse, Peter was probably feeling pretty tired and grumpy. Fishing happened at night, so Peter would be tired from the night’s work, and we hear that it had been an unsuccessful expedition. Verse 5: “Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.””

Or perhaps it was more ‘Look mate, we’re the fisherman round here. We know the waters. 1. The fish are in the shallow water. 2. We’ve been fishing all night and caught nothing. 3. We’re really tired. Alright? But if you say so. You’re obviously the expert round here. In deep water fishing. In the daytime.’

And off they sail and, before long, a huge catch is being hauled in. I wonder if the conversation switched from tired and cynical to energised and professional. ‘Hey, James, John, get your boat over here. There’s so much we’ll get swamped. Here, careful. Draw alongside. Balance the nets across the boats. There’s enough for all of us here. We’ll even be able to pay those bloody Roman taxes once they’re sold!’

And then, job done, Peter begins to take on board what has happened. His new friend has shown him something of His power and authority and the implications of that deeper water are pretty scary. Verse 8 Peter says “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”. This is too much to take in. Perhaps this isn’t just about a big catch of fish.

So Jesus takes the initiative with the words “Do not be afraid.” “Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching people”

It’s a great story, isn’t it? Full of character and drama and, just like in the deep lake on which they’re fishing, there are hidden depths for us to draw on.

Catching people. That’s what Jesus told Simon his new job was going to be and it’s a task that we’re called to as well, today. Following Jesus will mean announcing the good news and drawing people into a living relationship with Him which will be life transforming.

Does that sound a little bit scary? If I said to you, that’s your task, your mission, your job after church, to go out and tell the good news of Jesus, would you feel a little bit anxious about that? Maybe. And what is that ‘Good News’? We learn that later in Luke, in all kinds of ways but, in particular, in the Sermon on the Plain where he instructs His followers to love their enemies and not to judge. Love don’t judge. Jesus knows Peter's anxiety, though, and goes to the heart of the matter “Don’t be afraid”. The right word for the particular problem. Don’t be afraid.

So we, like Peter, are called to sail out into deeper water and cast our nets out, hopefully, for an abundant, rich harvest that will give fullness in life. And to trust Jesus as we do that.

I really like this idea of the deeper water. Reading the passage made me reflect on what this metaphor might mean for us for the times and circumstances that we live in.

My starting point is the complexity of the world we live in. Our context. It’s secular. Christian values and our heritage are unknown to many people these days. What else? The world is really connected now. It’s truly global and yet many people live lonely and isolated lives. Some of us continue to live comfortable lives while others struggle for the basics, even in our own country. And how people live their personal lives has changed as well.  As a society, we’re now welcoming and inclusive of gay and lesbian people who want recognition of their loving relationships. LGBTI+ people can get legally married now and they’ve been able to adopt and foster for many years.

So it’s a complicated world that we live in, with deep cultural waters where powerful currents stir beneath the surface.

What I want to say, though, is that this is the world which Jesus calls us to live and be active in. To be his disciples in. It might feel scary, but He gives us the tools we need.

What might be that ‘deeper water’ that we’re called to move into as individuals and as a church? I think that engaging with issues of inclusion and sexuality fall squarely into that category. Being able to affirm gay and lesbian relationships, or people who wish to live in a different way in relation to their birth gender, is something that churches have struggled with even if society at large has raced away on this issue in recent years. And it’s not a remote, far away issue. I'm sure there will be relatives of some of you who are gay or lesbian, or who are living a different lifestyle. There may be gay or lesbian people here. I don’t know, but I’m clear that I want to speak into the issue sensitively and with love. People are people, not issues to be debated. I need to remember that.

Some of us are engaging with this issue here in church by studying the C of E’s ‘Living in Love and Faith’ course at the moment. We've just started and each week we meet to discuss and reflect about relationships and identity in society in relation to our Christian faith. There’s a strong emphasis on deep and respectful listening and on love not judgement.

I think it’s a really positive sign that some of us are undertaking this course and my hope and prayer is that it represents a significant step on our way to becoming a more inclusive and genuinely welcoming place for all people, whoever they are and whoever they love. I’ll be speaking more on this issue over the coming months because it’s so important in our modern society.

Some of you listening to this might be really pleased to hear about this. Some of you might be feeling that I’m wrong to even mention it. Some of you might not care that much. There's a range of responses but what I want to say is that Jesus called Peter out into deeper water, and he calls us too. That deep water can feel like a scary place to be yet it’s in the deeper water where the rich and fruitful catch of fish was made against all the odds. And the truth is that it’s outside of our comfort zones where we grow as people and as disciples. We need to be brave, and we need to trust that Jesus will be with us in the places He calls us to.

You might be wondering how we can hear the voice of Jesus as we enter this unfamiliar and risky territory. I want to commend two things to you. The first is to read and engage with the stories of Jesus as we find them in the Gospels. Spend a little time reading and reflecting on them each day. Use Bible reading notes if it helps. Frances and I can help you source them if you need.

And the second thing is pray. Spend time with God in prayer. There are lots of modern, easy to read resources available and even some excellent prayer apps for your phones. Just ask me afterwards. However you do it though, spend time with God in prayer. And don’t feel you need lots of words. Fewer words are probably better. Give space for God to speak into your heart and your Bible reading on these issues. And then let’s talk about what we find so we share our faith journeys with each other.

Jesus called Peter out into deeper water. It seemed wrong to Peter but he followed Jesus' call and was rewarded with a rich harvest, beyond his dreams. It was a bit scary for poor old Peter but that was Jesus’ call to him. And it’s His call to us today as well. Will you hear Him? Will you answer? What will you say?

Amen

Christian Unity

Jan 21st 2022

Uniting Church, Whaley Bridge

Christian Unity

One June morning a few years ago I got up at 6am and walked from my hotel through empty London streets to the House of Commons.  After queuing and security clearance I found myself in the dazzling surroundings of Westminster Hall, where 75 circular tables were laid for breakfast.  I chatted around the table with my MP Kevin Barron and around the table with church leaders, lay and ordained, of every denomination.  After a welcome from the then Speaker of the Commons, John Bercow, we were led in worship by members of the House of Common and the House of Lords, representing every nation of the UK and all the main political parties.  Our keynote speaker was Archbishop Angelos, leader of the Coptic Church in the UK and an inspirational Christian who advocates around the world for human rights and religious freedom.  Archbishop Anglos comes from Egypt and spoke most movingly of the suffering and faith under persecution of Christian people there. With his words still ringing in our ears we sang the hymn “Beauty for brokenness” – as we will do today. Then we went off to a range of practical seminars about different ways churches can engage with their communities at local level.

It was an unforgettable experience, a glimpse of glory.  Here at the beating heart of the British democratic system were Christian people coming together across denominational and regional boundaries, coming together to be a church at the service of the nation.  For me it was a wonderful vision of Christian Unity, and I felt humbled to be part of it.

This was the Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast, an annual event organised by the Bible Society in conjunction with the all-party group Christians in Parliament. We Anglicans may feel ambivalent about being an established Church that ties into institutions of power and privilege in ways that sit uncomfortably with the radical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet at best being established creates a space for all Christian denominations to come to the table at the heart of British life and government– and Moslem colleagues have assured me, it also creates a space for other faiths to take their place there too.

This week is the week of prayer for Christian Unity, and I reckon it’s a week for letting God widen our horizon by a few inches.  Do you ever have that itch for a view from a hill?  For me on these winters days when the light is clear and bright, only a view from a hilltop will do.  Eccles Pike, Pym’s Chair – the big vista of landscape. I need to be reminded of that grandeur, let my vision be filled with the sheer vastness of it.

That widening of perspective is what Christian Unity Week offers us.  There is a beauty is the local.  If we are ensconced in a local church that tends to be the lens through which we see our faith - that’s fine, that’s good – but sometimes we need to let the bigger vista of Christian belief unfurl itself before us.  We need to notice how expansive this landscape is, how rich and varied.  This week of prayer is an invitation to see bigger and see differently.

We heard in our second reading how the Apostle Paul was challenging the Christians at Corinth about their pride and blinkered vision that was creating such divisiveness within the community.  He invites them to see themselves as parts of the body, and to realise how ridiculous it would be if, instead of being diversified the body was all one thing. “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?”  Unity in Christ is not about uniformity, Paul wants us to know.  Unity does not mean we are amalgamated into a homogenous lump of believers. No:  our unity in Christ acknowledges and values our diversity.    

And then Paul develops his arguments some more:  The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” We are different, and we need each other’s difference.  I find this challenging.  It’s not about loving each other despite our difference but loving each other because we are different.

The beauty of our Christian faith is that it invites us to encounter a God who is both with us and beyond, us, both “immanent” and “transcendent” to use some slightly technical church-talk.  First of all God is near, reachable, knowable. “See I am with you, with you always” says Jesus.  “The kingdom of God is within you.”  “We are all baptised in one Spirit” assures Paul.   We can know within our own experience, and we should take confidence in this. We can trust what we have come to know of God in our Methodist Circuit, in our Anglican parish church, in our house church, or whatever other tradition.  That is the immanence of God, God with us.  But what of this other aspect of God, God beyond us, the God who is so much bigger than we can imagine?  How do we encounter that transcendent aspect of God?   

For me ecumenism – the encounter with in different Christian faith traditions is one way into that.  The ecumenical encounter has been a constant through my Christian journey and has been a tremendous gift and a blessing.  Because my background is in the study of modern languages – German and French – there have always been opportunities to get to know Christian people in Europe and share faith from their perspective. That difference interests me and the spiritual experiences that have formed me most have nearly always been in the context of difference – being alongside Christians of a different tradition or nationality from my own and being nudged into seeing the God of Jesus Christ through their eyes.  Those have been the moments when my vision of God has expanded a little and I have seen the glory from the mountaintop.  It’s in these moments of encounter with difference that I catch a sense of the transcendence, the beyondness of God.

The Easter I was eighteen I spent in the Taize Community an ecumenical community in France that has a special ministry with young people.  There was snow on the ground as I sat in the tent that formed the main church, along with about 800 young people from around the world.  I was cold, I was hungry, and we sang chants in Latin until I felt dizzy.  And then we prayed the Lord’s prayer, each in our own language.  All around me there were voices speaking words I did not recognise; there were hundreds of voices, probably thirty of forty different languages, and it was an extraordinary experience to be part of.  So many different sounds, and yet one single intention.  Christ was among us, teaching us to pray, connecting us to one another.  It was a powerful and profound experience of the Holy Spirit.  Something had taken hold of me and would not let me go.

Twenty years later I began training for the ministry – and my call to ministry came from a newly Anglican Methodist Local Ecumenical Partnership where a coming together of different people with diverse gifts and traditions released a great wave of creativity in mission and ministry. It’s easy to perceive unity as bland and dull, as when all the paints in the palette merge into brown.  Yet when unity cherishes and affirms difference – that is a beautiful thing.

The prayer for Christian Unity is not an end in itself.  Our gospel passage reminds us that ministry of Jesus was to fulfil Isaiah’s vision:  to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”  It is always good to be reminded that Jesus came not to set up a church, but to heal and liberate the people of the world he loves.  The kingdom, the rule of God was Jesus’s constant theme and the fulfilment of the kingdom is at the heart of the prayer he gave us.  We work and we pray for God’s coming kingdom and when we gather together as Christ’s church, as we do this morning, it is as a sign of that kingdom, in which every nationality and language and faith tradition is loved and reconciled.

In this week of Prayer for Christian Unity may God bless us and enlarge our vision.  Amen.

Baptism of Christ

Whaley Bridge Parish

Jan 9th 2022

Baptism of Christ

Our friends Kit and Matt decided they wanted to be baptised when they were teenagers.  Not in church they decided, but at Slippery Stones on the River Derwent, a favourite swimming spot. Their Methodist minister Sue was a friend of mine too and asked me to help.  We left the cars and walked up the last mile or so, stopping on the path to pray – Sue had chosen the “I am” sayings of Jesus to punctuate our journey.  When it came to the baptism the boys took it in turn to fall backwards into the water, and Sue and I hoisted them back up.  I can still remember the splashiness and the weight of the teenage lads in our arms, the sense of a moment somehow outside time.

 A German Minister who I met told me about the baptism festival – “Taufefest” – which his group of churches holds every year in the Rhein.   Hundreds of people come along, bring a picnic and make a day of it on the riverbank.  Adults are baptised by immersion and babies and young children by pouring river water on their heads. Over the years it’s become increasingly popular, with more people taking an interest in being baptised for themselves.

 Baptism is about receiving grace and following Christ, and as such it takes us to the heart of the faith, to the heart of what it means to be Christ’s church.  In our ministry in the church baptism can easily become marginal to the experience of the church community, and it is sad when this happens – because it is to the spiritual detriment of everyone, both to the church community itself, and to those who come for baptism.

 This week and next I plan to reflect on our experience of baptism.  This week we will think about how we practice baptism in Whaley Bridge Parish, and next week we will reflect for ourselves on our own baptism and what it means for us now.

 And the reason for doing so is that on this second Sunday in Epiphany we remember the Baptism of Jesus by John.  Epiphany means revealing, and all four gospels agree that it is this moment of going down into the waters of the Jordan that marks a turning point that marks the beginning of Jesús ministry. 

 Despite the birth stories of Luke and Matthew which we major on at Christmas, all four gospels agree on the fact that Jesus grew up in obscurity.  He reached adulthood – roughly the age of thirty – without his life being marked out as different or remarkable.  It is now that he joins the crowds queueing up to be baptised that marks the real beginning of his ministry, that he receives his vocation as God’s beloved Son.

 Steve preached for us before Christmas about John the Baptist’s fierce call to repentance, to let go of our sins and our past and let God change us.  John’s baptism is a baptism of repentance, of turning our life around.  So why does Jesus join in?  If he is God’s beloved Son, what sins does he need to repent of?  Does Jesus need to be forgiven and change his ways?

 Well, no - but by going down into the waters Jesus is showing us what God is like – not high and mighty, towering in judgement above us.  God’s not like that.  Jesus shows us that God comes down to our level and goes through what we go through.  Paul writes about this in his letter to the Corinthians.  He says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.”  Jesus is God coming to be where we are and getting his hands dirty in the process.  That’s why he goes down into the waters of baptism – because he completely identifies with us in all our frail and mixed up humanity.

 We heard in the gospel “When Jesus had been baptised and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven “You are my son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.” The power of the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus and he is filled with the knowledge of being God’s beloved.  And then his Galilean ministry begins and there is no stopping him from living out the love of God in the power of the Spirit.

 At the baptism service it is traditional to use the text of Jesus welcoming the children.  Beautiful though this story is, I often use the baptism of Jesus as my text   I always want to say, these words are for you.  God is saying that you Alice, you Benjamin, you are God’s beloved child, and he is very pleased with you.

 So baptism marks the beginning of Jesus’s ministry and in Matthew’s Gospel, baptism in the theme of the last words of the Risen Jesus s to his friends.  “Go, make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” In the Acts of the Apostles we read about the how individuals and households are baptised after Pentecost, and how the laying on of hands of baptism goes with the presence of the Spirit.  And as early as the second century, the practice of baptising babies and children began – which is how most Church of England baptisms happen today.

 So why do that?  What’s the point of baptising a child who doesn’t yet know if she wants to be a Christian or not? The reason that the Anglican church continues to baptise children – before they are old enough to make a commitment for themselves – is because of what we know of the grace of God.

 It is the amazing grace of God to us in Jesus that finds us and saves us. We believe God does not wait until we are able to respond by putting our faith into words that make sense.  In Jesus the grace of God has dawned upon the world, as Paul writes to Titus. That dawning of grace extends its light to the babblings of a baby just as much as to the brilliant arguments of a learned theologian.  Baptism is a reminder to us how wide and deep and all-encompassing the grace of God really is.

 At our baptism by grace we become part of God’s people the church, part of the family of faith.  In our parish my prayer is that we will regularly have baptism services that are joyful celebrations on our main Sunday slot – such as the baptism of Georgia in November.  The art of adapting our worship so that it is accessible to people who don’t usually go to church – short, warm, genuinely welcoming. Holy Communion services are much too long and quite unsuitable for this purpose. I know that you had a baptism at Messy Church a few years ago – which is a great idea and certainly something to repeat. We should have had the baptism of Walter in our main service next Sunday, though this has been postponed for Covid reasons. 

 Of course, we will continue to offer services at other times where this suits families better – we need to show flexibility and meet families halfway. We are so fortunate that Sue does pastoral work with baptism families and that our clothes swap ministry and the Carers and Toddlers Praise group offers a space to meet up with families who have been baptised and keep that relationship going.

 In the baptism service those present are asked to commit to support the child in his or her journey of faith and to help her live and grow within God’s family.  That is very much a commitment for the local parish church, and it is good to ask ourselves to what extent we are in reality fulfilling that commitment by uur prayer and our action.  A challenge for us! 

 Words of the prophet Isaiah:

 Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

This is God’s promise to all his people

 I invite you to pray our prayer for today again, and to pray it not just for yourself but for those children in Whaley Bridge who will come for baptism this year.

 Heavenly Father

At the Jordan your revealed Jesus as your son.

May we recognise him as our Lord and know ourselves to be your beloved children

Through Jesus Christ our Saviour

Amen