Remembrance Sunday at Stebbing and Lindsell

Readings Micah 4, 1-5 and Philippians 4, 6-9

We will remember them.

It is 70 years ago this year that the Second World War began, and it is 90 years since we first held a remembrance Sunday – 91 since the end of the war, so 90 since the first annual marking of its ending.

But of course – and unfortunately - Remembrance Sunday is about so much more than that these days. It has been hard this week to frame in my mind what to say today after events first in Afghanistan and then in Fort Hood, Texas, in which virtues like honour and trust were discarded for personal and political gain at the cost of 18 lives.

I want to start with the obvious. Remembrance Sunday is ever more important year by year, as the number of living veterans of the first Armistice Day dwindles to almost none. It also remains important because in the news every day, and never more so perhaps than this week, conflict, death and injury are unavoidable, and we need to find some way of making sense of it all. I hope in what we do here today and what I say in this address we can try to do that.

In the three years we have been here there have probably been more deaths of UK service personnel than at any time for a good few years. But the conflicts that have taken their lives are far away from our lives; we do not see what they saw and we do not share their experience in any way really, in spite of the media coverage it all gets. This is a great contrast with conflicts of the past where the nation was under a fairly constant threat and the population as a whole considered themselves to be at war, even though it took weeks sometimes for news to get through. I guess that although we are constantly aware of what’s going on in Afghanistan, we do not actually consider ourselves to be at war – these days that is what soldiers do. So today of all days, we should not forget them.

The most significant thing I have learned in getting to know soldiers over the last few years is that they all love peace; they strive for it and long for it. That is why a reading like Philippians 4 is actually a good one for today; at first hearing these words do not sit well in a context of war, especially if you are a pacifist, but put yourself in the shoes of a soldier in Kandahar reading these words today from his or her special Armed Forces edition of the new testament. What better words could there be to both encourage and comfort someone like that? Yes it is true that there is very little that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy in what we see on our TV screens from war zones around the world. All the more reason then for us, as for that hypothetical Bible –reading soldier to follow the apostle Paul’s advice to the Philippians and think about these things, because by their very nature they remind us of God’s Kingdom, and they focus our minds on trying to bring that to fruition.

Which is also what is going on in the prophecy of Micah 4. It has a short term fulfilment in the return of God’s people from exile, but when we reads it with our New Testament Christian glasses on, we see it referring metaphorically to the future rule and reign of God, with the consequence of peace and reconciliation. It is a famous passage often cited by people who oppose war, but I wanted us to hear it today because I believe Micah speaks into our current world as a voice of hope for the future, and as an encouragement to see the sacrifice of wars past and present not as futile, but as building towards a future in which the words of Micah speak of reality, not as a prophecy, and the words of Paul to the Philippians are more immediately relevant. We are not yet beating our sword into ploughshares, and there is still a lot of ugliness dishonesty, impurity, ignobility, and so on in the world, but our purpose in acting as we are called to, whether military or civilian, must be to work within God’s plan towards the goal these words spur us on to.

It is traditional on occasions such as today to draw a comparison between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of human lives in war, and in one sense my conclusion today is not going to deviate from that tradition. I will say as I always do that any comparison must point to the supremacy of Christ’s sacrifice, because its efficacy, as we are about to sing, means that God’s wrath is turned away form humanity – “On that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied”.

There is a painting that belongs to the Royal Corps of Signals in Blandford, Dorset. It is called “Through”, and it depicts the body of a signaller, lying in open ground it what is clearly a battle situation. The signaller has given his life to re-connect a severed signals line, thus enabling two separated groups of soldiers to communicate. To me there is no co-incidence in the fact that the soldier’s body lies with arms outstretched and knees drawn up to one side, in the manner of a crucified body. The painting tells a story about human heroism, but it portrays a more profound truth about the supreme sacrifice, of Jesus Christ, which restored the connection between God and humanity that had been broken by human sinfulness.

Paul wrote to the Philippians, telling them “the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts in Christ Jesus”. The key words in that phrase are the last three – God’s peace is made available to us in Christ Jesus – through faith in him and by an acceptance of the validity of his teaching and the achievements of his sacrifice.

As we remember today all those in the past and in the present whose lives were spent in protecting our freedom, I feel the best way of making sense of the pain and the suffering of war today is to look at it all in the light of Christ’s own suffering. Not that we see Afghanistan as some kind of holy war, but that our understanding of what is happening in the world is always subject to the sovereignty of God.

All Saints 1 Nov 2009 at Lindsell and Stebbing, and All Souls at Stebbing

Isaiah 25, 6-8

John 11, 32-44

Today's Gospel presents a dramatic working out of the second beatitude: 'Blessed are those who weep now, for you will laugh' (Luke 6.21) or Matthew 5.4 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.' It is a theme echoed in Isaiah 25.8, and then in Revelation 21.4, as tears in the face of death are turned to joy.

All were weeping at Lazarus' death, and Jesus shared the sorrow of his friends. But his real response will be to enact the words of the second beatitude. His prayer at Lazarus' tomb does not ask for a miracle. He says 'Father, I am giving you thanks' (eucharisteo in Greek). His expression of confidence and joy uses a word, which we associate with the Eucharistic Prayer, which we of course make through our risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Tonight we will be thinking more about death and resurrection as we celebrate All Souls at Stebbing and Great Saling, with those who have been bereaved. This morning I would like to concentrate more on the status of the living church and the communion of all saints

The saints, in the way the term is used in the New Testament, are the community of believers who share a faith in Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. You do not have to be dead or even dead famous to be a saint. St Paul frequently addresses his letters to “the saints in ..”  

While I guess it is a bit strange that the Gospel chosen for this day is not about someone whom we would necessarily regard as a saint in the stereotypical sense, hre story of Lazarust does make the dramatic point that risen life with Christ is a free gift from God to all who are called to be saints. Famous saints like St Francis, or St Maximilian Kolbe, who did things to get themselves and more importantly God noticed are all very well, but if we concentrate too much on them, we might miss out on the person they are trying to draw us to – Jesus. St Therese of Lisieux - whose relics recently toured the UK, is all very well, but she’s no different from you or me in the eyes of God.  To focus too much on any saint, if our relationship with God suffers, is like going on a journey, but stopping at the first signpost to our destination, and just standing looking at it.

 The dead Lazarus, bound in his grave clothes, could do nothing for himself, but he was given life as the free gift from God. Having said he’s not normally listed under saints, we need to remember that travellers to Paris are sometimes greeted by him, if they arrive by train at the Gare St Lazare.

Though of course St John couldn’t have known about that rather good designation for the end of a journey, he invites us to note the parallels between the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus, which of course opens the way to us to our final destination in the new creation.

Think about it for a second. Both stories have women called Mary who weep; they both involve cave tombs with stones rolled away. In both narratives there is a lengthy time the body spends in the tomb, and references to grave clothes, and (implied by the spices on Easter morning, and overtly here,) the resultant smell. Of course the passages are ultimately linked by the sheer impossibility in human terms alone, of coming to life again.

 The similarity continues then with the appearances of Lazarus and the risen Christ from their tombs. Lazarus emerges bound in strips of cloth, and Jesus orders people to unbind him. This is a symbol of the way in which we are bound by sin and death, and a reminder that the risen Christ will proclaim release from sin when he appears in the upper room (John 20). There, his authority to release people bound by sin will be given to his disciples. With this, the tears are at an end as, in the words of Isaiah (25.8), 'He will swallow up death for ever.'

One  Tuesday night last month at the course in Christian studies we were looking at the apostle’s creed, and considering what those ancient words mean for the relationship of believers to each other and to God. I was blessed to be in a small group as we discussed the final paragraph:

       I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

As a group we noticed how there a natural and gracious sequence in these words: the Spirit of God brings together the church on earth and the communion of saints, which transcends the boundaries of space and time. The communion is based on forgiveness – by God’s grace alone we are saints, remember, and centres on the resurrection of the body – the body of Jesus yes, but also our bodies, when we make the transition from being part of the earthly church to just being members of the communion of saints in eternity.

But I promised to focus on the living this morning, so I wonder how we really ought to feel about the communion of saints. I’ve never been much of a protestant, until last week anyway, and I do, you’ve probably noticed, celebrate saints’ days from the lectionary whenever I can. I’m not doing this, I’m sure you realise, because I think that saints are more important than Jesus, or even because I think they are as important as Jesus. I do it because they point to Jesus, and so help us on our way.

That is our task too, but that’s another story.

All Souls at Stebbing

1 Peter 1 3-9

You know typing, right – well, the fact is I have to do a lot of it these days, but haven’t had a lesson since I was 17. I know I’m doing it wrong, but I’ve just kind of adapted to the keyboard and screen so that I can get on with the job in hand.

The other day I was typing an address for a funeral, and instead of writing about the hope of eternal life, I wrote about the hop of eternal life. That’s funny now, but I had a hard time trying to keep a straight face at the crematorium.

If I knew how to type properly, and didn’t rely on computers to do my grammar for me, my life would in a way be simpler, less complex and more joyful. I’d be doing fewer corrections too!

Why am I talking about typing, you ask, well, because it is a bit like life, especially the life of a Christian; we do it, but not all of us actually know what we’re doing. Some of us were taught about it in our youth, some more recently, but under stress it is hard to call to mind things from the recesses of our memories.

But our struggle with life, like my struggle with the keyboard, doesn’t normally show, it just sometimes comes to the surface when we are under pressure or stress, as we are when we suffer bereavement.

Church, then, is like a typing class; it gives us the things we need to do life together, even in the darkness. Here we can find support, comfort and (by the grace of God) strength to carry on. Here we can soak up the wisdom of the Scriptures and our traditions, that have served us for many centuries and are still of indispensable use today. Here we can find a comforting shoulder, a listening ear, and even simple things like a cup of tea and a box of tissues. Things we need for every day, but particularly so in our loss.

But the picture breaks down at this point. If you attend a class – for typing or whatever, you have a teacher, who spends some time with you and then you are left on your own to get on with it. With God it is not like that. Yes, Jesus did spend some time on earth, but after he left he sent the Holy Spirit to be our comforter and guide, so we never need to be alone; we never need to be alone. Even in the deepest darkest moments of our sorrow or suffering, we never need to be alone.

Jesus doesn’t just teach us how to live in good times and in bad, then leave is alone -  he walks with us on the journey through life.

You and I find comfort in the love we receive from others, the practical help, the hug, the company; in the touch of a comforter’s hand, you may be assured that you are receiving the love of God.

So if you are feeling a little like an untrained typist trying to type a dissertation, be assured you are in good company. Church is not about being superior and saying “we know how to do this”. Church is really just a bunch of people who know they need God’s grace and strength, and are brought together on a common journey to seek these things. We are, you might say, the walking wounded, but because we walk with the wounded saviour, our heads do not drop.

Our reading spoke of the inexpressible joy of knowing Christ; perhaps that is what is meant by the hop of eternal life?

But the hope of eternal life, which never disappoints us because the Holy Spirit has been given us, is always waiting for us to reach out and claim it for ourselves, and then we shall find rest for our souls.

Lindsell 11 10 09

Yesterday's sermon can be found here

Stebbing and Lindsell 04 10 09

please visit the Friends' Meeting House for last Sunday's sermon

thanks

Lindsell, Little Saling and (partly) Stebbing, 13th September 09

This (it being a frantic week) owes a lot to Roots on the Web. The readings Were Proverbs 1, 20-the end and Mark 8, 27-the end. I kind of used this script at Stebbing but deviated massively because I needed to launch the vision statement there.

This week as we continue to travel through Proverbs and St Mark, we are directed to the difference between God's way and our own, and exhorted to follow his wisdom and commands.


The teaching in Proverbs is delivered as from a father to a son, and some of it may be based on the teachers of the Egyptian and Babylonian Empires. But what is remarkable alongside this heritage is the high regard given in the Book to women, of which we shall hear even more in next week’s reading. The book begins (chapter 1 verse 8) by giving respect to a mother's teaching alongside that of a father. And now Wisdom itself is personified as the most desirable of women. Wisdom is the revelation of God, the fountain of life, giving us discernment, which frees us from death and leads to life. The Wisdom of the God of Israel is not a goddess like those of ancient fertility religions. She is the word of the living God who pours out the divine Spirit (1.23). Those who respond to her will share in the messianic banquet, as we read in chapter 9 verses 1-6). It is fascinating and perhaps unexpected that the book of Proverbs contains a resurrection hope.

From chapter 1, though, the first call of Wisdom is to conversion. The path of violence must be abandoned and the first step on the path to life is to recognise how pervasive violence is in those who turn their backs on 'the fear of the Lord'.

The punishment envisaged for this failure to seek divine wisdom is not a thunderbolt from heaven. Rather, it is simply that the foolish will reap the consequences of their own folly. They 'eat the fruit of their way' because they have ignored God's call.

The view expressed in Proverbs had been a simple message; that 'those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease' (1.33). Later Wisdom literature like Job, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations would temper this sunny innocence with a realistic recognition that things do not automatically go well for those who follow God's way. This provides the basis for Jesus' remarks in today's Gospel reading from Mark 8. It probably also resonates slightly better for us in the light of our own life experiences. Perhaps that’s why Proverbs doesn’t feature heavily in books with titles like “why do bad things happen to good people?”

Jesus asked the disciples who they say he is, and Peter confesses him as the Christ, i.e., the Messiah. Having commended Peter's answer by indicating that his confession is divinely revealed, Jesus immediately goes on to outline the nature of his understanding of the Messiah. He was not going to be a warrior king at the head of a triumphant army who would come to overthrow the occupying forces and “restore the Kingdom to Israel”. Our familiarity with that phrase from Acts chapter 1 is an indication that even after the resurrection, the disciples didn’t necessarily get the message!

Instead, Jesus explains that his destiny is to be a wounded figure who is eventually killed. Nonetheless, even here there is hope for vindication through resurrection.

I have always been intrigued by this episode. It reveals so much about Jesus but challenges us in two ways; first, to consider his very nature, ands second, in our own response to his question, “who do you say that I am?”

We confess in our creeds that Jesus is God incarnate; we acknowledge his authority and power and we worship him in response to those things. But I can’t help but wonder whether Jesus was really expecting Peter to give the answer he did. Can he have known it was coming and so did he therefore plan his consequent teaching session on what was to come, or was it all spontaneous? We will never know.



What we can be sure of though is that Peter made his declaration unprompted, other than by the words he had heard and the actions and attitudes he had seen coming from Jesus. We could I suppose conclude that whether or not he foresaw Peter’s response, Jesus seizes this moment to tell his disciples about his death in order to reinforce the point that he is not the Messiah that most Jews were waiting for. He is God, but he is human and has to react as a human to the workings of Peter’s very human mind.

And so, when we are asked, “Who do you say that I am”, we probably know the answer we are expected to give, if we say the creed often enough. Yet I acknowledge that not everyone here would answer that question in the same way as Peter did. This passage is frequently used to indicate the importance of personal confession of the person and nature of Christ in the Christian faith, and there is no doubt that our faith is edified by being able to say it with him, but we need to remember that Peter didn’t say this out of nowhere; his confession was not out of the blue, but was the result of spending a lot of time sitting and listening to Jesus’ teaching, watching him in conversation with others, and presumably worshipping with him. We need to remember this because if we forget it, our ministry of welcome to those who come along to church looking for something or someone, and our ministry of inclusion of those who struggle to confess like Peter, will be compromised, and we will appear to be saying, “If you come here, you need to be able to say that”, which of course we are not saying at all.



Peter’s confession may have been sudden, but it was a long time coming. Unfortunately his next pronouncement is less well considered, as we then turn from the wounded servant messiah to wounding tongues. Having just been commended by Jesus, Peter is then sharply rebuked for daring to suggest that the way of suffering was not an appropriate way forward. Peter's response to this public rebuke is not recorded but it is not unreasonable to think that he would at the time have felt stung by that censure, and he might remember it forever.

However, when we recall that Mark's Gospel may well be based on Peter's preaching, the fact that this is remembered would seem to indicate that by this time Peter was happy to admit to his fault, rather than feel resentful about the just rebuke. He had not appreciated the divine wisdom behind Jesus' remark, and behind his going the way of the cross. Are we wise enough to listen when we are called to account, or do we make the occasion one for bearing a grudge and trying to get even?

lindsell salings 16 08 09

For todays sermon please go here

Lindsell 030509

Text was Acts 4, 5-12 and John 10, 11-18

"True leadership and discipleship cannot be separated from the personal love of those whom we know by name and voice."

In John's Gospel, Jesus picks up the metaphor of the shepherd, familiar to his hearers from the 23rd Psalm and gives it a new, self-referential, twist: the good shepherd is the one who is prepared to face death in order to fulfil his responsibilities.
In Acts, Peter follows his master's example. By healing the cripple and fearlessly proclaiming the source of his power, he puts himself in immediate danger. In each case, the willingness to sacrifice oneself is tied to personal love: the shepherd knows the sheep by name and they know his voice; the disciples act in the name of Jesus; the ones we care for are our brothers and sisters.
Peter is the dominant figure in the early chapters of Acts, and his appearance here is typical. After a night in prison, he and his companions are brought before the Jewish religious authorities. The assembled array is impressive: rulers, priests and scribes; the high priest and members of his family, listed by name. The disciples are thrust right into the middle of all this. They are unlettered, ordinary, men, as Luke reminds us a little later; we know also from his Gospel that Peter's nerve had failed when his master had been arrested. But now he is transformed: he speaks with the freedom and confidence that was, in the ancient world, the mark of a philosopher. His style is fluent and authoritative, more a sermon than a speech of defence. He even emphasises the errors of his prosecutors by adding 'you' to the Old Testament quotation, 'This is the stone which you builders rejected', and by insisting on the resurrection of Christ before the Sadducees, who rejected even the future resurrection. The transformation of Peter reveals the power of the Holy Spirit, bestowed on the apostles at Pentecost.
Jesus is rarely in the New Testament described directly as 'God'. Instead, the writers repeatedly ascribe to him activities or titles or descriptions that properly belong to God. Here Jesus identifies himself with the Good Shepherd who, in the Old Testament, stands for God. Ezekiel 34 makes a contrast with the bad shepherds, who neglect and exploit their flocks; Psalm 23 gives details of the painstaking care provided by the true herdsman. In John, Jesus contrasts the shepherd with the hired hand: the one abandons his charges at the first sign of danger; the other faces death for the sake of his sheep. The extension of the Old Testament metaphor is striking: Jesus identifies himself with God precisely in his self-giving death.
Jesus' claim is that his relationship with the Father, one of mutual love and knowledge, is the source of his love and knowledge of his sheep. They are his own: the Greek word idios is used of members of one's family. It is the unity between Father and Son that makes unity among the sheep an imperative. That is why the 'other sheep' will become part of one and the same flock. Some scholars argue that the 'other sheep' are scattered groups of Jewish Christians in John's own day, facing persecution by the synagogues; most think that they are the non-Jews who will eventually become Christians. In either case, the readers are reminded that they are all linked as members of one family through the one shepherd.
And the one shepherd is of course unique. As Peter says in his conclusion, “Salvation is found in no on else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.” He is the only one.
Its worth noting that although at Easter we talk about how Jesus rose from the dead, this passage makes it clear that it was God who raised him; he did not do it himself. The work of Christ on the cross, and the power of God which raised him from the dead, are how our salvation is possible. Peter’s speech before the Sanhedrin sees them with their backs against the wall, defending their faith and seeking to ensure the truth about Jesus is properly understood. Clearly, Peter took an enormous risk in speaking out, and could have suffered a similar fate to that of Jesus, but the Sanhedrin eventually release him and John.

I find it fascinating that Jesus’ picture of the sheepfold, with himself as the shepherd, the protective gate (verse 7), while apparently first of all implying a protected, isolated community, if we see the sheep as the Church, is of course followed by the statement from Jesus that “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen, I must bring them also … there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” So its actually a call to be inclusive of outsiders – whether, as we have seen, these other sheep are from other churches or from no church at all.
Here at Lindsell this is what we aim to do, to be inclusive, and we need to be ready to be transformed by our encounter with other sheep. I’m no farmer, but I do know that when you introduce new stock to a flock or herd, the gene pool is altered over generations and the animals become different – I wonder how long it would take fro a flock of plain white sheep to become spotty with the introduction of just one Jacobs ram? In the same way, as we grow as a church, and we are the only officially growing church in this benefice right now, we need to hold in tension our stated aims to have an open door and to hold to traditional values.
Our shepherd does want to let other sheep into the sheepfold, but are we ready to receive them? Have we perhaps regarded the sanctuary of this building, this church family as somehow sacrosanct? I think perhaps not so far in my experience, which is why we are growing. Yet at the same time we do not need to compromise our gospel faith, and instead we should be ready to model it by word and deed.

The sheepfold Jesus spoke of might have been made up simply of a circle of thorn bushes with a gap guarded by the shepherd – who would lie down across the entrance, hence lay down his life – but I suspect that for us the thorns are not just o protect us from what is outside; if you are sitting in or near thorns you cannot stay comfortable for too long and you have to move; the thorns in our sheepfold then might be a motivation to get up and go out- to turn the church inside out, for the sake of the other sheep, the people we know and love, who aren’t here today.

Using some material from www.rootsontheweb.com by Sister Margaret Atkins