It's Saturday, and I can't believe I have at last the time to sit down to write.

I was asked this week why I didn't want to go to various Christian conferences, clergy meetings and special services.  (Not true, BTW: I just happen to limit them to a few hundred a year).  The answer I wanted to give was: 'Because I have a life and a ministry'.  Although, hopefully, I managed something better and kinder than that.

But really, do we need all these conferences and special services?  Don't get me wrong.  If someone wants to organize something and then take their chances on people turning up because it sounds interesting and exciting, I am very happy.

But what happens in the Church is that people (normally, clergy) organize meetings, services, whatever, and then tell people they have a duty to turn up.

Well I, at least, am on the payroll, and so there is the 'it's your duty argument', but what about families where both partners are working and where attending means having to sit through, let's face it, very boring meetings?  It just means that their kids are being neglected and deprived and their marriages put at risk.

I keep hearing that the Church believes in the family, wants to support marriages, and disapproves of divorce.  So what do we do to offer support?  We organize a conference, meeting, or service that takes people away from their families.

So we believe in the family, do we?  Really?  Then let's instead organize a movement to protest against unnecessary gatherings, services, and un-needed meetings in our churches.

Just say, No!

I volunteer to Chair the first meeting - oops!

Thinking Ahead

I am now getting back into the swing of things after coming back from holiday earlier this month.  This week I have been going over the diary for the next few months having acquired a new one for 2012 while away.  While visiting the UK, I saw party venues advertising for Christmas - scary!

This is the time of they year when requests for assemblies and dates for events and meetings start pouring in for the next year.  It is a little depressing watching the diary fill up so quickly!  I got so used to filling in dates for 2012 that I signed something with the date 2012 instead of 2011!

Last Sunday, I was preaching on the set reading: Romans 10:5-15 and, in particular, on the theme of preaching itself.  Preaching and teaching the Christian faith were what I originally felt myself called to do.  I have always felt dissatisfied that it hasn't been more of a focus of my ministry.  Like other ordained ministers, I give regular Sunday sermons, but there are so many other other tasks also demanding time and attention as the diary illustrates all too clearly that it can only be one thing among many others.  Sadly.

Yesterday I talked about a TV programme popular in the UK to illustrate what I saw as a problem with preaching in the Church.  The programme is Dragon's Den.  In it would-be entrepreneurs make a pitch to 5 multi-millionaire investors - the Dragons - hoping that the Dragons will make an offer to invest in their company.

Many of the pitches are extremely professional and entertaining.  After the pitch, however, comes the questioning from the Dragons.  At this point, many of the ideas and companies that seemed brilliant in the pitch are exposed as not nearly as good as they originally sounded.  They are shown to be lacking in substance.

Congregations increasingly expect their sermons to be short and entertaining.  Like the pitches made to the dragons.  The trouble with short and entertaining is that, again like the pitches to the dragons, they can also be lacking in substance.

I have just started preparing for the sermon a week on Sunday.  This will be on Romans 12:1-8.  It has struck me how much weight Paul puts on the mind and thinking.  I have always believed that a sermon which fails to make people think has failed as a sermon, no matter how entertaining it may have been.  But more about that in the next post! 

A very wet Hong Kong indeed today.  I thought I would bring the posts 'Introducing Romans' to a close with the following Postscript.  The posts 'Introducing Romans' really belong together, but that would have made the post very long indeed.  Hence the need to break them up.  Anyone wishing to access it as an unbroken whole can do so clicking on the label Romans or on the following link:

Introducing Romans

Have a good weekend!

Postscript to Introducing Romans

We have noted how Paul was spending the Winter in Corinth when he wrote Romans, reflecting on his past work in the East and preparing for his future work in Rome and the West.  Before that however, he was off on what he saw as a crucial journey to Jerusalem.  The last thoughts we have from Paul before he set off on this journey were of those who caused division and opposed his teaching.  Doubtless, he was worried that they may get to Rome before him.  After all, his opponents had caused him trouble enough in the past 10 years or so.

He was also worried that he might meet opposition in Jerusalem when he arrived with the collection.  Paul was well aware that so controversial was his preaching to many Jewish-Christians that they might simply refuse to accept the gift no matter how badly they needed it.  He was right to be worried.  Acts 21 records Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem with the collection.  The day after his arrival, he goes to meet James, the brother of Jesus, and the other leaders of the Jerusalem Church.

Paul gives them a report of his ministry amongst the Gentiles.  They seem to have received it well enough, but what really mattered to them can be seen from how they reply to his report.  Luke tells us: ‘Then they said to him, ‘You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law.  They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs.’ (Acts 21:20-21)

Their answer to this concern is for Paul to go to the Temple and demonstrate his loyalty to Judaism and the Law.  It was either a set up or a terrible miscalculation.  When Paul is recognized in the temple led instead to a riot and Paul nearly being killed.  Instead, he was arrested a riot breaks out and Paul is nearly killed.  Instead he is arrested.  We do not hear of him as a free man again.  He is imprisoned in Caesarea for two years before being sent at his own insistence for trial in Rome where we know he was also a prisoner for two years.  What happened to him after that we do not know because this is where Luke finishes his account of Paul’s ministry.

Paul had planned three journeys and had written of his desire to see the Roman Christians.  He was to make two of those journeys and did eventually get to Rome, but not in the way he had hoped.  As for the journey he had planned to Spain, we simply don’t know whether he made it there or not.  Some think that Paul was released after the imprisonment in Rome recorded at the end of Acts and went on to Spain.  Some think he was released, but didn’t make it to Spain.  Others still think that he was not released.  The truth is we will never know!

In Christian mission and ministry, we have to make plans.  God expects it of us.  Otherwise, there is a danger that we will just drift.  Churches, dioceses and provinces often have five year plans for what they will do and often these are formulated with the best will and intentions.  Just as Paul’s plans had been.

It can then be very disappointing when our plans do not work out as we either wanted or expected as frequently they do not.  Coping with disappointment can be hard.  On the occasion of my 25 years in the priesthood, I preached a sermon on some of my own disappointments.  One person who heard it declared afterward that she was disappointed in me.  Disappointment doesn’t always fit with some Christians’ world-view!

But in Romans itself Paul wrote of his sufferings and yet despite them he knew that ‘all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose’ (Romans 8:28).  Paul had learnt through years of ministry that although God wants us to plan ahead, God is greater than our plans and has a plan of his own.  Paul was to write to the Philippians about his imprisonment:

‘I want you to know, beloved that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ; and most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear.’  (Philippians 1:12-13)

No matter how much we may be committed to the Church and to the Gospel, God is more so.  We need in our planning and thinking not only to be open to God’s guidance, but to God overruling and changing our plans.  As the saying has it: ‘man proposes, but God disposes’.

And what is true in mission and ministry is true for us personally.  We all have our hopes and dreams.  We plan for the large and small things in our lives: for our careers, partners, and families.  We plan where we shall live and what we shall do.  We plan for our children and their schooling.  And the big plans give rise to the little plans that govern what we do each week and day.

As Christians, we need to see that our lives are in God’s hands.  This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan, but that we should not be so attached to our plans that we are not open to God changing them.  At times, we will find this frightening and we will be afraid.  There would be something wrong with us if we were not.  Paul believed, however, that not only did ‘all things work together for good for those who loved God’, he also believed, as he again says in Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

Yes, our plans will change or even fail altogether – that is a fact of life.  For the Christian, however, there is the promise of God that, no matter how much we may be disappointed or how bad things may get, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  As Paul discovered, not only is God greater than our plans, he is greater than our failure and, no matter what, he remains firmly in control. 

This post deals with the other two journeys that Paul was planning at the time of writing Romans.

2. A Journey to Spain

However, while he was reflecting on the phase of his ministry now coming to a close, Paul was also reflecting on what would happen next.  Having preached in the east of the Empire, Paul now wanted to go west and his attention turned to Spain.  He informs the Roman Christians: ‘So, when I have completed this, and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will set out by way of you to Spain …’ (Romans 15:28 NRSV).

Why Spain?  This cannot be answered with certainty.  Paul could have gone east from Jerusalem into the Parthian Empire where we know there were Jewish communities or even as far as India.  Even if Paul wanted to stay within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, then there was the north coast of Africa, which again had established Jewish communities.  There were in other words plenty of places that Paul could have visited.  The answer probably lies in the principles Paul gives for deciding where to preach.  In Romans 15:20, he writes:  ‘Thus I make it my ambition to proclaim the good news, not where Christ has already been named, so that I do not build on someone else’s foundation …’

By this he doesn’t mean that everyone in a specific region has heard the Gospel, but that the Gospel is established there.  Spain obviously struck him as a region that had not been evangelized.  It also fitted with other ambitions.

3.  A Journey to Rome

The third journey that explains Paul’s reason for writing to the Roman Church is that Paul specifically wanted to visit the Church in Rome.  In Romans 1:11 at the start of the letter he writes of his longing to see them and tells them in 1:13 that he has often intended to come to them, but has been prevented from doing so.

The reason for Paul now wanting to go to Rome is probably two-fold:

1.  The first reason is one that is frequently commented on.  It is normally linked with Paul’s intended journey to Spain.  Paul speaks of how he intends to make this first visit to Rome on his way to Spain: ‘For I do hope to see you on my journey and to be sent on by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a little while.’ (Romans 15:24)  What Paul probably means by this is that he is hoping Rome will be come a base for his mission in the west as Antioch was for his mission in the east.  Paul originally was ‘sent out’ by Antioch to preach the Gospel (Acts 13:2)  This sending out would involve the Romans in providing support in terms of money, prayer, and personnel – many of whom, as we have seen, were already known to him.

2.  All the above is undoubtedly true and important.  There may have been a second reason, however, and that is that Paul wanted to bring Rome within the orbit of his authority.  We have seen that Paul made a point of principle not to preach where Christ had already been named.  And yet, at the beginning of the letter, he tells them that he has wanted to visit them, as he puts it, ‘in order that I may reap some harvest among you as I have among the rest of the Gentiles.’  (Romans 1:13)

There is an apparent contradiction here.  Paul will tell them at the end of the letter that he is going to Spain because he doesn’t want to preach Christ anywhere that Christ is named, but here at the beginning of the letter he tells them he wants to come to Rome so that he may preach the Gospel and reap a harvest among them as he has the other Gentiles.

The answer to this apparent contradiction lies in the fact that, as we have previously observed, the Roman Church was not established by an apostle.  Paul clearly feels that this means it ought to come under his authority as the apostle to the Gentiles.  He actually is quite explicit about this.  His Gospel, he tells them, is about Jesus Christ our Lord ‘through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ …’ (Romans 1:5-6) 

These two reasons are, in fact, closely linked.  If Paul is to be able to use Rome as a base, it is essential that Rome recognizes that he is a genuine apostle, with all the authority that implies, preaching a message that he received from God.

In Romans then he sets out his Gospel, that is what is distinctive about his Gospel as the apostle to the Gentiles and seeks to explain it to the Romans in the hope that they will feel able to embrace both it and himself as the person preaching it.  Paul was not certain that they would any more than he was that the Jerusalem Church would accept the collection.  Paul was only too aware of those who would oppose it.  Paul writes at the very end of the letter: ‘I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned.  Keep away from them.’  (Romans 16:17)

Romans 16:16-20 are sometimes considered to be an afterthought to the letter, coming as they do after all the greetings in that chapter.  It is worth reminding ourselves, however, that Paul having dictated a letter to a scribe, in this case as we have seen to Tertius, then adds a greeting in his own hand to authenticate the letter (see Galatians 6:11, 2 Thessalonians 3:17, 1 Corinthians 16:21, Colossians 4:18).  What is more he tells the Thessalonians that this is his practice in every letter he writes.  This would suggest that 16:17-20 are verses that Paul has added in his own hand.

If this is so, and the verses are there in any case whether in Paul’s own hand or not, they suggest that Paul feels he will have the same battle for the Gospel in the years to come as he had in the years just past.  Romans lays the groundwork for what Paul hopes will be future ministry in Rome in the years ahead.

In Romans, Paul writes about the themes that he believed to be essential in his preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles.  He goes into more detail and deals with the objections with more care than in any of his other letters.  He wants to be well prepared for the journeys that lie ahead.

Today I want to look at the first journey that Paul was planning at the time he wrote Romans.

1.  A Journey to Jerusalem

In the winter of 57, Paul felt that his work in the eastern part of the Roman Empire was complete.  He writes in Romans 16:19: ‘from Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum I have fully proclaimed the good news of Christ.’  In 16:23, he states that there is now no role for him in these regions.  Except that is for one.

Paul has for some years been collecting money from his Gentile churches to take as a gift to the Christians in Jerusalem.  As he puts it to the Romans: ‘At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem in a ministry to the saints; for Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources with the poor among the saints at Jerusalem.’  (Romans 16:25-26).  Paul didn’t, however, see this simply as a charitable gesture.  For him, this was an expression of fellowship between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and a sign of unity between the two branches of the Church.

Incredible though it may seem, Paul was worried that this generous collection and ‘sign of peace’ would be rejected by the Church in Jerusalem.  He writes to the Roman Christians: ‘I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in earnest prayer to God on my behalf, that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my ministry to Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints …’ (Romans 16:30-31)

In these three months, it is likely that Paul was reflecting on how his ministry had gone now that this chapter had come to an end.  Inevitably, he would remember the opposition he had encountered so far, the arguments he had had and be thinking about the questions he would be asked in Jerusalem especially by those who were suspicious of him and his message.  The letter to the Romans is the outcome of this reflection.

A Milestone of Sorts

Only time for a short blog today as I need to put the finishing touches to 5 short talks I am recording this afternoon for the radio.

I wanted to blog today because 30 years ago on June 28 I was ordained deacon in the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary in Chester in the UK.  Not having any other opportunity to mark the occasion I thought I could at least remember it here.

I have just been on the Cathedral website and was intrigued to discover, and not a little disappointed, that it makes very little mention of the name preferring just Chester Cathedral.  I wonder why this is!

It's the start of a new week so before I get sucked into all the stuff that awaits, I thought that I would post the
second in this new series on Romans!

Introducing Romans - Part 2: A Letter from Corinth

So what can we be certain of?

Well you would think that the first thing would be that Paul wrote it!  In fact, in Romans 16:22 we read these words: ‘I Tertius, the writer of this letter, greet you in the Lord.’  Tertius means by this that he wrote it down, that he was the person that Paul dictated it to.  Does this matter?  Well, it is, perhaps, a gentle reminder that Paul wrote the letter according to the writing conventions of the day and that when trying to understand what it means it needs to be read as a first century letter not a modern piece of theological writing.

It seems likely that it was written during the Winter of 57 to 58 from Corinth, a church closely associated with Paul and one which he did establish.  Romans is unique amongst Paul’s letters in that all his other letters were written either to churches he himself had established or to people he knew well.  Although Paul hadn’t established the Church in Rome and hadn’t even been there at the time of writing the letter, this didn’t mean he didn’t know about the Church there.

He writes at the beginning of the letter:  ‘First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world.’  (Romans 1:8)  This could be taken as hyperbole or mere flattery were it not for the fact in Romans 16, at the end of the letter, Paul sends greetings to a long list of people at Rome whom he obviously knows well including Priscilla and Aquilla, who were his co-workers in Asia, as well as close friends and relatives.

But why write it?

We need to remind ourselves that Paul was a controversial figure in the early Church as he still is today.  Jewish Christians in particular were deeply suspicious of him and he faced severe opposition from some of them.  The intensity of this opposition can be seen particularly clearly in his letter to the Galatians and his second letter to the Corinthians.  Essentially, the accusation of his opponents was that he had sold out on Judaism.  You can see why they thought this.  Paul did not require his Gentile converts to be circumcised, as God had commanded in the Old Testament, and he didn’t require them to keep the Law of Moses, which all Jews, Christian and non-Christian alike, believed to be the Law of God.

Paul felt that in some cases his teaching was being misrepresented, that it was certainly being misunderstood, and that some of his opponents were simply false teachers responsible for leading people astray and compromising the Gospel.  In Romans, then, Paul doesn’t seek to give a complete statement of Christian theology, rather he seeks to explain those elements of it that were particularly characteristic of his preaching and to answer some of the questions and objections that had been raised because of it.

This explains why the letter deals especially with such themes as justification by faith, the relationship between Jews and Gentiles, the Law, God’s relationship with Israel, and what you can and cannot eat as a Christian!  It was Paul’s teaching on these themes that got him into the most trouble with other Christians.  He doesn’t need to talk about the resurrection of Christ, for example, because this was something he and his opponents were all agreed on!

Given, then, that Romans is an explanation and exposition of that which was distinctive in Paul’s teaching: why send it to Rome where, as Paul himself acknowledges in the letter, he had never been before?

The answer to this question lies in three journeys Paul was planning to make at the time he wrote Romans.  

It is that time of year again.  No, I don't mean the Summer, but the end of term with all its many events!  Tomorrow in Church we start reading through Romans and I have been working on a simple introduction to it.  This is the first part!

Introducing Romans - Part 1: An Independent Church

June 29 is the feast day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles. 

The Feast of St Peter and St Paul is an important reminder that Christianity isn’t simply about Paul.  (In the light of Anonymous' comment below, I think this should read: the spread of Christianity isn't simply about Paul!)  There were other important Christian leaders and teachers, not least Saint Peter.  Paul was, of course, hugely important, but it is possible to overdo it.  In both non-Christian and Christian circles, Paul is often seen as having effectively created what we now know as Christianity. 

For some, this is a negative thing: Jesus preached the pure Gospel and Paul came along and changed it, making it into a religion to rival those of the pagans.  For others, it is a positive thing: Paul is seen as having provided the much needed theological and intellectual basis for the new movement.

The truth is, as Paul himself acknowledges, that Paul received a great deal from those who were Christians before him.  Much early Christian theology was in place before Paul became a Christian.  The reason that the picture of Christian origins is distorted is because much of the New Testament was written by Paul and the only early history of the Church, the Book of Acts, focuses on the mission and ministry of Paul.

It doesn’t do any harm, then, to remind ourselves that there were important centres of Christianity that neither Paul nor for that matter Peter founded.  Egypt, and Alexandria in particular, was an important centre and there is certainly no evidence that either Peter or Paul went there, although our Lord did, of course, albeit as a baby!  Rome itself is another example.

Both Peter and Paul are linked with Rome.  Peter is believed by Roman Catholic Christians to have been the first Bishop of Rome and by some to have founded the Church there.  While it is probable that both Peter and Paul died in Rome, they didn’t found the Church there.  The Church was already in existence in Rome before either of them went there.  So how did it come to be in existence?

We are told that on the Day of Pentecost that there were in Jerusalem ‘visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes’ (Acts 2:10).  They were amongst those who heard the disciples speaking in ‘other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance’.  It is likely that some of these became believers and took the Christian Gospel back to Rome where it seems to have thrived.

Despite its independent origins as a Church, Rome was to become closely associated with both apostles.  Apart from Rome being the place where the two apostles were martyred under Nero’s persecution of the Church, St Peter was claimed as its first Bishop, and it was to give its name to the greatest piece of Christian writing in the history of the Church: Paul’s letter to the Romans.  In this letter, Paul, undoubtedly, does show his theological genius and the letter has been of phenomenal influence on people who were themselves great theologians of the Church: Augustine in the fifth century; Luther, in the sixteenth; and Barth in the twentieth.  These and many more like them were all indebted to it.  There have been many, many books and commentaries written on it.  It is certainly the one I personally have the most books and commentaries on.

Even though it has been so closely studied, Paul’s letter to the Romans still manages to challenge and perplex. Scholars argue over the meaning of almost every verse, often reaching dramatically different conclusions. In the next post, we will begin by asking whether there is anything we can be certain of.

Returning to Romans

I recently ordered a copy of a book just published on Romans.  It is Richard Longenecker, Introducing Romans.  Like many, the more I read Romans and the more I read books and commentaries on Romans, the less I seem to understand it.  This book is in anticipation of a commentary on Romans that Longenecker is in the process of writing.

It deals with all the issues surrounding Romans such as when was it written, to whom, and why.  It gives a very good overview of where scholars are at when it comes to understanding and interpreting Romans.  If you would like to read a short review I have written on it, this is the link: Longenecker, Introducing Romans

Scroll down for the review.

Preparing the hymns for Sunday worship for the next few weeks (see the last post) has alerted me to the fact that we will be reading through Romans over the Summer starting at chapter 6.  Longenecker's book arrived at the right time!  Coincidentally, I have 5 short talks for the radio to prepare to be broadcast in August.  Added to the fact that June 29 celebrates Peter and Paul, Apostles, it looks like this is a good time to return to Romans.  The last time I preached and wrote on Romans was back in 2008 (see the label: Romans).  I don't want simply to repeat what I wrote then, but it will be quite fun to be able to pick up where I left off, and I am grateful that this new book has helped me to do that.

Communication

I realize that it has been a little while since I last blogged.  My blogging does tend to go in spurts.  On the one hand, I don't want to get into the habit of just saying something for the sake of it; on the other, I realize it gets a bit pointless if I don't post anything for too long.  So my apologies for the erratic character of my blogging!

Here in Hong Kong, the Summer season is now well and truly upon us.  Temperatures are well into the 30 degrees centigrade.  Strangely, there hasn't been too much rain.  No doubt it will come!  We have had some heavy rainfall, though, and as usual we have new leaks in the Church.  They are not too serious at the moment, but it can get depressing, nevertheless.  Those reading this outside of Hong Kong may be interested in the following which has just been published on news website:

'Shelters have been opened across the territory for people to seek refuge from the heat after the Observatory issued the very hot weather warning. It is forecasting more sweltering weather over the next couple of days and is urging people to take precautions and avoid prolonged exposure to the sun.'

June is always busy both with the Schools and with events and meetings before people go away over the Summer.  Yesterday, however, was a public holiday in Hong Kong so I took advantage of the phone not ringing and fewer emails coming in to choose the hymns for the Sunday services until mid-September.  Apart from feeling very pleased with myself, it is good to know that there is now one less thing to worry about!

Being able to work in relative peace made me realize how much of a distraction email can be.  It is now a fact of life, of course, and it can be very useful, but it does mean that people expect instant responses.  I am reading Tim Challies book, The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion, and he makes the point that any new technology brings advantages and disadvantages.  I remember embracing the email when it was still a relatively new method of communication.  It seemed to offer nothing but advantages over the old postal system.

Even in Banchory a significant part of my day would be spent writing or answering letters, and then walking to the Post Office to catch the last post so that they would arrive - hopefully - in a couple of days so that with any luck I would get a reply if required within a week or so.

The change that email has made not just in speed, but in expectation, was brought home to me last week.

I received an email with a question in it at about 10.00am.  As there was information I needed to gather to answer it, I thought I would leave it until lunch-time to reply.  Meanwhile, the sender grew so anxious that I had not replied immediately, and not being able to get me by phone, phoned a third party to contact someone who would be seeing me later that day to ask me to reply!

Now the business people out there would probably tell me that if I think this is bad, I should try having a Blackberry and see the expectation that this raises.  Which is I suppose my point: do we really need this speed of communication?  Aren't we in danger of sacrificing thoughtful communication for instant communication?  And what is this doing when it comes to prayer and meditating on God's word?

I wouldn't want to be without email.  Forgive me, however, for not rushing out to buy an iphone or Blackberry!

Good Friday

It's rather busy here at the moment, so please forgive a very short blog!  I just wanted to say to you, my faithful readers, that I hope you have a very Happy and Blessed Easter.

My love to you all.

The Real Presence of Christ

Last Wednesday was the last in our series of Lenten Studies on the Eucharist.  We were looking at the different approaches to the Eucharist developed at the time of the European reformation and then thinking about how we understand what is happening in the Eucharist when we celebrate it today.

It has become customary to contrast the Roman Catholic belief with the approaches of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin and despite some of the limitations of this approach and the generalizations that it leads to, this approach does have the merit of defining four broad views of the Eucharist.

The Roman Catholic view we discussed last week.  Essentially, at the start of the 16th century, Roman Catholics believed in the sacrifice of the Mass and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine.  It was this that the reformers in their different ways were reacting to.

All three reformers were agreed in rejecting the idea of Christ being sacrificed in the Mass.  They also rejected the restriction of communion to one kind, that is to the bread, for the laity.  After this, as is well-known, there was much disagreement.

Luther was nearer Roman Catholic Church in the way he believed in the real presence of Christ in the sacrament.  While rejecting transubstantiation, he developed an idea that was much like it.  Transubstantiation is the belief that the outward appearance of the bread and wine remain the same, but that the substance, the inner reality, are changed into the body and blood of Christ.  Luther suggested, as an alternative, consubstantiation.  In this the outward appearance of the bread and the wine remain the same, as with transubstantiation, but the substance, the inner reality, is BOTH that of the body and blood of Christ AND the bread and wine.  Luther was extremely insistent on the real presence of Christ's body and blood in the sacrament and took the word 'is', when our Lord said at the Last Supper, 'This my body' and 'This is my blood', quite literally.

Zwingli in his rejection of Roman Catholic teaching went to the opposite extreme and opposed any real presence of Christ's body and blood in the bread and the wine.  In his initial teaching, at least, the Lord's Supper was for Zwingli a symbolic meal.  The word 'is' for Zwingli in our Lord's words at the Last Supper meant, 'This signifies my body' and 'This signifies my blood'.  There is evidence of a more positive view of the Lord's Supper in his later teaching, but it is fair to say that Zwingli and Luther fell out over this in a big way with the result that Protestants were to be seriously divided over the meaning of the Lord's Supper, a division which remains to this day.

Zwingli's view has been caricatured as belief in the real absence of Jesus, which is unfair to Zwingli, but not to many of those who followed him.  It is a reminder that it is one thing to say what you are against, another to say what you are for!

It is to Calvin's great credit that he spent so much time in his writings trying to develop a positive doctrine of the Eucharist, focusing as much on what was happening as on what was not.  Like Zwingli, Calvin rejected the idea that Christ is in anyway physically present in the bread and the wine and so disagreed with Luther and his followers on this.  Furthermore, he was not afraid to say so!  Calvin, however, also worked hard to reach agreement over the meaning of the Lord's Supper with those who succeeded Zwingli and followed Zwingli's teaching.  His efforts were met with some success.

Reading Calvin, what comes across, to me at least, is that the Lord's Supper meant something to him on a more than intellectual level.  You get the impression that the Lord's Supper is very much part of his spiritual life and that without it he would feel spiritually impoverished.  He is not just writing in a theoretical way about Christian doctrine, but about something that is central to his experience of the Christian life.  This explains why for Calvin frequent participation in the Lord's Supper is so important.  Calvin alone in his day believed that the Eucharist should be celebrated and the sacrament received by believers on a weekly basis.  The Lord's Supper is something that for Calvin truly matters.

While Calvin agreed with Zwingli that Christ is not physically present in the bread and the wine, he rejected any idea that the bread and the wine were empty symbols.  He says that what they 'represent, they also present'.  He believed that Christ's body and blood are truly offered to us in the sacrament and that when we partake of the sacrament by faith, we spiritually feed on the body and blood of Christ.  Christ is thus really present in the sacrament albeit spiritually by faith.  We can describe the bread as Christ's body and the wine as Christ's blood because that is what they represent and what they offer the believer who by faith wants to feed on Christ.

I have said here before that for me this is the most helpful way of looking at the Lord's Supper.  If I may be so bold, however, I think I would like to go a little farther than Calvin at least in trying to explain our use of language.  At the reformation, the argument was very much over whether Christ's body and blood were present in the sacrament.  Again, at the risk of over-simplifying, some such as Luther said they were present physically and some such as Calvin, spiritually. There is still, however, a tendency to suggest that we must literally eat Christ's actual body and drink his actual blood whether we do this physically (Luther) or spiritually (Calvin).  Where I think Zwingli was on to something was in feeling uncomfortable with this understanding of the Biblical language.  I think his own understanding went in the wrong direction, but he is right to ask what the language means.

Surely the language of eating and drinking Christ's body and blood is metaphorical, that is, that what we are being invited to do when we are offered the body and blood of Christ is to participate in the benefits that Christ's death and sacrifice have obtained and made possible for us.  To focus on eating the body and drinking the blood whether we do this physically or spiritually is surely to stop at the sign and not to move on to where the sign is pointing.

Not for one moment do I want to suggest that nothing is happening in the Eucharist.  I believe absolutely in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and, to put it bluntly, that Christ is offered to us in the Eucharist in a way that he is not offered to us elsewhere.  The bread and wine by representing the body and blood of Christ, are presenting to us all the benefits of Christ's passion.  What we are being offered is not simply Christ's body and blood, in whatever sense, but an intimate communion with the person of Christ himself made possible by the body and blood of Christ.

In other words to stop at the idea of eating Christ's body and blood, perversely, is to limit the presence of Christ in the sacrament.  When Christ said in John 6:57 'whoever eats me, will live because of me' he meant far more than 'whoever believes in me will live because of me', but, surely, he also meant more than 'whoever has bite of my flesh and sucks my blood, will live because of me'.  Surely what he is referring to is a union between himself and the believer that is so real and intense that only the language of feeding on him is powerful enough to express it.

For this reason, I have no problem whatsoever in saying that, in the Lord's Supper, I eat Christ's body and drink his blood, but in saying this what I am saying is that Christ is so really and truly present that I am able to encounter him and receive him in way that transcends all speech and doctrine.

As Calvin said, 'I would rather experience it than understand it.'

From Real Meal to Medieval Mass

The Fourth Lent Study: Audio

After a short delay, I can now post the audio for last week's talk on the Eucharist: From Real Meal to Medieval Mass.  I should say that these are not live recordings, but recordings made after the talk.  Actually, they are recorded by me here in my study!  This means they sound more read than delivered!  In the version delivered on the night, I take breaks to explain and develop points more than I feel able to here.  I hope that they are, nevertheless, reasonably clear.

I am quite pleased that I am at least getting hold of the technology of doing this.  Please let me know if there are any technical problems - as well as, of course, any comments you may have.

This is the link:

The Eucharist - Study 4: From Real Meal To Medieval Mass

From New Testament Meal to Medieval Mass

It was the fourth of our Lent Studies on Wednesday.  This week, we were looking at the transformation of the Lord's Supper from a Real Meal in the New Testament to a liturgical celebration focused on the elements of the bread and the wine as it has become.

It was perhaps inevitable, given the behaviour of some at the Church's meals, that the Church would find it necessary to regulate how the Lord's Supper took place as Paul had had to do at Corinth.  In the Didache, written at the end of the first century, or at least at the start of the second, there is the beginning of guidance for a service rather than instructions for a meal.  It is clear that formal prayers to be said over the bread and wine are beginning to take shape.

It is still, of course, fairly basic at this stage, but by AD150 we see in Justin Martyr (103-165) a clear structure emerging to the service.  The President still, Justin tells us, prays freely over the bread and wine, but there is a definite liturgical pattern to what happens.  In another work, the Apostolic Tradition, there is an example of what we would call now a Eucharistic prayer. Traditionally, the Apostolic Tradition has been seen by scholars as having been written in Rome by Hippolytus at the beginning of the third century.  It is believed by some recent scholars to be a composite work of material from between the middle of the second and beginning of the fourth centuries.  Whichever view is right, this is the earliest surviving example of a formal Eucharist prayer. This prayer has served as the basis for one of the Eucharistic prayers in the modern Roman Catholic Mass and the Church of England Eucharist.  It is this Eucharistic prayer we use here at Christ Church.

What is also interesting in the Apostolic Tradition is that provision is made both for a Eucharist with a prayer over the bread and wine and also for a Real Meal without the bread and the wine in a eucharistic sense.  This probably illustrates the point we have been making about how the Eucharist as a liturgical service separated itself from the Lord's Supper as a meal with the Eucharist becoming the main service and focus of the Church's worship.

For good or ill, the Meal eventually did die.  This was no doubt helped by the the conversion of the Emperor Constantine in AD315.  The Church was now able openly to aquire buildings in which to meet.  This led to a more formal celebration of the Eucharist with the liturgy for it becoming both more elaborate and fixed with additional prayers being added to it.  Some of these prayers we still use today.  Although it is important to note that there was not one liturgy everywhere, but rather different families of liturgies.  These had much in common, but there were also significant differences.  In the West, not surprisingly, the Roman liturgy would eventually become the predominant one for the celebration of the Mass.

Over what we call the medieval period other developments took place:

1.  The Mass was seen as a sacrifice being offered by the priest for the benefit of those present or even dead and absent.  Perhaps 'seen' is the wrong word as the offering took place away from the worshippers often behind a screen.

2.  The Mass thus became as much about performance as it did participation.  The benefit was there irrespective of whether the congregation ate the bread or drank the wine.

3.  In this performance of the Mass, the bread and the wine were believed to become the body and blood of Christ in a real way.  While there were occasional arguments about how this happened, there was no argument that it did happen.  The view, of course, that became most accepted was that of 'transubstantiation' most notably as was expressed in the writings of St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).  It is worth stressing that the doctrine of transubstantiation is not so much an argument that the bread and wine become Christ's body and blood, but how they do so.

4.  This emphasis on the Mass as the performance of a sacrifice in which the bread and the wine were changed into the body and blood of Christ meant that not only did people not have to eat and drink the converted bread and wine to gain benefit, but that it was desirable for them not to as these were by their very nature holy and not to be taken lightly.  The consecrated elements became primarily not something to be eaten and drunk, but worshipped and reserved.  Ordinary believers would only take communion once or twice a year and even then only in one kind, the bread.  It was not worth the risk of spilling the wine.

Such then was the situation in 1500 at the beginning of the sixteenth century.  However, over the next 100 years or so the Church was to divide over its understanding of the Eucharist not just between Roman Catholics and Protestants, but between Protestants themselves.  The Protestants were agreed in rejecting the sacrifice of the Mass, the worship of the elements, and that it was wrong to deny the cup to lay people.  They could not, however, agree on what was happening in the Eucharist, if anything, and in what way, if any, Christ could be said to be present.

The extremely virulent dispute between Luther and Zwingli over this probably ensured that protestantism could not be a united movement.  Criticism of the Mass by Protestants in turn led to a hardening of attitudes within the Roman Catholic Church which at the Council of Trent reaffirmed traditional Roman church teaching.

This brings us then to our last study next Wednesday when I will ask what it is we think is happening and what it is we are doing when we celebrate the Eucharist each week.  To help us answer this I intend to look at the main approaches as they were developed in the sixteenth century and to study John 6.

I will post the talks from Wednesday in audio form here in a day or two!

Happy Monday

It is a public holiday tomorrow here in Hong Kong which is nice!  I am hoping to use it to write up my next study for Lent.  In the meantime, here is the link to last Wednesday's talk.  It is in two parts!

The Eucharist - Study 3: A Real Meal (Part 1)

The Eucharist - Study 3: A Real Meal (Part 2)

Happy Mothering Sunday

I am preparing now for our Mothering Sunday Services tomorrow.

Sadly, we are in danger of losing Mothering Sunday in favour of Mother's Day.  But Mothering Sunday is so much richer.  It embraces Mother's Day, but goes beyond it.  We remember, of course, our earthly mothers, but also our Heavenly Mother, the Virgin Mary and our Mother Church.

Tomorrow, I will be thanking my God, who mothers me, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who cares for me, my dear mother in the UK, and my wife, who always looks after me.  We will also be thanking all the countless mothers who are just being mothers, some who will be thanked and many who will be forgotten.

So for all our Mothers Everywhere, we ask our Blessed Mother to watch over them, keep them, and protect them.

Please Give Me Your Opinion

This is by request for some feed-back!

I have now found a way to put links to audio talks by me here on the blog.  Basically, you click the link and you are taken to a site hosting the talk.  All well and good, but a little bit pointless if no-one wants to listen to them!  Recording them so that they are 'listenable' to in this way does require a bit of effort on my part, which is no problem as long as I am not speaking into (virtual) space!

So if you listen to the 'trial talks' and find it in principle a good idea (I know it all needs refinement), could you post a comment or send me an email (I know that not everyone likes leaving comments)?

In our Lord's Day, if there were ten people who were willing to meet together on the Sabbath, there could be a synagogue.  The idea being that they would tithe (give a tenth of their income) to fund a Rabbi, who would then be in a similar income range to themselves.  Don't worry, there will never be appeals for money here, but if there are ten people who find it a reasonable idea.  I will go ahead and try to get better at speaking into the microphone!

Tune in at Easter to see the result!

Update on Lent Talks

I am trying to make some of my talks available through audio.  This is all a bit experimental at the moment, but here is the first attempt.  It is the second talk for Lent, 2011.  If it works, and there is any interest, I will add others!

The Eucharist - Study 2: A Violent and Bloody Sacrifice

Wait for One Another

At our Lent Bible Study last night, we were thinking of how the Eucharist in the Early Church was a real meal, so real that at Corinth some ate and drank so well that they became drunk.  The only reason we have Paul's extended piece on the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11 is that he found it necessary to write to correct this abuse.

Early in the letter Paul had written to the Corinthians:

'Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.'  (1 Corinthians 1:26)

Not many, notice, but some nevertheless.  Some were well-educated, powerful and of noble birth and this is something that sometimes goes uncommented on.

Firstly, those who were rich must have been truly genuine and committed to the Christian message or else why join a movement that was mainly comprised of the poor, slaves, and those from a much inferior social class?  What was happening in the early Church was truly exciting: the rich were mixing with the poor as equals and as brothers and sisters in Christ and, whatever else we may say, this is much to their credit.

Secondly, their commitment to Christ expressed itself in the willingness of the rich to support the new movement in material terms.  Paul himself refers to the support he had received from Philemon.  We know that the first Christians met in the homes of rich people who were willing to open them up for the purpose.  It was here that the Lord's Supper and the church services took place.  To be able to afford a house big enough to accommodate a sizeable group of people would have meant that you were seriously rich.  That despite being rich, and therefore socially well-connected, you were willing to open your home to slaves and the like to come and eat in is really remarkable.

So before we rush into condemning the behaviour of the rich in Corinth - as we must and as Paul does - it is worth remembering all this.  So what was going wrong at Corinth?  Essentially, it seems that the Church would decide a time to meet.  The meeting itself took the form of a meal celebrating the Lord's Supper.  The rich being rich could get to the meeting on time without any problem.  After all, that's one of the advantages of being rich, you have control over how you live your life and when you can come and go.  The poor, especially slaves, have no such control.  They have to do as they are told and need the permission of others before they can do anything.

The problem at Corinth was that the rich, instead of waiting for the poor to turn up, got on with their gathering, sharing in the meal together, so that by the time some of the Church had managed to get there, there was no food left and so they left the meeting hungry.

At our study last night, I asked the question how would most Vicars, as advised by their Church Councils, deal with such a situation if something like it occurred today.  I suggested that 9 times out of 10 (if not more), the following approach would be adopted:

1.  Obviously, we must be careful not to appear ungrateful to the rich who are so kindly providing places for us to meet, generously giving to support the ministry, and even providing food and wine for us to enjoy at our meetings.  Where would we be without their commitment?

2.  We can perhaps keep back some food and drink for those who can't make it to the meeting on time.  Then there will be something for them to eat and they won't go away hungry.

3.  We should also encourage the slaves to be more responsible in their time-keeping and ask them to try harder to get to the meetings on time.

I can guarantee that at every Church I have known that this would be the basic approach.  So how does Paul deal with the situation?  We need to remember that he is normally very diplomatic when dealing with pastoral issues.  In Romans 14 and 15, for example, his advice is a model of diplomacy, tolerance, and compromise.  Here, however, his reaction is one of absolute outrage:

'What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you? Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you!'  (1 Corinthians 11:22)

He is not in the least intimidated by the wealth and power of the rich.  He is not prepared to compromise what he believes to be central Christian truths to keep the favour of the rich.  After this expression of outrage, he then goes on to describe the Last Supper Jesus held with his disciples drawing this conclusion:

'Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord.'  (1 Corinthians 11:27)

He continues to tell them that it is because of their unacceptable behaviour at the Lord's Supper that some have become sick and died (11:30).  This phrase 'an unworthy manner' has been taken to mean that each of us as individuals should not receive Communion if we have sin in our lives.  It has caused much angst and soul searching.  It is, of course, right that each of us take receiving Communion seriously, but we need to see that what Paul meant in using this phrase was that the rich should show respect to the poor.  Receiving in an unworthy manner in Paul's terms is less about sin in our personal life and more about failing to show respect to a fellow member of the Body of Christ.

That Paul is talking primarily about our relationship with one another rather than our individual relationship with the Lord is confirmed by the conclusion that Paul himself draws at the end of this passage:

'So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.  If you are hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation.'  (1 Corinthians 11:33)

So simple: wait for one another!  You are in this together regardless of whether you are rich or poor.  In Christ who you are, where you come from, which school you went to, what job you do, how much you earn, how popular you are, all count for nothing.  Wait for one another!  No-one is more important than anyone else.  Wait for one another, make sure you value all equally, for only then will you be eating the Lord's Supper in a worthy manner.  Any celebration of the Lord's Supper then that doesn't include every member of the Body of Christ, whatever their age or background, is not the Lord's Supper and is to put at risk the physical and spiritual health of all who take part.

All that Paul writes, of course, only makes sense if the Lord's Supper was a real meal. It is also worth noting that as Paul founded the Church at Corinth and was its pastor for its first 18 months, it must have been Paul who established the practice of having the Church's meeting over a meal.  Ironically, however, the consequences of what Paul writes here were that the Lord's Supper became less about sharing a real meal and more about what the meal signified.  Probably this was a right and necessary development, but we should not forget that originally the Lord's Supper was a real meal that all could share in as had been the Last Supper itself.

The development of the Lord's Supper from being a real meal to the Eucharist in the liturgical form in which we now celebrate it, will be the subject of our next Lenten Study! 

The past few weeks have been especially challenging for me.  I am hoping that now the waters leading up to Easter will be calm ones!   I am, then, thinking about Easter and preparing for the services over it.  The coincidence of reading Rob Bell's book, Love Wins, and delivering a series of Lent talks on the Eucharist as a preparation for Easter has brought home to me how there exist two very different approaches to the death and resurrection of our Lord at work in the Church.

1. A Vindicated Martyr for Truth and Justice and an Example for All

The first sees Jesus' death as the inevitable outcome of his life and teaching.  How he lived and what he taught inevitably brought him up against those in power who had to silence him.  Jesus, however, refused to be silenced, but proclaimed the Kingdom of God accepting death as the consequence.  God, however, vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead, thus demonstrating that Jesus was right all along, defeating death in the process.

Jesus thus sacrificed his life for the Gospel and God brought life out of death by the resurrection.  Jesus died as a martyr, but God did not abandon him.  We now are to follow the example of Christ trusting in the God who raises the dead.

The advantage of this explanation of the death and resurrection is that it is entirely intelligible and makes sense providing, of course, that you are willing to believe in a God who resembles the normal Christian understanding of him.  After all, we know of modern examples of people who have stood for truth and justice, often at great personal cost, even suffering death as a consequence.  True they may not have been resurrected in the way the Bible describes Jesus as having been resurrected, but it is not so great a leap of imagination to believe that God could raise Jesus and anyone else for that matter.

A further advantage is that it is a positive message that resonates with us.  It is victory over death and the triumph of truth: an example of how we too should live trusting that God will look after us as he looked after Christ.  The emphasis on this view is on the resurrection as sign of hope.  It is a call to follow Christ in his life and sacrifice trusting that God will not abandon us either.

On this first view the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is essentially that of someone sacrificing their life for what they believe.  There can be no doubt that there is that to it.  Nor can there be any doubt that in the New Testament Christ's life and death is held up as an example of how we also should live our lives and not be afraid of the consequences of standing for the truth.  But is that all there is to it?

2.  An Offering for Sin and Victory over the Powers of Darkness

Not according to the second type of approach.  On this view, Christ's death was not just the sacrifice of a martyr giving up his life, but was an objective sacrifice that achieved something in and of itself.

The trouble with the first view is that it moves too quickly on to the resurrection.  Those who take the second view argue that Christ wasn't simply dying because of what he believed and how he lived, nor was he dying simply because of the human sin of those who crucified him, he was dying for our sin and behalf of our sin in an objective sacrifice offered to God to obtain the forgiveness of sin and to defeat the forces of evil which controlled the world and held all in their power.

This, in other words, was not an ordinary death.  It was a unique, one off death that forever changed the nature of reality.  God did indeed vindicate that death in the resurrection, but the death itself was where the primary action took place.  This is why we still preach Christ crucified.

The problem with this view as opposed to the first is that it is much harder to explain to people today.  It is certainly not easy for us to understand.  In the ancient world, sacrifices were normal and understood in a way they are not today.  However, I am certain that the second view is the foundational view of the New Testament.

The question, of course, is which should be foundational for us today.  I imagine that this Easter most will go with the first.

Whether we are right to do so, however, is another issue altogether.

A Violent and Bloody Sacrifice

What perhaps got the 16th century protestant reformers more upset than anything else when it came to the Roman Catholic understanding of the Mass was the suggestion that in the Mass a sacrifice was taking place.  The Sacrifice of the Mass was something that they rejected altogether.

I am aware that protestants often caricature Roman Catholic teaching on this, and I certainly don't want to be guilty of that myself, but it is clear that many did and do believe that in the Mass Christ is being offered again to God and that this sacrifice can bring benefits that can be applied to people or situations.  This is where the idea of masses 'for the dead' came from and why the Mass had value even when people didn't actually partake of the bread and the wine.  The benefit lay in the event itself.

The reformers, however, believed that Christ died 'once for all' and that his was an unrepeatable sacrifice.  The idea that Christ was being offered again by the priest seemed to them completely to undermine the sufficiency of the work of Christ.  They not only then rejected any such thought, they rejected any practice that might even suggest it, and so out when priests and out when any talk of altars in churches.  I have known many Christians today who get very upset when we call the table at the front of the Church, an altar.

It is surely right that we should reject any suggestion that Christ's death is anything other than perfect and sufficient for our salvation.  Maybe, however, we shouldn't be quite so squeemish about talk of altars and maybe we should be careful of rejecting the association of the Eucharist with a sacrifice altogether.

Last night in our second Lent Study, we saw how the Last Supper was a Passover Meal and how the Passover commemorated the deliverance of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.  They were commanded by God to slaughter a lamb and put its blood on the door post so that the Lord would pass over the Israelites homes and spare them the death of their first born in the 10th plague.  In the Last Supper, Jesus institutes a new Passover celebration to remember the sacrifice he is about to offer of himself.  There is to be a new covenant in his blood.  A deliverance this time from slavery to sin.

The Lord's Supper then is about sacrifice and death, about blood and a new covenant to save us from sin.  At the Eucharist, we may not be offering a new sacrifice, but we are remembering a sacrifice without which we would not have any hope of life.  The Eucharist is about a death that brings life to the dead.

Many talk about the Eucharist as celebrating the gifts of God in creation.  They see it as a thanksgiving for all that God has given to us and an offering of ourselves to his service.  It is a celebration of life.  It is right that there is this to it.  It is, however, far more important in the Eucharist that we focus on the death of Christ for us - for that was rather our Lord's point.  We remember what he has done for us by his death in the past, we seek the benefits of his death in the present as we ask forgiveness for our sins, and we proclaim, as Paul puts it, his death until he comes.

Seen like this, the word altar seems to be entirely appropriate!

Love Wins, and Loses

I am preaching at the services tomorrow and my intention had been to focus on the Epistle reading from Romans 4, which fits nicely with what I plan to say on Wednesday at the next Lenten Bible Study.  However, when I sat down to write the sermon (I am still one of those who write his sermons out by long-hand), it became obvious that there was only one reading that I could focus on and one verse in it, that is, the Gospel Reading and John 3:16:

'For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.'

I have preached on this verse many times, but what gives preaching on it added significance this week is Rob Bell's book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, and the furore surrounding it that some are calling Hellgate!  I have already mentioned it in the blog this week.  As I have said, I am surprised that people are surprised that this is where Rob Bell is coming from.  Perhaps they are just annoyed that he has raised the issue at all.

One of my favourite TV series at the moment is Outnumbered.  There is something of a running joke in it about the 'elephant in the room': something large and significant, but about which we do not speak.  Universalism, and more particularly a rejection of hell or any idea of it, is the 'elephant in the room' of the Church.  We don't talk about it, but it is there, and universalism and a rejection of anything that passes for hell is the default position of most pastors, priests, and preachers regardless of their particular brand label.  Even if we prefer, for whatever reason, not to talk about it.

(A Question for Anglican Vicars: have you ever told anyone who has asked you about what has happened to their loved ones who have died that they haven't just slipped away and that they might not just be waiting for them in the room next door?)

Rob Bell's book, even if this was not his intention, is making people come out of their own particular closets.  Me included.  A lot depends, of course, on what you mean by hell.  For some it is a place and for others, a metaphor, but even a metaphor must be a metaphor of something, and, even on the most benign, understanding it cannot be something very nice.  Certainly, it must mean that for some people the future is not one of heavenly bliss, but of hellish consequences.

Now Rob Bell is very clever.  He asks whether we think Gandhi is in hell.  But Gandhi is one of those nice non-Christians that we all like.  What about Hitler and Stalin and Mao?  The fact is we can all play this game and we would be wrong to do so.  The question of who is in hell, wherever or whatever it is, is not for us to judge.  After all, we may be going there ourselves.

But because we shouldn't speculate on its occupants, doesn't mean it doesn't exist (whether literally or metaphorically).

I personally deplore those who have labelled Rob Bell a heretic and a false teacher.  (How many people have you brought to faith in Christ this week?)  But that doesn't mean he is right.  In fact, I believe he is seriously wrong, not in the questions he asks, but in the answers he implies.

It would be lovely to think that, ultimately, we were all going to cuddle one another in heaven rather burn in hell, but if cuddling each other is our destiny, then rather than appealing to those parts of the Bible we like, we should just get rid of it altogether, and admit we are making the Christian faith up as we go along and hoping we get it right.

However, for anyone who wants the Bible to play an authoritative role in what they believe, there is no escaping the consequences of God loving us, consequences which, because the set reading tomorrow stops at John 3:17, we won't be told of in our services, but which can be spoken of in places like this:


'Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.'  (John 3:18)

God's unconditional love for all of us has very serious consequences.  It is that some of us will be won and also that some of us will be lost.

Lent 1

We had the first of our Lent Bible Studies last night.  It is always hard to attract people during the week here, for good reason, so it was encouraging to see those who did come!  As I have said previously, this year we are thinking about the Eucharist and its meaning.  Most of our services at Christ Church are Eucharistic and follow a set liturgy.  Given this, it is all too easy to become mechanical in our worship and to fail to pause to meditate on the significance of what we are doing.

One of the questions, I want us to ask during these studies is about what is happening when we receive the consecrated bread and wine.  Is anything happening that can only happen in this way by this means?  Do I receive something tangible from God that I would not otherwise receive?  And if so, what?

I spoke last night of my own developing understanding of the meaning of the Eucharist.  I began my Christian life in a context in which Communion was peripheral and unimportant.  At Bible College, I came to believe, through studying the New Testament, that partaking of the Lord's Supper should be the focus of our gatherings for worship.  As a curate on the Wirral in the UK, I increasingly came to believe that Communion was something that we did together.  This is important because very often people focus on their own private Communion with God to the exclusion of their Communion with each other.  I found the book by Robert Banks, Paul's Idea of Community, very helpful in thinking this through.

When I left the Wirral, I had, then, a strong view on the central importance of the Eucharist for Christian worship and a belief that it was a communal celebration.  I still, however, saw it fundamentally as something we were doing because our Lord had told us to, something that encouraged us to look back to what he had done for us rather than something that had real benefit in the present.  To put it another way: while there are always blessings that are to be had from obedience to God, in principle there was nothing to be received in Communion that could not be received by other means - through praise, prayer and preaching, for example.

It was only after my return to parish ministry in Scotland that I found myself focusing more intensely on what was happening when receiving Communion.  Was it only because our Lord had commanded it that we did this?  Was its only benefit that it helped us to look back to what Christ had done for us?  It was here that Calvin proved especially helpful in my thinking.  To cut a long story short: I came to see Communion as conveying what could not be received by any other means and that something very real truly is present when we receive Communion.

I thus came to the place from which I approach these Lenten Studies with three basic convictions:

1.  Worship should be Eucharistic, that is, the Eucharist should be at the heart of our life together as the Church.

2.  Communion is both about our Communion with each other as fellow members of the Body of Christ and also about our Communion with Christ himself.  In the Eucharist, there are thus two key moments: at the Peace when the Celebrant says, 'We are the Body of Christ', and at the administration of the sacrament when the minister says to the Communicant, 'This is the Body of Christ'.

3.  When we receive the consecrated bread and wine, we really are feeding on the body and blood of Christ, truly present in the sacrament and this feeding is vital to both our spiritual and physical health as Christians.

Next week, I want to look at the Eucharist as a violent and bloody sacrifice.  This week, I looked at my own developing understanding over my ministry of the Eucharist as something that conveys real benefits to the believer in the present.  I want now to begin to look at the nature of these benefits by looking back to the context of our Lord's institution of the Eucharist.  It is for very good reason that we call the place where the bread and wine are laid an altar.

Can't buy me love

Pastor Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan has been creating a stir in the United States with a book, Love Wins, that reportedly supports belief in universalism: the doctrine that God's love will save all.  I first heard of it when a friend in the UK phoned and asked whether I had heard that Pastor Mark Driscoll had become a universalist.  My friend had, of course, confused the Mars Hill Churches.  Mark Driscoll of Seattle coming out in favour of universalism really would have been a story!

(A good account of the controversy is in fact available via a link on the Seattle Mars Hill web-site:
A Chronology of Rob Bell )

My own confusion, however, is different to that of my friend.  I can't understand why anyone remotely familiar with Rob Bell would be surprised that he lent towards universalism.  If you build your ministry on the idea that God welcomes everyone always, you are hardly likely to believe that he will change his attitude when you die.

My confusion extends to the reaction in the media, on blog sites, and facebook.  Most Christians I know gave up believing in God punishing people after they die a long time ago.  I don't simply mean us Anglicans whose God is just such a cuddly teddy bear he couldn't possibly hurt anyone - or do anything else for that matter - but even most evangelicals who lay claim to the Bible.  I don't mean they have stopped believing in a God who judges in a theoretical sense, it's just that the belief has no practical implications for how they preach or minister.  It's a belief that like Mrs Rochester is embarrassingly kept hidden away in the theological attic and is not allowed out or admitted to.

My suspicion, and it's just a suspicion, is that part of the commotion surrounding Pastor Bell's book is that he has stated in plain terms what most preachers and ministers pretend and imply to their congregations and the outside world that they believe.  There is, in fact, a very simple test to find out whether we are universalists to all intents and purposes.  It is to ask ourselves when was the last time we told someone that the consequence of not turning to Christ is that they will not be saved.

Whatever we think of Rob Bell's book, Rob Bell challenges us to be honest and to sign up openly to the universalism we imply by our lives and teaching to be true or to start telling it as it is.

Lent

It's the first Sunday of Lent and I have just returned from our early morning Eucharist and am enjoying a coffee before our main morning service.  I quite like the liturgical change that Lent brings. For us at Christ Church no flowers in Church, more reflective hymns, and an emphasis on self-examination and abstinence.

I notice, however, that some churches rather than encouraging people to 'give up' things for Lent are encouraging people to 'take up' things for Lent.  This fits well with an age that doesn't think it should ever have to do without anything.  Not that the two are mutually exclusive, of course.  Our Lord did without food and took up prayer, but I don't think that's quite what those talking about by taking up something up for Lent mean.

Although the liturgical emphasis maybe on quiet and reflection, Lent here at Christ Church is actually quite a busy time of year.  For me lectures at Ming Hua, our theological college, a series of Lenten Bible Studies, the Church AGM and a raft of important meetings beginning tomorrow with our Church Council meeting: the last before our AGM.

The Lenten Bible Studies this year are going to be on the Eucharist. This is at the suggestion of a member of the congregation after the Lenten Bible Studies last year.  Our worship here is Eucharistic, but it is easy to assume that people understand why and what it is we are doing when we come to Communion.  It is also the first time for a while that I have led a series of talks on the subject and I am quite looking forward to it.

I have written about my own experience and how I approach the Eucharist on this blog (see under Eucharist) and this will be the approach I will be following in the talks.

On Wednesday, I intend to begin by talking about my own experience first as a non-Eucharistic evangelical, and then the discovery of its importance while studying the Bible at Bible College, through to celebrating regularly as a priest.  I then want to look at its background in the Passover Feast, particularly its violent and bloody background.  We often forget the significance of the language of the Eucharist as a sacrifice followed by drinking blood.  This is perhaps why some prefer to focus on the Eucharist as a celebration of the gifts of creation - so much nicer than thinking about sharing in a death!

Calvin believed that Christians should receive Communion regularly and that the Lord's Supper should be at the heart of the Church.  Many Calvinists subsequently ignored this aspect of his teaching.  I hope over Lent that we can think at Christ Church about why it really is so important that we keep the Eucharist at the centre of our worship.  I will keep you informed.

Have a good Lent!

Happy New Years

Christmas has been and gone so has New Year and Chinese New Year.  So many big occasions in such a short period!  Now things begin to get more reflective as we prepare to enter Lent.  These contrasts are, I think, important giving rhythm to the year.  Last night, I went to hear Bach's, St Matthew Passion conducted by Mazaaki Suzuki.  This was one of the opening performances for the 2011 Hong Kong Arts Festival.  I am not musically literate, but I can tell when I am in the presence of a composer of genius and a performer of greatness.  It is quite a long work to sit through on a Monday night especially after coming from a deeply frustrating School Council meeting.

Growing up, I had little interest in classical music.  My childhood and teenage years growing up in Liverpool were dominated by the Beatles and what was known then as the 'Mersey Beat'.  The first 'record' I remember buying was a single by Adam Faith!  When I became a Christian, I became part of a culture that was deeply suspicious of  'pop' music, and I stopped listening to anything but Christian attempts at it: some reasonable, some ..., well, let's just say, less good.  This was the era of the 'Come together' experience.  Anyone remember that?  We still sing 'Freely, freely you have received', which comes from it.

As I rejected the dualism implicit in this sort of approach, I started listening to non-Christian pop again and enjoyed it though was never a big enthusiast.  I much preferred the spoken word on BBC Radio 4, which now, thanks to the internet, I can still enjoy here in Hong Kong.  Classical music, however, remained very much outside my horizons.  I had heard Church Choirs sing Bach and organists play his organ music before and after Church services and, frankly, did not care for it very much.  This was both personal taste and ideology.  It was after all the time when the cry was for the Church to be relevant.  Whatever that meant.

My first serious encounter with classical music was at a concert I went to, which must have been around 1978.  It was at the Royal Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool, given by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.  A friend had invited me to go with him and I had no reason for not going.  The Hall itself I had been in before.  It was where my School Speech Day was held.  The first of the two secondary schools I went to being just down the road.  I seem to remember they were playing Elgar, although I don't remember which piece.  I do very clearly remember thinking, in a moment of enlightenment that has stayed with me, that this was altogether different to what passed for music in popular culture.  What was more the musicians had real talent  and ability that went way beyond thumping away on a guitar.  I didn't give up listening to popular music, but I did begin listening to classical music.  Not knowledgeably, I freely admit, but for pleasure, nevertheless.

Ironically, I now find myself having done something of a circle and thinking that my young Christian self may have had a point when he rejected much popular music as the work of the Devil.  Certainly the values it promotes seem hard to justify from anything like a Christian position no matter how much fun they may or may not be to dance to.

Whatever, I wish the Hong Kong Arts Festival every success as it brings great artists like Mazaaki Suzuki to Hong Kong and, hopefully, introduces more people to the genius of composers like Bach.  Maybe one or two may even stop to think about the words!