Minutes that Matter: March, 2018 Good Friday

Talk Five: It's All About You

"There is a green hill far away, outside a city wall,

where the dear Lord was crucified, who died to save us all.’

Today is Good Friday, the day when we remember Jesus’ death on the Cross.  Life, however, will go on much as normal.  Churches will not be packed today.  We don’t want to dwell on the battered, bruised, and bloody figure dying on the Cross.  If we celebrate Easter at all, we will save our celebration until Sunday. 

But the Cross can’t be passed over so quickly, much as we would like to.  Faced with his death Jesus said: ‘Now my soul is troubled.  And what should I say - ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.’  This was what it had all been about: his birth, his life, his teaching, his miracles.  The Cross wasn’t a means to an end.  It was the end.  Jesus continues, ‘Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.’ 

St Augustine wrote: ‘Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men; but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience.’

Jesus was crucified as the hymn says ‘outside the city’ and today we see God’s verdict on it.  ‘It is finished’, were Jesus’ last words on the Cross.  And with them, God also passed his judgement on the earthly city: its rulers and its inhabitants.  On you and me.  The Cross condemns our ‘contempt of God’: our idolatry and love of self; our worship of false gods; our pursuit of lives and lifestyles that are contrary to God’s word; our arrogance and pride.

For most people, our Lord's death today is that of a martyr who died as a consequence of the exemplary life he lived and for what he believed in.  Thankfully, though, God made everything alright in the end!  Thank God, we think, for Easter Sunday!  But why would we rejoice?  We who have God’s judgement pronounced on us.  We who are members of the earthly city destined for destruction?

But surely, we ask, Jesus ‘died to save us all’, didn’t he?  Surely this means that the Gospel is good news?  It can be!  It all depends on what we see when we look on the Cross.  If we see just another man dying for what he believed in, then it is anything but good news.  If, however, we see God’s Son dying, not only because of our sin, but also for our sin.  Then we see not a martyr, but our Saviour.  One who can save us from the very judgement that his death pronounces on us.

But there is more.  If the Gospel is to be good news to us.  We need to see something else as we look at the Crucified Figure dying on the Cross.  We need to see ourselves hanging there dying with him.  Dying to the sin that nailed him there.  Dying to our love of self.  Dying to the worship of our false gods.  Dying to lives lived without thought of God.  Dying to our arrogance and pride.  For it is only if we die with him that we shall live with him.  Suddenly, then, today becomes important after all: today, it’s all about you.

St Paul writes: ‘For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.’ (1 Corinthians 1:18)  For many, the Cross is just another death.  A horrible death.  The death of a good man.  It is even possible that it is the death of a good man who God raised from the dead.  But it is foolishness to believe it is anything more; anything to do with us.  The truth is that it is foolishness not to.  It has everything to do with us.

On the Cross, we see God’s judgement on us, but we also see his love for us.  We see the means by which we can be saved from the judgement that is coming to us.  Today, Good Friday, we are offered hope.

Easter Sunday in three days’ time can indeed be a time to celebrate - not only our Lord being raised from the dead, but also our being raised with him. 

But before that, today, we must first die.

Minutes that Matter - Good Friday (audio)

This is the link to my talk for Minutes that Matter on RTHK Radio 4 for today, Good Friday.  I  have posted the transcript separately!

Minutes that Matter - Good Friday

Minutes that Matter: March, 2018

This is the link to the audio of my fourth talk for Minutes that Matter on RTHK Radio 4:

Talk Four: Hostile Minds

This is the transcript:

Talk Four: Hostile Minds

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way ... '

This passage is taken, of course, from Charles Dickens' famous book: A Tale of Two Cities.  Dickens had in mind the cities of London and Paris in the late eighteenth century.  The New Testament also describes two cities and we are all citizens of one or the other of them.  One is the city of man in all his pride and arrogance, rebellion against God, and self-centredness; the other is the City of God, the home of all true believers.

For Christians, Dickens’ description, I think, applies very much to our own time also.  As society becomes increasingly secular and post-modern in its thinking, I believe that we are in a position now to see more clearly than we have at probably any time in my own ministry what God wants of us and what we should be doing as Christians in the world. 

Not only that, but when I think about the opportunities and resources Christians have today for living out and sharing our faith, I am overwhelmed by the 'abundance of riches' that has been offered to us.  For example, in the run-up to Christmas, my Church ran a campaign to encourage people to buy a Bible and read it.   I was struck by how the Bible and resources for understanding it are available now in a way that is almost embarrassing.  God has placed a great challenge before us, but he has provided for the task.  Direction, opportunity, and resources: it is, in that sense, the BEST of times.

In the society in which we live, however, there is increasing cause for Christians to be concerned.  Firstly, the developed world of which Hong Kong is a part, is getting increasingly hostile and antagonistic towards Christians and Biblical values.   This is the inevitable outcome of the collapse of Christendom in the West.  Even at the beginning of my ministry people still spoke of how the UK was a 'Christian' country; in America many harboured the idea that America was 'one nation under God'.  And here in Hong Kong, while we don't claim to ever have been a Christian city, the Church has been involved in the affairs of the City.  But this is all changing as society becomes more secular and diverse and embraces values and attitudes to which the Church historically has been opposed.

Secondly, Christianity at the moment is itself is facing something of an existential crisis.  There are many in the Church who sincerely want to follow the social and moral trends in wider society and, to a greater or lesser degree, wish to change Christianity in the process.  For those who think in this way, everything is up for grabs: from the doctrine of God to our understanding of ourselves and our identity as individuals.  At the moment, those who believe we should hold fast to the orthodox faith as expressed in the Bible and Creeds of the Church, on the one hand, and those who believe that our faith needs reinterpreting as a faith for today, on the other, are co-existing in a somewhat uneasy peace.  This is unlikely to last.  Opposition, division, and confusion: it is, in this sense, the WORST of times.

And yet curiously, in all this, rather than feeling either optimism or pessimism, I surprise myself by feeling something else: a sense of challenge and call.

It is going to get harder and harder, especially for orthodox Christians, to live out their faith lovingly and faithfully in a society which is hostile to Christian values and beliefs.

This is the challenge.

But in the midst of this challenge, I sense that God is calling us in the way he has called Christians at similar times in the past.  Calling us to be 'faithful unto death’ certainly, but calling us to rediscover who we are and what it means to be his Church living in the world.  As Christians we are to live in and look forward to God's time.

This is the call.

Whether these are the best or the worst of times, or both at the same time, Christians can be sure that the best time is yet to come.

Minutes that Matter: March 2018

Here is the transcript and the link to the third of my talks for RTHK Radio 4's Minutes that Matter programme on Fridays in March.

Talk Three: Clear Thinking

St Paul writes that the 'god of this world has blinded the MINDS of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 4:4).  Our minds matter.  How we think affects how we act and how we see the world around us. If we are to live the Christian life, we need to get our minds sorted out.  St Paul urges believers to be 'transformed by the renewing of their MINDS' (Romans 12:2).  In his letter to the Philippians, he writes that we should let the 'same MIND be in us that was in Christ Jesus' (Philippians 2:5).

This doesn't just refer to what we believe, although that's important.  Nor is it to suggest that church sermons should be more intellectual, although that wouldn't do us any harm either.  It means in the first instance getting our worldview right.  How we see the world and approach our daily lives needs to be re-orientated so that our lives are centred on God and his priorities and concerns rather than those of the society in which we live.  This will affect every aspect of our lives: our beliefs, our relationships, our values and attitudes, as well as our behaviour.

This is not to argue for a dry, cerebral style of Christianity.  It is, however, to argue that as Christians we need to concentrate and focus our thoughts and thinking.  If we don't, then we will simply find ourselves following the prevailing thinking in the world around us; adopting its values, attitudes, and concerns.  All of which come from its rebellion against God.

St Paul writes, in his most famous letter to the Romans, that as a consequence of the human refusal to honour God and give thanks to him for our existence, we became ‘futile’ in our thinking (Romans 1:21).  Instead of worshipping the one true God, we now worship gods of our own creation and replace the service of God with the pursuit of power, pleasure, and prosperity.

God’s reaction to this, says St Paul, is simply to let us get on with it.  If this is what we want, this is what we can have.  But let there be no misunderstanding: rather than this all being a sign of independent and original thinking, it only serves to show how debased our minds have become and how corrupt our behaviour.

Ironically, the world accuses Christians of being the ones who are brainwashed; of being unable to think for ourselves; of being irrational and gullible; of having blind faith despite the overwhelming evidence against it.  All this because we refuse to go along with the prevailing climate of opinion and all this from the most brainwashed generation in history.  A generation that is constantly having its mind made up for it and is constantly being told what to do, what to buy, and how to live through advertising, social media, and the many forms of thought control that are now a characteristic of life in the developed world.

Ours is an age in which dissent from society's values is met with intolerance and even persecution. Western society claims to value freedom; however try going against society's adopted norms when it comes to belief and behaviour and see what happens.  Try expressing orthodox Christian faith publicly and see what happens.  Biblical faith is up against it and those who hold it need to wake up and gather our thoughts.  We can either follow society's thinking, changing our faith to fit in, as is happening in many parts of the Church at the moment, or we can insist on having the mind of Christ.

Post-modernist thinking currently dominating our culture pours scorn on the idea of there being any authority outside of ourselves and rejects the idea of there being any external source of objective truth; truth is believed to be personal and relative.  Truth, in other words, is whatever is true to me.

Jesus, however, claimed himself to be the truth.  He said that his followers would know the truth and the truth would set them free; his Spirit, he promised, would lead them into all truth; and St Paul writes that God has shone in believers’ hearts to give the ‘light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’

Questions of truth are difficult. Christians believe they have their answer in Jesus Christ.


This is the link to the audio of the Talk:

Talk Thee: Clear Thinking

A Message for Lent

For our Lent Studies at Christ Church this year, I have been taking a different theme each week from what our Lord said in the letters to the seven Churches of Asia in the book of Revelation.  The four themes I have selected are:

1. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches

2. Be faithful unto death

3. I have this against you

4. I know your works

Last night, we were looking at the third theme which is to do with false teaching and the need to hold fast to the truth.

Warnings against false teaching abound in the New Testament, and they are a major theme in the letters to the seven Churches.  Interestingly, Ephesus, one of the seven Churches, emerges in the New Testament as a centre of false teaching. St Luke, for example, tells us that St Paul warned the leaders of the Ephesian Church of what would happen after he left them:

'I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.  Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them.' (Acts 20:29-30)

St Paul sees the attack on the Church as coming both from outside the Church and from within it.  It is the job of Church leaders to protect those whom God has entrusted to their care from false teaching.

So how does this apply to us?

In the Book of Revelation, and indeed the New Testament in general, the Devil appears as a major player in the attacks on God's people and as the One who deceives.  St Paul writes in 2 Corinthians that 'we are not ignorant of his designs' (2 Corinthians 4:11).

I think we have to admit that we have been very ignorant of his designs and that the Devil has been very successful in deceiving the Church - so much so that not only are we not now in a position to recognize false teaching, we are even unhappy with the concept itself.  As a result, we are largely defenceless against the attacks that are being made on us today as a Church and as Christians.

We are like people being attacked in a dark room: we know we are suffering injury, but we have no idea where the blows are coming from or when we are going to be struck.

The attack has been carefully planned and orchestrated:

Firstly, we have been encouraged in the Church, for many years now, to be open in our thinking.  We have been persuaded to see dogma as bigotry; certainty in matters of faith as narrow-mindedness; and insistence on the importance of doctrinal assent as intolerance of the worst kind.

The real seeker after truth is one who is prepared to doubt; who values the beliefs of those outside the Church who also seek meaning in life; who engages in open-ended dialogue with those of different faiths; and who does not insist on one interpretation of the truth.

Secondly, we have been urged to be relevant to the world in which we live.  Implied in this, of course, is that the way we have understood and expressed our faith in the past is not relevant any longer - if ever it was.

Everything has been up for reconsideration from the fundamental teaching of the faith, such as the Virgin Birth and the resurrection of our Lord, to the Creeds themselves.  The very need for doctrine has itself been questioned in the process.  Surely what matters more is what we experience as individuals and how we engage with the world around us?

Thirdly, having got us in the Church to the point where we are unwilling to be dogmatic about our faith and are unhappy with traditional formulations of it, and where what matters most to us is how we are perceived by the world around us, we are now being encouraged to move to the next stage in our departure from the truth.

What form this stage will take is only just beginning to take shape, but already there are some hints.  This week, I suggested three areas in particular:

1. Our understanding of God as expressed in the historic Creeds of the Church.

The Devil doesn't have to do much to persuade us to abandon these Creeds as most Christians have already been persuaded to think that they are either no longer relevant or are incomprehensible or both.  Having got rid of the Creeds, the way is open to convince Christians that they now need to change the way they think about God.

2. How we worship and talk of God.

Worship has already become more about what we experience and the effect it has on us than about giving honour and praise to God.  In some Churches, worship is as much about entertainment and giving people a good time as it is about anything else.  And, for the record, this applies equally to those Churches who insist on great liturgy because they love the language it uses as it does to those who like hi-tech and bands.

3. Our understanding of ourselves and what it means to be human.

Most of the arguments so far in this area have been about sex and who does what, with whom.  The freedom of the individual to make these decisions for themselves without fear of being questioned or judged is now just accepted and understood.  What we now face is a questioning of how humans for all their history have seen and understood themselves and, in particular, of what it means to be a man or a woman.

Having got to where we now are as Church, we simply lack either the ability or the resources to tackle these issues effectively.  What St Paul said would happen at Ephesus, and what was happening in some of the seven churches in Asia, is happening to us, that is, that the distortion of the truth is happening from within.

Given how we have been deceived into thinking that we should be open and accepting of any idea or opinion no matter how contrary it may be to what the Church has believed in the past, our Lord's words in Revelation come as a total shock.

He talks about how he hates (and yes, he does use the word 'hate') what some in the Church are doing and teaching.  He condemns those who tolerate teaching that is wrong.  He tells them that unless they repent and do something about it - and quickly - he will bring to an end their existence as Church.

And that, I believe, is our Lord's message to us this Lent.

Minutes that Matter: 2018

Below is the transcript of the second talk in the series I have recorded for Minutes that Matter on RTHK Radio 4.  They are being broadcast on Fridays in March.

This is the link to the audio of the talk!

Talk Two: Talk of the Devil

Talk Two: Talk of the Devil

In Lent, we think of the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, where, we are told, he was tempted, or tested, by the devil. 

Talk of the devil raises a subject that is not much discussed in Church or polite society. The reality is that many of us do not believe in the devil and those of us who do are frightened of what will be said about us if we admit to it.

Clergy especially also worry, understandably, about those who believe in the devil too much and who take an unhealthy interest in the subject. There are also those who like to make a big a drama out of their belief in the devil. Popular films about the devil and the supernatural do a lot of damage, though not necessarily in the way you might imagine. One of the unexpected damaging consequences is that it results in church leaders being less willing to talk about the devil. We don't want to be associated with this sort of thing. The truth is that it's just a whole lot easier not to talk about the devil at all.

The trouble is, however, for clergy particularly, avoiding talk of the devil is not always as easy as it might seem. One of the few things New Testament scholars agree on is that Jesus was himself an exorcist. That is, he freed people from demonic possession. 

The normal way we often deal with this is simply to read what the Bible says and then just not to comment on it. If pressed, however, many, if not most, will say that the devil is a vivid way of describing the power of evil in the world. It is the personification of evil for dramatic effect. And so while we don't believe literally in the devil nowadays, we can still can learn from the vivid portrayal of evil using this dramatic device.

Personally, I do believe in the devil. I don't want to spend a lot of time in talking about him. I actually think that to be quite dangerous. But I think it is even more dangerous to deny his existence.

The Bible describes both a spiritual and a physical dimension to the world we live in. God remains all-powerful; there is no suggestion in the Bible that the devil in any way rivals God. But that does not mean that the devil has no power at all. When, for example, the devil offers our Lord 'all the kingdoms of this world' if he will worship him, the Lord does not reply that they are not the devil’s to offer. In fact, the New Testament works on the assumption that the devil's power is real and to be taken seriously.

If there is one thing that Christians and non-Christians alike cling to, it is the idea of free-will. It is like a small child holding on to a teddy bear. It comforts us. We like to think we are in control of our lives and are able to make our own decisions, that we are free to choose what we do and do not believe.

I think God lets us think this if it makes us happy, but after a moment's thought, surely we can see that the idea of free will is fraught with difficulties? The choices we make are influenced by so many factors outside our control. Even the most basic, everyday choices we make, are influenced by external forces. As far as the New Testament is concerned we are slaves to sin and death. We are all addicts. It is only in Christ that we can find true freedom.

However, even coming to Christ is not something we can do on our own. Our minds, St Paul tells us, are blinded by the devil so that on our own we can't understand the Gospel. Christ can save us, but before that we need God to shine his light into our lives so we can see Christ and turn to him.

Of course, we prefer to believe that there is no devil and that we are free decide for ourselves whether we follow Christ or not. It plays to our pride and arrogance, but I think I prefer to trust my salvation to God rather than relying on myself and hoping that I am right in thinking there is no power of evil out there.

Evil is both personal and real. But the good news is that God is greater than evil and in Christ has defeated it.

Minutes that Matter: March 2018

I have the privilege of recording talks for broadcast on RTHK Radio 4 here in Hong Kong.  A series of talks I recorded recently for the Minutes that Matter programme are being broadcast on Fridays in March.

This is the transcript of the first with a link to the programme in the Radio 4 archives.

Talk One: Tested

We are in Lent and counting down to Easter.  Lent lasts 40 days based on our Lord's time in the wilderness.  St Mark tells us that after Jesus was baptized, the Spirit 'drove' him into the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil (Mark 1:12).  The three temptations are well-known: to turn stones to bread, to throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple, and to worship the devil to gain earthly power and glory.

We could say that our Lord was tempted to focus on material satisfaction, to show off, and to seek position and power.  Put like this, they are temptations that are common to us all.  For our Lord, however, they got at the heart of what sort of Messiah he would be.  If he had given into them, he would not have been thought a bad person necessarily, and may even in his time have been popular and successful.

For example, would our Lord have appeared to be bad, if he had made his priority feeding the hungry?  If he had demonstrated who he really was in an obvious and dramatic way?  If he had tried to gain influence politically to further his goals?

Our Lord, however, saw the temptations as coming from the devil.  We know this in advance, so when we read the account of them in the Gospels, we assume that he was tempted to do something that was clearly wrong.  The danger of our Lord's temptations, however, was not that he was tempted to do things that were obviously wrong - quite the reverse.  It could easily be argued that what he was being asked to do was right.  The danger in doing them lay in the fact that this was not God's way.

We all know that lying, cheating, and murder are wrong.  We may still be tempted to do such things, but we know we shouldn't.  The far greater temptation comes when we are asked to do something that is not necessarily wrong in itself, but which reflects an outlook and attitude that is wrong and not of God.

An alternative, and probably better translation of the word we translate as temptation, is 'test'.  In a test, the answer is often not obvious and certainly not one we can know in advance.  It requires us think and to work it out.  It is a test!

We can all expect to be tested.  The only way we can hope to pass is by revising hard beforehand.  Our Lord, in each of the test questions put to him, replied supporting his answer by quoting the Bible.  Knowing the Bible won't guarantee that we get the answer right when we are tested, but we won't get it right unless we do.

St Paul writes that naturally our minds are hostile to God.  We don't think the way God does or the way God wants us to.  We are conditioned to think the way the world around us thinks and has taught us to think.  And, of course, the world will naturally praise us, and even call us good, if we do what it wants.  This is what makes it so especially difficult to know what God's will is: doing what is wrong so often seems so right.   

If we are to pass the test, we need learn to think the way God wants us to.

St Paul writes in Romans 12:2:  'Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.'

For us to think the way we should, our minds need to be renewed.  This happens as we start to put God at the centre of our lives rather than ourselves.  It happens as we model our lives on Jesus Christ, who the Bible tells us, is the image of God.  It happens as God’s Spirit works in us.  For God does not leave us to get on with it by ourselves.  Jesus promised his disciples that while he was going to leave them physically he would return to them in the person of the Spirit.  The Spirit would dwell in them and lead them into all truth.

With the Spirit’s help, we can pass the test.

Here is the link to the audio of the talk:

Talk One: Tested

The Call to be Faithful

I have brought together some of my thoughts, talks, and sermons to create a Booklet on the occasion of the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation.

It can be read or downloaded here:

The Call to be Faithful

All Saints' Eve 2017

Today is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. We have been thinking about it at Christ Church over the past few months. Over the past year, I have given three sets of talks for the radio programme Minutes that Matter on RTHK Radio 4.

In them, I have tried to reflect on the significance of the Reformation as well as looking at where the Church is today.

I have brought all three of them together in a booklet, which I will post here today. The following is the Preface I have written to them.

Preface

This booklet contains the lightly edited transcripts of three sets of talks that I have delivered this year for ‘Minutes that Matter’ on RTHK Radio 4. The format of the programme explains the form and length of the talks! Originally, a piece of music accompanied each of the talks, but I have left the details of the music out of the transcripts. Those who would like to listen to the audio version of the talks together with the music that originally went with them can still do so on the RTHK website in the Radio 4 Programme Archive.

The talks were written with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in mind.

In the first set of talks for March, I address directly issues arising from the Reformation and the division it caused. I argue that while the Reformation emphasized important aspects of the Christian Gospel, it had ‘unintended consequences’ apart from the immediate divisions it caused. The Church is facing the full force of these consequences today.

In the second set for August, the subject is the Holy Trinity. In the talks, I discuss the importance and centrality of the Holy Trinity for the Christian faith and argue against attempts in the present day to see belief in the Holy Trinity as something peripheral, optional, or even to be abandoned altogether. I urge those who continue to believe in the Holy Trinity to lay aside their historical differences and unite in the face of attacks on the historic, orthodox faith of the Church.

Finally, in the third set of talks for November, I examine what it means for the Church to be ‘fruitful’ as Jesus commanded. I argue that the Church in the West, taken as a whole, has ceased to be ‘fruitful’, and has instead opened itself, both consciously and unconsciously, to the prevailing spirit in western society with fatal results. I express the hope that Churches outside the West will take up the challenge to be faithful to Christ and stand firm against the new paganism that, I believe, is threatening the Church.

The title for the combined sets of talks comes from the words of our Lord in Revelation:

‘Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.’ (Revelation 2:10)

Ross Royden

All Saints’ Eve, 2017

Trinity 1 (Corpus Christi)

John 6:51-58

Last Sunday was Trinity Sunday, the Festival of the Holy Trinity.  It was the last in a series of great festivals which began this church year back in November with Advent Sunday.  Except that just when we thought we had completed the cycle, some churches on Thursday just past, almost as a PS, had one more - Corpus Christi.  Corpus Christi is also known in the Anglican Church as a ‘Day of Thanksgiving for Holy Communion.  As this longer title suggests, Corpus Christi celebrates the service that is known in Churches by different names: the Mass, the Eucharist, Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, Breaking of Bread, or simply, the Liturgy.  Whatever title is used, the service itself has its origin in our Lord’s Last Supper with his disciples on the night he was betrayed and arrested.

As with other festivals that fall on a weekday, many churches celebrate Corpus Christi today on the Sunday following and we are no exception.  It is appropriate that we are using a Mass setting today that was specially composed for us by a member of our church family, Canon Martin White.  And we would send our thanks and greetings to Martin and his wife, Noreen, this morning.

This year, as many will know, we are remembering what is seen as the symbolic beginning of the European Reformation when, on October 31, 1517, a monk who taught in a university in Germany nailed his ‘Ninety-fve Theses’ to the door of a church.  (At least, this is how the story has come to be told.)  It was a routine way at the time of inviting academic debate.  There was, however, nothing routine about what followed as a consequence.  The Church in the West was to be divided into Roman Catholic and Protestant.  The division is with us still.  As someone who is chronically sick often learns how to live with their sickness so we in the church have learnt how to live with ours.

The division between Catholic and Protestant was over several different issues, but it became focused on the doctrine of ‘justification by faith’.  Ironically, there is little disagreement between Catholics and Protestants over this now.  But the Reformation didn’t just result in division between Catholic and Protestant, equally serious and bitter was the division between Protestant and Protestant.  And that division was over how to understand the service we are celebrating today, and unlike justification by faith that disagreement remains today.  Thankfully, although still terrible, it is normally without the bitterness that often characterized the difference and disagreement in the past.

In our closing hymn, we will pray for ‘our sad divisions soon to cease’.  Sadly, there is no sign at the moment that they will.  Given our divisions, it is easy to forget how much we are actually agreed upon.  We in the Churches are all agreed that Jesus did share a Meal with his disciples on the night before his crucifixion and we are all agreed that he told his disciples that they should continue to do it after he had left them.  We are also all agreed that the Church did continue to do so and that this service we celebrate and give thanks for today is a gift to us from God to be received gratefully and thankfully.

We are, however, a bit like someone who has been given a gift only to unwrap it and say, ‘What is it?’  Because while there is much that we all agree on, there is much that we do not, and at the heart of our disagreements is the question of how to understand the gift we have been given in this service.

The divisions at the time of the Reformation all centred on whether and in what way Jesus was present in the Eucharist.  For Roman Catholics and for Luther, the monk who started it all, Christ was truly present in the bread and wine: ‘body and blood, soul and divinity’.  So that to eat the bread and to drink the wine was really to eat Christ’s flesh and to drink his blood.

For other Protestants, however, this was to take it all too literally and, indeed, to miss the point.  What Jesus meant at the Last Supper when he said, ‘This is my body’ and ‘This is my blood’ is that the bread and wine represent his body and blood.  After all, as a matter of fact, they couldn’t be his body and blood at the time he said the words!

For those who took this position and who take it today, the Lord’s Supper is a ‘commemorative meal’; one in which we remember what our Lord did for us in the past and think on what that means for us in the present.  Of course, our Lord is with us when we do this, just as he is with us when we meet on other occasions to worship and to pray.  The bread and the wine, however, they believe, remain exactly what they are: bread and wine.

Some took a middle way not comfortable with what they saw as the literalness of Roman Catholics and not happy with the ‘divine absence’ of the hard-line Protestants.  Christ might not be physically present in the bread and wine, they argued, but in eating and drinking the bread and wine we are doing more than remembering Christ, we are feeding on him spiritually.

Well, we are not going to solve the divisions of 500 years ago this morning.  I imagine that both those in the congregation here at Christ Church and those of you listening on air or online have your own ideas and understanding.  What I would say, however, is that as Christians we should begin by focusing on what we are agreed on.

And again, we are agreed that our Lord did this and wants us to do this.  In other words, it is important and it matters.  It is hardly conceivable that our Lord would have made this the last thing he did with his disciples if it were not.

All of which brings us to this morning’s Gospel reading.  In it, Jesus says, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’

At this point, many, including many Biblical scholars, would cry, ‘Foul!’.  They see it as illegitimate to link our Lord’s institution of the Eucharist with his use of very literal sounding language here in St John’s Gospel.  They argue that the eating and drinking our Lord is talking about here is not the eating and drinking we do in the Eucharist, but the spiritual feeding on Christ that takes place when we believe in him and make him and his teachings the basis of our lives.

And with this understanding of Jesus’ words, I would agree.  At least, this is what I think it means in the first place.  After all, in our reading, Jesus is physically present with those he is speaking to.  How could it mean anything less?  Jesus is challenging the crowd to make faith in him so integral a part of their life that they could not live without him.  Believing in him, knowing him, is to be more important to them than food and drink.

Jesus is challenging them to see him not as an optional extra in their lives, but as essential to their very existence.  They are not to see him simply as some teacher who they can turn to as a guide when they need some help, but as the centre and basis of their lives without whom they cannot go on living.

This is a challenge to all who would follow Christ now as well as then.

But imagine you were hearing these words in John’s Gospel for the first time not on the lips of Jesus during his earthly ministry, but when the Gospel was read during your gathering with other Christians as a Church.  We know that these gatherings, like ours this morning, centred on the Lord’s Supper.  Would it have been possible to hear Jesus saying that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood without also relating his words to what you were about to do?  And wouldn’t St John, the writer of the Gospel, have realized and intended this?

We may disagree as Christians on precisely how Jesus is present in our service this morning, but what we can and should agree on is our need to feed on him.  Whatever our understanding of what happens in the Eucharist, we aren’t simply remembering Jesus this morning nor are we simply remembering all that he has done for us, we are reminding ourselves of our need for him and of our dependence on him for life itself.

But it is not enough for a hungry and thirsty person to be reminded that they need food and drink to live.  They know that well enough.  They need to be given food and drink and that, I believe, is what Jesus offers us in himself and through this service for which we are giving thanks.

There is, however, one more thing that it is all too easy to forget because it seems so glaringly obvious.  All Christians are agreed that, at the very least, the bread and wine represent Christ’s body and blood, that is, they speak of his death and sacrifice: when he gave his flesh for the life of the world and poured out his blood as a sacrifice for sin so that we could be ‘justified by faith’ and ‘have peace with God.’

The trouble is that we don’t always want reminding of this.  We are comfortable with the idea of Jesus as our teacher and guide.  We like that he is our friend and brother, a companion in times of trouble and when we are sad or lonely.  We are not so comfortable with the idea of Jesus as the Lamb of God who was sacrificed for us and because of us.

At the heart of our faith and worship is a bloody sacrifice.  Jesus didn’t just die on the Cross as an event we look back on in the past, he very deliberately put his death at the very heart of what we do in the present every time we meet to celebrate the Eucharist and receive Holy Communion.

Many Christians refer to the sacrifice of the Mass.  At Christ Church and in many churches, we describe the piece of furniture at the front of our place of worship as the altar.  Christians have different ways of understanding how the sacrifice of Christ is experienced by us in this service. But let there be no disagreement over this: without Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, without the shedding of his blood, there would be no forgiveness of our sins, no possibility of us feeding on him or of us being able to follow him.

Christ’s death on the Cross is what makes our life as Christians possible and our worship of God acceptable.

So, this morning, we approach the altar to eat of this sacrifice, to partake in it, knowing that as Christ himself said: ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you.’  But we also know that the ‘one who eats this bread will live forever.

We come then this morning to him who gave his life for us knowing that he will not turn us away.  We bring our worries, fears, problems, needs, and, above all, our guilt and sin confident that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin.

As we kneel before the altar, we are reminded that ‘God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.’  And in faith, we feed on him whose ‘flesh is true food’ and whose ‘blood is true drink’.

Trinity Sunday

Today is Trinity Sunday.  This is the Sunday in the Christian year most dreaded by preachers.  As one preacher, not known normally for being lacking in words, said to me this week, ‘What do you say?’  It has been said that if you speak for more than five minutes on the subject of the Trinity, you end up saying something heretical.  As a result, many preachers shy away from talking about the Holy Trinity at all.  While this is understandable if those who are given the responsibility of preaching do this, what hope is there for congregations?  So, conscious of the dangers, this morning’s sermon is about the Holy Trinity.

First, though, a word about the Christian year and the Church’s calendar.  It is, at first sight, a bit strange.  Everything seems to happen in the first six months: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Ascension, and Pentecost.  All these seasons and festivals centre on Christ and what God has done in and through him.  This makes the Festival of the Holy Trinity the odd-one out.  It focuses, or so it seems, not on an event, but on a doctrine.

It is perhaps no surprise then that the Festival has had something of a chequered history.  It was only officially adopted as a Festival of the Church relatively late in the 14th century, although it was celebrated by churches locally before this.  It was often celebrated on the Sunday before Advent, the Sunday we now know as the Feast of Christ the King when we celebrate the founding of Christ Church.

The Church of England, when it adopted its prayer book in the 16th century, numbered the Sundays in the second half of the Church’s year after Trinity Sunday.  This was because it had previously been the practice to do so in the Liturgy used in a part of England.  (This Liturgy is known as the Sarum Rite.)  In the 1970s and 1980s, the Church of England undertook a major revision its Prayer Book and Liturgy, and the ‘Sundays after Trinity’ were dropped in favour of ‘Sundays after Pentecost’.

In the latest revision of its services, known as Common Worship, Sundays after Trinity have returned in the Church of England, although other churches, including Anglican, continue to refer to seasons at this time of year as the Sundays of Pentecost or simply, Sundays in Ordinary Time.  The materials we use for our Sunday School, for example, describe Sundays this way.  Here at Christ Church, however, we keep the old traditional ‘Sundays after Trinity’, even though most churches, both globally and locally in Hong Kong, do not.

So, the question I want to ask this Trinity Sunday is this: is the dropping of Trinity as a season in the Church’s calendar of symbolic significance?  To put it in another, more direct way:  do we still as Christians believe in the Holy Trinity?

In answer to this question, I would suggest that not only have we abandoned the season of Trinity, we have also abandoned the doctrine of the Trinity, and if not in theory, then at least in practice.  Not only do we find the doctrine of the Holy Trinity hard to understand, we are also either not sure whether we believe in it anymore or we are sure and don’t believe in it.  Even if we do still believe in it, we either go easy on it or do not see it as central to our faith.  It may be an interesting theological formulation, but it is not something fundamental to our Christian life.

The reasons for all this are many, but one important reason for this abandonment of the Trinity as the central doctrine of our faith is that it goes against the grain of present day Christianity.  I realize that this is a big subject and that much more needs to be said than can be said this morning, but I would single out three characteristics of the sort of Christianity we want today:

1. We do not want difficult ideas

The first characteristic is best expressed negatively by what we don’t want!  Life is both complex and challenging.  Most of us feel under a great deal of pressure as we seek to make a living and raise our families.  There is much in the world around us that clamours for our time and attention.  When we come to Church, the last thing we need is more complications.

Preachers, then, are under tremendous pressure to keep it simple: to present the Christian faith in an engaging and even entertaining way.  Social media has only served to reinforce this demand.  But whatever the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is, it is not easy.  It doesn’t lend itself to heart-warming quotes on Facebook.

We don’t like doctrines at the best of times.  The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is difficult and complex.  A difficult doctrine is at a double disadvantage.

2. We want a faith that is relevant to us

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is first and foremost about God.  Yes, it does have much to say about the Church and about us as individuals, but first and foremost, it is about God and who He is in and of himself.  The focus of the Holy Trinity is on God.

But we are the ‘me’ generation.  You may have seen the posters: it is all about me.  I saw a fantastic birthday card the other day.  On the front it had: ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  Today is all about you.’  Then when you opened it up it had: ‘No change there then!’

We are not too concerned with who God is in and of himself.  If we are concerned with God at all – and it’s a big ‘if’ - it is about the relevance of God to me.

3. We want a human Christ

The Holy Trinity focuses on the relationship between Christ and the Father and the Spirit.  It asks questions about our Lord’s divinity and seeks to give an answer.  Our concern now though is with his humanity and how that affects his relationship with us.

This is, in part, a reaction against too great a stress on our Lord’s divinity in the past. The Church very early on came to the conclusion that our Lord was not only human, but also divine.  The doctrine of the Trinity was, amongst other things, an attempt to work out in what way he was divine.  Over the years, however, the emphasis often fell on his divinity rather than his humanity.  In Christian art, for example, he was often pictured with a gold halo (just in case you forgot and to avoid any misunderstanding).

However, to say that there has been a reaction against this is something of an understatement.  We don’t want someone who is, as St John’s Gospel puts it, ‘one with the Father’. We want someone who is ‘one with us’.  Not someone distant and mysterious, but someone close and relevant.  This is reflected in our worship and the hymns that we sing.  Whereas we used to sing:

‘Immortal, invisible, God only wise,

in light inaccessible hid from our eyes …’

We now prefer hymns and songs that stress how he is near and can be known and seen.  Hymns such as ‘Shine Jesus shine …’, for example!

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity then, like the season, has been quietly dropped or, at least, made something of an optional extra.  But, I would suggest, the Holy Trinity having been removed as an obstacle, we are - perhaps without even realizing it – witnesses to a reinterpretation of Christianity itself.  Christianity is being changed from a Trinitarian faith into a humanitarian philosophy.

This is to be seen in the way the other Festivals of the Church’s year are being subtly reinterpreted.  Taking the three characteristics of Christianity briefly outlined above, these give the criteria with which we now approach our faith and any aspect of it:

1. It must be easy to understand

2. It must be about us

3. It must focus on humanity and not divinity

So, very briefly, for example, Advent is about us getting ready for Christmas; Christmas is about the reaffirmation of the essential goodness of humanity; Easter is about what can be achieved by human self-giving; Ascension about humanity being affirmed and raised up; Pentecost about celebrating life.  You don’t even need God to celebrate the Festivals, though as we are the Church, we generally think it is perhaps a good idea to include him in the festivities.

Yes, I am parodying, but with this sort of emphasis on celebrating our humanity, there is little room at the party for the Holy Trinity.  We now have a very acceptable religion for today even if it is not quite clear where God fits in.

But we need to step back and see what has happened and, even more seriously, where it is all going:

First, we abandoned the Holy Trinity.  Secondly, we reinterpreted the central features of Christianity.  And now, a third stage in the reinvention of Christianity is underway.  Having reinterpreted Christianity as a religion focusing on humanity and human need, the way has now been opened for Christianity to take its place as one religion amongst many.  For some, it’s the best example, for others, even some in the Church, it is not even that.

Religion, in general, expresses humanity’s search for meaning and guidance as to how to live.  As Christians, we centre on Christ as our teacher, even as God’s messenger, but now that Christianity is also focused on humanity, our faith in Christ does not mean that we shouldn’t also acknowledge other teachers and messengers:  Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, and Krishna, for example.

And what if we do organize services of ‘inter-faith worship’, who but the intolerant and bigoted could possibly object to that?

There is more that could be said, and more that should be said, but then you may feel that I have already said far too much.  So, let me bring this sermon to a close by asking this question:

What is our purpose as a Church?  (And, I ask myself, what is my purpose as a clergyman?)

It is, I suggest, not to manage, to fund-raise, or to maintain.  It is not even to pastor and to counsel.  It is, keeping it simple, to make God known and to lead his worship.  But to do that we need to know who God is: who it is that we are worshipping and serving.  The Church, historically, despite all its many failures and failings, has believed that the God we worship has revealed himself in the life and person of Christ.  We have for the past six months been thinking of what he has done and celebrating it in our Festivals.

Today, however, on Trinity Sunday, we are celebrating what we have discovered in all this about who God is; who it is who has done all this for us.

The Holy Trinity tells us that God is 1 and 3, 3 and 1.  A simple enough formulation, but one with huge implications.  One that tells us that the baby whose birth we celebrated at Christmas was the one who brought creation itself to birth; that the one who died on the Cross at Easter was himself the Lord of life; that the one we proclaim in our message isn’t just a prophet, one messenger amongst others, but the eternally-begotten, divine Son of God in whom, uniquely, we see God himself: the God who reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And this God is worthy of our worship solely for who He is.  Not because of what he has done for us in the past, not because of his usefulness to us in the present, but simply because he is God and beside him there is no other.

This is Christianity as the Church has traditionally understood it.

The Catechism of the Roman Catholic in paragraph 234 has this:

‘The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life.  It is the mystery of God in himself.  It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them.  It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the "hierarchy of the truths of faith".  The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men "and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin".’

St Elizabeth of the Trinity prayed this prayer:

‘O my God, Trinity whom I adore, help me to become utterly forgetful of myself so that I may establish myself in you, as changeless and calm as though my soul were already in eternity.  Let nothing disturb my peace nor draw me forth f from you, O my unchanging God, but at every moment may I penetrate more deeply into the depths of your mystery.  Give peace to my soul; make it your heaven, your cherished dwelling-place and the place of your repose.  Let me never leave you there alone, but keep me there, wholly attentive, wholly alert in my faith, wholly adoring and fully given up to your creative action.’

The Anglican Bishop and hymn-writer, Bishop Ken, wrote what has become known as the Doxology:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,

praise him, all creatures here below,

praise him above, ye heavenly host,

praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Amen.

May we, this Trinity Sunday and throughout the season of Trinity, begin to rediscover the God we are called to worship and serve.

The God who reveals himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Easter 6

Acts 17:22-31

Our first reading this morning sees St Paul in Athens.  This was not where he had wanted to be and, indeed, he was only there because of circumstances.  St Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy had travelled from Asia Minor on what is commonly known as St Paul’s second missionary journey.  As a result of God’s leading, they had visited and established a Church in Philippi in Macedonia and then another in Thessalonica.

They had, however, encountered severe opposition.  In Thessalonica, this was mainly from the Jews, and they had had to leave Thessalonica because of it.  Unfortunately, moving did not solve the problem and they found that those Jews who had opposed them in Thessalonica had followed them to Beroea.  It was St Paul himself who was the focus of the opposition and in the end St Paul’s supporters put him on a boat and shipped him off to Athens leaving Silvanus and Timothy behind in Macedonia.  They were to join him later.

St Paul, then, was on his own in Athens and took the opportunity to look round.  He did not like what he saw.  Everywhere he went there were temples, shrines, and the worship of pagan gods.  This went against everything that St Paul believed both as a Jew and a Christian.  The Ten Commandments, for example, specifically forbade the worship of idols and here they were everywhere to be seen.

St Paul, however, didn’t simply disapprove or condemn, he engaged, arguing with anyone who would listen.  This included Greek philosophers.  His arguments proved interesting to those who heard them and he was invited to address the Areopagus, a formal gathering of the leading citizens of Athens.  It was so named because of the hill on which the gathering took place.  Over-shadowing it was the Parthenon, the Temple of the goddess Athena.

St Paul in his speech was courteous and avoided unnecessary rhetoric, but he was very much ‘on message’ and direct: ‘Athenians,’ he began, ‘I see how extremely religious you are in every way….’  They would not have disputed this.  God, however, he told them does not live in ‘shrines made by human hands’.

Now some of the philosophers present may have had some sympathy with this, but most would not.  The gods were everywhere in the first century, and it was axiomatic that they should have temples dedicated to their worship.

The gods of the first century were not, however, exclusive and just because you worshipped one that didn’t stop you from worshipping another.  I may have thought, for example, that my god was better than your god, but that didn’t mean your god didn’t exist.  The Athenians, in particular, revelled in the worship of many gods.  Something that St Paul makes use of in his argument.  It was to be one of the achievements of Christianity that it destroyed these gods and ended their worship. 

Christianity asserted what Jews had been asserting for years:

‘You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the LORD your God am a jealous God …’ (Exodus 20:4-5)

There are still different religions today, but the pagan gods of St Paul’s day are just a historical memory, so much so that we find it hard to imagine what it must have been like in St Paul’s day.

So what is the situation today?

1. Today many people in our world still continue find themselves born into a religion.  So, if you live in one part of the world, you will be born a Muslim.  In another, a Hindu, or a Buddhist.  In some parts still, a Christian.  With the movement of people and travel, your religion may be determined by your family rather than the country you are in.  But it is birth still that determines it.

2. It is, however, also true today that many people are born into NO-religion.  The process of secularization in the West has resulted in the privatization of religion so that religion has become about what consenting adults do in private.  Religion has no or little place in the public arena.  Increasingly, it is not even done in private.  With the result that in the West most people are born and brought up believing that either there is no god or no god worth bothering with.

There may not be an outright denial of religious belief, but religion is not the key to existence.  It doesn’t make much difference to what people believe, to how they live their lives, and the decisions they make. 

If you think this is extreme, try asking yourself when your faith in God was the major factor in a decision or choice you made for you or your family.

This is very different to how it was in the past.  The secularist in the West is proud to have thrown off their medieval past when people were born Christians in the way they are still born into other religions in parts of our world today.

But note this: the modern liberal in westernized societies is in much the same position as the medievalist.  They have not made a choice about religion, birth has made their choice for them.  They have inherited a non-faith which they have grown up believing to be right in a way no different to the Christian medievalist or, for example, Muslims in the Middle East today.

Now, obviously, some do think about the way they have been brought up and either affirm or reject that upbringing.  Others, especially those born into No-faith, often seek a faith becoming dissatisfied with not having one and having been denied one by birth.  But many do not.  Like the citizens of Athens their non-faith is no more than a superstition, something they just believe without examining it or asking questions.

One of the things that really annoys me is the way many in the west and in westernized societies criticize those of us who are religious.  One of their major criticisms is that we indoctrinate our children.  They hate faith schools arguing that we teach intolerance and prejudice because for them simply to be religious is to be superstitious, intolerant, and prejudiced.

What they do not see, for they cannot see, is that they are doing exactly what they accuse us of.  They are bringing their children up not to have faith and to be intolerant of anyone who does have faith or, at least, of anyone who allows it to make a difference to how they live.  They have a superstitious fear of religion which they, in turn, pass on to their children.

Many schools have become places where faith is relativized, put in its place, if not rejected altogether.  Instead, the values of materialism are celebrated.  And you only have to go on social media to see the success they are having.  Aphorisms such as ‘you only have one life’, ‘when you are dead, you’re dead’, ‘life is not a dress rehearsal’ are taken as stating the obvious.  Videos telling us to ‘pursue our dreams’, that we can achieve ‘whatever we set our hearts on’ are prolific.  Happiness is assumed to be found in career, family, and friends.

In other words, the philosophers of our day are pursuing a ‘materialist’ philosophy.  A philosophy that just assumes that life is what happens here and now in the here and now: that success is to be evaluated by the job we do or the cars we drive or by the size of our bank balance or the number of brand labels we wear.

So what is to be done?

St Paul, we are told, argued in the ‘market-place’.  He got out there.  He debated with the philosophers of his day, the Stoics and the Epicureans.  At the Areopagus, he found a way to proclaim the truth in a way they would understand.  So superstitious were the Athenians that in case they missed a god, they built an altar to the god they didn’t know about.  It was an altar to the ‘Unknown god’.  St Paul told them that the god they worshipped as unknown, he proclaimed to them.  Despite all their religion, philosophy, and learning the true God remained unknown to them and it is he who is revealed in Jesus Christ.

All this presents a challenge to us who have chosen to believe in God through Christ.  We now live in a society which is as pagan in its way as was Athens in its.  The true God remains unknown.  So what are we to do and how are we to rise to this challenge?  Sadly, we can only touch on this this morning.

In the first place, we have a duty to our children to pass on our faith and values.

This is not as easy as it seems, and, I have to say, it is not enough simply to call some schools church schools and assume this is happening if all those schools do is mimic what goes on in secular schools.

Do not misunderstand me, it is great that we have schools that have a Church connection, that encourage the worship of God, and tell Bible stories, but it is not enough if they also promote the same material values and follow the same curriculum that transmits them as do secular schools.  We need faith schools not simply church schools, that is, schools that are not only connected to the Church and managed by it, but schools that actively promote the Christian faith and Christian values not only in separate religious lessons, but throughout the curriculum.

This is a view I have held for some time.  In July, 1989 I wrote a letter to the Christian magazine, Third Way, in response to the news that Christians were setting up a Christian faith school in an English village. 

This is the link to the letter, which, I discover, can still be read online:

Letter to Third Way - July, 1989

There is much more that can and should be said about this, but let it be enough today to say simply that the upbringing of our children is too important a task to be left to today’s pagans.

Finally, for today, we too must get out into the market-place and like St Paul we must argue and debate.  It is wonderful that we have a renewed place of worship here at Christ Church.  A place that I hope people will want to come to and where they will be welcomed and where they will feel at home.

But that is not enough.  We cannot wait for people to come to us.  Like St Paul, we must go to them.  St Paul, when he went, proclaimed to them the God they worshipped as unknown.  Today we proclaim the God they refuse to worship, but who still remains unknown.

There is, however, a sting in this tale.  Our society may reject the Unknown God; it may have turned its back on our faith and values; it may think that that life is not a dress rehearsal and that when you are dead, you are dead; it is, however, in for a big shock.  St Paul closes his presentation to the Areopagus with these words:

‘While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’ (Acts 17:30-31)

The message we proclaim is not a polite invitation.  It is not something to be accepted or rejected as people see fit or as suits them.  It is a divine command.  And how each person responds to this divine command will one day have consequences.  For God exists whether we believe in him or not, or follow him or not, and one day we will be judged on the basis of whether we have believed in or followed him or not.

So let us make a renewed commitment as we return to this renewed place of worship to proclaim the God we worship to those for whom he is as yet unknown and may this be a place where he is not only known and worshipped, but followed and obeyed.

Easter 4

1 Peter 2:19-25

If you were to do a top ten of the most popular Psalms, I am pretty sure that at number one would be the 23rd Psalm: ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’  This Psalm has been the inspiration for many hymn-writers, we have sung a version of it in our service today.  Perhaps more famous is the version that has as its first line: ‘The Lord’s my shepherd…’!  Like the Psalm itself, it is a hymn that is popular at many different services.  It is, for example, sung or said at both weddings and funerals.

The image of God as a shepherd is a popular one in the Old Testament, and it is one that is taken up in the New Testament by our Lord himself including in, but by no means limited to, our Gospel reading this morning.  Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd.  This is quite a daring move for as I have said in the Old Testament it is God who is the shepherd of his people.  Jesus is claiming now to be fulfilling God’s role on God’s behalf.

This idea of our Lord as a shepherd is behind our Lord’s understanding of his own mission.  He told people who were critical of his friendship with sinners that he had come to ‘seek and to save’ those who were lost.  In one of his parables, he implicitly compares himself to a shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine sheep who are OK and goes off to search for the one sheep who has gone astray.

The image of the shepherd is taken up by St Peter in our second reading.  He writes to the recipients of his letter: ‘For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls’.

St Peter is writing, you may remember, to believers spread across several Roman provinces.  He describes them as ‘exiles in the dispersion’.  In chapter 2:11, he describes them as ‘aliens and exiles.’

Anyone who knew their Old Testament Scriptures would have immediately got the image of dispersion and exile.  In 8th century BC Assyria had conquered the Northern Kingdom belonging to ten tribes of Israel and had carried most of them off into exile.  This left just 2 tribes, those of Judah and Benjamin, in the south centred on Jerusalem. 

In 597 BC, these two were to suffer a similar fate, this time at the hands of Babylon who destroyed the Holy City and carried the inhabitants of the southern kingdom off to exile in Babylon.  Here they lived as ‘aliens and exiles’ remembering and longing for their home in the Promised Land.  Psalm 137 captures their sense of loneliness and longing for home: ‘By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion.’

Some of the exiles returned having been given permission to do so by the Persian ruler, Cyrus.  But many stayed on and settled and made their homes outside of the Land of Israel.  Those so living away from Israel were known as the diaspora (or dispersion).

It shouldn’t be thought that those living in foreign lands were any less Jews or any less committed to their faith.  Quite the reverse, in fact.  What is quite incredible is the way they managed, over many centuries, to preserve both their faith and identity.  Generally speaking, they avoided being assimilated into the culture where they were living. 

Under the Romans, they were given special privileges that allowed them to go on practicing their religion even when it went against Roman Law.  They remained intensely loyal to Israel and to Jerusalem even paying an additional tax to the Temple on top of the taxes they paid to the authorities.  This was completely voluntary.

So, when St Peter writes to those who are in the dispersion, he takes up this idea.  Probably, in the first place, those he writes to were Christian Jews living outside of Israel.  But he extends this idea.  Those he writes to are ‘aliens and exiles’ not only in the historic sense, but in a new sense. 

Now that they have become Christians, they have been born again to a living hope: an inheritance that is ‘imperishable, undefiled, and unfading’.  This inheritance he tells them is kept in heaven for them.

They are aliens living as did the Jews of the diaspora in a foreign land.  They are exiles from their true home, but that home is not now an earthly city, but one that is to come.  In Revelation, St John describes that city as the New Jerusalem.  St Paul writes to the Philippians: ‘But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.’ (Philippians 3:20)

As Christians, we belong to the heavenly city.  We are exiles and living as aliens here in this earthly city. We are refugees if you will.  The New Testament draws a number of consequences out of this:

1. Our values and beliefs should be those of the heavenly city.

In the same way as the Jews of the dispersion looked to Zion and the Law for guidance, even though they were living in a foreign land, so too we Christians must seek guidance from the heavenly city to which even now we belong.  Our values, attitudes, and priorities are to be those of the heavenly city.  People should be able to tell where we belong to by the way we live and behave.  It is always difficult for those who have been exiled and find themselves living in a foreign land.  No matter how hard they try, they inevitably find themselves adopting the culture of the place where they live.  Sometimes this is harmless, but as we have seen all too graphically in recent years, there can be a clash of cultures and of values. 

One of the greatest dangers facing the Church as the moment is that of assimilation.  We have always been tempted as Christians to adopt the values and attitudes of the kingdom of this world rather than the values of the attitudes of the kingdom of God.  Often, we have done so.  As Anglicans, we ought to be aware of this as much as anyone.

Nevertheless, despite the temptation and pressure to conform and our failure to resist it, we have managed at least to preserve a distinctive theology and set of beliefs so that even when we have gone wrong in practice, there has still been a body of beliefs to challenge us and call us back to what should be our true identity.

There will always be arguments over what we should or should not believe as Christians, and Christians have and will disagree over this.  What I find a bit worrying, however, to put it mildly, is how at the moment Christians seem willing to compromise and even abandon what have in the past been beliefs that have been regarded as central to the faith.

If we are to survive our exiles as aliens in a foreign land not only are we to live the lives of the kingdom of God, we must know what we believe and value it.

2. As citizens of the heavenly city and members of the kingdom of God, we realize that God’s Kingdom is not going to come on earth by our own efforts. 

Or at least we should realize it.

The New Testament teaches that God’s kingdom is not going to be established by us, but by God.  But all this raises a question that has occupied the minds of some of the greatest thinkers of the Christian Church.  What is the relationship between the earthly and heavenly city?  And given that we are members of the heavenly city, what should be our attitude, as ‘aliens and exiles’, towards the earthly city in which we live?

The answer the New Testament gives is in some ways quite surprising.  In our own day, we are seeing groups who have a different culture to the culture of the place in which they live becoming radicalized and seeking to bring down the society in which they live, replacing it with one based on their own values and beliefs.

The New Testament instead urges Christian ‘to honour the Emperor’, to be submissive to those in authority, to pay their taxes, to live, as much as lies within their power, peaceably with those amongst whom they live.  St Peter tells slaves who are Christians that they should accept the authority of their masters ‘with all deference’.  In case they think they can be selective in this, he continues: ‘not only those who are kind and gentle, but also those who are harsh’. (1Peter 2:18)

Nowadays, St Peter and other New Testament writers, come in for much criticism for these words and others like them.  How could they support such a cruel and oppressive institution like slavery?  Why didn’t they do more to condemn and to change it?

This as much as anything, I think, shows the difference in perspective between them and us.  They did not see as a priority the transformation of a society to which they did not belong.  This is not to say that when they could make a difference they didn’t take the opportunity to do so.  They did.  It was just that their priorities were different.  They expected suffering in this world as part of God’s plan to prepare them for the next.  St Peter actually tells his readers when speaking of the suffering they face: ‘For to this you have been called …’

What is more, and this brings me onto my third and final point:

3. The role of Christians in the earthly city is to live as citizens of the city that is to come and to find those who belong to it.

I used to live in Bedford in the UK where my brother is now a Vicar – amongst other things – Bedford is very ethnically mixed city.  It has several different ethnic communities:  Italian, Polish, Pakistani to name but 3.  What is striking is how these communities have managed to keep their own identities while living in what is otherwise a typical English town.  Their grandparents may have been born in Italy, etc. but the vast majority were born in Bedford.  They still, however, regard themselves as primarily Italian, Polish, Pakistani, or whatever.  This is graphically illustrated when England plays Italy or Poland at football or Pakistan at cricket!

They have, for example, their own shops, community organizations, and travel agents.  They live in Bedford and partake in its life and vote in its elections, but their culture and lifestyle are that of Italy, Poland, or Pakistan.  They have kept their identity.

This is the image that the New Testament uses of the Church.  Yes, we are living in this world, but this world is ‘not our home’.  We follow the laws of the kingdom of God and maintain its values and attitudes even though it is a temptation and pressure to do otherwise.  We too must keep our identity or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we should discover it.

Now, as an individual, it is very hard to do this.  As an individual, the pressure will always to be to fit in.  The reason why the different ethnic communities I have spoken of have been able to keep their identity is precisely because they are a community with community networks that support each other and enable them to preserve their shared culture and values.

This brings us at last to our first reading today.  If we are to maintain our identity as citizens of heaven.  If we are to hold out against the pressure to conform to the values, attitudes and priorities of society around us, we too need our support networks, we need to belong to a community of fellow citizens.  This community God has given us in the Church.  We are told that the first believers devoted themselves: ‘to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers’.  Luke tells us that all who believed were together and had all things in common.

The role of the Church is to offer support and to foster our identity as Christians.  We cannot live as ‘aliens and exile’ on our own.  We need each other.  The Church is not an optional extra.

Finally, returning to the image of the Shepherd, St Peter writes: ‘For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls’.  We have returned and for that we thank God and all those who were used by him to bring us back.  Many, however, remain lost and God wants to use us to find them and bring them back to the city to which they belong.

In our reading from Acts, Luke writes that the ‘Lord added daily to their number those who were being saved’.  Our beliefs and values, our behavior and lifestyle, should draw people to us.  Some sheep, however, are so lost that they need shepherds to go out in search of them.  While we must be ready to welcome all who come to us seeking their true home, we must also go in search of those who are so lost that not only do they not know their way home, they don’t yet realize they have a home to go to.

In conclusion, I think I can do no better than quote the writer of the letter to the Hebrews who puts it this way:

‘For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.’ (Hebrews 13:14)