Sermon 16th November 2014

From now until Advent, adults will ask, and discover answers to, questions on the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

Today, one of our Lay Readers, Trevor Tayleur, continues our Alpha study.

Why and how to tell others?

The reading is from Matthew 28: 16-20

What’s happening on Thursday 7 May 2015? The next general election. And in the run-up to the election the political parties are all going to be urging us to vote for them. Leaflets will pour through our letter boxes and canvassers will knock on our doors, urging us to vote for their party. When it comes to election time, political parties are not backwards in coming forward.  They have a message that they want people to listen to.

Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel is known as “The Great Commission”. While politicians are not usually reluctant to tell us what they think and what they believe, a lot of Christians today are reticent when it comes to telling people about their faith – indeed our faith. A lot of people think that faith – or lack of faith – is something personal. It’s being pushy and interfering to try to convert people.

And some examples of evangelism are off-putting. There are some tele-evangelists who seem more interested in money and power than in humility and servanthood. A person standing on a street corner shouting at passers-by through a loud speaker seems an improbable way of telling people about God’s love. Yet it’s difficult to get away from the fact that in the Bible Jesus does tell his followers to go and tell people the Good News. “Go and make disciples,” he urges us.

Apart from Jesus’ words to us, a second reason is our love for others. If we’re in a desert, parched with thirst, and we come across water, it would be very selfish to say, “Great, we’ve found water!” but not want to tell other thirsty people about it. We live in a world where people struggle to find meaning and purpose in their lives, where people battle with guilt, fear, anxiety and other issues. If we believe that we have something that can help them, why stay silent? We have good news that we can share.

Now that’s all very easy to say. Yes, there may well be a lot of spiritual hunger in the world, but people in 21^st Century London aren’t generally falling over themselves to hear the Christian message. When faced by indifference, it can be discouraging. I remember a few years ago at an office Christmas party a colleague staring at me in disbelief when I said I believed in the Resurrection – that Jesus did actually rise from the dead.

So where do we start when it comes to telling others? Now, as a parish we do a lot to bring Jesus to the heart of our community – the playgroups at both churches and the monthly lunches for the elderly that are starting shortly, just to mention a couple of our activities. We’re already doing a lot of good things, but there’s always more that we can do.

 As part of preparing this talk, I’ve been reading a book called “Fruitfulness on the Frontline”. It’s a book about how to live for God in our everyday settings and places (our “frontline”). It asks us, “Where is your ‘frontline’?  Where do you spend significant time through the week in contact with non-Christians?”

Whether we work at home caring for children, or whether we are students, or work in a factory, hospital, shop or office, or whether we are retired, God can use us in many different ways. We don't need a high position, a university degree, or lots of money to be able to make an impact for God. What if the people God wants us to love and serve are the people we meet day-to-day?

As some of you know, I’m a very keen rugby fan. “Earning the right to go wide” has become a very popular mantra in rugby. This means that a team can’t go straight out on to the field and play entertaining and exciting rugby. A team first of all has to do the donkey work, getting into good positions in the field and wearing down the defence before it can start doing the exciting stuff. More generally, it has come to mean that if you want to say something controversial or suggest something risky, you first of all need to earn the right to be heard.  And I believe that this applies to telling people about our faith.

Now there are examples of one-off encounters where it is right and proper to share your faith. If in the first minute of a rugby match a team gets the opportunity to play some exciting running rugby, it would be foolish to miss the opportunity simply because it hadn’t done the hard work first! You don’t always have to earn the right to go wide.  But as a general rule, you need to establish your credentials before people will take you seriously. So, wherever our frontlines are, how do we earn the right to go wide? Now, the book Fruitfulness on the Frontline has some suggestions – six in all starting with the letter “M”! Now, I’m not planning to go through all six – but I shall look at some of them.

The first is “Modelling godly character”. There’s a famous passage in Paul’s letter to the Galatians in which Paul describes the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. In tough times and easy ones, with difficult people and delightful people, how do we in our lives show the fruit of the Spirit? Which of the fruits are struggles for us? Do we pray that we will grow in the Christ-likeness of our responses?

Modelling godly character doesn’t simply mean being Mr Nice Guy. It will often lead to loving actions – and so it should. But Jesus himself could be very forceful. He forced the money-changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem as they were exploiting the poor; he called the Pharisees a brood of vipers and associated with the outcasts of society. Jesus wasn’t always “nice”, but he always showed the fruit of the Spirit, even under the greatest pressure and provocation. What are the pressure points on our frontlines? What are the situations, who are the people where we need God’s Spirit to help us? We won’t be able to cultivate the fruit of the Spirit in our lives simply through our own efforts and hard work.  We do need to ask God for help.

The second “M” is “Making good work”. Work is a gift God has given us so we can serve other people. But I want to be clear that when I use the word “work”, I’m not just talking about paid employment, but also include the tasks that we each do on a regular basis, which may include voluntary work, being part of a pensioner’s group, supporting the Carnegie Library, housework, childcare, helping at one of our parish playgroups, and a whole host of other things. Making good work includes both what we do and how we do it. It means doing good work that serves other people, doing good work that contributes to human flourishing. And when we work, we are also doing it for God. And when we work, we can mirror our working God who created beauty and order.

Of course, it’s not only Christians who can do good work, but it’s very much the case that sloppy work done with a poor attitude is unlikely to provide a good platform for talking about our faith.  By contrast, when we serve others well, when we do our bit, our words about Jesus have a better chance of being heard.

And now on to the third, “Ministering grace and love”. There are many ways to do this, not only in practical care and kindness for those who need it, but through the way we respond in difficult and indeed ordinary situations. How do we engage with the check-out person? How do we engage with the new parent at the school gate or the colleague at work who’s going through a hard time?

Grace and love are amongst the hallmarks of Christian discipleship. We tend to water it down to being kind and nice to as many people as possible, but the example we are to follow is Jesus. For him ministering grace and love meant his dying on the cross to offer all of us a way back to God.

And the fourth “M” is “Being a Mouthpiece for truth and justice”. There will be times when being a disciple means speaking up for things that are true, just and good. And it will also mean speaking up against things that are unfair, unhealthy or untruthful. It’s not easy; indeed it takes courage, wisdom and prayer, but it’s part of earning the right to go wide. Being a mouthpiece of truth and justice: it does sound rather overwhelming, perhaps conjuring up pictures of great figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. Or brave protestors standing up to the might of authoritarian regimes at great personal risk. It is indeed part of our calling to stand up for truth and justice, and to combat injustice and oppression in the world. But we should also remember that we can find falsehood and injustice in all kinds of places – in school corridors, as well as parliamentary ones, in living rooms as well as boardrooms.

Standing up for truth and justice may involve standing up for a neighbour in dispute with the Council, or blowing the whistle on incompetent work that endangers people’s safety and lives. It may involve challenging an unjust appraisal system at your work, or standing beside a child who is being bullied.

·      Modelling godly character

·      Making good work

·      Ministering grace and love

·      Being a Mouthpiece for truth and justice

These “Ms’ help to earn us the right to go wide, the right to be heard.

And then there’s a final “M”, which very much ties in with the Alpha theme, “Being a Messenger of the gospel”. Even if we do all the other “Ms”, people won’t necessarily know we’re Christians.  So we need to be open about our faith. We’re not going to be able to pressure or argue people into becoming Christians. I once heard a speaker, a highly intelligent man who was able to argue very forcefully. He said that when he went to university he believed he would be able to persuade his friends to become Christians through the logic of his arguments. All that happened, he said, was that they remained non-Christians with bad arguments!

But having said, we also need to have reasons for our faith. We may not be able to argue people into becoming Christians, but we also need to be able to show people that Christianity is not a blind leap of faith; it’s a reasonable step of faith. A lot of people believe faith is irrational, but there are good reasons to believe. So if someone is incredulous that you believe in the Resurrection, you can say, “Well, actually there’s quite a lot evidence that it did happen.” And if somebody says to you, “How can you believe when there’s so much suffering in the world,” you do have something to say. We’ve covered many of the big questions in our sermons. A couple of months again Adrian spoke on, “Did Jesus rise again?” which is available on the parish website, or you can ask us for a hard copy if you want to. We’ve also covered suffering in a number of sermons. The resources to answer these questions exist.

As well as being able to give reasons for our faith, a second thing that we can do is tell our own story. And when friends ask, you can tell your story. And really it’s hard to argue against your story. People can argue about the evidence for the Resurrection or the contradictions in the Bible or suffering and so on, but it’s a lot harder to argue with your story. Once, when Jesus healed a blind man, there were a lot of people who came and questioned the man. The Pharisees cross-examined him and tried to trap him. And he replied, “Look, I don’t know the answers to all your questions. But I can tell you this: once I was blind and now I can see.” There was no answer to that.

We may be hesitant about sharing our faith, but we don’t have to rush out and evangelise the whole world this week. Why not ask God to show us two or three people on our front line that we can pray for? And when the opportunity arises, let’s be ready to give reasons for our faith. And we shouldn’t need to do this on our own. We can ask others, family members or friends to pray for us as well.

Let’s rely on God; let’s have confidence in his timing; let’s build trust and relationships and care for people we meet on our frontlinesf; let’s be willing to share what Jesus has done in our lives and what he offers to everyone.

Let’s pray. Lord, our frontlines are many and varied. Between us there are many people we can reach. Help us on our frontlines to lead lives that are worthy of you, and to tell others about life and freedom in Christ.

Amen.                                           

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[i] 1 June 2014

Sermon 3rd November 2014

From now until Advent, adults will ask, and discover answers to, questions on the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker continues our Alpha study.

Why, and how, do I read the Bible?

The reading is from 2 Timothy 3: verses 10-17

So, “Why, and how, do I read the Bible, then?” The answer to today’s specific question, as adults return to the topics of the Alpha course, begins with a story. It’s the one about the archaeologist on a dig in the Negev Desert in Israel. One day she very excitingly uncovered a casket containing a mummy. After examining it she contacted the national museum. “I’ve just discovered a 3 000 year-old body of a man who died of a heart attack!” Not surprisingly, the museum’s response was that they wanted to conduct their own tests on this amazing find.

In due course, the museum got back to the archaeologist and told her. “You were exactly right, about the mummy’s age and cause of death. How on earth did you know?”

“Easy”, she replied. “There was a note in his hand saying ‘10,000 Shekels on Goliath to beat David.’”

Now of course that’s got nothing to do with why, or how, to read Bible, really – other than so as not to miss out on the meaning of good jokes, perhaps. But it does hopefully set the scene for the much longer story that I want to tell today. So get as comfortable as the furniture allows; and I’ll begin ... Actually I’m going to tell you about a story. And in order to do that, I’ll need you to have a rough map of our world in your head. If you can zoom out, and picture the continents, you’ll remember why they are continents: because they make sense. Each one is a distinct area of land: Africa; North America; South America. Except there’s one continent that doesn’t really make sense; at least it doesn’t occupy one distinct piece of land. The continent I mean is where we live. Why do we call Europe a continent, when on a map it’s really just one end of Asia?

Well, there is one thing that has marked off Europe from the rest of Asia for many centuries. What has happened is that Europe, unlike the rest of Asia, has been shaped by a story. It’s a story that has been told, and believed, across Europe for well over thousand years. It’s a story that gave the answers to the most fundamental questions of life: where are we from; where are we going; what’s wrong with the world; and what’s the solution?

Or to put it another way, it’s the story about a loving God who made a beautiful world, and who made people to live in it. It’s the story of how those people rebelled against the God of love; and how this God put into a practice a plan to end the rebellion and to bring whole world back to Himself. It’s the story of how He did just that: how He first chose a people to be His and to be, as it were, His bridgehead in this rebellious world. It’s the story of how from that people He brought a Saviour. It’s the story of how through his death and resurrection Jesus brought into being a new people; a people to know and to love God; a world-wide people to serve Him and share the good news of His love with others. And it’s the story of how one day the whole world will be reconciled to Him, as every living creature bows again before God, lost in wonder, love and praise.

That’s the story that has been told, and believed, in Europe. It’s the story which has done so much to affect our laws and culture, our society and government, and the very way that we think. And that very brief summary is the story of the Bible.

Of course within this big story that the Bible tells (the meta-narrative, as it’s known), we find all sorts of little stories. They are stories about very ordinary people – not heroes, but people like us – who got involved with God, and whose lives were turned upside down as a result. And we find things other than stories in the Bible too. We find books of law, poems, practical down to earth advice, prophecy, and letters too. If you missed it, see our website for a whole series on the types of Bible literature that we did in 2012. For now just know that each type has its place within the overarching story.

Now you might say, as increasing numbers of people in Europe do: ‘That’s all very well, but so what? Why should I believe this story rather than any of the many other stories told about our world? Why not believe, for example, the story that says it’s all just an accident, and there’s no plan or purpose in life or history? Why believe the story that’s told in the Bible?’

Well the simple answer is that this story doesn’t claim to be one story among many. It claims to be the story, the story above all others. And for a very simple reason: it is God’s story. In our reading from it we heard that the Bible is ‘God-breathed’. That’s the literal meaning of the word other versions translate ‘inspired’. What Paul was saying to Timothy is that all Scripture is God-breathed. In other words, the words of the Bible are the words of God. Of course human authors wrote it, over hundreds of years; but behind their minds was the mind of God Himself. That means we can’t look at this story as simply one among others. We have to look at it as the story, above all others – because it’s the only story that God Himself has told.

Now that thought leads to 3 conclusions about this story. If this story is the story, if it is God’s story, then we can say first of all that we can have confidence in it. We live in a world strangely lacking in confidence. 100 years ago, in the period before WW1, people were full of confidence. People believed in big things then, like Science; Progress (with a capital S and a capital P). Many people believed in the story of Progress in which Science would solve all our problems (and we could get rid of God entirely). But who believes in Science and Progress in that way now, after all that happened in the past century? On the other hand, the Bible says that God is the same: yesterday; today; and forever. We can have confidence in Him, and in the accurate answer to life’s critical questions that are told in His story.

And if this story is the story, God’s story then we can say, secondly, that this story can touch our lives in a way no other story can. It’s what we might call the Heineken effect: this story touches parts that other stories can’t reach. It can affect us very personally. Hear again what Paul told Tim the Bible can do, from The Message version: “every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another – showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way.”

The Bible can shape us in a way that no other book, no other story, can. It’s not just that we read the book; rather this book reads us. It’s like a mirror we hold up to ourselves. But it doesn’t just show us what we’re like; it shows us what we should, and can, be like. And that’s not very comfortable. Having our lives touched by this story is not a comfortable option: having rebellion exposed, and mistakes corrected, rarely is – but that is what the Bible can, and does, do.

And if this story is the story, God’s story then we can also say that we can become part of this story. That’s because God’s story is all about God getting involved with very ordinary people; not heroes but people like us. The Bible is full of them: Moses; David; Ruth; Mary; Luke, to name a few. These were people whose lives were turned upside down – because their story got intertwined with God’s. 

What was true for them was true for the writer of this letter; and for the person who received it. Paul and Timothy were people whose lives were taken by God and turned upside down by Him. For Paul it meant complete reversal. The man who’d persecuted the early Church was stopped short on the Damascus Road. He spent the rest of his life playing his part in the great drama of God’s unfolding story. And it wasn’t an easy role to play: he wrote here, “You’ve seen my troubles and sufferings, and all the grief I had to put up with”. And Timothy had his own part to play. He didn’t enter into the story dramatically like Paul did; he grew into it from childhood: “Why, you took in the sacred Scriptures with your mother’s milk”.

And as it was for them, so it can be for us. The Bible’s not a closed book. We don’t have to stay on the sidelines of this story. We can become part of God’s story. We can become part of the story the Bible tells. How? By letting the Bible become part of us; letting it show us the truth; expose our rebellion; correct our mistakes; and train us to live God’s way; by letting it show us the way of salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. If we want to get involved in God’s story, then we must let God’s story get involved in us. There is no alternative; but it’s not least why God has given us the Bible, so that it can do those things. As DL Moody once said, “The Bible isn’t given to increase our knowledge; it’s given to change lives”! And that means yours; and mine.

I’ve focused on why we should read the Bible, because obviously that’s the crux of it. It’s only once we’ve made an in-principle decision to read it (and let it read us) that we need to get to the how. So to repeat, the main reason to read the Bible is because it is God’s story. We can have confidence in it; and we can be sure it’ll change our lives – if we let it. The Bible will do that both positively and negatively – teach, and correct us – if we join the millions of others who have become part of God’s story through the centuries.

We live in an age where the resources that are available to us are instant, and limitless. A touch on a screen can access the Bible in 50+ translations and languages. What matters is that we use them – be they on paper, phones, tablets or computers. If you want to be part of this story, set aside time each day to read it – and programme yourself a reminder to do it! Start short, like 5 minutes, even, and increase it. Try a Bible-reading plan, whether you find it in a bookshop or on-line; or pick one book, maybe a Gospel. Ask God to speak to you through whatever it is that you are reading; and don’t be surprised if He does – both about what you may be expecting; and/or something that you’re not! Use other resources too, like a commentary (Tom Wright’s “For Everyone” series is particularly good), or a study guide; get Bible reading notes; join a small group to study the Bible with other people. In essence, do whatever you need in order to help you answer 2 key basic questions about each Bible passage. We always need to ask first, “What is this saying?”; and then, “What does it mean?” The third step is to ask God how it applies to you: at home, work, or however.

In one way this isn’t difficult, at all; in another it can be the most challenging part of any day, or life! When God teaches us what we need to learn, and corrects our faults, it really can turn everything upside down – but that will be in good ways! For centuries the Bible has been the main way that God has done that, spoken to ordinary people like us; and it still is so today. The challenge, to each of us, is to choose to put ourselves in the way of that day by day; to be part of God’s on-going story, by reading – and being read by – the Bible as His living Word. And so let’s pray for His help to choose to do just that, then, each day …