Sermon Ash Wednesday 18th February 2015

This Ash Wednesday, one of our Lay Readers, Simon Brindley preaches. 

Celebration of discipline

The book that as a Parish we have committed ourselves to learn from this Lent, is called “Celebration of Discipline,” by Richard Foster.  The title sounds very familiar but here is a small confession. I have had one on my bookshelves for the best part of 30 years but I am pretty sure I have not actually read it before!

I sincerely hope to remedy that this year…

Hmmm….I am not at all sure we always think of discipline as something to celebrate. Necessary perhaps, but something to throw your hands up in the air about, as you would if you had just scored a goal in the Premier League?  Something to smile broadly about as you would if you had just got good exam results or heard some good news from the hospital?  Something to have a party about as you would if it was a birthday or an anniversary? Hmmm….to celebrate discipline??

What do you think of when you hear the word discipline? Do you think of school and the rules about uniform and lots of homework and never talking back to teachers? Or do you think maybe even about being beaten in some way for doing wrong as used to happen a lot at one time, whether by teachers or even parents? Or do you think perhaps of the nun in her cell rising at 4.30 every morning, day after day to meditate and to pray for the world?

Or maybe in our modern multi-cultural society do you think of the Moslems at your place of work who go to the prayer room 5 times every day, align themselves with Mecca and bow to the ground to pray and who then fast throughout daylight hours every year during the entire season of Ramadan? At the very least they earn respect who do that…

Or do you think of the magistrate handing out fines and imprisonments to the shoplifters and the fighters and the drunks?

I don’t know about you but, for me, although I think I would probably celebrate if there was more discipline in society generally, I am really not so sure about myself. Discipline for me sounds a bit too much like punishment, or something painful.  It sounds like something to be endured, as if the pain of itself is the good thing. “You need more discipline!”…. You need to be sterner, harder, learn to love going without….

Or, as another example:

“Yes, we have decided he needs to be disciplined!”

“Aaghh what have I gone and done now??”

So when the church suggests I should be happy about discipline and celebrate, is that not just one of the reasons people no longer instinctively think about God in their lives? Is it too much associated with telling us what we have done wrong and tying us down, limiting our hard earned freedoms?

Is it all in fact just a difficult and rather negative idea? Or is there something more at work here?

It seems to me that both the prophet Isaiah and St Paul writing to the church at Corinth are suggesting, shouting at us even, that there is.

For the Jewish people, going without food, fasting, was one of their clear religious disciplines. The Christian West has largely lost this practice but for the Jews, as for modern Moslems in Ramadan, fasting was part of the fabric of their lives, reminding them every time of God. I imagine it was so much part of their lives that on one level they were very, very good at it. But here comes Isaiah, shouting at them at the top of his voice a message directly from God. Don’t give me your superficial fasting practices he says; Give me justice in your society, for the poor and hungry, for your workers and your neighbours.

Discipline yourself to work for these things and then see how my blessings will flow. Just imagine how your societies and communities will flourish if you discipline all your energy and creativity to work for justice and building each other up. It will be like a city that has been destroyed being rebuilt. Safety, security, peace, health.

Then perhaps, he might have concluded, your going without food, your fasting will be in its rightful place in your order of priorities.

Do these things yourselves…..and the vision is one where the discipline of working for justice actually creates the very societies where God’s blessings flow, the kind of societies you wanted all along. Not a negative vision of pain and hardship endured for its own sake because that is what narrow religious people do…

To us for this Lent a message?

And St Paul, many centuries later, living in the certainty of the resurrection of the Messiah and the gift of the Holy Spirit to the people of God. See how he begs the church in Corinth not to let their experience of God’s grace be wasted.

Look at the example I have shown you he seems to me to be saying.

Like me he says, you will have troubles, hardships and difficulties but you need to show how God brings you through these things by showing the discipline of patient endurance.

Like me you might even have to face beating or prison or at the very least being overworked or going without sleep or food. Should you respond with anger or by giving up? No! Respond like I have shown you with the disciplines of purity, of understanding, of patience, of kindness, of righteousness and of truth. Discipline yourselves to live by these things and not the way you might have lived had you not known God’s grace, perhaps with despair, anger, bitterness and revenge.

And the vision here is one of knowing true riches, the things that are most valuable. We may seem poor by worldly standards he says, but in sharing our experience of God’s grace we make many people rich in what really matters. We may seem to have nothing much by worldly standards, but our disciplined lives of patience and kindness, even in the face of suffering, show we really possess everything.

Live this way yourselves. This is the time to do it.

God gives you everything you need to discipline yourselves to live lives of purity, kindness and patience in all circumstances. And the vision here is one of knowing lives that are truly rich lived in the grace of God, again not a negative vision of pain and hardship endured for its own sake because this is what narrow religious people do.

To us, for this Lent, a message?

I don’t know about you but in these passages I can begin to hear, coming closer, the sounds of celebration.

I have been trying to think in the last couple of weeks about how all this might work out in practice in real lives. Why does God ask us to discipline ourselves to do what is right and are there examples of that kind of discipline leading to good things? Well, here are a few that I came across in very different scenarios just listening and thinking about what was going on around me. 

I read about Bradley Wiggins the cycling hero and how he came 4^th in the Tour de France, I think it was 2009, the highest Briton ever, then slumped to 20^th or so the following year after some difficult family circumstances. But when he joined a new team, lost weight and really disciplined himself in his training, his diet and his attention to every tiny detail, then came the first win ever of the Tour de France by a British rider.

I listened to my mother in law, a 13 year old German girl at the end of the Second World War living in the devastation of the destroyed cities of Hamburg then Frankfurt. The Allies were faced with a choice of letting the German nation suffer in poverty for decades as punishment for the previous 10 years. But instead the Allies showed the discipline of investing and rebuilding the German cities and infrastructure, rather than revenge, understanding that this was the way to longer-term peace and security for Europe.

I remembered a visit in the middle of the night from an old friend, not part of this community, in the middle of the devastation of his wife finding out that he had not honoured his wedding vows. And how we agreed then and over the next few days that the only possible way forward would be through the disciplines of faithfulness, of honesty, of wise choices and of the tough choices, for both of them, of forgiveness. There were no guarantees, but only by actually living by what really mattered could he even begin to hope to recover what he actually really wanted for his life.

Discipline not for the sake of narrow hardship but because it leads to where God wants us to go. I don’t know about you but I can begin to hear, coming closer, the sounds of celebration.

And I read in the Times this last week a piece by the journalist Danny Finkelstein recalling the moment on 9 March 1965, in a few days time 50 ago, when Martin Luther King in the town of Selma fell on his knees to pray in the middle of the road at the head of his crowd of protestors, facing the angry police and counter demonstrators and almost certain bloodshed and devastation, then stood up and turned to the crowd and announced that they would go back to their churches. Showing enormous discipline in doing what was right and despite the criticism of many on his own side who said “Look how weak he is!” the journalist said this was probably King’s finest moment and the political turning point as the politicians saw the moral force of his disciplined ideas and within days the key political changes had commenced.

To celebrate discipline?

I think now I will finally read some or all of this book but reminded of the far bigger vision that God has for all of us both for our communities and for ourselves. He wants us to do the right things not to endure pain and hardship for its own sake because that is what narrow religious people do….but because he longs to bless us.

Let us listen out this Lent and see if we can hear, beyond our hard work, our patient endurance….. the sounds of celebration.

Amen