Sermon 1st March 2015

Today our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches. The reading is from Psalm 42.

When he was little my now hulkingly-large son had a clear most-favourite film. It’s a miracle that the video tape (yes, it was that long ago!) didn’t break. I can’t count the number of times that we were pinned to the sofa, denied permission to move so much as a muscle (apart from to push the rewind button, to replay the crucial parts). That all changed dramatically as the final credits started to roll, though. Caleb would leap from the sofa and fly out the room. His sister and I soon learned that we had to move fast too, to clear the path to the sofa. We’d hear his slippered feet approaching at top speed, perfectly timed for the replay of the pivotal moment. “Willy’s freeeee, Daddy!” he’d cry – as he took off at side of the sofa. Just as Willy the orca cleared the marina seawall that separated him from the open sea, so Caleb would clear the end of the sofa, eyes fixed on the screen. He did it with ever-greater ease as he grew, but the look of pure joy on his face was only ever absent the once. That was when he realised mid-air that he was going to clear the other end of the sofa too; but that’s a different story!

I knew that starting with that (true!) tale would be a sure-fire winner, because we all feel the same way! Freedom is so central to our society and way of life that we’ll fight to the death for it. We have to be free; free to choose: where we go; or don’t; when we do; who with; to do what; to say what; to whom; and on and on the list goes; and nobody is ever going to tell, or make, us any different: are they! Freedom is what matters; at all costs. So I’d have to be very brave to quote the words of the Collect for Peace from Daily Prayer, then (or the part of it that says of God, “whose service is perfect freedom”).

That prayer may date all the back to 5^th Century, but even in those days it was a deeply radical, societal-challenging thought. At its heart – then and now – is the idea that “To be subject to God as the King and to serve him as the Lord is our truest nobility. It is what we have been designed, created for by the Holy Trinity, for God is enjoyed and glorified by humanity when He is gratefully and humbly served by us”, as someone once very eloquently expressed it. i.e. we are at our most free when we choose to give ourselves totally to God. It is a choice; and it’s 1 that we are each invited to make freely; because that’s what God is like. Yes, it does sound, and look, counter-intuitive; until we grasp that what we’re actually doing is exchanging slavery to self for the freedom to be the person who we have always been made to be.

Now this Lent series is based on having made such choice. Without having done that, none of this will make too much sense, because it is about working out how to live for God first and foremost: day in and day out. It’s important, then, to stress what’s also said in the introduction to this year’s Lent book: this Celebration of Discipline really is for everyone. As I said about the series that’s just ended, there isn’t a great division, in this, or any, church. It’s not that there’s some point at or beyond which certain people reach some new stage of life or faith. All of us can only ever start from wherever we are now – however long, or short, we may have been at it. So here’s an invitation to do just that: to start from where you are now; and move on.

Richard Foster is quite clear, that this is about moving on with God; but at the start of his book he commends it to people who wouldn’t claim to be anywhere with God! ‘All’ we need, he says, is to want to engage with life at levels that reach beneath the surface of it, beyond the everyday. He believes – as I do – that if we do that then it won’t be long before we encounter the God who longs for us to get to know Him as the One who made us, and loves us. Above all, this God wants us to be free to choose to serve Him; because that is best, most free, and fulfilling, choice that we will ever make.

Of course it will help to engage with this process with God in mind, then. As a more modern translation expresses the start of Psalm 42, “I want to drink God, deep draughts of God. I’m thirsty for God-alive.” And, if that is what you are, or want, then you could do far worse than to commit to keep on reading this book way beyond Lent. Yes, it offers us good, dare I say disciplined, ways to prepare for Easter; both on Sundays and through the weeks. But of course that can only be scratching at the surface of what’s here. And life is so much bigger, longer, and wider than Lent. So the aim is to give a taste of the riches that await those who are prepared to work on it; but, as in all things, that will be for you to choose.

Having said that, in one way the choices are all easily made. In this 2008 version of the book – which has been reprinted countless times since it first came out in 1978 – there really is everything that’s needed. Each of the 13 chapters comes with a week’s worth of Bible readings (so there’s 3 months for starters!) In addition, there are books recommended for further reading; and I know from those of them that are on my shelves that there are decades of thought-food there! And, if that’s not enough for you, each chapter has 10 good questions about the ground that’s just been covered too. So it’s ‘only’ a matter of us using what we are being offered – and inviting God to take and make the most of that, and us.

I will come back to that thought later, after encouraging you to give it a go. If you’re not yet convinced about trying this, though, consider just reading the very helpful Ash Wednesday sermon on our website. In that Simon Brindley concluded that he has recently been reminded of the far bigger vision that God has for all of us, both for our communities and for ourselves. He (God) wants us to do the right things not to endure pain and hardship for its own sake ... but because He longs to bless us. It’s for those reasons that discipline is something that is to be celebrated; because it puts us in all the right Godly places. And that, in turn, picks up a key theme from this book’s first chapter – which is entitled, ‘The Spiritual Disciplines: Door to Liberation’, for reasons that I hope you’re now getting.

Freedom is obviously an important theme for Foster as well – and quite rightly so; but obviously it’s the Godly sort of freedom that he means, and that we are best off seeking. So a large part of this first chapter is spent on explaining what that does – and doesn’t – mean; and on what it does – and doesn’t – look like in practice. In fact Foster lists no less than 7 pit-falls that are to be consciously avoided if this process is to lead us into that Godly freedom. He also uses a wide range of images to help us to understand what is, and isn’t, going on in this process. Some of those are quite sharp, as they need to be; including the one likening this to walking a narrow path along the top of a ridge. To wander off this path, in either direction is to risk taking quite some tumble; so care is needed here.

Foster suggests – and I think he’s quite right – that the 2 dangers are these. Either we can think that, if we only try hard enough, then we’ll sort everything out ourselves. If we define the problems (call it sin, if you prefer) that we bump into time and again; and then really set our mind never to do it again, we will eventually win those battles. Alternatively, we can accept that actually there’s nothing that we can do about it. We were born the way that we are, so that’s it; how we were brought up, what we’ve been taught or have experienced, has only reinforced all that in us; meaningful change is beyond us, and that’s that, so no point even trying.

Of course I’ve over-egged that a bit; but you will recognise at least one of those key failings in yourself, I’m sure. When we do, we’ll also recognise our need to walk along this ridge-path that Foster calls ‘disciplined grace’. “It is ‘grace’ because it is free; it is ‘disciplined’ because there is something for us to do”, is how he explains it. And with that he stresses something else that we really need to grasp as we commit to walking this path. ‘All’ we are doing is putting ourselves in the right place for God to work. We can’t do it ourselves, we know that; it can happen, though: we know that too. So, what we need to do is “let go and let God”, as the old saying goes. The picture Foster uses here is of plants. If we want them to grow we have to put them in the right soil, at the right time; and we have to water them – but we can’t make them grow. Only the soil – in this case, God – can do that; our part is to give it every chance to happen: and this is what these spiritual disciplines can, and will, do.

I realise that I’ve not said much at all about the disciplines themselves; and I’m almost done. It’s not a problem, though – because that’s for the next 3 weeks. In his book Foster groups what he calls the classical disciplines together, under three general headings: inward; outward; and corporate. We’ll take one discipline from each heading and examine it in detail; including the mechanics of how to do it – because most of us don’t know how to anymore! But never forget that these are, in a way, ‘only’ meant to be tasters, to whet our appetite for more. So don’t get hung up on any one of them – as Foster also warns. We can’t afford ever to forget who this is about either. These disciplines are God’s way to teach us how to become more like Jesus and that is their aim. Doing them will contribute to changing our mind-set, by helping us to know, and to choose freedom – by choosing to love and serve the God who has made us, and claims us to be His own.

I’ll end with a prayer that we will indeed do just that. It’s adapted from one written around the Collect for Peace. Let us pray: “O God, whom to know is to live, to serve whom is perfect freedom, and to praise whom is the health and joy of the soul; with our lips and our heart, and with all the might that we have do we praise, bless and adore thee; and now we commit ourselves to walk the path of disciplined grace, this Lent and beyond; through thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”