Sermon 22nd March 2015

Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches. The reading is from Acts 13: verses 1-3.

“Guidance is the most radical of the (Spiritual) Disciplines because it goes to heart of this matter of walking with God. Guidance means the glorious life of hearing God’s voice and obeying His word. The goal of guidance is not specific instructions about this or that matter but conformity to the image of Christ.” And what better quote than that could there possibly be to end a series that has rattled our spiritual cages as much as this one has done? Or at least potentially has done; and/or might yet do – if we’ll keep on applying all of its teaching.

Now that is quite some jumping-off place, I realise; so here’s a light-hearted interlude, which may (or may not) be of some relevance to today’s subject of Guidance. It’s the story about an American who’d not long been living in the UK. He was still adjusting to the challenges of our differing pronunciations, but was managing to hold onto his open-hearted nature through it. So when a young man called by to ask if he had odd jobs needing doing, he asked “How much will you charge to paint my porch?” When he was told £50 he agreed, and handed over the paint and brushes. Some while later the now paint-splattered lad knocked on his door again. “All done!” he said. As he took his money, he added, “And by the way, that’s not a Porsche: it’s a Ferrari.”

It’s true that there may be more about communication in that story than guidance; but the 2 are closely related. And we could even stretch the point and say that it might have lessons to teach us about the Discipline of Simplicity that’s also in Richard Foster’s, “Celebration of Discipline”. That’s not one of the topics that we have covered on Sundays, because this Lent series could only ever offer tasters from this book’s broad menu. But that’s also why the impact of it could yet be so much wider and deeper than has happened so far. There are so many discoveries yet to be made, by anyone who chooses to keep putting themselves in the right Godly places in this way. And that’s true not just of the areas that we’ve not covered, but also of those that we have.

As I said at the start of this series, even what we have done on Sundays has only been able to scratch the surface of each area that we’ve picked out from the book. And, only having had 3 weeks to do it all in, each topic has been one selection from the 3 headings that Foster groups the classic Spiritual Disciplines together under. So while we’ve heard good and Godly thoughts on Meditation, and Service, and today we will cover Guidance, don’t forget what else is still out there waiting to be explored. Under Inward Disciplines, there’s: Prayer; Fasting; and Study. In Outward ones, it’s: Simplicity; Solitude; and Submission. And I won’t get to the other Corporate Disciplines of: Confession; Worship; or Celebration. And if that all sounds like rather a lot, well it’s meant to! This is, to quote Foster again, all about walking a path of “disciplined grace”. It’s us doing our part, to put ourselves in the right place where God’s grace can then transform us.

That’s not least why this is the right place to end our series – though, as I say, hopefully very much not our learning from it. “The goal of guidance is … conformity to the image of Christ”, remember; and that, by definition, has to be a life-long journey. We don’t know how it works, of course; but it may even be one that continues on the other side of the grave. Or maybe I’m just projecting again, on the basis of how far I know that I still have to travel in being conformed to the image of Christ myself. One of the ways in which I’m very aware of that for myself is in this area of Guidance – and I know that’s so for plenty of others here too. How do we know what God wants? What is the right Godly course of action to take in the particular circumstances that we each face? And how can we live for Him in the detail of our daily life?

Those are the sorts of questions which I hope we do at least pause to ask, regularly; or that we will do, after today. Yes I’m very aware that that Foster quote I began with says that’s not what it’s primarily about; but any general aim that we have of becoming more like Jesus must be worked out in the detail of the everyday, of course. What’s particularly interesting, then, is that Foster lists guidance amongst the corporate Disciplines. Inasmuch as we do think of it I’d guess that we’re most likely to think of guidance as something that we need for ourselves individually. Yes, of course we do each need as much Godly guidance as possible. Foster recognises that, and in this chapter he offers much helpful material about it too, so do read what he says on that.

As you’d expect, plenty of what he writes about God’s guidance of individuals is also equally applicable to the corporate dimension of it as well. But Foster is often quick – and right – to remind us that the way that we see things is not just quite different to the way that it used to be; it’s also rather recent!  Take today’s short Bible reading as a classic example of that. It’s one that’s entirely consistent with Old Testament themes and stories, that it was the church which together discerned what God was doing. (And isn’t it interesting how that happened here in the context of the church exercising Spiritual Disciplines of Worship, Prayer and Fasting together!) Note how it then wasn’t that Saul (who became Paul) or Barnabas told the others what they had heard from God, and the rest agreed. God’s call to what turned out to be Paul’s first missionary journey came to the church, corporately; and that’s how responded to it: corporately! Together they owned it, affirmed it, and implemented it, by together sending out Saul and Barnabas.

You see, the Old Testament is very much a story of how God made, and led, a people. Often it happened – as still does today – primarily through God’s interaction with a particular person; be they a prophet or a king; but it was about God’s people – as it still is today. Foster’s not talking here about the church as an organisation in an institutional sense so much as about us being God’s people today. That’s something which I’d agree it’s easy for us to lose sight of in our drive to matter as individuals. It’s why it’s so important to see, and exercise, guidance as a corporate discipline – which I’d say we do at least try to do here. Not everyone will be aware of this, of course, but in all our key leadership meetings, at Preachers, PCC, Standing Committee, Action Groups, we pray, think, and talk around what God’s doing in His church. And that hopefully then shows up in the specific decisions that we make as a church, and we how try to live together as God’s people here.

This is a crucial part of what Foster was trying to get the Western church to remember nearly 40 year ago when this book first came out. The need for it is, if anything, even greater today, because of a growing tendency to put ourselves first. And it really is a Discipline to seek God’s guidance in this way because it means being truly counter-cultural about it. We each need to see ourselves as part of something that’s bigger, and more important, than ourself. Nobody’s saying that it’s easy – much less trouble free – because it absolutely isn’t. It’s rare enough for everyone in any group of people to agree about a general direction, let alone the specific decisions that are necessary to follow it. As the Church of England regularly experiences at its Synods, tensions inevitably arise from the discernment process itself; and how we deal with those speak volumes about what we actually believe about God, and about our faith.

Foster has plenty more to say about the potential dangers of corporate guidance. I’ll leave you to read it yourself, though; not least because there’s another important aspect of this Discipline that it would be good to mention now. It’s one that’s particularly relevant to our tendency towards individualism, because it invites us to put ourselves in the hands of our fellow believers. This aspect of corporate guidance does apply more to the individual – but in a radically different way to what we might expect. The essential idea here is that we go to other people, as a group, and ask them what they hear God saying about a particular idea or course of action that we’re considering. And this is not advice-seeking so much as us trusting that God is guiding us by this method, through those people we go to!

I fully anticipated a sharp intake of breath when I wrote that (if not outright booing!) But it strikes me that we really should be open to this method, as people of faith who believe in a great God! Foster tells a whole range of wonderful stories of this principle in practice, which are well worth reading too. He’s also wise and sensible enough to point out the pitfalls – and the balances that we can rely on for guidance. The key thing is that we can know that God’s Spirit is never going to say anything that radically new or different to what’s in the Bible. Additionally, as we get to know God better and better over time – as we do with a spouse or very close friend – we’ll know more and more what He wants for us and from us. In that sense guidance gets easier for us – corporately and individually alike; because through engaging in this process we are conforming to Christ’s image; and that is “the goal of guidance”, remember: both corporate, and individual.

Now once again I’ve barely scratched the surface of this vital topic, of the Discipline of God’s guidance. Hopefully you’re all keen to find out more about it, though; just as you were, and are, about Meditation, Service; and all the rest of the Disciplines too. Above all, I hope you’re longing to find out how to become ever more like Jesus; and that your experience of Easter this year makes that longing both more poignant and all the more urgent. The reason that we chose to do this series this Lent was – if you’ll allow the pun – to foster such a longing in the light of all that God has done for us in Christ. As I also said at the start of this series, the ways to do that are all laid out for us very helpfully in this book itself. It invites us to choose to do the work of walking along this path of disciplined grace, day by day. By doing that we’re choosing the freedom of being, and becoming, the people who God has made us to be. So we can know for sure that He will guide every step of our journey to become ever more like Jesus. So the question for each one of us, and for us as a church, as this series ends is: will we make these choices? Let’s pray that we will …