The only hope for humanity

Here's the reflection I shared during today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Desmond Tutu is someone whose life has been shaped by Jesus’ teaching to love your enemies as yourself. For Tutu, Christianity is the religion of the downtrodden and dispossessed in which everyone is equal in the eyes of God and those who follow Jesus are exhorted to love our enemies. He has said that, “It wasn’t easy to love your enemy when they were throwing us in prison or murdering us.” It is the most difficult of all doctrines, he says, but it offers the only hope for humanity.

I mention this because our Gospel reading (Matthew 10.34-11.1) seems to show a very different side to Jesus than that highlighted by Desmond Tutu. Here Jesus doesn’t appear to be saying, “love your enemies,” instead he says that he has not come to bring peace but a sword and that he came to make enemies of the members of families. What is going on here? Are we talking about the same person? Is there a contradiction in what Jesus was teaching? Do we have to make some kind of choice between the two? It all seems very confusing.

The important thing to be aware of in understanding these words of Jesus is that he was talking to his disciples about a mission that was specifically to the people of Israel. Jesus began his instructions to his disciples, as recorded in Matthew 10, by saying: “Do not go to any Gentile territory or any Samaritan towns. Instead, you are to go to the lost sheep of the people of Israel.” Everything that Jesus says in this chapter is in the context of that mission and when we understand that it makes a big difference to the way we understand what Jesus was saying here.

Jesus thought of his own people, the Jews, as being lost. They had moved away from God’s plans and purposes because they had not been bringing the light of God to the Gentiles. Instead, they had turned in on themselves and acted as though God was just a national God for themselves. What Jesus was about to do through his death and resurrection would blow that kind of thinking out of the water. As he said to the disciples in verse 18, they would, in future, be telling the Good News to both Jews and Gentiles. But, for now, before his death and resurrection Jesus sent his disciples only to their own people with the message that the kingdom of God – the day when Jews and Gentiles would come together to worship the one true God – was coming near. Jesus’ mission and ministry in Israel before his death was an opportunity for the people of Israel to come on board and be part of the new thing that God was doing in the world. But Jesus was realistic about the way many would react to this opportunity.

He knew that some would respond positively and embrace his message but that others would be violently opposed. His message would, therefore, bring division among the people of Israel. Some would accept and follow and others would be violently opposed. This is what he meant when he spoke about not bringing peace and the members of the family being divided. He was speaking specifically about the effect that his message, life, death and resurrection would have on the people of Israel.

We know from subsequent events that Jesus was right in his assessment of the situation. Jesus himself was violently opposed and killed by those who did not accept his message despite large numbers of Jews hearing and following him. The early Church was persecuted at the same time that it grew rapidly in numbers with both Jews and Gentiles becoming followers of Christ. Finally, Jerusalem itself was overrun by the Romans and the Temple, the focus of the Jewish faith at that time, was destroyed. That act meant that there could no longer be a solely national focus to the Jewish faith and the early Christians spread out from Israel even more widely as a result.

So Jesus, here, is speaking specifically about what would happen within the people of Israel as a result of his message and mission but he was not talking about the content of that message and mission. His message and mission was to bring the light and forgiveness of God to the whole world, both Jews and Gentiles; a message and mission of peace and reconciliation, not of violence and division. The Gentiles were viewed, at that time, as enemies of God’s people but Jesus was saying that God’s people should love their enemies and that God would bring all peoples into his kingdom. 

The good news of Jesus is peace, reconciliation and love for enemies, just as Desmond Tutu claimed and has practised. It is the reverse of violence and division but its effect in the Judaism of Jesus’ time and immediately after was division. Just as Jesus, the early Church and those like Desmond Tutu gave themselves wholeheartedly and peaceably to this mission despite the opposition and violence that they have encountered, so we must do the same as followers of Christ. That is what it means to take up our cross and follow in Jesus’ footsteps by living all out for the peaceful reconciliation of all peoples. As Desmond Tutu has said, to do so offers the only hope for humanity.

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James Whitbourne - A Prayer Of Desmond Tutu.

Revelation: fixed and unchanging or dynamic and evolving

Here's my reflection from today's Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The letter to the Ephesians (Ephesians 3. 2 - 12) speaks of a revelation from God which was based on the work of Jesus but the understanding of which developed after Jesus’ ascension. The eternal purpose that was carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord is that we all now have access to God in boldness and confidence and the realisation which followed Christ’s ascension was that this access applied to the Gentiles as well as the Jews and was therefore for all people everywhere.

This revelation began when the apostle Peter was told in a dream to eat food forbidden in Torah and then went into the house of a Gentile and saw the Spirit of God fall on outsiders. Writing about this incident David Runcorn asks where was Peter to go biblically to explain this? What began with this incident went beyond the received revelation as long understood; something very new was going on and we shouldn’t underestimate how disturbing this would have been.

Peter and the leaders of the church in Jerusalem proceeded in vulnerable obedience under the compelling guidance of the Spirit. What they began to realise was that God was creating a community based on radically new belonging and identity in Christ, one that is yet to be fully revealed – neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female. This was the revelation which came to the apostle Paul and on which he based his mission and teaching. It is this revelation that underpins our reading from the letter to the Ephesians.

David Runcorn notes that this means that an unfolding revelation is evident within the scriptures. This is important in today’s Church because many of the issues on which there is division or debate come down to the extent to which the revelation of God’s will for us in Jesus is fixed and unchanging or is dynamic and evolving.

Those who argue that the traditional teaching of the Church cannot be changed because it is based on an unchanging revelation from God have opposed the remarriage of divorcees, the ordination of women priests and bishops and currently oppose the inclusion and marriage of those in same-sex relationships. Those who argue that there is an evolving and developing revelation as God continues to speak and act in contemporary society are driven back to the scriptures to review whether past cultural understandings have obscured aspects of the original texts which can then lead us into new understandings of God’s revelation. In relation, for example, to the ordination of women, this meant that we recovered an awareness that women were among those called by Jesus to be his disciples and women were to be found as leaders within the Early Church. As a result, our understanding of the necessity for women to be ordained changed leading, in time, to the ordination within the Church of England of women as priests and bishops.

If we think about these processes in relation to a practice like that of slavery, we see that this understanding of a developing and unfolding revelation of God is accepted in practice by most, if not all, Christians. Slavery was an established practice throughout ancient cultures, including the Roman Empire in which the Early Church was established and grew. Slavery is mentioned in the New Testament but is not condemned and no call to free slaves and eradicate slavery is to be found therein. Slavery continued essentially unquestioned until the 18th century when the campaign for its abolition began. The Church was one of many institutions in society that was involved in the Slave Trade and which resisted the Abolition Movement. However, the Abolitionist’s re-examination of scripture focused attention on the freeing of slaves in The Exodus and St Paul’s support of the slave Onesimus as indicating an understanding of God’s acceptance of all that militated against the maintenance of slavery. This understanding of scripture has become widely accepted in the Church, despite being the reverse of earlier, and therefore traditional, teachings.

This process of change began with the revelation spoken about in today’s Epistle that all have access to God in boldness and confidence and the realisation that this access applies to Gentiles as well as Jews. This revelation is, in essence, one of inclusion that, as Paul states there is no distinction - not Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female – that prevents human beings from having access to God in boldness and confidence. Our Epistle is, therefore, about both the unfolding revelation of God’s will and purpose in our own day and time and the inclusive nature of God’s embrace of humanity through Jesus Christ. Those who seek inclusion in the face of traditional Church teaching are true to those revelations and, therefore, true to scripture.

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Peter Case - Words In Red.

East London Three Faiths Forum Tour of the Holy Land: Day 6 (2)

In Caesarea I read Acts 11. 1 - 18 explaining that this incident represents one of the key developments which enabled Christianity to become a world religion:

'The apostles and the other believers throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. 2 When Peter went to Jerusalem, those who were in favor of circumcising Gentiles criticized him, saying, 3 “You were a guest in the home of uncircumcised Gentiles, and you even ate with them!” 4 So Peter gave them a complete account of what had happened from the very beginning:

5 “While I was praying in the city of Joppa, I had a vision. I saw something coming down that looked like a large sheet being lowered by its four corners from heaven, and it stopped next to me. 6 I looked closely inside and saw domesticated and wild animals, reptiles, and wild birds. 7 Then I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat!’8 But I said, ‘Certainly not, Lord! No ritually unclean or defiled food has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 The voice spoke again from heaven, ‘Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean.’ 10 This happened three times, and finally the whole thing was drawn back up into heaven. 11 At that very moment three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where I was staying. 12 The Spirit told me to go with them without hesitation. These six fellow believers from Joppa accompanied me to Caesarea, and we all went into the house of Cornelius. 13 He told us how he had seen an angel standing in his house, who said to him, ‘Send someone to Joppa for a man whose full name is Simon Peter. 14 He will speak words to you by which you and all your family will be saved.’ 15 And when I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came down on them just as on us at the beginning. 16 Then I remembered what the Lord had said: ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ 17 It is clear that God gave those Gentiles the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ; who was I, then, to try to stop God!”

18 When they heard this, they stopped their criticism and praised God, saying, “Then God has given to the Gentiles also the opportunity to repent and live!”'

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Jim White - Diamonds To Coal.