Somewhere to belong

Here's the sermon that was shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

We all want a place to belong – somewhere to call home. You might have found that place. You might still be looking. A house or a family don’t necessarily make home. We yearn for something more – a safe haven, a place of refuge where we can truly be ourselves.

When children are asked to come up with five words or phrases that sum up what is needed in a home, they come up with words like: safety, warmth, happiness, food, water, somewhere to sleep, shelter, people who love you there.

The letter to the Ephesians, of which we have heard a section read this morning (Ephesians 2.17-22), says that these things can be found and experienced by becoming a part of God’s family. The starting point in the letter for talking about this possibility is very different though because it begins by talking about two groups of people who are separated from each other by significant barriers.

The letter is speaking about the way in which the Jews were separated from the Gentiles, on the basis of the Law of Moses, by racial, religious, cultural and social barriers. In addition, there were also sub-divisions with women and children being viewed as less important than men. Jews were understood to be God’s chosen people and very close to God while the Gentiles were seen as the distant heathens.

Christ tore down these barriers through his death on the cross. He died and rose again to bring us freedom in the form of the gift of love. The law of love and grace fulfils the Law of Moses meaning that the barriers between Jew and Gentile have been torn down because the old rules and regulations no longer apply in the same way and can no longer divide us.

In this way Christ created a unity that wasn’t based on racial, religious, cultural or social stereotypes, time or context, but a unity based on, and through, him for the whole world and in all periods of history. The new mixed-race Church is not so much the joining of the Jewish and Gentile people – with each trying to negotiate their own starting points – but rather a completely new humanity. And if Christ can unite Jews and Gentiles in this way then no other gulf should ever be that great again!

So what does all this mean for us today? Firstly, the emphasis on unity means that no one person, group or nation is more important than another. No one is a stranger or a foreigner because now we are all united in one body through Christ. The universal Church now contains all of us as members of God’s family, his house. This ‘oneness’ has to be demonstrated in our relationships with each other and in our behaviour. So we should welcome and respect everybody equally in our daily lives whether they are on our doorstep or in another country.

Secondly, by using the imagery of family and house, the Letter to the Ephesians shows that God wants to have a close relationship with us, like the ones we try to achieve in our own families and friendships. He no longer wants to be worshipped at a distance and in a temple that is man-made. Instead, we have become his temple through Christ dwelling within us. This is why our behaviour and our relationships have to reflect his Spirit working in our hearts. We are called to be holy and to model Christ’s love for us.

Thirdly, to do this we need Christ as the cornerstone of our building, our lives. Just as without a cornerstone a house is not properly supported, we cannot survive without Christ. God’s purpose for humanity is revealed through Christ. It is Christ who bridged the gulf between Jew and Gentile through his death on the cross and therefore it is Christ who unites us. It is through Christ that we become the temple in which God dwells through his Spirit. As a recent worship song says, “It’s all about you, Jesus.”

Therefore, as we build our lives on Christ:

• we should be united in faith;
• we should build up the Church by the way that we live our lives;
• we should welcome all people without discrimination;
• we should thank God for sending his Son to save us by his death and resurrection;
• we should live faithfully in prayer; and
• we should trust in God’s Spirit working through us.

By sharing what we have, we can make home a reality for others when they lack provision, nurturing, belonging, support or refuge. By offering our time, energies, resources and prayers, we can create the sense of belonging that God wants all people to find in him. May it be so for us. Amen.

(Based on materials from the Mothers’ Union resource pack entitled ‘Home’)

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Matt Redman - The Heart Of Worship.

Small pebbles on the graves of the dead

Francine Mayran has been exhibiting her paintings and sculptures since 1999. Her artistic work of memory on the Holocaust has developed in parallel since 2008:

'She thinks that painting imposed itself as an imperative, to serve the transmission of an intransmissible genocide, the one of men, women and children, whose only crime was to be Jewish or Gypsy, or in 1915 Armenian, or in 1975 Cambodian or Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994.

She says, as the American painter Samuel Bak, "I didn’t choose the Shoah, but the Shoah chose me to become one of its bearers of testimony".

Her aim is to connect photos and objective evidence of the past, and to link them through a personal pictorial creation, as in a line of descent, so that these images remain and live on and so that through painting, they become moments of the present.

She tries as a bearer of memory, to take over from the memory of the last direct witnesses, who little by little pass away.

Her creations also try to be echo of other memories, those of the Gypsies, those of the homosexuals, those of the resistants deported because of their ideas,as well as those of the handicapped persons.

As the artist says: “To speak, to write, to paint are small pebbles on the graves of the dead, words of support to survivors to allow them to leave their burden of guilt and responsibility and pass on their message.”'

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Yaakov Shwekel - Shema Yisroel.

R. B. Kitaj: Diasporist art

Diasporist art is the art of movement, change, migration, contradiction, dislocation and dissonance. R.B. Kitaj was both an artist and theorist of such art; writing two manifestos on the phenomenon and creating paintings which cleaved to his “own uncanny Jewish life of study, painting, unthinkable thoughts and near death …”

Because Kitaj’s childhood was spent in the US and much of his adult life in the UK, he was something of an outsider to both countries. Before becoming a student at the Royal College of Art, he travelled widely as a merchant seaman. Befriending the likes of David Hockney, Frank Auerbach, Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, he spent the best part of 40 years in the UK as part of the self-titled ‘School of London’ before the death of his second wife Sandra Fisher, which he blamed on negative reviews of his Tate retrospective, led to a final move to Los Angeles where he was to die in his studio by his own hand.

Kitaj defined the Diasporist artist as living and painting in two or more societies at once. It therefore seems appropriate that this retrospective is split between two venues; the Jewish Museum in London and Pallant House in Chichester.

Many of the works displayed are multilayered in their form and meaning. As works intended to provoke conversation they require our eye to roam because of the difficulty in focusing on a single part of the image. When combined with written commentaries for his Tate retrospective (inspired by the dialogical nature of Midrash) this approach in part provoked the furious reaction of some critics to the exhibition. Kitaj, however, understood his intent in terms of Diasporism:

“Diaspora is often inconsistent and tense; schismatic contradiction animates each day. To be consistent can mean the painter is settled and at home. All this begins to define the painting mode I call Diasporism. People are always saying the meanings in my pictures refuse to be fixed, to be settled, to be stable: that's Diasporism …”

Juan De La Cruz equates the uncertainty about their role and impact felt by US soldiers in Vietnam with that felt by St John of the Cross when torn between his loyalty to the church and his involvement in the reforms of St Teresa of Avila. Kitaj’s skill as a draughtsman can be seen in the wavering pose and questioning features of the conflicted African-American soldier on a transport plane around which Kitaj has collaged the crude scenes of wartime abuses which are troubling the soldier’s conscience. His name tag is the clue to the creative dissonance Kitaj introduced into the work by linking the soldier’s conflicts to those of John of the Cross.

The Church is called to be a pilgrim people journeying in the tension of the now and not yet. As a result, we have much, potentially, to learn from Diasporist art and yet our frequent tendency is to bathe in a nostalgic yearning for days of ‘glory’ past in Christendom. Diasporism is for Kitaj an engagement with the outsider; not Jews alone, but also homosexuals, women, Palestinians, Afro-Americans, and many of the Modernist artists he so admired. Such inclusivism challenges our nostalgia revealing the hidden oppression and abuse which can accompany the accumulation of authority and power.

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Lou Reed - Strawman.

Encountering God: Scriptural Reasoning

Tonight we had the first meeting of our local Scriptural Reasoning group. Scriptural Reasoning is a practice of inter-faith reading. Small groups of Jews, Christians and Muslims, and sometimes people of other faiths, gather to read and reflect on short passages from their scriptures together.

The texts we used tonight were from a Text Bundle made available by the Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme. The theme was Encountering God and the process we used was of a short reflection on each passage by a representative of that faith followed by open discussion among the whole group.

This is what I said in reflecting on the Christian text: 

Encountering God: Christian text - Acts 9:1-9

 

This is a classic Christian encounter with God, to the extent that the phrase ‘a Damascus Road experience’ meaning an extraordinarily dramatic conversion or a profound life-changing experience has come into common usage.

 

Saul’s Damascus Road experience literally turned his life upside down as is symbolised by his fall. One moment he was up on his feet - a leader of others with a warrant from the High Priest to arrest heretics – the next, he was flat on his back in the road with God telling him that those he was persecuting were actually God’s own people – the body of Christ. In one moment everything he thought he knew was shown to be false and the entire direction that his life had taken up to that point was reversed so that he goes from this encounter to preach the Christ whom formally he had persecuted. I once was blind, but now I see; as the lyrics to ‘Amazing Grace’ put it. The story seems to suggest that this is the power of God’s presence – encounter with God reveals the inadequacy of all that we have known up to that point and turns us around to receive and know the truth.

This is also symbolised by the light which shines in this story. In the Christian scriptures Jesus is spoken of as ‘the light of the world.’ This light shines in the darkness of error and reveals truth. John 3. 18 – 20 says: “This is how the judgement works: the light has come into the world, but people love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil.  Those who do evil things hate the light and will not come to the light, because they do not want their evil deeds to be shown up.” Saul comes into the light, sees that his deeds are evil, turns away from them and begins a new way of life signalled by taking a new name.

Through this encounter Saul sees: that Jesus is God; Jesus has been raised from death and is alive; and Jesus is in his people - the Church, which is the Body of Christ. I once was blind, but now I see. Or does he? One of the strange aspects of this story is that in the story Saul does not see. He does not actually see Jesus - instead he hears his voice - and the immediate result of the encounter is that Saul is blinded and cannot physically see.

So what is actually going on here? Is this encounter with God actually as straightforward as my earlier comments suggest? We might want to suggest that Saul’s physical blindness is symbolic of his earlier blindness to the truth about Jesus. His physical blindness lasts for three days and then after prayer he miraculously sees once again. His blindness therefore equates to the three days Jesus spent in the tomb and Saul’s regained sight therefore equates to a resurrection experience. That interpretation would fit well with what I said earlier.

Alternatively, we might want to suggest that sight distracts us from hearing the still, small (perhaps inner) voice of God; that it is only once he has been blinded by the light that Saul can hear what God wishes to say to him. So there may be an element of asceticism in the story – the closing off of physical sight in order to enhance spiritual insight.

Again, we might also suggest that darkness, blindness, lack of sight and lack of knowing is actually essential to true encounter with God. As God cannot be defined or fully comprehended by human beings, it may be essential to true encounter with God to realise our inability to fully ‘know’ God and therefore to accept and rest in the darkness and blindness of our lack of knowing.

All these are possible paths to the further exploration of this passage as we discuss together. In this context, however, we must also acknowledge the way in which this passage has been used and abused in Church history to support anti-Semitism. On a simplistic reading of the story, Saul the Pharisee became Paul the Evangelist, the Jew became a Christian, the persecutor becomes the persecuted and all this on the basis that Jesus is revealed in the story as the resurrected Son of God. Therefore, the Church has, at times, argued and acted on the basis that Christianity is right and Judaism is wrong; a minority faith once it became the majority on many occasions reversed the change which had occurred in Paul so that those who had formerly been persecuted became the persecutors of others.

Clearly that simplistic reading of this encounter with God ignores: the fact that both Jesus and Paul were Jews; the profound influence which his Jewish upbringing, study and experience continued to have on all that Paul did and said subsequent to this encounter with God; and is at odds with Paul’s own teaching about the continuing significance of the Jewish people. How we interpret and understand encounter with God has profound implications for what we then do and say as a result. That is why deciding to do Scriptural Reasoning together in this way is so important and yet also an exercise to be undertaken with great care and sensitivity.

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Paul Mealor - Now Sleeps The Crimson Petal. 

Scriptural Reasoning

Following a very constructive planning meeting last week, I am now looking forward to the start of a local Scriptural Reasoning group after Easter.

Scriptural Reasoning is a practice of inter-faith reading. Small groups of Jews, Christians and Muslims, and sometimes people of other faiths, gather to read and reflect on short passages from their scriptures together.

The next meeting of the East London Three Faiths Forum provides an opportunity to try Scriptural Reasoning through the discussion of texts relating to women and equality.

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Pierce Pettis - That Kind Of Love.

Overcoming divisions in the Spirit of Jesus

The ‘peace lines’ in Belfast are walls that “were built in the early 60s, at the height of the “Troubles” – the hardest stage of the fight between the two communities [of Catholics and Protestants] – when Northern Ireland was at the climax of Civil War. At that period only weapons spoke and the paramilitary groups from both sides laid down the law: bombs were smashing Belfast day after day; reprisals were reciprocal ... rancour turned to hatred and life together was no longer possible. The only solution was to physically divide, and let communities close themselves into their own microcosm. Therefore, religious islands, divided by cement barriers erected by the authorities in order to stop the violence, grew up.”

A similar kind of hostility between Jews and Samaritans can be seen clearly in the New Testament. One of the worst insults that hostile Jews could offer to Jesus was to call him a Samaritan (John 8:48). When Jesus was refused hospitality by a Samaritan village because he was going to Jerusalem, his disciples James and John wanted the village destroyed before Jesus rebuked them (Luke 9:51-56). The parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:33-37) also reveals this division because it challenges the idea held by Jews that it would be impossible for a Samaritan to act charitably. This story of Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well also shows up these divisions in that the disciples are amazed that Jesus was talking to a Samaritan woman (John 4:27) and the Gospel writer comments that Jews did not use the same cups and bowls that Samaritans use (John 4:9).

Samaritans claimed that they were the true Israel who were descendants of the "lost" tribes taken into Assyrian captivity. They had their own temple on Mount Gerizim and claimed that it was the original sanctuary. They also claimed that their version of the Pentateuch was the original and that the Jews had a falsified text produced by Ezra during the Babylonian exile. Both Jewish and Samaritan religious leaders taught that it was wrong to have any contact with the opposite group, and neither was to enter each other's territories or even to speak to one another.

All of which makes Jesus’ words in John 4.21-24 quite amazing: “… the time will come when people will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem … the time is … already here, when by the power of God's Spirit people will worship the Father as he really is, offering him the true worship that he wants. God is Spirit, and only by the power of his Spirit can people worship him as he really is.”

Jesus seems to be saying that the reasons for conflict between Jew and Samaritan are about to be superseded in such a way that both will, in future, be able to worship together. This claim is one that the writer of the letter to the Ephesians repeats in 2.11-18, on this occasion about divisions between Jews and Gentiles: “… Christ himself has brought us peace by making Jews and Gentiles one people. With his own body he broke down the wall that separated them and kept them enemies. He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace. By his death on the cross Christ destroyed their enmity; by means of the cross he united both races into one body and brought them back to God ... It is through Christ that all of us, Jews and Gentiles, are able to come in the one Spirit into the presence of the Father.”

Both these passages focus on divisions being overcome as we come to God the Father in the Spirit. The Spirit that is being talked about is, of course, the Spirit of Jesus, the one who, with his own body, breaks down the wall which separates enemies; the one who, through his death on the cross destroys enmity and unites enemies before God. So, if we are to be ‘in the Spirit’ and are to worship God ‘in the Spirit’, we must do the same by laying down our lives in order to overcome divisions between enemies.

Gordon Wilson was the father of Marie Wilson, one of 12 victims of the Enniskillen Remembrance Day Bombing in 1987. The bombing could have provoked a response of anger and revenge; instead what emerged was an atmosphere of forgiveness and reconciliation because of Gordon Wilson and the way in which he responded to this tragedy in the Spirit of Jesus.
A few hours after the bombing, when interviewed by the BBC, he described his last conversation with his daughter, a nurse, as they both lay buried in rubble. He said: "She held my hand tightly, and gripped me as hard as she could. She said, 'Daddy, I love you very much.' Those were her exact words to me, and those were the last words I ever heard her say." To the astonishment of listeners, Wilson went on to add, "But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie. She loved her profession. She was a pet. She's dead. She's in heaven and we shall meet again. I will pray for these men tonight and every night." Historian Jonathan Bardon recounts that: "No words in more than twenty-five years of violence in Northern Ireland had such a powerful, emotional impact."

Gordon Wilson forgave the terrorists who had killed his daughter. He said that he would pray for them. He also begged that no-one took revenge for Marie's death as that could not bring her back. His response to atrocity of the Enniskillen bombings was in the Spirit of Jesus and helped to overcome divisions between Catholic and Protestant as throughout the rest of his life he worked hard to bring reconciliation between people in Northern Ireland including becoming Patron of the Spirit of Enniskillen Trust which works to encourage dialogue and greater understanding between all social, cultural and religious traditions.

What Gordon Wilson did with his life is what we see Jesus doing in this story. Richard Burridge writes that in this story, “we have a real meeting of opposites - of a Jew with a Samaritan, a man with a woman, a rabbi with a sinner, the one ‘from above’ confronting the lowest of the low.” It is a story which “sums up all the bitterness of human separation by race, creed, class, sex, profession, status” and shows us what it means for Jesus to be the bridge, not only of “the gulf between God and the world, but also all the barriers human beings put between themselves.” It was for this reason that God sent his Son into the world, and for this reason there is hope for us all, from Northern Ireland to modern Samaria on the West Bank to here in Dagenham.

It is a terrible irony, and an absolute gift to those who argue that religion causes violence, that Christian faith was in Northern Ireland used as means to divide Catholic and Protestant. Gordon Wilson’s words, spoken in the Spirit of Jesus, helped to turn that situation around. Could our words and actions in the Spirit of Jesus do the same?

Where are the divisions within this local area and how could these be overcome in the Spirit of Jesus? What can you, as Christ’s people here at St Cedd’s, be doing and saying in the local community that would be in the Spirit of Jesus? How can you work in the Spirit of Jesus to encourage dialogue and greater understanding between all the different social, cultural and religious traditions found in this area? Are you willing to ask those questions? Are you willing to pray those questions? Are you willing to be inspired by the Spirit of Jesus to destroy enmity, to tear down barriers, to make peace, and to unite enemies?

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U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Children of Abraham

Bit late but this was my All-Age Mothering Sunday sermon at St John's Seven Kings:

How many of us have watched the TV programme ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ How many of us have done some research into our family history? For those who have researched their family histories, how far back have you been able to go? What has been the most interesting thing that you have discovered? How many of us have known our grandparents? Our great-grandparents? Our great, great grandparents? What is that we find interesting about ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ Why is that we need to know so much about our past?

There can be many reasons why it is interesting to research our family histories; we may track down relatives about whom we knew nothing and broaden our extended family, for instance, or we might come to understand ourselves better by knowing about family traits and characteristics which have been passed down across the generations.

I doubt that any of us have traced our family histories back to Abraham and Sarah but our Bible readings today suggest that we can. Abram and Sarai, as they were originally known, were very old and very sad because they had no children. But one night, out in the desert, God made Abram a special promise. God said:

“Look up and count the stars – if you can. That’s how many people there will be in your family one day. Think of the sand on the seashore. How many grains can you count? I’ll bless you and give you such a large family that one day they’ll be as many as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore.”

As a sign of that promise, God changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah. God’s promise comes true when Sarah finally does have a baby, called Isaac, when she’s very old. The great-great-great-(lots of greats)-grandchildren of this family are the members of God’s family here today, so we’re all actually members of the same family; Abraham and Sarah’s family, which is also God’s family.

Now, because we are all part of the same family we’ve got to care for each other like we are family. Some of us heard John Bell talking about that this week in our Lent Course. He said:
“... within the Church, at its best, we are the surrogate mothers and uncles and grandchildren to other people – and that’s a very different unit of belonging. Which means that should your mother or father reject you, the Christian Church will still accept you.”

This is an important part of Mothering Sunday because today is about Mother Church as well as being about the Mothers who gave us birth. As John Bell says, the Church at its best is our extended family; “the water of baptism will be thicker than the blood of genealogy.”

As a result, we’ve got millions of brothers and sisters of all ages and colours in every land all over the world. In fact, just like on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ when we realise that we are Children of Abraham, we also realise that we have some unexpected relatives because Jewish and Muslim people are also Children of Abraham.

Bono, the singer with rock band U2, suggested in his guest column for the New York Times on 2 January this year the idea of an: “arts festival that celebrates the origin of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Every year it could be held in a different location; Jerusalem would obviously be the best place to start.”

We can already experience something of that idea locally through the East London Three faiths Forum:

“For more than ten years, the Three Faiths Forum has been encouraging friendship, goodwill and understanding amongst Muslims, Christians and Jews. We also facilitate dialogue, leading to action with people from other faiths, and those who do not subscribe to any religion. We create new models for faith encounters.”

So we can see through all this that although God’s promise starts out with small things it can become incredibly massive. Sarah laughed when she heard what God had planned. Just like Sarah we can be sceptical, cynical and mocking about what it is possible for God to achieve through us but, in the story, Sarah’s cynical laughter turns to joyful laughter when her son Isaac is born and the same can be true for us too as we learn to trust that God can use us and achieve great things through us.

We know the difference between cynical laughter and joyful laughter don’t we? Who can give me a cynical laugh? Who can give me a joyful laugh? Sarah’s story shows us how we live life joyfully and hopefully. Patricia De Jong has described what happened to Sarah like this:

“Here is Sarah, at age 90, saying to God: Look, I'm old, I'm tired, I have arthritis and even a little osteoporosis; are you sure we want to get into something new like this now?

But this is when we encounter the marvelous wonder of God, at that very vulnerable moment - when the improbable is mistaken for the impossible, at that moment when we actually believe that our spirits are wasting away, as our bodies are, and God couldn't possibly have any more surprises in store for us, at that moment when we have settled in to things the way they are, instead of things the way they can be through the hope of God …

And yet what better way to live than in the grip of a promise? To wake in the possibility that today might be the day ... To take nothing for granted. Or to take everything as granted, though not yet grasped. To handle every moment of one's life as a seed of the promise and to plant it tenderly, never knowing if this moment, or the next, may be the one that grows.

To live in this way is to discover that God is always blessing us ... This is what Abraham and Sarah found out late in life ... This is what the psalmist had in mind when he wrote, "so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's." (Psalm 103:5) This is the spiritual path we embark upon when we place our hand in the open palm of God ...

Abraham and Sarah believed in God's promises and dared to hope. As Paul reminds us, "hope does not disappoint because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given to us."

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Pops Staples - Hope In A Hopeless World.