A blessing on the earth

Here's the reflection that I shared earlier today as part of the Midday Meditation Services for Holy Week at Billericay Methodist Church, Western Road. These are reflective 45 minute services throughout Holy week to help with reflection on the life, ministry, and death of Jesus as we look towards a promised resurrection, with carefully chosen choral music: 

The Annual Lent Lecture given here, at Western Road, earlier in Lent was entitled: ‘The Bible and People of Other Faiths: A Personal and Theological Journey’ and was given by Dr Elizabeth Harris, honorary Senior Research Fellow within the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion, University of Birmingham, UK. Elizabeth gave helpful and fascinating insights into understandings of people of other faiths within the Bible and our readings today provide an opportunity to revisit that same theme and its relevance to the events of Holy Week.

‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’ (Isaiah 49: 6)

These are words originally spoken to the People of Israel, as the servant of God, but then understood by the Church as applying to Jesus, who fulfilled the task originally given by God to Israel. Although the Israelites were God’s chosen people, they were not to keep God to themselves. God’s intent in making Israel his chosen people was that they should be a light to the nations so all people would be God’s people. When Jesus speaks of himself as the light of the world, he is saying that he is acting as Israel, as God’s servant, by bring the light of life to all people everywhere.

We see Jesus acting on this basis in our Gospel reading too:

among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They … said … ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ … Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. (John 12: 20-22)

It is when people of other faiths and other cultures come and ask to see Jesus that Jesus knows it is time for him to be glorified through the crucifixion and resurrection. It is for this reason that, once filled with Jesus’ Spirit, the apostles, including St Paul, take the message of Jesus, in word and act, to all the nations of the then known world. As St Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians:

we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1: 23 & 24)

Although there is considerable debate in the early Church about the Gospel being preached among the Gentiles, it becomes increasingly clear that the love of Jesus cannot be contained solely within the Jewish church and must be shared and spread more widely among the Gentile peoples too.

The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has helpfully spoken of two strands of theology to be found in the Old Testament; a core testimony and a counter testimony. The core testimony is supportive of the institutions of the day, whether the Judges or the Kings, and sees Israel as a beacon of light in an embattled world surrounded by hostile, unbelieving nations. The counter testimony is in large part the voice of those who do not have power – the Israelites, themselves, when slaves or in exile, those who are oppressed by the wealthy and powerful, those who are foreigners and migrants, and those who are people of other nations and other faiths. When Jesus enters our world as one of us, he does so as someone who is part of the counter testimony and through him the counter testimony is seen to be the testimony which embodies the nature of God most fully.

As a testimony which is counter to the testimony that claims God for the Israelites alone, the counter testimony is an inclusive testimony. In relation to people of other faiths, this means that the counter testimony sees all people as God’s people. We see this specifically and surprisingly expressed by a number of the prophets.

In Amos 9.7-8, the prophet says:

“Are not you Israelites
the same to me as the Cushites?”
declares the Lord.
“Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt,
the Philistines from Caphtor
and the Arameans from Kir?

Here, there is no mention of the Israelites as God’s special people, instead all people are God’s people and it is noted that the Philistines and Arameans had their own Exoduses, as did the People of Israel when they were freed from slavery in Egypt. Later in the same chapter Amos speaks of all the nations that bear God’s name, not just one (Amos 9. 12).

Malachi prophesies of those who will see God’s plans with their own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!’ (Malachi 1. 11) Isaiah gives the greatest and clearest vision of a harmonious kingdom embracing all nations where there is peace between all peoples and all creatures. In Isaiah 19. 23 -25, we read of this vision specifically in relation to Assyria, Egypt and Israel:

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Similarly, Jesus says that: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So, there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10. 16). In his teaching, he specifically teaches, through the Parable of the Good Samaritan (who is a person of another faith), that we should receive from our neighbours who follow other faiths (Luke 10. 25-37).

That is what we see St Paul doing when he preaches at the Areopagus in Athens. There, he specifically visits the range of worship places in Athens, compliments the people on their faith, begins his sermon with reference to one of the altars and quotes from their poets (Acts 17. 16-34).

In a report called Embassy, Hospitality & Dialogue prepared by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali for the 1998 Lambeth Conference, Bishop Nazir-Ali takes us across similar ground. He notes that Amos declares that God has a purpose for and acts within the history of the various nations, both far and near and that the language of the Exodus from Egypt is used to describe God's "saving plan" for these peoples (Amos 9:7). Also, that Malachi speaks of the ways in which God is recognised and worshipped, however inadequately, among the nations. In some cases, in ways that are worthier than the worship of Israel itself (Malachi 1:11).

In both Isaiah 19 and in the so-called Apocalypse of Isaiah (Chapters 24-27) there is a reference to a blessed community of nations. God's blessing no longer applies solely to Israel, the other nations are also blessed. Israel is the primary recipient of this blessing and also God's instrument in extending it to others, but there is also anticipation of a future which belongs to God.

The universalism of the New Testament arises out of the response to the Gospel by the poor, the marginalised and the foreigners. We are told that the common people (ochlos) heard Jesus gladly (Mark 12:37). He keeps company with the sinners and outcasts of society (Matthew 9:10-13). Foreigners respond positively to the words and works of Jesus (Matthew 8:1-13, Mark 7:24-30, Luke 17:11-19, John 12:20-21). This is confirmed in the experience of the Early Church which is alerted to its world-wide mission by the response of those either on the margins of the synagogue or outside it altogether (Acts 13:44-48).

Jesus’ encounters with Gentiles were encounters with people of other faiths and by studying these encounters we can explore Jesus’ approach to those of other faiths. Jesus crossed cultural and religious boundaries in order to speak with those such as the Samaritan woman. In Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan, it is the person from another faith (the Samaritan) who is a good neighbour to the person from God’s chosen people.

Paul had a multi-cultural upbringing. He was born and grew up in Tarsus in Cicilia (Acts 21: 39), a city noted for its Stoic philosophers. From other sources it seems likely that Paul’s parents were carried off as prisoners of war from the Judean town of Gischala to Tarsus. Presumably enslaved to a Roman, they were freed and granted Roman citizenship which was then also passed to Paul. In Tarsus Paul would probably have had an education in Greek culture before going to Jerusalem at about the age of 12 to study under the famous rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22: 3). In his ministry, Paul visited the worship places of other faiths (Acts 17: 23), quoted from the writings of other faiths (Acts 17: 28; 1 Corinthians 15:33; Titus 1:12), and used rhetorical approaches learnt from Greek oratory.

Both Scripture and our experience provide criteria that God is working in the cultures and histories of all people. In different ways, people respond to this divine impulse and the Bible, as the inspired record of God's saving acts, provides us with a means of discerning how God has been working in the history, the culture and the spirituality of a particular people. Awareness of the divine need not be confined to the structures of institutional religion. Indeed, it may not be found there at all! It can be a very private affair and sometimes it may be found in counter-religious movements which set out to affirm human dignity and equality and which challenge oppressive social institutions.

As was the case when Elizabeth Harris spoke to us, this review of Biblical passages that relate to relationships with those of other faiths seeks to show that there are a range of possible ways to understand and relate to our neighbours of other faiths. In relation to Holy Week and Easter, we are reminded that Jesus’s purpose in going through the cross to resurrection, was with all peoples of all faiths in mind and that his vision was that of the peaceable kingdom in which all peoples live together in peace with one another, with God and with creation. However we understand our relationship with those of other faiths, may we make that our prayer, now and always:

God of unity, whose Son said, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So, there will be one flock, one shepherd. You love our human family and every work of your hands: As children of Abraham, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with other believers and all persons of good will, we thank you for having given us Abraham, a distinguished son of this noble and beloved country, to be our common father in faith. We ask you, the God of our father Abraham and our God, to grant us a strong faith, a faith that abounds in good works, a faith that opens our hearts to you and to all our brothers and sisters; and a boundless hope capable of discerning in every situation your fidelity to your promises. Make each of us a witness of your loving care for all, particularly refugees and the displaced, widows and orphans, the poor and the infirm. Open our hearts to mutual forgiveness and in this way make us instruments of reconciliation, builders of a more just and fraternal society. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

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Leontyne Price - The Crucifixion.

A prayer for life and living

Here's the sermon I preached at St Catherine's Wickford this morning:

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray (Luke 11: 1-13), he responded with a model prayer – beautiful, balanced and brief. It has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. In his book ‘Discovering Prayer’, Andrew Knowles, a former Canon Theologian of Chelmsford Cathedral, simply and succinctly takes us through the different sections of this prayer for life.

"We begin with God - Jesus reminds us to whom we’re talking. We’re coming to Almighty God who is also our Father. We aren’t phoning through a big order to a supermarket store which sells everything. Nor are we practising some weird and wonderful thought-process guaranteed to release psychic powers. We’re coming simply, humbly into the presence of our Creator, having received the invitation to do so from Jesus himself."

"The prayer begins surprisingly, by calling God ‘Abba’ – ‘Dear Father’. The Jews have several names for God, and a hundred ways of avoiding his holy name. No one had ever presumed to call God ‘Daddy’. Jesus is inviting his friends to share his own intimate relationship with God. This is not like any prayer that has ever been before. This is love talk."

"It’s also good to remember that because God is ‘our Father’, we belong to a great, trans-national, cross-cultural family, some of whom have already died and some of whom are yet to be born. Wherever we are around the world, and at whatever point in time we live, we own God as our Father and Jesus as our Lord. So when we pray this prayer, we’re sharing with our Christian brothers and sisters, across every division of colour and class, of politics and economics, of time and eternity.

We say ‘yes to God’ - Not only do we begin with God, we also ask that all he wants to do in our lives and in our world may come about. We ask that men and women everywhere may realise who he is and humble themselves before him."

The Norwegian artist Grete Refsum notes that “From a theological perspective the only secure thing to say about prayer is that it affects the one who prays. The mature religious attitude to prayer is that one prays in order to change and dispose oneself so as to receive properly what God has willed for us. And through this change in attitude the person who prays becomes better able to cope with the way things go in the world. Such an attitude is expressed in The Lord’s Prayer in the section ’Thy will be done’. Prayer understood in this way actually may represent a survival strategy.

In this perspective, the prayer section ’Your will be done’ is the central section in the Lord’s Prayer. Not only is it placed in the middle of the prayer text, it is in itself the very core. This is quite a scary saying. To acknowledge openly: I am not in control, only God is. And furthermore: the prayer explicitly expresses that ’your’ will – not mine – decides. Your will be done, in consequence, deals with surrendering to that which is going to happen, accepting whatever may come. It represents an acceptance of what has been given to you, without being able to change or direct destiny yourself.

And in this very acceptance and the surrender there may be liberation. The Norwegian resistant fighter and survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp, Kirsten Brunvoll, tells in her biography about her experience in 1944, during the transport to the camp: 'I thought quietly and spoke quietly, but my whole body shivered, and it was impossible for me to be quiet. I was sure that the trucks, which now picked us up, would drive us directly into the gas chambers. All of a sudden I could no longer fight. I said to myself: if it is so that I am to die, so let me die. Thy will be done [Skje din vilje]. Instantaneous I relaxed. The shivering stopped and I was filled with a warmth of happiness, convinced that if I died now, then it was because it was to the best for me.' (Brunvoll, Kirsten. 1964. Veien til Auschwitz. Oslo: Aschehoug. Original edition, 1947, page:153.)” (https://www.artway.eu/artway.php?id=536&lang=en&action=show)

"We ask that God’s kingdom may come - The kingdom of God exists wherever God is King. It isn’t located on a map, nor do we enter it by holding a passport! The exciting truth is that God is already King of millions of lives. He is already acknowledged as Lord in a vast number of situations. We see the effects of his rule when hate is turned to love, when bitterness is dismantled by forgiveness, when disease is overwhelmed by health, and when war gives way to peace.

But we must remember that God is a father and not a dictator. For this reason his kingdom can only come when individual people invite him into their lives and submit themselves to the changes he wants to make.

This phrase, ‘May your kingdom come’, more than any other in the Lord’s Prayer, has a tendency to rebound on the user. If we really want God’s kingdom to come, then we must open ourselves and our circumstances to God, whatever the cost.

And if we’re looking for the kind of changes in the world that only God can make, we may find that he promptly enlists us in his service! We may find ourselves doing anything from bathing an invalid to mailing a cheque for famine relief. We may even find ourselves called to lob in our whole life as the only fitting contribution we can make to the service of God’s kingdom in a particular situation.

We bring our needs to God - In the second half of the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to meet our basic human needs. We ask him for enough to live on, for forgiveness, and for protection.

‘Give us day by day the food we need’ has a strong echo of the days when the Israelites were supplied with manna in the desert. Every day they had ‘enough’, and the Lord’s Prayer asks that we may have the same experience of God’s faithful provision each day as it comes. In an age when many people are run ragged by their desire for money and possessions, this is a wonderful promise from Jesus. All the same, we should notice that it is everything we need that God will provide, and not everything we want.

‘Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.’ This reminds us that our standard of living is more than a roof over our head, food on the table and a shirt on our back. Our well-being is intimately tied up with personal relationships – within ourselves, between ourselves, and between ourselves and God. Our recurring need here is for forgiveness. We hurt people by our self-centredness, our anger and our prejudice. We hurt God by going our own way in defiance of his loving law, wilfully defiling all that he intended life in this world to be.

So we ask for forgiveness. We feel the need and we say the words. But it’s no easy matter for God to forgive us. It cost him the life of his only Son to show the reality and consequence of sin. As he died on the cross, Jesus took on himself the results of all our sin. This is the only way by which we can be forgiven and restored to spiritual life. This is the Christian Good News: that life with God – something we can never earn and certainly don’t deserve – is his free gift to us through the death of Jesus. Our sins are not only forgiven but forgotten, and if we mention them to God again he’ll wonder what we’re talking about.

But as we ask God to forgive us, we must check if there is anyone who in turn needs our forgiveness. How do we feel about our worst enemy? Is there any member of the family, or anybody at work, against whom we’re nursing anger, bitterness or resentment? Only as we forgive others can we enter fully into the wonderful experience of God’s forgiveness of us. This is not just a nice idea. It’s a condition for our own forgiveness. Elsewhere Jesus warns that if we don’t forgive, then we in turn shall not be forgiven. This teaching alone, if we take it seriously, will completely change our lives.

‘And do not bring us to hard testing.’ Sometimes this is translated, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ and we may well wonder when, why and how God could possibly want us to be tempted. And we would be right – he doesn’t. But while God will never lure us into evil, he will sometimes allow us to be tested. Just as we will put ourselves through all kinds of discomfort to get fit or lose weight, so God will allow pressure on us to strengthen our faith or increase our insight.

The Lord’s Prayer recognises that temptation is an integral part of our daily life. We’ll never lose it, so we must learn to use it. If we can use the force of temptations to push us closer to the Lord, rather than sweeping us away from him, then we’ll be harnessing their power for our benefit."

So, this is a prayer for life – a prayer about our lives and a prayer on which we can base our lives. That is why it provides both a prayer for us to pray daily and a pattern to use in all our praying – whether in words or actions. Gertrude Chigwedere, who was a very faithful member of St Catherine's congregation, was one who made this prayer her life. We remember her today as a lovely quiet lady who expected nothing but gave a lot. A very kind hearted woman who readily offered to help others. Service to others was her byword, caring for the Mutuku’s children, washing up after the coffee morning’s at Bradwell Court, willingly taking on the laundering of the purificators, and cleaning of the church along with Yvonne Sobers, who remembers her with great affection. She was a friend to all and we miss her a lot. Let us remember her especially today as one who loved and lived The Lord’s Prayer and take inspiration from the example of her life lived well in the Lord’s service. Amen.

(Much of this sermon is taken from 'Discovering Prayer' by Andrew Knowles, Canon Theologian of Chelmsford Cathedral, published by Lion Publishing PLC)

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Ladysmith Black Mambazo - I'll Take You There.

Hope is love stretched into the future

Here's the Christmas message I have shared from Churches Together in Westminster:

I recently came across the phrase, 'hope is love stretched into the future' and used it for some Christmas intercessions. I prayed for a future where we can live free from fear of the Covid-19 pandemic because of the development and rollout of effective vaccines. These intercessions asked that God lead and guide all involved in developing, testing, approving and using the different vaccines and be with all who currently have the virus and all who are providing care and treatment; may his love be shown now in care and be stretched into a future that is free from of current restrictions.

As well as giving cause to pray into this time of pandemic, the God of hope also creates hope in us that we might see his love stretched into a future where his kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven. Let us place our hope in the God of hope, the one whose love stretches into the future, and make that our prayer this Christmastide:

God of hope, we pray for a future where the good news of Christmas – of God with us – is experienced in every community throughout the world. May our experience of a Christmas in which we are only able to be with others in small numbers and for a short time make us hunger and thirst for depth of community and greater love of all. May your love in coming to be with us be stretched into a future where we reflect your love by being with those who are alone, marginalised, despised or rejected. Amen.

Happy Christmas from all at Churches Together in Westminster.

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Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir - The Prayer.