The two things that matter

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Catherine’s Wickford this morning:

The Jewish people to whom John the Baptist was speaking in today's Gospel reading (Luke 3.7-18) thought that they were God’s people because of their birth; because they were Abraham’s ancestors (v 8). John the Baptist tells them that that isn’t the case. If the people of Israel are like a tree, he says, then God can cut that tree down at its roots.

Many of us will have grown up in Christian families, just as all those to whom John was speaking had grown up as Jews. Like them we may well have attended services for the worship of God since we were children and we, like them, might think that that makes us a part of God’s family. John’s message is that that is not the case.

There are two things that matter says John. Two things that make all the difference and family roots and traditions are not included. The two things that matter, says John, are firstly how we respond to Jesus, the coming Messiah and secondly whether our response involves actions as well as words.

John pictures Jesus, the coming Messiah, with a winnowing shovel separating the wheat from the chaff. He is saying that the coming of Jesus will separate out the true people of God from the false and it is by our reaction to Jesus that this will become apparent. Isaiah speaks about God being like a stone over which people stumble and, in the New Testament, both Paul and Peter apply this image to Jesus. Jesus himself says that he did not bring peace but a sword and came to set sons against fathers, daughters against mothers and so on. What he is talking about is the reality that as the coming Messiah he would be a controversial figure about whom people would be divided, even in the same family.

It is by our reactions and responses to Jesus, John says, that we can see who are God’s people and who are not. The question for us this morning then is who do we believe Jesus to be. Is he the Messiah, the son of God and saviour of the world, or was he just a good man but a man nonetheless? What we believe is important because, John says, if we reject Jesus then we reject God.

But within our response to Jesus as God’s son, as the Messiah there is also a further level of consideration. Is our response to Jesus just about words that we speak and beliefs that we keep in mind or do those words and those beliefs change our lives; do they affect the way in which we live? Our actions reveal our true beliefs. Do those things that will show that you have turned from your sins, John says to the crowd in verse 8. Don’t just mouth meaningless words but put your money where your mouth is and do the things that will demonstrate that your life has been turned around by your encounter with Jesus.

What are we to do, the crowd, the tax collectors and the soldiers ask John in verses 10 – 14. His response is not actually that demanding; do your job well, do it fairly and honestly and be generous with what you have.

Working hard and well and being generous are signs that we have changed from people who are out for ourselves to people with a concern for God and for others. It is that change that God is looking for in our lives. It is that change that shows Him and other people that we have had a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ that has changed our heart and not just our mind or our words.

These then are the two things that John the Baptist says matter when we stand before God; our response to Jesus and a response that involves practical change in our lives to show that we have genuinely encountered Jesus and accepted him as God’s son, the Saviour of the World. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Nirvana - Lord, Up Above.

After the Fire

The fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017 shocked the nation. A personal tragedy that claimed over 70 lives and affected many more, it exposed inequalities and tensions but also a strong sense of community and resilience and, in particular, a wide range of faith groups that are embedded in the community, and that responded practically, pastorally and professionally in a time of serious need and confusion.

In advance of the one year anniversary of the fire, the parish of St Clement and St James and the religion and society think tank, Theos, will host an evening to reflect on the faith groups’ response.

The evening marks the launch of two publications: After the Fire by Alan Everett, Vicar of St Clement and St James, and After Grenfell: the Faith Groups’ Response by Amy Plender, from Theos. After the Fire is a moving and penetrating account of Alan’s experience at the heart of the mass disaster, while After Grenfell draws on over 30 interviews with faith groups across the community to understand how they were able to respond in the way they did.

In the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, the local parish church became a focal point of the relief effort, and a gathering place for a traumatised community. In the months that followed, it worked closely with other community and faith groups to provide a compassionate network of support.

In this bold and prophetic challenge, Alan Everett shows that the church's response was possible only because it had opened its doors long ago, building relationships with the most marginalised in the community. Its effectiveness was born out of a patient, faithful, unheroic ministry that is all too easily underestimated.

Through gripping reportage and searching theological reflection, After the Fire demonstrates how parish ministry can be a living symbol of God's love, and a vital sign of hope.

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Petris Vasks - Lord Open Our Eyes.

Cecilia Vicuña: Precarious prayer

Cecilia Vicuña’s exhibition at England & Co begins with a series of paintings from the 1970s in which religious icons are replaced by personal, political and literary figures.

Vicuña learned this technique in the late 1960s from the Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington and was initially inspired by the naïve and subtly subversive images made by 16th Century indigenous artists in Latin America after the Spanish conquest when they were forced to paint angels and saints for the Catholic Church.

Salvator Allende, Fidel Castro and Karl Marx simply replace the Christian saints in these images; a reversal of the images indigenous artists were forced to paint by the Catholic Church and an acknowledgement that the Marxism of Latin America in the ‘60s and ‘70s was, for Vicuña, more compelling than Catholicism. Yet, as these works are also deliberately naïve with their subjects depicted within a utopian setting, they also indicate the fragility of the freedoms which had been won and which the Chilean coup d'état of 1973 - when Allende’s life was lost, along with 43 years of Chilean democracy - brought to an end.

Vicuña writes that her artistic practice changed as a result. Prior to the coup d'état she had each day made an object in support of the Chilean revolutionary process. Post coup d'état her objects supported the resistance against the dictatorship.

These objects, composed of feathers, stones, sticks, and other found materials, are known as ‘Precarios’ because they are literally precarious - “they can’t endure, they may fall apart by themselves.” They show their socialist character through their poverty and by the fact that “they can be done by anyone.”

Not only are these objects beautiful in and of themselves but they also reveal the beauty of what is thrown away and ephemeral. As such, they are also deeply spiritual. Vicuña has explained that: “Precarious is what is obtained by prayer. Uncertain, exposed to hazards, insecure. From the Latin precarius, from precis, prayer”:

"These materials are lying down and I respond by standing them up. The gods created us and we have to respond to the gods. There will only be equality when there is reciprocity. The root of the word 'respond' is to offer again, to receive something and to offer it back. 'We are made of throwaways and we will be thrown away,' say the objects. Twice precarious, they come from prayer and predict their own destruction. Precarious in history, they will leave no trace. The history of art written in the North includes nothing of the South. Thus they speak in prayer, precariously."

Vicuña finds deep personal connections between Taoism and Andean culture but her art of exile and its spirituality also resonate strongly with aspects of Christian understanding and practice, for example, Peter Rollins’ interpretation of St Paul’s claim that Christians are the refuse of the world. Rollins suggests that “Christians are the de-worlded … the part of no part, the community of outsiders … learning from, leaning toward and reaching out to the people who live day to day as the trash of the world … [who] lay down the various political, religious and cultural narratives that protect us from looking at our own brokenness and allow it to be brought to light.”

Would that we genuinely lived in the way Rollins suggests! Vicuña’s art provides an object lesson in visualising such praxis.

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Rob Hallingan - Another Fine Mess.