Living Out Kingdom Values!

Luke 21:5-19

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit….Amen!

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much in today’s gospel reading that really encourages us to want to be a follower of Christ! If anything, some of it might make you want to turn around and head in the opposite direction! Jesus starts off by telling the disciples that the temple will one day crumble; there will be false teachers trying to lead them astray; there will be wars, earthquakes, famine and plague. Oh, and the icing on top of this lot is that they will be arrested, persecuted, betrayed and possibly even killed! It’s a wonder that anyone in their right mind would even consider that following Christ would be the best thing to do!

The scenario which Jesus presents to his disciples is an almost apocalyptic, terrifyingly doom-laden set of events which I’m sure would cause most of us (if we were in their situation) to at the very least think very long and very hard about what it is that we are called to do.

I’m sure that many of us will remember almost 14 years ago just as the new millennium was about to dawn, there was almost universal panic that the world would be thrown into chaos because the computer systems upon which we all rely simply would not cope! Well they did cope, and the world as we know it did not come to an end! Every generation seems to have its own particular events which seem to almost define it. We recalled last weekend the sacrifice made by those who laid down their lives in times of war for others. In our own recent memories many of us will recall where we were when we first heard about the planes hitting the towers on 9/11 (I was actually in a newsagents shop just off Putney High Street in London).

A few years later came the London bombings and an increased awareness that perhaps life was actually more fragile than we would like. We learn about genocides in parts of the world which if we stop and think about it actually aren’t really too far away from us. And we see on the TV and read about disasters such as the Japanese tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and only this last ten days or so the absolute devastation in the Philippines caused by the recent tornado. Wherever we look there are people whose lives have been deeply affected and indelibly shaped by these events and countless other events around the world which often go unnoticed by the rest of us but which leave a huge impact on those involved.

We are, it seems, living in a world which is falling apart. A world with too many people wanting to use the same few resources! We see the words of Jesus in this passage as we look around us and he speaks of “nations against nations” and “kingdoms against kingdoms”, we see climate change that is very often caused by our own use and misuse of the earth, and although technology may have moved us on greatly the world really hasn’t changed all that much. Human nature remains much the same now as it was in the day when Luke’s gospel was written.

We human beings tend to prefer certainty over doubt, security over fear. Very often we see things in terms of black and white when the reality of life is that for most of it can be quite messy and complicated at times! We were never promised an easy ride, as this gospel reading tells us! Sometimes perhaps we can look at just how comfortable and safe we are as Christians in our well ordered church buildings. For all the hysteria that certain parts of the media try to stir up, Christians in the UK do not suffer persecution or worse as they may in other parts of the world. There are parts of the world where to be known as a follower of Christ is to have your home or church at risk of being burned down, or have you and your family thrown into a re-education camp (North Korea), or even killed!

And in spite of all this people are still able to find the strength and the courage to stand and say that they are Christian…….that they follow Jesus! As I mentioned two weeks ago on All Saints Day we are now in what the church calls the “Kingdom Season”. It is a time when the lectionary readings tend to focus upon what is sometimes called the “end times”.

Yet the Kingdom of God is about so much more than what will happen at the close of all history or a state into which we hope to enter once we die. As we pray each time we say the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. The kingdom of God is for the here and now as well as, not instead of, but as well as when one day we hope to be gathered with the saints around the throne. The catch is that we are each called to be the agents of God’s kingdom……to coin a phrase we are each called to live out “Kingdom Values”! And I know that to some that might sound like some kind of pious soundbite, but it is about living out the gospel in our daily lives whatever the situation may be. It’s about being in awkward, uncomfortable and sometimes frightening situations with those who hurt and are angry with the world and with God and maybe just listening and soaking up their pain.

When I watched the news a few days ago there was a Catholic priest on there who had opened up his church in the Philippines for anyone who needed help. You may well have seen the same news report. There were hundreds of people in that building who were seeking shelter. Camped out and sleeping where they could, on pews, under statues, in the nave…..anywhere there was space. In a city of devastation this priest and his church were very much demonstrating the values of the Kingdom of God to all who came, without judgment or preconditions. He spoke of how people had been taking food from supermarkets simply to survive……..others would quite likely condemn this as looting, but this priest offered not condemnation but rather the recognition of people who have found themselves in a dreadful situation having to cope the best way they can. And he opened up his church to them. This is the Kingdom of God in action!

In a world where there is so much uncertainty for so many we are called not simply to be passive observers hoping and praying that things will somehow all blow over and everything will eventually be all right again. No! We are called to be there right in the thick of it, standing with those who need someone to stand with them and speaking out for those who are without a voice. And yes, this might make us unpopular at times; this might make us misunderstood or cause us to be ridiculed, but this is what sometimes what it is to a follower of Christ. It is not supposed to be an easy path, but as the last verse tells us we do have hope, as “not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance will you gain your souls”. May we each of us seek to be the agents by which God’s Kingdom is able to flourish here in our own community as we live out our commitment to Christ.

AMEN

Seeing the Saints Amongst Us!

Sermon 3rd November 2013

All Saints

 

Luke 6:20-31

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hands up anyone who thinks that they are a saint! No?

Hands up anyone who thinks that the person sitting next to them is a saint!

I suppose if we were to ask ourselves the question “What is a saint?” then we might get a variety of answers depending on our own experience or point of view. Ask someone who lives along the coast in Southampton and they will probably tell you that “The Saints” are their local football team! The Roman Catholic Church has some pretty rigorous standards by which it recognizes a person’s sainthood, yet it seems to me that our reading today from Luke’s gospel gives us a pretty good idea of what makes a saint!

 In Luke’s version of The Beatitudes we read of such things as “Blessed are the poor”, “Blessed are the hungry”, and “Blessed are those who weep”…….even “Blessed are you when they exclude you”. So much that chimes with what has become the daily experience of many in our own communities, yet which on the face of it seems to be complete nonsense! Poverty, hunger, mourning, hatred, exclusion,  – these things certainly don’t seem like blessings!

But Jesus is convinced that they are. And most shocking of all, Jesus says that these are the sorts of people to whom the Kingdom of God is entrusted.

 It goes on to tell us “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you”. I guess some of us will find it easier, and even perhaps temporarily more satisfying to hate those who hate us, ignore those who are different from us and give as good as we get when someone starts hurling abuse at us! Yet we are called to do the exact opposite and to demonstrate what it is to be a part of the Kingdom of God!

 It’s a pretty safe bet I reckon that most saints tend not to go around with lofty ambitions of one day achieving sainthood and maybe getting their own special day named after them. After all if they did then they would probably be going against the basic job description! When we read about the lives of the saints very often they are simply ordinary people who find themselves in some very extraordinary circumstances! We tend sometimes to think of the saints as a sort of breed apart……a kind of “Super-Christian”, much to be admired and looked up to, but there’s no way that any of us can ever hope to be part of such company!

Here in this church of course we remember St George, and there are those here who will have a particular place in their heart for St Anne and St Mark. I’m sure that most people here could come up with the names of any number of saints. Many of the churches in our own deanery are named after, or dedicated to saints.

Just up the road we have St Mary’s. A little further afield there is St Luke’s, St Bart’s, St Peter’s, St Michael’s, even St Wulfran’s in Ovingdean. Some of the saints may seem at times to be so well known that they almost have a kind of celebrity status surrounding them. Others remain relatively obscure and unknown, except by a few!

The witness of many of these women and men – such as St Francis of Assisi, St Theresa of Avila or St Augustine of Hippo – are well known. Many of their writings have become popular, their deeds have inspired us to name hospitals and schools and churches after them, and their service to the Church has been taught over many generations. Yet, for others – such as St Simon, St Jude or indeed, St Wulfran– little is known beyond their names.

But regardless of how much or how little we know about these faithful witnesses, one thing is certain: Their life and ministry has richly blessed and influenced the church. And as we gather to celebrate the Feast of All Saints, we are called to give thanks to God for the blessings that the saints have given the church, as well as the many blessings God has given us.

When we look around this church we see and feel the dedication, the love, the prayers, the lives of thousands of very ordinary people who have lived out what it is to be a part of the Kingdom in this place and in this community. The Kingdom of God is built of these people here in Kemptown over the generations, often quietly getting on with what it means to be the Body of Christ to those who come. These are our saints, often unnamed, who stand alongside the roll call of all the official more well-known saints. People whose lives and witness have helped shape this church and this community!

I do speak often about both inclusion and community, and it seems to me that All Saints Day is a great example of both. As people who are set apart for God we are all called to one day be a part of that great community of saints worshipping our Lord………not standing on the outside looking in, but to be right there taking our place before him.

And so we gather today, not just as a relatively small group of people in our own little corner of Brighton. We gather as part of a wider community. A community which goes beyond the walls of this building, beyond the invisible parish boundaries, beyond Brighton. A community which goes beyond what we experience in this life and joins us with all who have gone before us and who will come after us. On this All Saints Day we are all called to be a part of the great Communion of Saints which we affirm whenever we recite the Apostle’s Creed!

As Fr Andrew often tells us, look around at the people next to you, or in front and behind you………go on, take a good look! Because they are the saints you will be sharing the Kingdom with, and YOU are the saint they will be sharing the Kingdom with.

 

AMEN

Clinging on with persistence!

Genesis 32:22-31

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5

Luke 18:1-8

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In the sixteenth century the Spanish poet and mystic, Saint John of the Cross wrote a poem that would still be remembered and studied over four centuries later. That poem became known as “The Dark Night of the Soul”! The poem narrates the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God. That journey is called "The Dark Night", because darkness represents the hardships and difficulties which the soul meets in its detachment from the world and reaching the light of the union with the Creator. There are several steps in this night, which are related in successive verses. The main idea of the poem can be seen as being symbolic of the painful experience that people endure as they seek to grow in spiritual maturity and union with God.

Perhaps you are sitting here now thinking…….”well, this is all a bit too heavy for a Sunday morning”, and maybe it is! Maybe you came here this morning expecting to meet with God, worshipping Him as part of our community here at St George’s. Maybe on the other hand your’e not quite sure why you are here. Whether you are here for the first time or you have been coming for years, somehow it all feels as though you are banging your head against a brick wall. All the prayers we pray and all the hymns we sing never really seem to do anything except bounce off the ceiling! Sound familiar? I suspect that most of us have felt like that during at least some point in our Christian journey!

The gospel reading this morning begins with Jesus telling his disciples to pray always and not to lose heart. It goes on to speak of a woman who was absolutely determined to get justice and be treated fairly. And since Jesus told a parable about the need to pray always and to not lose heart, it seems that the disciples, despite their commitment to following Jesus, did, at times, lose heart, and that they also, at times, gave up  or were tempted to give up on prayer. They’re not alone!

Sometimes it seems that a lot of people have given up on prayer. They’ve given up, because they prayed for a loved one’s healing, but death came anyway. They’ve given up, because they prayed for an end to their struggles, but the struggles just kept on coming. They’ve given up, because they prayed for an end to the sadness within them, but the sadness remains. They’ve given up, because it seems that God has forsaken them. Like the psalmist, they say to God: “Why are you so far from helping me? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning? O God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; by night, but find no rest. Why, God, have you forsaken me?”

They’ve given up, very often simply because they don’t see the point of prayer. What’s the use? Too often, it feels like talking to a  brick wall.

You may remember a number of years after the death of Mother Theresa, this woman who was almost revered as a saint within her own lifetime, a woman who lived a life of obedience and poverty as she sought to bring something of the love and compassion of God to those who literally had nothing. What a saintly woman, how close to God she must have been herself to be able to do that!

And yet we know from her own writings that were not discovered until after her death, that for virtually all of her very public ministry she felt completely and utterly isolated from God! At times she not only doubted the love and compassion of God, but she doubted also the very existence of God, yet there was still something within her which caused her to persist for decades with reaching out to others in the name of a God who to her very often felt very far away!

 Although feelings can be useful, there can be times when we simply don’t feel as though anyone is listening…..not even God! Even Jesus himself as he hung upon the cross echoed the words of the Psalmist that I mentioned earlier, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”. Even he felt at that moment something of what it is to feel abandoned by God! Not that he was abandoned; far from it……..God was still in control. Yet at that moment everything within his body cried out to God……..”God, where are you?”

We are called to persist whether or not we feel as though it is worth bothering with. I’m sure that many of us have prayed and not received the answer that we wanted or expected…..or seemingly not received an answer at all! What is the point? Rather like the woman seeking justice, we may feel as though we are wasting our time just shouting into the void! But she persisted, she kept clinging on to the hope that she would be heard and listened to.

 We read of this strange encounter by Jacob as he crosses a ford in the river. The story goes that he somehow found himself in an all-night wrestling bout with a mysterious stranger. As they wrestle together the stranger ends up dislocating Jacobs’s hip and still they struggle on. “Let me go”, says the stranger, “it’s almost daybreak”. Jacob’s reply is very telling, because somehow he recognises that this is no ordinary man he is wrestling with.  “I will not let you go, unless you bless me”. I imagine that with his hip out of place, Jacob was probably not feeling too great at this point, yet there was no way he was going to let go, he was going to keep hold of this man no matter what the cost!

As we read on it turns out that the true identity of this stranger was actually God. Jacob had been wrestling all night in the darkness with God himself. His persistence had paid off and he received his blessing!

The widow who Jesus described in his parable keeps on persisting. She is determined somehow eventually to have her voice heard. It would be understandable for her to simply give up the fight. No one is listening…..why carry on? Yet something with her urges her on!

 When we cry out to God, sometimes in anger, sometimes in sorrow, sometimes out of sheer desperation, like Jesus on the cross we don’t always get an immediate answer. Like Jacob during his mammoth wrestling match there are times when we can do nothing else but simply cling on, but cling on we do! But, our cry has been heard, however loudly or quietly we make it!

Jesus said to pray constantly and to not lose heart. Even if that prayer is “God, where are you?” our voice is heard, and eventually, maybe not at a time of our choosing, but eventually, we will receive a reply!

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Hangng around with the "wrong" kind of people!

Luke 15:1-10

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The problem with Jesus is that in the gospels he always tends to hang around with the wrong sort of people! This was abundantly clear to the scribes and the Pharisees who were grumbling and saying “this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them”. And anyway let’s face it; he wasn’t exactly Mr Respectable himself! He himself was born of dodgy parentage to an unmarried mother. He ran away at the age of 12. He didn’t have a proper job or home. He just wandered about always going on about peace and love, telling people to give away their money and possessions to those more in need. It wasn’t just that he hung around with the wrong kind of people….as far as the scribes and Pharisees were concerned HE WAS one of the wrong kind of people!

So here we read of all the “tax-collectors and sinners” coming from far and wide to listen to Jesus. Jesus, again, was encouraging the riff-raff to come into town. You can almost picture it.

People followed Jesus wherever he went. The crowd following him here are unlikely to be following him to a service and sitting in nicely ordered rows to sing a few hymns and listen to a sermon. These are people who for many different reasons found themselves on the outside of polite society and who were kept on the outside by those who had the power to keep them there. They would probably have been noisy, scruffy and not the kind of people you would feel comfortable taking home to meet mum and dad…….yet they are the kind of people Jesus chose hang around with! They see in Jesus someone who is ready to accept them as they are, on whatever level they happen to be!

This whole chapter of Luke’s gospel is about rejoicing over those which were once lost but are now found. Something that is illustrated by three parables.  Today we focus on the one sheep who went missing and the joy that occurs when it is found and returned to the fold. Jesus speaks to the crowd and the scribes and Pharisees of leaving the rest of the flock in order to go in search of the one that was missing. As Jesus spoke these words though there were a few things which the Pharisees and teachers of the law conveniently forgot!

Firstly, in their complaining about Jesus hanging around with the wrong kind of people…..with sinners and tax-collectors, they had forgotten that ALL have sinned. Jesus summed up the law of God with two commandments - love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. All the other commandments actually fall within the scope of these two! If you fall short of these two commandments, you have sinned. I think we all qualify. And although they certainly wouldn’t have seen it that way at the time the Pharisees certainly qualified as well.

For them it really quite simple! They divided the world up very much into two camps - the good and the bad, the righteous and the sinners, the ones who were in and the ones who were out. If you made an honest attempt to live by the commandments, kept away from bad company and followed the Jewish ritual laws, you were ‘in’. If you didn’t, you were ‘out’. As far as the Pharisees and teachers of the law were concerned, they were ‘in’. They lived in a world where the lines were drawn very sharply and things were seen very much in terms of black and white…….no room for shades of grey here!

But in fact the situation is much more complicated than that. Some sins are obvious for all to see - murder, or adultery, or stealing cars. Other sins are not so obvious, but Jesus treated them just as seriously - the love of money and the things it can buy, lack of love for the poor and those in need, covetousness, self-righteousness, injustice and so on. In the eyes of Jesus these things were all just as important, and in fact very often go alongside the more obvious sins which the Pharisees liked to make such a big deal about! The Pharisees were so concerned about what they saw as the failings of others guilty of doing things that they certainly wouldn’t dream of doing themselves, and so full of their own self-importance that they completely failed to recognise that their own lack of love for others was in fact just as sinful in God’s eyes.

 So the first thing the Pharisees and teachers of the law forgot was that everyone is a sinner, there are no exceptions. The second thing they forgot was that every person is important to God. Not just as a part of the crowd, but as individuals. God loves each one of us, notices when we stray away, and goes out looking for us to bring us home. He would not do this if we weren’t important to him.

God’s priorities are rather different from ours! If we had gathered ninety-nine sheep together we would probably have weighed up the risks of leaving them and going out to search for the one that was lost, and decided “I’ll stick with the ninety-nine”. Or if we still had the nine coins we might be tempted to chalk up the loss of the tenth to bad luck and leave it at that. Not with Jesus. Every single person is significant to God. You’re not just a statistic that he can write off; you’re a person made in God’s image, a unique individual, loved and precious in his sight.

I’m sure there are times when all of us have felt that maybe we are the “wrong person, in the wrong place and at the wrong time”. We soak up other people’s attitudes and responses towards us and it can be so easy at times to believe it of ourselves. And if we are honest about it, for much of its history the church itself has been complicit in this. By excluding (whether deliberately or not) those who do not easily fit into a nice neat box the church has sometimes seemed to side with the Pharisees! Over the years, those excluded have included women, people of colour, lesbian and gay people……..and for some this can still sometimes be the reality which they continue to face.

How often do we have new faces here in church and we are not quite sure how to respond to them? They might not be wearing the right kind of clothes, or they just seem a bit too “different”…..not really “church people”. And so we keep our distance. Here at St George’s we like to think of ourselves as a welcoming church and in many ways we are, but there will be people who walk through the door sometimes who for one reason or another may not always feel that welcome which we so much want to give.

 In my role as baptism officer I’ve spoken with people who bring their children to be baptised and who are worried that maybe because they themselves or their guests are not particularly “church people” they may say or do the “wrong” thing. They don’t know when to stand up or sit down or are too pre-occupied that the kids are making a noise! It’s tempting sometimes for those for us who come here every week to expect others who are unfamiliar with church to behave in the “right” way…….to “fit in”! We might not always say it out loud, but people generally get a sense of whether they are welcome in a place or not!

Jesus welcomes ALL to his table. For him there are no “right or wrong” people, there are just people in need of God’s love and grace. The walls that we sometimes build to make us feel more secure, the boxes that we like to put ourselves and others in……to him these are nothing. He welcomes sinners and eats with them. As we come to receive him in the Eucharist today, whether we take the bread and wine or receive a blessing instead, remember that he invites each and every one of us to come to him. Nobody……NOBODY is excluded from the feast.

AMEN

Jesus.....the rule breaker!

Luke 13:10-17

+ In the name of God…..Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’m old enough (just about), to remember when Sunday was still a day which felt very different from the rest of the week. As a child and young person my Sunday consisted of going to Sunday school at my local Methodist Church in the morning. The afternoon would be spent perhaps riding my bike around the streets of Redcar. There wasn’t much else to do! The only shops which were open were small corner shops or newsagents, and pubs were limited to opening within very specific hours, much to the annoyance of my step-father! You would wake up in the morning and it “felt” like it was Sunday!

Fast forward 25 or 30 years to today and things are very different from how they used to be! Most shops are open now on Sundays and pub licensing hours have certainly eased a lot as well. We live in time when (whether we like it or not) goods and services are available around the clock……24/7! Switch on the TV to see rolling news whenever we like…….no more waiting for Closedown somewhere around midnight with the National Anthem…….anyone else remember that? Head out to the shops whenever you want. Feel like a trip to the cinema or the theatre? How about whiling away this Sunday afternoon enjoying lunch and sipping Pimms in a sun-soaked beer garden somewhere (after coming here to church first of course)? Maybe your ideal Sunday afternoon is to just sit in front of the TV watching old musicals…….I’ve been known to do that!

Just don’t tell the Pharisees! They wouldn’t like it……..really they wouldn’t! The world the Pharisees thought they lived in was a nicely ordered one. A world where people knew the rules and kept to them. And if you did happen to break those rules then you would soon know about it, and probably so would everyone else!

 

So, here we see Jesus in our gospel reading teaching within the synagogue on the Sabbath. When approached by a woman who had been crippled for much of her life his instant response is to lay hands on her and heal her…….would we really have expected anything else? Well it seems that the leader of the synagogue did expect something else! He expected Jesus to obey the rules, in particular the one that prohibits working on the Sabbath!

I have the image in my mind of this indignant leader as a kind of Blakey from the seventies sitcom On the Buses. A man who lived by the rules and for the rules! I suppose he is something of a “jobsworth”! Those of you who remember On the Buses will know Blakey as the inspector who was so obsessed with keeping order in the bus depot and making sure the rules were kept that he missed out on much of the camaraderie and sense of belonging that his workmates so obviously enjoyed!

And so this leader goes straight over to where Jesus was and just starts to lecture the crowd that was gathered there. “You have six days of the week to come and be healed, come then and not on the Sabbath!” The rules that he lived his own life by and that he expected others to also keep were being so openly disregarded. It’s interesting that he doesn’t directly challenge Jesus himself, but rather he goes for the vulnerable who have come to Jesus in need of healing!

And Jesus’s response? As he does so many times in the gospels he turns the tables around and faces the man with his own hypocrisy. “Don’t you untie your donkey and lead it to drink on the Sabbath? And yet you have the nerve to complain about someone being healed?” He might as well have just said to the man, “Get your priorities right”!

The Sabbath had been given by God to the Jews as a day of rest…..of re-creation, a day free from the cares of the rest of the week. It was a day full of spiritual meaning, a day when the community could gather together in prayer and worship. And yet in many ways it had become fossilised within its own tradition and rules. A day that was supposed to bring freedom instead brought with it a sense of having to obey the rules. What the Sabbath as never meant to be was a day when people became so pre-occupied with not putting a foot wrong!

 I remember reading a few years ago of the very conservative Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland which opposed local council amenities such as swimming pools and leisure centres being open on a Sunday, and in some cases even tied up the swings in children’s playgrounds to make sure the Sabbath was properly observed. I’m sure it was done with good intentions, but their imposition of the rules on their community deprived the community of the choice to decide for themselves how best to spend the Sabbath and sucked much of the simple joy of life out of it!

I should imagine people sitting here today will have a number of different attitudes towards Sunday. You may be a traditionalist who longs for the good old days of when the shops were closed and the most you could do after church was a stroll along the sea-front. On the other hand, there will be those sitting here who (perhaps on a sunnier day than today) are quite happy to drive somewhere for the day, potter around the shops or go to the cinema. All strictly forbidden if we are to keep to the absolute letter of the law! And if we stop to think about it most of us in someway will probably do something today that according to the synagogue leader in our reading would count as “work”.

Jesus, as I’ve said before was never one for sticking to the rules or conventions. He probably wouldn’t have made a very good Anglican, with our PCC’s, Synod’s and committees! The one thing for Jesus which came far above and beyond all these rules and customs was the simple love and grace of God for all who came to him. Following Jesus isn’t about conforming to a set of rules laid down in the Bible, it’s not about becoming so bogged down by a long list of do’s and don’ts that we lose sight of the freedom that Christ offers us. And it’s certainly not about beating ourselves up when we don’t always manage to live by those rules.

 Following Jesus is about relationship! Relationship with a God, who through Jesus is able to break through the walls and offer us love beyond anything else we can ever imagine. A God who shows us new ways of relating to one another. A God whose priority is the restoration of all creation to himself. As Jesus reached out to the woman on that Sabbath morning and healed her the crowd rejoiced! Let us rejoice too for the one who in his love is able to go beyond the rule-book and into the very hearts of all who come to him.

AMEN

Pride, and the God of Diversity

Yesterday I had the enormous fun and privilege of taking part in the Brighton Pride Parade. This annual event attracts thousands of people to the city to celebrate our hugely diverse community and to stand in solidarity with those who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender, and I am part of that community myself.

Yesterday for the first time I walked in the Parade in Brighton (having walked in the London one on a number of occasions previously) carrying one end of a banner identifying our group as Lesbian & Gay Christians. It was a fantastic and wonderfully affirming experience. For too long there has been mutual suspicion and distrust between the church and the LGBT community for many reasons. Walking past over 170,000 people yesterday as openly Christian AND gay the response was entirely positive. People were pleased to see the church there walking alongside and within the community rather than just being on the sidelines.  With my free hand, people were giving me high fives as I walked past, no matter that ordinarily they might not consider even going through the doors of a church.

We were not there to preach, evangelise or brainwash. We were there simply to walk alongside those who in the past the church has sometimes ignored, marginalised and in some cases badly hurt. Those of us who are both gay and Christian are in very real sense ambassadors for our God, who created all of us in our fabulous diversity, and yesterday I for one was proud to walk the streets of Brighton as an openly gay Christian. A wonderful day of celebration and affirmation of human diversity for people of all faiths and none. Long may it continue.

 

Mary, Martha.......and the Perfect Dinner Party!

Luke 10:38-42

+ In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I wonder which of the two in our gospel reading you relate to most (and this applies to the fellas as well)! Do you see yourself as a “Mary”, sitting there quietly listening at the feet of Jesus? Or are you more of a “Martha”, never having time to sit down, always rushing about, doing three or four things at once? I have a sneaking suspicion that most of us, if we are honest would probably see ourselves more as Martha’s……always busy, worrying that things are maybe not quite right and doing our best to make sure that things go to plan. I’m sure that many of us have had friends round for dinner, and spent hours working out the perfect menu, selecting the right wine (to be served at the right temperature), making sure the seating plan is in order, and oh so carefully choosing the right kind of background music to create the perfect atmosphere for a dinner party to remember!

I’m sure that thoughts similar to these would have been running through Martha’s mind as she prepared for and received their honoured guest. She was in fact fulfilling the expected role of a woman at that time, certainly no time to sit down for five minutes at the feet of Jesus like her sister Mary!

Mary, on the other hand seems to have no problem with behaving in quite a different, and even radical way with Jesus. She sits at the feet of Jesus as though she is a disciple! This is almost unheard of!  It is simply not a woman’s place to take upon herself what was very much the male role of student, learning from the Teacher. In that simple act, by doing something that seems so very ordinary to us today, she completely turns upside down the expectations of society as to the correct way in which women should behave.

 

Sometimes we forget perhaps just how radical parts of the Bible actually are. We become so used to always having it there in the background that we can sometimes miss those times when the status quo is changed, particularly in such a quiet way. This is one of those times!

We read in other sections of the gospels of a similar scenario, such as when Jesus visited the home of Lazarus (who he had raised from the dead, and who also happened to be the brother of Mary and Martha). We again see Martha rushing about making sure everything is perfect and Mary sat at the feet of Jesus anointing him with perfume!

At the beginning of my Reader training we were asked to complete one of those personality style tests that are meant to pinpoint what style of personality you have. Some of you might be familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator……..this was a very much simplified version of that and certainly wasn’t an exact science! It basically slotted us into a number of categories according to whether we were an activist/doing kind of person or more of a contemplative/thinking one. For what it’s worth I came out as being at the more contemplative end of the scale, though in reality I reckon, like many I am a mix of both, but apparently it’s the contemplation that dominates!

If such tests were around in their time I reckon most of us would be able to guess what personality types Mary and Martha would fall into! Mary, the one who takes time to sit and learn, perhaps a bit more studious! Martha the practical one, eager to get things done, distracted, we are told by “many tasks”. We see similar personalities in the male disciples as well; it’s not simply a gender thing!

In a situation that those of you who are parents will probably sympathise with Martha complains to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do the work all by myself? Tell her then to help me!” (Lk 10:40) “I’m doing it all and she just sits there”! It does seem pretty unfair! And the response of Jesus? Don’t allow yourself to be so distracted by external things all the time. Slow down and focus on that which is really important!

 

It’s easy to get so distracted by things that are going on around us that sometimes we lose focus on what is really important. Even here in church, we can get so caught up sometimes in PCC meetings, rotas for the coffee, getting people to help out at the jumble sale, even who is presiding or preaching from one week to the next, that we can forget to take out time to be still like Mary.

All of those things, like Martha’s own preparations are important, but we need the times of simply sitting at the feet of Jesus to recharge and refresh us. We need to find time in our often distracted day when we can just be still and know that He is God and receive His love! Hospitality and generosity to others are absolutely essential to the gospel message, how we treat others is a key part of Jesus’s teaching, as we saw in last week’s recollection of the Good Samaritan. Yet, at the same time our actions need to be supported by our being fed by the one who brings us fullness of life.

Today we give thanks for the service that St John’s College has given not only this church, but also the local community. Like Martha they have been beavering away over the years providing us not only with our parish lunches, but also many who come to the community centre for a bite to eat and a friendly face at the same time as providing work experience for their students. The church would miss its Martha’s, and we will miss St John’s, but we wish them well and assure them of our prayers as they themselves move into a new phase.

So, I come back to the question I asked at the beginning! Are you a Martha or a Mary? And truth be told, each of us will have a mixture of the characteristics of each with us. We need both Martha and Mary. We need to be people who are prepared to go out and get our hands dirty and also take time to sit at the feet of Our Lord and be refreshed.

AMEN