John Ortberg: The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People
Royal Speidel: Evangelism in the Small Membership Church (Ministry in the Small Membership Church)
Jason Gardner: Mend the Gap: Can the Church Reconnect the Generations?
Richard A. Burridge: John: A Bible Commentary for Every Day (The People's Bible Commentaries)
Alan Roxburgh: The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World
Alex Tylee: Walking with Gay Friends: A Journey of Informed Compassion
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In which Len Hjalmarson develops Alan Hirsch's view of mission as Christology - Mission - Ecclesiology: NextReformation » missional rooting. He points out that God has always been on mission, and that God's work of mission begins with forming Israel. Hence the root of mission is not Christology but the Trinity.
I can only aspire to this: Letters from Kamp Krusty: New Kamp Krusty Feature: "If Jesus Had a Blog"
Ten days ago, my blogging friend Will Grady wrote this heartfelt post: Loneliness in Ministry « Ramblings from Red Rose. He poses important questions about church leadership.
There are structural attempts to support, but they tend to have inbuilt defects. A Methodist District will run a group for those in the first five years of ministry (the so-called 'Under 5s Group' - kind of like playgroup for ministers). Some Districts even run these groups for those in the first ten years. I remember being ordered to avail myself of the fellowship - something wrong there! A lot depends on whether you get on with the leader and the other members.
The same is true of the regular circuit staff meeting. That, though, has a further handicap: you can be consumed with business and forget the soul. It does have the advantage of being a good place to talk through difficult issues, but whether you bare your soul there is a judgment call, especially as the superintendent minister is your 'boss' and could be involved, if there were disciplinary issues. What exactly can you confess?
That in turn has a connection with the rôle in our system of the Chair of District. At one stage, District Chairs were seen as pastors to the pastors. I don't doubt that many intend to be so, and on the odd occasion one has been so for me. However, one gave the game away in an annual letter when he said that each minister in the District was entitled to one hour of his time a year. Thanks, but no thanks, I thought. Furthermore, they would be even more closely involved in any disciplinary procedures, so a certain caution can inhibit you, especially if you're thinking some non-Methodist thoughts.
Where have I found support? I've learned over sixteen years to look for it outside the structures, and often outside Methodism. That isn't a criticism of Methodism, it's just a fact about the tendencies of structures and institutionalism. Friendship is vital, and in my first circuit while I was single the local URC minister (herself also single) spotted my need for support, and invited me to join one of her church's home groups. It was a generous move on her part. Out of that group and some other work came a bunch of us who used to meet socially on a Friday night for pizza, a video and some red liquid you wouldn't use in a Methodist communion service. Those people became among the dearest friends I have ever had in my life.
In the last circuit, it was the monthly meeting of a group of similarly-minded church leaders from across the denominational spectrum. We worshipped and prayed together, shared our news and supported each other.
I have also found the need for inspiration from outside. In the first circuit, I travelled regularly to St Andrew's Chorleywood while David Pytches was the vicar, for leaders' days. These were held about six times a year. I was also a member of the (now defunct) Evangelical Forum for Theology, a small academic Methodist network. Our annual conference/retreat was a highlight.
Here, I meet monthly or so with a vicar friend as prayer partners. We have a similar outlook and have similar church situations. Other support has been more difficult to garner, and I often feel quite dry spiritually. There are some possibilities, but diary clashes have been the usual problem.
What means of support do others use and recommend? Let's encourage one another.
Introduction
Voting. However cynical we are about politics, our culture is saturated with
it. We are a democracy, and we vote for our leaders. Local elections are
looming in many parts of our country. Opinion polls attempt to predict who will
win a General Election, and politicians pay close attention to them.
Voting is present in the epidemic of reality shows on the TV. We decide the fate of a wannabe singer on The X Factor. We judge the aspirations of someone who wants to be famous for being famous on Big Brother. We choose between desperate has-beens, trying to resuscitate their careers on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.
Now, if I asked you to take a vote on the Book of Acts, as to which passage had led to the most discussion, I doubt you would choose today’s reading. Perhaps you would choose chapter 2, with its account of the first Christian Pentecost. Maybe you would go for chapter 9, dramatically recounting the conversion of Saul on the Damascus Road. Both those stories are popular and controversial. But among the scholars, Paul in Athens wins the vote:
‘In fact, it has attracted more scholarly attention than any other passage in Acts.’[1]
Apart from the question of how Paul’s speech here relates to his teaching in his epistles (which I won’t bore you with in a sermon),
‘Luke has presented us here with the fullest example of Paul’s missionary preaching to a certain kind of Gentile audience (namely, an educated and rather philosophical pagan one without contacts with the synagogue)’[2].
In that respect, this story commends itself to us, if we are to have a missionary engagement with our world. It is to some extent a pagan one, and has little contacts not with the synagogue but with the church. For several years, I have referred to this passage in that respect. Indeed, I chose to preach on it only a month after starting here, when I did a series of sermons about our missionary relationship with a changing world. Today, the Lectionary brings me back to these verses[3], and the chance to reflect again on how we exercise our missionary calling today. What does missionary commitment require of each one of us?
1. Passion
Paul is waiting for some friends. Rather than idle his time away, the first
thing Luke tells us is that
‘While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols.’ (Verse 16)
‘Deeply distressed.’ The Greek is the word from which we get our word ‘paroxysm’. It’s a word for strong negative emotions. The city was full – no, weighed down – with idols. That it would be upsetting for someone Jewish like Paul is obvious on one level: the Ten Commandments prohibit graven images of God, so idols are out. But it was worse in Athens. Jews often alleged that there was a link between idolatry and immorality. The content of some Athenian idols would have backed up that claim.[4] As it’s Sunday morning, I’ll spare you the tawdry details.
We too face a culture that is ignorant of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There are many reasons for this, some of them our fault as the Church, but the desire (need?) for worship persists, and so we have idolatry today, some of which is connected to immorality.
We can list today’s idolatries easily: sex, shopping, money, possessions, and so on. But there are bigger questions for us: does seeing people worship in this way arouse passion in us as Christ-followers or not? And if it arouses passion, is it a godly passion?
There are several reactions we can have to contemporary idolatry. One would be apathy. We see false and unhealthy worship, but can’t be bothered to make a stand. Either that, or we’re more worried about people’s reactions if we say something, so fear keeps us quiet.
Another is that we can react passionately, thinking we are doing so for God, but being quite ugly. Passion turns to judgmentalism.
Or we can be passionate for the wrong reasons. We look at the numbers flocking to sporting events or the shops on a Sunday, and bewail our own small numbers. If we’re not careful, our real reason is not a desire to honour Jesus Christ, but the fear that our little religious club might close. ‘Can we fill all the vacant jobs here?’ is a poor reason for evangelism.
The passion Paul had was a passion for the glory of Jesus. If the worship due to his name were being directed elsewhere, even if out of ignorance rather than deliberate choice, that moved him. He challenges us to leave behind apathy, anger and selfishness as reactions to idolatry, and instead react out of a heart full of love for Jesus. I believe Paul could only have reacted as he did in Athens if he regularly remembered how much God in Christ had done for him who once had been a sworn enemy of the church.
We don’t have to have had dramatic ‘Damascus Road’ conversions like him, but a sense of how wonderful God is, how much he has done for us, how gracious and loving he is in contrast to us will do more for mission than a thousand training programmes. It’s a passion that comes from God’s grace, and which is nurtured in worship, prayer, fellowship, Bible meditation and getting on with the life of a disciple. In other words, God has acted in extravagant love towards us, and we receive and respond. Then we have a passion for Jesus and a passion for those who do not love him.
2. Engagement
If you have a passion for Jesus and for those who don’t know him, then the
last thing you can do is sit around and moan. Nor can you bury your head in the
sand and say, ‘It’s all hopeless.’ Passion will drive you to engage the love of
Jesus with those yet to know him.
And that passion drives people out into the world to engage with the idol worshippers and others. It doesn’t say, ‘We’ve got an interesting event on here, why not come and join us?’ Those happily worshipping idols see no reason to do so, and nor did the Athenians. Paul went to them to engage them with the Gospel; he didn’t set up camp and invite them onto his territory. So – he went to the synagogue (not that he considered his fellow Jews idolaters, but he believed Jesus was the fulfilment of all their hopes), where he didn’t get up and give an altar call: he ‘argued’ (debated) with the Jews and the Gentile God-fearers (verse 17). That is, he was in conversation with them. He didn’t solely use set-piece speeches.
He did the same in the mainstream Athenian culture, because he also went to the market place to debate with whoever was there each day. Here, we need to understand that the market place wasn’t simply where you went to buy your strawberries and potatoes: it was the centre of civic and cultural life in Athens. If you wanted to make an impact upon the life of the city, you went to the agora, the market place and started networking with people there. Therefore, we have our priorities out of kilter when we are happy that someone answers a call to preach or offers for the ministry, but we are less impressed when somebody becomes a bank manager, a teacher, an artist, a musician or a secretary.
Yesterday, I read the words of a Canadian businessman who had been reflecting on Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, where he tells his disciples they are the salt of the earth. Here is just one of his thoughts:
‘Salt NEVER serves its purpose staying in the shaker. The purpose of the Christian life is found when “shaken out” to flavour the world. Too often the highest vision of ministry given to Christians is to be on the church platform, rather than changing the flavour of the world.’
If disciples are the salt of the earth, then, the church is the saltshaker. Our purpose is not to create an alternative social life and entertainment menu for Christians: it is to shake the salt out into the world, where it will do its work of engagement. Yes, we are here to heal, comfort and encourage, but never by keeping the grains in the saltshaker.
3. Contact and
Conflict
Paul causes a stir in Athens. Some find him intriguing, others are disparaging.
Still others are confused: he is advocating a god called Jesus, and a goddess
called Anastasia (the Greek for ‘resurrection’, which is a feminine noun). The
Areopagus, the city council that decided which gods were acceptable to be
worshipped, decides almost to put him on trial – or at least put his views
under their microscope.
How does Paul respond? Much of his speech follows the conventions of ancient rhetoric. He speaks in their style. Unlike when he is in a synagogue, he doesn’t quote the Scriptures – but his content is scriptural. His only direct quotes come from Greek cultural sources such as poets – but he uses them to support his argument and bring the challenge of the Gospel to his hearers.
And his point is this: the Athenian approach to God is plain wrong. God the Creator doesn’t need idols, nor is he dependent upon what human beings do. You’re muddling around in the dark, he tells his listeners. God excused that in the past, but not any longer: he will judge the world. His promise that he will do so is that he has raised Jesus from the dead. This isn’t comfortable stuff. Paul is under suspicion. In response, he criticises Athenian beliefs, and ends by proclaiming the Resurrection, and Athenians didn’t believe anyone would be raised from the dead[5].
Paul, then, knows the Gospel, and has taken the trouble to know the society to which he is proclaiming that Good News. The Gospel is his foundation, but how he shares it depends on the people with whom he is engaging.
It’s this knowing the Gospel and knowing our world that is important for us. Some of us know one far better than the other. There are those Christians who spend so much time in Bible study, but they wouldn’t have a clue how to relate to non-Christians. But there are others who wrap themselves up in the world and are ignorant of the faith. The world easily squeezes them into its mould[6]. They are barely distinguishable from their non-Christian friends.
Let me pose this as a challenge, then: do I fall into one of these extremes? Am I so caught up in Bible study and Christian books that I can’t connect with people who need the Gospel? If so, will I take the time to listen and understand our world? We can do this by nurturing conversations with friends, reading newspaper leader columns and paying attention to popular culture, such as music and television. While we do this, we look for the underlying assumptions and subject them to Gospel scrutiny.
Or am I so absorbed by the world that I am losing my Christian distinctiveness? If that is me, then I have a different challenge. I may need the discipline of daily Bible reading. Good quality Christian books may help me. (Ask me if you want recommendations about books or Bible study notes.) I may well find it helpful to join a fellowship group where we spur one another on in our discipleship.
Conclusion
Sometimes in a world that seems increasingly ignorant of the Gospel, if not
hostile to it, the task of Christian witness seems daunting, if not hopeless.
But when we read of Paul taking the Good News to pagan Athens, we realise that
nothing is impossible with God. No, he didn’t see masses of converts, but he
did make some headway.
The change requires a degree of recalibration for us as Christians from what we have been used to. We can’t rely on commonly accepted beliefs or the idea of a ‘Christian country’: we need a passion for Jesus and for people not yet in the community of faith. Nor can we expect to do things on our terms and our territory: we need to move out in engagement. Finally, we need to bring the Gospel and the world together, not only in our actions but also in our thinking, so that we can shape our missionary task appropriately.
Are we up for the challenge?
Kim opines about that awful funeral poem, 'Do not stand at my grave and weep.' Yes, the closing words 'I am not here, I did not die', are dreadful. They play to the denial that happens in the face of death. The loved one did die: that is why we are here.
Worse for me is Henry Scott Holland's, 'Death is nothing at all.' Holland was, I believe, a canon of St Paul's Cathedral. Of all people, he should have known that (please forgive the double negative coming) death is not nothing. It is the last enemy.
Such poems provide false comfort. Sometimes I have had to have them included in a service, often because the family has already told the undertaker what they want in the service before I have been contacted. In such situations, I have found diplomatic ways of explaining in the service why I see things differently. I have never had poor feedback from doing so.
Ironically, in the face of all the denial these poems propagate, W H Auden's bleak 'Funeral Blues' (popularised in 'Four Weddings And A Funeral') seems more honest, even if it is tragically devoid of hope.
And from a Christian perspective, I am happier with 'What Is Dying?', the piece about a ship sailing away out of sight over the horizon, but being greeted in another port.
What do others think?
Paul Roberts is bored with the froth of postmodernism: staring into the distance::as far as our eyes can see » The Postmodern: boring the people of Britain since 1999
Curious for a pioneer of alternative worship ...
My new favourite blog, Stuff Christians Like, had this post a few days ago: Stuff Christians Like: #161. Refusing to make songs you can slow dance to.
In the comments, several people riff on the theme of (un)suitable music for first dances at weddings. Debbie and I only had a wedding reception with food. We're both allergic to dancing, but not to food. We were more - ahem - creative with our choice of entry music and exit music for the wedding service itself. For the bulk of the ceremony, we were trad. Hymns included 'Be thou my vision' and 'And can it be'. I'm sure there was a third, but I can't remember it.
But as I say, the entry and exit music were not quite what you would expect at a Christian wedding. Debbie, having been a biker in her youth, wanted to walk down the aisle with her Dad to Steppenwolf's 'Born to be wild' (that's from the hippie biker film 'Easy Rider', young people). We had timed it at the rehearsal so that she would arrive by my side just as the chorus came in for the first time. My mother was in the row behind me. As we stood for the entrance of the bride, she poked me and said, 'What is this song, darling?' Our Chair of District also came to the service. As an accomplished classical musician, I have no idea what he thought of the choice.
But I had the choice of exit music. I brought two possibles, and we experimented to see which one had the better rhythm for walking out to. In the end, the theme tune to the 1960s TV show Thunderbirds won out over The Simpsons main theme. We hadn't told my two young nephews, who were page boys. They were delighted.
As a minister, then, I have little room for argument when couples don't come up with the usual Mendelssohn and Wagner requests (or Widor's Toccata, but that depends on the organist's competence). Perhaps my favourite memory was an African-Caribbean wedding in Chatham. The bride came in, not only with her father and bridesmaids, but a whole long procession, American-style. As a song by Eric Benet played, they danced down the aisle, their forerunners scattering petals. When she left with her new husband, they went out to live African drums.
The one shame about that wedding was that the bride had, as a young woman in Wolverhampton, been a babysitter for Beverley Knight, now a famous British soul singer. Ms Knight was supposed to turn up at the wedding and sing. Unfortunately, recording commitments (she was recording her 'Who I Am' CD at the time) prevented her. Instead, an anonymous female singer from a black-majority Pentecostal church sang an a capella solo of Al Green's 'Let's Stay Together' (and - yes - Al Green, not Tina Turner). On the spur of the moment I dropped my standard wedding sermon and somehow linked that song with the Bible passage from Ruth that the couple had chosen for the ceremony.
Does anyone else have fun stories about wedding music?
Introduction
‘Are we there yet?’ If you have ever had small children in a car, you will
be familiar with that persistent question. ‘No,’ you say, and try to encourage
them not to be impatient, even though you know you’ve only just set out and
have hours to go. You will have planned a route, knowing where you are starting
and where you intend to arrive. Perhaps you will also have thought about
stopping places on the way.
And life is a long journey, too. Noticing the Old Testament language of pilgrimage, we speak of the Christian life as being on a journey. However certain we are of our faith, we have not arrived yet. We are still travelling. In the spiritual journey, we again need to know where we are going, where we might stop and how we get there.
I believe these verses from John 14 are to some extent about that journey. These days in the Church, we don’t spend so much time thinking about our ultimate destination. We so focus upon the ‘now’, with our concerns for social transformation and the like, that we forget something important here. Where we are going, the stopping places and the overall route will all affect how we travel now. So this passage – which overlaps so much with the main Gospel reading at a funeral – should give us direction, as well as the comfort it provides at funerals. I want to bring together, then, both what we do now with where we are going for eternity.
1. Destination
Jesus says he is going to the Father. It’s important to get the destination
right. You will go off course if you plan to head for the wrong place. If I think
I have booked a summer holiday in the Mediterranean, but end up in Moscow, I am
going to have all the wrong clothing with me!
In the spiritual journey, I want to suggest we sometimes mistake the final destination. Just to say we expect to go to heaven when we die is not to anticipate our final destination. That may sound strange, if not a downright heresy, but let me explain – and let me also assure you I am still going to talk in this sermon about where we go when we die.
According to that great New Testament scholar Tom Wright, the current Bishop of Durham, John has in view in his Gospel the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus[1]. And something similar is what the New Testament has in vision for human beings and the whole creation. The Book of Revelation looks forward to new heavens and a new earth, with a new holy city where resurrected human beings will worship God.
Our overall destination, then, is not simply heaven: it is an utterly recreated universe. We shall have resurrected bodies, just as Jesus had. The idea that the body is just a shell and that the real person is inside is not a Christian one, however much we repeat it. Historically, it comes from strains of Greek philosophy, which disdained the body. If the body had little or no value, then it didn’t matter what you did with it. Abusing it didn’t matter. Infidelity and perversion were of no consequence. Only the soul mattered.
But the biblical hope is different. It sees people as integrated bodies, souls and spirits. What we do in the body is a spiritual issue. That’s why many Christian ethical issues are about physical actions. The body matters to God. He created it, and he made it good. Fallenness and sin have damaged it. It rots in the grave, or is burned in cremation. But God’s plan is to restore it. We believe, as the Creed says, in the resurrection of the dead. We shall have what Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 calls a ‘spiritual body’ – not just a spirit, but a spiritual body, a body animated by the Holy Spirit[2], again just as Jesus did at his Resurrection.
And in a sense, God plans something similar for creation – there will be new heavens and a new earth. The new holy city will come down out of heaven from God. The Bible may begin in a garden, but it ends in a city. You can understand the appeal of the rhyme that says you are closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth. In the city, the dirt, noise and violence may make you feel far from God. But God is in the business of renewing and redeeming cities. Our ultimate destination is citizenship of God’s new holy city!
Now is this pie in the sky when we die? Only in the sense that we are eating some of the pie now! It is cake on a plate while we wait! My point is this: if our ultimate destination is resurrection to a body animated by the Holy Spirit, and citizenship of the new holy city in God’s new creation, then that has practical implications now. The pie and the cake are not all in the future. We anticipate them now, by our lifestyle. This is why we care about healing and social justice: because God will make all things new. It is about our Christian hope.
Not for us the bleak vision of a Dylan Thomas who wanted to
rage against the dying of the night and urged us not to go gently into that
dark night. For Christians, we pray for healing knowing that even God heals
someone, they will die later. But that is not the end. There is the new
creation to come. Healing is a foretaste of the resurrection body. Likewise, we
may campaign to correct social injustice, and we may or may not succeed. Even if
we do, our achievements may later be reversed. But again, we are anticipating
God’s ultimate future. Social justice is a foretaste of the new earth. Our final
destination motivates our action today.
2. Wayfaring Stations
Every now and again, Rebekah brings up the subject of death. She knows I deal
with it quite a lot, given the number of funerals I take – especially recently.
She doesn’t want anyone to die, although we explain to her that God will bring
them all back to life one day. It’s our equivalent of when I asked similar
questions as a boy of my parents. My Dad would say, ‘Imagine the bank [he
worked for NatWest] sent me to work in Australia. I might have to go there
ahead of you, but one day you, your Mum and your sister would all join me in
the house I had been living in, and had been preparing for all of us.’
His answer was reminiscent of what Jesus says in John 14, when he promises to go and prepare one of the many dwelling-places in his Father’s house for us, and then come back to take us there (verses 1-4). But what does Jesus mean by his Father’s house and the dwelling-places? After all, isn’t this where we get the idea about going to heaven when we die?
‘My Father’s house’ is an interesting figure of speech. Can you remember what Jesus also called his Father’s house? It was the Temple in Jerusalem[3]. The Temple, where Jews believed heaven and earth met, had many apartments in its complex. Pilgrims used these apartments as temporary dwellings when they arrived in town. Jesus uses these ‘dwelling-places’ as an image of
‘safe places where those who have died may lodge and rest, like pilgrims in the Temple, not so much in the course of an onward pilgrimage within the life of a disembodied ‘heaven’, but while awaiting the resurrection which is still to come.’[4]
So the dwelling-places in the Father’s house signify not our ultimate destination, but a wayfaring station, a place of rest before we reach the end of our journey. This would be, then, what Jesus meant when he told the penitent thief at Calvary that on that very day they would be together in Paradise. They would be at the divine wayfaring station. It is what Paul says with different metaphors, when he talks of going to be with the Lord, or when he and Jesus both refer to death as being asleep. Death is a place of rest before the resurrection of the dead. Blessèd are the dead, for they rest from their labours.
What is the practical significance of this for us today? Obviously,
it gives us some comfort to know that our loved ones who are disciples of Jesus
are at peace – especially if their life had been unhappy, they had suffered from
a cruel disease, or the manner of their death was distressing. However, there
is more. In a world filled with strife, friction, argument, bitterness and war,
God wants to grant rest and peace. Again, this gives us a vision for how we may
live in partnership with God’s purposes. Is there a situation where we could
please God by helping to bring rest in place of strife? Is there something we
can do to bring reconciliation in place of fighting, justice instead of war?
3. Route
More and more I find that if people want to come and visit us for the first
time, they don’t ask for directions, they ask for our postcode. Why? Because they
have satellite navigation in their car. They can type in the postcode from which
they are beginning their journey, and our postcode as their destination. Then the
device will guide them through pictures and voice instructions from door to
door. Hopefully, it won’t take them the wrong way down a one-way street, or
down a jetty to a river. Even with perfect sat-nav, we still tell our new
visitors about our house being up a hidden drive.
Our route is also guided by a voice. ‘I am the way,’ says Jesus (verse 6). He doesn’t simply show the way, he is the way. It is by listening to his voice and by walking with him that we find the route he has opened up to our initial temporary resting-place after death, and to our ultimate destination of bodily resurrection in the new creation. He has already travelled through death to the temporary wayfaring station of Paradise, and the Holy Spirit has raised him from the dead. His death and resurrection have opened up the way to the Father, as he was condemned in our place, freed us from accusation and brought us new life. Not only that, he shows us the Father to whom we are going, because if we have seen Jesus, we have seen the Father (verse 9). If we want to know what the God to whom we are going is like, we look at Jesus.
Jesus is the route, then. He has cleared the blockages on the road by his own death and resurrection. The same death and resurrection are also models for the way we shall travel. And to travel with him, we need to listen to his voice. The route we take is the way of discipleship. Fundamental to living in hope in the face of death is that we are committed to listening to Jesus. Listening to him does not mean we listen and then weigh up whether we fancy doing what he wants, as if God just made the Ten Suggestions and we can arbitrate the rights and wrongs. Listening to Jesus only works with a prior commitment to following him and imitating him. In John 7:17 he says,
‘Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own.’
We need to resolve to do God’s will, if we are to be true listeners to Jesus who is our route, our way. There is no point in hearing the voice on a sat-nav telling us to take a particular road and then ignoring it. The sat-nav will recalibrate the route in a few seconds, and give some revised instructions, just as if we fall away from the will of God, Christ will graciously find a way to get us back on our travels with him. But if we persistently disregard or disparage the voice of Jesus telling us his way, then eventually we shall no longer hear the voice.
Our ultimate destination, then, is the bodily resurrection of
the dead to live in God’s new creation. This involves a commitment to social
justice and healing now. Before we get to the resurrection, we rest in death at
the wayfaring station of Paradise. This means a commitment to peace-making now.
To make the journey means a commitment to following the voice of Jesus, who has
built the road and travelled it. And as we follow obediently, we call others to
join with us on the pilgrim way.
[1] N T Wright, The Resurrection Of The Son Of God, pp 445-7.
[2] I owe this insight to my research supervisor many years ago, Richard Bauckham.
[3] Luke 2:49; John 2:16.
[4] Wright, p 446.
Technorati Tags: death, resurrection, heaven, TomWright, NTWright, Paradise, RichardBauckham, DylanThomas, healing, socialjustice
It's my day off, and I did some long overdue tidying up of the blogroll this morning. I've dropped the news and technology feeds (although I do look at them), and made the general blogroll focus more specifically on the Christian and ministry blogs I read. I've also arranged them in alphabetical order. Do click on some of those you don't recognise. I've by no means included everything I look at in Google Reader, the list is mostly the current favourites.
You can tell it's my day off, though - my brain is more switched off than ever. This morning, Debbie and I forgot two vital things, but were reminded of them both in time. Firstly, we forgot we were going to start attending a numeracy class at our daughter's primary school. Not that we're innumerate: here speaks one who would have read Computer Science or Maths first, had he not injured his neck aged 18, and my wife is professionally an auditor. No, the school is showing parents how Maths (note the extra 's', American friends!) is taught today, so we can support our kids. Fortunately, another mum reminded us!
Then, as we were walking back, Debbie suddenly remembered that today was the day we had tickets for after school to take the kids and see some CBeebies characters at a theatre in Southend. A great time was had by all, and a good fun presentation of the virtues of recycling formed the narrative. It was our son's third visit to the theatre, and our daughter's fifth or sixth. It is wonderful that these high quality children's shows exist, so that we can introduce them to the joys of this cultural delight.
Now it's just a case of preparing for tomorrow. It brings probably the most pointless requirement in a Methodist minister's diary: District Synod. Only useful for meeting old friends, the business is usually rubber-stamped or dominated by those few who like the sound of their own voices and think everybody else loves their vocal cords as much. I have often taken a magazine or a good book with me. I cannot understand the devotion to Synod shown by lay representatives and older ministers. It is a fundamentally inefficient way to conduct church business. Theological debates, when they occur, are sterile, because they simply break down along predictable divisions. I could be doing something worthwhile. Usually, the weather is good, and you are stuck inside (although tomorrow's forecast isn't good). Worse, tomorrow our circuit is hosting. Must arrive early, not out of enthusiasm, but to bag an inconspicuous seat at the back.
Technorati Tags: blogroll, GoogleReader, Cbeebies, theatre, Southend, Methodist, Synod
Introduction
I have in my congregation at Broomfield a man who is a Freeman of the Borough
of Chelmsford. He thoroughly deserves it, as for decades he has gone out in
rain and snow to collect for worthy local causes.
I don’t know what rights were conferred upon him with the honour, but it is well known that if you receive the freedom of other towns or cities, you are entitled to drive your herds or flocks without hindrance across bridges.
However, although I drive past one or two farms on my way here, I’ve never noticed anyone expecting to conduct their sheep without let or hindrance along the A130. And even what farmland we have near here will be under threat as the housing expansions near Broomfield, Beaulieu Park and Boreham are built.
All of which means that we are further isolated from biblical metaphors about shepherds and sheep, making it difficult to enter the world from which Jesus spoke. Even our culture’s approach to herding sheep is different: we drive from behind and use a sheepdog, Palestinian shepherds lead from the front.
And not only that, Jesus mixes his metaphors! One moment he’s the gate to the sheepfold, the next he’s the shepherd.
So without spending too much time discussing ancient farming methods, how can we connect with John 10? At the very least, we can set it in context and look for the points Jesus is trying to make.
Why should we explore it, though? That’s where context comes in. To state the obvious, John 10 comes straight after John 9. In chapter 9, Jesus has healed a man born blind. To the disgust of the religious leadership, he has done it on the Sabbath. For that terrible act, Jesus has been condemned and the healed man has been excommunicated. For Jesus, this raises the issue about proper leadership of God’s people. That’s what John 10 is about: what kind of leadership is healthy, and what is toxic?
And it applies not only to the leaders, it applies to the whole Christian community. What is a healthy Christian fellowship, and what is an abusive one? Some of us have known in other places what it means to be in a damaging church, and have wanted to escape. It’s all very well putting some distance between ourselves and an unhealthy congregation or leader, but sometime we need to be part of a life-giving community. I believe John 10 helps us in the discerning process. And even if we haven’t had that painful history, it is still important to give ourselves a health check. So what does John 10 say to us about healthy churches and leaders?
1. Life
In verse 10 Jesus says,
‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’
Many years ago, the house church leader Gerald Coates once said that we have so re-ordered the church that we have replaced Jesus’ words that he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly with the idea that he came that we might have meetings and have them more abundantly!
There is a choice, says Jesus, between the kind of community that gives life and the kind that destroys. Life versus death. We talk of the Gospel, the Good News. If Jesus came to bring life, then the Good News needs to look, sound and feel like Good News. The American Christian writer Philip Yancey recently told the Church Times,
If it doesn't sound like good news, it's not the gospel. If it's not setting you free and enlarging life, then it's not Jesus's message.
There is a sense in which the Gospel proclamation starts not with Good News, but bad news – the bad news that we all are sinners, and that our sinfulness cuts us off from God. But the poisonous church or leader dwells mostly on sin and making people feel bad or worthless. You come away from their company feeling you are a miserable and worthless worm. Worse than that, the leader and the congregation manage to come over as effortlessly superior to mere mortals like you or me.
The healthy church or leader is different. The bad news isn’t absent. They are clear about the seriousness of sin and judgment, because it’s false good news to couch the message in terms of ‘I’m OK, you’re OK.’ We’re not OK, and the healthy church knows this. But the people of the healthy church also know that God is rich in mercy and generous with grace. God’s grace is more plentiful than human sin. The healthy church is therefore a safe place for the wounded. To quote Philip Yancey again from that Church Times interview:
If you had asked what I’d like my influence to be, I’d answer that I would like to give companionship to those who doubt, sympathy to those who suffer, and grace to those who have felt little of it from the Church.
If we are a healthy church, then wounded people will find life and love here. We will find healing for our own wounds. We will know pain, but will not be miserable wretches. We will have strong commitments to certain ethical standards, but even the actions we refuse to do will not be a dour, black-suited ‘Thou shalt not’, but a grateful recognition that God knows best for us.
No, there will be a joie de vivre about us. We will even laugh. As Oswald Chambers, who wrote the devotional classic ‘My Utmost for his Highest’, said,
When God makes you holy He gives you a sense of humour.[2]
2. Sacrifice
As some of you know, I suffered a (then) mysterious neck injury when I was
eighteen. I remember sitting one night at a renewal meeting. I was in such pain
that I looked for the most comfortable chair in the room. I felt a long way
from God and his purposes. An elderly, kind Baptist woman called Peggy read
words from John 10 to me that evening. I remember the ‘good shepherd’ material,
and had to ask the biblical reference.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. (Verse 11)
It meant a lot to me that evening to know that Jesus was a good shepherd. Now, as I read those words, I recognise that the particular way in which I know him to be a good shepherd is in sacrifice – in his willingness to lay down his life.
How do we know the love of the Good Shepherd? By his sacrifice. And the approach to sacrifice tells us a lot about which communities and Christian leaders are healthy, whole and spiritual, and which ones are snakes filled with deadly venom.
The difference is this: the healthy churches are willing to sacrifice, but the poisonous ones will not. They are the ‘hired hand[s] [who] care nothing for the sheep’ (verse 13). They, on the other hand, will demand sacrifice of others. This, then, is how Jesus regarded the religious establishment of his day.
About eight years ago, I watched a television documentary about healing evangelists. It followed two of them. There was a bit of a slant against them from the outset, but one came over as well-intentioned if misguided but largely harmless. The second, however, was portrayed negatively, and I believe rightly so. When one poor family brought a terribly sick child to him for healing and the child was not cured, the evangelist told them the child had not recovered because they did not have enough faith, and they should give a further donation of a thousand dollars to his ministry. Did the child become well? What do you think? The same evangelist flies the world in Lear Jets and employs bodyguards. I’m not surprised he needs the bodyguards.
That may seem an obvious and easy example, and it is far from most of our experiences. However, we need to guard against those tendencies we might have to expect everyone else in the church to make the sacrifices while we continue jogging along, just the same as we always have done.
But let’s not only be negative here: what does a healthy church look like in this respect? One gladly spends and gives up for others. It is one where people barely have to be prompted to look out for their neighbours’ needs. I often think of an incident at my first theological college. One of the international students, a Singaporean woman, suddenly and unexpectedly lost her mother back home. She did not have the airfare to go home. But the student community soon raised it – students on very limited incomes made sure Christina got home to her family. No-one had to tell the student body to do this, it happened almost instantly and spontaneously. It was a case of Acts 2, where the disciples sold their possessions to meet the needs of the poor.
3. Embrace
One other statement to explore, and it occurs in the middle of all the verses
about the Good Shepherd’s willingness to lay down his life for the flock. It raises
the question about how broad the flock is:
I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. (Verse 16)
The sacrifice, then, is not simply something that characterises the existing community: it is something that expands it. Christians recognise this as being to do with the Cross as the way into the kingdom of God.
Therefore, the healthy church or Christian leader will have a passion for those who have not yet experienced the love of God in Christ. They will not be content to stay as a private religious club: that is a crude distortion of their fundamental purpose.
No, healthy Christians and communities will be committed to outreach, including to people much unlike themselves. Nor will it be because we need to raise more offertory to keep the building going, or to fill vacant church jobs: both of those reasons suggest we do not love the people we are trying to reach, but are only trying to manipulate them for our sake. And manipulation and self-centredness are at the heart of toxic faith, not life-filled faith.
Healthy disciples and leaders will know that outreach, embracing others with the love of God, is fundamental to the life of the church. The theologian Emil Brunner famously said that ‘The church exists by mission as fire exists by burning’. This doesn’t mean merely that we need mission in order to keep the numbers up. It means that mission is at the heart of what it means to be church. The Resurrection stories have mission as central themes. In Matthew, the risen Jesus gives the Great Commission to make disciples. In Luke, he tells the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit and then they will be his witnesses. In John, Jesus sends his followers in the way the Father sent him.
There is no mistaking it. Mission is not for the enthusiasts. It is not the deluxe optional extra. It is the overflow of hearts bursting with God’s love. Filled with the life given by the Good Shepherd and imitating his sacrificial love, it is a travesty to keep Good News to ourselves.
Thus, shepherds cannot spend their entire time with the existing pen, working only to meet their needs. True shepherds look to expand the pen, and the flock welcomes this. It is healthy church life not to obsess about ourselves, but to prioritise showing the love of God in word and deed in the wider community. When our business meeting agenda are consumed only with internal matters, something is out of balance. But when our priorities are based on the embrace of those not yet in the fold, then the life and sacrifice of the Good Shepherd have soaked into us, and we cannot be the same.
[1] Using the TNIV at Bible Gateway again, as Oremus played up once more.
[2] David W Lambert, Oswald Chambers: An Unbribed Soul, p 7f.
Technorati Tags: GoodShepherd, spiritualabuse, GeraldCoates, PhilipYancey, ChurchTimes, OswaldChambers, missional, EmilBrunner, DavidWLambert
Thirty-two years ago, I sat in a minister's study. It was Maundy Thursday, and the last session of a church membership ('confirmation') class. We studied the promises and professions of faith that candidates for membership had to make. First came repentance. Second came faith in Christ. Only after that, and third, came obeying Christ in the world. It was the moment the penny dropped. I found Christ. I discovered that Christianity wasn't the mathematical sum of believing in God plus being good.
It's now two thirds of my life away. I thank God every 9th April.
Technorati Tags: conversion, confirmation, Gospel
On 11th March, I recounted the story of a woman's dreadful behaviour at a funeral. She ignored notices to move her car when picking up her son from the playgroup that uses the church hall, and got blocked in by the hearse. She then tried to have a row with me when I was about to lead the coffin into church. (Click the link for more detail.)
Yesterday, we gathered to bury the ashes of the much-loved mother and grandmother. I learned a twist to the story. Our church car park is at the front of the church. You turn into it immediately off the main road. When the woman finally roared off from the church, she failed to remember that the lowered pavement for the car park is off centre. As a result, she went over a large kerb, and damaged the underside of her car.
When we learned, we laughed. Should we have done? Plenty of church people had adopted a Christian attitude to the woman: 'I hope she doesn't get treated like that when she is mourning a loved one.' But could this be an example of Romans 1 justice, where God gives up those who reject him to the consequences of their actions - in this case, the woman's unrighteous anger? Were we right to laugh? Or should we have been saddened for her? It hardly compares with the longing of persecuted Christians for judgment on their tormentors in Revelation, but was justice done, or were we taking a perverse pleasure in an ungodly love of vengeance?
Thoughts, anyone?
Technorati Tags: justice, vengeance, funeral
