Colossians 2.6-19, Luke 11.1-13
The Ninth Sunday after Trinity, 24 July 2016
Sparkford ‘Together at Ten’, West Camel Methodist Church
How can hearing the gospel make you sad?
Well, there I was, walking through Yeovil the other day, under a bright warm afternoon sun, and the people were everywhere casually chatting with their companions as they wandered peaceably from shop to shop, while in St John’s churchyard some were viewing the beautiful floral displays as others sat on the grass reading, eating, relaxing. But on the opposite corner, at the top of Silver Street, positioned between Toni and Guy and Burger King, an evangelist was proclaiming loudly that all of us - old ladies, young babies and everyone in-between - were hell-bound sinners. That ‘God loves us BUT….’
And hearing that man’s gospel made me sad at first, quite mad afterwards. Because of the ‘BUT’. Why could he not simply stop at ‘God loves us’? Wouldn’t that be a more appealing message? Far more people were ignoring him than were ignoring the homeless man a few doorways down, with his gentle pleas to be listened to. Maybe the evangelist would get a better response if he stopped at ‘God loves you’ and started to explain to people why he does.
This toxic gospel, in a nutshell, says that we are bad, the world is bad, that our only hope is to turn to God and look forward to heaven. The problem with this so-called gospel (which is not good news at all) is that it is based on divisive thinking which has infected Christian spirituality from the very start. Dualistic thinking which goes like this: flesh versus spirit; works versus grace. God loves you BUT you cannot receive his love unless you escape this wicked world. [1]
We have got used to Christian thinking which polarises, where things are pitched against one another. Heaven as opposed to earth; the body to the spirit. Politics and prayer should be kept apart. Sacred and secular are two separate realms, holy and unholy. The Church and the world are set against each other.
My contention today is that this is not the gospel at all. This comes from the human tendency to divide and rule, to split things up so they can be controlled and manipulated, a tendency in wider human culture and society which has found its way into the very structure of religious thinking itself.
It seems to be human nature that we naturally polarise, want to keep things apart. It has to do with being in control, trying to make sense of things neatly, by oversimplifying. But as we know, it can lead to fundamentalism, racism, homophobia, fear of the other. We feel safer when we oppose, judge, differentiate, label and compare. Today we live in a polarised world: Conservative vs Labour, Christian vs Muslim, east vs west. Things are often said to be black or white. I know this is the way the world is, because Donald Trump told me. [2]
Oh, in these broken times, how we long for healing. Oh, in these restless times, how we long for peace. How in these confusing times do we long for a direction which will not lead us back down the old blind alleys we’re trying to escape from, but into something hopeful and new.
To the shoppers of Silver Street, and all of us, God has been taught as something ‘out there’ or ‘up there’, seen as remote and unapproachable. God, and everyone unlike us, too. How we long to overcome those things which divide us, to get out of our cycles of condemning and being condemned, how we long to find a way to begin to ‘shorten the distance between ourselves and God’. [3]
Well, here is the good news. There is a ‘how’. There is a ‘way’. The way is Jesus and the how is prayer.
As Jesus taught us, prayer helps us enter into a different way of knowing, an alternative way of perceiving reality. A way which removes all boundaries, barriers, divisions between ourselves, God and others.
It is very simple, the way he puts it. As Jesus taught us, our prayer might begin with a sense of God beyond: ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’ But it immediately then dares to pray ‘thy kingdom come’, and moves to an awareness of the God within us and inside the life of this messy world: ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.
When he teaches us to pray Jesus brings heaven and earth together. He leads us from a dualistic view of things to a unitive understanding. He leads us to reconciliation. [4]
Now, we know that Jesus’ social, religious and political world was just as fractured and fractious as our own. It was a fragmenting society riven with divisions and splits in the population.
Jews were pitted against Gentiles over issues of purity and identity; Zealot warred against Roman occupier; Pharisees and Sadducees were at each other’s throats; the scribes and the lawyers were at loggerheads; the Essenes opposed and defied the Temple authorities.
We understand that in the society of Jesus’ time, people were kept apart by a sense of hierarchy which honoured patriarchal families and to the well-to-do, who in turn regarded as shameful those at the opposite end of the spectrum - obvious social outcasts like prostitutes and tax-collectors (Roman collaborators), but also children and women. In this painfully polarised society the sick and maimed were excluded from the Temple and those who did not ‘fit’ were mercilessly marginalised. The Hebrew Scriptures taught of a God who was distant (Isaiah 55.8-9) and of enemies to be slaughtered (Ps. 139.19-22).
The people had divorced tithing and religious observance from issues of justice and mercy (Matt. 23.23), sinners were stoned not welcomed (John 8.1-11), and the chosen people saw themselves as superior to Gentiles (Mark 7.27). [5]
So, yes, a world very much like ours. And so the good news is that
It is precisely in this world of people divided, that Jesus develops his radical unifying and inclusive vision of the kingdom of God. With all his heart he longs to bring all people together as one in their dignity as beloved and cherished children of God. In the holy city Jesus cried out his heart’s longing ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing!’ (Luke 13.34). Jesus’ desire is for the unity of the world: ‘Then people will come from east and west from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God,’ he said. (Luke 13.29)
Where did Jesus get this heartfelt desire from? Maybe Isaiah’s so-called ‘servant songs’ which seemed to inspire in him a sense of his own vocation. Isaiah reveals a longing for unity and for elements that are often divorced or separated to be united: ‘The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid... The cow and the bear shall graze’. (Isaiah 11.6-7)
Maybe Jesus was inspired by the Psalms’ call to worship of all living things: ‘Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! . . .Young men and women alike, old and young together’ (Ps. 148.10, 12).
Jesus always crosses boundaries and breaks down barriers. For him the child, the social nobody, is the model of true greatness (Mark 9.33-37). Jesus welcomes the presence of women (Luke 8.3; 23-49) and Mary Magdalene is the first witness of the resurrection.
Jesus reaches out to those marginalised by society embracing the leper (Luke 17.10-19). In Jerusalem, as he throws down the tables of the money changers in the Temple, he welcomes the outcasts and the ritually unclean: ‘The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them’ (Matt. 21.14).
Notice how many of Jesus’ sayings are about overcoming separation, loss and division. He sees the potential for things once separated coming together:
- The woman is reunited with her lost coin.
The shepherd once again embraces his sheep.
The yeast is mixed with the flour.
The vine is joined to the branches.
The birds come to roost in the branches.
Things old and new are to be treasured.
The enemy is to be loved.
The prodigal is restored to his father.
The wounded Jewish traveller finds himself in the arms of a hated Samaritan.
God’s will is to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Love of God and love of neighbour are inseparable.
The kingdom is both now and not yet, here and still to come.Jesus teaches that when God made the human person, he made us for him and he made us whole, affirming the law which says, ‘you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength’ (Mark 12.30).
The most significant sign of his inclusive kingdom, where barriers are overturned, is the meal at which Jesus eats with tax-collectors and sinners (Luke 5.29-32: see Luke 14.12-24). For Jesus, the open table - where everyone, regardless of shame or status, has an honoured place - expresses his readiness to smash barriers and social taboos; to unite.
Where did these ideas come from? They came from a place of prayer and contemplation. Prayer and contemplation were at the heart of Jesus’ life and practice. He removed himself to pray in the self-same hills above Galilee, where he also taught. When he gave the Sermon on the Mount, that hillside was precisely the same place where Jesus went to pray. His teachings and his healings flowed from his practice of prayer. [6]
So, what is the good news for us, in these broken times? It is that, if we find a place of prayer and contemplation, and pray the way that Jesus taught us, then we too can go back into the world empowered to reach towards healing and reconciliation.
The good news is that, if if we make our prayers fully awake to God being within us and inside the life of this messy world, that if we say ‘Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’, then we are taking real, positive, steps towards healing divisions, bringing things together, and making peace.
The good news is that, if if we begin to accept ourselves as ones who God loves, completely, unconditionally, then we learn what it means to be forgiven - and from that, how to forgive others.
To the Colossians Paul wrote, ‘As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.’ (Colossians 2.6-7)
This is not a ‘God loves you BUT’ message; this is a ‘God loves you SO’ message. Paul is not teaching that faith in Christ means escaping this wicked world. Rather the opposite; this message says, God loves you SO you can grow and flourish in his love right in the middle of this muddled world; this message says, God loves you SO you can walk with him, outwards from your place of prayer, to play your part in bringing unity where there is division; to help others as you go, to shorten the distance between themselves and God.
Notes
Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) from the list which follows and the block quotes above, this sermon would not have come about were it not for the excellent chapter Jesus the mystic in Andrew D. Mayes’ excellent book ‘Another Christ, Re-envisioning ministry’ (SPCK 2014). This sermon is thus substantially Andrew’s, to whom I am extremely grateful.
[1] Andrew D. Mayes, Another Christ, Re-envisioning ministry, p.44-45, altered.
[2] Mayes, Another Christ, p.44-45, altered.
[3] Mayes, Another Christ, p.45-46, altered.
[4] Mayes, Another Christ, p.45-46, referencing John MacQuarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism.
[5] Mayes, Another Christ, p.44, altered.
[6] Mayes, Another Christ, p.46-48, altered.
Comments