Signs of love

A Baptismal sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook, Sunday 16th October 2011.

Paul and Frances, your family and friends, welcome to church today for your darling infant’s son’s baptism. It is lovely to have you with us: I and the church here at Crook hope you have a happy and memorable day. Baptism can be a nerve racking experience for the family as well as at times for the minister – well at least the organist did not play the theme music from Jaws, I did not have to wear scuba divers outfit and the coast guard was not involved.

I wonder if you put your Sat Nav on to find the church this morning or followed directional signs? At my son’s recent wedding the vicar gave the happy couple the wrong post code for the church so that many guests arrived in somebody’s private drive. Signs are very much part of our lives - shop signs, lighted signs, advertising signs, neon signs, school signs, restaurant signs, toilet sign, speed limit signs, disabled parking signs, no parking signs as the parking attendant slaps a £30 parking fine on you windscreen. “What do you mean, sir, you didn’t see the double yellow lines?”

We too have our signs; we wear signs all the time. Perhaps the gentlemen in either their red and white, black and white football shirts might prefer some David Beckham lookalike tattoos, a crucifix on the back of the neck perhaps, a guardian angel between the shoulder blades and an angel on the right shoulder. The guardian angel is there to overlook the names of his three children, Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz. Not quite sure what David will do for Seven his newborn daughter – will Prince William be a godfather we wonder. No David the minister will not use a flame thrower – it is not a baptism of fire! Perhaps the women would prefer signs of Gucci sunglasses, Vivienne Westwood jewellery, a naughty off the shoulder Armani something or other, Jimmy Choos nude shoes, a Mulberry designer handbag, why not go for something from the Sarah Burton Alexander McQueen wedding dress collection. Sorry.... that one is a one off.......... already worn!

As we look around us the church too is full of signs, a wooden cross on which Jesus died, a sign we say in church speak - a sign of our salvation, a rainbow arch around the organ, symbol of the church’s openness to diversity and inclusion, as well as a sign from a Genesis story, Judy Garland’s theme song, And of course a font where Jacob was baptised a few moments ago. Baptism is a sign too, it is also one of the sacraments of the Church; a sacrament is a sign also ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,’ as the old prayer book stated. In a nutshell, through baptism we’re made children of God’s grace, we become members of the Church. Jacob has been baptised as a Christian. This ceremony has obligations foremost of which is to live the Christian life. The sign at Jesus baptism in the River Jordan was a dove descending out of the sky and a voice from heaven which said: “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, listen to him.”

Paul and Frances just as your wedding rings given in Cyprus on your wedding day is a sign of your enduring love for one another, so Jacob’s baptism this morning is a sign of God’s promise to Jacob. God will be with Jacob and his family forever. But more than that. God will love Jacob forever.

Paul and Frances – God is committed to the flourishing, well being and happiness of your family, you have embarked on this great journey of love, not only of loving each other but of loving Jacob. As parents you are going to be a sign, an electric spark to Jacob of what human love is like, you are going to be the role models of what God’s love is like. Having five children on my own you I can assure you will be in for some challenging times and experiences. Jacob may not need a media bedsit where he will have his own TV, internet, game consoles and a new apple iphone. But he will need you to be there for him, to support him, to run the line at the football match, to sit at the poolside during swimming lessons, to listen to him experiment with a drum set, to help with the maths homework, to let him borrow your car for the first time. You are going to be signs of love for Jacob. But like the BBC 1’s roller coaster life of Sue and Pete Brockman’s family from South London, you may be outnumbered! The Jake, Ben and Karen’s of this world will see to that.

Paul and Frances. You are surrounded by loving families with offers of help and support, sleep-over, shopping, and grandparents. Use them. We as a church are here to help you too, our doors are open, you have our telephone numbers, we too can provide help and support, education and teenage training. Alas human beings live in a world of good and bad and that makes our lives and relationships painful and complicated but not so with God. God will never give up on you, even if you run away from him. Paul and Frances never stop loving each other - you are for Jacob a sign of what human love and family life is like and can be for the rest of his life – he will learn from you, you will be his example. As the late Steve Jobs co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc said, “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, and as with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”  And so it is with our relationship with God.

And in all this we, as we are able, together, will do everything possible to keep our promises to love, help and support you.

So before we complain too loudly about David Cameron’s Downturn Abbey Britain, a world of Kelly Rowland’s x factor wannabees, (I wish she could pick me! ), the future of Arsene Wenger, the slow goodbye of Coronation Street’s Becky McDonald, the price of Apples’ new iPhones,  and Sienna Miller’s phone hacking payoff, we should remember today that we have cause for thanksgiving – God has committed himself yet again to one more human family, the Moore family here from Douglas Terrace, Crook, and in the lives of this lovely family with whom today we join in celebration, we see the sign of God’s embracing, renewing vision of God’s faithful love.   

Paul and Frances may God bless you on your journey, and may Jacob’s baptism be a sign to live the faith more fully.

Amen

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit

Suffer Little Children

A Baptismal sermon preached by Ray Anglesea at St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook, Sunday 2^nd October 2011

Congratulations to Barrie and Joanne on Emileigh’s baptism. May the welcome your child has experienced today here in church infuse your family’s faith life for all time! 

Here’s a delightful story. At the recent wedding of Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall, the bride’s cousins, Princes William and Harry, read an extract from Margery Williams’ classic children’s story, The Velveteen Rabbit.        The story is about a boy who receives a Velveteen rabbit for Christmas.  The Velveteen Rabbit is snubbed by other more expensive or mechanical toys; they fancy themselves as real. One day while talking with the Skin Horse, the rabbit asks the horse what it means to be “a real person”. The horse replies that it means being loved. “It doesn't happen all at once. You become real. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.” “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand – once you are real, you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

Well it is a long time since I read that story to my children. Years later Hollywood still tells the same tale in children’s movies like Toy Story and Shrek, which is why they speak to parents as well as children. Love transforms. It makes us beautiful in the eyes of those who love us. It makes us real.

That is the great truth at the heart of the Christian faith. God’s love makes us beautiful in His eyes – and in ours when we see ourselves reflected in His. That is what makes us real: not physical beauty which fades over time, but spiritual beauty which can grow over time. We allow ourselves to be made real by God’s love, with all our imperfections, pain and limitations. It was the poet W.H. Auden who said:-

Beloved, we are always in the wrong, handling so clumsily our stupid lives................

One thing that always strikes me is how little Jesus himself has to say about sin. He seems much more concerned with lack of love. Perhaps that is really what sin is ultimately, the failure of love. It was at Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan that God’s said “This is my son whom I love, listen to him.” Here was a moment of sheer intense intimacy, a moment in time when God’s heart was revealed to his son. God’s greatest command is that we should love one another. Where do we find love? In the tiniest hazelnut, says Mother Julian: it exists because God loves it. In the entire sweep of the universe, says Dante, because it is ‘love that moves the sun and the other stars’. But today love has a human face in Emiligh. And to her very young life we bring our own memories of those who have loved us into life, whose lives are interwoven with ours and made us what we are.

Barrie and Joanne – God is committed to the flourishing, well being and happiness of your family, you have embarked on this great journey of love, not only of loving each other but on loving Emiligh and Jordan. As parents you are going to be their role models of what human love is like, you are going to be the role models of what God’s love is like. Having five children on my own you I can assure you will be in for some challenging times and experiences. Let’s face it - recent UNICEF reports on the upbringing of British children are not very encouraging; Britain according to this international agency is the worst place in the developed world to be a child; parents and their children are locked into a consumption cycle where mothers and fathers rarely say no to their children’s’ demands; children sit in media bedsits where they have their own TV, internet, game consoles and phones. Oh really – is our popular modern British culture as bad as all that? As couples say in rocky relationships in popular B movies – it’s not us UNICEF; it’s you.

Well who said bringing up children would be easy? In every serious relationship there will be ups and downs, moments of tension, discord, in human terms there will be nights with a crying child, falling out, tears, naughty children may have to be disciplined, there will be  frustration about the lack of employment opportunities, insufficient funds and days when we just feel down, tired and bored. And with all the pressures of family life it is often difficult to make headway. But Joanne and Barrie you are surrounded by loving families with offers of help and support, sleep-overs, shopping, grandparents love giving their grandchildren back to parents. Use them. We as a church are here to help you too, our doors are open, you have our telephone numbers, we too can provide help and support, education and teenage training. Alas human beings live in a world of good and bad and that makes our lives and relationships painful and complicated but not so with God. God will never give up on you, even if you run away from him. Joanne and Barrie never stop loving each other  - you are for Emileigh and Jorja what human love and family life is like and can be for the rest of their lives – they will learn from you, you will be there examples. And in all this we, as we are able, together, will do everything possible to keep our promises to love, help and support you.

So today I want to give thanks for our popular modern culture, children no longer go to work up chimneys or go down mines when they are out of trousers, we do not require children to enlist as soldiers in military campaigns, work in sweat shops making trainers and clothes. I want to say a great yes for children growing up in a free Britain, in our welfare state, the greatest act of communal generosity in history. Here in Crook magnificent Sure Start Children's Centres provide a variety of advice and support for parents and carers from pregnancy right through to when children go into reception class.  Four/fifths of children are literate, 40% will go to university and many in Emileigh’s life time will live to be a hundred. We are a nation that gives ever more to charities, we are increasingly tolerant of class, colour, gender, race, religion and sexual preference, advances in medicine and scientific discoveries take our breath away, just think in Emileigh’s life time men and women may have reached and have set foot on Mars. But our greatest cause of thanksgiving this morning is that God has committed himself yet again to one more human family, the Rayner’s here in Crook, and in the lives of this lovely family with whom today we join in celebration, we see that embracing, renewing and hopeful vision of God’s faithful love, a love that like the Velveteen rabbit discovered makes us real.

One reason we find such children’s stories childish is that, in them, things work out the way we hope they will. The good win, the wicked are vanquished and the heroes live happily ever after. Life isn’t like that, we tell ourselves. But it could be less unlike it than it is. Which is why it is not naive to see the world through the eyes of love, for that is how God sees us.

May God bless you on your journey, and may your child’s baptism open your eyes to live the faith more fully.

Amen


Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit

Welcome!

WELCOME to the new Worship Blog


This blog is offered to members and friends of Northern Synod churches as a place to share worship resources. We've tried this once before, and it sort of petered out - but sometimes life gives us second chances, and this is one of them.

You will see that the Worship Blog is linked to the home page of our synod website, and is now differentiated from the synod blog, which is principally a forum for current synod concerns. (Which isn't to say that worship isn't to focus on current matters.)

So please send in your stuff - sermons, prayers, hymns, reflections, whatever.... Send them, like all website material, to Colin Offor or John Durell at our synod addresses - and keep coming back to the Worship Blog. And don't be afraid to post your comments: they will be moderated, but posted asap.

Most of the material that follows has been transferred from the Synod Blog - please start adding some new material now!


John Durell

Trouble at Vineyard

From a sermon preached at St Andrew’s Dawson Street Methodist Church, Crook, Sunday 18th September 2011 by Ray Anglesea





How many trade union members does it take to change a light bulb? Fourteen. One to screw in the bulb. Two to hold him on the step ladder. Four to hold the step ladder steady. One to flick the switch to test the bulb. One to make sure that the other bulbs in the room will need fixing. One to supervise. Two to take a coffee break, one to eat lunch, and one to sleep!


We may laugh at this Trade Union joke but one of the great inventions of modern Western society according to the theologian and writer, Tom Wright, former Bishop of Durham, has been the trade union. A trade union, as many of you know who, like me, have been paid up rank and file members, is an organization of workers who bargains and negotiates with its employer for better working conditions, wages and benefits. At last week’s annual TUC congress held in London, Union activists discussed calls for co-ordinated industrial action in protest at the Government's controversial policies on pensions and spending cuts. Despite Ed Miliband’s pleas to forego strike action to his union colleagues that helped elect him, disruption is likely this November. Three million state employees are to be balloted about strike action, bringing schools, colleges, universities, courts, ports and job centres to a standstill. It will be the strongest industrial act of defiance yet against the government's cuts programme.

The British Trade Union movement can trace its origins back to the Dorset Tolpuddle martyrs. Five of the six 1834 martyrs who risked the wrath of landowners calling for better wages and conditions were prominent Primitive Methodists, village men of faith.“Their trade unionism grew out of their faith,” said the Rev'd Dr. Leslie Griffiths, The Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, former President of the Methodist Conference and Superintendent Minister at Wesley’s Chapel London. Primitive Methodism has always been marked by a strong tradition of political activism especially for its allegiance to the Labour Movement; it served as a kind of midwife in the birth of English socialism. You will remember the saying that the Labour party owes more to Methodism than it does to Marx.


It was during the industrial revolution that trade unions became popular. Here in Crook the town’s fortunes changed in 1844 when the first pit was opened by Messrs Pease & Partners; by the 1860’s there were a total of 26 mines in and around the Crook area. By the end of the nineteenth century Crook had been transformed into a thriving town. Our own James Robson from West Auckland was a prominent British trade unionist; elected President of the Durham Miners' Association, serving until his death in 1934; he also served as Treasurer of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain and was a member of the Methodist New Connexion. Peter Lee was another. A preacher and a primitive Methodist he gave his name to a new town in County Durham. And here too we pay tribute to the late Geoff Waterfield chair of the Redcar steelworks multi-union committee who spearheaded the campaign to save steel-making in Redcar.


But over the course of the twentieth century trade union activity was set to change. The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher, rightly or wrongly, was determined to break the power of the trade unions. Even so, trade unions are still the largest voluntary organisation in the country but with declining membership together with the central question of British politics today - the need to reduce the deficit – this has placed the trade union movement in an invidious position. If the trade union movement is to survive it needs to find a way to reinvent itself or else decline will be terminal. The role of the unions has become something quite different from what our Primitive Methodist fathers and mothers envisaged. Today we live in difficult economic times; health service managers who don’t know whether there will be a job next year; employees in welfare charities whose central government and local authority funding is being cut at the very time when demands are increasing; armed service personnel who will gradually be made redundant in the next few years. It can’t be an enviable job to be a government minister who, in coping with the extent of the deficit, has to trim budgets and deal with the backlash from people whose livelihood suddenly comes under threat.


Today’s trade unions would have been horrified at the story Jesus told about the employer we find this morning in Matthew’s gospel and the workers who laboured at various times of the day. I am sure if what we just read in the Gospel took place today, there would be a huge hue and cry. Salaries are linked to hours of work; a skilled worker gets more than an unskilled worker; if workers have the same skills, the same hours of work and similar responsibilities, we expect them to get the same wages.


Matthew sets the parable in the context of the Palestinian September grape harvest. This picture was the kind of thing which could happen in the market place of any Jewish village or town. If the harvest had not been gathered in before the rains broke then it would be ruined. To get the harvest in was a frantic race against time. The kingdom of heaven is likened to how a landowner treated his day labourers during the grape harvest. By agreement they all get the same, one denarius, a subsistence wage for a family for one day; standard pay but not generous. What is surprising is that the landowner does not ensure he has a full workforce at the beginning of the day. He is prepared to accept fresh workers almost up to the end. These get paid first – one denarius – a financial symbol of what is enough to provide food, clothing, and shelter — the basics of human dignity for a worker and the worker’s family. It also gives the others hope that they will get a fat bonus. But no they get what was agreed, one denarius, they have no reason to complain. Some are treated very generously but none are treated unjustly. The story we read this morning asserts the value and worth of human labour. It is good and right that we should work. The story also suggest something more than trade union law, employment law or equal opportunities.


We can of course read the parable on many levels. We can see something of the comfort that God gives. Whether you discover, rediscover God late or soon, in the first flush of youth, the amber years of mid age, or the shadowing of lengthening years, you are equally dear and precious to him. We can see something of the compassion of God – there is an element of human tenderness in the story. The vineyard owner gives the labourers work emphasising the right of every man and woman to work and to expect a living wage.


But look at the last group of workers, the ones who were hired when only one hour of the day was left. The vineyard owner questions them: why haven’t you been working? There answer is revealing: nobody has hired us, nobody has given us a job. Nobody in other words wanted them. In today’s terms these are people who are long-term unemployed. Most frightening of all is the evidence that, in some places, unemployment is a third-generation issue. Work is simply not available. What does this say about the dignity and self-esteem of a household, a family, a neighbourhood? From my own experience of working in the inner cities this life is a social reality, the combined result of shifts in government policy and the forces of global markets. It is not a symptom of local indolence or moral turpitude. There are whole neighbourhoods where, for years, no one has said: “I have a job for you, and it will pay a living wage.” The twist in the parable’s tale is not simply that those who worked the shortest time got the same as the others; it is that these were the people whom no one else wanted, the bottom of the social pile. But they, too, received the living wage, and the dignity of the opportunity to labour for it. As Christians, our voices should be heard asking for an account from those who manage economies in the Eurozone as leaders battle to keep the faith as the Greek rescue descends into chaos amidst bankruptcy fears, as well as nationally, particularly as our jobless total soared to 2.6 million this week as the cuts begin to bite. Our standard of measure is the generosity of God, not the meanness of market forces.


But the thrust of the story in chapter 20 for me is not so much about the nature of God, his compassion, his goodness, his comfort, or the need to manage economic and financial markets and trade union reform. The parable is intended more of a warning to the disciples, that those at the front would end up at the back and those at the back would end up at the front, the last first and the first last. Jesus warns his disciples - just because you’ve been close to me so far, don’t think you are now the favoured few for all time, just because I am in bringing in the kingdom of heaven - don’t think that you are going to become rich and famous. That’s not the sort of thing I am about, that’s not the sort of thing God’s kingdom is about. You may well have set out with me from Galilee from the beginning but others may well come in much later and end up getting paid just the same, the regular daily wage.


There is always the danger that we get cross with God over this. People who work in church circles can easily assume that they are the special ones, God’s inner circle. I see it all the time as I work in the cathedral bookshop, ambitious clergy climbing the candlestick who use their power and influence to promote their own status and a pretty rectory, those who name drop, “when I was speaking to the Archbishop of Canterbury the other day” “Oh Rowan this and Rowan that,” “and yes of course, my dear, I already have an invitation to sit in the choir stalls for the enthronement service for the new Bishop of Durham.” And it is so easy to run the church without God, as if it was our club, in our own strength with our own skills.


The point of the story this morning is that what people get from having served God and his kingdom is not actually a wage at all, it’s not strictly a reward for work done, an honoury title, a seat in the choir stalls. God doesn’t make contracts with us like our trade union stewards as if our Primitive Methodist fathers and mothers in the faith could bargain or negotiate for a better deal. He does make a covenant with us. He promises us everything and asks of us everything in return. When he keeps his promises he is not rewarding us for effort but doing what comes naturally to his overflowing nature. In reality, God is out there in the market place, looking for people everybody else tried to ignore, welcoming them on the same terms and surprising them with his generous grace – all that God gives is grace. We cannot earn what God gives us, we cannot deserve it, we cannot put God in our debt, what God gives us is given out of the goodness of his heart, out of his grace, what God gives us is not pay, but a gift, not a reward but grace.



Psalm 145:1-8; Philippians1:21-30; Matthew 20 v1-16


Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and an authorised Methodist Minister working in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit.

Mourning after the Riots

(originally posted on the Synod Blog 5-September-2011)

From an illustrated sermon preached at Stanhope Methodist Church, Stanhope, Sunday 4^th September 2011 by Ray Anglesea

This is a special time of the year in Weardale. A time of beauty; purple heather moorland, harvested golden wheat fields, ripening berries, brambles, rowan and elderflower, the twittering of excited migrating swallows and the cry of the curlews. The annual Stanhope show, now in its 170^th year, is a display case celebrating the best of agricultural and county life, the main ring the hub for the exhibition of local sheep, cattle and industrial produce, show jumping, horse and pony classes. It will rain of course, warm, soft rain that will make the cake stall cover up. Looking out over the fields and River Wear it is difficult to think that we belong, in the Prime Minister’s recent words, to a nation that has lost its way, a broken society, a sick society that is near breakdown, a society in a state of moral collapse. The August disturbances in the nation’s inner cities seem a million miles away from our beautiful dale, the town enclosed and surrounded as it is by the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, quite simply one the most lovely and unspoilt parts of England.

The peace and quiet of this nineteenth century Methodist chapel may seem like another world, but it is not. For here we come to encounter a God not of make-believe but of reality, not of other-worldliness but of this-worldliness. This holy space is a sanctuary of worship where our prayers and praises are not words that signify disengagement but connection.

That violent disorder should break out on the streets of London and other major British cities last month was a profound shock. For three unbelievable days, violent and lawless events ran horribly ahead of the collective ability to control or anticipate them once they erupted. We looked on in horror as we witnessed thuggery, vandalism and theft, murder, and the vicious and ferocious malice shown towards the police. The events and actions revealed the presence of a serious social disease, posing threats to the common good for which society was wholly unprepared. For most of us it was deeply unnerving to realise how fragile the veneer of civilised urban life really is. The Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks writing in The Times said “What we witnessed was a real deep-seated and frightening failure of morality; rebels with or without a cause - it was a moment when the nation caught a glimpse of its soul – and it was not a pleasant sight.” Whatever the reasons for this violent behaviour, they can never be excuses. For my own part I was relieved that the media did not blame my profession, the planning profession, for urban design solutions that have made the cities crooked places straight and the narrow ways wider to speed police access to trouble spots. 
 

In the wake of these shocking events, it’s important to avoid, knee-jerk reactions and trite answers. Politicians and social policy commentators including Lord Sacks have, nevertheless, thrown in their two pennyworth. Already the analysis and debates have continued about the erosion of public values. Many people realise that the causes of the recent civil unrest and disturbances in our inner cities are complex; the problems have hitherto been politically managed and contained. Deprivation and measures of austerity are likely to have played their part as well as high levels of unemployment, dysfunctional families, ending of education maintenance allowance, the discarding of Sure Start programmes, attacks on social housing tenancies – all of which may have given rise to tension and anxiety - but it would be too simplistic to place sole blame there. But clearly something has gone badly wrong. Whether we talk about an underclass or social exclusion or simply poverty it should be clear that the problem may have been ameliorated, but it was not solved by the Labour government throwing money alone at the inner cities, however well intended their social and economic policies may have been; and credit here must be given to the magnificent success of the Sure Start programmes. But let’s be clear - the tone adopted by Mrs Thatcher following the Faith in the City report in 1985 still continues in this present administration. For Thatcher personal responsibility and wealth creation were the keys to a healthy and peaceful society, and the welfare state was undermining these – hence her famous remark that “there is no such thing as society,” and her memorable reinterpretation of Jesus’ words in which she argued: “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.” Revd Dr Michael Northcott, Professor of Ethics at Edinburgh recently stated in the religious press “that what we saw on the street of England 3 weeks ago manifested not only a moral crisis, but a spiritual crisis; market and money are the gods of this new religion.”
 

The Bishop of Manchester, the Rt. Revd Nigel McCulloch, in a recent BBC Radio 4 broadcast suggested that “the disappearance of public values, some would argue, has led to a moral deficit in private and public life that has spawned acquisitiveness and dishonesty. It’s evident at all levels of our society.” To be frank, the riots are not the only recent examples of theft and greed. We are reaping what has been sown over the last 3 decades of creating a grotesquely unequal society, a society of looters created with MPs and their expenses, bankers and their bonuses, tax evading corporations, phone hacking journalists, bribe taking police officers. To create a false division between what we do in public and how we are in private is fraught with problems of credibility. This is not to condone but to understand the new forces of disorder emerging in our communities. 
 

How can faith communities and the Christian churches, in particular, and Matthew’s gospel this morning help to bring light and wisdom to the problem of conflict and unrest? I’m not sure that shrill demands for the Ten Commandments as suggested by some letter writers to The Times are likely to be heeded – even though I have a high regard for that moral code of unsurpassed clarity about not stealing and not coveting what belongs to others. By sheer coincidence as we begin a new month and a new school year, the lectionary begins a series today on teaching skills for practical living. As Christ calls us to live in community we think about how such skills might help us to resolve conflict in our midst. 

Matthew wrote his gospel some 80 years after Jesus’ resurrection to small church communities who were struggling to survive in scattered communities separate from the synagogues out of which they grew. Although Paul was the great founder of mixed congregations in Gentile cities, by the ninth decade the Pharisees had successfully banned Jewish Christians from participating in the synagogue for breaking the sacred laws of the

Covenant. It seems that Matthew needed to say something to the members of his own faith community to settle internal conflicts when such open conflicts arose. 

 
Whether this was an internal, specific and isolated problem in the early church we do not know, but history has shown that the church has not heeded Matthew’s instructions. Through the ages the church has not been immune to its own conflict, protest, demonstration, infighting, power and greed. And that is perhaps why we in the church still say on a daily basis ‘forgive us our trespasses,’ only wishing that others would join us in this penitence. For me reading this passage, Matthew 18 is the bedrock for the practical outpouring of basic principles of reconciliation; it is severely practical as well as ruthlessly idealistic. Reconciliation is a huge issue today; we see clearly the results of not doing it: in inner city riots, suicide bombs, campaigns of terror. That’s on the larger scale. On the smaller scale we see not only discord in our soaps, Coronation Street and The Archers, but also in broken marriages, shattered families, feuds between neighbours, divided churches.

 
Learning to live together whether in the church or city community with a great company of different others is the challenge that faces us more now than it ever has done in the past. Positive interaction and interdependence between peoples whether in Tottenham or Manchester are fundamental to the creation of community. Reconciliation and peacemaking I suggest begins with not blowing social, economic and racial issues out of all proportion; we can have a conversation about whether we think we live in a broken society or a society that is being broken up, but facebook and social media networks prompts us to say what is on our mind which often calls for instant knee jerk reactions and responses. Responsibility for peacemaking begins with the individual – with me - I need to work on my behaviour, my attitude, my heart to help the community to work. Remember G K Chesterton’s famous dictum? – “What is wrong with the world? – I am”. Matthew’s instructions in his gospel to the early church suggest that we should not only be peacemakers but we should tread softly on issues, getting to the root of the problem before it festers. We have to acknowledge that conflict is painful; in recent years restorative justice has been increasingly valued. The encounter between perpetrator and victim is not easy but it may offer a long term solution for both parties if they can face it. One of the most remarkable women in Glasgow is Karyn McCluskey, a single mother, nurse, forensic psychologist, and community campaigner. In response to the damage caused by violent gang warfare in her native city, she “treated violence like a disease and mounted a public health campaign against it”. Her courageous and amazingly successful campaign was essentially about setting up meetings between victims, their families, and perpetrators of bloodshed. From all quarters of the community, members of the most vicious gangs were bombarded with requests to give up their violence and channel their energy into something that enhanced life — theirs and that of others. 

 
Matthew through these instructions is offering not only the church but maybe civil society ways of developing strategies to access the grace needed to be good neighbours under circumstances of great disparity of both wealth and life chances: in modern cities where rich and poor live cheek-by-jowl and in the life of our churches.

 
Canon Stephen Cherry writing on the Durham Cathedral web site a couple of weeks ago indicated that the August riots were a disgrace - an absolute disgrace; evidence of the lack of the very grace that is needed for people to live together in community. He suggests “that grace becomes a force to be reckoned with when people freely open their hearts to their neighbours and to God, when they look to the interests of others rather than their own”. A society must measure success not simply in terms of material riches, but on its morality, its compassion, its concern for neighbour, its belief that the individual good is inseparably linked with the common good, particularly that of the most vulnerable. Our society will be judged by the values we teach our children and that applies to bankers and politicians as well as parents. And it is precisely that change, this strategy which needs to take place on a scale never previously imagined if our cities are to be good places for people to live in today and tomorrow. 

God is not remote from our concerns any more than we are remote from the forces unleashed in our cities. Our faith is that ultimately grace will triumph. Our action must be to do what we can to let grace triumph in our own lives, our churches, in our own communities. The question is ‘how well are we playing our own part in the ongoing spiritual struggle between grace and disgrace?’ Alas we live in a world of good and bad and that makes our lives and relationships painful and complicated. It’s a struggle from which no person or community is ever spared and that is why life is often so painful. But since our faith tells us where true victory lies our own struggle is informed by the confidence that, however deep the pain, however terrible the disturbance and carnage, grace will triumph in the end.

Psalm 119 v33-40;

Romans 13 v8-14;
Matthew 18 v15-20

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and an authorised Methodist Minister working in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit.

The Gospel in English

Sermon preached by John Durell at the inaugural English Language Service in Khovo Church, Maputo  7-August-2011

Perhaps I am the only one here today who learned English at his mother’s knee. I never had to sit down and study “I am, you are, he/she/it is…” I never had to think about why today I go, but yesterday I went, and not I goed. I admit that when I was a little older and went to school I struggled just as many of you will have with spelling – but by that time the English language was a part of me. I had taken it in with my mother’s milk. Wasn’t I lucky?

And yet, if I’m lucky compared with you, I also feel that I am very poor compared with you. I fear I may be the only person here who can confidently speak only one language. Hillian, in case you are wondering, does not speak English as a first language. But since it’s over forty years since I took her away from her own country and her own Dutch language, she must have spoken more English than anything else  in her lifetime. But like you, she had to learn it. And over the years we have been together I have often envied the way she has learned to speak other languages (some fluently, others less so); and I have come to see how much richer life is if, like all of you, we can think and express ourselves in a variety of languages. Languages reflect the rich diversity of our human life.

So it’s bit of a shock to turn to this ancient story of Babel, and to find that this rich variety of languages is seen to be not a blessing, but a curse. Here are people who seem very much like us: they are ambitious, they want to progress, they want their society to develop. Just as in our world today, new technologies in Babel mean that things are possible that could never be achieved before. We know very little about ancient civilizations that built only in wood, for even in hot climates the wood has rotted away. But learn to bake bricks, and build high with those bricks – and you make a name for yourself. You are remembered. Leave the villages behind and move to the city, and there are enough people to take on big projects. Today, for the first time in history, there are more people in our world who live in cities than in the countryside. For the first time in history, there is more land, more earth, moved every year by human beings and our machines than is moved by rivers and seas and all the forces of nature. Like the citizens of Babel, we, it seems, are set to “make a name for ourselves”.

But in this ancient story, this is the point at which God intervenes. We are not told exactly why, but clearly there is the idea that the people of Babel are going too far.  God reasons to himself that “there will be nothing beyond their reach”. It is not a bad thing to have ambition for ourselves. It is not a bad thing to seek to develop our society. But of course if we are listening for what God may be saying to us today, we will want our schemes and our plans to enrich not just our own lives, but our neighbours’ lives as well. The highest towers in our world today are being built in Dubai and the Gulf States, but they are nothing but the playthings of the rich. And in our global society there are many many things that are possible that once were never dreamed of, but not all of them will help us to be better human beings. No doubt God still looks down and thinks “There is nothing now beyond their reach.”

But what has this to do with languages? Perhaps this confusion of languages is a way of saying that we have got out of step with God. In all these ancient stories, God is the one who speaks. His word creates the heavens and the earth and everything in them. God is the one who speaks to his creatures, t o the man and the woman whom he sets in the paradise garden – and he still speaks to them, even when sin has driven them out. God speaks to Noah, and gives him boat-building lessons so that he and his family are saved from destruction. And through the sign of the rainbow, God speaks a word of promise, a covenant promise, to all humanity – to you, and to me, and even to the builders of Babel.

But if God speaks, we need to listen. Listening should be easy: ears are not like eyes, which we open and shut. Our ears are open all the time. Yet listening is not always easy – and listening becomes harder and harder when other languages are around us. Some people at Khovo kindly talk to me in English, and I listen carefully. But then they start talking to one another in Portuguese, and I begin to switch off. And because I’m no longer part of the conversation, they may even lapse into Ronga or Shangana, and because I’m not listening I don’t even notice. The people of Babel have not been listening to God. They haven’t thought about whether their big building schemes suit his eternal purposes of good. But because they forget to listen to God, they soon discover that they cannot even listen to one another. The human story becomes a story of tragedy when communication breaks down and people go off on their different ways, in different directions. Different languages, which might have reflected the richness of our varied human life, instead become a measure of our divisions. We can no longer speak to one another: we no longer hear one another.

Except that in the Bible, of course, the story of the Tower of Babel is balanced by the story of the Day of Pentecost. When the followers of Jesus find the courage to share the good news of his death and his resurrection, they receive this wonderful gift of the Spirit; and they discover that the streets of Jerusalem, which had previously been a babble of every language under the sun, echo to a single language that allows everyone to hear the great things God has done. Into this world of confusion the Spirit brings understanding. What was confused now becomes clear. And at that moment God makes his people one again.

If only we could recapture that moment. But of course there are still other forces at work in the world – and even in the Church; and if we have experience of petty jealousies and envy and things that divide us rather than unite us: well Paul knew all about these things too, and particularly when he was dealing with this church at Corinth. Here were people who knew all about that wonderful day of Pentecost in Jerusalem: you never know, some of them may even have been there. And they now knew that when they threw themselves into the life of the Spirit, they could talk in tongues – they could talk in a language that wasn’t anything like English or Portuguese or any local language that we could ever imagine, but which they liked to think was the language of God, the language of heaven.

Here in Corinth people were speaking this language, speaking in tongues, at the Sunday service. Fair enough, says Paul, if this is a gift that God has given you: but don’t be so proud of it. Don’t think that this is a the greatest gift that there is. It becomes a bit like the Babel story all over again. Here are people with great ideas, but they’re not asking themselves what God wants. I’m afraid we can still be like the Corinthians in our church life today. We make wonderful plans without always asking what it may be that God wants of us. We think we know best which gifts we should cherish and develop – when sometimes we should listen to what others in the church may tell us. Perhaps we have other gifts that we haven’t realised ourselves. Perhaps our pastor or our elder or a valued friend could help us to see which of our gifts would be most useful to God, here in this place, here today.

I’m not sure if anyone at Corinth was humble enough to ask Paul, but he tells them anyway. Better than tongues, he says, is to prophesy. Don’t use a language that no one else can understand, but speak in a common language –  and use that language to tell one another and the world outside what God has done. Use that language in the best way you can – and use it as a gift of the Spirit: a gift which like every one of the Spirit’s gifts can be used to build up the Church.

This is the challenge presented to you today, as we launch this English language service. God has blessed you with the gift of languages – and now there is opportunity to use and develop that gift so that more and more people may learn about God’s love, and his good purposes for us all. Every Sunday there are people in this city who are not as gifted as you. Like me they will need to hear the good news in English if they are fully to understand it – if it is really to touch their hearts and convert their lives. So seek these people out: invite them to Khovo, every Sunday afternoon, 16.00 hours sharp! And let Paul’s plea to the Church in Corinth be heard by Presbyterians here in Maupto: Aspire to excel in the Spirit’s gifts that build up the Church.

God bless you in this work: keep building!

A Mustard Seed

(originally posted on the Synod Blog, 10-August-2011)

Roderick Strange writing in The Times Credo column last week mentioned a priest, Jim Sullivan by name, who lived to be a great age. He died well into his nineties and had been a minister for about 70 years. At his diamond jubilee, he remarked, “I spent the first 30 years of my ministry trying to bring people into the kingdom. I’ve spent the last 30 trying to bring the kingdom into people.”

It’s a phrase worth considering. What does it mean for the kingdom to come into people? What kind of kingdom people would they become? There are various answers available: they would be poor in spirit, for example, or ready to suffer for a just cause.

The kingdom is what Jesus came to proclaim. “The kingdom,” he declared, “is at hand.” And he sent his followers out to proclaim the kingdom, while he also noted that its mysteries are hidden from the wise, but revealed to children.

What kind of kingdom will this be? It will be a kingdom, writes the Roman Catholic theologian Hans Kung, where, in accordance with Jesus’ prayer, God’s name will be truly hallowed, his will is done on earth, men and women will have everything in abundance, all sins will be forgiven and all evil overcome. It will be a kingdom where, in accordance with Jesus’ promise, the poor, the hungry, those who weep and those who are downtrodden will finally come into their own; where pain, suffering and death will have an end. It will be a kingdom that cannot be described but only made known in metaphors: as the new covenant, the seed springing up, the ripe harvest, the great banquet, the royal feast.

St. Matthew’s gospel has recently been telling us something of these kingdom metaphors, parables of the kingdom. Those of you who come regularly to church will have heard some of them over the last couple of weeks. Well here is my favourite metaphor – the parable of the mustard seed.

Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, the kingdom grows from small beginnings. It’s such a small thing in itself - but like the small swine flu virus, it is likely to have global consequences when taken seriously. Some commentators on this passage have got slightly overheated about the fact that the mustard seed isn’t, in fact, the smallest of seeds, as Jesus says it is. For others, in staunch defence of Jesus, it is clear that at the time this was the smallest seed they knew of.

Well, the truth is - Jesus was just using a common expression from his culture: the mustard seed was simply a normal way of referring to a very small amount of something, something that was very little. The metaphor of the kingdom was not meant as a bit of pre-scientific botany. It was also well-known that the mustard seed grows into a very substantial bush, virtually a small tree. And yet, when we can know all there is to know about the genetic structure of that mustard seed and the processes by which it is transformed into a bush of such substance, there is still something miraculous about that transformation. Anyone who has grown anything from seed will know what I mean. So this parable, this metaphor of the kingdom of heaven is not meant to be botany lesson, nor even a demonstration of the divinity of Jesus; it’s just a good form of communication. Jesus listeners knew immediately what he was talking about.

There is one more technical matter to look at before we come to the meat of the parable, and that is the reference to the birds of the air. Jesus, and the people to whom he was talking, were not astonished that birds might make their nests in the shade of a fully grown mustard bush. Birds, as we know, will make their nests wherever they want, wherever they can find food, and wherever they feel safe, whether that is in a bush or a tree or the many nooks and crannies of a church building, or on Spring Watch locations. But if we read this figure of speech in another way it is a standard Jewish Rabbinical way of referring to somebody else – and here’s the surprise in this Jewish of all gospels – Matthew is referring to the Gentiles – the Gentile people, people who stand outside the Jewish covenant of God with his chosen people (you may remember the Epiphany wise men were Gentile outsiders, Gentiles from the East, astronomers who lived and worked outside the Jewish nation - so too were the Samaritans, they had no dealings with the Jews at all). So what Matthew is referring to is that as the mustard tree grows, so too will the kingdom of God’s covenant people grow, so the tree will provide shelter for all the peoples and nations of the earth, just as birds will find shelter in the branches of the mustard tree.

Back again to Jim Sullivan’s quote about bringing the kingdom into people. What he is saying is that we are the mustard seed; we are the kingdom, we are kingdom people. As we nurture the kingdom within us by prayer and bible study we begin to grow from small beginnings to a flourishing bush. The kingdom, like the mustard seed, begins to transform us as we work in the world, in the classroom, the shop floor, the committee room, the executive suite, as we seek justice and peace, as we bring help to the poor, the marginalised and the sick, as we begin to transform ourselves and the world into his kingdom. It is we that have to grow from small beginnings, it is we that have to be changed, it is we that have to be transformed, the kingdom in us. We, individually, as small mustard seeds can be more effective in the world than any church committee will ever be, and boy do you we love our committees, as all churches do - gosh how did we become so top heavy? You know one of the saddest reasons for people losing contact with God is that they’ve been involved with the church but have become disillusioned, they have been hurt and damaged – and don’t lets kid ourselves churches can be painful places - what was bright and shiny in now tarnished and dull. What gave life and purpose has been reduced to disappointment and play acting, faith has become a habit without reality.

God so loved the world not the church that he gave his only begotten son. God’s work, his mission is primarily focused on the world, his kingdom and then on the response of those who encounter that work, that kingdom work. By implication, of course “the church” in its broadest sense is completely involved. But the institutions, the organizations, the rules and regulations of “church” – while they are inevitable because human beings always organize themselves – are put in their place as secondary, in the end, to the real work of God which is his work in his world. We constantly have to remind ourselves – as Isaiah repeatedly reminds us - where is God’s glory to be found? not in church buildings or its organisations - but in the world. We are here to change the world, not the church.

It took Jesus a little while and some interesting experiences to come to a realisation that his ministry was for all people and not just for Israel, for those of the household of faith. I think Matthew’s parables and particularly the one about the mustard seed begin to tell us that as Jesus develops his ministry he points more and more to God’s kingdom being for everyone. God’s kingdom was not to be a place from which a small band of chosen people could rule the world, but a broad place of many mansions, where all people can find a home and a welcome, where the birds of the air can nest and make a home.

Taking the seed and tree analogy further St Paul in his letter to the Romans, and that difficult of all chapters – chapter 11 - moves this tree image in a different direction when he writes about the wild Gentiles being ‘grafted’ on to the tree of God’s family, as it were – could it be grafted on in place of an original branch which no longer bears fruit?

Are we too idealistic to suppose that for Jesus, a redeemed and faithful Israel working for the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom is the place where the whole world can be and feel at home? The birds of the air don’t become the bush when they build their nest in it, but they do become a part of its life, and here in the shade of the tree there is not only room for, but a celebration of a diversity of bird types - robins, blackbirds, eagles, doves, - the diversity of male, female, back, white, young, old, straight and gay, the diversity of Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, Jew faiths perhaps? All finding a home in the tree like the birds of the air.

For those who have worked like me outside the church, working for the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom, often with people of different faiths or similar planning and community ideals I am increasingly aware of God being at work in people outside the church, building his kingdom. Jesus would appear to expect and particularly to value such people as these. More than once Jesus comments on how the faith he finds in Gentiles and Samaritans puts the faith he finds in Israel to shame.

In my rereading of this parable Jesus appears to be saying there is a broad welcome to those who will live by the values of the kingdom. There are sheep of his who are not of his fold; there are many mansions in the heavenly home to which he goes; there is room in his view for all people who are building God’s kingdom to find space and a home in the mustard tree, like the birds of the air to nest in its branches.

Jim Sullivan was wise to help people become kingdom. We would be wise to become kingdom ourselves.

Amen

Matthew 13 v31-35: Romans 11 v13-21

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit