Sermon by Fr James Heard, Sunday 21 May 2017, Easter 6, United Benefice of Holland Park
Sermon by Fr James Heard, Sunday 21 May 2017, Easter 6
Being away with our youth last weekend was just
wonderful. They really are great kids, very bright and not afraid to think and
ask hard questions. We discussed in the car on the way down about the previous
year and the discomfort they felt at the talks. In one of the talks, they were
told that it was important that they told all of their friends about Jesus and
try to get them to become Christians. One of them responded with such clarity –
‘That’, she said, ‘was a sure way to lose all your friends!’
It was helpful to explore the worldview behind this
emphasis… of evangelising, telling people about Jesus. After all, that is what
the Great Commission is all about isn’t it? At the end of Matthew’s Gospel the
disciples are told: Go into the world and proclaim the gospel, baptising in the
name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In fact, Christianity wouldn’t
have reached these shores had not someone come and done exactly that.
We heard in today’s epistle: ‘Always be prepared to give
an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you
have…but do this with gentleness and respect’ (1 Peter 3:15). With that in
mind, I wonder how you might answer the following questions: What does it mean
for you to be Christian? Doesn’t science disprove God? What about all the other
faiths in the world: how does Christianity relate to them? How do you reconcile
the terrible suffering in the world with an all powerful and loving God?
These are a just few questions, some of which have been
grappled with for centuries. They require a lot of consideration about what we
believe and we’re challenged to have some sort of response, even if we don’t
have definitive answers. This can be particularly difficult because, as
anthropologists recognise, most practitioners of religion participate in their
faith and religious practices more readily than they can explain or describe
it.
St Paul was one of the most significant apologist or
defender of the Christian faith in the early church. Having start out by
preaching to the Jewish community, today we find Paul among the intelligentsia
in Athens.
The Athenians were a complacent, self-conceited lot,
self-confident of their philosophy and religiousness. They had the greatest
philosophers in the world, philosophers we still talk about, and are influence
by, today.
Paul changes tack in his preaching: he doesn’t refer to
the Hebrew Scriptures. Rather, he meets the Athenians on their own ground. He
quotes two Greek philosophers: the God in whom ‘we live and move and have our
being’. This would have been immediately recognisable to his hearers, as would
his assertion that we are all the offspring of God.
St Paul communicated in a language and with concepts that
the Athenians would have recognised. He looks for similarities, points of
contact. He then gently and respectfully challenges their worldview. He invites
them to think more deeply. He tells them that God isn’t to be found in shrines made of silver and gold, things made by human
hands. Rather, the very being of God may be glimpsed in Jesus Christ, through
whom we know that death is not the end. At the mention of resurrection, many
thought he was talking nonsense, some wanted to hear more, and a few believed.
The challenge of offering a defence of one’s faith opens
up a number of issues for us Christians living in the 21st century.
If Paul’s sermon was particularly adapted to his audience in Athens, what about
our context? There are a number people today who are aggressively
hostile to religious faith. They have loud voices but there aren’t actually
that many. Some in today’s society are simply indifferent to institutional
forms of religion, busy with other things on a Sunday – family, sport, art,
shopping, socialising. Not bad things in themselves. There are yet others who
have a profound fascination with the spiritual life and its manifestation. But
are nervous about seeing this given this institutional shape / organisation in
the form of the church.
In summary, we have a situation in the UK where a few are
aggressively hostile to religious faith; there are many people (between 50-60%)
who still self-identity themselves as Christian;
and there are many others who might tick the ‘no
religion’ box in census forms, but who describe themselves as spiritual, who
recognises that there is a larger picture to reality than a purely materialist
one, but who view institutional religion with suspicion. They perhaps see it as
somehow less authentic than personal experience or a general sense of the
transcendent.
If that’s our context, how might we respond? I don’t
believe the answer is to enthusiastically try to turn every conversation
towards Jesus. That is a sure way to lose friends. I think there’s a different
way that’s unembarrassed about being Christian and one that’s inclusive,
welcoming and gentle.
I’ve been influence by the Benedictine approach to the
spiritual life. Fundamental to Benedict was hospitality. If you ever visit a
Benedictine monastery you can be assured of decent food. Here in the United
Benefice too, we try to offer a warm welcome, good food, nice biscuits and
organic fairtrade coffee, a glass of wine. Rather than attempting to
aggressively convert people, the invitation is simply to join the party. The
church isn’t an exclusive better than thou club but a place where all are
welcome. And the response to difficult questions might be, I don’t know, but
let’s explore together.
Perhaps it's a little bit like Noah’s ark we heard about
in the the rather perplexing passage from Peter. The church has used this
imagery throughout the centuries. The church nave symbolizes a ship with its
vaulted ceiling looking like an inverted keel. In this metaphor, the church is
a safe place in a storm.
And what’s it like in this ship? Fredrick Buechner
describes it (Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter's Dictionary, 1988):
… just about everything imaginable is aboard, the clean
and the unclean both. They are all piled in together helter-skelter, the
predators and the prey, the wild and the tame, the sleek and beautiful ones and
the ones that are ugly as sin. There are sly young foxes and impossible old
cows. There are the catty and the piggish and the peacock-proud. There are
hawks and there are doves. Some are wise as owls, some silly as geese;
some meek as lambs and others fire-breathing dragons.
There are times when they all cackle and grunt and roar and sing together, and
there are times when you could hear a pin drop.
It’s not all enjoyable…But even at its worst, there’s at
least one thing that makes it bearable within, and that is the storm without…at
its best there is, if never clear sailing, shelter from the blast, a sense of
somehow heading in the right direction in spite of everything, a ship to keep
afloat, and, like a beacon in the dark, the hope of finding safe harbor at
last.
Thus, Jesus the redeemer effected a great reversal.
Whereas the waters of the Flood brought death and destruction, the waters of
baptism bring new life, protection from danger, and a shelter in the storm.