A Survey of the Wondrous Cross

This Good Friday I have been asked by our parish church to submit a meditation or theological reflection on three verses from John’s gospel. John 19: 28-30. I submit it to your judgement sisters and brothers.

When I had just arrived in Coventry I had a conversation with the Anglican vicar with whom I was to work in an ecumenical project. He greeted me with these words: “Peter, what did Christ do for us on the cross?” I answered swiftly and clearly quoting the apostle Paul. He then declared in terms, that I was a fit and proper person to work with him in the parish.

I liked him! I liked this emphasis on doctrine. It also brought home to me the importance of another New Testament text namely 1Peter 3:15. “Always be ready to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.” I had shown myself to be ready. Are you likewise ready? I merely ask.

All of us in our separate ways must be ready to answer that question. What did Christ do for us on the cross? In framing an answer we are not alone indeed we have gathered here today to do what Isaac Watts did-undertake a survey of the wondrous cross; to probe its mystery and to encourage each other in faith, hope and love. In our thoughts and reflections this afternoon I have been assigned three verses from the fourth gospel-that of John. So it’s his answer to the question posed above that I will be focussing on for the next few minutes.

John sets out his stall very early in his gospel. “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. That’s from chapter 1 before Jesus has uttered a word.

Jesus is the Lamb of God-a sacrifice offered in a new Passover which will inaugurate a new Kingdom-a new world order if you like. Jesus is to offer himself as a sacrifice upon the altar of the world. He is both priest and victim.

Throughout John’s account of the passion Jesus is shown to be in control of events. He declares that he is thirsty calling to mind Psalm 69 but also John chapter 4   when Jesus began his ministry to the Samaritan woman by expressing a need. A sponge is placed on hyssop and lifted up for him to receive. Why hyssop? This is to fulfil another text Exodus 12 v 22 in which Moses cites the use of hyssop as a part of the Passover sacrifice.

Then Jesus declares: “It is finished.” The sacrifice is complete. Or to use a Methodist phrase: tis done the great transactions done. He bows his head and gives up his spirit. This is more significant than first appears. Normally a victim dies and then bows his head involuntarily. But Jesus bows his head first and then gives up his spirit. Does Jesus commit suicide? To us this seems unthinkable but in the ancient world suicide was a noble act. Jesus remember is both priest and victim.

One might also remember the noble sacrifice of Captain Oates lauded at the time of his passing from Anglican pulpits-and his famous last words-“I am going out and I may be some time.” Sometimes I use this form of words when popping out to the shops. Not everybody gets the reference.

In order to get a sense of what all this might mean for us consider the first Passover-that night that is different from all other nights. The night when the Passover lamb is sacrificed and the angel of death passes over Egypt sparing the children of Israel but smiting the first born of all the Egyptians. And in this moment when God shows his power the children of Israel are led out from Egypt into the desert to become God’s holy people and to be made worthy of the new land that has been promised to them.

To be made worthy of the Promised Land is no straightforward matter. Very soon the children of Israel were grumbling about their new circumstances. Egypt had been a real consumer society, plenty to eat and the children of Israel remembered with regret their fleshpots and plenty of public sector employment. Some of the big infrastructure projects are still standing and can be seen from outer space to this day. Of course things had become somewhat disagreeable in recent years and the contributions that the Hebrews had made to good governance in the country had been forgotten. There arose as scripture says a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.

And now behold a new Passover and Jesus is the new paschal lamb slain upon the altar of the world to bring in a new creation for the redeemed people of God. This the invitation, this is the grace freely given and ever given. But it comes with a call to be the people risen with Christ  to declare their faith and show by deeds that their sins are forgiven. And the first of these deeds is the call to leave Egypt and follow Jesus, the way, into the desert and then over Jordan to the Promised Land.

Let’s be clear about Egypt. This is a state of being not a geographical entity. There was a large Jewish community in Egypt, the land, until the late 1940s. It was in Egypt that the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek and in Egypt in Jesus time was a centre of Jewish of Jewish philosophy and scholarship. I well remember visiting John Newton’s parsonage in Olney, Bucks. Over the mantelpiece in his study was this text: “Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondsman in the land of Egypt and the Lord thy God redeemed thee.”

We too are called to come out of Egypt but this is a difficult and costly call. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is a costly grace not a cheap grace.

We too are in bondage to the pharaohs of this world who know neither Joseph not Jesus. You know their names!! We too love our fleshpots, we are almost desperate to go shopping again and we believe that the graces given by economic growth will be ever given.

A sign has been given to us in recent days. A 200,000 ton container ship stuck in the sands of Egypt laden with the products of the east to feed the misguided consumerism of the west. Its name “Ever Given” but not like the grace of God freely given –not at all. This is the devil’s grace and it too is costly grace a cost born by all the poor and disadvantaged people of the world.

In the cross we see clearly our evil-the abuse and misuse of the natural world to make instruments of torture well brought out in the poem you are about to hear. But at the same time God’s sacrificial love his gift of himself as the new Passover lamb which points to the recreation of the world and redemption for sinners like us.  As Paul expresses it:

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us therefore let us keep the feast.

Do the faithful thing.

The last time I wrote on this Bulletin I wrote about loving could be one of the hardest things we can do. But I also want to say that loving is one of the most faithful things we can do.

Faith, at least for me, is not first and foremost about thinking the right ideas about God. Faith is a sincere and intimate connection with and commitment to a person.

Faith comes down to sharing our life with a friend. In my case, that friend is the risen Christ. As the late Marcus Borg once put it, ‘believing is actually be-loving’. And Jesus was pretty clear about how to love him.

Shortly before the Last Supper, some Jews from outside Israel—came to see Jesus. When Andrew and Philip came to check if he wanted to meet with some potential new followers, Jesus reminded them what loving him was going to look like:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.” (John 12:24-25)

In ‘The Universal Christ’, Richard Rohr says “Christians are meant to be the visible compassion of God on earth…. They agree to embrace the imperfection and even the injustices of our world, allowing these situations to change themselves from the inside out, which is the only way things are changed anyway.”

As is often said, hurt people hurt people. Our common strategy for dealing with our pain is to find somebody to blame for it. We try to fix our pain by causing pain in someone else. Instead of healing our pain, blame multiplies and intensifies it.

Jesus invites us to join him in the only truly effective way to mend our lives. The way of love. When we acknowledge that we are all hurt people then and only then can we begin the healing process.

When we recognize that my pain is our pain, we take the crucial step away from blame to compassion. To use Henri Nouwen’s phrase, we become the wounded healer instead of the wounded victim.

We love Jesus by loving other people. Real people. Without exception. In all the messiness of their lives. And, yes, that means sharing their sorrow and suffering as our own. Elsewhere, Jesus called this loving your neighbour as yourself.

Sometimes, this will just wear us out. At the end of a long day, we may have nothing left to give. Now and then, we will need a mid-afternoon nap, a long weekend, or a walk in the park with our dog.

That’s okay by Jesus. He knows that love is hard work. We need a rest. And as it turns out, that’s an act of love as well. Sometimes the hardest one. The act of loving yourself.

God bless,

Alan.

Do the hard thing.

Lately, life hasn’t been feeling like, well, life. There’s been too much loss and loneliness and fear and anger and exhaustion and boredom. We miss eating out and visiting friends, going to the gym, and traveling. And we miss hugs.

When I was a student in the 1980’s I did a lot of running There was once an advert for running shoe whose strap line was ‘Made to do hard things’. Implying that it was not just the shoe but the runner was made to do hard things. I can assure you running up and down the hills of Sheffield was hard!

But honestly, we’re also meant to do tender things. To be close to one another. To give and to receive understanding and comfort. To share tears and laughter. To be, at least for a moment, just a little less guarded with each other. That’s why we miss hugs. We miss life.

Medical professionals and government leaders assure us that the vaccine will save us from this restricted and frustrating life we live at present, and in important ways, I believe that they are telling us the truth.

Hopefully masks and physical distancing will become an increasingly distant memory. The daily death count will disappear from our newspapers’ front pages and stop scrolling across the bottom of our TV screens. The life we’ve been missing will return—sort of.

It’s more accurate to say that the life we had known will return. What we call ordinary life is a sort of half-life. The pandemic simply highlighted and amplified its pattern. As a result, our yearning to be saved was able to announce itself to us with visceral urgency.

When I talk about salvation here, I don’t mean that we want to be whisked away from planet earth to a faraway heavenly dwelling place. Nope. I mean we are drawn to become who we really are. In her book, ‘Dusk, Night , Dawn’, Anne Lamott says, we are ‘loving awareness with skin on’.

The reason we need saving is that we are not just love in the flesh. We are also, as Anne puts it, ‘walking personality disorders’. We are a mix of things. Anne’s pastor says that we have dual citizenship. “We have the human passport with all our biographical details and neuroses engraved on it, and the heavenly one, as the children of the divine.”

Sadly part of that ‘Human Passport’ can mean that when we are hurt we are tempted to hurt others to try and achieve some kind of solace. For a while, it can feel good to judge others and to nurture resentments. Even when we realise how lonely and grumpy we’re becoming, we can find it pretty hard to live a different way. Sadly many congregations are hamstrung in their mission because of the internal lack of forgiveness that pervades our congregations.

But you know, it might just be that the advertising campaign was right. We were made to do hard things. We were made to love.

On this planet, love looks like admitting that we are fragile and wounded. As hard as that kind of vulnerability is, it’s even tougher to do the only thing that will make us whole: forgive.

While we’re talking about forgiveness, let’s be honest that we need forgiveness for our unforgiveness. If you’re anything like me, that’s going to involve admitting that you’ve done your share of dealing with your own wounds by wounding others.

Yep, in our personal lives, we were meant to do hard things. And my experience is that salvation—feeling connected to others and being at home in my own skin—lies in doing these hard things.

But I’ve also learned that I cannot do them on my own. At least in my life, I do these hard things by cooperating with a love that is always given to me. I do not save myself.

That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

He was willing to do the hard thing. To love us because that’s who he is. And his love is what makes it possible for me to move toward being who I truly am: loving awareness with skin on.

We were made to do hard things. We were made to love.

God bless and stay safe,

Alan.

Against Zoom

Just over a year ago the word ”Zoom” referred to a camera lens. But now Zoom has a different meaning altogether and refers to the popular video-conferencing app. It was novel at first but now it’s beginning to pall as a way of worship and a mode of meeting. I dislike looking at myself as if into a mirror when speaking. I also miss the sense of full body context so that you can become aware of the boredom or irritation of others. Gestures and body language are easily missed –formal disagreement with a speaker is difficult. I have also discovered that you can do other things while zooming such as reading texts and following up links and the rest of the meeting is oblivious to your activities.

I have set a personal limit on the number of Zoom meetings I can cope with per day without endangering my psychiatric well-being and emotional stability. That number is three. A webinar counts as half a zoom. I look forward to Zoom free holidays.

How do you feel about worship on Zoom? How do I feel? On a daily basis I attend Morning Prayer by Zoom with Anglican colleagues and friends. There is a set order which is screen shared, the two readings and psalms change every day and the intercessions are offered on a free and extemporary basis. There are three daily tasks: leader which includes the extemporary prayers, reader and responder. There are five regular members of the group although sometimes a sixth person joins us. It works very well and has now been going five days a week for a year.

Other forms of Zoom worship can also be a positive experience provided there is an opportunity for everyone present to be seen and to make a real contribution. What I personally dislike is the splicing together of various elements: prayers, readings, sermon and song for transmission to a passive congregation of viewers at a later date. I find this to be an utterly sterile experience perhaps especially when I myself have preached the sermon.

The Christian faith is faith in God who has become incarnate in the man Jesus. The word has become flesh and dwells among us. (John 1 v14) Bodily presence matters. We acknowledge the presence of the risen Christ among us in one another and in the bread and wine by which that presence is particularly signified. The word has become flesh not a video conferencing app.

It is all very well to read spiritual books, think lofty and enlightened thoughts and cultivate an enhanced condition of soulful life but the presence of Jesus, our incarnate God, is about his presence in one another and especially in those who particularly need our help. The others really matter. Now I am not denying the value of periods of solitude and silence. Methodism would benefit from a lot more silence. As T S Eliot wrote: “Even the anchorite who meditates alone prays for the Church, the body of Christ incarnate”. We have been deprived for a long time-a year without the Lord’s Supper!  Who would have believed it possible!

St Paul in 1 Corinthians speaks of Christian worship as the time when we come together.

“When you come together each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification.”

Sound good to me. Let it come soon!!

The Matter of the Census

The completion of the census form is something we will all have to address in the next week. But the taking of a census doesn’t always get a very good press in the Bible. Although the Lord commands a census to be taken of the children of Israel in Numbers 26 in 2 Samuel 24 census taking is denounced as revealing a lack of faith in God’s providence. There are of course references to census taking in the New Testament but these are associated with the taxation policies of the alien occupiers.

My main interest in the census focuses on one particular question. “What is your religion?”

This is a more difficult question than first appears. There is you see a clear distinction between religion and faith. A religion is a set of cultural and linguistic practices through which a faith is expressed. As Christian preachers we seek to proclaim Christ rather than particular religious practices. Such practices can be reserved to the notice sheet with details of forthcoming meetings and social events.

Christianity is a faith but Methodism or Presbyterianism or whatever might be described as religions. For myself I like to draw on the whole deposit of faith whether it be Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant in proclaiming Jesus as the saviour of the world. I frequently find myself worshipping with other Christians whose religious background is different from my own. When I was a minister in Milton Keynes, where there are many ecumenical partnerships many people wrote ”ecumenical” in the relevant box on the census form. This is not what the census compilers had in mind.

So the first possibility for me would be to write “none”. I have transcended narrow religiosity because I am a follower of Jesus.

Another answer might be to write “Christian” in the space provided. The difficulty about that is that Christianity is not really a religion within the world view of the census writers. They want to know about people’s denominational allegiances be they: Church of England, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical [an umbrella covering an enormous number of Christian groups], Orthodox, Pentecostal or whatever. If I reply that I believe in the one holy, catholic and apostolic church, as I do, I can imagine them tearing their hair out.

A third answer would be to write “Methodist” in the box provided. This is a perfectly proper answer within the meaning of the question. Nevertheless it doesn’t really do justice to my Christian faith. But then my faith isn’t really on the line here simply my preferred cultural and linguistic practices by which I express my faith. A wise Local preacher in my first circuit once said to me: “a Methodist is Christian in earnest”. Great line. I’ve often quoted it. Nobody not even a Methodist, I hope, would ever say; a Christian is a Methodist in earnest.

So what to do. Well you could do nothing because the question is voluntary in any case. The case for writing ”none” is simply this. It will serve as a warning signal to the leadership of the churches that they are facing a serious missional challenge and can no longer rely on people feeling a sense of loyalty to their denominations established status, the racial or social class profile of their people or any other form of tribal membership. That’s a good message to send and I am sure that St Paul would agree with me.