A Warm Welcome?

As we begin to open up our churches and get back to normal (what ever that might mean!), we hope that some of the people who engaged with our churches and circuit over the Internet will want to engage with us in person. But what will that mean for our churches?

Over the years as I have gone through the stationing process and visited prospective new churches the one thing the church stewards are keen to emphasise is that ‘we are a friendly church’. To be honest I would be surprised if a church ever said it was an unfriendly church! However after a few months into an appointment I feel like saying “You know when you said you are a friendly church…”

Is your Church a friendly church or a church of friends. The two are very different and easily confused by those who are on the inside.

Most churches have some form of welcome on the door but when the visitor arrives will you cut short the deep conversation you are having with some one you spoke to just two days ago and focus all your attention on the visitors?

Do the welcomers take the visitor into the church and help them settle WHERE THEY WANT TO SIT(!) or is the welcomers role to steer them away from the ‘reserved pews’ and into the pews where no one else wants to sit. Or are the visitors simply left on their own to play ‘pew roulette’.

Even if the visitor is fortunate to land on an empty pew would members of the congregation move from their ‘spot’ to go and sit with them too make them welcome or to they twist round in their seats, give them a good stare and ask the person next to them in a loud Methodist whisper “Do you know who they are?”

Does your Church give the visitor a plethora of books and leaflets without any explanation of what they are? (Is it obvious that the black hymn numbers are from the old book and the red ones from the new book – which nobody but the minister likes). Or do you fail to tell the visitor looking for a hymn book that the words of the service will appear on the screen apart from those we know by heart so we don’t bother with those, but that’s OK because where they are sitting they can’t see it any way.

After the service are they taken to the coffee room or simply told where it is? Are they sat at the ‘spare table’ while people put table and chairs together so that they and their friends can all sit and chat ? If you do go over to talk with them do you sit or hover over them like an impatient waiter?

What of you conversation? A very Methodist thing to do is to apologies for the preacher “It’s not our own Minister, just a Local Preacher.” And to the outsider what is a Local Preacher? or the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper or the offering?

Do you, in your best jokey voice tell them that we will have to get them on Church Council?

When the visitor leaves do we just ‘hope’ to see them next Sunday or do we ask questions of their experience and what we can do to help them feel more welcome?

Oh yes we’re a welcoming church, it’s just some people don’t want to be welcomed!

God bless, Alan.

Covenant – A Ten Word Sermon

A Sermon for the Covenant Service preached this year.

Covenant is arguably the single most important theme running through Scripture. Scripture is, after all, the human record of God’s people telling their stories of their encounters with God. These encounters were all driven by the sense of covenant, or relationship. That covenant relationship is precisely what made them God’s people. That covenant relationship was precisely what gave God’s people their name and their identity. That covenant relationship was precisely what motivated God’s people to keep going – it was not just their past and present, it was their future direction too.

While we’re here, let’s not make too much of the distinction between the Old Covenant (or Old Tesament) and New Covenant (New Testament). There was no sudden change when Jesus was born. Jesus was, after all, within God right from the beginning of time. There was certainly no sense in which God changed either – so let’s not prop up those tired clichés about “The God of the Old Testament” or “The God of the New Testament”. It’s the same God we’re talking about, whether we read the Old or the New Testaments. The only thing that changed was our understanding of God. When Jesus was born, an awful lot of myths and misunderstandings were shattered. The tables that were overturned were a metaphor for those upended ideas.

This Covenant Sunday, I want to hold before you ten key ideas about the meaning of Covenant. I’ll let you work out for yourselves if there is any link to the Ten Commandments, although to be able to answer that one you would first have to know what the Ten Commandments are, and a recent church survey suggested that most church people who talk about the importance of the Ten Commandments can’t themselves get past naming more than about 7 of them. Anyway, back to the Ten Big Ideas about Covenant.

The first big idea is Incarnation. God becoming flesh; God becoming one of us. God in the midst of God’s people. We first hear of it in the Genesis story, when God is taking a stroll in the Garden of Eden, much to the shame of Adam and Eve. We hear of it in the prophets, when God speaks through a human channel to remind God’s people of the covenantal terms they all agreed but quickly forgot. We see it in Jesus, who embodies the fullness of the Godhead in human form. We see it in the early church, where members are characterised by their love for the unlovely.

The second big idea is Commitment. As with any relationship, it requires effort to sustain it. That effort is called commitment. It’s a giving and not counting the cost. It’s working without seeking any reward. You could use the word ‘faithfulness’ here in this meaning of the word. With Commitment, we see God’s commitment to us and to all God’s people in the Covenant, because God is faithful. God doesn’t give up.

The third big idea is Forgiveness. With forgiveness is the idea too of “willingness to forgive”. Isn’t the story of God an epic story of forgiveness on the grandest scale, over and over again and through century after century? Isn’t the willingness to forgive part of the very nature of God? One of the comedic aspects of the history of the kings of Israel is the alternating good king – bad king nature of successive leaderships, yet time and time again, God forgives the wayward people and the covenant is restored once more.

The next big idea is Kindness. As they say in the internet meme, How old were you when you first realised that “Breakfast” is called that because it is the meal with which you “Break fast” after a long sleep eating nothing? Or, How old were you when you realised that the reason people eat desserts when they are stressed is that “stressed” written backwards is “desserts”. In this case, How old were you when you realised that “Kindness” comes from the same root origin as “Kin” or “Family” – meaning that to be kind to someone is the same as treating them like one of your own family? When God makes a Covenant to show loving kindness to all God’s people, what is actually being said here?

Idea number five is Extravagance. Recklessness. Wastefulness even. Cup running over, Good measure pressed down and spilling over the top. The story of the Prodigal Son was a parable Jesus told to reveal a little about God and God’s Kingdom. “My Gaff, My Rules” as Al Murray’s pub landlord would say. Well God’s Kingdom is God’s Gaff, and so God’s Rules apply – chief amongst them is this reckless extravagance. The Parable Jesus told could more accurately be called The Prodigal Father, since the Father threw that literal kill-the-fatted-calf extravagant party that so upset the other brother who wanted everything to be fair and carefully measured. Right throughout Scripture we see this same extravagance whenever God provides for the people. That’s the kind of Covenant that God offers.

Next is Mercy. What set God’s relationship with the people at odds with the religions of the surrounding people was this sense of mercy, contrasting with the sense of appeasement that had to be bought for other deities. Those other religions were forever offering sacrifices, including human sacrifices, in order to appease the wrath of their remote god figures and ensure good harvests or favourable weather. The God of Israel showed mercy – not of the screaming “Am I not merciful?” from the Emperor Commodus in the film Gladiator, but a gentle loving mercy that had no precedent. Mercy is a character trait that God brings to the Covenant table.

Idea number Seven is Grace. You were probably waiting for that one. Ian Smale, songwriter for kids ministry, summed up the difference between Grace and mercy as follows: Grace is when God gives us the things we don’t deserve; Mercy is when God does not give us what we deserve.
Yet Grace is so much more than unmerited giving. It is a way of being more than doing. It is a way of putting the other first, rather than putting self first. It is an attitude of service rather than control. God is gracious, and God’s Grace is integral to the Covenant relationship.

We couldn’t go much further without Love. This is our eighth Idea. To say God is Love is the closest we can get to explaining the fullness of God in a single word. Some writers have said that God is not a person, God is a verb. Love is an action, after all, and God’s people are all those who receive that love. We are helped in this understanding so much by the metaphors of the Bridegroom and the Bride Church, or by the beautiful and poetic imagery of lovers in the Song of Songs. Poets down through the centuries have tried to explain what love is, especially that rapturous sense of being “in love”. God’s covenant relationship is motivated by love, driven by love and sustained by love. Love is the very essence of who God is.

Idea number nine is Promise. Where commitment was the signing up to the deal at the beginning, and a way to sustain the relationship for the present, promise is constantly looking to the future. Whenever we say “I promise to …” we are talking about our future behaviour, actions and responsibilities. It’s an IOU if you like, just as every banknote in the land bears that famous promise from the Bank of England, “I promise to pay the bearer the sum of…” With the Covenant, God promises a relationship with the words “You will be my people and I will be your God”. Note the future tense there, and note too the emphasis in God’s words on God’s people collectively rather than any individual relationship.

Our tenth idea is … Mystery. Left until last because it was probably the most unexpected in my list, but also left until last because this one is so great that nothing can follow it. When we do our theology, when we talk about what God is like, we must spend the greater part simply admitting we don’t know. God is unfathomable, and any church that claims to have all the answers is therefore blasphemous. We can’t dare to claim we know God, but we can say with confidence that God absolutely knows us, even the bits that we really wish God didn’t know, but also we can say that despite God knowing us fully, warts and all, God loves us unconditionally. There’s so much about God which is and always will be a complete mystery, but we do know that. The mystery of God is absent in so much popular Christian literature, and it is a glaring omission. I would encourage you most urgently to start redressing the balance by reading a book called The Universal Christ by modern mystic Richard Rohr. Highly recommended. Anyway, back to our ten.

These ten ideas tell us ten different aspects of God’s character that God brings to the Covenant table. If we dare to sign up to the Covenant then we must be prepared to offer all ten characteristics back to God.

Except that it doesn’t work like that. We are not called to think of our Sunday Church attendance as our side of the Covenant. In fact I would suggest that our Sunday Church attendance has nothing to do with keeping our side of the Covenant at all. You see, our response to God’s love, to God’s Covenant relationship is not “upwards” but “outwards”. Our response is to our neighbour.

So, we go through all ten of those big themes one more time, very quickly, and in reverse order, as we consider the way we must reflect the ten characteristics of God just mentioned.

The mystery, as Paul says, is the presence of Christ in all humanity. The Universal Christ of which Richard Rohr writes. The mystery of Christ in our neighbour is what motivates us to respond to them. We make a promise today to keep this Covenant, and that promise is to our neighbour – to the oppressed, the captive, the refugee, those desperate. Our promise is to show love to them, a love which is expressed in our grace and mercy. A love which is expressed in the extravagance of our response to their needs, not seeking glory for ourselves, but secret extravagance which blows them away with our kindness. Kindness even, that sees all humanity as we would members of our own family.

None of this is possible unless we as a church are a healthy representation of the body of Christ. Healing comes when we forgive one another, not seeking revenge or demanding justice on our terms. Forgiveness means letting go, for when we forgive we cease to carry around the pain we feel, and in the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to forgive us as we forgive others. That’s how God’s Kingdom comes on earth.

In this Covenant Service we are making a Commitment – not just to God, but to one another and to all our neighbours. The commitment to love God, love others, love our neighbours and even love our enemies, is never one we should enter into lightly, for it demands everything from us. If you cannot make that commitment today then please sit it out and have another go next year when you may feel ready to do so.

Finally, the incarnation of God lies within us. We are called no less to embody Christ in this world. We are called not just to be Jesus’ hands and feet, but perhaps more urgently today to be his words, his prayers and even his anger – joining others to turn over tables in protest at the sickening injustices of today’s society.

Out of the many characteristics that God brings to this table in the Covenant with all God’s people, I have highlighted just ten today. Can you bring those same ten characteristics in your own response as an expression of your side of the Covenant, of your love for God, but most of of your love for your neighbour?

May God give you the strength and courage to say yes today. Amen.

Revd Stephen Froggatt

Jesus -a Green??

This piece is dedicated to the Streetly Eco Festival and might have been a sermon but I thought it better for this medium.

Concerned as we are about the environmental crisis we Christians need to ask ourselves a question. What do we Christians bring to the table? How does our faith in Jesus empower our actions and direct our thoughts and prayers in this matter. After all Jesus of Nazareth lived in the first century AD and had no knowledge of climate change science. Nor did he have the benefit of being briefed by Greta Thunberg and Richard Attenborough. So is Jesus irrelevant in this matter and does Christianity really make no difference at all because our thinking should be driven solely by the science. My answer to that is, No! Jesus does make a decisive difference and in our concern for the environment he is with us.

I want to answer my own question in three ways: First let’s look at what Jesus read, said and did.

Secondly let’s remember what happened to him.

And thirdly let’s call to mind what his followers came to understand about him and his place in the story of the salvation of the world.

What Jesus read! Perhaps you don’t see Jesus as one who spent his time in Libraries and to be honest nor do I. What I mean is that Jesus received the Hebrew Scriptures, taught their meaning and quoted them and in his life he fulfilled them. These scriptures are rich in references to our topic teaching the goodness of God and the goodness of his creation. Here’s one to take to heart but there are many others. Speak to the earth and it will teach you. In the hand of the Lord is the life of every creature and the breath of all human kind.

And Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says this: look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap and yet your heavenly father feeds them.

Jesus teaches his disciples that love is primary and is always looking to extend itself to outsiders, to heretics and foreigners-to Canaanite women, to Samaritans, even Romans and to the earth itself. Yes even the earth.

Jesus taught his disciples not to seek crowns and thrones but to embrace humility for the sake of love that is sacrificial in character. Christianity is not all about me or my individual rights it’s about the others, the family, society and creation itself-everything is connected. Jesus not only said these things he practised them as well. So when Jesus and his friends find themselves in the midst of a storm at sea the friends panic but Jesus calms the storm and chides his friends for their lack of faith. Who is this they say! That even the winds and waves obey him. Good question! Who indeed!

And so secondly we must ask ourselves; what happened to him.

Now remember if you embrace his teaching and follow his example you will encounter opposition not only in those days but also to-day. The opposition yesterday and today are the power hungry, the profiteers, the privileged, the followers of consumerism, those who use their position to exploit others for the sake of their imagined rights and those who believe there is no such thing as society. You know their modern names!

So these people went after Jesus as today they will go after you. Arrest, trial (of a sort) and execution was what Jesus faced. His disciples suggested armed rebellion as a response but Jesus said no. He breaks the cycle of oppression and revenge. Jesus foresaw his death but accepted it freely. In this way love wins the ultimate victory.

And so thirdly what did his first followers come to understand about Jesus. At first of course they were bewildered, frightened and confused. Some of them still are! But then they came to an understanding that Jesus had been raised up and that although the body they had known and touched had disappeared they could still experience his presence in all manner of ways not the least of which is the Eucharist.

Jesus, they realised, is the best image of God we have. God loves the world so much that he had sent Jesus for the sake of the world-that it might be saved. Yes things are in a terrible state-creation groans as Paul says but all is not lost for Jesus is at the heart of creation and in his rising we see the inauguration of a new creation.

So is or was Jesus a green. My answer is no. We should never seek to make our faith in Him an add on to our personal political inclinations. Nevertheless the person and work of Jesus provides a crucial (important word that!) insight into how we might address our environmental crisis. But we shouldn’t think of Jesus as simply my personal saviour-such individualism is at the heart of the crisis. Our faith is not just all about me, it’s about the others, you and I together and not just us but the whole created order as well.

Our problem in the Church is that we don’t always see what’s staring us in the face. So it is the Samaritans, proverbial outsiders who the godly despise who are shown getting the message. So in John’s gospel they declare together with one voice. This is indeed the saviour of the world.

I am no longer my own…

September is, of course, the beginning of a new Methodist year and it has become a tradition in many churches to use the first Sunday in September as their Covenant Sunday rather than the first Sunday of the calendar year. 

On occasions for Covenant Sunday I have used Pauls conversion as the basis for my sermon. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:3–6) was dramatic and utterly life-changing. The resulting insights from this initial experience became central to all he taught for the rest of his life. While most of us have a different, less extreme experience, the result should be the same. The insights from our encounter with Jesus should be central to our lives.

Before conversion, we tend to think that God is out there. After transformation, we see that God is not out there but is in here. When we look at life we don’t look at reality, we look from reality. We’re in the middle of it now; we’re a part of it. This whole thing is what the writer Richard Rhor calls the mystery of participation. Paul is obsessed by the idea that even before we recognise Jesus we’re all already participating in something.

I’m not writing the story by myself. I’m a character inside of a story that is being written in co-operation with God and the rest of humanity. This changes everything about how we see our lives. If we’re writing the story on our own, we think we’ve got to write it right. We’ve got to be clever, we’ve got to figure it out. If anything goes wrong, we’ve only got ourselves to blame. That’s a terrible way to live, even though many Christians do. And that’s ‘bad news’.

The good news is a completely different experience of life. A participatory theology says, “I am being used, I am actively being chosen, I am being led.” It is not about joining a new denomination or having an ecstatic moment. After authentic conversion, you know that your life is not about you; you are about life! You’re an instance in this agony and ecstasy of God that is already happening inside you, and all you can do is say yes to it. That’s all. That’s conversion and it changes everything.

This idea of participating in the goodness and continual unfolding of God’s creation reminds me of the prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi that begins, “Make me a channel (or instrument) of your peace.”  As a follower of Jesus we recognise that we are called to be his instruments, to be the conduit through which the love of God flows into the world.

Looking back on my life, I can see that God did everything. God even used my mistakes to bring me to God and God’s wisdom to others! I hope this week will inspire you to look at what has happened when you also said yes to participating as God’s instrument in the world.

God bless, Alan.