Sermon
Sunday 27th November, 2016
 
On Thursday last week, I spent some of the day at a roadshow organised by the Church of Scotland’s Mission and Discipleship Council. They are touring the country with this event which, it is claimed, is designed to hear the voice of the local church and give opportunity to determine the priorities of the Church of Scotland and shape its strategy over the coming years.
 
After a brief act of worship, the event was introduced by the new Convener of the Mission and Discipleship Council, a nice man who is minister in Granton Parish Church in Edinburgh and who was at university around the same time as me. He outlined some of the challenges the Church of Scotland is facing. Over the last 20 years, membership has declined by 30% and the number of ministers by 24%, which somewhat unexpectedly means that there are proportionately more ministers to members than before, but fewer overall. He reminded us that if you are a minister under 50, you are in the youngest 20% of ministers. You can imagine how good that made me feel, but the serious point is that very soon, nearly all the ministers we have the moment will be retiring. All this is very familiar staff, but it does no harm to be reminded every so often. I was interested, though, that we weren’t told how many congregations had been amalgamated and how many buildings disposed of in the last 20 years. My impression is that the number would be quite small, meaning that fewer ministers are serving smaller congregations but spread more thinly through much the same number of buildings.
 
The Convener then rehearsed a litany of other issues – declining income, greater regulatory burdens, difficulty getting elders, difficulty getting people willing to commit. You could see participants there, elders and ministers alike, nodding in recognition. It was all a bit gloomy. I sat with people I didn’t know who turned out to come from some pretty posh areas of Edinburgh and, in a way, it was comforting to learn that their struggles are very similar to ours.
 
We were encouraged to talk about things we thought the central church administration could do to help us address the problems we all face. As you might expect, given my predilections, I kept chipping in with suggestions that we try to deepen our relationships with other denominations. I hope my suggestions were received with profound gladness. But, as the day wore on, I became increasingly concerned. Concerned because what was coming from the Mission and Discipleship Council were suggestions that, with a tweak of the rules here, a change of procedures there, then things would be fine.
 
Let me do a straw poll. Hands up if you would like elders to be able to celebrate Holy Communion.
 
What is being discussed is that, given the right permission and encouragement, elders will eagerly undertake many functions previously reserved to ministers. If the Mission and Discipleship Council are listening, they will hear that actually the opposite dynamic is happening. Ministers are more and more having to do things that previously elders and other members would have done as a matter of course. I spoke with one who is acting as his own session clerk, for example.
 
But my concern is not that, in my view, the solutions on offer simply won’t work, but because they are not grounded in an understanding of theology. I believe very firmly that every major thing the church does must have a theological reason behind it. If it’s doesn’t, if it is just a technique borrowed from the world of business, it probably won’t work.
 
Take the shortage of ministers, for example. Make training easier, shorter – that’s the suggestion. By the way, it is always training now, whereas back in the day when I was at the bottom end rather than the top end of the youngest 20% of ministers, it was education for the ministry. Ministry, it seems, is being reduced to set of tasks, whereas there’s actually a lot more to it than that. But where in this thinking is the theology of vocation. Is God calling dozens of people to be ministers who are refusing to call because the training takes too long? Has the church stopped believing that everything is possible with God, or indeed has it stopped believing in Christ’s promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, and that as long as God wants a church on earth, here it will be.
 
I came away thinking that what the Church of Scotland is seriously lacking at the moment is not money, or people or ministers, though evidently it has less and fewer of all these than before. What it is lacking is a story, a story it can tell coherently, a story about our life in the world.
 
Which is mindbending. Because all we really have is a story, a story from which everything else flows, a story which gives everything we do meaning. We may not be much good at being a big institution any more, but we still have our story, and we ought to be confident in telling it.
 
And today, as we enter the season of Advent once again, we begin again our annual telling of the story. The part we read from Matthews Gospel can seem fearful, gloomy even. In a way, it is just a scene setter, a reminder of the ordinary things of life. It is into ordinary life that God comes. It is among ordinary life that the church serves. Don’t dwell on the image of one been taken of the other left. We are the ones were taken, not away, but into Christ’s service.
 
It is an image which has been used to scare people, to change their behaviour, but that was not the way Christ worked. He reached out in love. He invited people in. He came with a message of peace and hope. As Isaiah says, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,” and as the Psalmist says, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” This is an invitation to be received in joy and gladness, a promise which gives us hope. No longer are we to be gloomy. No longer are we to be afraid, because the promise is that God will reign in perfect justice; no longer will people go to war; division will be replaced by unity; tranquillity will displace strife; and prosperity will take the place of want.
 
This is the beginning of the story we tell, as Christians, as the Church of Christ. It is the story which unfolds with the birth of Jesus, through his life to his death, resurrection and ascension, to his giving of the Holy Spirit. This is the story we believe, the story we say defines who we are. It is time to cast off gloom, to trust in God and live the story we believe.
 
Amen.

 
Jesus said: Who do you say I am?
 
Like most people, I expect, who think about the Bible at all, I have parts I return to again and again in my mind. And that question of Jesus to his disciples is one of them.
 
I’m sure you’ll remember the occasion he asked it. It is in Marks Gospel, just after the feeding of the four thousand. Jesus is reflecting with his disciples on what has just happened. He asks first, “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples report on various things they have heard people saying about Jesus. Then he asks the more direct question, to people who, because they were closest to him, might have had deeper insight – “But what about you? Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers. “You are the Messiah.”
 
I keep returning to this question because, for me, it is possibly the central question of faith. Who do we say that Jesus is? The answer we give to that goes to the heart of our faith.
 
And although we have not read the story I have just briefly retold, I’m thinking about this question because of this day. On Friday evening, I was in St Michael’s and all Saints Scottish Episcopal Church, near Tollcross and, for a concert. The church had already been made ready for this morning. The green altar cloth had been put away and, in its place, the altar was dressed in gold. It was a very visible indication that is today is the feast of Christ the King.
 
This is a Sunday which has gradually been growing insignificance over recent years. Until about twenty years ago, very few people in the Church of Scotland would have heard of it. Hardly any congregations would have observed it. But it is one of the great and undoubted gifts of the ecumenical movement that churches learn from each other, and insights and traditions are shared, to the benefit and enrichment of all. So, over the last couple of decades, many congregations have begun to mark and appreciate the feast of Christ the King.
 
It falls on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. Next week is the First Sunday of Advent, and we move on to Matthew’s Gospel as our guiding gospel through most of the year. And we begin again by looking forward to the coming of Christ, which gives the context for our remembrance of his birth, his ministry, his death, resurrection and ascension and his sending of the Holy Spirit. In this way, the church seeks consciously to live its life in the context of the life of Christ. It may sound repetitive, but it isn’t, because every time we read and think about the stories of Jesus, we do so as different people, changed by the experiences we have had since last we read them. So just as we look forward to a new liturgical year, this Sunday invites us to look back. Who have we said Jesus is in the year since last Advent Sunday?
 
Though we change and develop, Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and for ever. In the words of today’s psalm, he is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in time of trouble. He is the eternal Son of God, who was born in humility in a stable in Bethlehem; who, in helplessness, was entrusted to human parents; who, as a young man, taught us all we actually need to know to live in reconciled relationship with God; who was ultimately betrayed, abandoned and killed, only to triumph over death. This is who we say Jesus is.
 
It is an unconventional story. No one expected that this was how God would act to redeem the world. Many, as we know, cannot believe it yet. But still, in the sketchiest possible terms, this is the story of the one under whose guidance we live our lives, whose example we seek to follow, whose story gives our lives meaning and whose promises give us hope. This is the story, to use the terminology of today, of our king.
 
And it is in the description of his crucifixion, a story which is always difficult to read, that we see most clearly and he was, he is – humble, loving, obedient, forgiving, suffering, dignified even in pain and mockery, compassionate, at one with those society rejects, because he himself was rejected. This is the one we acknowledge to be our King, the ultimate authority in our lives.
 
And this both raises and answers another question. Who do we say that we are? On this day, looking back over a year lived in Christ and looking forward to year in which we hope to grow in faith and continue in service we declare afresh, we are disciples of Christ, our King and we offer ourselves anew to him.
 
Amen.

 
And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon Englands mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On Englands pleasant pastures seen!
 
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?
 
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
 
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
 
One hundred years ago, a retired British general, Sir Francis Younghusband, came to the view that German propaganda was damaging the British war effort. To counteract it, he founded campaign called “Fight for Right”. Believing that it needed a song, he asked the Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges, for words. Bridges selected verses by the 18th century English mystical poet, William Blake. He took this poem to his friend, Hubert Parry, professor of music at Oxford, and a man considered to be one of England’s finest contemporary composers. He asked for “suitable, simple music, that an audience could take up and join in.”
 
Parry wrote suitable but certainly not simple music, but for all that, ever since its first performance in March 1916, it has been taken up and sung full voice in churches and schools, by trade unionists, suffragettes, missionaries, rugby supporters, promenaders; in short, by people of all walks of life, nationalities and political persuasions.
 
Asking Parry to compose the musical setting was an inspired choice. As a musician, he believed that German music stood at the very pinnacle of the art form. He was internationalist in outlook, and watched the destruction of the young men of Europe in the trenches of Flanders and France with horror and despair. He was no nationalist; he was no jingoist and, shortly after writing Jerusalem for the “Fight for Right” campaign, he withdrew its right to use his work, instead assigning the rights to the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. It was a mark of his and his wife Maude’s lifelong commitment to the cause of votes for women.
 
Parry, in some ways such an establishment figure, had real anti-establishment leanings – deploring militarism and war, actively supporting an end to male privilege and looking forward to a time when all would be equal. His beliefs made him a composer well-suited to set Blake’s words.
 
The son of a shopkeeper, Blake was an engraver to trade. Never well off, he was part of and identified with that stratum of English society which lived with poverty and debt, hunger and disease, and which was then entirely unrepresented in the places of power. His parents were Dissenters, that is not members of the Church of England, a principled stance which put them at considerable social disadvantage. William Blake was profoundly influenced by the Bible and Old Testament prophecy in particular, and biblical imagery suffuses his poetry. He was also a mystic; he believed he had prophetic powers himself, and was deeply influenced by ancient English legends of the Druids.
 
The text of And did those feet which appears above is faithfully transcribed from Blake’s own handwritten manuscript, which accounts for its non-standard punctuation and capitalisation. That’s important, because, although it sounds like it begins with four questions, the lack of question marks after the first two couplets leaves open the possibility that these are assertions of ideas Blake believed to be true.
 
The poem begins with a reference to the legend that, in the years the Gospels say nothing about the life of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea brought him on a trading visit to England. It may be that Blake believed that this had happened; after all he believed some strange things, but it is more likely that he is working towards a mystical rather than a literal truth. Jesus’ feet may never have actually walked England’s pleasant pastures, but God’s Spirit is everywhere present. Jerusalem, in this context, is not the physical Palestinian city but a metaphor for the kingdom of God, present on earth.
 
Elsewhere, Blake speaks of loss of innocence. Here, he conjures a picture of the Spirit of God present but overlooked, of the Kingdom of God crowded out and obscured by sin, using that highly redolent phrase – “these dark Satanic mills”. So much meaning is packed into these four words: the enslavement of working people in the factories of the Industrial Revolution; the dehumanising of children and women and men as their humanity is sacrificed on the altars of power and profit and war; even the universities and the churches, which Blake accused of imposing false ways of thinking on people.
 
These are ills which demand response. Drawing heavily on imagery from Ephesians 6, our first reading this morning, and a little bit on the story of the death of Elijah, Blake calls for the weapons of spiritual warfare, as do we when we sing his words. The bow of burning gold symbolises purity of intent; the arrows desire truth and justice, peace and equity. The prayer is for the clouds of sin covering the land to be folded back, broken up. The chariot of fire is the transport to the kingdom of heaven.
 
Then comes the climax – a vow, a promise –
 
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.
 
This fight is to be fought by intellect, speech, persuasion, and goodwill, not by physical destruction. Blake abhorred war. Those who take up the struggle must not rest from it until God’s kingdom is fully revealed, unchallenged, on earth. In England? Well, Blake was English. It was what he knew. This is not a cry for English exceptionalism, proclaiming England to be better or more worthy than any other place. Although the name may sit somewhat uncomfortably on non-English tongues, all that we know of Blake leads us to conclude that his vision was not confined to one place or country, but embraced all humanity.
 
These are some of the reasons why this is a hymn for our time, and a hymn for this day in particular. The drumbeats of war are being heard again by those who have ears to hear them. The fires of division are being stoked. This is Remembrance Sunday, but remembrance will have failed if it thinks just about glory and heroism and sacrifice and does not remember the evils which lead to war – the turning of race against race, the rhetoric of blood and soil nationalism, the overblown claims of greatness and superiority, the exploitation of the poor, the cynical manipulation of legitimate grievance, the lust for rearmament, the erecting of barriers, the will to tear up hard won international agreements. All these things we are seeing and hearing getting louder, more insistent, more confident. We see their appalling consequences in Syria and Mosul. We hear them in the words of the far right government of Hungary, in the speeches of ultra-right-wing politicians in Germany, in France, in the Netherlands. We heard some of them in the voices of some who campaigned for Brexit and we have heard them from the man elected to the presidency of the United States. Certainly, the drumbeats of war are sounding.
 
And make no mistake, they are sounding because things are profoundly wrong. The neoliberal project of the Thatcher and Reagan, of Blair and Clinton and Bush and Brown and Cameron and, yes, even Obama, may be dying, and rightly so, but it is not going to give up without a fight. It is dying because it has done too little to distribute wealth fairly, and too much to concentrate it in too few hands. People are right to be angry, but the anger of white men should not be directed against black men, nor against women, or Muslims, but against those who have gamed the system and made themselves immensely wealthy. Now is a time for unity. Now is a time for solidarity. Now is a time for dialogue, for understanding, for mental, not physical, fight. Now is a time to proclaim the values of the kingdom of God, to break through the clouds of sin, to unshackle the bound, to seek the Spirit of God and find the face of Christ in all people. In unity not division, in faithfulness not fear, will we honour the memory of men and women who died in battle. In these dangerous times, if these poppies that we wear are to mean anything, they must be for us signs that we will not cease from mental fight, nor let our swords sleep in our hands, till, with God, we have built his kingdom of peace and justice in this, and every other, land.
 
Amen.

 
Have you ever been asked, “Why does God allow suffering?” I have. Sometimes it has been asked by people who have watched or are watching a loved one suffer. That kind of experience can be a real test of faith. Sometimes it is asked in much more abstract circumstances. And whatever answer you try to give has to be tempered by the intent of the questioner.
 
To a person witnessing the suffering of a loved one, the answer has to be pastoral. We might recall how God in Christ experienced great suffering himself; that we believe and trust in a God who is love and therefore suffers along with those he loves, sharing the burden of pain. We might recall that this is a world of ceaseless process of creation and decay. We might offer the thought that God does not inflict suffering as a mark of displeasure. We might want to say, because it is true, that there are things we cannot understand. Often the best way is to say little but to be with the other person in their pain and confusion, because that is the godly thing, because God is always with us, whatever we face, whatever is happening.
 
But what about those more abstract times this or similar questions are asked? Often, that’s a more hostile, more confrontational conversation, with a subtext like this. “This God of yours: you say he is good and loving and all-powerful, still there are all these bad things going on. Not such a great God after all, is he? Maybe just a figment of your wishful thinking!” That kind of questioner doesn’t want an answer. They want to show that they are right and clever, and that we who believe are a bit stupid and gullible and definitely wrong. These people are difficult to argue with, because their minds are made up.
 
We read about the situation kind of like this from Luke’s gospel. The Sadducees were an elite. Predominantly wealthy, they lived comfortable lives, lives which gave them the leisure to pursue theological disputes. Like many relatively closed groups, they built up a high degree of certainty in their own beliefs. Their big thing was that they believed that there was no life after death, no resurrection, and that this life was to be lived to the full. All right for them, you might say; most of them were pretty comfortable.
 
The Sadducees argued that there was nothing in the written Torah, the first five books of the Bible, to support a belief in life after death. The Pharisees, their great opponents, argued that there was plenty to support such a belief in the Psalms, the Prophets and the Wisdom Literature of the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. It was a clash of fundamentalisms.
 
Jesus’ thinking was closer to that of the Pharisees on this matter. So this group of Sadducees thought they would try to demonstrate that Jesus was stupid and wrong. They came up with an absurd situation, of a woman who had been married in turn to seven brothers. ‘Who would she be married to in heaven,’ they asked, no doubt smirking. We’ve got you now, haven’t we?
 
So this is short but complicated passage yields its first lesson. We don’t know much about heaven, but Jesus tells us a little here. Heaven, he says, is not going to be just like this life, only better. Heaven is a gathering in of God’s people into God. In heaven we will be together with one another, together with those we love but not particularly together with any one other person because all will be equally together with God. Our life will continue because it will be life in God. It will be life in which all is restored because there will be no further separation from our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
 
It is interesting that the scenario the Sadducees concocted to try to outwit Jesus should have been what it was. It centred on a woman. Without question in their minds, her function was simply to provide heirs for her husband. She is nothing more than a possession, to be passed on to the next to inherit. Although taken to extremes in this scenario, this was a real system, and was developed in response to poverty and insecurity, situations of which the Sadducees would have had a little direct experience. They have no sympathy for the woman, no thought for the suffering implied by their tale.
 
But the answer Jesus gives does. Although he speaks about the next life, he is also speaking about this life, for to Jesus, there is no discontinuity between the two. In the next life, the systems of this world will have no further relevance. Those who are oppressed will be freed. Those who suffer will have their burden lifted. All shall dwell within the perfect love of God.
 
While this assurance brings hope, it also begs the question – if God’s perfect kingdom is like this, why do we put so much effort into maintaining systems which are corrupt, which do oppress, which call such suffering to so many? How can we be content with what is so far from perfect when we have such a good idea of the will of God?
 
These largely rhetorical questions find some sort of answer in the final thing I want to say. There is something of the Sadducee in all of us. We all wants to know where we stand. We like systems and rules and consistency. It is how we struggle to achieve fairness, which is laudable in an unfair world. But these systems are also the means of preserving privilege. Those who set the rules wield the power. That’s why they are so seductive. So we make the making of and keeping of rules all-important. We do it in many aspects of life, even in our life of faith. We call it a dogma, these systems of ‘correct believing’ that we create, rules by which we judge and measure faithfulness.
 
That’s exactly what the Sadducees were doing. They wanted to prove that Jesus didn’t measure up, that he was a bad teacher, a bad person even. But they made a fundamental mistake, one which fundamentalists are always making. They were elevating beliefs and dogma over the grace of God. Believing correctly had become more important than living lovingly. Believing by the rules had taken the place of gratefully appreciating the grace of God. Understanding rather than loving had become the goal of faith.
 
But God doesn’t work that way. His grace is abundant. It is always unmerited, undeserved. We cannot box God in and expect him to abide by our rules. Rather, what we must do, is appreciate God with thankfulness and, to the best availability, copy him and his all-inclusive love, love which makes us all his children, love which promises us that all will live in God for ever.
 
Amen.