Saturday 24 September 2016

The Drama of Desire

It's Harvest at All Saints this week.- the other 3 churches next week - so perhaps it's appropriate that we are in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve in We Make the Road...This week's theme is The Drama of Desire, and we consider the consequences of humanity's disobedience. I think the conversation between God, Adam and Eve is significant, based as it is around three questions (well, actually four!):

  1. Where are you?
  2. Who told you?
  3. What have you done?
In a way, these are existential questions and all have to do with accountability for our actions. Are we in denial? Are we blaming others? What results from human disobedience? We naturally feel guilt and shame when we know we have done something wrong, and either 'cover up' or blame someone or something else. The result inevitably is humiliation, hardship and hostility either for ourselves or others. Possibly both. The story of God's salvation is that God comes looking for us (ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ), faces us with our sinfulness and leads us back to himself. The way back is always God's initiative.

The connection with Harvest Festival is not hard to make. In the 'garden of creation' many wrong choices are made, because we play God and misuse the blessings God has given us. This results in the pollution of oceans and rivers, the stripping of forests, the destruction of the ozone layer and the climate change  most scientists now accept is the result of human exploitation.

I had the pleasure of a long train journey on Friday, and got stuck into a new book called The Invention of Nature. It is, in fact, the biography of an extraordinary German explorer and scientist called Alexander von Humboldt, who lived at the turn of the 19th century. Though little-known, he is credited with being the first to discover what we now call 'climate change', and the inter-relatedness of the whole of nature. Previously, the long-held majority view was a rather mechanistic one of a universe where all species essentially exist each for themselves, under the supremacy of humankind. Arguably, that is how our current ecological problems began. Humboldt saw that humanity itself is part of this 'web of life', with everything interwoven as with a thousand threads.

So, to get back to McLaren, humanity must choose: We can imitate one another's competitive desires and so be driven to fear, rivalry, judging, conflict and killing. Or we can imitate God's generous desires...to create, bless, help, serve, care for, save and enjoy. (p21)

The fourth question is at the beginning of Genesis 3: 'Did God really say...?' When doubt sets in, we are liable to lose our way.

Saturday 17 September 2016

A World of Meaning

Having spent the last two weeks reflecting on the Creation stories in Genesis 1 & 2, this week we look to the New Testament for 'A World of Meaning'. (Chapter 3 in Brian McLaren's book.)  He invites us to look at the great Prologue to St John's Gospel, where we read that the world was made through him (Jesus Christ, the Word of God) and without him nothing was made that has been made. If it is true that God is Creator, and that Creation is essentially good, what is it for? The answer is that God is Love, and Love always wants to give, as an expression on love. So creation is the gift of a loving creator to human beings who populate it.

But, as we learned last week, the world is not ours, to do as we please. It is still God's world, and we have the responsibility of bearing his image, living his way. Jesus shows the way, being both the originator of creation, then subsequently its saviour; In short, Jesus is the point of it all. His being, his presence, his walking this earth, gives meaning to life.

This is important, because life as humans can sometimes seem point-less, the world is in a mess and there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the things that go on. By centring on Jesus, things begin to make sense, but - as McLaren says - we need to pay attention.  

Creation reveals wisdom through its patterns...If we learn and trust the wisdom that comes through creation and in Jesus, we will live our lives in a new way. We will discover God as our loving parent, and we will encounter all other creatures as our relations, in one family of creation. (McLaren pp14-15)

As an ex-grammar school boy, thankful for my education but aware of its shortcomings, I wonder about the Government's announcement this week about grammar schools. In putting her case, Theresa May said, I want Britain to be the world's great meritocracy. I'm not sure that I want to live in a meritocracy.

Saturday 10 September 2016

Being Human

Last week, we began our year-long series based on Brian McLaren's book, We Make the Road by Walking. We thought about God's 'wonderful world', the sheer beauty and goodness of creation. So much to celebrate and enjoy. We noted that living creatures and humans were the penultimate act of creation: the final one being Sabbath. God says, 'didn't we do well?!' Even God enjoyed what God had made.

I was preaching at Christ Church, Cockermouth (you can hear it via a podcast at our website www.cockermouthareachurches.org.uk). The occasion was a civic service for our Town Mayor, and several mayors and mayoresses were present from the Borough and other towns in the area. There was much mayoral bling of course, so maybe the song 'Amazing Grace', with its contemporary chorus 'My chains fell off' was not the most appropriate choice!!

So to this week's theme, Being Human. Having celebrated the beauty of God's original creation, from Genesis 1, we move on to the next chapter and its alternative account of creation. It's the story of the Garden of Eden, and the choice with which humankind is faced: to be fully alive, represented by the Tree of Life, or to 'play God', represented by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's a choice between living under God's rule, letting God be God, or trying to make our own choices, by our own standards. The narrative suggests, and the rest of the Bible confirms, that left to our own devices, we inevitably get it wrong.

McLaren uses the image of hands to illustrate our choices: we can make a fist, or reach out in peace; we can play a violin or wield a sword; we can give or we can take away; we can hold on or we can let go. The Gospel reading he chooses to accompany the theme is the story of the man with the withered hand (Mark 3): Jesus chooses to heal on the Sabbath (a day of celebration, remember) rather than to obey Jewish law; as a result, the man himself now has more choices, to bless or to seize.

To be alive means to bear responsibly the image of God. It means to stretch out your hand to take from the Tree of Aliveness  and to join in God's creative, healing work. (McLaren p.12)

On another matter - though I'm sure there is a connection - we have heard this week of a Church of England bishop, who is living in a same sex relationship with his partner. When he was appointed, those responsible knew of his situation but believed that his gifts as a priest and a man of God were more important than his sexuality, especially as he himself (the Bishop of Grantham) had asserted his commitment to the Church of England's discipline on this matter. There has been the predictable outcry from certain quarters, while the bishop himself has been calm, gracious , not crusading for gay rights, but wanting to be known for his ministerial virtues rather than his sexuality. Quite rightly.

I have found myself thinking again that many Christians are missing the point by constantly speaking out against homosexuality. I don't believe that the Scriptures are anything like as clear on the matter as some like to think. In C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, the senior tempter, Screwtape, seeks to induct his nephew and junior tempter, Wormwood,  into the ways of deceiving the 'patient' - a human being. Is it possible that the Tempter is causing Christians to be obsessed with homosexuality so that they miss the point? Sex itself has been removed from the context of faithful, committed unions and become a leisure 'industry', with many, many people falling victim to it. There is a lot more in the Bible - quite explicitly - about sexual purity and marital fidelity, than about homosexuality in particular. Ought not Christians to be more vocal about these matters than about those who are of a particular sexual orientation? Should we not even be glad for the many who are homosexually monogamous rather than sexually promiscuous?

Thursday 1 September 2016

'We Make the Road by Walking'

One of the first books I read on moving to Cockermouth last year was 'The Shepherd's Life' by James Rebanks - tales of a Lake District shepherd. It provides a fascinating insight, season by season, into a way of life known only to a few. Among many fascinating explanations, we read about 'hefting': the means by which, after thousands of years of shepherding, a flock recognises its own territory and remains within it, needing no fencing. It is as if sheep take their sons and daughters year after year to the same places so they realise that is where they belong. Rebanks reckons that people are 'hefted' too, with a strong sense of belonging to a place, following familiar paths.

Starting this month, we are going to follow the pathways suggested by another book, 'We Make the Road by Walking' by Brian McLaren. There are 52 chapters to the book - one for every week of the year - as well as some seasonal material. Our sermons will follow the Bible readings he suggests, informed by comments in the following chapter. McLaren's theme is 'Aliveness', believing that the Christian Way leads to 'life in all its fullness'. The book is intended to help us explore God's Big Picture from creation in Genesis to new creation in Revelation with the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, of course, at the centre. He hopes that a 'global spiritual movement of aliveness' may result.

Making the road suggests setting out on a journey, and that is an idea very familiar to Christians. However, we are not the first by any means to do so! As we explore what it means to be a Christian in today's world we will find that the pathways are not new ones at all but we are being 'hefted' into the territory of God's kingdom, called to live the life which many have lived before us from the very beginning. As the prophet Jeremiah puts it: Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls (6.16)

It's very important that we discover - or re-discover - why we are here as God's people: not as members of a private club, but with the sacred task of bringing all people to the knowledge of God's love through Jesus Christ.

Week 1 begins with the wonder of it all: joy in creation, as God originally intended, before we messed it up!