Lent 2, 2005.
Genesis 12.1-4a, Ps121, Romans 4.1-5, 13-17, John 3.1-17.There is nothing more confusing than a self-service shop where nothing is easy to find.
I went to Bunning’s yesterday, to get a couple of things. Have you been there? It’s massive. It has everything, even a café. But it’s too massive. It’s just bewildering. I hated it.
There is just too much on display there, and all stacked up to the rafters, and when you look at it, you mind spins. It was not a pleasant experience. I got out of there with my sanity, but only just. What I wanted was someone to tell me where everything I wanted is situated, and to show me if necessary. I wanted definite directions and assistance, not just a half hearted “ They’re in isle 28”. Especially when isle 28 is 100 metres long, and all I was looking for was a little packet of picture hooks.
Spirituality is a bit like that these days. I mean, it’s a bit of a supermarket out there. Have you seen those new age fairs, the Psychic fairs about? (Incidentally, why do they need to advertise a Psychic fair? I mean, Psychics should know its on anyway, if they were any good. But I digress.) These places are supermarkets for spirituality. They have all these different spiritualities on offer, people who, usually for a large fee, will help you find yourself, or tell you that you are actually an angel’s soul trapped in a cycle of reincarnation on earth whilst you await a spaceship home, or some other weirdo things like that. Enlightenment through chanting the sacred word Ni! All that stuff about creating your own reality, or working out who you were in a previous life, which is usually Cleopatra or King Arthur. I mean, its just like an Oprah Winfrey show, but much, much bigger and more confusing. And it is all rather confusing, I think.
What I like about Johns Gospel is that he doesn’t mess about. There’s no messianic secret like Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus is telling his disciples not to say anything about His true nature, confusing it all. No, in John’s Gospel, Jesus comes right out and says the truth about who he is and why he’s here. It’s in John’s Gospel that we find the I am statements – I am the way, and the truth, and the life, from chapter 14 for example. There’s no mincing words. Jesus himself is saying this is the truth. He is saying to people “this is what you are looking for”. He tells the woman at the well that He is the living water. This is not giving some airy fairy esoteric answer like “seek the truth within” or “join my ashram and you will find yourself”. This Jesus has no qualms about telling people that the truth they seek is the truth that is before them. He will not hesitate to ask them to accept the truth, accept Him and find eternal life with God.” He is not backward in coming forward about His true nature. This is about those about Him knowing Him for who He really is, his true nature, just like on the mountain at the transfiguration. Except this is not to be kept a secret. This is for everyone to hear.
Its one of the big issues with the Christian churches these days, and especially the traditional Anglican Church, that people don’t seem to know what we Christians are all about. Once upon a time, even if a person didn’t regularly go to church, they at least had a working knowledge of what it was all about. Times have changed. People out there don’t by and large know what Christianity is all about. And I think we have lost the art of telling them. Or perhaps we didn’t really have it in the first place.
Mission is something that many of us equate with far off places, culturally if not geographically, like Africa or New Guinea. It’s not something we tend to think of in regard to our surrounding society. But I have to say, that in terms of the Christian faith, and our particular branch of it, the society around us, in which we live, is becoming more and more a far off place. It’s not a society in which spirituality is dead – on the contrary, it seems like everyone wants to be spiritual. That’s exactly why the new age fairs are so popular, and why there is this supermarket mentality of shopping for the right god. Its just they seem to pass the Christian faith by. We as Christians must learn to be able to respond to these desires of society for spirituality and be able to tell others about the truth we know about. But to do that, we first need to know what that truth is ourselves. And its here in John’s gospel that it laid out clearly. Verse 16 from the Gospel reading this morning: 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. The reference to this verse – John 3.16 is almost a cliché. Car stickers have the reference. I’ve seen it on the front of buses driven by Jesus hippies living a nomadic life, travelling around. I’ve seen stickers with the whole verse printed on them. There is even a wrestler – Stone Cold Steve Austin, who has borrowed the 3.16 for his own trademark. The reason it’s a bit cliché and possibly overused is because it is heart of the Gospel, it’s the central fact of the Gospel. Everything that Jesus is and was is based on this fact. It’s the mission statement. It’s the prime reason for Jesus coming to be here – to offer us the hope of eternal life. And it shows the motivation for Jesus mission – God’s love. It’s not God wanting to be worshipped by more people. It is God’s love that drives God’s desire to offer us hope in Jesus. Love alone. Total, selfless love.
We are a parish that has seen better days. We are a parish that wants to see more better days. We’re not going to roll over and die. We’re not going to shut up shop, nor join up with another parish – not yet anyway. And while I have the energy, I and many others here will be working to build up our community in faith and numbers. I wont beat around the bush here – if we are to survive and thrive, then we do need to bring more people into our community of faith. Financially we will be unable to continue if we don’t, especially if having a full time Priest is what the parish desires. But we mustn’t let financial and viability issues drive us. Just as God is motivated by God’s love to reach out to us, we must be motivated by God’s love to reach out to others. It must be evangelical zeal inspired by God’s love that drives us to mission to our own society. If we seek to reach younger people because the church will close without them, then we will fail. If it is a fear of the parish dying that is driving us, then we might as well chuck it in. We must be clear on this – that all the work we do to tell others about the Gospel is for the furtherance of the Kingdom, not for the survival of the parish as such, although I think in the end these two will be intrinsically linked, and if we do it well, the health of our parish community will benefit. But the parish’s longevity must never be subordinate to the Gospel and the kingdom.
At the same time then, getting back to the overwhelming and at times confusing market place of spirituality we have, this Bunning’s version of God, we need to be clear about the Good News we are telling. The Good News as encapsulated within John 3.16, that God sent Jesus to the world not to fill churches with people but to offer us eternal life, and more than that, eternal life with God. We need to be clear so that when people do ask us for directions, instead of a vague gesturing in the approximate direction and instructions that aren’t relevant or understandable, that we can say clearly what the truth is and where to find it. We must be able to give account for the hope that is in us and God’s love that inspires that hope.
The Lord be with you.
