Can Love make a difference? How do we remain focussed on Love?

Today will probably be the last reflection I will give on Bishop Michael Curry’s book “Love is the Way” although there are a lot of other chapters to be explored with a lot of rich a personal insights in them. 

I would like to share a few other of his thoughts today under the questions: Can Love Really Make a Difference in this World? As well as the question, “How do we keep ourselves focussed on the Way of Love in a troubled and divided world”.. 

Bishop Michael Curry writes that on one occasion he was speaking about how he believed that love could change the world, and he was questioned by a journalist who asked him “Sounds nice, but isn't a world built on love a utopian dream?  This had echoed a similar question from a different journalist ‘Can this really work?’ In other words, is love really an effective tool to change the world?  For a moment Bishop Curry had to ask himself?  Could it be, that getting angry, domineering and violent is in fact more productive than doubling down on love?  

But after a moment of pause Michael Curry replied with a question of his own: “How is the way of the world working for you right now?” Who’s the Pollyanna here? 

He went on to say that the world that we’re living in right now is a world built on selfishness, indifference and even hatred and it doesn’t look good. Amongst a host of other major issues of concern, we have wars and rumours of wars and wee have an earth exploited to a point of crisis, despite that fact that, to quote a protest sign “mass extinction is bad for profit”. 

Michael Curry goes on that what all this adds up to is just that: mutually assured destruction. Which he suggests is an insanity. Suddenly a world built on love starts to look like the sane one. 

And so he believes that not only will love work, but that it’s the only thing that will work.  He goes on to say: Love builds, hate destroys. We have to stop the madness, and you don’t stop the madness with more madness.  He says that love is God’s way, the moral way, but it’s also the only thing that ultimately works. It’s the rare moment he says where idealism actually overlaps with pragmatism and suggests that people don’t often think of Jesus as a strategist. But Michael Curry describes Jesus as a leader who successfully built what was essentially a radical equal rights movement within a brutal Roman Empire, a movement that has continued on for over 2000 years. Michael Curry suggests that you don’t do that without being a mast strategist. And so when Jesus said ‘Love those who curse you’, what Michael Curry calls Jesus famous call to non-violence, he wasn’t just speaking of the kind of behaviour that he believed God preferred, he was offering a strategy, a how-to-guide on changing negative situations into positive ones. 

And Michael Curry notes that when Jesus spoke these words in the Sermon on the Mount, he was delivering them to an oppressed and occupied people, share-croppers, seething and sometimes rebelling against their Roman oppressors. 

The Apostle Paul is sometimes held in contrast to Jesus. It is suggested that Jesus invited ordinary people into a new way of life while Paul created a religion around Jesus. But Michael Curry reminds us that in Paul’s letter to the Romans, in chapter 12 he captures the very spirit of Jesus’ teaching from the sermon on the mount where Paul encourages the Christians living in Rome to follow the way of love, not as a call to give up and to give in to injustice, but as a way to help and heal, to lift up and liberate. As Michael Curry puts it,  ‘to defang and disarm an empire without hurting or harming’ in the process.  We read these words in last weeks service: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  Thats exactly what what Jesus was teaching.  Michael Curry writes that it is what Ghandi, inspired by Jesus, would later call ‘pricking the conscience’ – disarming one’s oppressors with behaviour so loving that they can’t help feeling the wrongness of their own hate, thus opening their minds to new possibilities. 

Michael Curry believes that in the end Love is the only thing that works. And although the Jesus movement, otherwise known as the church, has not always practised it very consistently, when it has practised the way of Christ-like Love, it has been like a softening agent in society, transforming society for the better.  Jesus called it being salt and light. He also referred to it as being like yeast or leaven in society.  It only takes a little bit of yeast to affect the whole dough and to make all of it rise. 

One of Michael Curry’s early hero’s was Rev. Dr Martin Luther King jnr., although he freely admits that he was by no means a perfect person, being both saint and sinner. But one thing that Martin Luther King jnr did get right was to paint a picture of a dream of a different kind of world not based on racism and segregation, and the method’s by which he sought to achieve that dream were the ways of non-violent action that he had learned in the scriptures from Jesus. 

Michael Curry speaks of how the assassination of Martin Luther King jnr. was an enormous blow, not just to Michael Curry, but to others who had put their hope in him.  For some it raised questions of whether the way of love can really change the world?  For others, it was a reminder that following the way of Jesus in the world is not always easy and can indeed bring with it consequences.  Jesus warns of this, but it doesn’t not stop him from giving his own life for the cause of love, and in doing so he encourages his followers to not give up on the way of love either for it will not be without reward. 

Martin Luther King himself knew how difficult it is to consistently follow the way of love in the face of opposition and violence and so to encourage and help those who were part of his own movement, he laid out for them what he called the Ten Commandments of Non-Violence.  Michael Curry says that number 10 was specific to marching, but numbers 1-9 are more universal in nature. 

I personally was unaware of these 10 Commandments of Non-Violence of Martin Luther King, until I read Michael Curry’s book. I have to say I was not only surprised by them, but also deeply impressed by them.  I can’t go into detail here, but I will try to outline them briefly: 

Commandment 1 – Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus
Commandment 2 – Remember always that the non-violent movement seeks justice and reconciliation – not victory. 
Commandment 3  - Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love – this says Michael curry is the call to be the change that you would like to see in the world. Make the dream real by enacting it. 
 Commandment 4 - Pray daily to be used by God in order that all people might be free. (This is about having a vision of love and peace that goes bigger than just one’s own group). 
Commandment 5 – Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all people might be free – Michael Curry invites us to recall that the opposite of love isn’t hate it’s selfishness. 
Commandment 6 – Observe with both friend and foe, the ordinary rules of courtesy.  
Commandment 7 - Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world.  Michael Curry writes that service is the way we can exercise the muscles of love. 
Commandment 8 – Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue or heart – I am guessing that most of us are generally able to restrain ourselves when it comes to the violence of fist.  How do we fair when it comes to the violence of tongue and heart? 
Commandment 9 Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health – Michael Curry writes that this is the call to put your own oxygen mask on first. Unselfish living doesn’t mean ignoring the self or becoming anybody’s doormat. 

So, can love make a difference? Can love change the world? 

On one occasion, Michael Curry was preaching in at the Howard University’s Rankin Chapel in Washington DC.  Afterwards he was informed that the famous South African Jazz trumpeter Hugh Masekela wished to meet him.  Michael Curry was dumbfounded, having no idea why one of the world’s greatest jazz trumpeters would want to meet him? 

Hugh Masekela was waiting in the vestry and as Michael Curry entered, the jazz trumpeter threw out his hand and started shaking Bishop Curry’s hand vigorously, saying: “Anytime I come across an Anglican Bishop, I make sure to meet him”.  Hugh Masekela went on to explain that it was the Anglican Archbishop Trevor Huddleston who made it possible for him to become who he was.  When Hugh was a teenager he saw a movie based on a famous jazz trumpeter which captured his imagination. The next day he went to the chaplain of his school who was Trevor Huddleston, and Anglican monk and priest from Mirfield West Yorkshire who had chosen to serve the poor community of Sophiatown in Johannesburg.  Hugh Masekela told Father Huddlestone that he wanted to play the trumpet. And seeing the light in the teenagers eyes, Trevor Huddleston went to a local music shop and bought him a trumpet. Handing the trumpet over to Hugh Masekela, Trevor Huddleston had no idea of what an impact that would have on Hugh, or how Hugh would become a world renowned trumpet player. As Michael Curry writes, All he knew was that he had seen love glimmering in the eyes of Hugh and he did what he could to add heat to it’s light. Trevor Huddleston’s gift of the trumpet was a gift of love that changed a young black teenagers life growing up in Apartheid South Africa. 

Hugh Masekela is not the only one to have been impacted in a profound way by Fr Trevor Huddleston. Archbishop Desmond Tutu told a similar story how when he was a young boy, he contracted polio at a time when there was still no vaccine. He ended up in hospital where he stayed for months.  Father Trevor Huddleston would come and visit him in hospital and bring him books to make sure that he didn’t fall behind in his school work.  It was the love and care shown by Fr Trevor Huddleston that inspired Desmond Tutu later in his life to become an Anglican Priest which later led to him become Bishop of Johannesburg and then Archbishop of Cape Town, playing an enormous role in advocating for the end of Apartheid in South Africa and giving the people of South Africa the Dream of the Rainbow Nation as a vision for a New South Africa to aspire for.  T One has to concede that dream for a New South Africa has not been fully realised yet. Indeed corruption has eaten away at that dream. But at the time it could be said that Archbishop Desmond Tutu played a key role in preventing South Africa from descending into civil war. 

Can love make a difference in this world? Trevor Huddleston’s acts of love and kindness to Hugh Masekela and Desmond made an enormous difference, and particularly in the case of Archbishop Desmond Tutu had positive consequences that go far beyond any ability to predict.  

I am reminded of the story of the starfish by Loren Eiseley. It all started when...

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,

    “Well, I made a difference for that one!” 

The old man looked at the girl inquisitively and thought about what she had done and said. Inspired, he joined the little girl in throwing starfish back into the sea. 

Michael Curry asks, What kind of a world would we live in if even half the people in it were committed to living in the way of Love. What if it was even just 25% of people. What kind of difference could we make together? 

Making Do, Making New – Love is the Way

In Chapter Three of his Book, Love is the Way, Bishop Michael Curry speaks of his grandmother, and how when she was cooking or baking or prepping she told them stories.  She was African American, the daughter of share-croppers, the grand-daughter of former slaves.  She had grown up in a difficult world, where everyday was a struggle.  She went to high school and later taught children in the old country segregated schools. She worked as a domestic, cleaning homes while rearing children and a family.  She never went to college, but she did everything in her power to make sure that her children did.  She buried some of her own children, including Michael Curry’s own mother.  She buried a husband and lost loved ones fighting in the 2nd world war in segregated units.  

He writes: Times were hard and sometimes dangerous, but they always made do with what they had and what life threw at them. He says that was the phrase that she would always use: “We made do”. 

And one expression of making do, was his grandmother’s ability to cook with whatever she had in her pantry.  He says she could take the grits and make them gourmet.  With all sorts of scraps and bits and pieces, she could create a meal for her family that tastes like love feels. A meal so delicious that you could forget your troubles, at least while you were at the table. 

It had been how she had learned to cook from her parents and grandparents who had been slaves.  As slaves they weren’t given a lot. They were often given what was not wanted, scraps otherwise thrown away.  Part of the genius of cooking with scraps was that folk learned how to ‘make it stretch’. They took the proverbial two pieces of fish and five loaves of bread and fed a multitude.  He says: My ancestors took a little and made a lot.  

I get the sense that this would have been true for a lot of people living in Ireland a few generations ago.  Making do.  That was true of my grandmother, my mom’s mom.  My grandfather was a brick layer and an alcoholic. Not many of his wages actually made it home. My grandmother had to learn to make do. 

Bishop Curry writes that making do is not the same as giving up. It’s a way of figuring out how to both survive and thrive. Making do is about taking the scraps of life that might be in front of one and making something new and miraculous out of it. Taking an old reality and creating a new possibility.  

He writes that in the New Testament there is a passage in which the Apostle Paul reflects on the logic of love: Let Love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold onto what is good.  The passage concludes with the words: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” 

He says this is the methodology, the way, the logic of love. Overcome evil with good.  Take their garbage and serve it back gourmet. That is the way of love that Jesus was teaching, and living out in his own life. Making do! 

Michael Curry suggests a recipe for making do: 

The first ingredient for making do is tradition: And by tradition, Michael Curry is referring to tapping into the wisdom of the past.  The reason that his grandmother was able to make do, to continuously make the most out of difficult circumstances is that she had learn to do so from her ancestors, her parents and grandparents.  

When we need guidance on how to live a life grounded in love and guided by love, making lemon juice when life throws lemons at you, we don’t have to start from scratch. There already exists a wisdom from people of faith who have struggled and yet made do. 

Religion at it’s worst tries to tell us the way something should be done, because it has always been done this way. That is religion at it’s worst. Dogmatic, authoritarian, unable to bend or change or adapt to new circumstances.  But Michael Curry suggests that religion at it’s best should be a treasure chest of wisdom gleaned from the faith journeys of people who have gone before.  Like his mother who learned to cook from scraps and bits and pieces that others would have thrown away, so religion at it’s best should provide skill’s for living and loving when life seems to present to us the scraps. Learning to make the most in the midst of difficult circumstances. Helping us to keep our eyes focussed on the light when it feels like darkness has descended. 

The Second Ingredient for Making do he suggests is Imagination. 

Imagination is crucial if you are going to take life’s scraps and turn them into something gourmet as his grandmother did, and he points us to Michelangelo.  Michelangelo, one of the great artists of the renaissance, when asked how he was able to produce such amazing sculptures would say that the sculpture already existed in the block of granite.  It was simply his job to discover it. That, says Michael Curry is imagination. 

Michael Curry goes on to quote the anonymous saying that problems are solutions in disguise.  In the language of psychology, he says it is called reframing. Seeing a situation in a new light and in doing so finding new inspiration to move forward. 

The importance of imagination can be found in many of stories of the Bible, like the story of Moses and the Burning Bush. He notes that Professor Walter Breuggemann once observed that the moment of liberation for the Hebrew slaves in Egypt did not begin when Moses told Pharoah: “Let my people go!” Likewise it did not begin when the plagues brought their Egyptian slave masters to their knees. Neither did it begin when the waters of the Red Sea were parted allowing slaves to pass through to freedom on the other side.  Michael Curry writes that the freedom movement led by Moses begins at the burning bush, when God invites Moses to imagine a world without slavery.  It begins in the imagination. That’s where any movement begins that seeks to help us humans become more humane.  And so Michael Curry writes that making do begins when someone dares to imagine another possibility, one that is greater than what appears to be the reality. 

In Matthew 18:3  Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

It was the late Urban Terry Holmes who believed that what Jesus may have been referring to was that wonderful children’s characteristic of imagination.  And like wise, Bishop Curry says, if we are to behold the reign of God, that perfect reign of God’s peace, God’s shalom, God’s salaam, what he call’s the dream of God, then we need to become like little children and use our imaginations to imagine a new future, to dream a new dream for humanity. 

The last ingredient for making do says Michael Curry, is God. 

Bishop Curry writes that he grew up in a community where God was a given.  He acknowledges in the book that not everyone grows up in that way.  But within his community, the givenness of God gave people like his grandmother the strength to believe that life could be different and the constant assurance that whatever struggles or battles they were facing there was always a possibility that their current circumstances could be disrupted by a power greater than themselves.  It gave them the ability to look at life with the eyes of hope.  That out of sadness, joy could still come. That out of despair there was always the potential for new possibilities.  I think even people who don’t have a traditional faith have discovered that when they have acted on a moment of inspiration and embarked upon something that seemed bigger than themselves it seemed like the universe had begun to conspire with them in bringing a new possibility into being, as though there were hidden forces at work aiding and assisting them.  For Michael Curry and the community he grew up in, the language that they used to describe such experiences was the language of God.  To believe in God for them, was to believe in the possibility of the impossible, that they could tap into a strength beyond their own when life was at it’s most difficult.  And so Michael Curry writes that that’s why prayer matters. Prayer matters he says because when God (or some conception of a Higher Power) is brought into the equation of life, something changes. New possibilities emerge.  Making do, requires a little bit of faith… a faith that new possibilities are possible even when it may seem impossible. 

Bishop Curry ends the chapter by referring to Howard Thurman a theologian who made a big impact on Martin Luther King Jnr.  Howard Thurman spoke of his own grandmother who had been a former slave.  She had told of how the slaves would have two church services every Sunday. The first service was arranged by the master, and the authorised preacher would preach a sermon whose essential purpose was to instruct them on how God would want them to be better slaves. 

But after the formal service, the slaves would then hold their own worship service and the slave preacher would preach another sermon, one that would always have ended with the words: “You are not slaves, you are the children of God”. It was an act of spiritual defiance and spiritual resistance. 

In those words, the old preacher ripped off the givens of reality and offered a new possibility. “You are not slaves, you are the children of God”.  

Bishop Curry writes: No matter what the world and life may say, or how it may make you feel, you are the children of God.  And that essential identity of being children of God gives us the energy to make do, to find strength in a power greater than our small selves, to take whatever it is that life throws at us and to make do, and not just to make do, but, indeed, to make new. Amen. 

An Audio Recording of the Full Service : 

​But this I know.... (Why Did Jesus Die?) - Dr Tony Moodie 

The Sermon today includes a comment on the popular modern hymn "In Christ Alone" by Townend and Getty. 

About 15 years ago the Methodist Church in Britain published a new hymn book. The committee that worked on it wanted to include ‘In Christ alone’. They recognised it as an outstanding modern hymn not just for the words but also the tune, composed by Keith Getty. But the committee asked for permission to change the words, ‘Till on that cross as Jesus died / the wrath of God was satisfied’. They wanted to change the words to, ‘the love of God was satisfied’. The request was refused and the reason given was that the words, ‘the wrath of God was satisfied’ are supported by Scripture and by theological tradition. So, ‘In Christ alone’ wasn’t included in the new Methodist hymn book.

The Methodist Church in Britain wasn’t the only Church with with concerns about that line of the hymn. About the same time, the Presbyterian Church of the USA requested permission to include it in their new hymn book. They wanted to change the words to, ‘Till on that cross as Jesus died/the love of God was magnified.’ The Presbyterian committee thought that getting permission would be a formality because the hymn had already been published with those altered words in another hymn book, used by some American Baptists. But the publishers of that hymn book had slipped up. They hadn’t requested permission, and that caused them a lot of problems. 

In the end the Presbyterian committee issued a statement saying that the song had been removed from the list of contents for their new hymn book. They said that they had done that with deep regret but they couldn’t support the idea that Jesus died on the cross to appease God’s anger. The Methodist committee’s reasons were pretty much the same. 

Is God wrathful or angry, and does that anger need to be appeased or satisfied before God can accept us? 

When I was about 18 years old I left the Anglican church that I’d been brought up in, and started attending a different church. I felt quite vulnerable there. Most of the people in the church were well instructed in the doctrines of their faith while I didn’t really know what I believed, and I wasn’t sure if I believed what everyone else in the church believed. They seemed to have all the answers but I was struggling with questions about the Christian faith that troubled me. Some of those questions came up in the Bible study group that I joined, and that met before the morning worship service. 

I liked and admired the leader of the Bible study group, John. John was one of the most attractive Christians I’ve known. But I couldn’t make sense of the answer that he gave one Sunday to the question, ‘Why did Jesus die?’. John said that although God loves us, the justice of God demands that we should be punished for our sins. And so, instead of of us being punished, our punishment fell on Jesus. Or, in the words of the hymn, ‘on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied’. 

I’ll come back to those words, and the explanation of why Jesus died. For now I’ll say something about another hymn that speaks of Christ’s death on the cross. I was familiar with the hymn, ‘There is a green hill far away’ from when I was a child. And I’d sung it often without being bothered by what it said about the death of Jesus. To be honest I’d never thought much about its words:

There is a green hill far away
Without a city wall;
Where the dear Lord was crucified
Who died to save us all.

We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains He had to bear;
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.

He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good;
That we might go at last to heaven
Saved by His precious blood.

If I had stopped to think about the words of the hymn I might have had questions. How are we saved by the death of Christ? How are we made good by Jesus dying? It’s not wrong to ask questions. From the earliest days of Christianity, Christian thinkers have asked questions like that, and they have tried to provide answers to those questions.

But the words of ‘There is a green hill far away’ and the words of ‘In Christ alone’ are a little different. In the old hymn there’s no mention of wrath. It just says, ‘He died that we might be forgiven’ … ‘Saved by his precious blood’. Unlike the hymn, in Christ alone, it doesn’t explain how Christ’s death on the cross makes it possible for us to go to heaven. It just says, ‘we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there’. That’s similar to the New Testament. The New Testament says that the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ has somehow changed our relationship with God. But in general it doesn’t give much in the way of explanations of how that happens.  

The hymn, ‘In Christ alone’, does give an explanation – in those words ‘the wrath of God was satisfied’ even though it’s very brief. It’s a summary of the explanation that John gave to the Bible study group: By sinning we break God’s laws and that incurs God’s wrath, so we deserve to be punished. But God wants us to be saved, so Jesus died on the cross in our place, taking the punishment instead of us. 

In technical theological language that’s called the penal substitutionary theory of the Atonement. It’s part of the theological tradition that was referred to in the reasons for not changing the words of the hymn ‘In Christ alone’, and it’s one of a number of different theological explanations, or theories, of how Christ saves us. 

It isn’t wrong to want explanations – or to give them. Christian theologians through the centuries have done their best to explain their belief that Christ came to save the world. Their explanations or theories all draw from Scripture in one way or another although each theory tends to draw on different verses of Scripture to develop its explanation of how Christ saves us. 

One explanation of why Christ died, that was popular amongst Christians in the centuries immediately after the time of Jesus, was quite different. It was based on the verse in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus says that he did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Early Christian theologians took the idea that Christ gave himself as a ransom and developed it into a theory to explain how Christ’s death saves us. They said that, because of sin, the human race was held prisoner by the devil. And when Jesus was arrested and crucified he was giving himself as a ransom to the devil, so that the devil would release all those who he held prisoner.  

In the ransom theory, instead of Christ paying the price for our sin by satisfying the wrath of God, Christ paid the price for us to be released from imprisonment to the devil. That may have been helpful as a way to explain Christ’s death to some people but for others it raised more questions that needed to be answered. And that’s true of every explanation – every theory about why Jesus died. This doesn’t mean that we should give up trying to understand things. It’s good to try to understand things, and explanations can be helpful up to a point, although some explanations may be better than others. 

No explanation is completely satisfactory, and it’s probably not a good idea anyway to try to impose our explanations on other people. This is where the non-subscribing principle is helpful. The NSPCI statement of faith says that the faith of this denomination is governed by the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments but it doesn’t prescribe any particular way of understanding Scripture.

The NSPCI leaves it to members of the Church to interpret the Scriptures themselves in the light of their own consciences and using their own reasoning abilities. I would like to add, for myself, that we also need to read and understand the Bible through the Spirit of Christ living in our hearts and minds. But that’s a topic for a different sermon on another occasion. The important point is that Non-Subscribing Presbyterians don’t have to sign up to any particular explanation or theory. 

All the theories that theologians develop to try to explain why Christ died are based on images that they find in Scripture. The Bible uses many different images of what the saving work of Christ is like: it’s like a ransom, it’s like a debt being paid for us, it’s like the penalty for law-breaking being cancelled, it’s like the sacrifice of a lamb in the temple, and so on. 
Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah ch. 53, about the Suffering Servant of the Lord, was taken as a prophecy about Christ from the earliest days of Christianity. In that passage there are several different images of what the suffering of the Servant of God is about: He has borne our infirmities, he has carried our diseases, he was wounded for our transgressions, he bore the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. 

I’m sure that some of those images were in the mind of the author of that old hymn, ‘There’s a green hill far away’, when she wrote the words, ‘we believe it was for us he hung and suffered there’. The hymn ‘In Christ alone’ is based on some of the images of Isaiah 53 – he was wounded for our transgressions, he bore the punishment that made us whole.
It doesn’t pick up on other images from Isaiah 53 – he has borne our infirmities, he has carried our diseases, by his bruises we are healed.

I’m going to say more about just one biblical image, not one from Isaiah ch. 53. It’s an image in the passage we read from ch. 2 of the Letter to the Ephesians. It’s the image of a dividing wall that has been demolished. The first thing we should notice is that it isn’t concerned with judgement. It’s concerned with relationships. It’s not about laws that have been broken. It’s about walls that have been broken, broken down – walls that have separated human beings from God and from each other, and that have now been demolished. It’s about broken relationships and about relationships being restored. It’s about reconciliation between human beings and God, and it’s about reconciliation between human beings and other human beings. 

Verse 14 of Ephesians ch. 2 says that Christ has destroyed the dividing wall that separated Jews and Gentiles. But the more basic problem is the barrier that has grown up between human beings and God. Verse 13 says, ‘in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ’. Through the life and death of Christ, the wall between humanity and God has come down, and so all other dividing walls that the human race has allowed to be built up must fall too. 

To change the image a bit, we could say that through Christ, God has cleared away the rubbish that we’ve put in the way of our relationship with God. And, because of that, we have the opportunity also to clear away the rubbish that we’ve allowed to separate us from other people the divisions between Jews and Gentiles, but also the feuds and jealousies that divide families and neighbours, the hatreds that divide nations All those, and still others, can be cleared away.     

In Ephesians ch. 2 we aren’t given a theory to explain all this. We’re given a picture. And it’s vital for our spiritual and emotional health that we see that in this picture the blockage to our relationship with God is all on our side. There’s no wrath on God’s side, holding back God’s love for us. Although there is wrath – but it’s on our side.     
       
It’s there in the injustice, exploitation, oppression, conflict, aggression, violence, cruelty, and all the other things that are part of the mess that this world is in.  On God’s side, there is only love, because God is love. The New Testament doesn’t only tell us that God’s love breaks down the barriers between us and God. It tells us that if we open ourselves to God’s love we will be enabled to do what is needed on our side to break down the barriers that divide people from each other. And often there a lot of work to be done.

Ephesians ch. 2 says that all this is made possible through Christ, through the cross. If we have inquiring minds we will inevitably ask, ‘But how does that actually work?’ ‘How does the death of one man, Jesus, dying on a cross, bring all this about?’. Our final hymn is a meditation on the death of Christ. It keeps coming back to the words, ‘I cannot tell“. When I was preparing this sermon, I was originally going to say that I would leave it there, with those words, ‘I cannot tell’. I cannot tell how the death of Christ saves us. But there are clues in the New Testament as to what was involved in the life, and death, and resurrection of Christ. 

I’ll end by very briefly pointing to just one of those clues. In 2nd Corinthians ch. 5 verse 19 we read this: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. God wasn’t somewhere way up there, looking down on Jesus. God was in Christ, in the life of Christ on earth and in the death of Christ. God, who is through all and within all, according to Ephesians ch. 3, is in Christ, and in us. To use another image, God is the fabric of everything that is. And what God does in Christ, God does everywhere. 

But I must stop here before getting into yet another theory about the death of Christ to add to all those other theories. Perhaps, our final hymn does give the best answer to the question, ‘How does Christ’s death break down the walls that divide us from God and from each other?’,  I cannot tell ... I cannot tell how silently he suffered, as with his peace he graced this place of tears, But this I know, he heals the broken-hearted, ... and stays our sin, … and calms our lurking fear.          Amen. 

Below is an audio recording of the first half hour of todays service with opening hymns, prayers, readings and a meditative reading from John O'Donoghue the full sermon can be watched on the video below. 

Today being Pentecost Sunday we come to explore the Pentecost Narrative in Acts 2. It is Luke’s story of the giving of the Holy Spirit in contrast to John’s story in John 20. My tendency is therefore not to read this story primarily as history, but rather to read it as a symbolic narrative in which Luke is seeking to express insights into the spiritual life using symbols and metaphors.

I believe that the real heart of the story of Pentecost can be found in chapter 1:14 where we read they were all together constantly praying. This is in response to the command of Jesus to stay in Jerusalem waiting for the gift of God from on High.  This I believe is the crux on which the whole story pivots and from which it all unfolds.  A stance of prayerful receptivity can open us to the Divine Presence or the IAM Presence which in the Biblical tradition is generally referred to as the Holy Spirit.  The word Spirit can mean breathe or wind or breeze. It is the Breathe of God that animates, gives life to and moves in and through all creation.  The word Holy, in its original meaning means different.  When we are moved and animated by the Holy Spirit or the IAM Presence, we are moved and animated by something different, something other than our normal egoic way of thinking. And this opening up to the IAM Presence or the Holy Breathe of God according to the story come through prayer. 

The word ‘prayer’ or ‘to pray’ in this verse is the Greek word proseuché (pros-yoo-khay) and it refers to an exchange of wishes; to pray therefore literally means to interact with God or the Divine by exchanging our human wishes and ideas for God’s Divine wishes for us and for the world; exchanging our narrow small-minded egoic desires and wishes in order to be moved, inspired and animated by a Higher Wisdom than our own, as we become open to the IAM Presence which resides at the heart of all things. 

And so prayer may begin by the expressing of our own human wishes to God, a speaking out of what concerns us and what our own hopes and dreams are, but if prayer is to be an exchange of our wishes and ideas, often arising from our small and narrow egoic minds, it ends with us needing to be open to receiving The Divine wishes for us which come from a higher or a deeper place – perhaps one could even say, from our higher selves. And this requires being open and receptive. Prayer ultimately and logically should lead to silence and stillness, leaving us in an open and receptive place, ready to be open to the Holy Breath of God, open to the IAM Presence from which all deeper or higher inspiration and wholeness comes. 

As the Psalmist reminds us, Be Still and Know that I am God: Be Still and Know the IAM Presence of God that underlies all of Reality. 

And in the story of Pentecost there is some wonderful imagery that points to this: 

Firstly, there is the imagery of the wind.

In verse 2 we read that suddenly a sound like a blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the house were they were sitting.  That is at least how the NIV translates the original Greek, and most English translations would roughly do the same. But as I explored some of the Greek words behind the English text, there are I believe other possibilities in how to understand these words. 

In the English text, we read the phrase "a rushing wind". However, in the original Greek, the word used is "pheromenēs" which means to carry or bear or even to uplift. In addition, the Greek  word biaios (bee'-ah-yos) often translated a violent can also simply mean strong. In addition the Greek word for ‘wind’ could also be translated a breeze, a gust, or even as breath.   And so the wind in Acts 2:2 might indeed be describing not a rushing and violent wind, but rather a breeze or a breathe of air that uplifts and brings strength to those who receive it.  This imagery evokes the imagery of two Old Testament passages.  Firstly, the idea of the wind lifting up and carrying, is reminiscent of the Isaiah 40:31 which speaks of being lifted up on wings like eagles.  Just as an eagle flies high, soaring up on the currents of air, so being open to the IAM Presence in prayerful receptivity or meditation, opens us to the Divine breeze or current that enables us to be lifted up to begin to soar, carried by a current that is greater than ourselves.   

The other Old Testament passage that it might remind us of is that of the story of Elijah when he encounters the Divine Presence, not in the sound of a tempest, in other words not in the sound of a rushing and violent wind, but rather in the sound of a gentle whisper, the gentle sound of a breath. 

We have all had times, even if momentarily, for a split second, when we have been able to sink down into Presence. It might be just for a moment staring out the window while drinking a cup of tea, or waiting quietly in a car. And in that moment of quite watching and listening, of open receptivity, our spirits briefly come into contact with a sense of a still Presence.  And in that moment we feel a sense of quiet relief and a lightness like a breathe of fresh air has just blown into our spirits.  It is surely, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breathe of God breathing through us enabling us to be momentarily touched by the IAM Presence of God. 

Secondly in verse 3 we read of the imagery of fire, “...they saw what seemed like tongues of fire which separated and came to rest on each of them.”

Again, two Old Testament images come to mind. The first is the image of Moses’ encounter with the IAM Presence of God at the burning bush.  It suggests that when we become prayerfully open and receptive so that we begin to touch the stillness of that IAM Presence at the heart of Life, we become like human burning bushes, shining warmth and light wherever we go. Human manifestations of the Divine. 

And this brings us to the second image from the Old Testament, taking us to the Tabernacle, Tent of Meeting and later to the Jerusalem Temple where a lamp, known as the "Eternal Light" or "Ner Tamid" in Hebrew, was meant to burn continuously, representing the perpetual nature of God's presence in the Holy of Holies.  

In Acts 2, the flames of fire that rest on the heads of those gathered in prayer, remind us of our Divine capacity to become living temples in which God lives by God’s Spirit, Living Temples animated by the Holy Breathe of God in which the flame of eternal light, the IAM Presence shines both within and through their humanity.  As Paul says, do you know know that your bodies are Temples of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Breathe, the Holy Presence of God (see 1 Cor 6:19).  

Is that perhaps what the Pentecost story is pointing us toward – our God given potential of becoming living Temples of the IAM Presence of God. 

Lastly, in the passage we read of the disciples being enabled to speak in other languages, helping to bridge the divides between people.  It recalls the Old Testament sacred myth of the Tower of Babel, where due to human pride, the people become scattered across the world speaking different languages so that they become divided, separated, no longer communicate and understand one another.  It sounds a little bit like our world today doesn’t it? A world of division and separation where there is a failure in understanding and an inability to talk and communicate it civil ways. 

But in the story of Pentecost, as the disciples, together with Mary the Mother of Jesus and some of the other women, gather in prayerful waiting, openness and receptiveness, and as they find themselves being gifted with the IAM Presence of the Divine,  the underlying Unity behind all things, they are enabled to become part of the unifying, reconciling, healing work of God in the world and God’s secret plan revealed in Christ in Ephesians 1:10  to bring all things back together in unity. AS Paul says in 2 Cor 5:19 God was in Christ reconciling the world to God’s-Self. 

When we gather in open, prayerful receptivity to the IAM Presence in all things and in all people, we become partners with God, in the work of healing the divisions and separation of our world as we begin to speak the reconciling language of Christ-like Love. 

Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? 9 Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,[b] 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome 11 (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

And I leave it there: What does this mean? What could this mean for us? Amen. 

​Ascension into the Heart of Love

As some of you may be aware Thursday was Ascension Day

Today I would like to explore the ascension story in Acts 1:1-11 and to uncover how that story might offer valuable insights and inspiration to us wherever we might find ourselves on our journey through life. 

In the story of Acts we read how the risen Jesus meets his disciples one last time and instructs them to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit, promising them the power to be his witnesses. As they watch, Jesus ascends into heaven, leaving them gazing upward. Two angels then appear, asking why they are still looking at the sky, and affirm that Jesus will return in the same manner he left. 

1. As we reflect more deeply on this story, I believe that Firstly, it is a story that provides us with a Symbol of Transformation and Growth

 The ascension can be interpreted as a metaphor for personal growth and transformation. Just as Jesus ascended to a higher state, so it speaks of our human potential to be elevated through learning, growth and development.  This past week Wends and I watched the first episode of the new series of the piano where pianists from the Manchester area were invited to perform in the Manchester station.  Seeing a wide variety of people, young and old, expressing themselves on the piano and displaying their musical giftedness was a reminder of the enormous potential that lies in every human being.   God has planted seeds of infinite potential in each of us.  And just as a pianist needs to devote themselves to practising in order to increase and raise their musicality and piano playing skills our time spent here on earth should surely be more than just about survival and getting through each day.  Our time here on earth is surely God’s invitation to each of us to begin to tap into the potential that lies within, raising our life-state. As Bryant McGill writes: Your entire life has unfolded for your heart’s ascension to Love.  And in this passage today, this is symbolised by the ascension of Jesus.  As Jesus in the story is lifted on a cloud into heaven, so we are invited into a journey of continuous self-discovery as striving, by the grace of God, towards our fullest potential, being raised and lifted up to be bearers of God’s life in the world. 

2. Secondly, the story of the ascension invites us to reflect on the importance of Letting Go and Moving Forward:

In the story of the ascension, in order to ascend, Jesus must be willing to let go of a former earth bound existence. It is perhaps a reminder that at some point all of us will need to let go of our earthbound existence. As they say, the only two things that you can be sure of in life are death and taxes.  When it comes to our taxes, we all need to be willing to let go of a certain portion of our income that it might be used, hopefully with wisdom and care, for the common good.  When it comes to death, there will come a point in which each of us will need to let go of our earthly existence.  Whether we believe in an afterlife or not, when we release our final breath, it will surely be a profound act of letting go, for in that moment we will need to let go of everything we have owned, every role we have played, every relationship we have valued and nurtured. In that moment of our final breath we will all be forced to let go of everything we have held onto for our security and our sense of identity in this world. 

The ascension of Jesus is surely a symbol of this. In order to ascend, he needs to let go.  He needs to let go of his earthly existence. He needs to let go of all those he has loved and treasured. He needs to let go of his ministry and he has to entrust all of these things into the hands of the Higher Wisdom of God. Will his mission on earth continue? Who knows… he has to let go.  The disciples also need to be willing to let go of the one with whom they had shared their lives.  The departure of Jesus is a moment of change for them too. From this moment on, their lives will not be the same.  It will be for them a moment of growth for they will no longer be able to relate to and rely on Jesus in the same way. 

And so the act of ascension requires the letting go of the familiar and moving towards the unknown. It is an invitation to all of us in whatever the circumstances of our lives to embrace change, leaving behind old patterns or limitations, and embracing new possibilities. It encourages each of us to courageously step out of our comfort zones and embark on new adventures or challenges into the vast unknown. None of us is able to embrace something new, unless we are ready and willing to let go of the old. 

3. Thirdly the story of the ascension is a story that speaks of Legacy and Impact:

   Jesus' departure and the disciples' commissioning to continue his work can be seen as a reminder of the importance of leaving a positive impact on the world. Regardless of one's beliefs about Jesus, the idea of leaving behind a legacy of kindness, compassion, and service to others is universally meaningful. It prompts reflection on how each of us can contribute to making the world a better place. When it comes time for us to depart, what will it be that each of us will leave behind?  Will we like Jesus leave behind a legacy of kindness, compassion and service to others? 

4. Fourthly, the story of the ascension invites us to reflect on the values of Community and Connection:

   The disciples' gathering together around Jesus at the moment of his ascension highlights the power of community and human connection. And after Jesus has left them, we see them continuing to do so, continuing to meet together.  It underscores the significance of supporting one another, sharing experiences, and finding strength in unity and in community. It reminds each of us of the importance of building meaningful relationships, fostering empathy, and creating a sense of belonging in our communities.

5. Fifthly, the story of the Ascension is a story of Hope and Possibility:

Near the end of the narrative, after Jesus has ascended two angels appear saying: 

 “Men of Galilee, why do you stand there looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

   The promise of Jesus' return can symbolize hope and optimism for the future. It reminds us that even in the face of uncertainty or challenges, there is always the potential for renewal, growth, and positive change. Just as the resurrection reminds us that the cross is not the end of the story, so the promise of Christ’s return, however one conceives of that, reminds us that cruelty, hatred, inhumanity and despair are not how the story of life ends. It encourages individuals to maintain a sense of hopefulness and resilience, believing in the possibility of a brighter tomorrow even in the darkest days. And because of this, like the disciples who are asked why they are looking up into the sky, so we are encouraged not to be so heavenly minded that we become no earthly good.  If there is hope and possibility for the future, if Jesus is ‘to come again’, at the very least it will surely also be through each of us as we continue in this world watering the seeds of love, kindness, compassion and joy, as we pour our energies into not only our own growth and transformation, but as we do the same for others, helping, inspiring, lifting others up to become people of the ascension, ascending to new heights of possibility in their own lives as the seeds of Divine potential that God has placed within them and us are able to grow like a plant in spring growing up towards the sun, preparing to bear fruit in the world. 

“People of Galilee, why do you stand there looking into the sky?”  

As Elizabeth Gilbert writes - “There’s always another level up. There’s always another ascension. More grace, more light, more generosity, more compassion, more to shed, more to grow”. Amen. 

Seeking and Finding God’s Love

Michael Curry writes: Sometimes it’s hard to feel God’s Love in our everyday lives, especially when life gets turned upside down.  In these times we can’t always feel the Divine Presence and we don’t always have a chorus of angels playing background music when chaos descends. 

But there is good news says Michael Curry. There is a simple way to connect to the Divine anytime you need to. If God is love and love is an action, he says you’ve only got to get out there and do it.  He adds, you’ve also got to get out there and receive it.  And the easiest way to do that he says is to become part of a community of people whose aim and purpose is to give and receive love.  In fact, every day says Michael Curry provides an opportunity to give and receive love as long as you’re not living in isolation. But if you’ve got a loving community, it becomes that little bit easier to be in touch with God’s Love. 

Bishop Curry writes that community has been an important way in which he has come to know and experience God’s Love.  His early experience of that love came first when his mom became sick and then when she finally died.  It happened in stages, firstly when she had a stroke and ended up in a coma. They couldn’t visit her because children weren’t allowed in the hospital.  But in the midst of that time, a community of people came around their family to begin to support them.  

He writes that his mother never did wake up from her coma. For years they visited her. Sometimes she would open her eyes, and it would seem like she was still with them, especially in the earlier years. But eventually her body began to shut down.  He says that the memory of her death is vague, but he has a vivid memory of the cemetery on the day she was buried. It was the moment when he finally realised his Mom wasn’t coming back.  The day was icy cold, and as they lowered her body into the ground he started crying.  He was standing next to Mrs Bullock who pulled him in to herself as she rocked him back and forward. He remembers rubbing his cheek on the soft scratchy hairs of her wool coat as she rocked him.  

He writes that the way Mrs Bullock pulled him in, her coat becoming a soft landing for a boy’s suffering – this was how he and his family lived through the whole period of his mom’s sickness and her death, resting in the loving hands of their church community, which by extension were in fact God’s hands.  

After his mom was buried they gathered at someone’s house for a meal. And he remembers his grandmother looking around the room at the Bullocks, Josie Robbins (who I spoke about last week) and all the rest who were gathered there, and in her Baptist way, she said: “You know where the Spirit of the Lord is when you see people love”.  And she shook her head and smiled. 

God’s Love is indeed experienced in loving community.  

In our Gospel passage today, Jesus reminds us of the importance of this… In chapter 15:9 he begins: As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 

One of the ways we can abide in God’s Love is through loving community. And this is what Jesus is pointing to in verse 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you”.  He is encouraging his disciples to nurture the bonds of loving community – to create a community built around the loving way of Jesus.  

And that is the value of going to church.  I have often heard it said by people that they don’t go to church because you can find God in other places, and especially in nature. And in a way they are absolutely right.  God can indeed be found in nature.  Psalm 98 echoes this: Make a joyful noise all the earth; break forth into joyous songs… let the sea roar and all that fills it; the world and those who live in it… Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy. 

We should all be making time to find God in nature… if you look, indeed You will find God there.  But sometimes you also need to feel God through flesh and blood, through a warm smile and a hug, and that is why church community can be so valuable. 

Bishop Curry writes that God may be the source of Love, but people are often the vessels of that Love.  When we create a community of love for ourselves and others, he says God shows up, and we find ourselves resting in God, experiencing God’s Love.  Not all church communities manage to create communities of love. Sometimes churches fail miserably.   There is no perfect church community. I am quite sure there have been times when this church community have failed to be places of love and care, where some members may not have experienced love and care and as a result they have drifted away.  It takes effort to nurture a community of love and not simply become a private inward looking club.  

It is also not to say that you can’t find loving community outside of a church, of course you can, but there is something about a faith community that stand in a unique position, because faith communities are places in which we can find rituals of comfort that connect us with a deeper, wider and more universal Love, the Love of God.  The Church has been practising this for centuries, providing rituals of faith and rituals of comfort when normal words are inadequate.  

Michael Curry writes that While his mother was sick, his family never stopped living the rituals of faith, whether they felt like it or not. His father never missed a church service, and not simply because it was his job as an episcopal priest. Michael Curry writes: I think that is why we prayed good and long each time they visited his Mom – because they didn’t know what else to do.  He writes: Those words – Oh help us heavenly father – carried us when we couldn’t carry ourselves. We rested in God’s hands. 

Community is love, he writes, and intentional spiritual practice provide the scaffolding that makes it even stronger. And having experienced this kind of community especially when his mom was in a coma and later when she died, he says that he did not conclude that the world was a broken bitter and ruthless place, for despite the pain and the grief, he found that he was not abandoned… he was in fact loved. And if he wasn’t abandoned, then neither was his mother, for she was also resting in God’s hands.  

In Luke’s Gospel, the last thing that Jesus says, is not “My God my God why have your forsaken me” as we read in Mark’s Gospel. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus last words are, “Father,  into your hands I commend my spirit”.  They are words from Psalm 31 that Jesus would have known well from growing up with the psalms being read regularly in synagogue. In his dying moments, in agony, Michael curry writes that Jesus leans on the spiritual tradition that had nurtured him. Those words bubble up and carry him through. He rested in God’s hands. 

And he felt that this was true also for his Mom. She was also resting in God’s hands. None of us know how it all works he says. We don’t know everything. But from being connected with a faith community, this we do know: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” 

Bishop Curry writes that Resting in God’s hands through being part of a community of love is more than just going to a place of worship. It does require active participation – being willing to be involved, to ask for help and being open to receive it when it is offered.   You can go there he says, but you still have to do love, putting yourself out there with all the vulnerability that it requires.  And indeed, you don’t have to be in a faith community to do these things – You can do these things anywhere, but as Michael Curry says: It takes a lot more courage outside of a community of faith.  

There are not a lot of places of community in this world where people can find love and support.  A few years ago I was speaking to a father whose son was under-going cancer treatment. And he became part of a whats-app group of other parents who were experiencing the same thing. What struck him was that for most of the people on the group, this was the only place where they were receiving love and support. Most of them didn’t belong to a faith community and therefore didn’t have the love and support of such a community.  He realised in that experience what a gift his own faith community was. 

There is a real danger that Churches are dying and many may go extinct.  There continue to be records numbers of churches in England that are closing there doors and having to sell their properties.  The phrase comes to mind: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”  We should not take our faith communities for granted. If we nurture our faith communities as communities of love, they will be places in which we can rest in God’s hands.  

Thank you for being part of this faith community, even if your only contact with us is online. 

​What is Love?

Today I would like to begin a new preaching series based on a Book by the Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry called “Love is the Way”.  The book is a really thought provoking exploration on the meaning of love and the potential for love to truly transform the world.  The first chapter begins in an obvious place as it asks the question “What is Love?”, “What is this thing called Love?”

In answering that question, Bishop Curry introduces us to a woman who made an enormous impact on his life, a women by the name of Josie Robbins. At the time of writing the book, Josie Robbins was still alive and in her 85th year.  The moment that precipitated Josie Robbins coming into his life was in fact the death of his own mother when he and his sister were still children.  She wasn’t a member of their church. She wasn’t even a family friend at the time.  She was just a lady who stopped by at his own church to drop off her neighbours child before going on to her own Baptist Church.  

But when she heard about their family situation and asked: ‘How can I help?’ soon thereafter, his father invited her into their home, leading her to the spare bedroom where a pile of clothes needed to be ironed.  A little later the same day he rang to say that he was running late at work and could she give his kids lunch?  And from that day, as she responded to further requests from his dad for help, Josie Robbins would eventually become a surrogate mother to him and his sister. 

He writes that “Moved by love, Josie  jumped in with both arms and never let go.”  She became the one who made the hurt go away as she did many of the things that their mother used to do for them. And over the years she was present at all their family events and big days – from high school, to university and to his seminary graduations, to weddings, ordinations, births and baptisms and on and on and on. 

For Michael Curry Josie Robbins became a living example of what love looks like, the kind of love that is the only way we can save the planet. 

Many languages have several words to encompass different kinds and dimensions of love.  Three of the most frequently used words in New Testament Greek are eros, philia and agape. Eros refers to romantic and sexual love and is what Valentines Day is about.  Philia is fraternal, brotherly or sisterly love. Also the bonds of love and affection experienced between friends.  

Finally, Agape is love for the other – a sacrificial love that seeks the good and well-being of others, of society and of the world.  Michael Curry writes that Agape is the kind of love that looks outward.  It is the kind of love that he experienced through Josie Robbins.  It is the kind of love that Jesus seemed to be most interested in. Love in this sense is the firm commitment to act for the well-being of someone other than yourself opening up the goodness and sweetness of life to them. And Michael Curry writes that it can be personal, or political, individual or communal, intimate or public. Love can never be segregated to the private or personal dimensions of life, but extends to and affects all aspects of life. 

What Michael Curry didn’t know as a child was that Josie Robbin’s love shared so generously with his own family had changed many other lives also. She was the principal of St Augustine’s school, a high school for pregnant and parenting teens.  In the 1960’s, while most of the rest of society were ready to disown and abandon pregnant teens, she poured her life energy into giving them a chance at a better future for themselves and their children, helping thousands of them to complete their high schooling with the opportunity to go on to study further or get a decent paying job.  

Michael Curry writes that an oft quoted passage in the New testament says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only son”. The Greek word for love used in the passage is agape, while the Greek word for ‘world’ is kosmos. But what it really means he says is “everything” – “everything that is”. Isn’t that wonderful…For God so loved the kosmos, God so loved everything that is, everything that God had created, that God gave… God did not take. God gave. As Michael Curry says: “That’s agape. That’s love. It is the way to a new world that looks something more like God’s dream for us and for all creation, what Dante spoke of as “the love that moves the sun and the stars”. 

Today’s reading is from 1 Cor 13, the apostle Paul’s inspiring ‘ode to love’. It is a passage that tragically is seldom read in churches except at weddings.  But as Michael Curry says, when the apostle Paul wrote those words he wasn’t at a wedding. He wasn’t giving advice to young couples on how to make their marriage work.  Paul’s words were in fact written for  a dysfunctional church community in Corinth in which its members had forgotten all of the values of Jesus of Nazareth that had first brought them together and they were in fact ripping themselves apart.  

They were a community splitting into factions according to who had baptised them. Members suing each other in the secular courts. Some were sleeping with other members spouses. The rich and well-to-do were demanding that they receive communion first and others getting drunk at communion. And in the midst of all of this a community arguing about who was more spiritual than who. 

Bishop Curry says it is behaviour that has a decidedly contemporary ring about it reflecting much of the of behaviour and attitudes expressed so often on social media platforms today: Arrogant, rude, insisting on its own way, irritable, resentful, rejoicing in wrong doing.  And so Paul reminds the Church in Corinth of the kind of love that they should be nurturing as a church community built around the values of Jesus – the only kind of love that can save a divided community. 

Bishop Curry writes that you might think that the opposite of love is hate. But if Love looks outward, to the good of the other, then it’s opposite is not hate. Rather it’s opposite is in fact selfishness. A life completely centred on the self. 

He goes on to say that intuitively, we all understand that nothing good ever came from selfishness and greed. In contrast to love, selfishness is the most destructive force in the cosmos and hate is only a symptom. Selfishness destroys families. It destroys communities. It destroys societies, nations and global communities, and he says, it will destroy the human race by laying waste to our planet it we let it. 

By contrast, he says that Love is the only thing that has ever changed the world for the better, seen in people who have dedicated themselves to the growth and flourishing of others, their communities and of the world.  This includes, parents and teachers dedicated to the flourishing of the children under their care. In fact it includes anyone and everyone who in their neighbourhoods, and places of work dedicate themselves to living not just for themselves, but for the greater good. People like Josie Robbins,  Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, William Wilberforce, the great abolitionist, Malala Yousafzai the activist for girls' education and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban and continues to advocate for education and equality. 

As Michael Curry writes: Love is a firefighter running into a burning building, risking his or her life for someone he doesn’t even know. Love is that first responder hurtling toward an emergency, a catastrophe, a disaster. Love is also someone protesting anything that hurts or harms the children of God.  As Jesus says hours before his crucifixion in John’s Gospel: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s own life for one’s friends.”

Where selfishness excludes, love makes room and includes. Where selfishness puts down, love lifts up. Where selfishness hurts and harms, love helps and heals. Where selfishness enslaves, love sets free and liberates. 

And finally, Michael Curry says that Love is God’s GPS for living.  Getting back to Paul and the dysfunctional Christian community in Corinth, he concludes his exhortation to them to love with these words: “And now faith hope and love abide… and the greatest of these is love.”

Michael Curry writes that Faith is another word for trust. Without trust society falls apart. Every society depends on trust. Without trust, government is useless and relationships are impossible. Without trust it’s every human for him or herself – and that is just a mess he says. And so faith is a radical act of trust in reality. It is to dare to live and act as though the moral arc of the universe is long but bent towards justice, even if you can’t see its end.  Nothing short of faith can stay the course. It dares us to believe that in the end, even if we can’t see it, love will win. 

Then comes hope, which Michael Curry says puts wind in our sails of faith, for it is the energy that keeps us going when life gets tough. It was Dante who imagined the gates of hell with a signpost above it: “Abandon hope, all who enter here”.  Without hope Bishop Curry says that life becomes mere survival, but with hope he says you can march through hell for a heavenly cause. 

But while faith and hope are necessary for a full life, Bishop Curry says that they are not a guide for life. They don’t tell you what to do. That he says is the purpose of love. It is love that tells you how to direct the energy of faith and hope. He says that if faith and hope are the wind and the sails, then love is life’s rudder. It is God’s GPS or SatNav for the way of love will show us the right thing to do every single time.  He writes: “It is a moral and spiritual grounding – and a place of rest – amid the chaos that is often part of life. It’s how we stay decent in indecent times.” And although the way of love is not easy, he reminds us that it is the only thing that has ever made a positive difference in this world. 

What is love to you?  What are the places in your life where you are needing love’s care?  What are the places in your life where love is calling you to reach out beyond yourself to make a difference in the world? 

Today, as I have a Sunday off from preaching, I have prepared a brief online reflection based on three of the lectionary passages set for today.  The passages are:  

Psalm 23;   1 John 3:16-24;    John 10:11-18; 

In Psalm 23, we are invited into the imagery of the shepherd and his flock. The well-known and familiar imagery can get lost in our familiarity with them, but the Psalm remains rich with poetic imagery that can inspire us and plant seeds of hope within us for the Psalmist speaks to the fundamental human need and longing for guidance, protection, and sustenance. In the vast expanse of life's journey, we find comfort in the idea of a shepherd who leads us to green pastures and still waters, providing us with the nourishment and rest we need to thrive.  The imagery of the shepherd caring for his sheep in speaking to the universal longing for protection and nurturing I invites us to contemplate the possibility that there is a Higher Wisdom at work that we refer to with the word God, that seeks our highest good. It reminds us too of the importance of compassion and care for one another, regardless of our religious beliefs.

In the first letter of John verses 16-24, the themes of Psalm 23 are carried through as we encounter a powerful message about the nature of love. Love, as described here, is not merely a sentiment but a radical way of living. 

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

And so the passage suggests that Love is demonstrated through tangible acts of compassion, generosity, and solidarity with those in need. This love transcends religious boundaries and speaks to the universal longing for connection and belonging. As Non-Subscribing Christians, we embrace this call to love one another, recognizing that it is through our actions that we affirm our shared humanity and through our practical acts of love that we demonstrate our Christian commitment.

Lastly, in the Gospel according to John 10:11-18, Jesus presents himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. Vs 11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” It is a passage that carries a profound message of selflessness and sacrifice. The Good Shepherd is willing to put the needs of others before his own, demonstrating a deep sense of empathy and compassion. This is contrasted with the hired hand, who only looks after his own interests and runs away when trouble comes. In a world often marked by division and self-interest, this portrayal of leadership serves as a powerful reminder of the values we should hold dear as followers of Christ.

As we reflect on these passages, they are an invitation to recommit ourselves to embodying the spirit of compassion and love in our daily lives. May we be like the good shepherd who cares for his flock, extending a helping hand to those who are vulnerable or in need. May we practice a love that knows no boundaries, reaching out to our fellow human beings with empathy and understanding.  And may our actions reflect the deep-seated belief that we are all interconnected, bound together by our shared humanity and held by a Wisdom that is greater than our own. 
Amen. 

Judgement – Seeing Ourselves in the Light of Love

In around 1995 I was in the early stages of becoming a lay preacher.  I was just getting on my feet as a preacher after a wobbly start when I had thought a few times of just giving it up. 

On one particular Sunday I preached a sermon on a topic I can’t remember, but somewhere in the sermon I had made some kind of illustration by making a rather derogatory remark about time-share salesmen.  I don’t know how the timeshare industry is regulated or operated here, but in South Africa, the time-share industry had a reputation of creating contracts that were easy to sign but very difficult if not impossible to get out of.  

After the service one of the more senior members of the church came past to shake my hand at the door.  All he said to me was: Brian, I am a time share salesman.  To be quite honest, I don’t think he was a time-share salesman, but was putting himself in the shoes of a time-share salesman I order to make a point. 

And in that moment I suddenly realised what I had done.  It was for me a moment of searing pain in which I instantaneously recognised not only how sweeping and prejudiced a statement I had made from the pulpit, but the potential hurt and shame I may have caused for anyone in the congregation who was a time share salesman or perhaps had a family member who was one. I felt ashamed that the words had come out of my mouth so glibly without having considered what they could mean for some who were listening.   One could say that it was a moment of judgement. A very painful moment, that in fact lasted like a dreadful shadow for hours afterwards, and in fact probably for quite a number of days.   But it was also a moment of growth. One could say even a moment of salvation from that moment for myself and for anyone who would listen to my preaching from that moment onwards.  I would from that moment onwards be far more mindful of how  I spoke from the pulpit and hopefully never again make derisive, sweeping and prejudiced comments from the pulpit again. I hope I have never done so again. It is entirely possible that I have, because we all have blind-spots, things we are not fully aware of unless someone points them out to us. 

Today I would like to reflect on the concept of judgement.  What is judgement? What does judgement look like and feel like. In a way, this is an epilogue to the sermon series we have just completed. 

The idea of the Last Judgement is one that is deeply etched into our Western Psyche. Some of the greatest artworks of Western Civilization are depictions of the last judgement.  And I think especially of the scene of the Last Judgement painted by Michelangelo on the Altar Wall of the Sistine Chapel between 1536 and 1541. 

Interestingly, in Michelangelo’s depiction of the Last Judgement, almost all the human figures in the painting are depicted naked.   One might simply put that down to the fact that it is a renaissance painting in which it had become more and more common to depict the naked human form. But in doing so, it appears that he was actually trying to communicate something of the deeper meaning of judgement: The sense that the process or experience of judgement is an experience in which our ability to cover up is removed.  Judgement is the experience of no longer being able to hide ourselves from the light of truth, the truth of who we are and what we have done. 

One gets a sense of that in the Genesis story.  When Adam and Eve in the story disobey the Divine command, they feel exposed  and vulnerable and so try and cover up their nakedness by hiding in the garden and sewing together fig leaves.  It is a story that is true not because it happened, but because it happens to all of us. It conveys an archetypal truth. 

It is surely symbolic of our human tendency to become defensive in trying to cover over our flaws and faults.  None of us enjoy being criticized and having our faults and weaknesses identified, even when we know that the criticism might be true. In fact often it is when the criticism is true that we become the most defensive because we feel so vulnerable. We don’t like to be exposed and so we try to cover over our faults, because we don’t want others to see us as we really are. And more often because we don’t want to see ourselves as we really are.  We are afraid of the light, because in it we feel exposed and vulnerable. And so we prefer to hide our flaws and faults in the dark so that we can avoid looking at them in the hope that others won’t see them as well. 

And this brings us to our passage from John’s Gospel today in which the writer shares his perspective on what judgement is:  

John 3:19-20 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.  (And we should note that the Greek word for evil in this passage comes from the root Greek word ponos meaning hurtful. Our tendency to cause hurt and harm. It is not saying we are inherently evil.)

I wonder if that gives us a clue as to what the so-called final judgement is about:  Is it perhaps that the metaphor of the final judgement refers to that moment when the Light of Truth will shine upon us in such a way that we can no longer hide the truth of who we are and what we have done.  It is a searing and painful moment, because we don’t like what we see it and we especially don’t like others to see it as well.  The metaphor of the Last Judgement is the experience where we stand naked before God and we can no longer cover ourselves up. 

I think of someone like Vladimir Putin.  No-one likes to think of themselves as a bad person.  You can be almost certain that Vladimir Putin does not think of himself as a bad person.  In his mind he has a whole lot of stories to justify to himself and to other people why he is doing what he is doing. In his propaganda he constantly tries to show himself in the best light.  What will judgement look like for Putin? It will look exactly the same as it will be for each of us. It will be a moment or an experience of no longer being able to hide behind the stories that we tell ourselves, and having the truth about our actions exposed will surely be a most painful experience.  

But what we don’t realise is that the Light of Truth that illuminates our darkness and exposes it is also at the very same time the Light of Divine Love.  And while it might be painful to have the truth about ourselves revealed by Divine Light, it is also in that moment that we can begin to experience the embrace of divine love. 

What will the judgement and accountability look like? That is a question that is difficult to answer, because we are in the territory of things that are beyond our full comprehension.   But what I would suggest is that at the very least judgement and moral accountability when we stand naked before God will look something like my experience standing at the door of the church shaking hands.  At the very least the final judgement will be a lifting of the veil of the true nature of our crimes of commission and omission.  It will be seeing our acts of cruelty and indifference in the full light of love.  It will be a coming to know and to experience the full impact of our actions upon those whom we have hurt, abused or perhaps neglected.  And that seeing of ourselves and our actions unveiled completely before us will be an experience searing and inescapable pain for it is a dreadfully painful thing when we have nowhere left to hide and our deeds of darkness are exposed to ourselves and others.  But the good news will also be that this searing pain of having our deeds and misdeeds exposed by the Light of Divine Love will also be our healing and for our final salvation. 

When one thinks of these things in terms of victims and perpetrators, when a victim wishes pain on a perpetrator is it not that what they are really wanting is for the perpetrator to fully know and to fully understand and in some way to fully experience for themselves the full extent of the pain they have caused the victim.  And generally, where perpetrators have been able to bring themselves to the point of doing so with deep contrition, then a true and real reconciliation is able to happen between victim and perpetrator.   

Does that possibly give us a glimpse of what the final reconciliation of all things will be:  On the one hand, it will be the experience of the complete healing of the pain and wounds of the victim which will be mirrored and facilitated by the complete accountability and the complete contrition and healing of the perpetrator as well in which the perpetrators of this world will come to fully know and fully experience from the inside the true depth of pain inflicted upon their victims. And this process of healing of the perpetrator will not be without pain or without cost, but it will be full and it will be complete, just as the healing of the wounds and pain of the victim will also be full and complete aided by the fact that the perpetrator has fully understood and experienced in their own spirits the pain that he or she has caused.  

In Ephesians 5:13 we read: ‘But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes light.’

The exposing of our darkness might be a painful experience, but it is also the experience of our ultimate healing.  The Light of Divine Judgement turns out to be the Light of Divine Healing and Love because “...everything that is illuminated becomes light.” 

Questioning Eternal Hell (Part 6) - Free Will & Corrective Punishment

Over the weeks of Lent leading up to Easter, I had been inviting us to question the Doctrine of Eternal Hell. I had been using as my guide a book by David Bentley Hart trying to communicate the essence of some of the key points he makes. 

A question that we began to explore in the last sermon was:  Is there any justice? Where is the justice?  If the promise of Universal Salvation is true, that everyone, even the worst of humanity will in the end be saved by God’s all-redeeming Love expressed in Christ, is there still room for justice. 

We saw how David Bentley Hart believes that the New Testament writings point to two horizons: A penultimate horizon, ‘the end of the age’, in which all will be held accountable for our actions in this world, and a final horizon, ‘the age beyond all ages’ when having been purified of our darkness, we will all without exception be brought home to God. 

George MacDonald was a Scottish Congregational  Minister who lived in the 1800’s  (born in 1824 –  and died 1905).  He was the author also of quite a number of fictional stories. He had a very big impact on C.S. Lewis.  

Now George MacDonald was a Christian Universalist, in other words a believer in Universal Salvation, that in the end, all would be saved. But this did not mean that he had given up on the idea of some kind of judgement, accountability and even punishment in the after-life.  MacDonald's universalism was not the idea that everyone will automatically be saved, but is closer to the ancient view of the Christian theologian Gregory of Nyssa that all will ultimately repent (come to a change of heart and mind) and thus be restored to God. 

MacDonald grew up in a very severe Scottish Calvinist tradition and appears to have never felt comfortable with Calvinist doctrine, feeling that its principles were inherently "unfair". Apparently when the doctrine of predestination was first explained to him as a child, and that God had created some to be destined to eternal torment, he burst into tears. He could never accept the doctrine even though he was assured that he was one of the elect.

As Barbara Amall writes:  He was repeatedly quoted saying that when Protestants decided that three places in the afterlife were too many, [hell; purgatory; heaven] he believed that “they got rid of the wrong one.” He believed the early protestants should have got rid of the idea of Eternal Hell and rather should have retained something of the idea of purgatory.  It is not to say that his understanding of some kind of purgatory in the afterlife was an uncritical acceptance of the Catholic Doctrine of purgatory. He simply believed that some kind of purgatory, in other words a place or an experience of purification made far more sense of the over-arching Biblical framework and could at the same time preserve the foundational Christian teaching that God is Love, that God’s Love would be triumphant and that no-one would be finally excluded from God’s all encompassing, never-failing love.  For George MacDonald, the idea of an eternal hell of sufferings and torment turns God into a monster for whom eternal cruelty is the final word and not eternal love. 

And so in 1890, George MacDonald, while giving a series of lectures on Dante made the following statement:  “I do indeed believe in a place of punishment, but that longing and pain will bring us back to God.” He went on to say “There is a deep truth in the soul undergoing Purgatory [in other words, the sufferings of purification] in order that it may return to God—in whom we live and move—at all times.” 

From his "Unspoken Sermons: Series I, on Justice" MacDonald said that  "If our God is a consuming fire, what will he do but burn and burn until every evil thing is consumed, and creation is awakened pure and free from sin! The fires of hell are but the love of God." He went on to say in the same sermon that "God's fire is not an avenging wrath, but a refining and cleansing flame. He will purge from his creation all that mars its beauty and tarnishes its purity."

 In God's school, where men [people] are punished for their sins, there is no cruelty, only love. For God cannot be cruel, and he never punishes for vengeance; he only corrects for the sake of the wrongdoer…. Punishment is not vengeance, but a means of reclaiming the wrongdoer and restoring him to his true self."

It also needs to be remembered that where the New Testament refer to punishment, the Greek word that is used, kolasis, refers to corrective punishment and not vengeance. The word can be found in Matthew 25:46 at the end of the parable of the sheep and the goats, where the goats, or the ‘unrighteous’, who have not shown care and concern for the poor and the needy, are separated from the sheep and thus destined for what English translations call ‘eternal punishment’.  But here the Greek word is kolasis. And as Thomas Talbot writes in his book the Inescapable Love of God, kolasis was a common Greek word for remedial punishment or correction, and that the idea of an eternal correction, would be an event or process of limited duration whose corrective effect literally endures forever.  

And so for George MacDonald and many other Christian Universalists like him, all the metaphors of fire in the New Testament as we touched on in the last sermon, refer to the purging fire of Divine love burning away all that is false, unjust, unloving and wicked within us in order to reveal that golden essence within of that original true self or the image of God that God has placed with us that has been marred obscured and distorted, by our selfishness, injustice and lack of love.  George MacDonald believed that the purifying, purgatorial, love of God is in fact already experienced in this life whenever we are met with the painful consequences of our wayward actions. 

But there are also a few other metaphors as well in the New Testament, most especially in the Gospel of Matthew and one from the Gospel of Luke, metaphors of exclusion, like sealed wedding doors, accompanied by the gnashing of teeth. And one can think especially of the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus where because of the Rich Man’s failure to show compassion and human kindness to Lazarus in his destitution and poverty, he seems to be quarantined off in some experience of suffering and thirst in the afterlife.  But there is nothing in the parable to indicate that these sufferings of the Rich Man are in fact eternal. We should also be reminded of the fact that it is a parable, not a literal description. It is but one metaphor among many used in the New Testament.  

For George MacDonald, if the passages in the New Testament referring to some kind of exclusion and banishment from the Divine Presence are to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed, then the purpose of such exclusion is ultimately to awaken a deeper longing for God that would in the end bring that soul back home to God. 

I am reminded of the words of St Augustine: “O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you”.  The suggestion is that outside the embrace of Divine Love, there is no real happiness, only restlessness. And it is that restlessness and unhappiness that will eventually make all of us turn back to God where we can find our deepest happiness. 

There are a lot of people who suggest that eternal hell is the choice that some will make to remain eternally separated from God. This is the argument based on free-will. That God respects our free will so much that God will allow us to make the eternal choice to reject God. 

But David Bentley Hart says that such a choice in fact makes no sense. Because we have been made by Divine Love and for Divine Love, and that our true and deepest freedom can only be found within that Divine Love. To live outside of that Love will forever leave us unhappy, empty and unfulfilled. And it is precisely for that reason that David Bentley Hart suggests that we will all one day find our way back to God, no matter how far we have strayed or how lost and depraved we have become,  because as beings who in fact crave happiness and freedom, the desire for that happiness and freedom will eventually lead us back to the only place where that happiness and freedom can be satisfied, and that is in God. 

And so it could be said that God has created us with a homing device. You can only stray so far and for so long until it begins to chafe and a deep longing is ignited within us to return home. The idea that we can wonder off for all eternity and of our own free will reject God’s Infinite and Boundless Love doesn’t actually make sense, because it goes against the very nature of how we are made at our core.  The Divine Image within, what some might speak of as the Divine Spark within all, will eventually bring us all back home.  In this view, there is no-one who is dispensable in God’s eyes and there will in the end be no collateral damage in God’s plan to bring all things back to unity in the end.

“O God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in you”.  St Augustine, interestingly was not a Universalist, but if he had pondered his own statement deeply enough, and truly understood the limitless nature of Divine love, he might have realised that one day, all sorry and miserable sinners would turn back to God. 

And so in the New Testament there are numerous passages, using a variety of images and metaphors that speak of judgement, consequences and remedial and corrective sufferings. None of those need to be dispensed within a Christian Universalist framework.  What David Bentley Hart suggests however is that while these passages do exist and need to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed, if we simply had the eyes to see them, the number of passages that consistently point to the final reconciliation of all things are in fact far more numerous. 

I hope this series has been stimulating for you.  I would have to concede that perhaps not all have been completely convinced by this series of 6 sermons.  There is only so much ground that can be covered in 6 short reflections. The gift of our Non-Subscribing tradition remains that all of us are encouraged to investigate these things for ourselves and come to our own conclusions.  If this series has peaked your interest there are a number of books that you can read further.  I will put references up on our website. 

David Bentley Harts book “That All Shall Be Saved” was not the easiest reading as he seems to be writing for people who have a masters or doctorate in theology.  But there are a number of other books that you could read: 

Rob Bell has a very readable book entitled: Love Wins which I would be happy to lend to you. 

I have another readable book by Kalen Fristad called Destined for Salvation. 

The most thorough book that I could probably recommend on the subject is by Thomas Talbot, called: The Inescapable Love of God. 

Thomas Talbott’s Book which is available on Kindle is perhaps one of the most thorough Biblical explorations of the subject.