SERMON FOR ADVENT 2 - The Importance of Scripture
When we've done parish quizzes there's usually a round of catchphrases from current adverts. It's usually Maria and the kids who sit in front of the TV a couple of weeks beforehand, pen and paper in hand, noting down the latest offerings from well known ads - [L'Oreal "because I'm worth it"] It's one of the most infuriating rounds of course because however often you've watched them, you just can’t remember which product goes with which slogan!
If we look back a hundred years, the equivalent questions would have been taken from the Bible. Go, especially to the Welsh Valleys or the cotton plantations of Louisiana and the words and phrases of the Scriptures would have been etched into every head - through samplers, framed texts in people's homes, through preaching and through ordinary conversation. Names like Jezebel and Lot's wife wouldn’t need to be explained: now it takes Cliff Richard's variant of Auld Lang Syne, No1 in the charts, to teach the Lord's Prayer to our younger generation!
Nor am I knocking Harry Potter - a good read if ever there was one - when I tell you that this excellent story (which is breaking all records for children's fiction at the moment) makes no attempt to provide a religious framework as its point of reference. Reviewers have described the three books already published as good parallels to the CS Lewis's Narnia stories. But where CS Lewis has a Christian thread running through the whole thing, with Aslan as a kind of Christ figure, Harry Potter is simply set in a world of wizardry - good spells and bad curses. There is no obvious way back into the Christian story from there.
So it's not hard to see why it's so difficult for most people to draw on Biblical stories and allusions. Apart from a few highly motivated evangelicals, most Christians just don’t their way around the Bible - or have the first idea who are the major characters contained within. It's a bit like asking the Republican Presidential hopeful, George Bush Jr, the names of four world leaders. It's embarrassing maybe, but the answers just aren't there!
And the question for today is, does it matter? Do we, here, need to know "who begat whom" in Deuteronomy or who was the father of Enoch? I'd like to suggest that the answer is - yes and no. Yes we all need some idea of the way the Bible works, and a rough idea of both the history and the ideas of the Scriptures. But no, the detailed knowledge of who was related to whom doesn’t usually matter - unless you happen to be in Belle Vue Boys School when they want to know about the relationship between Isaac and Ishmael. [Abraham: half-brothers]
It was the historical authenticity of the Bible that has been on the mind of John McCarthy recently. We've talked about him in sermons before, and you will remember that seven years ago, he was locked up by the Hezbollah Islamic fundamentalists somewhere in the Beka'a Valley of the Lebanon for months on end. After a lot of pleading he was given a copy of the King James Version of the Bible by his captors. At the time he was only a very nominal Christian, but in those circumstances he was desperate to read anything he could lay his hands on. So he read the Scriptures from start to finish, over and over. And this month, in a series on Radio 4, he is exploring the Bible Lands once more, asking those vital questions: does this Bible mean anything any more? Is it history? Did these great figures described there really exist etc etc.
Almost at once he realised that the Bible is useless as a modern piece of history and that people like Abraham are not real people but fictional types of the people who did extraordinary things. Yet what John learned from committing the famous bits from the Bible to memory is how one small, inconsequential nation - driven by an enduring faith - had been able to survive and even flourish against every invasion, every attempt at cultural ethnic cleansing, Somehow they had managed to retain their identity and their hope for the future.
"Comfort my people, bring comfort to them, says your God; speak kindly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her term of bondage is served, her penalty is paid: for she has received at the Lord's hands double measure for all her sins…"
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For me, one of the most impressive interviews of this week from Belfast, was that given by David Trimble on Wednesday evening. The newly elected Executive was to meet the following afternoon and already John Humphries of the BBC was asking how long the new Northern Ireland First Minister gave this motley assortment of politicians who had, up until recently, been unable to talk together in the same room. David Trimble looked directly at the camera and said: "This whole process is far more robust than commentators would give us credit for."
What David Trimble had put his finger on was this: First there was the undying determination of those leading the process that it would succeed. Second there was the realisation by those on differing sides that, in reaslity, they shared a common story and that they would be for ever held to account if they did not seize the chance of a reconciliation when it was offered.
Now what does this teach us as Christians?
If we continue to neglect the Bible, it seems to me that we are in danger of becoming 'no people'. Unless we have at least some idea of the story, the characters, the successes and failures which we have inherited, we have nothing of substance in common with our fellow Christian men and women. Whatever else the millennium hype has produced, we know there is something going on when the Sun, and tabloids like it, start writing history books! They've understood that you can't talk about 2000 years and millenniums without having at least some inkling of what filled those years! This history is what binds us together on these islands.Our Biblical story is what holds us together as People of Faith.
And within the bigger story are the hopes, the aspirations and the drive that led those women and men to achieve what they did. It might seem like 'all change' today, but it isn't the first generation that has found the pace of change difficult to cope with and it won’t be the last.
Without some idea of what the views in the Bible are, and some intelligent interpretation of those views, we are in danger of being swept along with the latest fashions - whether good or bad - because we simply haven't got enough grounding in our Biblical story to know how to judge what is before us.
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And there's perhaps just one more thing to recall.
When John McCarthy sat in his isolated cell in the Lebanon, he read the Bible as a way of getting through the day. But in a recent article in the 'Tablet' he describes how the words on the page grew to became quite personal to him - as if the text was being written directly for him as he needed it.
This is something that I have always found to be true, and is something which helps to make sense of today's Gospel reading. Now I would be the last person to claim to be a Biblical scholar. Actually I'm nor very interested in much of the Law or the historical detail. But what I have discovered - as in the preaching of John the Baptist - is that if I listen/read carefully enough, there is something in those texts which is directed straight at me. Like your favourite teacher who always knew when you were telling the truth - or not!
The ability of the Bible to make some real contribution to our day-to-day thinking and working just cannot be over-stated. We don't just say 'This is the Word of the Lord' as a way of telling one another that the particular passage chosen for today is finished. It is the declaration of our faith: in these words God has spoken to us.
So three points to summarise:
(1) Without the inspirational word of the Scriptures we are lonely and ill at ease. Through these words generations have discovered the way in which God clearly and objectively guide us. It's worth asking why everyone seems to choose the 23rd Psalm for funerals? Because in there somewhere are truths we find no-where else.
(2) Without the unifying force of Scripture we have no common story to accompany the journey of the pilgrim People of God, the people who know that they have still some way yet to go, and who - through its pages - read of others who have gone that way before them - and made it!
(3) Without the extraordinary power of the Scriptures to cut us down to size and know our need of God, we lose sight of our humanity, our weakness and our need of Christ
Whether we take up the 'Cover to Cover' Bible reading course next year, or try and read and re-read the readings printed out for us Sunday by Sunday, may I encourage everyone in our Church community to use this Advent and this newest of New Years to revisit the Scriptures. And don't be out off by the fact that you haven’t done much about it in the past. As the final words of the 2nd reading reminds us:
"Bear in mind that Our Lord's patience is an opportunity for salvation"
I think those words are for all of us!
5.12.99
Address at the funeral of Mary Winn 10 December 1999
By a slightly odd quirk, I had particular reason to think of Mary the other evening when, after some late night visiting, I had walked in a puddle and discovered that both my shoes had holes in them and my feet were wet. I think I had known this for some days but as I turned each shoe over, there were the tell- tale signs.
It was said to me years ago that you could tell whether a man was a gentleman by the way he cared for his shoes and that may or may not be true. But they are foundational items for all of us. A pair of ill fitting shoes in our youth ruins our feet for life and a shoes that are no comfortable make us less than pleasant through a long day - my feet are killing me…
Mary Winn's career was essentially as a buyer of good quality shoes for Brown Muffs, here in Bradford. Which was quite something as she had not had the easiest childhood and she had by no means enjoyed a silver spoon in her mouth. Her father was a cabinet-maker turned stevedore, and apparently had gone across to the US and worked on the construction of that most pure of the New York skyscrapers - the Empire State Building - pure in architectural terms and not just for its role in the film 'Sleepless in Seattle'!
So Mary had worked her way up Brown Muffs from the shop floor until she was a senior buyer, making journeys to the major manufacturers in Street, Somerset, and also to the factories like those of Bally in Switzerland at the request of the Managing Director or Brown Muffs no less. Not bad for a Bradford lass - but a sign of that wonderful rapport that she could build with people and an indication of that sociable temperament that was a hallmark of her life.
Family mattered. As a young man, Mary took her nephew and godson John to Switzerland. She devoted much of her adult life to the care of her mother, and kept closest touch with her sister who also died, shortly before Christmas, some years ago, at the age of 92.
Family mattered, friends mattered too and we are so pleased that you who are here today can represent a greater crowd of friends and acquaintances with whom she corresponded and on whom she relied so much - especially at the end of her life when the rota of cake makers were to be found week by week at her door. Her generosity was matched by theirs. What is St John saying in our first reading? "Love must be genuine and must show itself in action…"
But back to foundations. For it won’t have escaped your notice that John and Marie-France have chosen one over-arching theme for the whole of this Requiem.
The foundation for Mary was her faith: her confidence that the Christ who had died would open for her the path to everlasting life. Both at St Chad's in Toller Lane and here at St Martin's, she was the most committed of communicants, the most undemanding of parishioners, the most forgiving and the most welcoming. That - as we know from the Gospels - in the result of a prayer life which provided that inner strength and that outer peace and contentment with which we will always associate Mary Winn.
A foundational conviction, a habit of prayer, a love of God in his people - within the Church and well beyond, all based on the texts for this afternoon: "Set your troubled hearts at rest. Trust in God always; trust also in me."
But there is also something else in those words, and it is this: Jesus is talking directly to the believer. It is a 'one-to-one invitation' to use today's phrase. Yet like many people of her generation, especially those who did not marry, much of Mary's life was enjoyed vicariously, through the experiences of others. Through her, John was assisted through University; in due course it was his wife and family who became hers. Hers the pride in her "sweethearts" as Alex and Christoph excelled in sport, visited far parts of the globe, learned musical instruments and finally found fulfillment at University. We will hear something of Alex a little later at the commendation.
Friends and family have filled these 25 years since she retired and she has watched and loved them in all that they have done.
Now her Redeemer liveth; the waiting is over and her work is done. It is her faith that will enable Christ to fulfill his promise: "for I am going there on purpose to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place, I shall come again and receive you to myself, so that where I am you may be also."
Let us together thank God for one who laid foundations for others but who now knows - face to face - her living Lord. For her this first verse of a hymn she would have sung often:
Christ is made the sure foundation/Christ the head, the corner-stone. /Chosen of the Lord and precious, /building all the Church in one. /Holy Zion's help for ever /and her confidence alone.
SERMON FOR MIDNIGHT MASS 1999
A couple of years back, Ian McColm brought in a photograph taken by a friend of his, of an olive tree - standing in the Garden of Gethsamane. Apparently, this tree was at least 2000 years old and would therefore have been growing during the life-time of Jesus.
That's how we digest great lumps of history: we can’t really comprehend centuries, let alone millennia. As my mother in law said last night, time goes faster the older you get - which is perhaps why Maria's prayers on Sunday reminded us that with God, a thousand years are like one day passing! No, the only way we cope with history with a capital 'H' is to turn it back to ourselves, to try and recall what we were doing when such and such happened. No doubt in the future, people will ask - "and where were you on Millennium night" - and one of the biggest smiles will come from Brian who's off to Thailand…!
Struggle as they might, those trying to get us all excited about the secular millennium celebrations have largely failed: one interesting comment caught my attention about the Greenwich Dome the other day. It was described tersely as expensive, temporary and hollow inside. Worse, those who have visited it say it's a brilliant day out (if not cheap) but that the best bits are not the wonderful pieces of art brought from all over the world to look at but the hands on pieces of - yes, you've guessed it: "Virtual Reality"…
Today, as we celebrate the real millennium celebration (however spuriously) ie the 2000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus, we have much to be grateful for. This isn't the time to go through the contribution the life of Jesus has made to our world - that's too big to cope with; but for us who live the Christian Way, we can reflect tonight on the way in which the light of Christ has touched people's lives - our lives - for immense good. It isn't all gigantic balloons and emptiness. It certainly isn't 'virtual reality'. It's the real thing: God has been, and is, there - in and for his people. That has been our journey, as for Blake, from Innocence to Experience.
Yet as 4million mobile phones are unpacked from Christmas stockings throughout the UK today, and landfill sights are opened up to bury the ones already obsolete, there is one stark statistic which we also can't ignore: that the level of religious faith in western Europe has fallen to an all time low. While those in the US work longer hours with fewer holidays than we in Europe, the numbers of people going to Church on a Sunday is double that here. Yet, strangely, those responding in the UK to this huge poll for Gallup still claimed to belong to one religious organisation or another. "I'm not sure what I believe, I don't go to Church that regularly … but I'm still in there, I still belong!" There's the paradox from which we must learn: people have some kind of faith but they don't have a corresponding religion to go with it.