Pondering Polemics

There are times when I am glad not to be a gifted theologian. As soon as someone finds themselves thus branded, they also find themselves branded with a label and if this label is not popular, then the Polemicists come out and try to force that theologian into their way of thinking.

Being identified with the Papalist camp, I have my share of people trying to convince me that Rome is heretical and that I should not despise my Anglican identity, while others tell me that I am being chauvinist or homophobic or Mariolatrous or just plain nasty.

I perceive that the same Polemicists have descended upon the Continuum Blog in no small number. Unfortunately for me, they are Papal Polemicists and their bent seems to be to try and convince, nay forcibly convince, the learned members there that they are wrong. It seems that the Synod of Whitby is meeting again with even more snipery!

I disagree with the folk on the Continuum, but I have every respect and interest in what they are doing in presenting just how coherent Anglicanism really is. I don't regard the 39 Articles as defining Anglicanism, as far I understand them at the moment, though I do look through them to try and make sense of them in the same way as Blessed Father Newman did. I am still learning - it's not easy when you're doing this as an amateur. However, I do not see it as my job to tell people that they are wrong. I see it as my job to bear witness to the Truth as has been revealed to me by Our God through Holy Mother Church. Unless I've got the law courts completely wrong, witnesses don't get out of the witness box, grab the defendant by the throat and force their testimony down it.

To support what I'm saying here, I'd like to make an extended quote from the Sixth Discourse of Dorotheus of Gaza:

There are times when we not only condemn but also despise people; for it is one thing to condemn and quite another to despise. Contempt adds to condemnation the desire to set someone at nought - as if the neighbour were a bad smell which has got to be rid of as something disgusting, and this is worse than rash judgment and exceedingly destructive.

Those who want to be saved scrutinise not the shortcomings (as below) of their neighbour but always their own and they set about eliminating them. Such as the man who saw his brother doing wrong and groaned, "woe is me: him today - me tomorrow!" You see his caution? You see the preparedness of his mind? How he swiftly foresaw how to avoid judging his brother.? When he said "me tomorrow" he aroused his fear of sinning, and by this he increased his caution about avoiding those sins which he was likely to commit, and so he escaped judging his neighbour: and he did not stop at this, but put himself below his brother, saying, "He has repented for his sin but I do not always repent. I am never first to ask for forgiveness and I am never completely converted." Do you see the Divine Light in his soul? Not only was he able to escape making judgment but he humbled himself as well. And we miserable fellows judge rashly, we hate indiscriminately and set people at nought whether we see something, or hear something, or even only suspect something. And what is worse, we do not stop at harming ourselves, but we go and gossip and say, "Here, listen to what has just happened!" We harm our neighbour and put sin into his heart also.

How can we put up with this behaviour unless it is because we have no true love? If we have have true love, with sympathy and patient labour, we will not go about scrutinising our neighbour's shortcomings. As it is said, "Love covers up a multitude of sins." If we have true love, that very love should screen anything of this kind, as did the saints when they saw the shortcomings of others. Were they blind? Not at all. But they simply would not let their eyes dwell on sins. Who hated sin more than the Saints? But they did not hate the sinners or condemn them, nor turn away from them, but they suffered with them, admonished them, comforted them, gave them remedies as sickly members, and did all they could to heal them.

Let us acquire tenderness towards our neighbour so that we may guard ourselves from speaking evil of our neighbour, and from judging and despising them. Let us help one another, for we are indeed members of one another.

When I hear that phrase "One True Church" I worry about the context in which it is being used. If that word "True" is not supported by some commitment to love, then I wonder whether it really is true. Human beings are not entirely rational and there are things of the soul which defy the rational thought of others and the self to make coherent sense of. I am still trying to understand how to be an Anglican Papalist. By that I don't mean a Romaniser, but rather how to bring the integrity of Anglicanism - and boy does it have integrity - into union with the Holy See. The Holy See is the One True Church. I firmly believe that, but I also believe that the Orthodox Church of the East is the One True Church and that the Anglican Church is the One True Church, because, as Dorotheus reminds us, each Christian is a member of every other Christian.

If we are going to debate the nature of what it means to be Church, then we need to do so in recognition of this basic, yet transcendent property of the Church. For an Anglican Papalist to despise his Anglican heritage is to cease to be an Anglican, and to become a Romaniser. Fr Hope Patten in rebuilding the Shrine at Walsingham sought to reclaim some of the Anglican Heritage thrown out at the reformation. He was not out to Romanise. Indeed, this archetypal Anglican Papalist despised Latin and used the Book of Common Prayer with a Roman twist. Other Anglican Papalists make use of the Anglican Missal, and Anglican Breviary which seek to reclaim the liturgical richness of the pre-Reformation without jettisoning the BCP.

As I say, the BCP is an Anglican product, but does not, in my mind, define what Anglicanism is, though I do not despise its use, nor those who use it. Indeed, I rather pine for the days when I used to sing Choral Evensong in the Church Choir, before being kicked out for having the wrong voice.

To the disgust of many a Prayer-book Catholic, I proudly wear my biretta at Morning Prayer. The horns make it very easy for me to doff at the Holy Name. The thing is, until they got back into the practice of wearing mitres, Anglican Bishops wore mortar-boards. I daresay many a prayer-book Catholic has nothing against a mortar-board. However, a mortar-board is just a modified biretta which has been joined to the zucchetto, hence the distinctive shape. How much of Anglicanism is the same, I wonder?

We Anglicans need to come together under the Kingship of Christ. We need to recognise our need in one another so that we can present ourselves whole and humble to each other so that we can embrace each other. Having heard Metropolitan Jonah's speech at the inauguration of ACNA, if he is right then there are lots of welcoming arms outstretched for us. We need to be humble enough to allow ourselves to be embrace and even dare to embrace others. In doing so, our embrace of Christ will be tighter and more passionate.

Sorry! Couldn't resist!

Ships that pass

Homosexuality was raised again in a homily I heard this morning. The priest criticised the Church for its attitude to homosexuals citing the story of Jairus' Daughter and the woman with a haemorrhage as examples of the acceptance of Christ for all people. However, he said nothing to indicate which particular attitude of the Church to Homosexuality was detestable to him.

If I've got this right, the Church says nothing detestable about homosexuality, the doctrine is: being a homosexual is not a sin, fornication is a sin. Homosexuals are acceptable to God, those who reject Him as King refuse to accept Him and thus render themselves unacceptable. I agree that the issue is not black and white, but there is a clarity to which some folk blind themselves.

The priest also went on to say that Christianity is not a set of rules. How right he was - it's one single Rule, the Rule of Christ. We therefore have duties of obedience to His teaching. Christ condemned sin strongly - we ought to hate it so much that we would rather rip off parts of our own bodies rather than fall into it. Christ also gave us the Way to live despite our sin - follow Him His way. If that is not a rule, I don't know what is.

Of course, the issue is ripping the Church to pieces. I find myself reading the account of the shipwreck in Act xxvii.

And when the south wind blew softly, supposing that they had obtained their purpose, loosing thence, they sailed close by Crete. But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind, called Euroclydon.

And when the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive. And running under a certain island which is called Clauda, we had much work to come by the boat: Which when they had taken up, they used helps, undergirding the ship; and, fearing lest they should fall into the quicksands, strake sail, and so were driven. 18 And we being exceedingly tossed with a tempest, the next day they lightened the ship;

And the third day we cast out with our own hands the tackling of the ship. And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away.

But after long abstinence Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me, and not have loosed from Crete, and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, Saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar: and, lo, God hath given thee all them that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was told me. Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island.

But when the fourteenth night was come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country; And sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms. Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day. And as the shipmen were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea, under colour as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat, and let her fall off.

And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat, saying, This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I pray you to take some meat: for this is for your health: for there shall not an hair fall from the head of any of you. And when he had thus spoken, he took bread, and gave thanks to God in presence of them all: and when he had broken it, he began to eat. Then were they all of good cheer, and they also took some meat. And we were in all in the ship two hundred threescore and sixteen souls. And when they had eaten enough, they lightened the ship, and cast out the wheat into the sea. And when it was day, they knew not the land: but they discovered a certain creek with a shore, into the which they were minded, if it were possible, to thrust in the ship.

And when they had taken up the anchors, they committed themselves unto the sea, and loosed the rudder bands, and hoisted up the mainsail to the wind, and made toward shore. And falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground; and the forepart stuck fast, and remained unmoveable, but the hinder part was broken with the violence of the waves. And the soldiers' counsel was to kill the prisoners, lest any of them should swim out, and escape. But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose; and commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves first into the sea, and get to land: And the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.

It's quite fascinating if we see the ship as the Ship of the Church. How, during the storm, the sailors tried to hold her together with ropes, binding the hull, casting out all that was not nailed down, including the tackle and so on. Why did this crisis occur? Because those in control of the ship decided to sail a dangerous course at the worst possible time for their own convenience.

We see the sailors try to flee the ship, letting down the lifeboats ready to cast away from the storm-tossed vessel, yet they heed the voice of St Paul telling them to stay together otherwise they won't be saved. Interestingly, St Paul doesn't make it clear whether all had to stay on board in order for everyone to be saved. If someone had left the ship, would that have doomed everyone? The text doesn't answer that, but it does in my eyes draw attention to the many splittings that are occurring within Anglicanism and the slow disintegration of the Roman Catholic Church in the light of modern storms. It raises the question of the house divided against itself falling. The Church should stand all together or not at all.

I firmly believe that the Church needs to stay together in order to be the vehicle of salvation. Look what happens to the ship. The prow is wedged fast and unmoveable, the stern is ripped to pieces. One could draw parallels with the wise man building the house on rock and the foolish upon the sand, and it does seem to suggest that those who stick to the core traditional and orthodox doctrines of Christianity and remain unmoveable, whereas those who do not find themselves going through the greater ordeal of fragmentation and disintegration.

There is still much to be positive about. The Eucharist is present by which all are nourished. All make it to shore safely floating on bits of the ship. God's promise is that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against the Church. I take that as a positive sign, that the Church does have a future as the vessel that carries all aboard to Salvation through the wounds of Christ. I just hope and pray that God sends us a decent shipwright very soon.

Christ in casuals?

That they may also ascend: Marcus Cornish’s new bronze statue for Our Lady Immaculate and St Philip Neri RC Church in Uckfield, East Sussex, shows Jesus in billowing contemporary clothing, defying gravity, looking down at and reaching out to all who enter the church.

What do you think?

Storm in a chocolate bar wrapper.

Homily preached at Eltham College on 5th June 2009 based on the fourth chapter of St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians verses 17 to 32.

It’s break time.

Of course, after a double period of P.E.
with your Games Master making you run
from here to the Lake District
and back
in lead-lined wellies,
your stomach feels as empty
as a Big Brother Contestant’s head
and is just as noisy.

Fortunately,
you have prepared for this eventuality:
in your bag is a King-size Twix.


So you find yourself
a spot in the quad with some friends,
take out your Twix from your bag,
open it up…


And woosh, it’s gone!

Snatched out of your hand
by an 11 year-old interloper!

Before he disappears
around the corner at Mach 7,
you can see him stuffing
your break-time snack into his mouth.


How are you feeling now?

[PAUSE]

Angry?

Furious?

Indignant?

Hungry?

What awful thoughts of retribution
are crossing your mind?

Catch the boy, rip off his arm
and beat him to a pulp with the wet end!

Ritually behead him with your shatterproof ruler!

Do something else even nastier with the ruler!

Ah!

But bear in mind,
you’ve got to use that ruler later in maths today.

Certainly these are inventive thoughts,
but what are you going to do really?

[PAUSE]

There doesn’t seem much you can do.

Your Twix has gone forever.

That boy has vanished
into the group playing Manhunt on the field.

All you are left with
is the rumbling of your stomach,
and the rumbling of your seething fury
at what has just ruined your break.


But why are you angry?

Well, duh!

Because someone has stolen your Twix.

Yes, but why does that make you angry?

Perhaps you are angry
because you are hungry after P.E.

You had legitimately purchased something to eat,
and now it has been stolen from you.

You feel cheated, outraged and still hungry.


The conclusion is that
somehow
you want to retrieve what is rightfully yours
which you can’t seeing that
it is now little more than a load of goo
inside another boy’s stomach.

You want exact some sort of judgement
on the perpetrator of this most diabolical of crimes.


But what judgement do you want to exact?

Revenge,
violence,
hatred,
some form of ridicule?

We know that violence in revenge
achieves very little of any worth.

We know that hatred just builds up
more hatred until violence seems inevitable.

Ridicule creates more ill-feeling
and resentment.

Honestly,
how confident are you that,
in this situation at your most angry,
you can administer justice
fairly, proportionately
and appropriately?

[PAUSE]

We could try turning the situation around.

What motive does the boy have
for stealing your Twix in the first place?

It could be for a laugh.

Granted, you don’t find it at all funny.

In fact,
it does say something very tragic
about a person who believes
that stealing from others should be funny.

Surely he is less someone to get angry with
and more someone to be pitied.


It could be that he’s hungry,
just like you,
but hasn’t had the wherewithal
to buy his own Twix.

It could be
that he has other issues in his life
which lead him to commit acts
which are socially unacceptable
– and Twix stealing is certainly
unacceptable.

Again, would that not mean
that he is in need of help,
not vengeance?

Or else,
he’s just too lazy or mean
to get his own Twix from the refectory?

Why should that bother you?

After all, laziness and meanness
bring about their own punishments in life,
and you aren’t lazy or mean, are you?

[PAUSE]

St Paul says: "In your anger do not sin":

Do not let the sun go down
while you are still angry,
do not give the devil a foothold.”

That’s the trouble with anger.

If it isn’t expressed rationally,
but rather purely emotionally,
it rampages like a fire
and causes damage.



When we are angry,
we need to step back,
out of the situation
so we can see the bigger picture.

That takes an awful lot of self-discipline,
but it’s worth learning.

It seems that it is often easier
for young folk like yourselves
to learn this than many adults.


If you’re unemployed,
then it’s easy to be angry at seeing
“foreigners” coming in and “stealing” jobs.

If we give in to the emotion,
then we end up
seeing valuable contributors to our society
as evil.

It is emotions like these
that the far-right use to stir us
into acts of bigotry and racism.


It is possible to be angry justifiably,
whether you are the victim
of a happy-slap chocolate-snatch,
or whether you are angry
at the way the Ghurkhas have been treated.


However,
we mustn’t confuse our passion
for fairness,
justice and liberty
with an uncontrollable emotion.

Like Joanna Lumley,
we can use the energy from our anger
to find rational,
peaceful and effective protests
in order to get our point across.

What we have to get rid of
very quickly
are the feelings
which threaten to consume us
and lead us down paths
of negativity and destruction,
impairing our judgement
and sense of fair play.

[PAUSE]

Twixes come in twos
– hence the name Twix.

You could offer in future
to give one away
to the very boy who has caused you
all this anger.

“Hmmph,”
you say,
“give me one good reason
why I should share with him.”

Can you give one good reason why you shouldn’t?

A week and a bit too early!

There is only One God in Perfect Trinity and Perfect Unity, but there seem to be several lesser holy trinities which point to the true Holy Trinity. St Paul's Faith, Hope and Love spring to mind as does St John's Spirit, water and blood. One could say that SS Peter, James and John also form a holy trinity, but that could be stretching the point: they form a triad rather than a trinity. Faith, Hope and Love seem to form a trinity because they seem to have separate identities but the same essence. The way St John speaks of Spirit, water and blood as separate entities yet sharing a unifying testimony, is a lesser trinity than that of Faith, Hope and Love, since their unity of essence is less obvious.

In my mind, there is another holy trinity. The Venerable Bede mentions in a sermon of his that the Peace "which the world cannot give" can only come about through Love. It seems to me that God provides us with a conceptual mirror of His existence in the relationships between Truth, Peace and Love, since all three are the same thing but have a separation and uniqueness of themselves.

God tells us that Love is the source of all things. It is because of Love that God creates all that is. Truth bears witness to the fact that Love exists and is real and, when it comes into contact with what has been created, Truth bears witness to the reality of Creation and the act of its creation in love. The Creature finds Peace only when it has the assurance of Truth of its creation in Love.

So we find ourselves as restless beings in various forms of agony: a cold numbness of complacency, a feverish endeavour to control things and people, a furious pushing away of that which challenges our perceptions and seeks to unseat us from our confidence that what we hold is true, a sickly obsession to finding an anodyne in what is created, and a nausea of believing that others possess the truth, love and peace that we deserve.

A search for the Truth brings Peace through Love. A desire for Peace can only be found in True Love, and Love can only ever lead us to Peace through the revelation of what is True.

Ἀγαπητοί, νῦν τέκνα θεοῦ ἐσμεν, καὶ οὔπω ἐφανερώθη τί ἐσόμεθα. οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἐὰν φανερωθῇ ὅμοιοι αὐτῷ ἐσόμεθα, ὅτι ὀψόμεθα αὐτὸν καθώς ἐστιν.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.

I John iii.2

Because we were created in love, we ourselves bear in ourselves the Truth of our reality. We do seem to get confused by this, in that we can confuse our truth as an existence separate from other people, or to convince ourselves that the truth can only ever be reached by certain reductionist techniques. Our truth is totally subordinate to the Truth precisely because our truth is the Truth. The Truth of our reality can only be the Truth that God is. We seem more to be obsessed with the tiny diamonds of Truth that permeate our understanding, hoarding them, protecting them, polishing them and examining them rather than realising that these tiny fragments are merely the intersections of the Truth with our empirical reality.

The Church really does possess this Truth, because the Truth is God Himself, yet she only possesses Him in the sense that He desires the embrace of His Bride and yields to that embrace. Yet, at each instant in time, all we will be able to perceive of the Truth are the fragments we have so far collected, and the fragments that we are finding now. Our possession can never be an ownership, merely an experience of Divine Love.

Yet if the Lord Christ tells us that He is the Truth, if St John tells us that God is Love, and the Saviour also describes the Holy Ghost as a comforter, a bringer of Peace, then the trinity of Love, Truth and Peace offer us an active way of living out our belief in God as lovers, peacekeepers and proper scientists.

Trust or Trussed II: The Letter to the Gullations?

If you think about it, one of the lessons that life gives you is that people can't be trusted. However, life does not often teach you who can be trusted until it's too late and thus when you have been deceived. It is when you have been deceived and hurt by one whom you have trusted that you find yourself

1. hating them for deceiving you;


2. trusting less in people around you;


3. berating yourself for being so stupid.

This raises the issue of gullibility and over-credulity in people. Can it be that actually all Christians are gullible because they spend their time being controlled by the priests and pastors. They are being told what to think by a Magisterium or by pastors under a specific interpretation of the Bible. Even in this day and age, I still meet people who say effectively: "I believe in God because the Bible tells me He exists and I believe what the Bible tells me, because God wrote it." As arguments go, this is pretty weak. At some point, the Christian must be prepared to examine his faith in exterior to the Scripture.


Moderns reject the Real Presence as a piece of supreme gullibility. The body and blood of Christ cannot be physically perceived, so the believer in the Real Presence is being required to believe in something that is not physically verifiable. This, according to some, is a sign of gullibility, that others are seeking to control others through their belief.


If this is true, then to what end? It seems a strange sort of power to control what people believe if it cannot subsequently exploit that belief to some achievable end. If one just rejoices in what one can make others believe, then surely this rejoicing is deeply limited and become unfulfilling unless it moves into some form of exploitation. That is not to say that it cannot happen. I just doubt whether such a practice would last very long.


If gullibility necessarily leads to exploitation, then under what accusation can Christian belief be seen as gullibility? The ends seem obvious; according to the teachings of Christ, Christians are required to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, forgive one's enemies - the perfect mules for the world all for the pie-in-the-sky promise of eternal life.

What fools we must be - the fools for Christ as St Paul would have it. So St Paul's statement must be the way that Christians address the question "are you not being foolish allowing yourselves to be treated in this way, and all for some vague promise that you can't even provide evidence that it exists in the first place?" This provides the unbeliever with "evidence" that Christianity builds in a failsafe to prevent the believer from realising that he is being taken in.

So are Christians merely victims of a two-millennia long fraud?


Well, I am convinced the veracity of the Scriptural evidence of the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. I find the testimony of St John in his first letter very compelling.

Ὃ ἦν ἀπ' ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν, περὶ τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life,

Again, I just don't see the point in lying about such a thing as this, especially when the core doctrine of Christianity is to help people live life well.

One could refer to the Jehovah's Witnesses and their policy on blood transfusions, but then the comeback is "well, isn't this exactly the same as the Catholic stance on contraception and abortion?"

Well, I can understand the doctrine on contraception and abortion. Both contraception and abortion stem from views of the body that are inherently damaging. Yes, there are complicated factors, but again, at the heart of these issues is the question: "are we considering the welfare of all lives involved here?" As a Catholic, I believe in the well-being of the unborn as much as in the well-being of the mother. I also question whether it really is better to let lust rampage through society with the widespread use of prophylactics than to teach people to cultivate a deeper love than to scratch animal itches.

I am not convinced that the Jehovah's Witness prohibition of blood transfusion stems from a similar interest in the well-being of others. It seems more to me like an arbitrary proof of faith than a way of deciding how to live well.

It seems then, that the whole difference between cultic gullibility and religious observance lies in whether or not the practice stems from a coherent philosophy of well-being. The Mass may seem arcane and meaningless to an outsider, but its purpose is to bring people together in a state of respect, love and generosity together with the God in whose existence we believe. Yes, the Mass done properly has much intricate ritual which can confuse and annoy those who do not understand what is going on, but each ritual again stems from a desire to be well in the presence of God and this is verifiable with study. If we believe in a God who desires not only to be present with us but to make his presence objective, then this is surely reasonable. The ritual killing of one's children as practised by the followers of Moloch is not.

Of course, the question of gullibility now boils down to a value judgement. If gullibility involves being drawn into believing something "false" and, as a result of that belief, making a "foolish" action then one needs to qualify "false" and "foolish". One also needs to understand what "well-being" is. All good questions, but they do raise doubt upon the militant atheist stance that religion is the opiate of the gullible.

As a Christian, I should look to everyone's happiness - a happiness that God created each one of us to have. Of course I fail, often miserably but I do not believe that I am being conned by some maleficent conspiracy. Judging by how long the Church has existed and the number of grievous errors she has made (the Crusades and the persecution of the Jews), the fact that she still exists with the same message convinces me that the Way is the way.

What you don't really want to hear!

I used part of a previously published sermon that I did not actually preach to form the heart of this homily.

Homily preached at Eltham College on Friday 1st May 2009 based on St John v.1-16

Why is it that Christians are unpopular?

For one thing, they go on and on about
trying to lead good lives
and pointing out
everybody’s sins!

When was the last time you sinned?

[PAUSE]

That’s seems rather a rude question
to be asked first thing
on a Friday morning.

How did it make you feel?

Uncomfortable?

Nervous?

Did you find it a laughable question?

Let’s face it.

You don’t want to be told that you’re a sinner.

Nobody does.

The question of sin is not exactly
an issue which makes
Christianity popular.

The idea of sin seems
outdated these days,
just an irrelevance.

What do you think of when you hear the word?

Something rude?

Is saying the word “bum” in chapel a sin?

Is eating too much a sin?

Can a cream bun really be sinful to eat?

Is sin what an MP does
when he runs off with his secretary?

Or is sin just a Christian’s way
of telling everyone to obey
an arbitrary and pointless set of rules
in order to spoil everybody’s fun?

If that’s the image of sin
that we Christians send out,
then we are ourselves failing
to understand what God wants for us,
and that’s a sin too.

[PAUSE]

Whether we are Christian or not,
there is a sense of
right and wrong in all of us
– within limits!


We would agree that deliberately
wiring someone to
the Van der Graaf generator in the physics lab
is clearly a case of murder
and is something
morally and ethically wrong.


Yet, is it murder
to allow a terminally ill patient to die
by turning off their life support machine?

Further than that,
is failing to hold the door open
for someone a sin?

[PAUSE]

Robert forgets to hold the door open for Nancy
and it hits her,
taking the skin off her elbow.

This puts her in a bad mood
so she shouts at her secretary Jean for being,
in her words,
“bone idle”.

Jean takes Nancy’s criticisms seriously
and tries to compensate
by working harder.



She spends more and more time at the office
trying to sort out what to do,
so much so that she forgets
about the needs of her twins
Bradley and Britney.

They crave attention from their mother
and, without her guidance,
start to wander away
from the straight and narrow.

Britney,
in order to numb the pain
of being ignored by her mother,
and finding her life meaningless,
gets hooked on heroine.
Later, she is invited to an eighteenth birthday party
where she meets Taylor.

They get pally.

She introduces Taylor to heroine.

He gets hooked, loses his job
and gets kicked out of his home.

One day, he leaves his filthy squat
lined with dirty newspapers
and even filthier hypodermic needles,
in a frantic search for money
to stop the pain in his stomach.

On his way he meets Kyle.

Kyle refuses to give him any money,
so Taylor stabs him dead with his rusty penknife.

He takes from Kyle a grand total of £3.87.

Not enough.Of course, Taylor is caught
and convicted of Kyle’s murder.

Who is responsible for Kyle’s death?

Taylor? Britney? Jean? Nancy? Robert?

Do you honestly have an answer for that?

[PAUSE]

It’s being said that
it is the greed of bankers
which is to blame for the Credit Crunch.

Do you really agree with that?

But then how did the greed get there in the first place?

[PAUSE]

It could be said that sin is nothing more
than finding different ways of being selfish.

This is a vast subject
and cannot be dealt with
in a couple of sentences.

But even a little selfishness,
as we have seen,
contributes to the suffering of other people.

[PAUSE]

So it seems that sin is serious.

Worse still, we are all guilty of being selfish.

Yes, you knew it didn’t you?

Christians always tell you that you’re a sinner,
but that doesn’t mean that you’re evil.

Actually,
quite the reverse,
it means you are no better,
nor worse than anyone else.

To realise that we all
contribute to the sufferings of others
is a brave thought,
and to seek to stop that suffering
is an even braver thought.

How?


Well it’s all contained in the phrase
“Love your neighbour as yourself”.

To love our neighbours
means that in addition to enjoying our lives,
we need to include
the interests and needs of others
and build them into our enjoyment of life.

To love ourselves means that
we have to see ourselves as we really are,
warts’n’all
and to be happy with who we really are.

[PAUSE]

Yes, we do need to recognise that
sin is a serious business,
that we do fall short in what we do,
but that is not the end of the story.



However far downhill
you think this world is heading
with corporate greed,
teenage pregnancy,
famine and poverty in the third world,
or even vile acts of genocide,
it really doesn’t have to be this way.

We can start
by following the example
of St Francis of Assisi
and look for the image of God
in every single person around us
and treating them
with compassion and interest.

Christianity is all about realising
that we need the direction of God
to prevent sin from destroying us,
and to trust Him to show us how
to limit the effects of Evil.


God has no desire to see us destroyed by sin,
and that’s why He sent Jesus Christ
to die and rise again.

What God offers all of us
is the opportunity to transform the World
into something brilliant,
free from sin and suffering.

After all, that is the message of Easter.

Isn’t it?

Easter 2009

It's all doom and gloom at the moment, isn't it?

The Pope speaks about the terrible loss of life in Italy through the Earthquake.
The Archbishop of Canterbury speaks of the need to use the recession as a lesson in anti-materialism. The first item of News in Blighty is about the Labour Party Spin Doctor attempting to slur the Conservative Party leaders.

So what's different from this age from the time of the Resurrection?

It seems mainly to be the technology we use, and the breadth of our ability to communicate our ideas. We are certainly no more enlightened than those who have gone before us. Our political and economic situations don't hold up much hope for the future; the crumbling fabric of our society in a culture of "grab what you can" certainly doesn't fill us up with hope; and the militant atheists seek to drum up more support with their happy and uplifting slogan of "dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return" - it's such a comforting thought that will win many a person over(!)

And into this hot-pot of Pharisaism and Sadducaism, political unrest, hedonism, barbarity and sadness, one little man does something amazing - He rises from the dead. Not ostentatiously, no big bang that shakes Jerusalem and Rome to their very foundations, no rout of the foreign power, He just appears to those who love Him to show them that their faith is not misplaced.

And suddenly, we realise that life is worth living, even though depressions do assail us and that there is something more. Sure, we have nothing to show for it, nothing that will prove that our hope is well-placed, we just have that hope, and our faith and our love that will confound the philosophers and scientists and the cynics of this day and age, just as it always had confounded them in ages past. The problem is that Truth is bigger than the Human Mind and always will be. Only the Church possesses the fulness of Truth and even then I'm not convinced that she possesses it fully in any one particular instant of Time, but cumulatively the truth discovered in each age piling up upon that discovered previously.

But there is work to be done, for I do not believe that the Church is living out her hope as well she might, for many of her congregations are getting choked by the cares of this world. So what is it that we have to do? Pray! Yes, then what?