Vigeon Post

"Friends I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you be in agreement and there be no divisions among you." I Cor 1 x
Church folk ought to be celebrating an important centenary this week but you will not find much reference to it . it is exactly a hundred years since an Anglican priest in the USA by name Paul Wattson set up the first Ecumenical week of Prayer for Christian Unity.. He chose the week of 18th to 25th January because it leads up to the feast of  the Conversion of St Paul; he reckoned that was a  good date to use, seeing it commemorates someone embracing an impossible change of heart. The growth of that movement was one of the features of  20th century church life ; and it was immeasurably strengthened by the fact that it became a venture organised jointly by the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church. Fifty years ago when I was still a young priest the week would be observed widely in most communities. There would be daily acts of worship in different churches and often there would be a day when a watch of prayer would be kept from morning to night with people going in and out throughout the day to pray for the coming together of the Christian people as Christ himself would wish it to be.  It is still observed but not - I think - as widely or as enthusiastically as it once was.   Like most human enterprises, prayer, when it ceases to show results, tends to be shelved and alternative strategies employed.. I think perhaps that we don't feel that Christian unity is so important as Christian survival when in so many places the church seems to be gently slipping down the plug hole.  On the other hand perhaps we should realise that a disunited church is a weak church destined to fail.  A church that lives on its own will die on its own.
Of course you only have to read your bible to remember that disunity tends to be the norm for human beings  Right at the beginning it is clear that there is only room in the world for either Cain or Abel but not both. Human beings are notorious for finding it difficult to live in peace together. We Christians are those who profess to have in our faith the secret that will allow God's kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven - a kingdom of justice and peace and goodwill.  But somehow we seem to omit the ingredient from our own spiritual diet. It is perhaps more natural to be like Adam than to be like jesus.  It did not take very long in earliest times for the admiration of the world enshrined in the words "See how these Christians love one another" to be turned into a scornful verdict "Well see - how they love one another - I don't think !"
Unity in the church was always taught as just about the number one priority; but  in reality it has never been really achieved in practice . If you listened to Paul's admonitions this morning you can tell how disturbed he was when he heard that the church congregation he had planted in Corinth was being torn apart by petty rivalries.
Divisions tend to begin locally rather than internationally.  I noticed over many years as a vicar that when I went to a new parish it was not unknown that some folk who did not like the previous vicar would start to come back out of the woodwork. And then of course one noticed that some who had previously been stalwarts were drifting away from the new Vicar who was me ! This reflects the experience of St Paul.  Folk preferred different personalities, different styles of leadership. I'm a Paul man or a Peter man or a Apollos man - there are even those who say I'm a Jesus man.  One of the good reasons why Vicars should come and go a little bit is that if you stay too long then you will end up with a congregation which fits in with his style and personality. And that is never the reason for being a Christian.
As I prepared for this sermon I jotted down a list of factors which prevent the Church giving the impression of unity.  I have already mentioned  the clash of personalities;  there is also a clash of ideology - Christians have  always assumed that there is only one way of thinking about Jesus and that is their way;  that there is only one way of doing the Jesus thing and that is their way.  So in our day we see our own Anglican church world wide splitting apart because their leaders cannot agree on the moral interpretation of Christian living.
But these are the things that we see on the surface. Below there are all sorts of motives that are at work in our souls. There is for example in most of us a need to be right.   This is of course a good thing; but when my need to be right overcomes my love for my Christian neighbour who sees things differently then I need to beware.  Behind the need to be right is often another secret of our soul and that is insecurity. Any idea or action which seems to threaten our peace of mind or our long held suppositions arouses feelings which easily become divisive.  If you make a heavy investment in a faith or a doctrine then anything that seems to threaten that investment will make you fight for survival.  
 For others the idea of change can arouse strong passions.  We don't like changes because we like to have a comfortable arrangement of our hearts and minds which we can live with; things that upset our comfortable pew we see as divisive.  I remember how about 15 years ago when the debate about the ordination of women was in full swing I was surprised to find that my country congregation were not too upset -  for I had always presumed that country folk tended to be very conservative in their attitude to all things new. But talking to Frank my Churchwarden farmer he spoke words of wisdom. "Owen, he said, we farmers have got used to living with change. We used to see it as a threat; but we know now that  if we do not change our farming methods we will go out of business. We now see change as a way into the future; so perhaps the same thing applies to spiritual matters."
Paul in his words to us this morning is telling us that whatever happens we must keep together. We must not let our personal thoughts and feelings spoil our Christ given unity. There is one thing which is anathema to the gospel and that is folk breaking away because they think they have a better Jesus than the next bloke. On the whle the folk who down the ages have been what the apostle calls 'holier than thou' have not had a unifying effect on Christ's church.
Paul's final words to us this morning remind us, what we are doing when we are functioning as a Christian family is not something to which worldly ways of thinking and doing apply.  What we stand for is a faith and a way of life which to everyday ways of thinking is foolishness. One of my favourite sayings is that the task of any priest is to love his people into holiness of life. But it goes beyond that; -  for the task of the church is to love the world into that holiness which will save humanity from destroying itself.  There are only two ways open to the human race. It can either live together in obedience to a powerful authority or it can learn to live in mutual love.  
We must always go back to the words which Johns gospel gives us - he tells how on the eve of his death Jesus prayed that those who believed in him would be ONE. Not one because that is a tidy way of doing things but one - as he said - that the world may believe.  The really sad thing about the church today is that it has been gradually stripped of any kind of authority because what it teaches is at odds with what people see on the ground.  I remember being horrified when my good GP commented to me that when he had a patient who needed some neighbourly good care  he avoided involving Christians. They are [ he said] too bothered about the state of their souls to be  of practical use."  I would of course protest strongly against the verdict but he must have had experiences which led him to that view. He was a very good doctor..  
If we cannot be one then our witness is  always weakened or negated. We are seen as a community which behaves like any other human community. Whereas if we understand our faith rightly God has put us here to represent something different about being a human being. If the prescription of Dr Jesus for the human race was not something radical it would not have been needful to put him on his cross.
We go back to |St John again perhaps and hear him say to Pilate as he stand in court "My kingdom is not a worldly kingdom - it doesn't function like yours does. If it did then my people would fight.  But that is not my scene."  
One of the moments I remember that gave me new insight into my discipleship happened when as a student I took part in a Parish mission in south London. The parish of East Dulwich was a large one with the kind of staff which is only a dream today. The vicar had three curates and a lady parish worker and if you were not in church on a Sunday morning you received a visit from one of the clergy on Monday to enquire if you were ill .   It was also what you would call an Anglo Catholic parish - very High Church with a weekly High Mass with all the trimmings.  I found myself talking to the churchwarden of this highly disciplined church; and he told me how he himself was a cradle evangelical and the worship of his parish church was quite different to what he had been brought up to.  And then he said this: "But when I got to know the vicar I found that he loved the Lord Jesus as I love him - so then the differences fade into the back ground - because we  love the Lord, we can trust each other even if we have different ways of expressing it."   I am sure he was right.  Back in the seventies I was privileged to have a colleague in my parish as a part time parish worker. Doreen had been brought up in an extremely Protestant parish church where they did not even wear surplices and Bishops were regarded with suspicion.  She was a bit wary of working in a church like mine  which lit candles and wore vestments and was eucharistically centred.  So she said she would come to our church to worship for a few weeks to see if she could cope.  In the end she said she would be happy to join us because although many things were strange to her the religion was genuine and that is all that matters.
  In the end you and I are here because at some point in our livs we have come under the spell of our Lord Jesus Christ.  One of the important things about our Lord is that he treats us each individually  according to our needs and our lights - as he did to folk  in his lifetime on earth. We should not be surprised to find that there is more than one way of doing the Jesus thing.  But it is the Jesus thing which is in the end the vital factor.
Paul's words to us this morning are as relevant as they ever were. "Friends I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you be in agreement and there be no divisions among you ."

TARSICIUS AND DANILOLA

Overshadowing all the events of the past week - and indeed over the past two years or so - has been the way the fate of a ten year old boy on the way back home from the library in Peckham has kept popping up to disturb us. And the disturbance is not ended even though the trial of those accused of his murder is over. I imagine it will be some time before questions are no longer asked.

I was pondering over today’s readings and thinking how demanding they would be in terms of sermon writing; I had spent a long time reading and thinking and praying and inspiration was sadly lacking. But just before getting up yesterday morning an idea flashed into my mind. Danilola, I said to myself, would not find himself without a welcome when he got to St Peter’s gate. Let me tell you this story and you will find why.

It is around the year 300 AD and the city is Rome. You would think that three hundred years after the life of Jesus Christ that people would have got used to those strange people called Christians even though they persisted in affirming that there was a higher authority than the Emperor of all the Romans. But no - one of the last great persecutions of Christians were under way. You will find it difficult to imagine but all you have to do is to think how easy it has become to be suspicious of Muslims in our society when the right sort of rumour and innuendo is spread around. So too, pagan Rome saw the Christian community as a threat to its way of life. If Christians were not regarded in quite in the way we regard terrorists today, yet perhaps they constituted a more subtle yet just as real challenge to the traditions of the greatest empire ever known. they were stripped of their assets, their books were destroyed, their leaders were arrested and interrogated under torture; many of them were incarcerated in the Roman gaols and used as fodder to feed the ghoulish entertainments at the Coliseum.

It is Sunday 15th August and the church is worshipping in those burial chambers we call the catacombs so as to escape the possibility of a police raid. In those days, Christians who could not attend because of sickness or prison would receive the sacrament by the deacons who would go out immediately after Mass was ended. On this day, they took counsel. There were many brethren in prison and they would be expecting their Sunday communion. None of that "I’ll have it when I’m better and back in church,Vicar" syndrome in those days. The trouble was that the police knew most of the clergy by sight so it would not be safe for them to do this task. So in the end they decided to send one of their altar boy servers, an acolyte called Tarsicius. The police would take no notice of a kid, they argued. So that is what they did and Tarsicius set out to visit the prison carrying the sacred bread in a box inside his robe; and very conscious of the great privilege he had been given of carrying Jesus to his friends in prison.

All would have been well - but at a certain street corner were lounging a gang of teenagers with nothing to do and all the time for a bit of trouble. As T went past, one of them stuck a foot out and tripped him up to everyone's delight. T got up saying nothing while the gang surrounded him and whistled and gestured and poked at him . T’s silence got to them; they were angry that it was no fun because they were getting no reaction from him. "You know what" said a leading lad "I reckon he must be one of those effing Christians" and suddenly they were jeering at T with renewed anger. They picked up rocks from the street and threw them at T; still he said nothing. In the end he collapsed . The gang frisked his pockets thinking he must be carrying something very valuable for him to be a messenger of that ilk. They found nothing and they ran away. Later, distraught members of his congregation found the boy in the gutter dying of his injuries. When they got back home he was already dead. When they stripped him for burial they found the box of bread tucked away next to his chest. He had been faithful to the end.

St Tarcisius is the patron saint of altar servers and of first communicants. I am sure too that he is regularly on duty at St Peter’s Gate to welcome the Danilolas of this world to a better place.

The story reminds us of more than one important thing. The first and obvious one is that life in the inner city in the year 300 ad was no more safe for the unwary than it is today. Danilola’s fate is simply what happens when teenagers have nothing very much to do but look for mischief; and where society does not provide safety on the streets; and where twisted and wicked untruths are banded about as truth in ignorant and vicious circles. It is healthy for us to be reminded that there have been times when victims of this kind of crime were not blacks or Muslim or Pakistanis but Christians. It is in the end nothing to do with these classifications - it is something nasty in the human psyche which fills us with envy and suspicion of people who are different in some way as our selves. It reminds us that the other six deadly sins are in the end just as dangerous and certainly more so than the sexual ones . But perhaps that is another story.

This has certainly been part of our Christian story from the beginning. For there is a connection with today’s scripture. We heard that not too long after the first Easter Day an early Christian leader called Stephen was stoned to death by a mob. The fact that his executioners considered themselves to be doing God a good turn does not make it any the less a dreadful piece of mob violence. Stephen was a brilliant man who could hold his own with the best of the Pharisees and Saducees and all the other establishment voices in Jerusalem. He was convinced that the death of Jesus was a terrible blasphemy brought about by those who were supposed to be God’s respresentatives; and he told them so. Thus he became the first of all those who down two thousand years who thought that Jesus and all that Jesus stands for was so precious and wonderful and true that the last thing they would do was to betray him. Sometimes like Stephen they were people of great intellect and robust personality; other times they were just an altar boy like Tarsicius. But they all knew that loyalty is the supreme Christian necessity. So I will end with two enquiries of you.

1. Do you know that when you receive communion, you are doing in Christian terms what a Roman soldier did when he signed on. The word Sacrament literally means an oath of allegiance. You seal yourself body and soul to Him.

2. Did you know that when you pray "Lead us not into temptation" that the word temptation means betrayal. To deny Christ was the greatest sin for those early Christians. Temptation was being in the situation of being able to save your skin by denying Jesus. So you needed to be delivered from the wiles of the evil one, the enemy of your soul who would tempt you to betry not only Jesus but yourself.

Both Tarsicius and Stephen were led into temptation but kept their allegiance and were delivered from the evil one. We may be reminded of some words we heard from S Peter last Sunday - do you remember ?

Christ suffered for us , leaving us an example, so that you should follow in his footsteps.

From time to time someone takes that seriously.

And that is why they are called saints.

            Trinity II  2006  St Mary Magdalene Coventry
Last week we took our little grand daughter to visit Twycross Zoo.  I noticed in their guide that they are particularly proud of their collection of Primates.  Which is a bit confusing - because when our newspapers talk about Primates they don't mean gorillas and chimpanzees they mean Archbishops of the Anglican Communion.  Rowan Williams is of course Primate of All England - rather like Wimbledon Tennis Club. 
If you are at all interested in the affairs of your national church you cannot be unaware that there is great heart searching going on around the world. The row about homosexual bishops rumbles on and the idea of women bishops got a fillip recently when the American church elected a woman as their presiding bishop which is what they call their archbishop.  So the situation is further complicated by us having the first woman primate ever. In America they are - for better or worse - more democratic than we are and they elect their bishops
The arguments and divisions are of course in reality more about authority than any one particular dispute.  Only recently I was glancing through a book written in 1944 in which the writer said 'of course the time when the issue of the literal inerrancy of the bible was a matter of debate is long since gone and we don't have to worry about that any more'. The author who had a very acute mind would have been very surprised and I thank horrified to find that biblical fundamentalism is very much alive and kicking in modern Christianity.
So the big issue is not about sexuality in its various forms but about the authority of the bible over everything else.  This is what divides the primates.
I gather the Daily Telegraph commented this week that all this talk about a splitting up of the Anglican communion etc. etc. is something of an irritation to the run of the mill Anglican congregation who simply want to get on with living the life of their parish church.
I think this is probably true.  I think our church tends to attract the kind of broad personalities who want neither to be tied  to the literal meaning of every word of the bible nor to the discipline system of Rome. Neither of those choices seems to the Anglican spirit to represent the way of Christ who seems to have been in constant collision with those who represent an authoritarian or legalistic  religion. So into these muddy waters we come into church this morning and encounter one of the great prayer book collects.
God who has ordained that all our works without love are nothing worth; send into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity the very bond of peace and of all virtues without which whoever lives is counted dead before you .
It is a prayer which is at the same time reassuring and unsettling. Reassuring because that is what we want to hear.  Whatever we put in our Sunday envelope means nothing without love;  morality without love is nothing;  in fact there is nothing more terrible than morality that is loveless.  The love we refer to is of course the love that cares - caritas in Latin - in old English charity.  Jean Vanier - who is a modern day saint who created the l'Arche communities for handicapped people - said once that love means doing ordinary things with kindness.  And that is a pretty good low key definition for starters.
But it is also unsettling because it does not give us an option.  Without this thing called love, it says,  even what appears to be living is in fact dead in God's sight. That's pretty dramatic - pretty strong stuff. however successful your church - unless it is motivated by love it is nothing.
There is a very ancient traditioin of how St John the apostle lived to a great age in the city of Ephesus. In his younger days he had been a great protagonist for Christ and had argued the case for Jesus with great fervour. But as he grew older he simplified things down more an more . And the John people remembered was a very old man going about the city saying over and over again 'little children love one another'.
Yet despite this from very earliest times Christians seem to have had a predilection for divisions of opinions which could become ferocious on occasions.  One of the  faults of we human beings is that we seem to have an inner need to be right. So that if anyone disagrees with us then they have to be wrong  - and that means every effort must be made to make them see the error of their ways.  The first big argument of this sort takes place in the Acts of the Apostles where at one point most Christians believed that to be a Christian you had first to be a Jew.  When sergeant majors in the roman army start witnessing to their faith in Christ, a big yes/no divide erupted.  Then when non-Jews were allowed into the church the question arose as to whether they could sit down and eat at the same table as Jewish Christians who observed kosher laws. This continual argument about how inclusive the Christian church should become has gone on in all kinds of ways since Pentecost itself.  And I suppose what the world outside tends to be conscious of is how one lot of Christians can sound so very nasty to other Christians with whom they do not agree.
That's the flip side   Fortunately there is the good side too.
At its best Christian love exhibits itself in glorious ways.   St Paul this morning lets his hearers know in no uncertain terms that his work as a Christian apostle is worth everything.  He believes that though he has nothing - yet he has in reality got everything that is worth having. In another place [Romans 14] he argues with people who are being contentious within the church. He says this - and I reckon it is a hefty statement particularly as translated by JB Philips.
"Who are you", he asks, "to criticise someone else's servant - especially when that someone else is God"
Somehow we have to temper our tender consciences.  There have always been different ways of doing the Jesus thing.  and in the end it is to God we must answer for ourselves - not anyone else. 
The New Testament insists over and over again that what every differences there may be yet they should never mean that the bond of mutual love between Christians is broken and thrown aside.  It is a two way thing.
For those who are on the side of tradition and keeping to the old ways;  they must beware of believing that they know what God thinks better than the Almighty does himself. For those who are labelled liberals - and that is not a modern phenomenon and it is an honourable label - then they have to be aware of the sensitivities of those of more conservative mind.  To my mind, for example,  when Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual priest , was elected bishop of New Hampshire  - whatever the ifs and buts of the case, it was not helped by the way he paraded his partner around for photo opportunities.
Perhaps we might put it like this: 
Do we all have to agree so that we are able to love one another -  or
do we have to love one another in order to find out how to agree - if only agreeing to differ.
I think the second is the best option;  yet it is perhaps strange that when Christians disagree then Christian charity is the first casualty to be thrown out of the window.  Then there is hurt. I felt very hurt about twenty years ago when I was voted off Diocesan Synod by my deanery because I was in favour of women being ordained priest. I had to keep reminding myself that I was a big grown up boy.
But in the end we have to keep a sense of proportion.  These disagreements and quarrels are not the only cause for concern.  Perhaps not even the most important causes for concern - just the most newsworthy. Since retirement some thirteen years ago now, I have ministered in a wide variety and number of churches. one cannot be aware that in some, indeed many places, our church gives the impression of gently seeping away through the floorboards. Only last week I  attended a Mothers Union Deanery Festival in another diocese where only four banners were paraded and there were perhaps fifty members in church. Not long ago most churches would have been packed to the doors for such an occasion, It can be very dispiriting.
In those circumstances we might turn again to the gospel for today.  The reason why certain stories about Jesus were remembered and noted down and not others is surely because they were found to speak to the needs of the church that read them. 












Very roughly the boat is the church, the disciples are you and me and all our Christian neighbours. And we are scared because disaster is in the air. We are being blown one way and another and cannot see a way ahead. And where is Jesus - he is asleep on a cushion at the stern of the boat. Astonished at his lack of interest we wake him up - Lord don't you care that we are heading for disaster ? 
And Jesus wakes up, and wearily says "Peace be still". A better and more relevant translation might be "Shut up and be quiet".  This is God in Headmaster mode.
And what is his next remark "How little faith you have !"  I think the implication is "How could you imagine there was real danger when I was on board ?" 
Like so many storms that have arisen in the church of God over the past two thousand years the passions of todays divisions will surely fade away.  No doubt they will be succeded by other matters of contention.  Ini the mean time you and I have to get on with loving one another so that we can love our world and save it .  That may sound like a get out but it is the big truth that matters. 
A good priest once wrote that the job of the parish priest is to love his people into holiness.  I have never heard a better definition.  Then I remember my Professor of History at Cambridge who was a devout Methodist,  saying that the really important historical fact about Church History was not the debates and the quarrels and the popes and the kings - no the most important thing is that for century upon century Christian pastors have encouraged their people to love one another.  Lets get the priorities right.  Our future will not be guided by Anglican primates shouting at one another across the monkey house which is Gods church. It will in fact be guided by God himself and it probably  may turn out in the long term to be something rather different to what any of us expects.                                                                                                                                                             

TRINITY I 2006

Happy Fathers' Day to all our dads and granddads !

As I read over this morning's Old Testament lesson - my twisted mind said to itself- well - they even had the Weakest link in those days - or maybe it wouldhave been more appropriately Big Brother. Samuel the great prophet and spiritual leader of Israel realises that God had not made a good choice in making Saul kingof Israel. Perhaps we had better start again. Samuel sets off to Bethlehem where old man Jesse lives . The people of the village are rather wary of this

powerful old man, a bit scared,  because they know that he and the King are no longer good

 friends. But he reassures them  - "I've just come to take a service he says". And

 that reassures them.   A Vicar taking a service is just about the most innocuous 

thing you can imagine isn't it ?
Well they couldn't have bargained on what happened then. Samuel does a roll call of

 Jesse's remarkable family. All boys ! and big strong mature responsible young men they 

all are. 

Everyone fit to be a celebrity. Its all a bit pantomimish. Cinderella was in the 

kitchen when Dandini calls - David is out looking after the sheep - both of them 

were thought unimportant enough to miss the show..  But Samuel knows something 

is missing and so David is fetched for -  God doesn't want a big brother he wants

 a kid  brother apparently.  Good looking, lovely eyes he had - and red haired - 

as someone wrote once - whoever heard of a red head Jew !  He was different; he 

was as we say these days charismatic.
You can never tell with genes. One of the marvels of every family is how the 

same background and the same genes turn out such a variety of children. So 

young David is anointed to be the next king - Gods chosen one . 
You can read David [and Jesus'] family tree in the first chapter of St Matthew.  

It's a real Fathers Day saga - its a list of all the fathers before Joseph 

husband of Mary. But it is particularly interesting for the mothers it mentions 

 It begins  ' the genealogy of Jesus Christ  the Son of David the son of Abraham".

 As you read down it you realise that the family tree is not quite what you would 

expect of  Jesus Christ.  For the first son of David was of course King Solomon and

 Solomon was the child conceived in adultery by Bathsheba who was married to Uriah,

 one of David's officers and who you remember was discreetly bumped off in battle 

so that David could marry his wife.  Not a good start we might think. Go back a

generation or two and we find that Jesse was descended from Boaz whose wife was

 Ruth .  We know and love that story. But we 

forget the scandal. Israeli Boaz married Ruth the  Palestinian !  She was 

certainly not a Jew .  Go back a bit further and find another ancestor called 

Salmon. His wife was called Rahab. Who was Rahab ? she was  a prostitute in 

Jericho who collaborated with Joshua's spies and was spared in the holocaust 

that followed the fall of the city. Go back even further and come to Judah 

who was one of the sons of Jacob, the one who sold Joseph for twenty pieces

of silver to the traders.  One of the nastiest pieces in the whole blood 

line is how a lass called Tamar was married to Judah's son, who then died. 

She was left a widow without children. so in desperation she dresses up as 

a  prostitute and seduces her own father in law in order to get herself a 

child.  
You know -  the Sun and the News of the World are really very dull compared 

with the Bible! There is nothing new under the Sun when we are talking headlines.
It certainly seems that God made some surprising choices when he looked for his 

celebrities. Even St Paul ponders how God apparently preferred the cheating

 double crossing, mothers boy  Jacob to his elder brother - the hard working

 Esau.   Joseph of the amazing technicoloured dream coat must have been an 

insufferable little prig to have wound up his brothers so badly - he had 

to learn his lesson the hard way but he remained a bossy boots to the

 end of his life.
And David was not only the sweet psalmist of Israel  with lovely eyes; 

but he was also a ruthless,  devious and ambitious war lord who let 

nothing stand in his way.  One of the bits we never read in church 

is how when on his death bed he calls to Solomon his son and says 

like the godfather he was "You know son,  there are certain 

gentlemen around who are not my friends and so they are not

 your friends either. You know that I promised them their 

lives as long as I lived.  Well - you never made that promise 

- so as soon as I am dead you know what to do - nudge nudge 

wink wink"  So Solomon of course sends in his death squads.  
God in the Old Testament seems to have chosen some strange 

characters to be his celebrities.    Perhaps that is the point.  

The Old Testament is there to provide the agenda for change; 

the Old Testament tells it how it is in our real world.  

People sometimes say to me "Its a wicked world, Vicar. 

Its never been as bad as this." And I will reply 'You are wrong 

- it has always been as bad as this one way or another. 

This is how the world is'
So this is where the fun stops.
Well not quite the end for I cannot refrain from one more 

story. Forty odd years ago Bob Lord was Chairman of Burnley 

Football (Soccer) Club; and poured a lot of his fortune into

making it one of the top teams in the country.Alec, my church

 warden, who was a prominent Mason came to me - "Owen, Can you 

help. I have been asked to propose the toast of Bob Lord and 

they will expect me to quote the bible to them. Can you think 

of a good text ?"
I thought hard and came back to him.  Why not tell him that 

a prominent player called St Paul wrote  "Whether we are at

home or away we belong to the Lord and we make it our aim 

to please him".  And that of course introduces today's New 

Testament reading from Two Corinthians.
Very often I feel, we hear the epistles of Paul and presume 

that he is chuntering on about something but we are not quire

 sure what and so don't really take too much notice.  But very 

often he comes out with something outstandingly important.
So it is today.  He is saying that the death of Christ on the

 cross was a cut off point for the human race. "From now on 

therefore we regard no one from a human point of view; even 

though we once knew Christ from a human point of view we know

 him no longer in that way. If anyone is in Christ -we would

 say 'if anyone is a Christian' - there is a new creation. 

Everything old has passed away - everything has become new'.

 In a word - it doesn't matter what colour hair David had or

 even Jesus had. We are not to look back to find meaning in 

the past, to find meaning in typical fallible human lives.

 We are not to look back and be traumatised by our feeling 

of guilt for our past.   Just think how many of the terrible 

situations of today's world owe their origin to the telling 

and re-telling of  dangerous myths; men like to remind their 

folk  of past histories, past misdeeds and treacheries; past

 injustices done to them by their neighbours. Even today 

Campbells and McDonalds in Scotland are uneasy allies since 

the massacre of Glencoe in 1689.
Sometimes we are urged to apologise to those people who have

 been badly affected by our ancestors in the days long gone. 

The people of Bristol are to apologise for their part in the 

slave trade.  Christians are asked to apologise to the Muslims 

for the Crusades of the middle ages. Nobody seems to ask Muslims 

to apologise for their conquest of Jerusalem which was of course 

a Christian city before the Muslims arrived. All of which is 

simply to point out how impracticable it is to mend history like 

that; we are not the people of the past; and perhaps such attempts

 to promote reconciliation only serve to stir up bad feelings . To

 be a Christian, Paul suggests, is to take up Christ's offer of a 

new start - we are called to be people of the future, not wedded 

to the past. While you and I; while churches and religions and 

communities and countries  cherish their past and use it for an

 agenda for the present day there can be no solution to the troubles

 that beset us on all sides.  Every thing old has passed away - says

 Paul - history is all dead and gone; we are no longer in thrall to 

the past. Dwelling on the past only spoils the present and frustrates

 the future.  If anyone is a Christian there is a new creation, a new 

beginning, a new start. That sounds great - it sounds a wonderful 

prescription for the future.  The  problem is that asking people to 

forget the past and start again is asking something so sacrificial 

that it must seem like a death. Which is perhaps Paul's point. The

 old me has to die; the old church has to die; the old country , the 

old world has to die and so on forever. Only so can there be a new 

start. 
Let me end with two examples of what Paul might have meant by a new 

beginning. Sally's late cousin Mack was the Roadmaster for Ulster, 

 a civil engineer responsible for the upkeep of roads in the province

 - not an easy job in those days of bombs under bridges.
He was also  Churchwarden of his parish church and an ardent very 

committed Protestant Ulsterman.  But I remember one day in 1969, 

when we were over the water for the Confirmation of  Sally's goddaughter,

  how he said in a moment of truth.
"Owen,[he said] I certainly don't want the border to go.  I would 

fight on to the end to keep it as it is. But if I am to be realistic, 

if the border went tomorrow, I guess in three years I would have 

forgotten it ever existed".  You have to know the man to realise 

what an admission that was and what a tribute to his inner honesty.
A few years ago a book was published called "The Railway Man".  

It was told by a chap who was a prisoner of war who was forced 

to work on the ill famed Burmah railroad by the Japanese. After 

the war he [who worked for British Rail] went to an international

 conference on railways and found that the engineer officer who 

brutalised him in the war was now  a delegate from the Japanese 

railways.  The crux of the story was how he realised that something

 had to be done. The two men met - they put the past behind them 

and actually started talking to one another. The author puts it 

like this "Sooner or later the hating has to stop".
If we want a new world, if we want a new church, if I want a new me 

- then it is good bye to the past and all it means. There has to be 

a cut off point. There has to be a point where all the hating has 

to stop.  I believe that is the true Christian response.
Week by week you and I come into church and remember all this. 

We say the general confession and ask forgiveness for the past

 so that we can put it behind us. We are the people of our baptism;

 we are the people of the new start. Christian experience is that 

we keep on falling over and over again -  and have to be picked up

 over and over again. And as he picks us up the Lord says - " never

 mind - lets start again shall we ? " We must always let him do this.  

The important thing is what is sometimes called the sacrament of the 

present moment. Now is the time, now is the moment, now is the 

challenge to start again -  now - this moment - this morning is the

 opportunity held out to each of us to become God's new people .

"When I am weak then am I strong"

As the thunder thundered and the lightning flashed and the rains poured down 

this week, I suddenly heard my mother's voice from over seventy  years back 

saying to me "God is moving the furniture".  Even as a very young child 

I knew it was a sort of joke - but somehow it helped to get things

in proportion.
The thunderstorm was often regarded in days gone by as God giving a 

free demo of his enormous power.
The voice of the Lord divides the lightning flash; 

the voice of the Lord whirls the sands  of the desert. 

The voice of the lord breaks the cedar trees and strips bare the forests. 

So says Psalm 29.
From one point of view it all sounds  quite reasonable. God if He is 

to be any kind of God must surely be powerful, strong, able to cope 

with anything that is thrown against him. So we tie ourselves in 

knots by wondering why the God of power and might does nothing in 

the face of disaster ; be it global,natural or personal. As the

 logical minds of unbelievers say; either God is almighty but

 not good or he is good but not almighty. He can't be both.
If you listened to some of this morning's scriptures you may have 

picked up another way of looking at things.. Someone has called it 

the 'gift of weakness'.
We can begin with the strange picture that Marks Gospel gives us 

of the return of golden boy Jesus to his home parish. He could do

 nothing there because of their unbelief. Surrounded by folk he 

had grown up amongst, the lads he had gone to school with - all

 they can see is the local bloke they know only too well. In the 

days when men had man servants it would be said "No man is a hero 

to his valet".  Jesus who we think of as an inspirational and 

powerful figure is reduced to an apparently incompetent weakness.
Yet in the second half of the reading we see Jesus sending his 

disciples out two by two in a most vulnerable way. This mission 

does not need any of the normal investments; no money, no spare

 kit, no Diocesan office; no nothing apart from a willingness to 

share Gods gifts of healing body and soul.
The ordinary man or woman in the street may not be scriptural 

experts; but they typically have a true glimpse of the differences 

between what looks like a wealthy church and a simple under resourced 

Jesus of Nazareth. Gods cause does not need worldly strength and power.

Turn then to the rather strange reading from St Paul. We have to understand 

that Paul had founded and pioneered the infant church in the city of Corinth. 

 After he left, some time later, we are given to understand, a rival gang 

of Christian leaders calling themselves Apostles muscled in on the act. 

They were proud of their charismatic gifts; proud of their commission; 

and in the process disparaged Paul their church's founder.
"Paul ? decent enough chap I suppose - all right in his way but not

 very impressive really is he. If the church wants to grow and become 

something of real influence in the city you need leaders who are much 

more spiritually gifted."
What we heard this morning is part of Paul's response to this development

 He regards any kind of showing off of spiritual gifts as a foolish nonsense. 

If any one wants to boast of their experiences he reckoned he could 

trump it. He tells of how on one occasion he was caught up mystically 

into the presence of God and heard and saw things that can never be 

repeated. Some think he is referring to that overwhelming experience 

he had when he was converted to Christ on the road to Damascus.
But he does not want himself to be valued by the stories he might 

tell of wonderful experiences; but only by what people can see and 

hear in the flesh.
Then he comes to the really interesting bit. He says that to stop 

him boasting about his spiritual experiences, God allowed Satan to 

inflict on him a thorn in his flesh. Nobody knows exactly what he 

means. He is obviously referring to some kind of chronic illness 

or disability. Some have suggested he was an epileptic; or that 

he suffered from chronic malaria; or that he had an eye complaint. 

We shall never know - it could be almost anything - whatever it 

was it was sufficient to make Paul in person something less 

than a commanding or inspiring figure.How he must have yearned 

to be free of this handicap so that he might cut a better figure 

and do better work for Christ.
Three times, he says, three times I asked God for me to be cured 

of this thorn in the flesh; and three times God said no. As if God 

is saying 'in this particular case I am not going to do anything 

about it because it is better for things to be as they are. As the

 children's poem on God answering prayers says "Isn't No an answer ?". 
And God says to Paul; my grace is sufficient for you - I am giving you 

all you need to carry out the work I have planned for you. For my power

 is made perfect in weakness.
In sharing this with us, Paul is letting us into one of the great 

though often unsung secrets of the Christian faith.
God's strength is not expressed in obvious worldly ways. A moments 

reflection will remind us that the cross we place in honour on our 

altar is a sign of the greatest weakness imaginable. Nobody is weaker 

than a man who has been nailed on a piece of wood like a butterfly

 on a pin and left to die.
This is something which each and every Christian soul has to come 

to terms with. Our following of Christ begins as we do business 

with the man on the cross. As we kneel before the altar for Holy 

Communion it is Christ crucified as well as Christ risen whom we meet. 

At that meeting all our personal qualities, talents, gifts,  

become as nothing; and it is at that point of nothingness that 

God is able to exercise his strength.
Anyone who has engaged in Christian ministry knows this. In Paul's 

paradoxical secret there is great truth. God is at work when you 

often do not expect it. If you are full of yourself, if you think 

you are Gods special gift to his church you will get in God's way.
I learned this for myself in my earlier years of ministry. I ran 

into Janet many years after conducting her husband's funeral. 

She came up to me at some gathering or other and said "Oh Mr Vigeon 

I'll never forget what you said when you visited me when my Jim died.".

 I remembered her then. I remembered the visit. It had been a particularly 

tragic death of a comparatively young man; and I had been lost for words. 

I was quite at sea and hardly able to put two sensible words together. 

In fact as I remember it I said practically nothing. But in my weakness, 

because of my weakness God was able to step in and speak to Janet. 

  Talking to colleagues over a number of years I have found they

 have shared the same kind of experience.
I should point out that the contrary is true ; if I for some reason 

think I have preached a super sermon or coped magnificently with 

some challenge  [which is not often] then it is usually turns 

out to be a nothing event.
Paul had a hard life in the service of Christ. When I see adverts 

for Vicars in the church press which are extolling the advantages 

of being near to the Lake District, or Bournemouth or Devonshire 

I wonder what place that should have in attracting a priest to a 

new parish. Paul knew imprisonment and corporal punishment; he was 

nearly lynched by a mob at least twice; he was shipwrecked - you name,

 it he knew it. Yet he can reply to those who accuse him of being 

second rate in these words
I am content with weakness, insults, hardships for the sake of Christ; 

for whenever I am weak then I am strong.
God does not move the furniture about. He doesn't sent tsunamis or 

earthquakes; he certainly does not tempt unhappy lads to try to blow 

up London.
God needs souls who know that are nothing in order that he can bring 

healing and life to our power crazy world.


THE ONE CORINTHIANS CAROL

Let's sing a carol of power in weakness
Let's sing a carol of foolishness wise ;
Let's sing a song of compassion and meekness
Sparked by our joy in the Christ baby's cries.
 2.
Sing of the goodness that overcomes evil ,
Sing of a love that overcomes hate ,
Sing of a God who doesn't have favourites ,
Sing of a Kingdom with no nation state.
3.
Sing of our High Priest betrayed by religion,
Sing of our Prophet whose message is scorned,
Sing of our King without worldly authority
Hung on a cross with a crown that is thorned.
4.
Weep for  morality fuelled by terror,
Weep for the souls who know they are right,
Weep for the minds who are sure what God's thinking,
Weep for confusion of darkness with light.




5.
Weep for those weapons of  true mass destruction -
Greed that distorts our humanity's  core ;
Sceptics who mock at our inner convictions,
Lies that spread envy, distrust and make war.

6.
These are the songs of the Lord of our Christmas,
This is the carol that angels would sing;,
These are the songs which men dub as irrelevant,
These are the songs of our newly born King.
7.
These are the songs which we hardly dare utter,
Fearing our words may betray our dear Lord;
Either by holding too fast to tradition,
Or by  discounting the strength of His Word.
8.
And so we forget that God works in Samaritans,
We search for the speck in our good neighbour's eyes;
And pray to  the "god" we have made in our likeness -
Only too keen to cut Love down to size.
9.
So as you come to the stable at Christmas
Holding out hands for the Christ Baby's food,
Wonder afresh at a vulnerable Saviour
Kneel and adore Him, and drink yourself  good.
10.
And sing then a carol of power in weakness,
Sing then a carol of foolishness wise,
Sing out a song of compassion and meekness
	Sparked by our joy in the Christ baby's cries