The Compassionate Life

Luke 15: 1-32, Micah 7: 18-20



Today I want to talk about compassion. This is a sermon in our series ‘The Relevant Jesus’. So I wanted to say something about what Jesus had to say about compassion that was new and different then and is still new and different – yet relevant - today.

I am also keen to talk about compassion because we are reading Karen Armstrong’s relatively new book: ‘Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life’ in a discussion group I attend. And when I say we are reading it I don’t mean just discussing it. Our group – perhaps because it has been going for nearly 30 years now - has got a bit fed up with just discussing things one week and moving onto something else more or less interesting to discuss the next.

Karen Armstrong’s book is not just a book to be read and put down as one would perhaps a novel or a biography of a famous person. It is rather an instruction book: more like a recipe book or a manual for a new piece of electronic equipment. Karen Armstrong is of course being extremely ambitious when she sets out to give us some instructions for a better way of living: a more compassionate life, but I recommend her book to you and this sermon draws from it.

Of course the Bible is also not just supposed to be merely an interesting read. It is – amongst other things - also an instruction book – like Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. The gospel is not merely consoling but life-changing.

Now the Bible contains lots of stories about compassion such as the three parables in our Gospel reading. But it also contains some clear instructions. I’d like to touch on just four before I move onto the parables. The four instructions I have in mind: are first the principle of an eye for an eye, secondly the so called ‘Golden Rule’: ’Do unto others as you would have them do to you’, thirdly the second of the two great commandments: ‘Thou shat love thy neighbour as thyself and fourthly ‘Love your enemies’.

We need rules to live by if only because otherwise there would be no such thing as society. Margaret Thatcher was wrong when she said there is no such thing as society. Of course there is – and it needs rules to function. One of these rules which can be found in the book of Exodus is ‘an eye for an eye’ or more precisely: ‘an eye for an eye and no more’.

You’ll remember that it was – in Jesus’ time – legitimate for someone who, say, had had his sheep stolen by a neighbour to go and get a sheep from that neighbour’s flock whether or not he got his own sheep back as well.

Just one sheep mind. Otherwise you could see that the situation would get completely out of hand. In a way an eye for an eye is not a bad rule. Basically it prevents anarchy and we still use the principle today when punishing offenders: there is a graded series of penalties depending on the seriousness of the crime. Even if we now don’t say require a person who has killed a neighbour’s child whilst drunk in charge of a vehicle to hand over their own child to be killed: killing a child is treated more seriously than say killing a neighbour’s sheep – or these days –cat.

Now an eye for an eye and no more while sort of sounding fair doesn’t in the end lead to a stable situation for as Gandhi says ‘An-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye ... ends in making everybody blind.’

Everyone – including atheists - would surely agree with Gandhi. We recognize that an eye for an eye is really no way to deal with crime such as manslaughter through drunken driving, or hacking into the mobile phones of missing teenagers, etc. – crimes punishable by the State. But it doesn’t work even when it comes to us ourselves dealing with less serious offences committed against us If we are burgled and we find out who burgled us we should not go round and burgle our burglar’s house. If a work colleague steals our idea and then gets credit for it with the boss it’s not going to work if we go and steal some of their ideas in retribution.

You’ll remember too that Jesus also criticised the eye for an eye and no more rule by saying – according to Matthew - "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well” Would atheists agree with this? Surely on the face of it is unrealistic and also a recipe for disaster. Giving my cloak to someone who has just sued me for my tunic is surely going to encourage others to sue me for car on the basis that I will give them my house

This rather odd instruction on the part of Jesus seems to suggest that Jesus had completely different ideas about justice, fairness and compassion. I’ll come onto those a bit late when I want to explain why I have chosen today’s Gospel reading and it’s relation to our theme of the compassionate life.

The second rule I want to talk about is the so-called Golden Rule, i.e. ’Do unto others as you would have them do to you’. Now this is a rule promulgated by all the major religions. Confucius says in around 500 BC ‘Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you ‘. And Jesus commands his disciples to follow this rule when, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, according to Matthew, he says ‘So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them, for this is the law and the prophets’.

Now ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you’ is at variance with ‘An eye for an eye’ because obviously exacting retribution in this way isn’t what the other would have you do. Even if I steal someone’s treasured possession I do not want them to come and steal my treasured possession.

Most atheists seem to agree with the Golden Rule. They might even agree that it comes to us via Jesus from the Jewish law and the Old Testament prophets rather than say Confucius. This is because of course it seems to require no belief in God. And on the face of it sounds sort of logical – if everyone behaved towards one another in a empathetic, compassionate way the world would surely be a better place?

However when you start to think about it a bit more, the Golden Rule is not as simple as it sounds, because in order to put it into operation you need to know ‘what you would really and truly wish that men would do to or for you’. And in my experience this sounds simple but is not.

I am sorry if some of you have heard this rather simple illustration before: But when my wife asks me whether I would like some breakfast I know whether I am hungry or not. So far so good. But if I am hungry and she asks me what I would like then things start to get difficult. Should I have just a slice of toast as I am trying to lose weight? Or should I say a bacon sandwich which I know I will enjoy but has lots of calories or should I compromise with some porridge. I just don’t know. And as I get older I become less and less certain of what I want, let alone need. Perhaps we cannot really know what we need and our desires are surely a poor guide to our needs. It is I think only God who really knows what we truly need and therefore the Golden Rule – for all its apparent logic – only makes senses if there is a God who knows what it is we need and therefore what people should do for one another.

This brings me to the third rule: the second of the great commandments: ‘thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’. This is called a great commandment because Jesus gives, or rather reiterates this commandment, in answer to a lawyer who asks him – according to Matthew – ‘Which is the greatest of the commandments?’ I have of course deliberately detached it from the first of the great commandments: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind’. And I will argue in a minute that the second doesn’t make any real sense without the first but to concentrate sole on the second for the moment.

It is I think, worth pointing out again and again what we tend to forget about this commandment, that here Jesus commands us not only to love others but to love ourselves as well. We can quite easily miss the end of the sentence. Actually I think loving ourselves is just – if not more difficult - as loving others. It is also worth remembering that Jesus connects the two things: loving others with loving ourselves, suggesting that one without the other is impossible.

Just a word about loving ourselves. This is not just about loving what we like about or find good in ourselves but what we also find shameful. Just as God loves us for all that we are – not just what he finds good but also what he finds bad - so we must love ourselves in a similar fashion. But I have talked about this before, so I won’t go on about it here.

I am not sure what atheists think about this second commandment but note how it is different from the Golden Rule.

Firstly this commandment talks about love rather than doing or not doing to others or what we ourselves desire or don’t desire. Of course love is as much about doing as feeling but it is surely more than just recognising the desires of others through empathy. For a start, as I pointed out earlier, compassion is surely as much about needs as desires. But love is surely also much than acting upon others needs and desires: I’ll come onto that in a minute when I talk about our Gospel reading.

Secondly, the second great commandment is different from the Golden Rule because Jesus connects it with the first great commandment: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind’. In Luke’s account Jesus roles them together as just one commandment: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind and with all thy strength and thy neighbour as thyself’: so indicating that all three: love of God, thy neighbour and thyself are all connected and perhaps that each is impossible without the other two. This is of course where atheists would part company with followers of Jesus.

And finally that fourth instruction: ‘Love thy enemies’. Jesus, according to Luke, gives this commandment in his Sermon on the Plain. When discussing an eye for an eye, the Golden Rule, and the great commandments Jesus makes it clear that he is just reiterating what had been said before ‘in the law and by the prophets’ but this commandment ‘love thy enemies’ is new and surely just as incomprehensible today as it was then. I am not going to attempt to say anything more about it.

Instead I want to turn, finally, to today’s Gospel reading. I chose this whole chapter from Luke’s gospel because all three parables – the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son are clearly meant to be read together and they all relate to today’s theme: the compassionate life. The third of the parables might seem to be more important because it has more of a plot. It superficially seems more interesting but, as I said earlier, the Bible is not just supposed to be interesting but life-changing. Furthermore whereas Jesus did say what he thought were the most important commandments he never said, ‘Listen to this parable this is more important than those I have just been telling you’.

Reading them all together takes a bit of time but brings out the similarities between them. All three have something that is lost – a sheep, a coin, a son. The central character in all three is also someone who is ‘lost’: the shepherd – because his is a despised occupation, the woman because hers is a despised gender, the father because he is humiliated by the behaviour of his son who in effect insults him grossly by claiming his inheritance before he has died.

But there are two other similarities which bear upon today’s theme. In all three parables the main character either expends a lot of energy and/or takes a considerable risk in looking for what is lost. And in all three there is a party at the end of the story when what has been lost has been found. All three stories are basically – when you look at them closely – frankly implausible. It is as if Jesus is saying: ‘This is the nature of love: it doesn’t make logical sense.’

So in the first parable the shepherd – out of love for the lost sheep - goes to look for it abandoning the other sheep. What shepherd would actually do that? And what shepherd would actually throw a party when he found a single sheep that had been lost.

In the second parable what woman would actually spend a day looking for a single lost coin – unless of course it meant a lot to her – and even then would she really invite all her friends around to celebrate what was merely a rectification of a mistake on her part?

Finally the father – in the third parable - does not need to divide his inheritance between his beloved sons at his younger son’s request and in fact risks a lot by doing so. He, in effect, by losing control over his property and income, becomes dependent on his sons – the younger of which promptly up-sticks and leaves home with the money - leaving him dependent on his elder son (who we know from later events) isn’t exactly generous. Then when the younger son having squandered all his money returns home, the father rushes out to greet him in a completely undignified manner, and they celebrate with the standard party. When I say standard I mean the party we have come to expect in such a parable, rather than a standard party per se: in fact this party is completely over the top with the best calf being slaughtered.

Who is who in these unbelievable stories and who are we the listeners supposed to identify with: the loser or the lost? Are we supposed to identify with the loser: the humble shepherd, the despised woman, the foolish and insulted father? Or are we supposed to think of ourselves as the lost helpless sheep, the inanimate coin which can hardly be held responsible for being lost, or the mean and feckless son, who even when he is has lost everything, and is himself disgraced, plots to wheedle his way back into the household by exploiting his Father’s demonstrable weakness.

Incidentally the lost son’s behaviour on finding himself penniless hardly seems to be a model for repentance: he seems more scheming than genuinely remorseful. And note too that the lost sheep and the lost coin do absolutely nothing to get found, to return to the loser.

But if we are supposed to think of ourselves as lost are we then supposed to imagine that the humble shepherd, the despised woman and the foolish and insulted father represent God? Well perhaps. In these parables Jesus shows that true compassion is so much more than what we might have thought it was or have come to expect: whether this is God’s love for us or our love, for him, for others or even ourselves, perhaps it doesn’t matter who is who in these stories.

Compassion is of course about empathy – as the Golden Rule and the second of the great commandments suggest – but these thee parables show us that compassion is so much more than that. Love is risking all for what is loved including dignity. Love is forgiving all on the part of the loved. Love is holding a party when the lost has been found.

Remarkable but still relevant today.

The parable of the wheat and weeds (2): humbleness of mind

Sermon on Matthew 13: 24-30, Colossians 3.12-17, St Matthew's, Oxford, 6th February 2011

The other day I got caught out by a friend. I was saying how much I liked a swingeinglly critical review of a new book – it doesn’t really matter what the book was. The reviewer had laid into the book and skilfully ‘demolished’ it and I was expounding on how much I agreed with the reviewer. ‘But have you read the book?’ my friend asked me. Err no I hadn’t. I had just assumed what the reviewer said about the book was true. I was basing this assumption on what I knew about the reviewer – who I respect – and the writer of the book – who I don’t actually know much about. Basically I was being uncharitable to the writer – making assumptions about his intentions – which I really had no business doing without, at least, reading the book, and even then…

The first verse of our Epistle reading was: ‘Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering; forbearing one another and forgiving one another’. And today I would like to say something about ‘humbleness of mind’– something I was patently not demonstrating in the conversation with my friend. I have been thinking about humbleness of mind because I have reached Karen Armstrong’s seventh step of her ‘Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life’ which I mentioned I was reading in my last sermon here. Karen’ Armstrong’s seventh step is ‘Recognise how little we know’ which seems to me a pre-requisite or perhaps a consequence of humbleness of mind.

I find that I presided at the 8 o’clock Communion on the 5th Sunday of Epiphany last year -although I am not entirely sure whether this is the 5th Sunday of Epiphany or the 3rd Sunday before Lent – and that I therefore preached on these two readings we heard just now a year ago. Last time my main message – based on my reading of the parable of the wheat and weeds – was that we shouldn’t try to distinguish and root out the weeds amongst us: ‘lest’ – as the farmer says to his servants ’in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them’. This is because cannot tell very easily what is wheat and what is weeds: they appear to be very similar.

Note too that there is no indication within the parable itself that the two different types of plant are supposed to represent two different types of people. If you read the parable in the context of the parable immediately before it – the parable of the Sower – and the parable immediately after it – the parable of the Mustard Seed – both parables about seeds - you come away not nearly as certain that the wheat represents good people – the saved - and the weeds bad people – the damned - but more like different types of knowledge or wisdom. Wisdom that is nourishing and productive in the case of the seeds sown by the Sower, the mustard seed or the wheat, knowledge that is the converse – distracting and unproductive in the case of the weeds (in both the parable of the Sower and today’s parable).

But back to humbleness of mind: in the Greek ταπεινοφροσύνην.

In the first verse of our Epistle reading Paul links humbleness of mind with bowels of mercies. He uses the expression bowels of mercies - σπλάγχνα οἰκτιρμοῦ - because the Greeks thought that the bowels were the site of the emotions rather the brain (and we of course still associate the heart with our emotions – at least with love – a little higher up our body but still rather anatomically incorrect). ταπεινοφροσύνην is a composite word with ταπεινο meaning something like lowly and φροσύνην meaning mind or the faculty of perceiving and judging. By putting together σπλάγχνα οἰκτιρμοῦ with απεινοφροσύνην Paul is reminding the Colossians that compassion is not just a matter of the emotions it is a matter of the mind. Not only of having loving feelings towards one another but about being humble about one’s own opinions and respectful of others. He urges them to be forbearing one to another – and this forebearance surely encompasses one another’s opinions as much as feelings.

This is why Karen Armstrong includes her seventh step in her ‘Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life’. Only by ‘recognising how little we know’ can we be truly forbearing to one another.

Karen Armstrong argues that the point of recognising that we know so little is 1) ‘to recognise and appreciate the unknown and uknowable’ 2) ‘to become sensitive to over-confident assertions of certainty in ourselves and other people ‘and 3) ‘to make ourselves aware of the numinous mystery of each human being we encounter during the day’.

She shows that many of the greatest philosophers and religious thinkers have come to the idea that we know very little but often think we know a lot. Isn’t it true that as we grow older and wiser we become increasingly uncertain of the strongly held opinions that we formerly held and also increasingly clear that there is little that can be said with any certainty? By saying this I do not what to say that we know nothing but rather that we should err on the side of being uncertain in how much and also what we know.

Karen Armstrong notes how disturbing it is to hear someone talk dogmatically about something you think you know about. This happens to me all the time. I consider myself an expert on food but because eating is something we all do, most people have opinions about food – quite strong opinions sometimes – and will often tell me things about food – which in my view are patently wrong, or which I know already, or which I feel I know more about than them. This can make me unreasonably irritated at times. I complain that if I were an expert on say nuclear particles, or the history of the Second World War, or even car maintenance, this wouldn’t happen to me but I am not so sure. It also makes me think I must do the very same to other people at times: when I expostulate on books I haven’t read, for example.

Socrates insisted that the only reason he could be considered wise was that he knew that he knew nothing at all. Wittgenstein famously finishes his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicushis with the words ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ Christians on the other hand have often been held to be quite certain about a lot of things – but yet the unknowability of things is perhaps a bigger theme in the Bible than one might assume.

In particular there is clear idea that God is mysterious. OK the Christian and Jewish tradition is that God has revealed himself and Christians believe that God has, in the particular person of Jesus, provided a clear revelation of himself, but still that revelations is partial and incomplete. The resurrected Christ is not instantly recognisable – even to his closest friends. He cannot be held (or completely grasped) because he has not yet ascended to his father. Paul writes to the Corinthians: ‘For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall understand fully.’

Karen Armstrong suggests that – as a sort of spiritual exercise - we should spend time in trying to define exactly what distinguishes us from everybody else, noting that who we are constantly eludes us. We should also note how often we contradict ourselves and act or speak in ways that we are surprised by. In conversing with my atheist friend Ron recently I have begun to realise that I am very uncertain about who exactly I am. And I note that describing to others who I am has become increasingly difficult – even in a sort of way painful. I wonder whether you experience this difficulty on those occasions when, in a gathering, everyone is asked to share their news in turn or worse still (to my mind) to say something about who they are.

If it is so difficult to describe who we think we are I wonder how we think we can possibly talk so knowingly as we often do about other people. And how then can we presume to know whether other people are good or bad, right or wrong, saved or unsaved? And to pursue this line of thought further: if it is so difficult to sum up other people how much harder it is to sum up God, what he/she is or is not.

This recognition that we and others (including God) are essentially mysterious and that we should be humble of mind about this is an essential part of the compassionate life. In our Epistle reading Paul goes on to say ‘And above all put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’. Love without self knowledge is, as I explained, in my last sermon, extremely difficult if not impossible. But love without recognising that one knows so little – not only about oneself but per se – is I think also impossible. I, with Paul, commend to you ταπεινοφροσύνην: humbleness of mind.

Prevention is better than cure: the media coverage of our recent paper in the BMJ

The front page headline for the Daily Mail last Thursday was ‘Heart attack deaths halve in 8 years’. This was a report of our paper published that day in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and to be found here.

The paper also made the front pages in the Telegraph and Express and into the Guardian, the Independent, the Mirror, the Huffington post and onto the BBC News (radio and television), the Today Programme and even into a newspaper in Winnipeg (according to Kate Smolina – the first author of the paper and until recently my DPhil student (jointly supervised with the co-authors of the paper: Michael Goldacre and Lucy Wright)). Unfortunately the paper doesn’t seem to have made it into the Daily Mash yet as one of our other papers recently did.

Our paper presents several ‘findings’ but the main finding is, in my view, that just over half of the decline in heart attack deaths between 2002 and 201 in England was caused by fewer people having heart attacks and just under half by more people who had heart attacks surviving. We knew already that the number of deaths from heart attack was declining and suspected that this was partly due to fewer people having attacks and partly due to more people surviving attacks but we didn’t know for certain which was more important and now we do.

I therefore find the headline of Jeremy Laurance’s piece in the Independent ‘The curious case of the vanishing killer’ and its opening lines particularly irritating. Laurance says ‘It's a good news story that has [not’ had’ note] medical researchers baffled: in the past decade, deaths from heart disease in the UK have fallen spectacularly, and no one knows why…’. Has he not read our paper? Does he not get the point? But what was the point of our paper as opposed to its main finding? I’ll try and explain that later but meanwhile what did the media reports think was the point.

The reporting of our paper has been extensive but also extremely variable with the report by NHS Choices being one of the best and the report by Sky News  being one of the worst.

Many of the reporters don’t seem to have bothered to try and contact the authors of the paper for their views on the pointy of the paper or even what the paper says but have relied instead on comments from others – notably the British Heart Foundation. The best report I have seen – from NHS Choices – does not rely on comments from others but draws its own conclusions. I don’t entirely agree with all of its conclusions as I do not entirely agree with everything that is said in the paper. (A paper written by multiple authors is always a compromise.)

In particular – as NHS Choices says - ‘It should be noted that although the study shows a fall in heart attacks and also in death rates among heart attack patients, it does not tell us the precise causes of either.’ It’s probably because the paper is so clear in its main finding – and sorts out an important question – that speculation on both fronts has been so rife. For my own speculations see the news story from the University of Oxford University

Some of this speculation is quite frankly ‘wild’. There is some wild speculation in our paper itself such as: ‘The increase in acute myocardial infarction event rate in London between 2007 and 2009 may be a result of the financial crisis that peaked in 2008 and greatly affected the London financial district.’ How on earth did this get into the paper I am now thinking? This rather small, foolish bit of speculation seems to have been reproduced in several articles: as if the financial crisis just affects the ‘London financial district’. See for example the Telegraph.

So what are the real causes of the a) decline in the number of heart attacks b) the death rates among heart attack patients? These are many and varied and could well be displayed in the sort of map that the Government’s Foresight Programme developed to ‘explain’ the causes of obesity and which I have discussed previously on this blog here.

I was tempted in my one (rather ill fated) media appearance in relation to the paper to suggest that improvements in food labelling had played a major role in the decline in the number of heart attacks. Implausible? Equally plausible, in my view, as the suggestion that the financial crisis had important effects on the trends.

There is actually some research into (rather than speculation on) the causes of the decline in deaths from heart attacks in England - admittedly from an earlier time period i.e. from 1981 - approximately the point at which the decline in deaths from heart attacks began - and 2000. This research - from Simon Capewell and his colleagues at Liverpool University - suggests that 58% of the decline can be attributed to ‘population risk factor reductions’ (principally smoking, 48%; blood pressure, 9.5%; and cholesterol, 9.5%). Given that the annual decline in heart disease deaths between 1981 and 2000 was roughly the same as between 2002and 2010 it is not unreasonable to suggest that this research should be used to interpret our results. Did any of the journalists do this? No of course not.  We did mention this paper in our paper but perhaps we should have given it a bigger billing.

Of course interpretation in science is largely value driven rather than evidence driven. There are two interpretations of our results which I like. The first comes from Andy Burham - Labour's Shadow Health Secretary.

Any Burham seems to be suggesting that the introduction of the National Service Framework for Coronary Heart Disease – introduced by the last Labour Government – was a cause of the fall in heart disease deaths. He says ‘In Government, Labour launched a national drive to cut deaths from heart attacks through the national service framework on coronary heart disease. It succeeded because of the strength of the NHS structure - which Mr Cameron is now to break apart.’

Andy Burnham’s contention that the National Service Framework was a major cause of the decline in heart disease deaths is a tad speculative - particularly as the decline started in around 1980 long before the National Service Framework was introduced (in 2000) but nevertheless it is true that our study ‘calls into questions whether the NHS needs to change radically in the way it does things.’ And Andy Burnham’s point the ‘if the NHS isn’t broke why fix it?’ is appropriate – at least with regard to the treatment of heart disease which, it should be noted, is one of the causes of ill-health in England, if not the biggest. Note that both David Cameron and Andrew Lansley have used the argument that England’s high rate of heart disease (compared with say France) justifies their proposed reforms.

The other interpretation I like I haven’t found anywhere yet. This is that our study shows that ‘prevention is better than cure’. Note that more than 50% of the decline in heart attacks deaths is due to the decline in the actual number of attacks and less than 50% of the decline is due to improvements in survival after an attack. I.e. the prevention of attacks is more important than what goes on after the attack. Note too that it is possible that survival after attacks has only a little to do with improvements in the treatment of heart attacks (after they have occurred) and more to do with hearts getting stronger (from preventive activities prior to the attack).

Of course the decline in the number of attacks may be partly due to improvements in the drugs given to people at high risk of an attack (statins for raised blood cholesterol, anti-hypertensives for raised blood pressure, etc) and even improved forms of surgical treatment (such a ‘stents’) for people who have serious heart disease but given these drugs and new forms of surgical treatment came into use only over the last decade or so – long after the decline in deaths began (around 1980) it seems unlikely that they have made a major contribution (see too Simon Capewell’s findings mentioned above) This leaves us with lifestyle change as the mostly likely main cause of the fall in heart attack deaths (again see Simon Capewell’s findings). The decline in smoking is probably the most important lifestyle change but improvements in diet such as the switch from animal fat to vegetable fat which began about the time heart attack deaths began to fall, may also have contributed.

Whether the Health Service (much as I love it) has had anything much to do with these lifestyle changes seems unlikely. The switch from animal fat to vegetable fat was largely due to the increasing availability of cheap vegetable oil (sun-flower, rape seed, etc.) due to agriculture subsidies under the Common Agriculture Policy etc. When did your doctor last talk to you about saturated fat and did you head his/her advice?

Interpretation of the results of papers is, in the end, value driven. My interpretation of the results of our paper (which I am not sure is even entirely shared by my co-authors) is that it means that prevention is better than cure. This interpretation is – like Andy Burnham’s –based, not just on the findings of the paper – but on speculation. Though I do have some empirical support from other research such as that of Simon Capewell and his colleagues. I also have some logic to support my case. It is value driven: because I am a preventionist rather than a treatist.

The problem with the media coverage of our paper – from my (preventionst) point of view was that it got hijacked by too many treatists. OK perhaps I should feel grateful for the amount of coverage our paper got and that at least prevention sometimes got a mention. (The paper does to some extent speak for itself without the need for too much interpretation.)

Several people have congratulated me on the extent of the media coverage for the paper. But I really do not care about coverage. All publicity is not good publicity in my book. I am sorry that the coverage didn’t do more to help Andy Burnham’s cause - hat the NHS isn’t broke so why fix it - or mine that ‘prevention is better than cure’. In saying this I should say that I am not blaming anyone but myself.

'Thou shalt love thyself as thy neighbour?'

Sermon on Romans 12: 1-21, St Matthew's, 14th January 2012 (but changed quite a lot).

Today’s epistle reading – from Paul’s letter to the Romans – is partly about gifts and talents but also partly about how we should behave as Christians. I thought today I would focus on the idea that comes up again and again in Paul’s writings, and is in Jesus’ parables too, that whilst undoubtedly we human beings have weaknesses we also have strengths – gifts in other words - and how we are going to discern what these are.

My focusing on this theme in the epistle reading is partly motivated by reading Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. In this book Karen Armstrong challenges us to be more compassionate and sets out a twelve step programme for how to achieve this. After learning about compassion (Step 1) and looking at the world (Step 2) Step 3 is entitled ‘Compassion for yourself.’ Significantly this comes before ‘Compassion for others’ (Step 4).

Of course compassion for ourselves is important and something we regularly forget to practice. In our service just now I reminded you of Jesus’ summary of the law: Firstly ‘The Lord our God is one Lord and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they mind and with all thy strength’ and Secondly ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’. Now we all tend, to forget the second half of this Second Commandment. We are not only to love others but we are to love ourselves.

Now I think compassion for ourselves requires looking for and finding the good in ourselves rather than just the bad. In fact it would seem somehow perverse to love what we see as bad in ourselves – although I am not sure that it is always easy to tell what is good and what is bad and often the two are inextricably mixed. If we are courageous we may be reckless, if we are honest we are may be rude, etc. etc. But let’s leave that for a moment

Karen Armstrong tells a story about a friend – the Rabbi Albert Friedlander – who had grown up in Nazi Germany and as a child was bewildered and distressed by the vicious anti-Jewish propaganda that he heard from every quarter. One night when he was about eight years old he couldn’t sleep and so made a list of all his good qualities. He told himself firmly that he was not what the Nazis said, that he had talents and special gifts of heart and mind which he enumerated to himself one by one. Finally he vowed that if he survived he would use those qualities to build a better world. Karen Armstrong notes that this was an extraordinary insight for a child of eight in such circumstances, but she says that Albert Friedlander – in later life – was one of the kindest people she had ever met.

The commandment that thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself is related to what is sometimes known as the Golden Rule i.e. ’Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. Jesus commands his disciples to follow this rule when, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, he says ‘So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them, for this is the law and the prophets (Matthew 7:12).

Now the Golden Rule also presumes self-knowledge – you need to know what you wish men would do to you to be able to do the same for them. It requires us to know ourselves. And in particular we need to know what we need. Some of us find this really rather difficult. When my wife asks me whether I would like some breakfast I know whether I am hungry or not. So far so good. But if I am hungry and she asks me what I would like then things start to get difficult.

Should I have just a slice of toast as I am trying to lose weight? Or should I say a bacon sandwich which I know I will enjoy but has lots of calories or should I compromise with some porridge. I just don’t know. But what I do know is that I like my wife offering to make breakfast for me – even if I don’t actually need any breakfast. It is a fairly safe bet that she would like it if I were offer to make breakfast for her. In part I know this because I know myself.

We do know our basic needs - for food for love – and because we know this we can respond to one another’s needs. We can love our neighbours as ourselves. Love seems to me – at heart – about responding to one another’s needs. Paul says as much when he talks in this passage about how members of the Roman church should behave towards one another e.g. verse 10 suggests that they ‘should outdo one another in showing honor’. This is because Paul knows that in Roman society ‘honor’ is a big deal. Romans got stressed if they felt that people were dishonouring them or their family. Their need for honor was great. To respond to this need was to ‘love one another with brotherly affection.’

But beyond our general needs we may not know our specific needs. It is – I admit – conceivable that someone else – someone who really knows and loves me – my wife perhaps – might know – better than I know myself – what I should have for breakfast. We do not know our specific needs because we are not honest with ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses.

Paul tells the Roman Christians ‘I bid everyone one of you not think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgement, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him.’ But my problem is not I think – thinking more highly of myself than I ought – though perhaps I am a bit guilty of that – but of thinking of myself with sober judgement and coming to a conclusion about who I am. I do not think I could –very easily - do what Albert Friedlander did as a child: enumerate my talents and gifts – my strengths in other words.

The flip side of recognising one’s strengths is to recognise one’s weaknesses. I certainly cannot easily enumerate my weaknesses. This is even harder than enumerating my strengths. But I do think the attempt is worthwhile. We do this in general terms in most of our acts of worship and we will shortly say a prayer of confession today. But although it is relatively easy I think to acknowledge that, we – in general - commit ‘manifold sins and wickednesses…by thought, word and deed’ it is much harder to admit what these are in detail even to ourselves and certainly to others.

But confessing our sins and weaknesses is not the subject of this sermon: it is identifying our strengths. This is surely the part of ourselves which we present to God at the end of our service, in the prayer of oblation, when we offer ‘ourselves, our sours and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy and lively sacrifice’. After all we can hardly offer our manifold sins and wickednesses to be such a sacrifice can we?

Note that Paul starts this section of his letter on gifts and Christian living with the words ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present you bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service’. The words are obviously the origin of the prayer.

So how are we to identify our strengths? I think that what Paul suggests rather helpfully here in Romans is that we can begin to identify our gifts in the context of our relationships with others. Here he talks about this context as the ‘body of Christ’.

He’s just been talking about presenting our individual bodies as a living sacrifice. Here is another sort of body – a corporate rather than an individual body - and it is only within this body – the body of Christ -that presenting our individual body makes sense. He urges his readers ‘Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us let us use them’ –try them out – in the context of - and for the benefit of - that corporate body to which we belong.

So if we are a prophet we must prophecy, if we are good at serving people we must serve, if we are a teacher we must teach, if we are a car mechanic we must mend cars, only then will the body that we are all part of function properly. Note too that Paul talks about gifts –here at least- as mainly things we do rather than things we are but I think we can see gifts as both character traits and skills.

What is this body of Christ of which we are members and hence ‘individually members one of another’? Those who heard Paul’s letter for the first time would have been wrong to assume that it meant just their little church. It meant at least all the Christians in Roman and beyond.

It seems to me significant that Paul – in this passage – moves seamlessly on from his exhortations to use our gifts to further exhortations about how we are to use these gifts i.e. in a loving fashion. It is no good being good at giving aid to others if we don’t do this with zeal and it’s no good if we have a talent for mercy but aren’t cheerful about it.

This discernment – and more importantly - use of our gifts are primarily acts of love: a response to others needs. Do we first need to love ourselves before we can love one another, as the order of Karen Armstrong’s Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Live would seem to suggest and indeed the commandment to ‘Love our neighbours as ourselves’ implies? Perhaps not: if discernment of our gifts is in the using of them in the service of others.

So loving ourselves is hard. Even knowing ourselves, what we truly need and who we are, including our good qualities, is difficult. Perhaps self-knowledge is not absolutely essential for if we are to love ourselves. We are commanded to love ourselves but only in the context of loving others and not for its own sake.

Why I am no longer a Minister in Secular Employment

This is an edited version of a talk I gave to Churches Together in Earley and East Reading on the 13th October 2011. It is also incorporates material from a farewell editorial I wrote for the journal Ministers-at-Work which can be found here.


First a brief word about who I am. I am Mike Rayner, Director of the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group at the University of Oxford and have been so for over 15 years. I am also an ordained priest in the Church of England and Assistant Curate at St Matthew’s Church, Oxford. I have been a member of the congregation of St Matthew's for over 30 years but the Assistant Curate for only four. I’ll be telling you more about myself over the course of this talk.

In this talk I will suggest that all Christians have a ministry where they work. And we all work – whether we think it or not – and whether we are paid to do so or not. So in that sense we are all ministers at work. But I also want to suggest that some people should be recognised by the Church as having a special ministry where they work – even if that work is not paid by the Church. They should be ordained in other words.

Then having convinced you of that I want to go one step further and suggest that ministry is something we can do when we are not working - for the Church or anyone else. I want to suggest that all of us are 'called' - to have a vocation - to be ministers in all of our lives – both working and non-working. I want to suggest that this should be called Whole Life Ministry - WLM for short. I will also suggest some people should be ordained to be WLMs and I will also try and explain my reasons for this.

But before I really get going I want to talk briefly about four descriptions (used in the Church of England) for ministers who have a ministry, at least in part, outside of the parish in which they live. These terms are Non-Stipendiary Minister (NSM), Self-Supporting Minister (SSM), Minister in Secular Employment (MSE) and Worker Priest.

So first we have that absolutely horrible description ‘Non-Stipendiary Ministry’. This is a horrible term because who want to be defined by what they are not. It implies that non-stipendiary ministers are somehow deficient relative to stipendiary minsters: that they don’t have a stipend and are therefore second class.

Slightly preferable to my mind is ‘Self-Supporting Ministry’: which is coming to replace the term Non-Stipendiary Ministry. But even this term isn’t particularly helpful. What on earth is self-supporting? I am not self-supported and I wonder how many people are. I am supported by the University of Oxford who pay my salary. Self-Supporting Ministry also implies that that person’s ministry is done in their unpaid time – as voluntary work presumably. But I for one see my ministry as being done just as much during the time I am paid to work as in the rest of my time.

The description of my ministry that I have preferred until recently is ‘Ministry in Secular Employment’. I am currently on the ‘management’ committee of an organisation called CHRISM – Christians in Secular Ministry. In fact, until recently, I have been the Editor of its Journal called Minsters-at-Work.

CHRISM - according to its website is the - national association ‘for all Christians who see their secular employment as their primary Christian ministry and for those who support that vision. CHRISM has around 200 members, an Annual Meeting, a journal, tries to set up local branches, etc. Its members are therefore generally NSM/SSMs who see themselves as MSEs. Most members are ordained but not all by any means.

Now I have increasing come to dislike this term MSE. This is primarily because I do not see my employment as secular. To me it is sacred. I have always thought of myself as having a vocation to the work I do. Whether I have always responded in the way God would have had me respond in response to his call I cannot be sure but I hope that I have tried to listen to what he was calling me to do. So a brief description of that aspect of my calling: to paid employment.

I’m not going to run through my cv but at the moment I work full time for the University of Oxford in the Department of Public Health. I am the director of a research group there. The funding for my salary comes from the British Heart Foundation and the research we carry out is into issues such as food labelling, food advertising to children, food taxes, etc.

We aim to do research which has an impact on Government policy – in that we are quite unusual for a university-based research group – but we have had some success in this regard. For example some people credit us with inventing traffic-light labelling for foods and we played a part in writing the current legislation around the tv advertising of junk foods to children. In all of this I see a sacred dimension.

My job for me is part of my ministry. What I do day-to-day – manage staff, write papers, apply for grants, go to meetings etc – I try to do for the glory of God, to help build the Kingdom of God, or however you like to put it. To this extent I am still a Minister Who is Employed by a Not-Overtly-Religious Organisation - the University of Oxford!

But before I explain more about how I see my current ministry and this thing I want to call Whole Life Ministry I want to deal with that fourth term ‘Worker Priest’. This term isn’t generally used in this country. I quite like it but most others don’t. It’s not considered appropriate for a variety of reasons. Firstly some (many?) of us - like me – who feel we have a ministry at work are not exactly workers but managers. ‘Manager Priest’ would be a better description for me rather than ‘Worker Priest’.

A second reason for avoiding the term – not a particularly good reason – is that the term ‘Worker Priest’ is associated with an initiative of the Roman Catholic Church in France, in the 1940s, to pay priests to be based as workers in factories and such like rather than in parishes. However many of these worker priests then got involved with the Trades Unions and were quickly called back to parishes by the Pope who effectively suppressed the movement in the 1950s. So ‘Worker Priest’ is distinctly non-Anglican and has a ‘pinkish tinge’ to boot.

Thirdly of course – whereas NSM, SSM, MSE can be applied to someone who is not ordained and if ordained either a deacon or a priest – the description Worker Priest can only reasonably be applied to someone who is ordained to the priesthood.

I am not going to apologise for spending so much time on words because words are important as John clearly thinks when he begins his gospel with the words ‘In the beginning was the word’. But now I want to try and explain more about how I currently see my ministry. I’ll start by explaining why I am ordained.

Now it is relatively easy to see why someone who has a ministry in the parish in which they live – whether they be stipendiary or non-stipendiary (or self-supporting) should be ordained. But why should some who sees their secular employment as their primary Christian ministry, as CHRISM members and I used to do, be ordained? This is always a difficult question. I guess my answer is: why not?

My own history here might be useful. Whilst I always felt I was called to the work I was doing I also from my late teens felt a calling to the priesthood which I tried to explain to various people at various times. Eventually in my late forties I found some people who thought I had such a vocation too and one of them – a bishop – ordained me (over four years ago now).

I have never, or hardly ever, seen my calling to be a paid employee of the Church of England and also I have never, or hardly ever, felt a calling to be in charge of a parish church. But does an ordained priest remain a priest does when he/she goes off to work for a Not-Overtly-Religious Organisation? Yes of course they do. But do they have a priestly role when they are working for that organisation. This is more difficult. I personally don’t have (much of) a sacramental ministry at work. For example I have never baptised a work-colleague’s baby nor have I celebrated the Eucharist at work. The first has never presented itself as an opportunity. I have never particularly felt the need for the second but I wouldn’t rule either out. I think my priestly ministry at work is primarily through blessing – but I would be hard pushed to explain this adequately.

But back to my ministry at work as opposed to my priesthood at work. One thing to say about this is that some like me see their actual work as their ministry. Others see their work as merely the vehicle for their ministry: the work place as just another possible setting for their ministry.

For people who see merely their work place as a setting for their ministry then various options are open. But here there is, perhaps, a temptation to replicate the things that you might conventionally see or do as ministry where you live in the place where you work. Classically people for example have sought to find and meet together with other Christians at work. Workplace Christian Unions are one expression of this. Taking this further Workplace Alpha courses have been run apparently successfully in some places. I’ve experimented with this sort of thing by, for example, running a series of meditation sessions at my work-place. I wouldn’t recommend this. It didn’t really work for me and the sessions were quite a lot of work for little – in my view –reward (though I am not sure all those who attended would agree.)

Of course preaching the gospel doesn’t need words as St Francis reminds us. Workplace ministry is as much about being as talking. And for me it is not just about whether or not you steal the odd paper-clips from your employer. I confess I do. It’s clearly much more than that. For one it’s much more about how I interact with my boss, those who work for me, my work-colleagues, my competitors at other universities, the civil servants and politicians I lobby, etc. etc. Actually everyone who works has these types of relationships.

At St Matthew’s we – at one point – set up a ‘Faith-at-work’ group – which attracted a lot of people for a while. And this is something I would recommend trying out, if you have a big enough congregation, and a few people who are prepared to set up such a group. One of the successful things our faith at work group did was spend a morning discussing relationships at work and how we could bring our faith to bear on sorting these out.

But for me – as I said earlier - it also matters what I do at work, not just how I do it. This is the famous question addressed by Luther who claimed that there is nothing un-Christian about being a hang-man if you hang people to the glory of God. In CHRISM meetings we argue quite a lot about whether some or indeed any jobs are incompatible with being a minister (ordained or otherwise). Prostitution at least seems to be ruled out by most people, hanging people, not by all.

But to finish I wanted to elaborate upon this idea that for all of us our ministry is surely not just done in one place or is neatly delineated from the rest our life. Over the past few years I have come to see my ministry as being in and through the whole of my life and not just or even mainly in or through my employment. And this is why I would no longer wish to call myself a Minister in Secular Employment and prefer to call myself a Whole Life Minister – not a particularly felicitous term but I can’t think of anything better.

In his important book, the ‘Stature of Waiting, W H Vanstone points out that for most of our lives we do no work: we receive rather than give, we wait. He notes that Jesus’ life can be divided into two halves: his active ministry and his passive ministry if you like where the turning point is the Garden of Gethsemane. Up to that point Jesus has been doing and acting. Rather breathlessly if you read Mark’s account. Then after the Garden of Gethsemane he is done to. Arrested, tried, tortured, killed. His passion is non-active. It is the paradigm for the waiting we must all do –particularly, but not exclusively, at the beginning at ends of our lives. Are we a lesser human being when we wait rather than do? Did Jesus not have a ministry while he was being arrested, tried, tortured, killed, done to? Of course he did. Reflecting on waiting is one reason why I think why we don’t just have a ministry while we are rushing about, at work, if you like, but also when we are just being.

Moreover I am not quite sure why I have to see my ministry as primarily in any particular activity or even non-activity. But if pressed to do so I would say that at this particular stage of my life my primary ministry is, for the moment at least, ‘in’ and through food and art! By primary I mean the aspect of my ministry I feel most passionate about.

Are food and art anything to do with my paid employment? Well the food is but the art isn’t.

As I said earlier food, or at least research into food, is what I am paid to ‘do’. And this has led to a developing interest in the connection between food and faith and giving sermons and talks and even organising a conference, on this issue. I have also begun to lead meditations around eating and making food. My latest experiment has been in running contemplative bread making sessions which seem to work quite well.

I find it interesting – but perhaps not surprising – that this ministry through food (sermons, contemplative bread making sessions) takes place not at my workplace (the University) but in churches or church halls but it clearly has a connection with my paid work.

And art? What is this about a ministry through art? Is that Ministry at Work No I am not employed as an artist. I have an amateur interest in art that’s ‘all’. I have always enjoyed going to art exhibitions but I cannot say art has been a particularly big thing in my life. Rather strangely (at least to me) I have found that I have developed an embryonic ministry ‘in’ art though a developing passion for giving ‘art sermons’. You can find further details elsewhere.

In some ways I have given up trying to define my ministry. I don’t want to be labelled. In particular I do not want to be labelled NSM/SSM or MSE. If you must, call me a WLM. Of course everyone of us has to work out for ourselves – in discussion with God - what shape our Whole Life Ministry should take but for me it has been though trying to make connections between my faith and the rest of my life – be it my paid employment, a rather undeveloped hobby, my relationships. It seems easier – more fruitful that way.

The questions remains: why does a WLM need to be ordained? The answer seems to be in reversing the question. Shouldn’t everyone who is ordained be a WLM? The answer to that question in clearly yes. There is no ‘time-off’ from ministry for anyone ordained or not. I suppose there is then the question of why anyone should or needs to be ordained at all. But that’s for another day.

I am bad at summarising but here are some take home messages. We all have a ministry. A ministry of all believers if you like. Some of us are lucky enough to be paid for it. Those who are paid by the Church have the roughest deal I feel. All of us work – at least for part of our lives - and for all of us our work is part of our ministry – an important part but not the only part. We all have to work out our ministry in fear and trembling.

Updated on the 9th June 2012

A note added on 3rd March 2018: 

This is where I originally had after the words: 'In all of this I see a sacred dimension,' the words: 'You may not believe that I have heard God aright but I think God is calling me to work towards the introduction of soft-drink taxes in this country'.  I removed these words from this 'blog' - not because I was embarrassed by them, or because I didn't believe them anymore - but because they were being used by the food industry and others e.g. here in their opposition to the sugary drinks industry tax (now to be introduced later this month).   

New Year resolutions: a type of prayer?

Sermon on Mark 1: 9-20 and Galatians 4: 4-7, St Matthew’s, Oxford, 1 January 2012




The theme today is ‘New beginnings’. It won’t have escaped your notice that this is New Year’s Day but you might not remember that is it at this time of the Church Year we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus. Now New Year is a time when traditionally we review our life and make New Year resolutions. And of course Jesus’ Baptism comes at the start of his ministry and so marks the beginning of a new phase in his life just as, in a minor way, the New Year represents a new beginning in ours.

In my sermon I want to give you some advice on New Year’s resolutions based on Mark’s account of the start of Jesus’ ministry that we heard for our Gospel reading just now. This is perhaps rather ambitious Even more ambitiously I want to link today’s Epistle reading from Paul’s letter to the Galatians to the theme of ‘New Beginnings’. I suspect that you might have forgotten what that said by now as it doesn’t make much sense out of context but it contains an important idea within it which related to our theme.

But first: New Year’s resolutions. Now New Year’s Day has not traditionally been regarded as a Christian festival but perhaps it is becoming so. Like those other previously secular festivals: Harvest Festival, Mother’s Day, etc. the Church should perhaps more enthusiatically embrace New Year’s Day as one of its own special days.

Of course New Year’s Day doesn’t come at the beginning of the Church’s Year which starts four Sundays before Christmas at the beginning of Advent but it does come just after Christmas and the celebration of Jesus’ birth. And a birth surely constitutes a fairly important beginning so January 1st feels like the beginning of the year and certainly more so than the end of November/early December.

New Years’ Day is also associated with those resolutions. You might not be planning on making any this year but what I have to say may still be relevant to you. After all reflecting on our lives and making changes in the light of those reflections is something Christians are enjoined to do. Paul’s letters are full of injunctions to the early Christians to think about what they have been doing and then move on, to mature, to be more-Christ-like.

Reflecting on our lives and making changes in the light of those reflections is surely also the essence of repentance: something Christians have traditionally done most of in Advent and Lent – in the preparation for the major festivals of Christmas and Easter, but there is no reason why we shouldn’t do it at the start of the year. The time between Christmas and New Year is a quiet time for many of us – and a much quieter, less busy time than say Advent. And we need a period of quiet in order to make sensible resolutions.

Now I think it is easy to sneer at New Year resolutions. Certainly other peoples’ resolutions are faintly comic. Here are the resolutions of someone called Bridget Jones for 1996:

Stop smoking

Stop drinking

Find inner poise

Go to the Gym three times a week

Don’t flirt with boss

Reduce thighs

Learn to love thighs

Forget about thighs

Stop making lists


Of course Bridget Jones wasn’t a real person but, according to Wikipedia, these resolutions aren’t very different to the most commonly made New Year’s resolutions. But I should say that the Wikipedia page on New Year’s resolutions looks distinctly dodgy and really the only useful thing it indicates is that there is a lack of reliable research on the subject. And this, I think, is because people are reluctant to talk very much about them or if they do only in a jokey sort of way.

One reason why we find Bridget Jones’s resolutions funny is because they resonate with our own desires. Don’t we all want to give up our addictions, life healthier less stressful lives, stop doing those things that – like Paul we do but do not want to do - find more inner poise? OK we may not be so obsessed by our thighs as Bridget but there is no doubt something else about our character which we earnestly desire to change. And there may be nothing wrong with these desires. Part of following Christ is wanting to be a better person.

We don’t generally express these desires – particularly not in public – and only reluctantly to people we trust because they are in part an acknowledgement of what we see as our personal imperfections, what we feel ashamed about in ourselves.

So perhaps we treat New Year’s resolutions too lightly. Perhaps they reflect what the Bible consistently teaches and what we know in our hearts that not all is right in our lives. And perhaps they stem from a deep-seated desire that things might be different.

The other thing that makes New Year resolutions a delicate and difficult subject is that we all know they are extremely difficult to keep. I have tried recently to see if I can find any evidence that people are more likely to give up smoking in January than in any other month of the year: evidence of a sort that at least one common type of New Year’s resolution works – but I cannot find any such evidence At the end of the year Bridget Jones writes in her diary: ‘Number of New Year’s resolutions kept 1. An excellent year’s progress.’

Moving swiftly from the start of the year 1996 for 30s something Bridget Jones’s to Mark’s description of the start of the new ministry for 30s something Jesus. There are quite a lot of contrasts as you might imagine.

A thing to note about Mark’s account: Mark - in his usual rather breathless style - actually describes four beginnings to Jesus’ ministry: First Jesus’ Baptism; secondly an extremely brief description – much shorter than in Matthew and Luke - of Jesus’ temptations by the Devil in the wilderness. This is such a brief a mention you might have missed it. Thirdly a short description of what Jesus first began to preach about at the start of his ministry - again much shorter than Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts. And finally Jesus’ calling of his first four disciples: Peter and Andrew, James and John

In other words Jesus doesn’t just resolve to change his life at some random point in his early 30s. He first marks the occasion with a baptismal ceremony, secondly he goes off by himself into the wilderness to contemplate his future, thirdly he connects his plans with what has gone before – what the prophets had foretold and what John the Baptist had recently been saying- and finally knowing that he cannot do all that he wants to do himself, co-opts some friends to help him.

So my advice about life changing resolutions based on this.

1. Make them on a special occasion. New Year’s Day may be such a day. It might also be appropriate to announce them – as Jesus did to the world when he allowed himself to be baptised by his cousin John.

2. Think about them before you make them. Go alone into the wilderness – like Jesus did – or at least to a quiet place where you can reflect on what you are going to resolve. But there you will encounter wild animals and angels – as Jesus did according to Mark. Of course wild animals is a metaphor for difficulties and angels a metaphor for assistance from God.

3. Don’t think you can just forget about the past – the past is what makes you what you are now. Jesus ministry only makes sense in the context of what his fore-runners, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, John the Baptist had learnt from God. It was they who prepared the way for him. Similarly our resolutions have to make sense in the context of what has gone before.

4. Co-opt others to help you.

This all sounds like something you could find in many a self-help manual written by one of those TV psychologists but we know that making life-changing resolutions is not as simple as that. In particular we know –from experience that they are almost impossible to keep. The important word here is almost.

They are almost impossible to keep because of something called by psychologists, attitudinal ambivalence. When this is in operation – and it’s something which is much more common than we like to believe - we desire to behave in a different way to the way we usually behave but, for a variety of reasons, we are unable to make this change.

We might wish to be thinner but when confronted with that second mince pie we are unable to resist it. We know we should spend more time with our children but when asked by a work colleague to take on that extra piece of work we find it difficult to say no. Paul talks about this in his letter to the Romans where he explains: ‘I do not understand my own actions for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate‘ [7: 15].

And this is where our Epistle reading from Paul’s letter to the Galatians comes in and that important idea that it contains which bears upon our theme. This comes in Chapter 4 Verse 6 which says, ‘And because you are sons God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, the spirit who calls out Abba, Father.’ This seems to me a completely remarkable verse with a completely remarkable idea. It has its parallel in Paul’s letter to the Romans. There he says: ‘When we cry Abba, Father it is the Spirit bearing witness with our spirits that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.’ [8: 15-17]

Here Paul is developing one of his themes that somehow we Christians live in God and he in us. Jesus talks about this himself in his last words to the disciples where he prays: ‘The glory that thou hast given me I have given them, that they may become perfectly one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me.’ [John 17: 21-22] This mutual indwelling of Christ in us and us in Christ has an important ramification when it comes to prayer as Paul points out in Galatians 4:6 and Romans 8: 15. That is that when we say Abba, Father it is not we who are praying but God within us.

I recently gave a sermon here at an 8 o’clock communion service where I tackled the question of whether God could or would grant a prayer for fine weather at a church fete. I then posted this sermon on my blog and a friend of mine commented on it. He pointed out that I’d forgotten that true prayer is where God prays in us. And if this is the case the question of whether God can or cannot answer certain prayers becomes irrelevant.

Bridget Jones’ New Year resolutions read like a prayer. Here they are the first five again with ‘Let me’ before each one

Let me stop smoking

Let me stop drinking

Let me find inner poise

Let me go to the Gym three times a week

Let me not flirt with the boss


Aren’t all our life-changing resolutions really a prayer? Bridget Jones seems to direct this prayer at herself. So isn’t she bound to fail? What if she directed her requests at God rather than herself? Would she then see a transformation in her life? She too – as I did before my friend reminded me - might need reminding that prayers only work if it’s the Spirit of God who is making them.

Sermons are supposed to end with something to take away that we can apply. In this sermon I gave you the application in the middle where – to recap – I suggested we could look at how Jesus started his ministry and do what he did at the start of new phases in our life, such as the start of a new year. In brief I suggested you should (and not necessarily in this order): 1. Celebrate the occasion. 2. Go alone into the wilderness to plan any change. 3 Don’t forget about the past. 4. Co-opt others to help you.

But my more important message is that none of this is going to be any good without the Spirit of God within us.

Does God grant fine weather for church fêtes?

Sermon on Philippians 4: 4-7, St Matthew’s, 18th December 2011




The verse I’d like to pick out for comment today is a verse from our Epistle reading – Chapter 4 Verse 6 of Paul’s letter to the Philippians: ‘Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God’.

I’d like to focus on this verse because I have been thinking about petitionary prayer recently in the light of an ongoing discussion I’ve been having with various people about God’s omnipotence and omniscience.

Although a debate about what we mean by God’s omnipotence and omniscience might seem a bit esoteric, I do think it’s an important debate because what we decide affects what we think we are doing when we pray for things to happen and what we can legitimately pray for. In this sermon I would like to say something about each of these in turn.

I would like to argue firstly that in petitionary prayer we can persuade God to do change his mind and secondly miracles do happen and it’s OK to pray for a miracle.

But back to omnipotence and omniscience for a moment. The basic dilemma for me is this: if God is omnipotent - in the usual meaning of that word (ITUMOTW) - then he is in control of everything including all that has happened and is going to happen in the future. Indeed he might be said to have already caused everything that has happened including some horrendous evils such as the Holocaust and the crucifixion of his son. This I find difficult to accept.

Furthermore if God is omnipotent – in the usual meaning of that word – he has already – in a sense – foreordained everything that is going to happen and therefore knows what is going to happen. He is omniscient. So what is the point of petitionary prayer? Why, in Paul’s word’s should we let our requests be known to God if he knows what we want already and he knows whether he is going to answer that prayer or not?

One common answer to this conundrum is that what we are doing in prayer is somehow bringing our desires in line with those of God’s. In other words prayer is not so much telling God what he already knows but our learning from him what he thinks. This makes prayer an odd sort of conversation. Here is such a conversation with an omnipotent (ITUMOTW) and omniscient God

Me: Please God could we have fine weather for the Church fete next Saturday.

God: Mike: you know from the weather forecast that it will probably rain.

Me: I know that, and you know that I know that, but that’s why I am praying for fine weather.

God: But Farmer Jones in the next village has just prayed for rain. And I know that his need is greater than yours.

Me: Ah I see. So I don’t suppose there anything I could say to persuade you that our need is greater than Farmer Jones’s: the immanent closure of the local Adventure Play ground we are raising money for, for example.

God: Nope.

Me: Ah well.

This seems to me a rather unsatisfactory conversation. A more satisfactory conversation with God would surely run like this.

Me: Please God could we have fine weather for the Church fete next Saturday.

God: Mike: you know from the weather forecast that it will probably rain.

Me: I know that, and you know that I know that, but that’s why I am praying for fine weather.

God: But Farmer Jones in the next village has just prayed for rain. And I think that his need is greater than yours.

Me: Is there anything I could say to persuade you that our need is greater than Farmer Jones’s: the immanent closure of the local Adventure Play ground we are raising money for, for example.

God: I’ll look into it.

Of course if this sort of conversation is more like real prayer than the first then it follows that a) we stand some chance of persuading God to do things that he wouldn’t have otherwise done and b) he can intervene in our lives and indeed his creation – including the weather - in ways which are miraculous.

I have argued before that one of the reasons why I think God is persuadable is, paradoxically perhaps, that he isn’t entirely in control of everything and doesn’t therefore know about everything and that is because he has given us free will. This means that God’s decisions are contingent upon our decisions to some extent. And it also means that he does not necessarily know everything that is going to happen – is not omniscient.

In the imaginary conversation above, God may will not yet know what the local Council are going to do in relation to funding for the Adventure Playground – because the relevant meeting has not yet taken place and the relevant free choices have not been made. In which case God’s decision about the rain is still be open at the time of my prayer.

In sum I think petitionary prayer – even for fine weather at church fetes –sometimes works because God has yet to make up his mind what is going to happen. And by works I do mean efficacious. I realise that it is somewhat piously said that God answers all our prayers but in the way he wants not the way we want. But this to me is a sort of cop out. It seems to me to suggest that our desires do not matter to God.

And here is a bit of a diversion about prayers for fine weather at church fetes. It is surprising how often this turns up as an example of the sort of prayer a mature Christian would not and should not make. It’s an interesting sort of prayer because we know that if it is fine for our fete that won’t be good for someone else – a local farmer is usually wheeled in here – so in making the prayer we are asking for the impossible – a miracle if you like. And perhaps this is why it is selected as an example of a faintly ridiculous sort of prayer. For of course it is always much easier to pray for what is possible - the non-miraculous. But I’ll come back to asking for miracles in prayer later.

We mature Christians also know, of course, that God is more interested in prayers for other people rather than ourselves. Church fetes score a few points on the worthiness scale here because it’s not just us who will enjoy the event more if the weather is fine t but all those others who will attend. But in praying for others we tend to feel our prayers should be for serious problems like big life decisions or serious diseases. We presume God’s not interested in minor colds or how people are going to find time to do all the things they need to do before Christmas or whether or not people are going to get wet at the church fete?

Note that in our reading Paul says that ‘in everything’ not just ‘in serious things’ we should, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let our requests be known to God’. Furthermore he doesn’t say ‘requests for other people’ or even ‘requests we think God will answer’ but – at least by implication – all our requests – whether we think God is interested in them or not.

So one reason why I think we should let God know our requests is that we cannot predict how God might answer them. And indeed God cannot entirely do so either even though his knowledge is infinitely greater than ours. I also think it is somewhat presumptuous of us, even arrogant, to suggest which aspects of our lives God is interested in and to predict how God might answer prayers about our concerns.

And this is where miracle comes in. An omnipotent God (ITUMOTW – is to my mind dangerously close to an absent God. If God fore-ordained everything from the start what need is there for miracles? If for example God - from the very beginning - planned for the Israelites to escape from Egypt via the Red Sea, he would have known when would be the best time for them to cross over without any need for a miraculous parting of that sea. We now know that there are certain freak weather conditions which make the Red Sea passable on occasion.

The Bible is full of miracles and at the heart of the Christian story is a miracle: a baby born in a stable who was somehow God. Furthermore when that baby grew up the miraculous seemed to happen all around him. When people asked him for healing from serious illness it happened, the winds and waves appeared to obey him and when he died he miraculously rose from the grave.

It is extremely difficult I think to explain away all miracle and still be left with a meaningful Bible. And in any case I am not sure that the miraculous is –even nowadays – is as exceptional as we might think. If we look we can see miracles all around us. We sometimes see or even experience healings from diseases where there would seem to be no hope of a cure. Sometimes even the weather changes seemingly as a result of prayer.

Note that the parting of the Red Sea was a weather-related miracle in response to a prayer from Moses and so too were some of the miracles of Jesus such as his calming of the storm. John Taylor – in The Christlike God – tells this story of a weather-related miracle.

‘Forty years ago my wife, Peggy and I were climbing a mountain in East Africa with four friends. After a night in a mountain hut the others set out to make for the summit while we prepared food and water for the evening meal; then we went after them. We go up without encountering them but this did not surprise us as they had been gone some time. When we started back I made a reckless blunder. Forgetting that the summit had been a constant landmark and the return would be without one, I suggested a short cut across the wide arc we had come by. We lost our bearings, got into very rough terrain and had to cringe under an overhanging cliff while a black thunderstorm drenched us. When it passed I looked in all directions with no idea where the hut lay, and appalled realisation of what I had done. In a very small voice Peggy said, ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’

‘I said, ‘Yes. I’m dreadfully sorry, it’s my fault.’

‘She said, her voice quite steady, ‘I’m frightened, John.’

‘‘So am I’ was all I could answer.

‘And then she said, ‘Well. It is Whitsunday,‘ and at that instant a beam of sunlight struck though the cloud and shone for a few seconds on the hut about two miles away, reflected dazzlingly from its aluminium roof, giving us our bearings. It was the most direct act of Good I have personally experienced.’

But Taylor does not stop there he goes on immediately to say, ‘but the miracle did not happen up there in the grey sky. The break in the cloud was going to happen anyway.’ I am not so certain. Is it so difficult to believe that God could cause a break in the cloud? We now know from Chaos Theory that it only takes a butterfly to flap its wing in Indonesia for the weather to change in East Africa.

Taylor says ‘What I know for certain is that, had I characteristically been protesting that we could still find our way, and had Peggy retorted, with justice, ‘How could you be such a fool?’, we would have been glaring at each other and would never have seen that pointing shaft of light. The miracle was in us, they almost always are’.

Why is John Taylor so certain that the miracle was in the changing of the usual dispositions of the two people here rather than break in the cloud? Which miracle is harder to believe? Is it so much harder for God to change the nerve impulse of a butterfly in Indonesia so that it flaps its wing than the nerve impulse(s) of two people in East Africa so that they would look at the relevant spot rather than be glaring at one another.

Perhaps miracles in answer to prayer happen all the time. Perhaps our problem is that we don’t see the miraculous answers.

So to summarise. And perhaps it has taken me a long time to state the obvious . But firstly God listens to our prayers and sometimes answers our requests and secondly it may take a miracle to answer some of our requests but that’s no excuse for not making our requests known to God. Miracles sometimes happen. So with Paul I say,‘Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God’.