A sermon for New Year's Day 2023: Letting go of anxieties

St Matthew's Oxford, 1st January 2023

Readings: Isaiah 49: 8-15 and Matthew 6: 24-34.   

Today is New Year’s Day - a day when we traditionally review the past year and think about the coming year.   My sermon today is entitled, ‘Letting go of anxieties’.   It is by way of a follow up to a sermon I gave on Remembrance Day entitled, ‘Letting go of memories’.  That was about letting go of the past.   Today I want to talk to you about letting go of the future.   My sermon is a sort of antidote to the notion of New Year’s Resolutions.   And it is about being hopeful rather than anxious about the future.

Now anxiety is something we all suffer from to some degree and at some points in our lives.  Anxiety can be so extreme for some of us that we need to seek help from other people.  In this sermon, I don’t want to trivialise anxiety or suggest that I don’t think anxiety isn’t serious: far from it.   Our neighbours who feels anxious deserve our sympathy.  We who feel anxious need to be relieved of our anxieties, to be healed even.

Nor do I wish to suggest that anxiety is unnecessary.  Many of us have good cause to be anxious.  The causes of anxiety can be real enough.  The rising cost of living in the UK is having effects on all of us but particularly on those of us who don’t have much money in the first place.   When Jesus says, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow’, as we heard in our reading just now, he is not saying that there is no reason to worry about tomorrow.  Jesus’ listeners were living in much more precarious times than most of us here today.  He knew his listeners lived in times where ‘where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal’.  Jesus is not being unrealistic about his listeners’ lives nor our own.

However the causes of anxiety can also be imagined.  When we were young many of us were afraid of the dark – a fear which we grew out of.  I like to think that all anxieties are fears which we will eventually grow out of – if only at our deaths.

Anxieties can be about all sorts of different things, about how much money we have to live on, whether we are going to recover from an illness, what we are going to wear at a party.  We can worry about almost anything. 

Anxieties can be for the day after today or they can be for the more distant future, the wider meaning of tomorrow.  In saying, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow,’ Jesus was clearly talking about tomorrow in both senses.   We can predict with some certainty what we will be doing the day after today and therefore whether to anticipate that with pleasure or fear.  But we cannot be absolutely certain: the unexpected can happen without warning.   When it comes to the more distant future, things are even more uncertain, though we know, – in the words of Julian of Norwich - that eventually, ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

Even if, in theory, we know that eventually all will be well many of us feel anxious about the future: we fear the effects of the cost-of living crisis, the war in Ukraine, global warming, again not without reason.   What should we do about our anxieties?   Jesus says at the end of today’s reading, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’   I think that this means we should let go of those anxieties about the future, live in the present, focus on the now.

Anxieties are, I think, quite difficult to talk about for most of us, because they relate to our identities, who we are.  Many people do not wish to share with others the fact they are running out of money, are feeling progressively insecure.  Anxieties, not ‘just’ about our physical well-being but about our mental health, our gender, our sexuality may be even harder to share.  And when we hear that Jesus has told us not to worry, it may seem like a failure on our part to do so.  We may even be ashamed of our anxieties– perhaps thinking that people will feel the less of us if we were to reveal our worries to them.

 

What do we do with our anxieties?    One way we are naturally inclined to, is to seek to deal with them ourselves, to pull ourselves together as it were.  This can take the form of preparations for the future.  Jesus seems to say that:  on the contrary, ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…but rather store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where you treasure is your heart will be also.’   By storing up treasures on earth Jesus means accumulating material wealth and the supposed security that brings whereas by treasures in heaven he means our good deeds.   He tells us at the beginning of our reading that ‘No one can serve two masters…You cannot Serve God and Mammon.’   Mammon is an Aramaic word for wealth and not just possessions.   Jesus is saying you cannot rely on your wealth and on God.

Rather than rely on our own resources, or indeed our abilities to accumulate the resources which would seemingly make our lives more secure, Jesus says we should be more like the birds who neither ‘sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns and yet have enough to eat’. 

And this is why I do not think we should make New Year’s Resolutions.  I don’t think that it is heretical to say so.   The Bible does not command us to make New Year’s Resolutions.   I find in my files the text of a sermon I gave at St Matthew’s exactly 10 years go entitled ‘New Year resolutions: a type of prayer?’   At least there was a question at the end of the title.   I would like to say, contrary to what I said 10 years ago, that New Year’s resolutions are not a type of prayer.  Resolutions encourage us to believe that all we need to do for our lives to be better is to make one more effort.  

In saying, ‘Do not worry about tomorrow’ Jesus is not saying we should not make plans.   Plans are important and helpful, for by looking ahead to what we want to accomplish in the future, we direct our energies as we work with what we have to hand.   After all even birds make plans for having their young by building nests.  Jesus tells us that all that we need has already been given to us.   Just as the grass is already adorned with flowers without making any effort itself, so too are we have been given all that we really need.  But whatever plans we make have should be applied to the resources we have at the present time.

This switches our attention away from the future to the present moment.  A meditation on eating a satsuma might seemingly have little to do with anxieties for the future but it too focuses our minds, if only for a few minutes, on the present moment and in doing so we forget the future.   Ultimately we do not know what we will be doing tomorrow, we can, though it is perhaps easier said than done, let go of our anxieties by living in the present where we do know where we are.

In our passage from Isaiah this morning the people of Judah find it impossible to believe the prophet’s assurance that the days of their exile have come to an end, not just will come to end, have in fact already done so.  Isaiah says that God has told him to say to the exiles ‘Come out’ from Babylon and return to Judah because this is the ’time of favour’ and the ‘day of salvation.

‘Sing for joy,’ Isaiah says to the heavens,’ and exult, O earth; …For the Lord has comforted his people, and will have compassion on his suffering ones’.  But the people say ‘‘The Lord has forsaken us, our Lord has forgotten us.’  They feel the prophet’s message is too good to be true.  The job of the prophet is to persuade the people of God of God’s gracious activity in their lives at that point in time and it is my task today.

Jesus, like Isaiah, announces a new beginning in the shape of the Kingdom of God.  And his teaching about this Kingdom is supremely relevant to our thinking about the future.   At the beginning of Mark’s gospel Jesus announces that, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand.’ [Mark 1: 15].  In other words the Kingdom of God is now.   When the Pharisees ask Jesus about when the Kingdom of God was coming he says, ‘In fact the Kingdom of God is among you’ [Luke 17:20-21].   In some paradoxical way for Jesus the Kingdom of God was both still to come and yet among us, both present and future, both already and not yet.

I think most Christians have concluded that what Jesus of meant was that the future kingdom is the full and final reality, whereas right now we have it partially in ways that are promised rather than actual.   This assures us that the Kingdom is certainly going to arrive, but like a child waiting for Christmas we just have to be patient and wait.  But I don’t think Jesus would have said the Kingdom of God is among us if that was all he meant.  I have come to suspect that we Christians have so stressed the not yet of this announcement of the Kingdom that we have lost touch with the already.   We do of course have the promise of Jesus’ return to console us but in that consolation that things will in the end be better we have miss his assurance that ‘things can be better now.  ’

And of course because we know that all will be well in the end, we slip into an attitude that the mess of the moment has to be put up with and find ourselves thinking and even saying ‘You can’t change human nature’, ‘You can’t change the system’, ‘Politics will always be a dirty business’.  And so we take it for granted that transformation is not here yet.   But if Jesus is right and the Kingdom is already with us, transformation is possible now.

It might seem almost impossible for us humans to let go of our fears for the future, to let God deal with our anxieties.   We hold our anxieties close as if they are part of our identities.    But let go we must.   Just as we are to let go of the past – not to forget it – but to let go of the conflict and suffering it causes us in our present, so we are to let go of the future.   This doesn’t mean that we stop making plans, but that we should let go of our fears for that future .

When I talked about letting go of the past last Remembrance Day I reminded you that Jesus says, in John’s gospel, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’   That is the we are to let go of ourselves if we are to have a new identity in Christ .  And again, in Luke’s gospel ‘So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple’.   It is in dying to self – and in that I would include our letting go of our anxieties – were we find new life.   In this new life focused on the present we find hope for the future rather than fear.

Dying to self may be almost impossible for us to do by ourselves – and perhaps we need God to help.   But to let go of self is to let God.  To let God is to let God take responsibility for what is seemingly impossible for us.   But by letting go of our selves we open ourselves to the possibility of God’s loving, presence in our lives: his Kingdom of God.   A loving presence that will transform us, give us peace and help us bring peace and compassion to others.   

A sermon for Remembrance Day 2022

 Readings: Isaiah 2: 1-5; Romans 12: 9-21

I have been reading a book by a theologian called Paul Knitter - thanks to a recommendation from [X].  In that book Paul Knitter recounts this story of a meeting of something called the Inter-religious Peace Council in Israel/Palestine in 2000.   He writes:

“We had spent more than a week listening to the grievances, the fears, the angers of both Palestinians and Israelis.   We were gathered with students and teachers at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, on Holocaust Memorial Day, after an emotionally wrenching ceremony remembering the victims of Nazi terror.  In our subsequent discussions we heard the Jewish participants talk of the ‘the need to remember,’ never to forget, so that ‘never’ again will such horrors occurs.   As the conversation flowed easily back and forth, Geshe Sopa, Tibetan monk and scholar, raised his hand then quietly but forthrightly asked the Dean of the Hebrew Union College, ‘But why do you have to remember’.

After an awkward, almost horrified moment of silence, Geshe continued, ‘What would happen if you let go of such memories of suffering?’   He went on to speak of the sufferings [that] the Tibetan people are enduring from the Chinese, adding that what is important now, in the moment, is not to cling to memories of the past but to understand that the Chinese are acting out of…ignorance… .  The reaction that follows such understanding is compassion for mistakes made.  We must feel compassion for all who are suffering, on both sides.  We [Tibetans] don’t look at the Chinese as evil, but try to find a peaceful solution and make them happy and peaceful.

Unfortunately, but also understandably, there was no further discussion of Geshe’s question and suggestion.  It was so different, so un-imagined, that it was, probably, not understood.   A similar silence was the response a few days later when Geshe made a similar statement to the director of the Dehieshe Camp for Palestinian refugees [in Bethlehem]."

Paul Knitter goes on to say “To let go of angers from the past [and fears for the future] in order to be free of them and so fully present to the moment is something very difficult for us Christians and Westerners to understand.  Or perhaps we are afraid to understand. "

This idea that we need to let go of our responses to suffering in and to the past is I think relevant to our act of remembrance just now.  Our Christian faith is a historical faith with a strong sense that God has intervened in history – in particular in the history of the people of Israel - and culminating in the death our founder – Jesus – on a particular Friday in around the year AD 33.   So we are bound to have the sense that history is important.   In a way we are a people defined by the past.   But we have a choice as how we remember that past.   I would like to suggest that there is a good and a bad remembering when it comes to Remembrance Day.  A bad remembering is in essence to hold on to the past: a good remembering is to let go of it.   To let go is to let God., as I will aim to explain later.

But what precisely are we remembering on Remembrance Day?   Our liturgy just now summarised this with the words, ‘We remember with thanksgiving and sorrow those whose lives, in world wars and conflicts past and present, have been given and taken away.’  This means, of course, not just the people who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars but in all wars right up to current wars including that between Russia and Ukraine.  And, of course, Remembrance Day is not just about remembering lives lost but also the suffering and grief that is caused by war for those caught up in it – both combatants and non-combatants.  Perhaps there are even some here today who have suffered – and may continue to suffer - because of war.  If so we should remember them in our prayers and I am sure we will do so later in this service.

However a bad way of remembering wars and conflicts is to glorify them.  By that I mean to remember the lives lost in victories rather than in defeats, of those on our side rather than on theirs.  To glorify war is to see war as necessary, even as God’s will, instead of a mistake.  It is to view it as a series of courageous acts of bravery worthy of medals rather than of the much more mundane daily living in terror and fear, the loss of courage and of decent into despair.  It is I think worth remembering today that there were about 100,000 British soldiers who deserted during the Second World War whose stories are seldom told.

On Remembrance Day we are sometimes urged to see lives lost in wars as acts of sacrifice – analogous to Jesus laying down his life for his friends.  I think we should be suspicious of such sacrifice language.  It is to give a meaning to war, even a justifiable purpose, which is to come close to glorifying it. 

Furthermore most of those who lost their lives in the First and Second World were conscripts - as a many of the Russian soldiers in the current Russia-Ukraine war.   These conscripts did not and do not voluntarily give up their lives, their lives were and are being taken.   Rather than sacrifices, most lives lost in war are reasonless slaughter or worse the results of orders from politicians and military leaders far from the fighting.

But there are good ways of remembering wars.  There are those that result in lessons learnt so that we might avoid wars in the future.   I also want to suggest that a good remembering helps people let go of their anger, their grief, their suffering as a result of the past as a step to resolving conflicts in the present (as Geshe Sopa suggests). To remember wars in a good way is the opposite of glorifying them.  It is to see them for what they are but then to let go of the memory.  

Our readings today, from the book of Isaiah and then from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, were about war and conflict – and of course the authors cannot but acknowledge their reality.  Neverless they do not dwell on past wars and conflicts.  The eyes of Isaiah are firmly on the future and of Paul are firmly on the present.

Isaiah, in his prophecy of the future, sees a time when there is no more war, when people ‘shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks [and] nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’. 

Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, in the passage we heard today, talks about conflicts between neighbours rather than nations but what he says is relevant to all conflict..  Paul here, is echoing the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells us to ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’  Paul, similarly, urges the Roman Christians not just to bear with their enemies but ‘No, if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink.  He then rather spoils this, in my view, by claiming that by this means they will be heaping burning coals on their enemies’ heads.

Neither Isaiah nor Paul ignore the reality of past war and conflict.  But both recommend handing over the ultimate resolution of conflict to God. Isaiah says,‘He (God) shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples.’  Paul says, ‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’  In other words, if we have taken sides in a war or conflict, we are to cease our partisanship and let God decide who was or is right or wrong.  This is of course almost impossible when the conflict is current such as the China-Tibet conflict or the Russia-Ukraine war

Now it might seem paradoxical to suggest that remembrance should be linked to letting go.   Because to let go might seem to be to forget.   But I am not saying that letting go is to forget what happened – rather to let go of the feelings that those memories of what happened invoke.   

When I was a child there were still people who felt grief and sorrow for family and friends lost in the Second and even the First World War.   And indeed many people in Britain were still angry with the Germans and the Japanese.   But those of us left commemorating Remembrance Day in church today can have no memory of those who died in the Second World War – let alone the First World War.   However war and conflict are very much still with us and we may know people who have died or suffered in more recent wars: in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Ukraine.  

So are we to let go of our grief at those losses?  Yes I think so.   As the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes puts it: ‘There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.   More important perhaps is to let go of our anger: in particular that directed at our former or even current enemies. Letting go of our anger generates the possibility of forgiveness, of reconciliation and therefore of peace. 

Jesus says in John’s gospel ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’  It is in dying to self – and in that I would include our letting go of our anger about and grief for the past – we find a new life, a new way of looking at death and suffering.

Letting go of anger and grief – indeed dying to self - may be almost impossible for us to do by ourselves and that is where God comes in.   To let go is to let God.  To let God is to let God take responsibility for what is seemingly impossible for us.  God has given us the final answer to war and conflict by dying on the cross.  His is the true and final sacrifice.  There is no need for any more.  

Paul says to the Galatians ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’  This is a remarkable text but I think Paul is saying here, amongst other things, that we to let go of self is to allow Christ to be Christ in us and that this new reality is something we should seek.

So to conclude.  By letting go of our anger and grief about past wars and conflicts, and even current wars and conflict, we open ourselves to the possibility of God’s loving, presence in our lives.  A loving presence which will transform us, give us peace and help us bring peace and compassion to others.   This is worth remembering not just for Remembrance Day but for all our lives.

 

 

 

 

 

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Penitence, guilt and shame

 

Sermon for the 7^th March 2021, St Matthew’s, Oxford

Readings:   Exodus 20.1-17; 1 Corinthians 1.18-25 and John 2.13-22

Today is the third Sunday in Lent.  The Church of England’s website says: ‘Lent may originally have
followed Epiphany, just as Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness followed immediately on his baptism, but it soon became firmly attached to Easter, as the principal occasion for baptism and for the reconciliation of those who had been excluded from the Church’s fellowship for ..serious faults. This history explains the characteristic notes of Lent – self-examination, penitence, self-denial, study, and preparation for Easter…’   And this account of Lenten themes is followed by a 12^th poem about Lent

Now is the healing time decreed

for sins of heart and word and deed,

when we in humble fear record

the wrong that we have done the Lord.

So this morning I would like to focus on the Lenten theme of penitence.   And that poem reminds us that penitence is or should be a ‘time of healing’: a positive rather than a negative experience.

But looking at the passages for today - the Lectionary readings for the third Sunday in Lent – i.e. the set readings for today - it is not very easy to see how they speak to this idea that Lent is for self-examination, penitence, self-denial, study, and preparation for Easter.   I guess the three passages are linked together in some way as the people who choose the Lectionary readings always try to make sure they deal with related issues but I can’t see what connects them. 

I guess the reading that is most obviously connected with Lent is the reading from Exodus where we hear, for the first time, God’s 10 Commandments. 

The 10 Commandments are so well known that we might even be able to recite them and lest we forget them they are even written behind our altar over there.  They are so well known in fact that we can easily forget their importance: perhaps even treating them as self-evident.  

Some of them indeed embody moral ideals that are common to many traditions such as: ‘You shall not steal’ but others seem less self-evident such as: ‘Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy’.   Nowadays you can still be put in gaol for theft but not for forgetting it’s the Sabbath.   These differences in the commandments remind us that they are God’s revelation to the Israelites rather than a set of rules the Israelites worked out for themselves for regulating their society. The book of Exodus underlines this revelatory aspect to the 10 Commandments by having God give them to the Israelites directly, rather than through Moses, God’s normal way of communicating with the Israelites at the time.

The 10 Commandments form the basis of the Jewish Law as set out thereafter in the rest of the book of Exodus, in the books of Leviticus and Numbers and then repeated in the book called Deuteronomy.  And since Jesus said that he had not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it we can be sure that they apply as much to us today as they did in Old Testament times.   There is a sense in which everything in the Bible that follows on from God’s giving the Israelites the 10 Commandments, and that is about the rules we should live by, are, at heart, just an elaboration of those commandments.   For instance when Jesus famously discusses the Jewish Law in his Sermon on the Mount, he directly mentions two of the commandments: the 6th ,‘You shall not murder’ and the 7^th, ‘You shall not commit adultery’ and reinterprets them for his listeners of the day.  But much of what else Jesus says about the Jewish Law in that sermon indirectly refers back to the 10 Commandments or to his summary of those commandments: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’ and: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

It is, I think, worthwhile exploring how each of the 10 Commandments gets elaborated in the Old Testament and then the New.  Not that there is time to do that today.   But just as one example: the 9^th commandment is: ‘You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour’.   In general, I have taken this to mean, ‘You shall always tell the truth’ but, of course, it’s more specific (and limited) than that.  It’s recognising that lies that hurt other people are a special kind of lie.   Exodus 23 verses 1-3 say:  ‘You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness. You shall not follow a majority in wrongdoing; when you bear witness in a lawsuit, you shall not side with the majority so as to pervert justice; nor shall you be partial to the poor in a lawsuit’.  The other Sunday we were talking about social media and how it can easily it can be misused.  We might have usefully pondered on those verses when thinking about how we should bear witness against our neighbour - i.e. talk about our friends - when it comes to using social media.

Now some of the 10 Commandments seem relatively simple to stick to such as the 6th Commandment: You shall not murder’.  That is until you delve into what the Bible says about them in more detail.   Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.”   But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister you will be liable to judgement’.   I think we can safely say that the 10 Commandments as understood by Jesus are almost impossible to follow.

I have gone on too long about rules for living by when I really meant to talk about penitence: that is feeling and saying sorry for breaking the rules, like the 10 Commandments.  Breaking what we see as the rules can make us feel guilty or ashamed.  And here I want to make a distinction between healthy guilt and unhealthy shame.    The main difference being healthy guilt leads to a change of heart and action.   Unhealthy shame leads to demoralisation and inaction.

Healthy or appropriate guilt is the recognition of how far our behaviour, the way we live our lives, our economic systems, our social norms, etc. fall short of what God wants for us.   Moreover it’s important to remember that this recognition should be a collective act not just an individual responsibility.   I know that we are trashing the planet, through eating too much meat, flying more than we need to, etc.  but that is not just my fault, it’s everyone’s fault.  It also the fault of the institutions in control: the international institutions such as the United Nations but also multinational companies, national governments of both the left and the right.  Moreover the Christian church has played no small part in exacerbating the environmental crisis through its teachings on our relationship with nature and we need to recognise its role in that.

The recognition of how far away we are from obeying the 10 Commandments indicates that we have a general relationship problem, with ourselves, with other people, with nature and more fundamentally with God.  We should feel guilty about this relationship and we know that by recognising our dependency on God, God will restore that relationship. We all, like sheep, have gone astray and we need to turn to the Good Shepherd to lead us home.

This going astray (commonly called sin) and turning back to God in consequence (repentance) play a big part in some versions of Christianity.   So much so that you might sometimes be led to think it is the only important part of the good news that is the Gospel.  In my youth the Preacher at the church I attended would, virtually every week, remind us that there is an ‘I’ in sin.   Here’s the beginning of such a sermon I found from a bit of quick Googling: ‘There’s a reason the word “sin” has an “i” right smack in the middle—and a big “I” at that! Sin is all about me. When my world revolves around me, with me at the center of everything, sin is bound to result….’   

Now I think there is hardly any biblical basis for this idea that ‘Sin is all about me’.  Sin is much more complicated than that.  There is a sin called pride but pride is not the only sin and false modesty: to forget that we are made in the image of God, is equally sinful.  The notion that sin is all about me completely ignores the story of the Fall in which Adam and Eve - the first humans – by disobeying God – changed the nature of all our relationships and in particular our relationship with God.   It thereby ignores the fact that we live in a sinful world that we are all embedded in a sinful system.  But, besides such sermons having dubious authority, they can generate unhealthy shame rather than healthy guilt.

Unhealthy shame is unjustified feelings of guilt inflicted on us by others.   Jesus experienced such shame at his trial and crucifixion.   Remember he was, amongst other things, spat upon, stripped naked and whipped, and mocked by bystanders before he was finally crucified.   Human beings, throughout history, have inflicted shame on one another from the mundane (now recognised as completely unacceptable) bullying inflicted by children on one another to the truly horrific such as that inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews in the Holocaust.  But perhaps the most insidious forms of unhealthy shame are religious or quasi-religious. 

A big problem with ‘I in sin’ sermons and the like is that they can make us feel hopeless rather than liberated.  They can easily flip from encouraging healthy guilt to inflicting unhealthy shame.   It is certainly impossible to live up to the rules that God would like us to live by and we constantly fail to abide by those rules if we try.  This should not be a cause for despair because we know God forgives us (as we have been reminded today by our saying a confession and Jon pronouncing an absolution during this service).  But humans also have a tendency to feel guilty about things we shouldn’t: about things we have no control over, such as our sexuality or our appearance or even abuse by others.  And we can easily made to feel guilty about things we have little control over such as addictions or relationships that have gone wrong in the past.  Our capacity for unhealthy shame is extensive and preachers should urge us to guilt and repentance with caution.  I hope I have not fallen into a trap today.

This is not to say that our unhealthy shame doesn’t need healing.   For some of us shame can be chronic and toxic.  Shame by its nature is also often hidden.   What we feel shameful of is difficult to share even with those we love.   Moreover the idea that God sees and knows everything about us is for some a source of fear rather than comfort.   Psalm 139 which begins: ‘O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away’ is for some deeply troubling.   Even our notions of God can exacerbate shame rather than alleviate it.

While shame may often be hidden I think it is much more common than we might tend to think.  Those of us who do suffer from shame can think we are the only one who is and that is just not the case.

There is a similarity between healthy or guilt and unhealthy shame in that both can be redeemed and potentially transformed by the death and resurrection of Jesus.   We know that whatever we are guilty of, in the way we lead our lives, has been forgiven by God, once and for all, through the cross.  In this we can be certain.   We can also say that through enduring shame of all kinds, Jesus opens the way to the defeat of shame as of death and suffering.  But it is often harder, I think, to feel that shame can be defeated.   In my own experience the way of healing shame is through sharing the experience with another in whom you trust and who, after you have done so, will continue to accept you for what you are.   The person who loves you more than any other and who will not reject you whatever you are or whatever you have done is God.  

So yes Lent should be a time for self-examination and penitence but for a purpose: preparation for Easter.  Yes Lent should be an occasion for seeking forgiveness for those things we feel appropriately guilty about, but by God’s grace it might also be a time to find healing and liberation from shame.  In both cases Lent, like spring, should be time of renewal as we once again we prepare to remember all that God has done for us by his death on the cross on that first Good Friday and his glorious resurrection on that first Easter Sunday.

 

Sermon for Epiphany 2021

 

Isaiah 60: 1-6 and Matthew 2: 1-12.

 

This is my third sermon this Christmas and all three have the underlying premise that Christmas hasn’t; and cannot be cancelled.  And now it is about to be Epiphany perhaps I should also say that Epiphany isn’t cancelled either.  In these sermons I have sought to remind people that Christmas cannot be cancelled because of that first Christmas more than 2000 years ago when Jesus was born.   When God became a human that Christmas it was a defining moment in world history.   It meant that Christmas is going to be celebrated forever whether we like it or not.  It is not in our power to cancel Christmas although, over the years, some have tried to do so.

In my sermon today I want to focus on an aspect of Christmas - the giving and receiving of gifts.   The giving and receiving of gifts is part and parcel of Christmas perhaps because, as part of the Christmas story, the wise men who visit Jesus after he is born present him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (as we heard in our reading just now).  But surely it’s also- and more importantly - because God’s incarnation in the form of a baby born to Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem that first Christmas is the greatest gift God could give the world.

I want to explore the giving and receiving of gifts as a sacrament.  St Augustine, in the 5th century AD described a sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.’  And I think there is a hidden, spiritual dimension to gifts at Christmas that isn’t affected by the Corona Virus or anything else.  My last mention of the virus I promise.

I suppose you might say it is a bit late to be thinking about Christmas presents: but it’s on this day, Epiphany Sunday, when we remember the visit of the wise men and what that visit signified.  And of course present giving doesn’t stop at Christmas.  I think we can safely say that receiving’s God’s gift of his son and giving gifts ourselves are things we, as Christians, are called to do throughout the year.

 As I said in my previous sermons this Christmas, some people, down the ages, have tried to cancel Christmas and all that it involves.   A well-known fictional example is the White Witch in CS Lewis’ ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’.   In this story the four Pevensee children: Lucy, Edmunds, Susan and Peter, stumble into the land of Narnia through a Wardrobe which is ruled by a witch who makes it ‘always winter and never Christmas’.   But the arrival of the children coincides with the return of Aslan the Lion to Narnia and the witch’s power starts to wane and the snow that covers the land begins to melt:

While three of the children – Lucy, Susan and Peter- are travelling through Narnia to meet Aslan, with two beavers showing them the way, they come across Father Christmas

 "I’ve come at last," said he. "She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.

And Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still.

"And now," said Father Christmas, "for your presents. There is a new and better sewing machine for you, Mrs Beaver. I will drop it in your house as I pass. "

"If you please, sir," said Mrs Beaver, making a curtsey. "It’s locked up."

"Locks and bolts make no difference to me," said Father Christmas. "And as for you, Mr Beaver, when you get home you will find your dam finished and mended and all the leaks stopped and a new sluicegate fitted."

Mr Beaver was so pleased that he opened his mouth very wide and then found he couldn’t say anything at all.

 “Peter, Adam's Son," said Father Christmas.

"Here, sir," said Peter.

"These are your presents," was the answer, "and they are tools, not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well." With these words he handed to Peter a shield and a sword. The shield was the colour of silver and across it there ramped a red lion, as bright as a ripe strawberry at the moment when you pick it. The hilt of the sword was of gold and it had a sheath and a sword belt and everything it needed, and it was just the right size and weight for Peter to use. Peter was silent and solemn as he received these gifts, for he felt they were a very serious kind of present.

"Susan, Eve's Daughter," said Father Christmas. "These are for you," and he handed her a bow and a quiver full of arrows and a little ivory horn. "You must use the bow only in great need," he said, "for I do not mean you to fight in the battle. It does not easily miss. And when you put this horn to your lips and blow it, then, wherever you are, I think help of some kind will come to you."

Last of all he said, "Lucy, Eve's Daughter," and Lucy came forward. He gave her a little bottle of what looked like glass (but people said afterwards that it was made of diamond) and a small dagger. "In this bottle," he said, "there is a cordial made of the juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow on the mountains of the sun. If you or any of your friends is hurt, a few drops of this will restore them. And the dagger is to defend yourself at great need. For you also are not to be in the battle."

"Why, sir?" said Lucy. "I think- I don't know - but I think I could be brave enough."

"That is not the point," he said. "But battles are ugly when women fight.  And now” – here he suddenly looked less grave – “here for the moment is something for you all!”

Now here, in this story, the presents given and received, while still being useful, point to, and signify something more.

The gifts that Mr and Mrs Beaver receive from Father Christmas might seem purely practical – just like the frying pan I gave Nicky one Christmas - but Father Christmas knows that a new sewing machine and a repaired damn are precisely what the beavers really want and need.   But the gifts that are more interesting are surely those strange presents given to Lucy, Susan and Peter.

Those gifts hardly seem appropriate for children.  Three of the gifts: the sword, the bow and the dagger, are weapons for fighting with.   Surely children shouldn’t be encouraged to fight?   But life will involve battles and children, as they grow up, will need weapons to fight with:  if not against witches, against the powers of evil.  The other three gifts to the Pevensee children from Father Christmas surely remind us that in life we cannot rely on our weapons and our fighting abilities.  We will need assistance in our battles: a shield for defence and a horn for calling for help.  Psalm 12 tells us that God is the shield and horn of our salvation.  We will, inevitably be wounded in the battles of life, and then we will need healing.   Note that Lucy’s gift of the bottle of cordial made of the juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow on the mountains of the sun is not just for herself but for her friends when they are wounded.  Later in the story the six gifts all turn out to play a significant part in events as they unfold.

Now what about those three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh that the wise men gave to the baby Jesus.  Why did the wise men give those things in particular?   Like the gifts Father Christmas gives to the Pevensee children they are hardly appropriate for a baby and are surely much more suitable for an adult.  Like the gifts to the Pevensee children the gifts of gold, frankincense have meaning and significance.

 Matthew doesn’t tell us explicitly why these gifts in particular but they are clearly reminders of prophecies of Jesus in the Psalms and in the books of the prophets such as in our Old Testament reading today.  Here Isaiah prophecies:

A multitude of camels shall cover your land

    the young camels of Midian and Ephah;

    all those from Sheba shall come.

They shall bring gold and frankincense,

    and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord

 

Gold, frankincense and myrrh are gifts deemed fit for a king in the prophecies and this is probably one reason why the wise men have often been thought to be kings.  From very early on theologians tried to work out the particular meaning of the three gifts and what each symbolised.  It was probably Origen of Alexandria in about 248 AD who first proposed that gold was a symbol of Jesus’ kingship on earth, that frankincense (an incense burnt in temples) was a symbol of his deity, and that myrrh (an oil used for embalming dead bodies) was a symbol of the importance of his death.  Thus the gifts not only hark back to the old prophecies but point forward to Jesus life.

The gifts the wise men bring can in no way repay the greater gift given that first Christmas: God’s gift of his son for the salvation of all, but the gold, frankincense and myrrh were a concrete sign of the wise men’s gratitude for the child.  Matthew tells us that when they found the baby they were overwhelmed with joy and opened their treasure chests.  In copying the action of the wise men in giving gifts at Christmas we join in with the Christmas story and express our joy and gratitude for God’s greatest gift to us.   

This joining in with Jesus’ story is also what we do when we join together at Holy Communion.  Then we re-enact the Last Supper Jesus ate before his death on the cross and in a sense participate in that death and subsequent resurrection.   At Holy Communion the bread and wine represent the body and blood of Jesus which in turn are a sign of everything Jesus has done for us through his suffering and death on the cross.   The bread and wine are gifts which we are commanded by Jesus to accept, with his words ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ but they are also gifts that we, as his followers, willingly receive and feed on in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving.

As I said St Augustine, in the 5th century AD described a sacrament as ‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.’  The specific sacraments he had in mind were ceremonies such as baptism and Holy Communion, but other things besides.   But what is this grace of which he speaks?  It is that of himself which God freely gives us.  It is that which gives meaning to our lives including our gifts.  By God’s grace we are forgiven our faults and given a new life.   It is that which means that we are required to give our lives to God and thence to each other throughout the year and not just at Christmas.

 

Gathering 

A sermon for Midnight Communion, Christmas Eve, 2020

The topic for my sermon tonight is gathering.  This seems to be an appropriate topic this Christmas given the prohibitions on gathering because of the Corona Virus.  And to start with I want to remind you of that verse from Matthew’s gospel where Jesus is talking to his disciples about how the church community should act and be.  Jesus says, ‘For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’   Gathering has a human dimension but also a spiritual one.  Tonight I want to suggest that God gathers us and gathers with us in ways we might not expect.

The Christmas story is full of gatherings.  Mary and Joseph are required to gather with other members of their tribe in Bethlehem by the Roman authorities.  This is for the purpose of a census.  Meanwhile some wise men, hundreds of miles away, are gathering together to embark on a journey to Bethlehem because they think a new star heralds the birth of a new king of Israel.   And on the night Jesus is born some shepherds are gathered together on a hill-side, just outside of Bethlehem, until their chatting around a fire is interrupted (as we heard in our reading - Luke 2: 1-20) by some angels.  

These are the sort of gatherings that are the consequence of humans being social beings and which, until recently, we took entirely for granted.   When you are watching tv programmes filmed last year, don’t you find yourself thinking: how come those people are gathering in such large numbers without any attempt at social distancing?   Now, when we are restricted from gathering, how much we miss it?

Gathering has or had a purely practical function.   Meetings of 10 or so people in one room were until last March a routine part of my work.  We gathered together to discuss and agree what work needed to be done before the next meeting.   The shepherds outside Bethlehem were gathered together presumably because it is easier to watch sheep if there is more than one of you and also a lot safer.  Gathering is useful for all sorts and types of work. 

But gathering is also part and parcel of celebration.   When Jesus was born some angels – as the carol ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ says – ‘were gathered all above’.  The shepherds once they had been told by the angels that something wonderful was happening in a stable nearby – that that very moment a Savior was being been born, the Messiah, the Lord – all rushed together into Bethlehem to see the baby – and to celebrate his birth, returning to their sheep ‘glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told’ by the angels.  Just like the shepherds we gather together at services like this one to celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas.

 And we also gather together at Christmas meals and parties whether we believe in the story that originally prompted the celebration of Christmas or not.  This need to gather together in celebration also seems hard-wired into our very beings and is why the restrictions on gathering together this year because of the Corona Virus have been felt to be so cruel.

Now of course shared meals are central to celebration.  In a little while we are going to remember a Passover meal celebrated by Jesus the night before his crucifixion.  For 2000 years Christians have gathered together to share bread and wine to remember the story of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection and what God has done for us through him.   Now gathering at the Communion meal, while it is physical with real bread and real wine, also has a spiritual side.  At Holy Communion we gather with all Christians alive today, across the ages and across the globe – virtually if you like.  At this very moment Christians throughout the UK are celebrating Midnight Communion but also they are also doing so in Iceland, Portugal and Ghana and other countries in our time zone   And at Holy Communion we don’t just gather with one another we gather with God. 

Now this sermon is a sequel to the one I gave at the Carol Service at St Luke’s the Sunday before last.  In that sermon I expressed the view that it was absurd for the Daily Mail or anyone else to think that Christmas could be cancelled.   I reminded people that Christmas cannot be cancelled because of that first Christmas more than 2000 years ago when Jesus was born.   When God became a human that Christmas it was a defining moment in world history.   It meant that Christmas is going to happen forever whether we like it or not.  

That birth in Bethlehem meant that God is still here with us this Christmas.  So however different and difficult it will be for us this Christmas it has not been cancelled, it cannot be cancelled because it not in our power to cancel what God has done for us.

In my sermon at the carol service I reminded people that in C S Lewis’ ;The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' the White Witch had tried, ineffectually, to cancel Christmas in Narnia by making it ‘always winter but never Christmas’.   Here is an extract from near the middle of the book when the White Witch is pursuing the three Pevensee children, Peter, Susan and Lucy, in a sledge drawn by reindeer with Edmund the fourth Pevensee child on board.   At this point the Witch’s power to stop Christmas coming is waning because Aslan the Lion has returned to Narnia.

And then at last the Witch said, "What have we here? Stop!" and they did.

How Edmund hoped she was going to say something about breakfast!  But she had stopped for quite a different reason. A little way off at the foot of a tree sat a merry party, a squirrel and his wife with their children and two satyrs and a dwarf and an old dogfox, all on stools round a table. Edmund couldn’t quite see what they were eating, but it smelled lovely and there seemed to be decorations of holly and he wasn’t at all sure that he didn’t see something like a plum pudding.

"What is the meaning of this?" asked the Witch Queen. Nobody answered.

"Speak, vermin!" she said again. "Or do you want my dwarf to find you a tongue with his whip? What is the meaning of all this gluttony, this waste, this self-indulgence? Where did you get all these things? "

"Please, your Majesty," said the Fox, "we were given them. And if I might make so bold as to drink your Majesty’s very good health—"

"Who gave them to you?" said the Witch.

"F-F-F-Father Christmas," stammered the Fox.

"What?" roared the Witch, springing from the sledge and taking a few strides nearer to the terrified animals. "He has not been here! He cannot have been here! How dare you—but no. Say you have been lying and you shall even now be forgiven."

At that moment one of the young squirrels lost its head completely.

"He has—he has—he has!" it squeaked, beating its little spoon on the table. Edmund saw the Witch bite her lips so that a drop of blood appeared on her white cheek. Then she raised her wand. "Oh, don’t, don’t, please don’t," shouted Edmund, but even while he was shouting she had waved her wand and instantly where the merry party had been there were only statues of creatures seated round a stone table on which there were stone plates and a stone plum pudding.

Now we might think that our plum puddings, this year, have been turned to stone.  

But CS Lewis’ story doesn’t end with the animals and their feast being turned to stone.   Aslan the Lion, towards the end of the story, releases all those who have been turned to stone by the White Witch and restores them to life.  He restores this Christmas gathering to what it should be: a glorious celebratory feast.

Of course gathering is easier in person – whether it be for Christmas Dinner or Holy Communion - but as I must keep on saying, gathering also has a spiritual dimension that transcends the physical.  Remember those angels at the first Christmas.   And we clearly do not have to be physically present to gather, as this year of Zoom meetings, Zoom social gatherings and Zoom services, like this one, demonstrates.   At the end of the day the Corona Virus cannot and does not prevent us from gathering. It certainly cannot prevent us from gathering with God.

That verse from Matthew’s Gospel again ‘Jesus says, for where two or three are gathered in my name, two note not even six, I am there among them.’     

 

Love came down at Christmas

 

A sermon for a carol service at St Luke's Church, Oxford, 13^th December 2020

The theme of my talk today is ‘Love came down at Christmas’.  This, you might remember, is the first line of a carol with words by Christina Rossetti.   The carol starts:

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine,

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and Angels gave the sign.

 Here Christina Rossetti is saying something amazing.  She is of course talking about the birth of Jesus, with angels bringing the good news and a star over the stable, at that first Christmas more than 2000 years ago, but she goes beyond an evocation of the scene to an explanation of what it was all about.

Our first reading from the opening words of John’s gospel – sometimes called it Prologue - is a traditional reading for Christmas carol services and also talks about love coming down at Christmas albeit in a slightly different way.   If Jane had carried on reading our first reading this evening she would have come to the verse ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’ 

It may not be immediately obvious who or what John is talking about when he talks about ‘The Word’ in this and previous verses in the Prologue but from the context it is clear that John has in mind two different persons: Jesus and God.   A bit odd I know to think of a word as a person but there it is. 

So ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ can either mean ‘Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us’ or – more surprisingly - ‘God became flesh and dwelt among us.’   That Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us is hardly surprising: a human person when they are born, if not before, becomes flesh, and so too with Jesus.  But John saying that ‘God became flesh and dwelt among us’ still, after all these years, has the power to shock us.   Surely the one thing we can assume about God is that he is not fleshy, he is other-worldly, he is beyond us, up there in Heaven?  But this is not so.  God really is down here with us.

Now when John told us that the Word became flesh he was saying something that had never been said before.   Other Jewish theologians has said things like. ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God’ and ‘by the Word God created the world’ but to equate Jesus – a human being – with that Word was truly shocking, then as it is now. 

This idea of God becoming flesh and dwelling amongst is not only shocking but mysterious.  How can it be?   Now a mystery is something which is difficult if not almost impossible to understand but I think it is at least worth trying to understand this mystery because unlike some other mysteries it has such importance for our lives.

Poems sometimes have the power to reveal mysteries that prose cannot.   Christina Rossetti says that ‘Love came down at Christmas’, not that ‘God came down at Christmas’ as John had said: his  prologue doesn’t mention love at all.   Christina Rossetti however is on safe ground when she says ‘Love came down at Christmas’ because John tells us elsewhere in the Bible that ‘God is love’ (1 John 4: 8) and that ‘Love is of God’ (1 Joh 4: 7).

And the idea that love came down at that Christmas over 2000 years go and indeed is still with us this Christmas is, perhaps, a tiny bit easier to understand than God becoming flesh in the shape of a baby.   Even in these commercialised times Christmas is surely a time for love and for expressing love.  Love within families and between friends as expressed by giving and receiving presents and sharing celebratory meals and indeed sharing our love of God at services like this.    But also, hopefully, extending that love to people less well off than ourselves.  Of course some might just see Christmas as a time to indulge ourselves but I don’t think many of us really do.  

Christina Rossetti, in her poem, makes the connection between divine love coming down at Christmas and our earthly love for one another in the second and third verses of the poem.    John tells us that love is of God i.e. that God is the source of love – all love – and when we love one-another we, like the miracle of that baby born with angels singing and a star overheard – reveal something of God’s love for us and the possibility of our love for him.

Now I was struck by reports in the press about a month ago that our Prime-Minister was intending to cancel Christmas as if that was in his power to do so.  And of course there have been attempts to cancel Christmas in the past – famously by Oliver Cromwell.   The most telling example of someone trying to cancel Christmas, I think, is in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis.  Bear with me for a moment: this does connect up with love coming down at Christmas I promise.

You may remember that, in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lucy was the first of the four Pevensee children-to get to Narnia through the wardrobe.  There she finds a world all covered in snow and meets a fawn called Mr Tumnus who explains to her that’s it’s a witch – the White Witch - who seems to control everything that goes on in Narnia including the weather

Here is Lucy explaining to her brother Edmund what Mr Tumnus has told her about the White Witch:

‘I’ve been having lunch with dear Mr Tumnus the Faun, and he’s very well and the White Witch has done nothing to him for letting me go, so he thinks she can’t have found out and perhaps everything is going to be all right after all.

The White Witch?’ sad Edmund; ‘who’s she?’

‘She is a perfectly terrible person’ said Lucy.  She calls herself the Queen of Narnia though she has no right to be a queen at all, and all the Fauns and Dryads and Naiads and Dwarfs and Animals – at least all the good ones – simply hate her.  And she can turn people into stone and do all kinds of horrible things.  And she has made a magic so that it is always winter in Narnia – always winter but it never gets to Christmas.'

But we know from later in the story that the White Witch is only seemingly in control.  And here, incidentally, we might think of Covid-19 really only seemingly ruling our lives at the moment.   In the end Aslan – the lion – comes to Narnia and frees the world from the White Witch and one sign of this is the return of Christmas.

We can be assured that Christmas cannot be cancelled whether by Oliver Cromwell, our Prime Minister, should he have wanted to do so, or the corona virus.   This is because love came down at that first Christmas when Jesus was born.   When love came down that Christmas it was a defining moment in world history.   It also meant that love is still here with us at Christmas.  So however different and difficult it will be for us this Christmas it has not been cancelled, it cannot be cancelled.  Love came down at Christmas 2000 years ago and still is with us today.

Here is the complete poem by Christina Rossetti:

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine,

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and Angels gave the sign.

 

Worship we the Godhead,

Love Incarnate, Love Divine,

Worship we our Jesus,

But wherewith for sacred sign?

 

Love shall be our token,

Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.

Starting where people are at

Sermon on Acts 17: 16-31 and 1 Peter 3: 13-15

St Matthew's, Oxford, 14th June 2020

Today my sermons is about evangelism: an appropriate subject given that St Matthew’s is about to hold an Alpha course.   Now I confess I have never been a big fan of evangelism.   I have always taken comfort in that verse in Ephesians which goes ‘The gifts he [Jesus] gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers[1].  So not all are called to be evangelists then.  Well that lets me off the hook. But of course it doesn’t, or at least not entirely, because as our reading from 1 Peter Chapter 3 today reminds us we should ‘always be ready to make our defence of the hope that is in us.’  That’s all of us and not just some of us.

Our reading from Acts, today, gives us an object lesson in how to give a defence of the hope that is in us and in particular suggests, that in doing so, we need to ‘start where people are at’.  It gives us three tips.  When embarking on a discussion about the good news of the Gospel:

Firstly listen to what your listeners have to say first
Secondly find out what they want and need
Thirdly talk to them in words they understand. 

These are rules to be followed in most conversations.  However you may not want to follow them in some situations such as when shouting at your child to step away from the fire but even then you’ll want to use words they understand.

But before moving on to these tips, let’s go back to our passage from Acts for a moment.  It’s an account of a speech Paul gives in the Areopagus in Athens in around AD 50.  The Areopagus was, by this point, a sort of meeting point where you could catch an interesting public lecture.   A bit like the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.

Luke tells us in Acts Chapter 17 that ‘all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.’  Now this might sound rather sarcastic on Luke’s part.   But on the other hand what Paul had to say to the Athenians was new.   So I think it is better to interpret this verse as Luke telling us that the Athenians were, at least in theory, open to the something new that Paul had to tell them.  I think it is always worth starting with the assumption that people are open to what you have to say, and vice versa, until proved otherwise.

So Tip number 1: Listen to what your listeners have to say first.  

Paul, before he embarked upon his lecture to the Athenians had clearly taken the time to look around Athens and to delve into Athenian beliefs.   And he starts his lecture by saying, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way’.  Now again that might sound as if Paul was being sarcastic.  But I don’t think Paul had much of a senses of humour.  And sarcasm – the lowest form of wit – I am fairly sure wasn’t his bag.  It seems to me more likely that he was being serious.  

We are inclined to think of Greek religion in terms of Gods like Zeus and Apollo and Goddesses like Hera and Aphrodite who gratuitously interfered in the affairs of humans whilst living it up on Mount Olympus   But of course for a long time there had been Greeks who had thought much more seriously about religion and even had a conception of God quite similar to that of Paul.  Here is Plato on God in the Timmaeus:

‘For God desired that, so far as possible, all things should be good and nothing evil; wherefore, when He took over all that was visible, seeing that it was not in a state of rest but in a state of discordant and disorderly motion, He brought it into order out of disorder, deeming that the former state is in all ways better than the latter. For Him who is most good it neither was nor is permissible to perform any action save what is most fair.

Plato’s God is not a million miles from our God who Paul tells the Athenians is the one ‘who made the world and everything in it’ (Acts Chapter 17 verse 24) and ‘gives to all mortals life and breath and all things’ (verse 25). And when Paul says God ‘who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands’ (verse 24) he is echoing the Greek poet Epimenides who Paul quotes later in his speech. 

Epimenides had written a well-known poem (in the 6^th century BC) poking fun at some Cretans who had built a tomb for the god Zeus:

They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one

The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!

But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,

For in thee we live and move and have our being.

The last line could be straight from one of Paul's epistles

So, in discussions about the gospel, it always worth hearing what people already believe rather than making assumptions.  In today’s world we perhaps need to find out more about our neighbours’ faiths before trying to convince them of our own.  And even those who would not subscribe to any particular religion have beliefs and reasons for those beliefs which need taking seriously not dismissing as stupid.

Tip number 2 is to find out what your listeners want and need.

Paul had found, whilst site-seeing in Athens, an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown God.’  Some commentators on this passage argue that the Athenians were hedging their bets here and ensuring that there wouldn’t be some god angry at being neglected.  This is, in my view, to diss the religious beliefs of the Athenians.   Another way to view the matter is that some Greeks had already come to think that God was unknowable and not just super-human as some of the myths about Zeus and the other gods suggested.

Don’t we Christians think that God was largely unknowable until revealed in the person of Jesus.  And even now there is some unknowability to God.  Paul takes the inscription seriously, rather than sneering at it, and addresses the longing for the unknowable to be known when he tells the Athenians that God has made us ‘so that [we] would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us’(Chapter 17 verse 27).

However in defending the hope that is in us we cannot assume our hope is what others hope for.   In my youth evangelists had a tendency to explain the Gospel merely in terms of sin and repentance as if we all must feel ourselves to be unworthy and in need of being saved from that feeling.   These evangelists assumed that if we didn’t feel unworthy we needed to do so and that if we felt unworthy that was right and proper because we were.   This, in my view, can get very close to saying that all shame is justified and good, even if that shame comes from others’ abuse.    

For me God’s saving work in Jesus is as much about restoring meaning to my life as it about me feeling better about myself.   But I think God saves people though Jesus in many different and glorious ways.

Tip number 3 is to use words that make sense to your listeners.

Paul’s speech to the Athenians in the Areopagus in Acts Chapter 17 is very different to his speech to the Jewish members of the synagogue in Antioch in Acts Chapter 13.  Both speeches start where his listeners are at.  In Antioch. Paul addresses his listeners as ‘My brothers, you descendants of Abraham’s family’ In Athens he associates himself with his listeners by telling them that, ‘From one ancestor God made all nations to inhabit the whole earth. In Antioch Paul quotes the Psalms: in Athens he quotes Greek poets.

Now you could see these differences in the speeches as demonstrating Paul’s rhetorical skills, as different devices to achieve the same end of conversion but I think they demonstrate Paul’s sensitivity to using words that his listeners will understand.   The gospel message has always needed translation from its original Aramaic, but more than just translating from one language to another, it needs translating from one culture to another.

Now the words that we Christians use, often as shorthand, to discuss the gospel within our community - words like sin, repentance, salvation, etc. - don’t mean the same to people outwith our community as they mean to us.   I think there is a case for avoiding words like sin when giving a defence of the hope that is in us.   At the very least we need to recognise that words like repentance will need, a lot of unpacking, to explain that it doesn’t just mean feeling sorry for the bad things you have done recently

But of course there is a limit to just using words that make sense to your listeners when defending the gospel.  Paul in his speech in Athens ends with the resurrection of Jesus (as he does in his speech in Antioch).  Now unlike the belief that God created the world and everything in it, which Paul and many of the Athenians shared, Jesus’ resurrection and the significance of that to Paul was something that most of the Athenians were not going to accept.   Paul, elsewhere, in his first letter to the Corinthians says ‘For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.  Wisdom in the shape of rational argument, such as the Greeks treasured, will only get you so far when it comes to being convinced of the life-changing good news that is the Gospel.

Now it is interesting I think to note that while, as I said, Paul’s speech to the Athenians, gives us an object lesson in how to give a defence of the hope that is in us, Luke tells us that, in response, only a few joined Paul and became believers: one, a man called Dionysius the Areopagite and the other, a women called Demaris.  Contrast this with the 3000 who became believers after Peter’s speech in Jerusalem at the first Pentecost.

And yet Luke sets aside over half a chapter of his Acts of the Apostles to record what was Paul said in this lecture  in the famous university town of Athens and to tell us that for two people at least the lecture changed their lives.

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[1] Ephesians 4: 11