When God drew his breath

2017 Christmas Eve Sermon

John 1 & Hebrews 1

St Peter's Church, Guildford

Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. In the noise and activity, the demands and the challenges of Christmas preparations, not much of our attention is able to rest in the silence of which the carol speaks.  We have written our cards and we have wrapped our presents. We have shopped, and then shopped some more and perhaps even this evening made our preparations for the impending Christmas lunch. In many ways the contemporary Christmas is an acceleration of the demands of our culture; imploring us to do more, to buy more and to never, ever sit still. When stillness and silence are the great enemy of our time, this night jars with us as much as it fills us with great wonder. Perhaps this is why, of all the Christmas services taking place throughout advent, for many of us, it is this silent night that resonates with us in the most meaningful of ways.

We know, of course, that there are different kinds of silence. We know all to well the silence that comes from apathy, from a lack of care, but this is not that silence. This is not the silence of slumber, the part presence of someone in body while the mind in dream. Nor is this the silence of death; an absence, a void and nothingness.

The silence of this night is a different kind of silence. It anticipates; it waits for something, it is poised and expectant. This is the silence of the theatre when the operatic singer draws breath before filling every space with the power and beauty of her voice.  This is the silence of the Olympic stadium after the cry of set, yet before the clap of the gun signals the start of the race. It is the silence of the liminal space; the threshold between what was and is and what is to come. Occurring only when the old has fallen apart yet before the new has emerged, this silence is pregnant with purpose, full of longing and it scans the horizon for the event, the happening, the realisation of the new that is to come.

This is the message of the gospels; that something has happened, that the event of all the events has occurred before our very eyes, and that happening was Emmanuel, God with us. Like any event, people see and record it from different angles, from unique perspectives, and this is true of the witness of the gospel writers. We have read John’s cosmological account of the Christmas story; it is the story of God as Trinity, the story of the whole of the created order, the story of humanity all rolled into just 18 verses of scripture.

What is the content of the event, of the occurring? John says that “the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us”, or perhaps, like me, you’ll appreciate the message translation; “the Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood”. John is telling us God’s story; a story that is told by God, is about God and is for God. God is at once the narrator of the story, content of the plot line and the outcome of the climax. It is the story of God’s decision to love the world in spite its brokenness, the recording of his becoming as one of us in the life of Jesus Christ, and the reason for his coming; that we have the right to become children of God.

We know that God’s story is one that surprises us. Not conventional at all, His beginning is one of inhabiting a feeding trough for a crib in a damp and dusty stable. It is outrageous that God may be born a human, let alone to a peasant girl in a backwash village in the middle east. Yet this was not the Son’s beginning at all; he was, as the creed says, begotten and not made. John tells us that there has not been a time when he was not, that he was with God and was God from the beginning. It is here, perhaps, we encounter the limits of our language and concepts. John articulates the son as means through which God created the cosmos, and describes him as the life of which we all share. Perhaps one of the great mysteries of this story is this; that he lay there, vulnerable and profoundly reliant upon that which he himself had called into being.

And so at Christmas we celebrate his coming and marvel at what he reveals to us and the whole of creation. The person of Jesus Christ is the visible and exact representation of the Father, in whom we encounter the glory of God. He came as a provision of purification for sin, and we remember that he, like all gifts, must be received in faith, that we may be purified and adopted as Children of God. Yet as it was then and is still now, many remain unable to recognise him and many still refuse to acknowledge the gift of the Christ child to the world.

And so we wait in this the liminal space of what is and what is to come. This silent night, this holy night is when we remember again, that like the operatic singer, God drew his breath, preparing to speak. God was about to speak a word, a final word, of which the content is the life, death and resurrection of the Son, Jesus of Nazareth. This Christmas, God invites each one of us to look again at the content of that word, to recognise and encounter his glory, and then to receive his gift of new life.

Silent night, holy night!

Son of God love's pure light.

Radiant beams from Thy holy face

With dawn of redeeming grace,

Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

Pioneer Ministry as an Evangelical: Issues of theological integrity

I am an Ordinand (read trainee vicar) in the Church of England (evangelical branch). I also happen to be training to be a Pioneer Minister. As I come to the end of my training, I am starting to wonder just how compatible these three characteristics actually are. Can you be an evangelical pioneer and hold a coherent theology? This question has been an irritant for a while, like a stone in my shoe, and I just have to let it breathe. The following is as much a space for that, as it is a cry for insight, advice and challenge. If you make it to the bottom of this piece then great, if you have some thoughts then even better, I would love to hear from you.

The Church of England defines Pioneers as those “called by God who are the first to see and creatively respond to the Holy Spirit's initiatives with those outside the church; gathering others around them as they seek to establish new contextual Christian community”.[1] The origin of pioneering is Christological; the author of the book of Hebrews refers to Christ as the “the pioneer and perfecter of faith”.[2] Christ’s pioneering is multi-faceted. Soteriologically he pioneered a new way of relating to God. Ecclesiologically he pioneered a new way of being with others, centred on the last supper. Anthropologically he pioneered a new humanity, for whom the triune life opens up to be a part of his end. Christ is the pioneer of God’s promise through the prophet Isaiah; “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”.[3] Pioneering then is firmly rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Pioneering is distinctively missional and often located far from the established church. Pioneers obsess about new things and are driven by questions, such as what if? How could we? We are a perceptive bunch too, always observing, reading and interpreting culture and looking for an opportunity or an edge to begin to work with, like when you come across an old roll of tape in the loft. Fundamentally, though, Pioneers adopt a posture of humility when it comes to culture. We go empty handed, believing that God is always at work before we arrive and if we listen and wait long enough, we will hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit and join with his ongoing work.

In Models of Contextual Theology, Bevans surveys six models of mission and the theology behind them.[4] Pioneering sits closely aligned to two of these models, the anthropological and the transcendental model. The anthropological model is one in which the practitioner is to listen to the culture, in order to identify the gospel which is already present and at work in that culture. They then point to God, already present and at work. This model is one in which gospel and culture form a partnership and God works in and through human experience to draw people to him. To use a farming model, the seed (gospel) is in the ground (culture); the practitioner’s job is to identify it and point to it. A good example of this model is “Christianity Rediscovered” by the great Vincent Donovan.

The transcendental model, is closely related. This model assumes that God is implicitly at work in human experience, and it is through the discovery of our own individual subjectivity that we can begin to discuss and discover any dogmatic belief. Theology is less about learning doctrine, but more a process in which we grapple with our own existence and the existence of God in tandem. Revelation is happening all around us and the practitioner seeks to “bring to speech” the ongoing encounter with God. Returning to the farming analogy, in this model the seed (gospel) is in the ground (culture) and the practitioner is to cultivate it through the turning of the soil. This approach has much to offer us in the post-modern world in which individuals express that “they are spiritual but not religious”. Where propositional evangelism may be resisted, discursive evangelism may well be welcomed.[5]

So what is the problem? The Evangelical tradition can be traced back to the reformation and their cry “Sola Gratia” (Grace alone).[6] Salvation is granted by grace alone, not by the word or work of a Priest or any other man, and is solely dependent on God actions and work. This resulted in a shift in emphasis from the sacrament to the word. Berkof describes how “Luther gave great prominence to the Word of God as the primary means of grace. He pointed out that the sacraments have no significance apart rom the Word and are in fact merely the visible Word”.[7]. It is from this source that evangelicalism emerged, through the Puritan and Pietist movements, and the emphasis on scripture alone persisted. Two of the greatest influencers on the movement in the 20^th Century were John Stott and Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Stott famously described the movement as “Bible people, Gospel people”. Lloyd-Jones held the same sentiments, arguing that one must begin and submit only to scripture. Consequently, “the evangelical distrusts reason, and particularly reason in the form of philosophy”.[8] As a result, evangelicals in the era of Stott and Lloyd-Jones were cautious when it comes to art and culture, with a reluctance at times, to see creation, ecology and social issues as Christian priorities.

The scripture alone principle naturally influences the missional model adopted by evangelicals. Bevans calls this the translation model. The gospel has a never changing core, though coming to us wrapped in the culture of first century Judaism under the influence of the Greco-Roman culture. The method is to unwrap the gospel from the culture, identify it and then rewrap it with the culture that you are in.  To return to the farming narrative, the church has the seed, the culture is the soil, and the church must plant it in the soil. This is why evangelical evangelism is often largely propositional, offering “something new” to the culture.

Evangelicalism has reached a more nuanced position on culture since Lloyd-Jones gave this address at the IFES conference in the 1970s. In a piece on the evangelical response to the arts, Lundin argues that evangelicalism rejected the arts and popular culture because of a lack of a coherent theology. As evangelicalism has softened to culture, there is still a reluctance to engage at the cutting edge and “evangelicals have often responded to innovations with fear and then waiting for the bizarre to become, through time, domesticated… the pattern has been for new theories to surface and circulate for a decade or more before evangelical scholars begin to appropriate them”.[9] I have seen this at work in my lifetime; as a child, I had a Christian friend whose evangelical parents refused to let him watch the Simpsons. After a while evangelicals warmed to the show. Later still, evangelical youth workers were using clips to teach Christianity to their young people about the faith.

Here we reach the root of the issue – the stone in my shoe. Can I be an evangelical and a pioneer? Pioneers make assumptions about the creation and culture (and have a methodology that follows) that seem incompatible with evangelical theology. Pioneers operate at the forefront of cultural change and innovation, yet evangelicals situate themselves a way back from the frontline. While it seems Pioneers want to affirm culture and get in the mix of cultural change, evangelicals have historically wanted to deny it as a theological source and call it to account, but in modern times are more cautious and reactive. As Pioneering establishes itself in the Church of England, the challenge to develop a coherent theology and methodology is the challenge set before evangelical pioneers.

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[1] https://www.churchofengland.org/clergy-office-holders/ministry/selection/pioneer-ministry.aspx

[2] Hebrews 12:2, NIV

[3] Isaiah 43:19, NIV

[4] Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology, 2002

[5] For more on this, see the research report by Haye and Hunt entitled “Understanding the Spirituality of People who don’t go to Church” http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/3678/understanding_spirituality_report.pdf

[6] Martin Luther, God's grace received must be bestowed, (https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/luther_martin/Incarnation/Gods_Grace_Received_Must_Be_Bestowed.cfm), 31.

[7] Louis Berkof, Systematic Theology, 607.

[8] Martin Lloyd-Jones, What is an Evangelical?, 44.

[9] Lundin, Roger, The Arts, in McDermott, Gerald R, The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology, 427.

Loving your Enemies

The following is a short devotional written for the Emmanuel Church magazine.

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” Matthew 5:44.

I can recall working through the Sermon on the Mount with a group of young people when this particular verse came into view. They were stunned to silence (a rare and precious occasion indeed) when having explored what it was that Jesus meant, I asked them to name one or two of their enemies. We too may be hard-pressed and reluctant to label anyone in our life with such severe terminology. Jesus’ Jewish audience lived under roman dictators, and the disciples were soon to face rampant persecution, but we do not live in such circumstances, so how may this verse be relevant to us?

Who is my enemy? One dictionary defines it as “a person who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something”. The concept broadens by considering the synonyms: rival, nemesis, challenger, opposer. I may not experience oppression or persecution, but I certainly have a few rivals (usually of my own making). I encounter people whose values are very different to mine and I know what it feels like to be challenged unfairly. From time to time, my work and my ideas are opposed by others too. My life is a mix of positive and negative interactions with others, with the latter leaving me feeling misunderstood, hurt and resentful. Alas, it seems I have more enemies than I first imagined to be so.

When we read Jesus’ command to “pray for those that persecute us”, it would seem that we are simply to pray for them to repent. Yet as we explore the original text further, the term opens up. The New King James version reflects this when it says we should “bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you”. Jesus wants more than I am often prepared to give; to both pray a blessing and be a blessing to those who we find most difficult. I am to pray that they are blessed in every sense and in every area of life.  Bonhoeffer called this the supreme command as “through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God”. It seems Jesus’ words reach much further than we first thought.

I have found that this kind of prayer is utterly transformative. Following a challenge at college, I decided to keep a (hit) list of people for whom I would pray for every day in this manner. My experience has been that people do not stay on my list for very long. While I may not have had much love for them at the start, as I pray for them my heart begins to change and I begin to love them too. 

Perhaps this is a part of what Jesus meant when he speaks of us becoming children of heaven; that we see as He sees and love as He loves. To obey this command is to align ourselves to and participate in with the will and work of God. When we forgive those who have hurt, opposed or misunderstood us our lives embody the gospel. They tell the world something of the loving God who died for his enemies, even you and I. May God help us to pray and may our prayers transform our hearts into love and when we love, may we remember that “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).