A light that says, "No!"

On Thursday evening, we turned on the lights on our 24 foot Christmas tree. It was a great occasion, and there will be many other opportunities to light candles or enjoy Christmas lights through the coming month. Tiny twinkling lights are an essential part of the Advent and Christmas season up here in the northern hemisphere. Our pagan friends would be happy to tell us of the significance of light at a time when the world seems dark. The past year is dying and something new is about to begin. Those small lights signify the tiny sign that something big and bright is coming.

The lights that appear on our Christmas trees and in our twinkling candlelit carol services, do far more than set the scene for a cosy night in, or indicate the turning of the seasons. For Christians, Christmas marks the turning point in history, when God himself stepped into creation in the tiny twinkling eyes of a baby. Christmas marks the breaking through of the kingdom of heaven into this broken world.

Christmas lights are potentially a great deal more than mere decorations. They are the tiny signs that something big is coming. It is quite appropriate to have them during Advent when we are waiting for the big day itself. They are tiny prophetic signs of the light that is even now coming into the world. They appear, at first in small numbers, and then as the holidays themselves approach, there are more and more of them.

Even one tiny light, is enough to illuminate a room – or rather – to reveal the darker corners. One tiny light, can show the shape of the darkness. Christmas lights are God's "No!" to darkness. Christmas lights are the signs of God's commitment to bring light into the world. When we look at our Christmas lights, let's see in them God's promise to be with us, to be in us, to be near us, through Immanuel, God made flesh.

Sermon for Prisons Sunday

Revd Wendy Carey

20th November Matthew 25 35-40

About twelve years ago, I was leading a Bible Study at Bullingdon Prison in Bicester.  It was a special day, because as well as the dozen or so prisoners who could usually be expected to attend, there were four new clergy in their first year of training, who had come to see what Prison ministry was like.  The morning went well; one of the prisoners had prepared to share the leadership of the study.  Everyone joined in, and it was about as good and worthwhile a Bible Study as you might wish to attend.  The curates were impressed, and as I escorted them back through the locked inner gates to the Prison gatehouse, one said 'But you've chosen the most respectable ones, the nicest ones, to come and meet us.'. Little did he know, but most of them were serving long sentences, two of them, including the pleasant, quietly spoken one who had prepared and co-led the session were Lifers, and one was serving a nine year sentence for very serious crimes that would have shocked them deeply.

The theme of this year's Prisons Week is 'can you see me, or are you just looking'?  We are challenged by Jesus' parable to look at ourselves and at others through fresh eyes, and without preconceptions.  The curates who met the prisoners at Bible Study met them without being given their labels, 'car thief'  'burglar' or 'murderer'.  Too often when we are just looking, rather than when we are really seeing, we only see what we think we ought to see, and it becomes harder to discern the person behind the label.

Think about the labels we each carry through life, and how they make us feel. In my life I’ve been wife, stay at home Mum, teacher, woman priest, pensioner, bus pass holder, and many more.  Some of them make me feel angry, because they turn me into a stereotype, none of them fully represents the person I am.  What are the stereotypes used to describe who you are, and how do they make you feel?

Jesus’ parable about the Last judgment, when people are finally divided like sheep and the goats, is thought provoking, and asks the question whether we are just looking or really seeing the truth.  An intriguing point about that parable is how unaware the people being judged were about where they fitted in.  The sheep did not know they were sheep, the goats didn’t know they were goats.  Both asked ‘when did we do these things, or when did we fail to do them?’  We only know truly where we fit in, when we are seen through God’s eyes, God who truly sees us, and is not just glancing idly in our direction.

The God who sees us, sitting here in the Church of Christ the Cornerstone, is the same God who sees the congregation of prisoners sitting in the Chapel of Hope in Woodhill Prison at this moment.  I bring their greetings, and the greetings of Chaplain Alan and the Chaplaincy Team, on whose behalf I’m speaking to you on this Prisons Sunday. 

When I was ordained Deacon in 1993, my license was a joint one, to be Honorary Curate at this Church, and Assistant Chaplain to Woodhill Prison.  For four and a half years I had the perspective of bringing together two places in the city, one, high profile and ‘respectable’, the other low key, and probably little thought about, unless you happen to be related to someone who works or resides there.  When you come into this city, you can see the cross on the dome of this church from a long distance away.  We are set on a hill, and visible, Woodhill is set away behind earth banks, few signs direct you to it.   Perhaps the people who are there today, either as prisoners or staff are ‘out of sight, out of mind.’  Today, on Prisons Sunday, we take a closer look, and try to see reality.

To help you look more closely at our prisons nationally, a few facts.

• When I began work at Woodhill as it opened in July 1992, the prison population in England and Wales was 43,000.  Today it is over 88,000.  That is, it has more than doubled in nineteen years
• A very large proportion of offences causing that imprisonment are in some way alcohol or drug-related
• It costs about £38,000 to keep someone in prison, that is, more than it costs to send someone to a top public school
• A disproportionate number of prisoners have been in care as children or young people
• About a third of male prisoners, and over half of female prisoners have mental health problems
• The majority of women prisoners have school aged or younger children
• Prison Officers, please never call them Wardens, do a most complex and demanding job, keeping our prisons under control and safe, a job that is very little recognised or celebrated.

And two facts to make you think, I hope – first, that more than 50 per cent of prisoners will re-offend within two years

And second, proportionately more prisoners will have been victims of crime, than an average section of the community – some of them being victims at a very early age.

If we are just looking, and not really seeing, we may easily make the decision that we can judge who in life is successful, admirable, blessed.  But Jesus’ parable of judgment tells us to stop and think again.  We do not know what it is that we may have done, to honour the Christ in those about us – Lord when did we see you and come to your aid.  Nor do we know when we might miss seeing the Christ among us – Lord, when did we see you and fail to come to your aid?

I spoke about the two buildings, The Church of Christ the Cornerstone, and Woodhill Prison as two very different places, this building, set high in the centre of the city, the prison on the edge, concealed.  But I’d like us to begin this Prisons week by thinking for a few moments of the things we have in common.

First, we are communities of hope.  Both buildings, and the people who come to them, have the expressed intention that what happens within this place will further the ends of justice and peace.  The Chapel of Woodhill prison is called the Chapel of Hope, and I have seen hope expressed there against all odds, and in really tough and challenging times.   As you think about our prisons as places of hope, I’d ask you to pray for Prison staff.  Most Prison Officers, Governors and administrators begin their prison service with high ideals.  They have to struggle to keep them, through disappointments, difficulties, and sometimes betrayals.  Please pray for them, especially in the week ahead.

Next, we are communities of faith, in the context of a society where faith is not always openly on view.  At Cornerstone we struggle to make sense of a context of the shopping and business centres.  Open expressions of faith may be rare, but there can be a recognition of the alternative values that faith can offer.  Similarly, there is little open recognition of the place of faith in the busy and routine of a prison, yet the prison chaplaincy can offer a quiet place of renewal and refreshment to both prisoners and staff.  Please pray for our prison Chaplaincy Teams, offering hope and new and positive directions through faith.  Pray for the team at Woodhill

We are communities of reconciliation.  Neither Cornerstone nor Woodhill can serve its purpose unless we bring change and reconciliation into people’s lives.  One of the saddest things about the waste of lives and waste of money represented by imprisonment, is the re-offending rate.  Only by helping people to take a realistic look at their own lives, at the harm we may have done, and the way back to wholeness of life, can we bring healing.  Such realistic recognition of the offer of new life is not just the work of the prison, it is the work of the church as well.  As we confess our sins week by week we recognise that we too need to realign our lives to the life offered in Jesus Christ.

And so, finally, we are both, Cornerstone and Woodhill, communities of forgiveness.  Many of our prisoners have committed crimes that make it all too easy to consider them as beyond our understanding, or beyond God’s forgiveness.  Yet it is for forgiveness, after true recognition of the harm done by sin, that we both exist.  And when the end time comes, God will be our judge about whether we reached out to the Christ in our neighbour.

I would like to leave the last words to a prisoner.  Paul, imprisoned at Woodhill in the 1990’s wrote this:

                       

A prayer for Forgiveness

I ask for forgiveness

and yet

I don’t feel forgiven. 

It seems that by sinning

alone I am driven. 

I believe in God

and his son

Jesus’ death 

And for my sins

he sacrificed

his last breath.

So why do I feel

so unworthy and unloved? 

Maybe because all

my selfish actions

I know God has seen. 

I want

I need

To be cleansed from within.

And to feel reassured

that God has wiped away my sin. 

I don’t care

whether I’m rich

or poor.

 I just want

the Lord

 to come through my door. 

Doesn’t he know it is open?

Amazing Grace: The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

Matthew 19.27-20.16

Amazing Grace: The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

Geoff Colmer

Sermon preached at the Church of Christ the Cornerstone Covenant Renewal service, 18 September 2011

Amazing Grace is a very popular hymn, the favourite in the USA. Because of its popularity, familiarity, maybe our understanding of grace has lost something of its cutting edge. If that’s the case there’s nothing like the parable of the labourers in the vineyard to give us a jolt. In a vivid and even abrasive story, the radical and offensive nature of grace is depicted, inevitably leaving the hearer saying, ‘But that’s just not fair’ and maybe having some sympathy for those who’d worked all day.

The setting would have been a familiar one. It was about a vineyard and there were lots of vineyards in Israel. Israel herself was referred to as a vineyard in the Old Testament, Isaiah 5.7, ‘The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel’.

And it was the harvest season. Because storms could ruin a crop there was a race against time. Many labourers were employed on a casual basis. They were like the migrant workers we have in our own country, without regular jobs and dependent on others for any sort of employment. The wage was typical if not generous for a twelve hour day’s unskilled labour. But those looking for work were often desperate and so they would wait even until 5 o’clock on the off-chance that there might be some work for even an hour or so.

When the vineyard owner arrives, he chooses some of those assembled for work. Just for the sake of illustration, let’s say that thirty labourers are there, and he chooses six and agrees to pay them the going wage. As an aside, there is an injustice of sorts done here, because out of thirty only six are hired. Yet there is no word of protest from those who are chosen at this point. They are more than pleased to have a whole day’s work ahead of them and the promise of payment.

The vineyard owner returns at nine o’clock and finds labourers still standing there so he tells six more of them to go to his vineyard and promises to pay them whatever is right. At twelve noon he does the same and also at three o’clock in the afternoon. At five o’clock with just one hour left there are still six labourers standing there, hoping against hope to get some work so that they can put something on the table. The vineyard owner asks, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They reply, ‘Because no-one has hired us.’ ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

I want you to notice that at this point everyone is partially satisfied. Everyone had received at least a portion of what he had wanted at the start of the day. No one was going away empty-handed.

Then at the end of the day, the owner says to his manager, ‘Call the labourers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those who have worked just one hour are paid they discover to their astonishment that they are given the wage for a full day. When those who came at three, at noon, at nine, and at six are paid, they are given the same amount. And it’s at this point that there’s trouble. ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

The vineyard owner doesn’t hide behind his manager and let someone else clear up the trouble. Instead, he says, ‘Friend’, and that’s an interesting word when used by Jesus like this. ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

So let’s have a rain-check - how do we feel? I’m tempted to ask who thinks the owner was fair, and who thinks he wasn’t fair. It’s a natural reaction. Surely if the world operated like this people would sleep in, arrive late, and get paid for the whole day. The whole ‘equal pay for equal work’ principle would come unstuck. But it’s to miss the point, and to miss the question, which is, ‘What is the kingdom of heaven like? What is God like?’ Does he give us what we we’re due, what we deserve, what we earn? Or does he treat us in a manner which is of a completely different order? Such as gift, or as we call it, grace?

Jewish Parable

At the beginning of Jesus's parable we are told that this is what the king of heaven is like. And we know from the whole of Jesus's teaching that the king of heaven is in fact a very peculiar kingdom to our way of thinking. It is an upside-down kingdom. It sets the established order on it head. It constantly challenges our assumptions. And what God’s kingdom is like is a mirror of what God is like.

And the word that describes it is grace. But the fact is that our world doesn’t operate on grace. Instead, we are so used to things coming to us on the basis of merit, because we have worked hard and long and in tough conditions, and because we deserve them. And to show how deeply this is ingrained, if you don’t believe me just ask yourself how easily you receive something without having to pay for it, a gift, a favour, a compliment.

But God doesn’t operate like this. In his kingdom he gives us not what we deserve. This is called mercy. And on the contrary God gives us what we don’t deserve, forgiveness, acceptance, a relationship with him. This is called grace. And he gives us his grace in abundance. Ephesians 2.1-10. CS Lewis, ‘extravagant generosity’.

This means that we’re all on the same level. All are equally undeserving. There are no rankings. There is no first and last. No one can claim privileged status or special membership of the kingdom of heaven. In relation to God it does us no good to say, ‘My parents were Christians’, ‘I lead a good life’, ‘I’ve always gone to church’, ‘I’ve been a Church Officer for more years than I can remember’, ‘I’m a Baptist Minister’, ‘I’m a Regional Minister’.

Our personal connections don’t do it. And our worthy achievements, all that we do for God, doesn’t do it. God isn’t overly impressed, it doesn’t win his approval. The king of heaven, knowing God, begins with him, and his generosity to everyone.

God’s grace isn’t the sort of thing you bargain with, or try to store up. It isn’t the sort of thing that one person has a lot of and someone else only a small amount. And actually the point of the story is that what people get from serving God and his kingdom, isn’t a ‘wage’ at all. It’s not a reward for work done. God doesn’t enter into contracts with us, as if we could negotiate a better deal. God makes covenants, in which he promises us everything and asks of us everything in return. When he keeps his promises - which is what he does - he isn’t so much rewarding us, as doing what comes naturally from his extravagantly generous nature. And this is what you celebrate today on your Covenant Sunday. You make covenant with each other but only because God out of grace has made covenant with you.

This story wouldn’t have gone down a bundle with the Pharisees who were contemptuous of the common people. It wouldn’t have gone down brilliantly with the Jews in general. They’d spent two millennia punctiliously trying to keep the law and the thought of despised Gentiles welcomed on equal terms to them – not on your life.

But then maybe this parable wasn’t so much for them, as for the disciples themselves, and disciples in subsequent generations, you and me.

If you go back to the end of the previous chapter Jesus says to the disciples, Matthew 19.30. It may have seemed that ‘the first’ were the rich and powerful, whereas ‘the last’ meant the disciples themselves. However, that saying was part of the answer to Peter after his self-centred question in v. 27. It’s possible that Jesus is intending this saying about first and last, to be a warning to the disciples themselves. ‘Don’t think that because you’ve been close to me so far, you are now the favoured few for all time.’

In this parable Jesus warns them, and us, that they may have set out with him from the beginning, but others may come in much later and end up getting paid just the same, the regular daily wage.

In both Jesus's parable and the other one, some individuals had nothing, were undeserving, knew themselves to be powerless, and then grace erupted in their lives. As long as they focused on what had been given to them, they were filled with joy. However, as soon as they made comparisons with someone else, their joy was turned to bitterness. They didn’t have a problem with grace, they had a problem with grace shown to others.

It’s been said, ‘If you want to be miserable, compare what you have to someone else.’ Invariably there will be someone who has done better than you for some reason or the other.

For some people, the very notion of grace is a scandal, an offence. But for other people, the fact that grace is shown to others makes it ten times worse.

We can all too easily assume that we are the special ones, God’s inner circle. The fact is that God is out there in the marketplace, looking for the people nobody wants, and who everybody else tries not to hire, welcoming them on the very same terms and surprising them with his extravagant generosity. Who are they? – the very people who maybe you would rather not see in Christ the Cornerstone. And sometimes it’s hard to stomach. ‘Look we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have.’ Matthew 19.27.

This parable is a challenge to us because although we speak and sing frequently of grace, we lose sight of just how radical, how scandalous it is. Instead we domesticate it, we make it manageable, and yet there is a wildness about God’s grace to us his people, and God’s grace to those not yet his people. ‘Radical grace has most often been too radical for most Christians. We most often put conditions on God’s grace: God accepts you if … And whenever an “if” clause is added, grace becomes conditional and ceases to be grace.’

On this Covenant Sunday, let’s celebrate the grace of God for ourselves, and especially as we covenant together in our vision of unity. But let’s make sure that the vision of unity doesn’t become such a preoccupation that we fail to give ourselves to the wider vision and to have eyes to see where God’s grace is breaking out in unlikely places, among unlikely people.  

Meanwhile Down on the Farm

Luke 7. 36 -50 

Meanwhile Down on the Farm

A sermon by David Moore

The story of Jesus at the house of Simon the Pharisee is a fantastic piece of storytelling. 

Jesus is out to dinner.   A gatecrasher turns up at the party who is making an exhibition of herself.   She has latched herself on to Jesus.

The host, Simon the Pharisee, a man committed to a rule-based tradition, appears to be playing by his own rules - not following the normal rules of hospitality - no water to wash the visitor’s hands and feet!  And added to this Simon appears tolerant towards a woman with a questionable reputation who is ‘molesting’ his principal guest.

Jesus challenges his host with a story, the simplicity of which exposes a critical truth.   It is a story about what matters most of all in life.  The moral of the story according to the Gospel is:  the one who loves the most is the one who is forgiven the most!

So, at the Dale Farm Travellers’ Site in Essex today who is in line for forgiveness?  Is it the saints or is it the sinners?  

Basildon Council says the law is the law and our hands are tied.  The law is the law says the local MP.  One rule for us and for them, say local land and property owners.

In the Gospel reading for today, Jesus is suggesting there is something higher than the law - mercy, forgiveness, love.  

Presumably the Councillors, the Bailiffs, and local residents will be satisfied with the symbolic shedding of blood that has appeared (caravans leaving) and they will sleep in their beds in peace knowing that right is right and the law, in the end, will prevail.

The question I have for myself is ‘where is God in all this?‘  

My judgment is that God is locked up tight in the overwhelming silence of the Faithful, and that it has been left to a few scruffy and one or two posh protesting ‘angels’ to remind us that God is love and love is the ultimate obedience of law.

The TV News, with mass delivery of fences, the diggers, the hard hats, the apparent meticulous planning, eerily reminds me of the hard time the Gypsies had under the rule of the Third Reich.  (Most German Christians did not see what was coming as they welcomed Hitler).

Luke, in his record of Jesus being led away for crucifixion, has him speaking these words:  If such things as these are done when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry.’

Over the next hundred years, whatever happens with global warming, the dominance of Europe in the world economy is bound to shrink - life will become less juicy for most of   us.  We do need to be clear what matters most of all.

This story from Luke alongside the events at Dale Farm not only put my ecumenical vision into an uncomfortable perspective but also re-awaken Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s question ‘who is Christ for us today?’ or who is Christ for the Travelling Community in Britain?