Lent 1: Temptation in the Wilderness

Luke 4.1-13

Sermon by the Reverend John Bradley

17th February 2013

Jesus' temptation in the wilderness follows immediately after his baptism. The wilderness is a place of purification where nothing can live for long. Jesus ate nothing for forty days and at the end of that time he was literally beginning to starve to death. If most of us ate nothing for forty hours we would say we were starving but after forty days without food, all the body's reserves of fat have been burnt up and the body starts digesting its own organs. That is a medical definition of starvation. So Jesus was in an extremely vulnerable state.

Why did Jesus teach us to pray that our Heavenly Father would not lead us into temptation? What loving parent would deliberately put temptation in the way of their child like a bowl of sweets on the coffee table with a sign saying 'don't touch!'? But suppose you had designed a toy that was meant to be indestructible; you might well give a prototype to some boys and say "see what you can do with that!" That's the difference between temptation and testing. Part of the expectation of Jesus' hearers was that just before the glorious Day of the Lord came there would be the fiercest time of testing, the darkest hour before the new dawn. For Jesus this darkest hour came when he was at his physical weakest. In the dry, lifeless wilderness he encountered the Devil.

My headmaster, J W Harmer, was an authority on religious education. He wasn't good at remembering our names but when he taught RE he had the habit of firing questions at anyone he thought wasn't paying attention. "Who is the devil?" he once asked, "The boy behind Jones". "No, sir," said the boy, flustered, "it's not me!" The Old Testament has three elements which become one in the New Testament. The subtle snake, the twister who deceived Eve in Eden is the first to challenge what God has said. 'Did God say...?' The right answer was "God said it, I believe it; that settles it!" but Eve used her own intuition instead. The second element is the Accuser, the Satan, a title more than a name. He appears in the book of Job where he is given divine permission to put Job through his darkest hour. The Satan is not wicked, just the Chief Prosecutor in the Court of Heaven. The third element comes from the superpowers which bring about the eventual destruction of Israel, especially Babylon. The overwhelming characteristic is pride and the demonic power is called the Beast. Later, especially in the book of Revelation, it is applied to the Roman Empire. The one who Jesus encounters in the wilderness has all of these three elements. 'We wrestle,' wrote St Paul, 'not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, spiritual forces of evil.' It is with this timeless enemy of the People of God that Jesus struggled in the wilderness and we struggle now.

At his baptism, Jesus had heard the heavenly voice saying "This is my Son; with him I am well pleased". But what does it mean to be the Son of God? The three temptations can be seen as three alternative ways of being God's son. In his starving state, the flat round stones in the wilderness began to look like fresh warm loaves of bread. If he was the Son of God through whom the world had been made, surely it would be easy to turn a stone into bread and satisfy his craving? Should he meet people's physical and material needs? He did it when he fed the 5,000 and when his disciples got an amazing unexpected catch of fish. He could go around the world meeting people's needs and be the most popular provider ever. But people would keep coming back for more. After he fed the 5000 some started following him just in the hope of more bread and fish. If he had just healed the sick and fed the hungry why would the rich and powerful have crucified him? They would have been pleased that he was keeping the peasants happy. But then he told the crowds to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. He announced the arrival of God's new kingdom where the world would be turned upside down, putting down the mighty from their seat and exalting the humble and meek. The mighty didn't like that and so conspired to do away with him. He set his course for Jerusalem, the city of peace which had become the maelstrom of oppression, knowing all that must happen there but the first temptation was to be Christ without a Cross.

Then came the temptation of seeking political power. Many people have set out on the road to political office with the aim of making a better world but have been corrupted by the power they acquired. That doesn't mean that no Christian should go into politics but it does mean that political power alone cannot make the world what God intends it to be. When people began to acclaim Jesus as the Messiah, they expected him to take political power, today Israel and tomorrow the world. But when Jesus was on trial before Pilate, the representative of political power, he said "my kingdom is not of this world; if it was, my followers would fight."

Finally came the temptation of dramatic acts which nobody could explain or reproduce. Sometimes unbelieving Jewish leaders would ask him for a sign, a miracle to convince the sceptics that he really was who he claimed to be. Jesus always refused. His mightiest act of all, his resurrection, happened without human witnesses and the first to see him were not Pilate and Herod but women whose testimony in that culture was generally disregarded.

How do these temptations affect us today? We might think that all we have to do to fulfil the commission of Christ is to feed the world, educate the world or even heal the world. But the task is not complete until we have made Christ's disciples. It is not that the Church is a membership club whose main purpose is to make more members but that trusting in Christ is the way to life in all its fullness.

We may not hanker after world domination (!) but it's easy to daydream about suddenly acquiring unexpected power or wealth. If you do the Lottery, what if the deep voice from the cloud said "it's you!"? (but it's not you or you or you!)? Some Lottery winners would say that their sudden wealth has brought them more problems than solutions. When I was a boy, my parents gave me a Premium Bond. It's never come up in 50 years but it could make me an instant millionaire. Such daydreams are a subtle temptation; giving attention to what most probably won't and would bring their own problems if they did! 'Solid joys and lasting treasure none but Zion's children know'! What Jesus heard at his baptism was a declaration of his Father’s love, a love bond which sustained him every moment of his life. A love bond cannot be proved by empirical experiment; to try to do so is to distrust the relationship. There are two love bonds which are fundamental to my life and neither can be proved or disproved by double-blind placebo trials. Both are sources of constant amazement to me. For each there was an event which changed my life. I asked for something I didn't deserve and received far more than I could ever imagine.

In Torquay, South Devon, alone in my room, in April 1966 I prayed that Jesus Christ would become Lord of my life and direct my way in his way. I thought of my life as a car and I asked Jesus Christ to take the steering wheel and direct me in the way he wanted me to go. I had been trying so hard to live a life that was good enough to please God and finally realised I couldn't.  I didn't feel any different but from that time onwards I was overwhelmed by a love which transformed my life.  I didn't deserve it, there is nothing I could ever have done to win it or earn it.  It was pure grace: undeserved favour.

In January 1979 I was near Hamnavoe in Shetland with a beautiful girl with whom I had fallen in love. I asked her to marry me and she said yes! Amazing! A few days later I woke up and thought "What did she say?" And I remembered clearly that she said yes.  I wasn't the only one to be surprised. When I introduced my fiancée to some of my college friends they were surprised that I had found anyone willing to marry me and amazed that I had found such a cracker!  But the sceptics would say in both cases "Prove it then!"  Some people can become sceptical about everything and everyone. When scepticism takes you over like that you can develop scepticaemia - a soul-destroying condition! What kind of husband would I be if I was always trying to prove that her love was real? It is the same with questioning the reality of the amazing grace of my Saviour.

We have a Saviour who knows what it is to be tempted but who showed that it is possible to resist and overcome the attractive but wrong choices and take the costly path of God's way instead. 1 Cor 10.13 This Lent we won't spend forty days and night without food and if you have decided to give up something you enjoy, that isn't the main point. It's all about learning how to be the people who God is calling us to be so that we can be part of God's plan to make the world what God intends it to be. Resist the temptations to take the easy roads; let's follow Jesus on the road of costly discipleship.


Prayer for the Week

Lord Jesus Christ, beloved Son of God, who resisted the subtle easier options and set your face firmly towards the Cross, help us in our weakness to follow close behind you whatever the cost. Amen

“I want my house full!”

1 Corinthians 12:12–27 One body, many parts;

 Luke 14:12-24 Filling God's house

Sermon by the Reverend John Bradley

2nd September 2012

Last month the Olympic Games brought together the fittest, strongest, healthiest people in the world to compete in a wide range of sports. The original Olympic Games in Ancient Greece were also a festival of the highest ideal people. For the Greeks, the ideal person was young, male, fair-skinned, clean-shaven, healthy and athletic. Anyone else fell below the ideal. So if you were no longer young, you were less than the ideal. If you were female, you fell further below and if were dark skinned or had a beard, you were simply a barbarian! Those who were not in good health or had some kind of physical or mental impairment were right off the scale. The Ancient Greeks would find the concept of the Paralympics where people compete despite their impairments totally incomprehensible.

Of the seven billion people in the world today, one billion have some kind of physical or mental impairment. If we all belonged to one nation, it would be the third largest in the world after China and India. It would have the highest rate of unemployment, the lowest standard of education and in terms of Christian mission would be one of the most unreached nations in the world. The rise of the Paralympics from its beginning at Stoke Mandeville Hospital near Aylesbury through years of widespread neglect by the media to today when the same organisers and venues provide both the Olympics and the Paralympics has been a long and arduous one.

There was a time when those who saw the world population growing exponentially seriously proposed that people with disabilities should be exterminated. ‘Social Darwinism’, which was not the view of Charles Darwin himself, said that if nature teaches the survival of the fittest, only the fittest should be allowed to survive. Those who consume the earth’s resources but make no contribution to its production were termed 'useless eaters' an expression favoured by the Nazis. In many parts of the world today, children with disabilities are hidden away from sight because they are considered a curse on the community. Not long ago in this country it would have been unthinkable to have a Home Secretary who was blind. Whenever President Franklin Roosevelt appeared on television, his wheelchair was always hidden to camera. Seventy years ago it was politically unacceptable for the Commander in Chief to be disabled, even though his wheelchair enabled him to manage his impaired mobility.

In our Gospel reading, we heard Jesus turning the world upside-down again! “When you give a dinner party,” he tells his wealthy, healthy host, “don’t invite your wealthy healthy chums. Instead, invite the people on the margins, the ones you usually ignore.” Then he presses the point home with one of his subversive stories! The healthy wealthy people had accepted the invitation to the banquet but when the time came, they all found something more important to do. But the host no more wanted empty seats at his banquet than did the organisers of the Olympic Games. So the uninvited – those whose diaries were empty because nobody ever invited them to anything – became the invited. But still there were empty seats so he sent his stewards out again to the margins, to the excluded, and told them to make them come in because, the host says, “I want my house full!”

Here at Cornerstone there is good news and bad news about the car park outside. The good news is that on most Sunday mornings, particularly damp ones, the car park is usually full. The bad news is that most people are not here worshipping God but are across the road worshipping Mammon! What do you think would happen if I were to go across there and grab complete strangers by the arm saying “you thought you were coming here today just to get your weekly shopping but actually you are invited to the greatest banquet in the universe? Even the long-life bread you buy here today will go stale and leave you hungry for more but come now and receive a foretaste of the heavenly banquet prepared for all mankind!” Perhaps they won’t come until they are hungry enough.

Then the second reading was Paul’s familiar picture of the members of the Church being like the different organs which make up a human body. The analogy wasn’t original to him but he used it in a different way. In the version in the Hindu scriptures, the head represents the Brahmin priests, the shoulders represent the warrior princes, the thighs represent the merchants and the feet represent the ordinary labourers who tread the dusty road. The untouchable dalits, the ‘crushed’ people, don’t get a mention; they are like the downtrodden dust. Paul doesn’t have a hierarchy like that. Instead, like Jesus, he turns the world’s way upside down. No part of the body of Christ can say to another part “I don’t need you.” There is no appendix in the Church; no part of the body that we had no idea was there until it started causing us trouble! Those of us with impairments, far as we are from the world’s ideal, not only have a place but have a special place of honour in the body of Christ.

Since the Disability Discrimination Act made it a legal requirement for all public buildings to be reasonably accessible to people with impairments, in my experience the Christian churches have generally made more effort to comply with this than have commercial shops and restaurants. That is to be expected, not because churches are more charitable than businesses but because there is a radical welcome at the heart of the Christian faith for those who are otherwise marginalised and rejected. But before we congratulate ourselves, we should remember that we are still on the journey. I often find that church buildings which have been made totally accessible for wheelchair users like me to join the congregation have barriers to prevent us from taking part in leading worship. When we first came to Cornerstone, the ramp for the dais was stored away in a cupboard and only Jim knew that we had one! When I’m invited to preach in an old parish church where there is a steep winding staircase up to the pulpit, they usually suggest I stay seated in my wheelchair in the chancel. I feel as if I should preface my homily with a disclaimer “don’t worry, I’m not the bishop!”

Much has been said about the legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The colossal amount of money has been spent not just for a few weeks of sporting entertainment or for the regeneration of a run-down area East of London but that the whole nation shall be inspired to become healthier, more active and engage in sport. For people with impairments, the focus shifts from what we can’t do to what we can do. My own experience of acquired disability has been one of learning to let go of what I can no longer do in order to be available for what I can do. Because of the Centre for Integrated Living in particular, this building is more familiar to people with impairments than are many church buildings. They are most welcome guests here, not only because our practical needs can be addressed but also we are most especially cherished by the Lord of the Banquet who wants His house to be full!

For Holy Week

Holy Saturday

The Reverend John Bradley 

How can we live when the Son of God is dead?
How can he reign, crown of thorns upon his head?
Then in Upper Room; Now in borrowed tomb!
Dark Calvary, where in agony he bled.

Yet it was he who gave us life; Our hope reborn through bitter strife.
He even prayed forgiveness for those guilty of condemning to agony their Saviour.

What can we sing after poetry has died?
Our heads hang down; all solutions have been tried.
He had given us hope; Now, how can we cope?
Is there a dawning when death will be defied?

(Download for a high-quality image.)

2nd before Lent: The Reverend John Bradley

A sermon by the Reverend John Bradley

Colossians 1.15-20                    John 1.1-14

Only thirty years after Jesus of Nazareth had been tortured to death on the cross, a despised fate reserved for the lowest criminals in the Roman Empire, his followers were making the most extraordinary claims about who he was. It wasn’t just that he had cheated his executioners and come back to life again. It was that he, the man with whom they had trodden the dusty lanes of Galilee, was no less than the one who makes the universe hold together.

Today when we hear of experiments in the Large Hadron Collider coming nearer to detecting the Higgs Boson particle (if such a thing really exists), those of us who are not quantum physicists can only stand back in amazement at science beyond our understanding. Someone has nicknamed it the ‘God particle’ since without it, in the moments after the Big Bang, the primal elements would have simply dispersed into the void rather than be attracted into the first matter.

When Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians he wasn’t telling them about astrophysics or quantum mechanics but he was affirming something very important about power. At that time most people thought that the greatest power on earth was the Roman Emperor. That’s certainly what Caesar thought. As a personal affirmation of civilisation and the peace and security which Rome had brought to its empire, the Pax Romana, a man would simply say ‘Caesar is Lord.’ It meant paying taxes, and nobody likes having to do that, but it also meant safety and security without the danger of some local chieftain deciding that he needed his tribute too. But instead of ‘Caesar is Lord’, Paul was teaching the Christians to affirm that Jesus is Lord.

The Colossians were part of the Greek-speaking world where, apart from the pantheon of various deities who behaved like characters in a soap opera, the idea of God was defined negatively. God is what we are not. We are aware of limits to our power but God has no limits; God is omnipotent. We know there are limits to what we know but God knows everything; God is omniscient. However fast we travel, we can only be in one place at a time but God can be everywhere all the time; God is omnipresent. We only live for a time and then die but God lives forever; God is eternal. I don’t think the Greeks speculated about what God eats but if they did, they probably would have concluded that God is omnivorous! One problem with this theoretical ‘God of the omni-s’ is that he is always distant from us. To be approached by such a God would be as terrifying as coming near to a black hole or a supernova.

Paul came to the question of who God is from a completely different starting point. The Hebrew understanding of God was not a philosophical construct like that of the Greeks. The God of Israel reveals himself through history. This is why one of the earliest Hebrew creeds, recorded in our Bibles in Deuteronomy 26, is not about what God is like but about what God has done. The God of Israel can still be terrifying and it is significant that whenever God’s angels appear to mortals, their first words are usually “Don’t be afraid!”

But something essential both to Paul and to the writer of the Fourth Gospel is that it is of the nature of God to reveal himself, to enable us to know him in ways that we can understand. According to Luke, when Paul went to Athens he found people offering worship to ‘the unknown god.’ There has been much speculation about what this was and no archaeological remains to confirm such a shrine but Luke takes it to be Paul’s starting point for engaging with the Greek philosophers. It might have been a popular catch-all insurance in which worshippers were saying to the various deities “I didn’t miss you out; when I offered incense at the altar of the unknown god, it was for you!” But another idea from further away fascinates me. After Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire, his land stretched from Greece as far as the Indus valley which is today in Pakistan but had been the birth place of what today we call Hinduism. Within the Hindu scriptures, the Vedas, there is the idea that the highest concept of God is Nirguna Brahma – the unknowable God, the God of whom we can say absolutely nothing, not even whether or not such a God exists! Indeed, Nirguna Brahma is beyond existence and non-existence. So was the deity worshipped in Athens not just unknown but unknowable?

The writer of the Fourth Gospel was quite sure that God is knowable and that he chooses to make himself known to us in ways that we can understand. Our understanding will always be far less than the reality of who God is but that does not mean that it is deceptive. God reveals to us true truth, public truth, not just ‘oh that may be true for you, dear’ truth! In the beginning was the Word, God’s self expression, and everything which came to be owes its existence to the Word. The ultimate question is not a scientific one but it is philosophical or theological. The question is why is there something rather than nothing and the answer given by our readings today is God. But God did not wind the universe up like a clockwork toy and then go off to do something else. The Word became human flesh like yours and mine and so ‘set up his tent’ among us. So Charles Wesley wrote

He laid His glory by, He wrapped Him in our clay;
Unmarked by human eye, the latent Godhead lay;
Infant of days He here became, and bore the mild Immanuel’s Name.  

Our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made Man. 

Here is the power of Christ the Lord, the total opposite of the power of Caesar the Lord or any of his modern would-be equivalents. In Jesus Christ, God reveals his power not in spectacular acts of vengeance on his enemies but in radical powerlessness. Instead of being born in the luxury of a royal palace, he is born in an ordinary peasant home. Some shepherds are told ‘this shall be the sign for you… a baby wrapped in swaddling bands and laying in a manger, just like their babies would be and just unlike the babies of the rich and powerful. Then he grew up in an obscure town at the edge of the Empire, far from the corridors of power. When he began his public work those he called to be close to him were ordinary common workmen, not the greatest brains or the wiliest politicians available. When 5,000 men, miraculously well-fed with bread and fish, were longing to make him their political leader, he refused. Instead he took the powerless route, the ignoble way, and set his face steadfastly towards Jerusalem knowing all that must happen to him there.

We shall soon be in Lent when we will again follow our Master in his journey to the Cross. Be prepared to be turned upside down. As Martin Luther once said,

“Only the weak shall be strong; only the humble exalted; only the empty filled; only nothing shall be something.” 

410 Creator of the earth and skies
263 O Lord of every shining constellation
398 Christ triumphant, every reigning
584 Thanks to God, whose Word was spoken

Self-revealing God, beyond our understanding yet nearer than our closest breath, show us how to live as creatures made in your image and bring your grace to its goal in our weakness. Amen.

Cornerstone Stewardship Launch October 3rd

Sermon at the launch of the Cornerstone Stewardship campaign

The Reverend John Bradley  October 3rd 2010

• Exodus 35.30 – 36.7 When the people gave too much!
• Matthew 6.19-34 The best investment

We have heard a lot this year about cut-backs in government spending and later this month the details will be announced of which programmes will be cut. Here at Cornerstone there is a gap in our budget for the coming year between the predicted giving and the budgeted expenses. This has led your Ecumenical Council to plan this Stewardship Campaign which we are launching today, but it is about far more than giving money.

The reason we are here is to follow Jesus, not just to keep the Church going. Following Jesus is about being a fully human being, not just being a Church member, and his teaching is about bringing in the Kingdom of God, not just growing the Church. So we do our Christian following far more outside this building than inside it.

Cornerstone is a city centre church in a mobile city; a few of you have been here since the beginning but most of us are here for a few years or even months and then will move on. However long or short, it’s important to belong somewhere because it is together that we are the Body of Christ. A human body only works because its different organs each take their different part. Its differences are part of its strength but only if the different parts work together. If you have ever broken an arm or a leg, you will remember how weak it felt when the plaster came off and you started to use it again. The muscles were weak because they hadn’t been stretched. It’s the same with the Body of Christ which this church is. Our strength is in our differences but what holds us together is that Christ is our Head. This body is going to be stretched through this Stewardship Campaign but the stretching will make us stronger.

Stewardship is about more than giving money and balancing budgets; it is about how we give ourselves to God so that His will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. So before we come to the gifts that we give, we need to look at the people we are. We not only give gifts; each one of us is a gifted person. There is no such thing as an un-gifted Christian. Every Christian has at least one spiritual gift (Eph 4.7); how do you use yours? None of us has all the gifts needed to be a church but together we do. If you don’t use yours, the ministry of the whole Church is weakened, like an unexercised muscle. It means not just giving your money but also your time – which is harder for some to give.

When Paul wrote his letters to the Corinthians, he was writing to a wealthy church. When they took up their offertory, they didn’t sing ‘Hear the pennies dropping’; they sang ‘I hear the sound of rustling…’! But the example which Paul held up to them was the church in Galatia which was materially poor but spiritually rich. He writes of them ‘They gave themselves to the Lord first, and to us.’ (2 Corinthians 8.5) They had the right priorities in Christian giving. We give in response to what God has already given us. Titus 3:4-6 ‘when the kindness and generosity of God our Saviour dawned upon the world, then, not for any good deeds of our own, but because he was merciful, he saved us through the water of rebirth and the renewing power of the Holy Spirit, which he lavished upon us through Jesus Christ our Saviour.’ There is an extravagance in God’s giving to us and our giving is in response to that. So do it cheerfully or not at all! Don’t be reluctant payers! ‘Each person should give as he has decided for himself; there should be no reluctance, no sense of compulsion; God loves a cheerful giver.’ (2 Cor 9:7)

One day while I was going to catch a train my mobile phone rang and a young man had made a cold call trying to sell me an investment. I let him finish his patter but when he asked me if I was satisfied with my present investments, he clearly expected me to answer no. But I told him I was extremely satisfied with my investment: it’s thief-proof, moth-proof and rust-proof. Once you’ve invested, you can’t touch the capital but the interest rate is simply out of this world! I told him it’s called the Kingdom of Heaven and people have been investing in it for 2000 years. I hope he looked it up on Google afterwards! Paul told the Corinthians ‘Remember: sow sparingly, and you will reap sparingly; sow bountifully, and you will reap bountifully.’ (2 Cor 9:6) We can’t expect an abundant harvest if we sow casually; we need to plan for abundance. That means that instead of coming last, after you have spent your income on everything else, giving comes first. The Master speaks to our generation when he asks, “Where is the profitability in gaining the whole world at the cost of losing your own true self?” We pray that God’s kingdom will come, that God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. If that means that the aim of your life is to leave the world better than you found it, a bit less like hell and more like heaven, you can do that by your giving. When you invest in the Kingdom of Heaven, there are people who will be fed and clothed and housed and healed and educated who otherwise would not be. You won’t know their names and will probably never meet them but their transformed lives are your true wealth.

There is a precious promise here which has been missed by the financial gurus and economic pundits: ‘you will always be rich enough to be generous.’ (2 Cor 9:11) The consumerist industry – what Jesus called Mammon – doesn’t want you to hear that because it wants you to keep spending on yourself, even if you can’t afford to. It wants you to be dissatisfied because that will make you a better consumer but following Jesus gives you the healthy alternative. I love the version of Psalm 23 which begins ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd; I have everything I need!’

We each need to decide whether our giving is going to be casual or deliberate. If we give casually, we will spend what we have on our own needs and then give from what is left. If we give deliberately, we will look at our total income and decide what proportion of it we are going to give. When giving comes first, the Lord who is our Shepherd makes sure that we have everything we need but when giving comes last, we never have enough. You will need to decide prayerfully what the right proportion is for you to give. In biblical times, the Jews gave 10% of their income and many Christians do that today but the biblical tithe also paid for some things which today we pay for through taxation. Some churches suggest that in Britain today, 5% is a reasonable amount to aim for. But whatever you give, give deliberately and cheerfully. Remember that while the Pharisees were pernickety about getting their tithes exactly right, Jesus noticed the poor widow who literally had only two pennies to rub together and she put them both in the offering chest. She was totally dependent on the charitable support of the Temple and could surely be excused from giving yet, as the Authorised Version puts it, she ‘cast in all the living that she had’ (Luke 21:4) and I expect she did it cheerfully!

This is a challenging time for the Church of Christ the Cornerstone. When this church began, our parent Churches gave generously to plant it here and have supported us financially until now. But the time has come for us to stand up and support ourselves so that those funds can be used to support new work elsewhere. We can rise to that challenge only by praying as if it all depends on God and giving as if it all depends on us. I believe that by God’s help the gap in our budget can be closed and that in giving generously, we shall all be blessed. Hudson Taylor, the pioneer missionary in inland China, once said that God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply. God is waiting to demonstrate that again here at the Church of Christ the Cornerstone.

Environment Sunday Sermon

Sermon by the Reverend John Bradley, for Environment Sunday 2008

Note: 6th June 2010 is Environment Sunday. The following sermon from 2008 is as relevant as ever.

Isaiah 24.4-13 Matthew 11.16-30
Matthew 11.19 God’s wisdom is proved right by its results

I can remember a time when the word ‘environment’ was a technical term used only in geography, when few people had heard the word ‘ecology’ – let alone knew what it means – and to call somebody ‘green’ was not a compliment! It was when I learnt French that I realised that the root meaning of environment is what you see around you. The problem is that despite modern television news, many people only take notice of a small part of what surrounds them.

The crisis we are constantly reminded of today first came to my attention through a book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. She was a lonely voice in the early 60s warning that if we kept on spraying our crops with pesticides such as Aldrin and Dieldrin which not only killed the agricultural pests but also the birds which fed on them, the day would dawn when there would be no birdsong left and the trees would bud in a silent Spring. Hers was a prophetic voice which was dismissed by the agri-chemical industry but a movement began which challenged the major powers. Until then, most people believed that modern technology was always a good thing and anyone who thought otherwise was just being old-fashioned.

But the movement grew and its prophets were largely secular. One ecologist actually blamed the growing crisis on the spread of Christianity. As long as people believed that divine spirits lived in every tree and river, he said, they treated them with respect. But when Christian missionaries came and taught them that there were no such spirits, only one God in heaven, this new teaching gave them permission to cut down the trees and pollute the rivers without fear. The criticism was valid but the answer was not to stop spreading the Christian Gospel but to make sure it was the whole Gospel. That includes the affirmation of the Psalmist that the earth is the Lord’s and everything that it contains. That statement underlies the Hebrew economy of the land where, at its best, land was not bought and sold as a commodity but lent for a while to those who would take care of it. In Israel, the people did not own the land because it all belonged to God. There are still some places in the world today, considered primitive by most Westerners, where individuals do not own land any more than we own the air we breathe. It works when everyone recognises their share in the responsibility for caring for the earth together.

Today, the threat of major damage to the earth is far greater than the extinction of songbirds. If we needed more evidence of rapid climate change, it is there on the news every week. The latest I saw was an expedition in northern Canada which found ice which had been rock solid for thousands of years is now starting to crack. Christian Aid has reminded us that the effects of this rapid change fall mainly on the poor. Subsistence farmers depend more than most on the regularity of the seasons and have no cushion to protect them against drought, flood or unusual temperature. In the past, we would have had confidence that the scientists would fix it. Still there are some who expect that one day soon a technology will be announced which will put it all right. But the sober message is that the disturbance of the world’s climate is under way and cannot be stopped. The best we can do is stop making it worse. We can change only three things: change the way we live, change the way we help the victims and change our understanding of wisdom.

It has often been explained that the burning of fossil fuels releases gases into the atmosphere which change the way its temperature is kept in balance. I once met Dr Jim Lovelock, a brilliant scientist whose book The Gaia Hypothesis showed how the earth and its atmosphere behaves as if it were one huge living creature, regulating and balancing the composition of gases in the air in order to maintain life. His theory was also dismissed by some at the time but it has now been developed into the science of geophysiology. Our modern economy is changing the atmosphere on which life on earth depends. We have become so dependent on burning oil, coal and gas that it will cost us more to find alternatives. Some proposed solutions have themselves proved to cause other problems. In America, thousands of tons of wheat are being converted into bio-fuel as an alternative to oil. But the side-effects have been an increase in the virgin forest being slashed and burnt to clear land for growing grain and a world-wide rise in the cost of grain for human consumption leading to food riots in many countries.

Even if the world stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, climate change would continue to happen for at least the next century. Pharaoh needed the wisdom of Joseph to prepare for seven years of famine. We have other means of predicting disaster. It means that in order to prevent large scale starvation, we will need to double at least our giving for world development and famine relief for the rest of our lives. If we do nothing, or just carry on doing what we have done so far, all the benefits of relief and development so far will be swept away. That is a hard message but we must be prepared to hear it.

The third change is the hardest and will be the most unpopular; we need to change our idea of wisdom. In some ways it is a return to a former wisdom which has been eroded and abandoned. But it is also a new way of combining the best of the old and the new. Jesus said that when a teacher of the law has become a learner in the kingdom of Heaven, he is like a householder who can produce from his store things both new and old (Matthew 13:52). It won’t be easy because there is a huge industry out there which is dedicated to proving to you that what I am saying now is wrong. I like the version of Psalm 23 which begins ‘the Lord’s my shepherd; I have everything I need!’ but they don’t because they want to convince you that you need more things. Satisfied people don’t make good customers; their aim is to convince you that you need to buy things you never knew you needed. They don’t want children to grow up because the clamouring toddler, pestering its mother to buy sweets, is their icon of success. Combine that appetite for more things with the spending power of an adult and you have the ideal customer! Consumerism thinks the wisdom of God is foolishness. God’s wisdom shows that human beings need one day of rest a week and that a healthy society has a shared pattern of work and rest. But consumerism campaigned to end restrictions on Sunday trading and now Sunday is one of the busiest days at the ‘cathedral of mammon’ across the road! God knows we all need some things and will need to buy most of them. The wisdom is in keeping the buying of things in its proper place. Jesus taught us that if we make our priority the reign of God and the right relationships which come from that, all the rest will come to us.

There are still some people who question whether climate change is really happening, but they are becoming fewer. There are more people who see it happening but think there is nothing we can do about it. I believe we need the wisdom of God in this more than ever. God’s wisdom is proved right by its results but if we wait for the results of our present folly, it will be too late to save the earth. If we do nothing, in fifty years time our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will blame us for our selfish short-sightedness. When we lived in Devon, one day a letter came to the school where Marian taught addressed to ‘The Teacher Responsible for Saving the Planet’! It went around the staff room and ended up on her desk. So what about you today? You can’t do it all but you needn’t do nothing. Let us all renew our commitment to care for the environment, to reduce our own carbon footprint, to care for those who are already suffering most from climate change and to choose the wisdom of God rather than the foolish wisdom of this world.

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The glory of creation, throughout the universe,
So wonderful in essence, delightfully diverse.
Antarctica to Asia; the jungles of Brazil,
Established by the Father, with loving care and skill.

From mountain tops to valleys; in forests and in parks,
We watch the playful squirrels; we hear the joyful larks.
Wild orchids so unusual; bright parakeets so loud,
Rare butterflies so fragile; the tiger standing proud.

Deep mysteries, of oceans and unknown outer space,
Migration paths of swallows, the eagle’s nesting place.
The more we gain in knowledge, the less we understand
This world so rich and complex, created by God’s hand.

But crisis looms upon us; the planet’s under threat,
The global climate’s changing, the balance is upset.
The melting of the ice caps; diversity declines,
Extinction of key species; we’re overwhelmed with signs.

So Father please forgive us for spoiling Planet Earth,
Give us a chance to change it; to instigate new birth,
Let’s care for your creation, in details and in whole
Protect, preserve and cherish; may this be our new goal.

© Denzil Walton

The Reverend John Bradley, 16th May 2010

Sermon preached at the Church of Christ the Cornerstone

Sunday 16th May 2010 (Easter 7)

Acts 16.16-34 John 17.20-26

Today’s Gospel reading is the one most frequently read on ecumenical occasions. It was probably read when this church was opened and certainly on many occasions since then. It reminds us that the visible unity of the Christian Church is not just a good idea; it is central to the will and purpose of Jesus Christ. Let us remember that if we are honest when we say that Jesus Christ is Lord of our lives and Head of the Church, what matters is not what I want or what you want but what He wants. This passage in the Fourth Gospel is at the climax of what is often called the Final Discourses, the last teaching of Jesus to his disciples before he is taken from them to suffer and die on the Cross. So clearly this is of central importance.

The whole of chapter 17 is a prayer. You can learn things about a person from what they pray for that you cannot learn in any other way. There are many occasions when the Gospels report Jesus praying to his heavenly Father but this is the most extended. Jesus is praying for his disciples, knowing that what is about to happen to him will also be a severe test for them. Judas Iscariot has already betrayed him; Peter will soon deny that he ever knew him. They will all let him down in some way yet it is to these that Jesus has entrusted his message and the future of its communication rests with them; there is no plan B. Jesus is also praying for people who haven’t yet heard of him such as the Philippian jailer who we shall come to in a moment. When Jesus prays for those who will put their faith in him through the words of his disciples, that includes every Christian from then until now and from now until the end of time. When you read in the Gospels of the many different people to whom and about whom Jesus spoke, do you realise that includes you and me? If we have become believers, it is because some other Christian believers put their faith into words that we could understand so that we could believe too. But it doesn’t stop there! We live in a world where many people are putting their trust in Jesus Christ and being added to his Church but we are living in a part of that world where currently the going is tough. Yet the need for the transformation which Jesus alone can bring has never been greater. That’s where you come in: when you tell your story of how and why you became a Christian and what Jesus means to you, others can catch on and become transformed believers too.

The unity that Jesus is praying for is not that we should all be the same; how boring that would be! You only have to look at the trees and flowers bursting into life around us to see that our Creator God loves variety! It is wonderful that people from all over the world have come to this city and to this church and we are seeking a dynamic unity in our diversity. Jesus’ prayer shows that this is the evidence that he is sent by the Father. Christian disunity is a denial of the incarnation; it really is that important. Jesus also prays that the glory which the Father gave to him and which he gives to us might make us one. Glory has several meanings; one of them is a good reputation. We often fail to glimpse the glory around us because we judge other people by their outward appearance rather than their heart. It is when we see one another as the saints which God is making us into rather than just the sinners we were that He makes us His ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.’ There is a danger in an ecumenical partnership like Cornerstone, with its prominent position and iconic history, that we become complacent and think that we have already done all the ecumenical journeying we need to do. But the ecumenical challenge to make visible the unity which the Spirit is giving to the whole Church and to remember that the whole inhabited earth – the oikoumene – is our concern because it is God’s concern is constantly before us. If we think we have arrived, we most surely have not!

So what about our first reading, one of the amazing missionary stories of the apostle Paul? First we meet a girl who would be considered in this country to be mentally ill. Like some in the Gospels who are described as being demon-possessed, she shows clear perception of who Paul and Silas are and what they are doing. But to her masters, she is a source of wealth, a ‘nice little earner’! I don’t think Paul was exasperated with the girl but he was disturbed by what her condition was doing to her. In setting her free, he deprived her masters of their income so they had the missionaries arrested. They had no compassion on the girl or joy at her healing, only anger at their loss of revenue. So Paul and Silas are flogged and thrown into jail. Instead of complaining about the injustice or worrying about the misfortune to their venture, they fill the jail with songs of praise to God! Praising God isn’t always easy; sometimes it really is a sacrifice of praise. But when we do give thanks to God in all circumstances, not just the nice ones, there is a power in praise! This time it led to an earthquake. The jailer assumed that the broken walls meant that any prisoners who had not been killed by the earthquake would have escaped. He knew that he would be held responsible and if any of the prisoners were held on capital crimes, his life would be forfeit. So he decides to take his own life rather than face his masters. Then Paul stops him and tells him they are all safe! When the jailer asks them “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” what did he mean?

In the first sense, Paul had saved his life by preventing his suicide. Secondly he was saved from the wrath of his masters because the prisoners had not escaped. But there is a deeper danger from which he needs to be saved, a prison in which he was a prisoner not a jailer, and it is to that that Paul responds. Wise counsellors know that there is often a hidden agenda; the presenting problem may not be the real problem. Paul told him to believe, trust, put his confidence in the Lord Jesus – a person of whom the jailer had probably never heard. Apart from Lydia and the other tiny band of Christians, the only Lord in which the people of Philippi had been told to believe, trust and put their confidence was Caesar Augustus! So when Paul and Silas had been accused of ‘advocating practices which it is illegal for us Romans to adopt and follow’, the Gospel they preached was at least subversive of the Emperor cult. The name to which every knee shall bow and whose Lordship every tongue shall confess is not Augustus; it is Jesus. We have an understandable reluctance to give such subservience to anyone because all those who set themselves up as Augustus Caesar did have proved to be fallible and inadequate. This is why our democracy is so precious: not because the majority is always right but because no individual leader is ever entirely right because they are not Jesus Christ.

So Paul and Silas, the wounds of their lashing washed and dressed, told the jailer and his household the message of Jesus. They put their trust in him and were baptised. Since ‘household’ normally would mean all the family including children, this may be the first recorded instance of infant baptism. Presumably these new Christians then met Lydia and the others and so the Philippian church grew.

The risen Christ has ascended to his glory and his appearances have ceased until the end of time. But there are still people who need to know what they need to do to be saved and the Gospel which Jesus brought can still transform them and us into those who reflect his glory. In our ecumenical journey ‘we are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, through the power of the Lord who is the Spirit.’ (2 Corinthians 3.18)

May we be one as you, Father God, are one with Christ our Saviour so that the world might believe that you sent him.

May we so reflect the glory which you gave to him that others may catch a glimpse of his presence in us. Fill us with your love so that our joy may be complete.

The Reverend John Bradley, 18th April 2010

Sermon preached at the Church of Christ the Cornerstone

Sunday 18th April 2010 (Easter 3)

What happened to Saul of Tarsus as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles was the classic ‘Damascus Road Experience’; it has put that expression into our vocabulary. Today such a radical change is treated with suspicion. No politician likes to be accused of ‘doing a U-turn.’ Before another election, Mrs Thatcher famously declared ‘the lady’s not for turning!’ But Saul did change direction, specifically with regard to Jesus of Nazareth and the Christian faith. He had tried to stamp it out but now he became one of its great ambassadors. The change was unexpected and unsought but utterly life-changing. What kind of change was it?

Conversion doesn’t just mean changing religion or denomination. This September when the Pope comes to Coventry, he will declare Cardinal John Henry Newman to be a saint. When Cardinal Newman described himself as ‘the only convert’ at the 1st Vatican Council, he meant that he had been an Anglican and had become a Roman Catholic. What happened to Saul of Tarsus was not that he changed from one religion to another. Many years later, when the Roman commandant in Jerusalem asks him who he is, he still says “I am a Jew…” (Acts 21.39; 22.3), not “I was a Jew but now I have become a Christian.”

So what is conversion? Conversion is the work of God. Ever since the time of Paul, some people have thought us preachers are proper fools. Some might say to me “you’ve been preaching for over forty years; how many people have you converted?” The answer is none, but whenever by God’s grace someone has heard what I have said and believed it and been converted, the work of conversion is entirely God’s. It seems ridiculous to imagine that people can actually be radically changed for the better by listening to someone preaching. But we keep on preaching and God keeps on converting people. When Paul wrote to the Corinthians about his preaching he said that ‘the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.’ (1 Cor 1:18) Notice that these are not fixed categories of ‘the lost’ and ‘the saved’; they are ‘journeying’ words. God’s work of conversion is changing ‘being lost’ people into ‘being saved’ people.

So what happens when God converts someone? There are many famous accounts where people have described their conversion. As well as Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan wrote an account of his conversion which he entitled Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. The classic sequence is conviction of sin – realising the gulf between the person you are and the person you should be, repentance – a change of heart, mind and direction, receiving forgiveness and assurance. It is still valid, but there are other roads. As well as The Damascus Road, there is The Jericho Road – being cared for when at rock bottom and brought to safety and health. And there is The Emmaus Road – from confusion and despair to a realisation of the transforming presence of the risen Christ.

Conversion is more than repentance. Repentance is something that God enables us to do but we have to do it. Every time we gather for worship, our prayers include an element of repentance. It is a reality check because we live in a culture where we are constantly expected to present a positive image – hordes of candidates are scouring the country doing it right now! – but when we come before God who sees us as we really are, such veneers are pointless. Some repentance can be frequent but short-lived; like the man who said “it’s easy to give up smoking – I’ve done it dozens of times!” It is after we have had a change of heart, mind and direction that God changes the actual person you are, and that is conversion.

What about those people who have never known a time when they didn’t believe? Do they still need to be converted? Most people brought up in a Christian home experience a time of drifting, or rebellion, or reassessment. We began with our parents’ faith and assumed it was true but eventually came to the point of asking “what do I believe for myself?” God’s work can be quiet, almost imperceptible. You could catch the Eurostar from St Pancras to Paris and fall asleep on the train. When you reach Paris, you know you have arrived, even though you have no idea when you crossed the border.

Conversion is not only for individuals; there is a need for both personal and social conversion. Social conversion is more than the benefit to society when more individuals are converted. It is the transformation of society itself by the power of the Gospel. Engaging in social conversion inevitably brings us into the realm of politics, whichever party you support. When we pray that God’s kingdom may come and God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are asking for a changed society and offering ourselves as agents of that change. It is a good thing to aim in life to leave the earth a little more like heaven than you found it. Social conversion addresses the national disgrace of 85,000 people in prison, the widening gap between rich and poor, the causes and consequences of marriage breakdown and broken families. It does so not by condemning those who have failed but by reaching out in costly compassion as Jesus did in Galilee, leaving us an example to follow in his steps.

Our Gospel reading this morning is one of my favourite parts of the Easter story. Peter was still under the cloud of having denied knowing Christ. He only knew how to do two things: following Jesus and fishing! How could he follow Jesus now? Better go fishing… Then comes another turning point – an unexpected appearance of Jesus, a life-transforming encounter. Peter can’t wait for the boat to land; his enthusiasm reminds me of Forrest Gump jumping out of his shrimp boat when he sees Lt Dan! Peter learns that Jesus still loves him and recommissions him to love others. 153 fish represent 153 Gentile nations; Peter is still to be a fisher of men.

Cynics will always scorn the possibility of conversion, just waiting for the reformed criminal to reoffend or the recovering addict to relapse. But the power to change the heart of a person, a change as radical as that from death to life, flows from the resurrection of Christ. It is because of Easter that we can be changed, not just when the last trumpet sounds, but now!

In some ways conversion is unrepeatable, like baptism, but at the same time, it is not just a once-for-all crisis. It is a stage in the process of becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ. In fact, the renewal of your conversion can be a reaffirmation of the faith in which you were baptised. The hymn writer Philip Doddridge wrote ‘High heaven, that heard the solemn vow, that vow renewed shall daily hear.’ Whether or not there has been such a life-changing moment in your life, each one of us can know that we have been and are being changed from ‘being lost’ people into ‘being saved’ people. When you think what God has done in your own life, you are better equipped to tell your story of growing faith to others. That is the best way to pass the faith on. Paul was ‘not disobedient to the heavenly vision’ he received on the Damascus Road and Peter never denied again the Master’s commission to feed his flock. Through their faithfulness, the faith reached us. Through our faithfulness, this same life-transforming message will reach others as yet unborn when they, too, need God’s gracious work of conversion.