Is God There? Separation Anxiety and The Fear of an Absentee God

I’m preaching this sermon at St. Aiden’s Church in Hartlepool on 29th March at 1900, at their Maundy Sunday service led by my dear friend Revd Gemma Sampson. It’s based on this Bible passage from John 13. 1-17 and 31-35

 

 

I’ve no idea what it’s like to be a child and know God loves me. Or what it’s like to be a Christian teenager. I have no idea what it’s like growing up in a Christian household or saying grace at mealtimes because that’s just what Christian families do. I have no concept of what a steady, deep, wind-swept lifetime of worship and faith is like.

Some of you here will. Some of you are Cradle-Christians.

Others will be like me. You’ll have gone from not knowing God in your life at all, to realising God has always been there, since the very beginning of time. Like me, you’ll have discovered Jesus and you’ll have become a Christian. Some of you are Convert-Christians.

There’s another group too. People who’ve come back to faith after a time away, after walking a different path. For a time you may have felt that God wasn’t for you or you weren’t for God, or the whole thing was a sham. But you came back. You’re a Come-back-Christian.

I think this group also includes Cradle- Christians and Convert-Christians who’ve ever felt, for a period, that God wasn’t obviously present in their lives, that God wasn’t there.

Perhaps this group may really get what scares me. This thing that, as a newish Christian convert who came to faith later in life and didn’t grow up with it, I really, really worry about.

And that thing is separation from God.

It’s not the same as “not- knowing- God- and- then- knowing- God.” I spent 27 years not believing that Got existed and I didn’t feel like I was missing out. God’s absence from my life felt OK because I had absolutely no concept of how much Jesus loved me. To me that’s not painful separation from God. It’s having blinkers on.

But to know it, and then to be separated from it? That’s desperate. It’s the thing that scares me most. Ever feeling God’s presence slip away from me.

When I first became a Christian I was so worried I’d wake up one day and would no longer believe. I was so worried that my faith was shallow and fragile and could be easily unpicked. I was so worried that my belief, even though it felt firm, might float away, and it might turn out I just got a bit swept up in something.

But I now know that my love for Jesus isn’t some temporary madness, some passing phase or fling. I now know my love for God is deep and strong. I know in turn what it is to be loved by God. I know, even though at times I find it hard to comprehend, that Jesus knowingly and willingly went to his death for my sake. Broken and misshapen as I am, dirty as a disciple’s foot before it’s washed, he died for me all the same.

So it is all the more terrifying when I think of what those first disciples went through. What must they have felt when Jesus told them he was leaving? What must they have thought when the guards took him away? What depths of desolation and fear and darkness does a person feel when their Lord and Saviour dies on a cross and is placed, cold and lifeless, in a tomb? Gone. Silent. Absent.

It’s why I find this part of Easter so hard and why I feel so moved reading the passage we heard tonight. The scene the Gospel writer paints is littered with phrases pointing to Jesus’ absence, which I find heart-breaking.

For me, the most poignant and uncomfortable thing is what he says to Peter.

“Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.”

Because this one’s about choice. Peter is told his actions matter, and he either lets Jesus wash his feet, because of what it symbolises, or he risks being separate from Jesus. Peter needs to understand this. Jesus is teaching him and all of them something very important.

“So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.  For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.”

He goes on:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

How we live matters. When we love one another with acts of service, which is what foot washing represents, we are with Jesus and Jesus is with us.

This is how, even on Maundy Thursday as we see this church visibly transformed, stripped bare as a reminder of Jesus leaving, of God made flesh dying a human death, this is how we know we can still always share with Jesus, be with God.

We reflect Jesus’ love for us and how he lives in us by how we love one another. Loving one another… really, truly, loving one another. Even in the darkness of this night, that’s how we know Jesus lives in us.

By our love for one another, everyone will know that we are His disciples.

∞ 

I’d like to now leave some space for prayer, particularly for anyone currently having a bit of a crisis of faith and who feels God’s voice is very, very quiet in their lives…

Come Lord Jesus.

For anyone, even a cradle-Christian, who has yet to fully experience a Jesus-filled life in all its fullness…

Come Lord Jesus.

And to anyone who has yet to feel God’s absence, because you haven’t yet felt God’s presence…

Come Lord Jesus.

For anyone else who wants more…

Come Lord Jesus.

Lord Jesus show yourself to us, be obvious in our lives. Help us to see. Draw us in. Tell us you’re near. Be alive in us this day. When we fear you’ve gone out of our lives, remind us of your promise that you’ll never ever leave us. Be in the water our feet are washed in. Be in the hands of those doing the washing. Be in the peace. Be in the tears. Be in the waiting. Lord Jesus Help us to be open to you. Show us how to share in you so that you live in us. Break down any barriers we have so we can allow ourselves to be loved by you and to love one another. Christ live in us, always. Amen.

Epiphany Sermon: Wise Men and Jigsaws

A short sermon based on Matthew 2. 1-12

“When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage.”

Astonishing. I find every detail of this story astonishing. These men, probably astronomers, or scientists as some researchers have deduced, these non-Jews, believe they’ve been given a message. These men have seen a sign about the birth of such a special person… that they need to go to him.

So they set off from their homeland on foot or on camels and they travel a very, very long way over field and fountain, (moor and mountain) following this rising star they’ve seen.

How long was that journey? Several months? Possibly longer? Jesus may have been as old as 2 when they finally got there. (So yes I’m afraid, the traditional nativity scene of the wise men standing beside the shepherds in the stable is fake news).

What drove them on all that time? What made them leave their home country to visit a foreign baby? And what did they find when they got there? I wonder what they thought when they saw that toddler. His ordinary parents. Their ordinary house.

Well, here’s something else extraordinary: These travellers, weary and dusty from their epic journey finally arrive at Mary and Joseph’s house, and what do they do? They get down on their knees! They’ve arrived at the home of the King of the Jews, and humble as he looks, they recognise who he is. They know they were right about that star. They get down on their knees and they pay him homage.

They then offer the little boy expensive gifts that they’ve riskily been carrying all this way. And then they depart. They return to their own country.

What an amazing story.

It seems like quite a leap of faith, to follow a star all that way. But something drove them on. They had a piece of the puzzle and had the faith that the bigger picture existed, even if they couldn’t see it, even if they’d never see it. They just had to go and find out. So they got up and went.

Just like Mary. She had to take a leap of faith after her piece of the puzzle was revealed. She was visited in person by an angel and told the baby she was going to give birth to will be “great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Not something you hear every day! Yet she replied, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” She was given a piece of the puzzle. Yes a more detailed and perhaps larger piece but still not the whole picture. It was enough for her to go on.

And Joseph. He had a piece of the puzzle too. An angel came to him in a dream and told him “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” That’s a bit of a weird and vague and frankly extreme claim. And again, not the full picture. Joseph took what faith he had, what piece of the puzzle he had and waited faithfully to meet his future son cum Messiah.

Then there’s the shepherds. They were absolutely terrified when their bit of the puzzle was given to them. An angel visited them in person and said “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” They went.

All of these people, humble shepherds, a carpenter and his fiancé, the foreign astronomers… something significant was revealed to all of them. King of the Jews, Saviour, Messiah, Jesus who will save people from their sins, Son of the most High, he will reign forever and his kingdom will have no end. Each was told something different about the little boy and together they build a much clearer picture of who this special child would be. I wonder if they swapped stories. I wonder if they conferred. They’d have got a better understanding if they had.

Each of their experiences was different. And strange or frightening, overwhelming or obscure as these messages were, they were the right messages for each of these people. Joseph wasn’t told to follow a star. He probably knew very little about starts. The scientists weren’t visited by an angel from heaven. They mightn’t have believed their eyes. Their pieces of the puzzle were as incomplete and they were right for them.

I wonder if it’s like that for us too. How did, or how might we come to know who Jesus is? None of us can see and figure out the big picture. The enormity of who he is and what he’s done for us. But some of us know a bit, and that bit’s right and unique to us.

Some of us might not even know we have a tiny jigsaw piece in our hand. Some of us might have been carrying a piece of the puzzle for years but have no idea where to put it, or what to do next. But whatever we hold, it’s the right piece for us. It fits. And one day, if we choose, we can add it to the rest and reveal someone beyond our imagining.

But it’s completely up to us. God doesn’t play with us like puppets on strings. We are free to choose to know God or not. To set off, like the wise men, with our piece of the puzzle and to seek out the bigger picture. Or not. We can choose to put our faith in the God we don’t fully understand, and we can spend our lives being enriched and blessed by what we learn as the pieces are revealed to us. Or not.

Our epiphany moment probably won’t be an angel or a star or a dream. It might be years of faithfully collecting puzzle pieces that are revealed to us at difficult or confusing or joyful times of our life, until one day we can just about make out the border.

Fortunately, although the full and perfect picture of God in Jesus might not be revealed to any one of us, it is revealed to every one of us. We each have a piece, we each know a bit, we each see and understand an aspect or a viewpoint or a characteristic or some truth, and together, the people of God make up this picture. Because Christ exists in all of us. Jesus said “abide in me as I abide in you”. Jesus is in us and we are in Jesus.

Whether we’re a humble artisan, a young woman, a farmer, a scientist, a foreigner, a person who’s never stepped foot into a church until tonight, we were each born with a piece of the puzzle that will be revealed to us when we’re ready. God abides in each of us:

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139.13-14)

Now it’s up to us to decide what to do with our insight, our faith, our puzzling questions. Will we go and find out more about this Jesus, whose star shines so brightly?

What They Did Next

Occasionally I publish sermons I’ve preached. Usually they’re about generosity as that’s what I do for a living (The Generous Giving Project).

Here’s one such sermon I preached at St Gabriel’s, Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland back in March 2017

It’s based on these two passages: John 4:5-42 and also Luke 19: 1-10

“The woman at the well” from John’s Gospel is that dodgy story with the serious blurring of social boundaries, misunderstandings and depending on your interpretation, a strong hint of a dubious past. A juicy bit of gossip straight out of (Middle) East Enders. A story of loose morals and forgiveness. Isn’t it?

Personally, I’m not so sure – after all it the passage doesn’t mention sin anywhere. I wonder whether we might get side-tracked when we see this as a story about a sinful woman. So that’s not what I want to talk about today. What I am going to talk about is what happened when this woman met Jesus; what she did next.

The story starts:

So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

Women and men in this culture didn’t usually mix. They kept a safe social distance from each other. So the woman is probably a bit shocked when Jesus addresses her directly. And what he says is even weirder. He asks her for a drink.

She can’t believe it. She says something like:

“Well this is odd, a Jew asking a Samaritan for a drink!”

Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate. When the woman at the well asks Jesus what on earth he’s on about, why He, a Jew, is asking her the Samaritan for a drink, Jesus answers,

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Living water” was a local expression for running water. So she thinks he’s on about a stream or river, and wonders how on earth he can provide this water when she knows fine well there’s no running water nearby. If there was, why would her ancestors have built this well? Was this man trying to be funny with her? Thinking he knows better than the locals?

But when Jesus talks of “living water”, he’s talking about himself. Living Water. Jesus Christ. The only one who can satisfy every need and be the source of all life. And over the course of their conversation, this truth dawns on her. She believes. She identifies Him. He is the Messiah.

Unlike the religious leader Nicodemus who met Jesus in the previous chapter, who just couldn’t get his head around who or what Jesus was, this Samaritan woman clearly gets it. She sees and accepts Him for who He is, just as He’s seen and accepted her. In fact it seems as if He’s always known her. And importantly she understands what he offers.

Armed with this knowledge she dashes off to play a unique role in Jesus’ ministry. She’s one of first characters in John’s gospel to seek out others to tell them about Jesus. She’s the first evangelist to the gentiles.

Her gender, her past (whatever it was) and the fact she’s not Jewish have no bearing whatsoever on her ability to see, receive and then act. In this story Jesus shares this living water, the truth and the life, with people whom Jews considered detested enemies and outsiders.

So I think this story makes it clear that since Jesus, the people of God is to consist of all of us, whoever we are. Jesus died for the sins of the world so that we can all be included in His Father’s generous love. And, no matter how late it is, or who we are, it’s never too late to receive this living water, if we acknowledge Jesus for who He is. It’s our opportunity to have a fresh start and change our lives.

So this is a sermon (I said I’d eventually get to the point) about the transforming nature of discovering who Jesus is and what we do with that knowledge. As soon as the woman at the well realised who Jesus was, she sprang into action. She literally left her water container at the well and dashed off to tell others, so they could share in Him. So here’s the question for us today: if we know what Jesus has freely and generously given us, how do we respond? What do we do next?

To assist us with that question, let’s meet Zacchaeus the tax collector. He’s the wealthy Jew from Luke’s Gospel who collected taxes for the Roman oppressors. He’s that traitor who got rich by extortion and embezzlement. By taking advantage of the elderly, and exploiting the working poor. Not a nice man. He’s the bloke who, when Jesus saw him, he called him down from the tree that he’d climbed, and said to him “invite me to stay at your house”.

Painting by Joel Whitehead

And after Jesus spent some time at this shady character’s home, Zacchaeus declared:

“Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

When Zacchaeus recognised Jesus, when he accepted him at the Messiah, he felt absolutely inspired, driven, compelled even, to completely turn his life around. His discovery led him to extraordinary generosity. He gave away his possessions.

We’ll never know what Jesus said to Zacchaeus in that house, but we do know what he said to the woman at the well about being the living water that will sustain forever, that will prevent us from ever thirsting again. And we do know that with this knowledge she ran to tell anyone who would listen. Maybe he said something similar to Zacchaeus. We’ll never know.

So what can we learn from these two people who met Jesus? I’ve learned that when I said yes to Jesus Christ, my life changed. And it doesn’t matter if your story of discovery is nothing like mine or theirs. Because even if we’ve grown up knowing Jesus we can still have light bulb discovery moments and choose to make a greater commitment. This can happen at any time. Maybe we haven’t yet had that discovery moment, and we’re still faithfully waiting for the day we’ll know in our hearts that Jesus Christ is our living water. Wherever we think we are with faith, the offer is always there. God won’t go away.  Every day the choice is ours to invite Jesus into our lives and to see what happens.

And when this happens, when we start to comprehend and accept that he gave everything for us, and he sustains our every need like pure, cool, life-giving water… when we properly get it that God loves us and gives us more than we could ever ask, and that God will keep on meeting us when we are still far off and will bring us home…. when we accept this level of generosity I firmly believe our hearts and our behaviours are transformed.

I just don’t think we can stay the same, once we discover Jesus for ourselves.

And when we discover (or rediscover) who Jesus really is, like the woman at the well, or like Zacchaeus, what will transformation look like? What will be noticeably different about us? What is God calling us to do? What is the Holy Spirit nudging us to share? How will we give of ourselves once we know Jesus Christ is the living water?

Will we be like sturdy reservoirs, collecting and storing this living water? Or will we do what these people did, and share this discovery with others? Will we let God’s love and light and generosity pour into and then out of us to other people? Will our faces shine with the light of this discovery? Will we go out and share this news with our neighbours like the Samaritan woman? Do we feel prompted to be like Zacchaeus by doing generous acts? By giving up some of our stuff? By generously giving away our money and possessions to those less fortunate?

How will our personal discovery that Jesus is the Messiah transform our lives? What will we do next?

 

 

 

God’s Not Fair (Matthew 20.1-16)

I’m English, so when I was growing up, I learned what was fair and what was not. And being English, I became very cross at any violation of the accepted rules of fair play. But figuring the rules out wasn’t always easy. I remember sobbing when my big brother would get bigger portions of cake or a bigger bike or the bigger bedroom when we moved to our new house.

“But he’s older than you Rachael,” my parents would say. “It’s only fair.” This was a tough lesson to learn, but hey if the reason was for fairness’ sake, then so be it. Fair’s fair.

My life at school was governed by rules. The teachers and dinner ladies would always be watching out for anyone not following them; play fair, take your turn, don’t take what’s not yours, you can’t have more than your fair share, don’t jump the dinner queue.

Fairness is very important in our culture. Our love of rules and regulations is perhaps why we, the English, invented so many sports: football, baseball, tennis and rugby to name a few. And if we didn’t invent the game itself, we were certainly the first to lay down proper rules for it, to ensure fair play: hockey, horseracing, polo, swimming, rowing, boxing and even skiing.[1]

We’re known throughout the world as being obsessed with queuing: a prime example of fair play. Where our German, French or Hungarian cousins would make their way as close to the front as they could, so they had a better chance of being served first, we English much prefer the order of a neat line. We’ll all be served, when it’s our turn, according to when we arrived. We think this is fair.

We even self-impose the queuing system in situations where there aren’t any actual queues. In pubs across the country, the customers all have a sense of who got there first, even though drinkers all stand side by side and the bar. Pushing in is frowned upon. The person pushing in jolly well knows they arrived after the lady holding a fiver out. The bar tender relies on their own sense of fairness and the honesty of their customers to ensure everyone’s served in the right and proper order.

The system of fair play only problematic when we find we’re both English and a Christian at the same time.

Here’s an example from a church council meeting I attended. They were discussing Parish Share. Parish Share is the sum of money each parish contributes to the central diocesan pot. This communal pot, funds various things to help our local churches. Like running training events or courses so lay people can develop their skills, or funding children’s and youth ministry advisers, a missioner, a professional safeguarding adviser, having someone to give local churches expert legal advice on the use of church buildings, and of course, funding our clergy, their training, their housing and their pensions so that they can minister. All these things and many more come from money in this communal diocesan pot that each church contribute towards.

But how much each church contributes is where it gets tricky. Because this decision lies with each and every parish. It’s up to them.

At the PCC meeting I went to, a heated debate broke out between members. One wanted to contribute more to the communal diocesan pot this year, in line with inflation, and also because they had plenty in reserve and could afford to. He felt it was only fair. But another person wanted to contribute less, in line with what other parishes in the deanery gave. She wasn’t happy that their church was giving the lion’s share, whilst, she believed, others weren’t pulling their weight. Why should her church give more this year when other churches were giving less? It’s not like her church benefitted more from the extra they gave, yet those that gave less still seemed to get a vicar. She just didn’t think it was fair.

Hmmm… so what’s actually fair?

Well…brace yourselves…because Jesus is about to weigh into the argument.

In Matthew 20.1-16 Jesus is explaining to his disciples what the Heavenly Kingdom is like, which, it turns out, is nothing at all like the United Kingdom.

God’s version of fair play goes like this:

“I’ll pay all my labourers the same, no matter what time they show up looking for work. If they do a full shift they’ll get £100 quid. If they turn up at ten to 5 and get stuck in for ten minutes, they’ll get a hundred quid.”

But that’s not fair!

No. It’s not.

God doesn’t play by our cultural understanding of fairness.

Our version of fair, our rules, our orderliness, our queues at the bus stop…it’s all for nothing compared to God’s massive heart and generosity.

God doesn’t care if a criminal nailed to a cross has lived a most sinful and terrible life up until now. It’s the fact he recognises that the man nailed to the cross next to him is Jesus, and the fact he accepts that he’s the Son of God, that matters. And because of this recognition and acceptance, he is forgiven and redeemed, even in his last remaining moments of earth. He had no chance to live a better life or make up for all he’d done wrong, but in his dying moments, he accepted Jesus, and that was enough for God. God’s that generous. (Luke 23.40-43)

So what might God have to say about the debate at the PCC meeting? What’s fair?

Well, all I know is the kingdom of heaven is unlike anything we could construct or write a rulebook for. So our own sense of fair might have to go out of the window. Instead we might have to base the answer purely on what we know about God’s character through what we read in the Bible, what we come to understand through a lived faith, and what we learn through prayer.

I think it might go like this: God would want each church in Durham Diocese to give as generously as it was able, holding nothing back, giving joyfully, not grumbling, giving more than they have to. Giving, in fact, not just according to the need, but giving generously and faithfully as a response to God’s generosity. Disregarding what they thought a fair proportion, based on what neighbouring churches were up to, and instead giving according to whatever God had been blessed it with.

And if each church did that, there’d be enough in the common fund, the communal pot, to cover lower amounts given by the much poorer communities elsewhere in the diocese. Churches whose congregations are extremely poor, and who can’t come close to covering the cost of their vicar, or much else for that matter. They’d still benefit from all the central pot could provide, including their vicar’s stipend. Mission and ministry can happen in even the poorest corners of the diocese because of the generosity of the whole diocese. Of all churches working together as a team.

This is giving according to what’s generous, not giving according to whatever someone calculates is fair based on perceptions and a sense of self-determined sense of fair.

Our rules of fair play limit us. We’re are only human and we only see with human eyes, and with our human imagination. It’s limiting. We don’t see the bigger picture when we only rely on our own rules and instincts.

But there’s another way. When we take away our culturally inherited ideas about fair play, and instead we turn our faces towards God, when we study God, seek God, ask questions about God, when we grow in our own faith and when we build others up in theirs… we will come to learn a whole new set of rules.

When we give like God, we’ll see that so much more can be achieved. Prayers are answered. Miracles happen. Generosity flows and flows from the least likely quarters.

But from time to time, when we’re challenged- which does happen because generosity is tough- when we struggle to do what’s generous and instead we want to do what’s fair according to our inherited English customs, let’s remember who our maker is.

Let’s remember our God is so generous that no matter how much we have sinned, Jesus paid the price for us, that no matter how little we knew we needed help, Jesus saved us anyway, and no matter how far from the path we wander, our Father will always welcome us home with open arms. Not because he’s fair, because he’s God.

So at the next opportunity when we leave this church today, let’s not give fairly. Let’s give generously.

Amen.

[1] From Kate Fox’s “Watching the English”… a brilliant book.