Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash
How many people have heard of C.S. Lewis? How many of you have ever read any of his books? It wouldn’t be a surprise if most of you have heard of Lewis, nor if a lot of you have read his books because he is a well-known and much-loved author. His most well-known work is The Chronicles of Narnia and I think pretty much everyone will at least have heard of that and perhaps read one, if not more, of the 7 novels that make up the complete Chronicles. But Lewis is also well-known, particularly amongst Christians, for his books on the Christian faith. And if you’re looking for something to read during Lent, which is only just over 3 weeks away now, you could do worse than read at least one of Lewis’ books on Christianity.
Lewis’ books on Christianity were published quite a long time ago now, between the early 1940s and the mid-1960s actually, but even so, I think they’re still relevant to us today. The reason for that is that they draw on Lewis’ own experiences of faith and struggles with faith and although those things are personal and peculiar to each one of us, Lewis’ own journey of faith is an interesting one because it will have both a lot of similarities with many of ours but, at the same time, it’s quite an unusual one.
Lewis was born in Belfast. He was born into a Christian family who were members of the Church of Ireland, which is essentially the Anglican Church of Ireland. Like many of us here today, I’m sure, he went to Church as a child but, when he was 12, he abandoned his Christian faith and stopped going to Church, in large part it seems because he found it all to be something of a chore and lacking in joy. Then through his teens and 20s, he confessed himself to be an atheist and it wasn’t until he was in his early 30s that he became convinced of the existence of God. At that time though, that was as far as his faith went. It was another 2 years before he finally returned to the Christian faith and to the Church of England.
I’m sure some of us will find at least parts of that story are similar to our own journey of faith. What’s unusual about Lewis’ story is the way he came back to the Christian faith and the Church.
Lewis always insisted that his conversion was brought about by reason and logical thought: it was a conversion brought about by words rather than deeds. He came to believe in God again, and later came back to the Christian faith and the Church, as a result of long conversations with his friends. Among those friends were the famous authors J.R.R. Tolkien and G.K. Chesterton, both of whom were Roman Catholics. And yet, much to Tolkien’s disappointment I believe, Lewis became an Anglican, and remained a member of the Church of England for the rest of his life.
That’s unusual in a number of ways. It’s not often that people are convinced of the existence of God and become Christians as a result of intellectual discussion. For most people that happens because they’ve seen, or particularly when they’ve experienced an act of Christian charity, some act of love or kindness or generosity that’s been performed by a Christian. Or it happens when people have a sudden revelation of God, they suddenly realise that God is there with them and at work in their lives. And it’s also unusual for someone to become a member of a different Church to the one those who’ve convinced them to believe in God and become a Christian belong to; they usually join their friends or those who’ve shown them Christian charity in the Church they belong to.
So whilst Lewis’ journey of faith may be familiar to many of us because it’s not too dissimilar to our own, the nature of his return to faith and the Church, is quite unusual. And I’m sure Lewis himself realised that because he said of it himself,
“The intellectual life is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us.”
So, as Lewis said, and as I’m sure we know ourselves, there are different ways to bring people to God and faith and the Church. And if we’re going to be successful in bringing people to God and faith and the Church, if we’re going to be successful at mission, we need try as many of these different ways we possibly can, to do it.
I think perhaps one of the mistakes the Church makes when it talks about and plans and engages in mission though, is that it seems to forget what the mission of the Church actually is. The mission of the Church is set out in the Great Commission that Jesus gave to his disciples to,
“Go … and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
So the mission of the Church is to bring people to God, to faith and to the Church, and to teach them about Jesus. There are many ways to that, as I’ve said, I think though, what the Church tends to do is concentrate so much on the how we do that, that why we’re doing it is forgotten, or at least neglected.
I’ll give you an example of what I mean. We’re being encouraged these days to make more use of our church buildings and one of the ways we’re encouraged to do that, is through what seems to come under the banner of ‘Community Engagement’ or perhaps of ‘Serving the Community’. Some of the ways that churches are doing that is by using their buildings as ‘Drop-In Centres’ or using them for ‘Coffee Mornings’ and ‘Luncheon Clubs’ and all sorts of things like that. Now there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that in itself and, in fact, there’s a lot that right and good about it. It’s part of loving our neighbour and caring for people in our communities who may be in need of these things. But there’s nothing specifically Christian about doing any of these things is there?
The fact is, people of all faiths and no faith do these kinds of things. These days, people of other faiths and no faith use our church buildings to do them, and sometimes they’re even do that at the expense of the Church’s worship. In fact, at times, the Church itself does these things at the expense of worship, or at least, these things have become more important to some churches than worship because more people go to them than go to church to worship God.
But if there’s no specific and observable Christian involvement and input at these events, I think we have to ask how they’re actually helping the mission of the Church? These things might be serving the community by providing the community with a building to hold events in, but if the Church isn’t involved in them or making their faith known to those who go to them when it is involved, how are these things helping the Church to fulfil its great, Christ-given commission to bring people to God, to faith and to the Church and to teach them about Jesus?
Now I know people say we shouldn’t talk about our faith at community events. They say that puts people off going to them because they don’t want to have our faith rammed down their throats. But we can talk to people about our faith, and use these things for mission, without ramming our faith down their throats. And it’s so simple. For example, if we hold a community event or help out at one and someone thanks us for what we’re doing, we simply need to say that they’re welcome, that we’re only doing what we’re supposed to do as Christians and showing some love and care for our neighbours.
If we get into a conversation with people, eventually the conversation will no doubt come round to what we do in our lives. In that case we simply need to make sure that we say, at some point, that we go to Church and we’re Christians. But if we don’t say things like this, how do people know who we are or why we’re there doing what we’re doing? We could be anyone, community volunteers, friends or family of the volunteers or organisers. Just because we’re at a community event in a church building doesn’t mean that everyone there automatically knows, or even assumes, that we’re Christians and are at the event because we’re Christians. But if we do say even such simple things as this, we’ve shared our faith, we’ve tried to use a community event to help the Church’s mission and we’ve tried to play our part in fulfilling the Great Commission that Jesus gave us.
We can help people to come to God, to faith and to the Church, and we can teach them about Jesus in many ways, by both word and deed but we’ll be able to do that much more effectively if our words and our deeds go together. We see that in our gospel readings today. Depending on which readings we’re following this morning, we’ll read either about Jesus calling some of his disciples, by word, or about his changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana, the first of the signs he performed through which, St John tells us, Jesus’ disciples came to believe in him. So we see that, in Jesus, words and deeds went hand-in-hand in order to bring people to faith. We could say that Jesus’ words got people interested enough to follow him, and it was what they saw and experienced as they followed him that convinced them that Jesus was the one to follow. And if that was the way Jesus called people to faith, surely, it’s the way we should try to call people to faith too?
Jesus’ way of calling people to faith, Jesus’ way of doing mission, if you like, worked: we know it did because we wouldn’t be in Church today if it hadn’t worked. Jesus’ brought people to faith by putting words and deeds together. So why should today’s Church seem to want to try a different way? Why should today’s Church want to try to bring people to faith by separating our words from our deeds, or by trying to use deeds alone? We must have deeds, good works if you prefer, but they must go hand-in-hand with words. That was Jesus’ way, and it should be our way too. Unless of course, today’s Church thinks it knows better than Jesus?
Amen.
The Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time (Epiphany 3) can be found here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 