One of the mysteries of what we might call the Christian era is the extent to which the Church has been persecuted throughout its existence. And it is a mystery. The Christian faith is about love of others. It’s about agape love, which I spoke about recently, loving, not in order to be loved in return, but loving simply for the sake and good of those we love. That is what Jesus taught, it’s what the Church teaches, and it’s what Christians are called to do. And yet the Church has been persecuted throughout its history, and still is today. So why should that be? Why should the Church be persecuted for telling the world that people should love one another?

The mystery of Church persecution is one that even the persecutors themselves can’t seem to answer. Those who have and do persecute the Church have never really been able to explain why they’ve done so. They’ve no doubt had their reasons but, in the end, what these reasons all seem to boil down to is simply that Christians are different to other people.

As we all know, people who are different can make us feel uncomfortable. And one way to deal with people and groups of people who make us feel uncomfortable is to get rid of them from our lives, or silence them, so that they don’t bother us anymore. So, perhaps the answer to the mystery of Church persecution is simply that the world has tried to get rid of the Church because, by its proclamation of the Gospel, the Church has pricked people’s consciences and reminded them of the error of their ways, and they simply want to go about their lives without being reminded of those things and being called to face up to them. 

But we shouldn’t really be surprised that this has happened. Jesus himself warned his disciples that they would be persecuted in the way that he was, and the reason for that persecution is given in this morning’s Gospel:

“…the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”

And what better way to prevent those evil works being exposed is there, than to put the light out?

In our own society, we don’t have to suffer the kind of persecution that Christians in many other countries have to endure. We’re not likely to suffer any physical harm or risk death because of our faith. But the Church is persecuted in other ways. There’s been a widely reported anti-Christian bias in the nation’s media and we know that our faith can be ridiculed and suppressed in ways that wouldn’t be allowed if it were any other faith. But, on the whole, I think the problems we face can be put into three categories, all of which are linked and form a more general circular problem.

The first is that, for the majority of people in our society, the Church and the Christian faith are simply an irrelevance. That’s obviously true of those who don’t believe in Christianity, but at the last census, more than half the population of this country said they did. So where are they all? Why aren’t our churches bursting at the seams? The answer seems to be the vast majority of the people in our country who claim to be Christians obviously don’t see any need to come to church, or of the Church in their lives either.

The second problem we have is that of the Church’s compliance with society. By compliance, I don’t mean compliance with the law, I mean compliance with the values and standards of society. When was the last time the Church made a real stand against the corruption and injustice that exists in our society, and made that stand because society’s values and standards are contrary to the Gospel?

The Church is far too content to say nothing and to simply ‘go with the flow’. That no doubt reduces the severity of any persecution the Church might otherwise face, but it results in a Church which is simply tolerated because it’s acquiescent. The Church no doubt knows society is wrong, but it accepts what society does without protest. That actually causes people to think that the Church is irrelevant, because the Church makes no difference to society, but it also leads to a third problem, that of the Church being despised for its weakness and hypocrisy. And that, in turn, leads to the kind of anti-Christian bias we see in the media and in the ridicule and suppression our faith is singled out for.

I don’t think there can be much doubt, that one of the root causes of all this, perhaps the major cause, is the attempt the Church has made to reverse, or at least arrest, the decline of Church congregations, by making the Church more ‘acceptable’ to society. The only way the Church can do that is by acquiescence with society’s values and standards; by going along with the world, or at least turning a blind eye to the world. But the Church isn’t called to be acceptable to the world or any society in it; it’s called to be acceptable to God. And to be acceptable to God, the Church is called to do things God’s way, not the world’s way. The Church is called to encourage others to do things God’s way, not to simply stand by and say nothing while God and Christ are ignored. The values and standards of the world are based on pride and ambition, the desire for power and lust for this world’s riches. The values and standards of the world are anti-Christ, they’re the very darkness that Jesus talks about in this morning’s Gospel. And when it goes along with these things, the Church itself is moving from the light into the darkness because it’s going along with the very things that Jesus himself says will condemn us.

The first great persecution of the Church was the Decian persecution (named after the Roman emperor Decius) which began in 249 AD. During that persecution, many Christians were martyred for their faith. Many others though, renounced their faith but, when the persecution ended, they wanted to be readmitted to the Church. What became the official Catholic position on this, was that these people could be readmitted to the Church but only after they’d served due penance and undergone a programme of teaching. It was a lengthy process, and it took years for those who’d renounced their faith to be readmitted to the Church. But even so, some in the Church wouldn’t accept them, and a schism, a split in the Church which became known as the Novatian heresy, resulted.

In response to this, and in defence of the Catholic position, one of the great Church Fathers, St Cyprian of Carthage, wrote a work entitled On the Unity of the Church. In it, St Cyprian spoke of the Church as the mother of Christians and the bride of Christ. This is what St Cyprian said: 

‘… she (the Church) is one mother, plentiful in fruitfulness. We are born from her womb, nourished by her milk, given life by her spirit.

The spouse of Christ cannot commit adultery. She is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home, she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one bed. She keeps us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has born for the kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and unites with an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church. No one who forsakes the Church of Christ can receive the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. No one can have God for his Father, who does not have the Church for his mother.

… The Lord warns us, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” [Matt. 12:30] He who breaks the peace and the unity of Christ, is an opponent of Christ. He who gathers anywhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ.

The Lord says, “I and the Father are one” … Does anyone believe that such unity which comes from the strength of God and is held together by the sacraments of heaven, can be divided by the falling out of opposing wills? Anyone who does not keep this unity does not keep God’s law, does not keep the faith of the Father and the Son, does not keep hold of life and salvation.’

The Church has never been acceptable to the world’s societies. It isn’t called to be and was never intended to be. The Church, and the individual Christians who make up the Church, are called to be in the world, but not of the world. We are called to be, and intended to be, acceptable to God, and God’s ways are not the world’s ways: they are as different as light from dark.  Let us pray that the Church of today will remember that. That the Church will remain faithful to Christ, and that holy mother Church will bear and nourish many more sons and daughters fit for God’s kingdom where his will, and not the world’s ways, is done.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 4th Sunday of Lent (Mothering Sunday) can be found here.

In the title song of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, the spirit of Judas, who by this point has committed suicide, asks Jesus a series of questions. It’s clear from the words of the song that Judas simply doesn’t understand why Jesus did what he did in the way that he did and he’s looking for answers, as he says repeatedly in the song,

“I only want to know.”

So, amongst other things, Judas asks Jesus why he let things he did “get so out of hand?” Why didn’t he plan things better and come at a time when mass communication would have enabled him to reach “a whole nation” rather than choosing “such a backward time in such a strange land?” And he asks whether Jesus’ death was intentional or whether it was “a mistake?”

Of course, Jesus Christ Superstar is a work of fiction, albeit one set against the backdrop of the Gospel accounts of the last week of Jesus’ earthly life, leading up to his crucifixion. But the questions that Judas asks in this song, are questions that people really do ask about Jesus, and especially about the events of that last week of his earthly life. Anyone who’s ever watched the kind of ‘search for the historical Jesus’ type of documentary we tend to see on the TV around this time of year will no doubt have heard someone ask this type of question. Whether Jesus deliberately provoked the events that led to his death, or whether things simply got out of hand and out of his control? Whether it was all a mistake and Jesus had simply miscalculated things, whether he’d over-estimated the true level of support he had among the people and under-estimated the depth of opposition he faced among the religious and civil authorities? 

And in one sense, these are quite valid questions to ask because if we look at Jesus mission and ministry from purely human terms, how could we describe it as anything other than a failure? The purpose of his mission and ministry, his own stated purpose, was to bring the lost sheep of Israel back to God. So the very people his mission and ministry were aimed at winning over, rejected him, and his message. Not only that, those same people arrested him, handed him over to a foreign, and quite ruthless, ruling imperial power, and then connived at his death to shut him up and get rid of him, and the few followers he had actually managed to gather round him. In human terms, how could that be seen as anything other than a failure?

If, as St Paul says, the Jews were looking for signs, what signs did Jesus give them that they should believe in him? He was a great preacher and teacher, perhaps a prophet, and a reputed miracle worker. But there had been other preachers and teachers and prophets and miracle workers before Jesus so what signs did Jesus give that he wasn’t just like all the others? What signs did Jesus give that he was the Messiah, the Son of God? If he were then surely God would never have allowed it to end in the way it did? Of course, there was the Resurrection, but that was in the future. In any case, the risen Jesus only appeared to his followers, to those who had listened and been convinced by his message, and who had faith in him. So even that wasn’t the clear, unmistakable sign that the majority of people seemed to be looking for.

And if the Greeks were looking for wisdom, what wisdom did Jesus show them that they should believe in him? There’s a great deal of wisdom in his teaching, but what wisdom can we find in the way it all ended? What wisdom was there in Jesus cleansing the temple? In a lot the ‘historical Jesus’ documentaries I mentioned earlier, this is seen as the pivotal moment in Jesus’ mission and ministry because it was a direct challenge and threat to the religious authorities, and one they couldn’t let go unanswered. And what wisdom was there in Jesus’ death? Human beings can do some horrendous things to one another but to put someone to death by crucifixion is one of the worst they’ve ever invented. So seeing Jesus crucified was hardly likely to rally people to his cause, in fact, quite the opposite. That was one of the purposes of crucifixion, to deter people from doing what the crucified had done for fear that they’d end up nailed to a cross too. It was one thing for Jesus to say that his disciples must take up their cross and follow him, it was quite another for them to see what that actually meant in Jesus’ case, and might mean for them too. In human terms, there really didn’t seem to have been much wisdom in following Jesus and continuing his mission and ministry. In fact, what happened to Jesus seems to have been almost guaranteed to signal the end of him,his message and his followers.

But then, perhaps we shouldn’t be asking these questions of Jesus at all.  After all, he said he was only obeying the Father’s will. So, if it was God’s plan, perhaps we need to ask these questions of God?

So where was the Wisdom that the Scriptures speak so highly of when God came up with this one? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried the same sort of thing before. How many prophets had God called and sent to the people of Israel already with the same message of repentance and the same mission and ministry to bring the people of Israel back to him? And how many of them had been rejected, along with their message? So what on earth, or perhaps more accurately, what in heaven’s name, was God thinking when he decided to try the same plan again? This time, of course, it was his own Son he was going to send, but he wasn’t going to send him in glory, accompanied by legions of angels so that everyone would know exactly who he was and why he’d been sent. No, he’d simply send him as a man, just like any other. In human terms, it seems an utterly stupid plan, a plan devoid of any of the any clear signs or wisdom that would give it even a fighting chance of succeeding. And, in human terms, it ended in the way it could have been expected to end; in disaster and failure.

But all that is in human terms, and this wasn’t a human plan. It was God’s plan and, as St Paul tells us,

‘God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’

And. If we think about it, hasn’t that been shown to be the case?

There can’t be any doubt whatsoever that the same Jesus who suffered such a humiliating rejection and shameful death, is the most famous human being who has ever lived. His life, his mission and ministry, and his death, have influenced the world in a way and to an extent that no other human being who ever lived, ever has. The humiliating rejection and shameful death that, in human terms, must have seemed to have marked the failure and the end of Jesus’ life and his mission and ministry, in fact, simply set the scene for his message, his mission and his ministry to be taken up by his followers and spread, not just to the Jews, but to people throughout the world. And from those faithful few who saw the risen Jesus and who, despite the danger and difficulties of doing it, despite the seeming foolishness of the message and of proclaiming it, went out into the world as witnesses to his Resurrection, there has grown a faith and a Church that now claims almost 1/3 of the entire population of the world as it’s own. From what, in human terms, seemed to be the failure and end of Jesus’ life, and his mission and ministry, there has come the greatest victory ever, the victory over death itself. And from the darkness of the sealed tomb that seemed to be the sign of the final and complete failure of Jesus’ mission and ministry, has come the brightest ray of hope ever to shine into the lives of men and women, the hope and promise of the resurrection to eternal life. So perhaps God’s plan was not so foolish and weak after all?

In that song from Jesus Christ Superstar, the spirit of Judas questions Jesus because Judas doesn’t understand and wants to know. We’re like that too at times, aren’t we? There are times when we don’t understand what’s happening in the world or to us in our own lives. We can’t see any sign that what we’re seeing and experiencing can be part of God’s plan. It can all seem so pointless and senseless and, because of that, we might think that, if God does have a plan for us, it’s a foolish one because there must be an easy or less painful way for us to serve God’s will and purpose. But it’s at time like these that we need to remember St Paul’s words that 

‘God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’

That’s not always so easy to do but just what that might mean for us, and for our lives, was expressed in the words of a prayer written by St John Henry Newman. They’re words that, I think, we all need reminding of from time to time, but perhaps especially when we’re going through bad times when we can’t see any sign of God in our lives and don’t understand why things have to be so hard. In those times when we’re tempted to think that we know better than God and could find better way to follow Jesus than the hard and foolish road we seem to be on.

You may have read or heard this prayer before, but whether you have or not, it’s one that I do recommend you have and keep a copy of, and that you do use. The prayer goes like this:

God knows me and calls me by my name.…
God has created me to do Him some definite service;
He has committed some work to me
     which He has not committed to another.
I have my mission—I never may know it in this life,
     but I shall be told it in the next.

Somehow I am necessary for His purposes…
     I have a part in this great work;
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection
     between persons.
He has not created me for naught. I shall do good,
     I shall do His work;
I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth
     in my own place, while not intending it,
     if I do but keep His commandments
     and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore I will trust Him.
     Whatever, wherever I am,
     I can never be thrown away.
If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him;
In perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him;
If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.
My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be
     necessary causes of some great end,
     which is quite beyond us.
He does nothing in vain; He may prolong my life,
     He may shorten it;
     He knows what He is about.
     He may take away my friends,
     He may throw me among strangers,
     He may make me feel desolate,
     make my spirits sink, hide the future from me—
     still He knows what He is about.…
Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see—
     I ask not to know—I ask simply to be used.

Amen.

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The Propers for the 3rd Sunday of Lent can be found here.

One of the core concepts of the Christian faith is justification. I’m sure we all know that, in general terms, being justified means to be proven right, or to show good cause for an action. So, for example, if we found out that the company we were working for was on the verge of bankruptcy, we’d be justified in looking for another job. But in Christian terms, justification is concerned with being right before God, it’s about being in a right relationship with God and it’s concerned with the process or the way that sinful human beings can enter that right relationship with God. It’s obvious then, that an understanding of justification is essential to the Christian faith.

And indeed, that’s what we find. All Christians have an understanding of justification and an idea about how human beings are justified. But, just as there are many different denominations of the Church, so there have been, and are, many different understandings of justification, different ideas about how we’re justified before God and enter into that right relationship with him. And, unsurprisingly, it’s something that Christians of different Churches and denominations have argued about over the years.

The arguments about justification are quite complicated and they all have their good points and bad points. But, essentially, certainly for the Western Church, they fall into two broad categories. Whilst virtually everyone agrees that God’s grace is essential to justification, the traditional Catholic understanding is that human beings must co-operate with God’s grace in order to be justified, sometimes spoken of as justification by works. The Reformed, or Protestant, understanding, on the other hand, is that justification comes by the grace of God alone, a gift which we receive by virtue of our faith, something known as justification by faith.

Both of these ideas have their merits, but they both have their drawbacks. If we go too far down the road of justification by works, for example, we might veer towards something called Pelagianism, the idea that we can achieve our own justification simply through living a good life. But that really makes Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross meaningless. It reduces Jesus to nothing more than a teacher who gave us instruction and an example to follow.

But if we go too far down the road of justification by faith, we might veer towards something called antinomianism, the idea that God’s grace frees human beings from any moral obligations or constraints, we’re free to do as we please, as long as we have faith. A milder form of this is something I’ve spoken about quite recently, that of people who think they’ve done enough and are right with God simply because they come to church on Sunday. But this kind of thinking, quite clearly, makes Christ’s teaching and example meaningless because, if we think like this, we don’t have to follow it.

So who’s right and who’s wrong about justification?

Well, really, both sides are right, up to a point, and both sides are wrong, up to a point. The truth is that we need both faith and works. We must have faith, that is we must believe in Jesus, so that we’ll follow his teaching and example. But we must follow his teaching and example, and that means that our faith must be accompanied by works. If we say we believe in Jesus, but we don’t follow him, then our faith is nothing but words that makes no difference whatsoever to the way we live, and where then, does that leave Jesus’ instruction that we must take up our cross and follow him? And we must have God’s grace too, so that we have the wisdom to know how to follow Jesus and the gifts, the strength and the courage to do it. We see this in the Scriptures.

This morning we heard about Abraham, a man who is revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike as our ‘father in faith’. When St Paul writes about Abraham, as he does in a number of his letters to the Churches, St Paul speaks about Abraham being ‘justified by faith’ rather than by works.

But St Paul speaks specifically about ‘works of the law’. so what he’s really driving at is that, because of Christ and through Christ, the promise that God gave to Abraham has now become available to all people, not just the Jews. In other words, non-Jews don’t have to follow the Jewish law to be justified, they have to have faith in Christ and follow his teaching and example.

And in fact, when we read Abraham’s story, we find that his faith was accompanied by works. Abraham went where God asked him to go, he did what God asked him to do, he was even prepared to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, if that’s what God asked of him. So when we speak of Abraham being justified by faith, we need to understand just what that means.

Abraham was justified by faith, he entered into a right relationship with God because of his faith, but that relationship with God was a covenant relationship. We read quite a lot about covenants in the Scriptures, but covenant relationships were common in biblical times, and they all had one thing in common; an overlord would promise to protect a smaller, weaker neighbour, in return for that neighbour’s loyalty. So, when God makes a covenant with someone, he offers to be their God, if they will be his people, and that places a responsibility of loyalty on those God makes covenants with. To be God’s people under the terms of the Mosaic covenant, for example, the people of Israel were expected to adhere to the Ten Commandments. And it was similar with Abrahamic covenant. God’s side of the covenant was the promise to make Abraham the father of many nations. Abraham’s side of the covenant was to have faith in God’s promise. So Abraham entered into a right relationship with God by faith, but it was the loyalty to God, and to doing what God asked of him, that his faith inspired, that enabled Abraham to stay in that right relationship with God and receive the reward God had promised him.

And so it is for us, as Christians. Through Christ, we’re offered the opportunity to enter into a covenant relation with God. God’s side of the covenant is the promise that he’ll raise us to eternal life. Our side of the covenant, our responsibility to God, is to have faith in his Son. But that faith can’t be in name alone, it must be accompanied by deeds or, in other words, by works. And we see this quite clearly in Jesus’ own words.

Jesus said,

““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.””

We also know from the Scriptures, that the will of the Father is that we should listen to Jesus and believe in him. And if we listen to Jesus and believe in him then we’ll do what Jesus taught us to do and live as he lived and said that we should live. How else can we make sense of Jesus’ insistence that we need to take up our cross and follow him? And we know that following Jesus requires some concrete action on our part. How else could we make sense of these words that Jesus spoke;

 ^“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’  And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me.’”

and that those who do not do these things,

“” …will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.””?

To enter into a covenant relationship with God always requires some action on our part. As part of our covenant with God we’re called to listen to Jesus and believe in him.  And if we listen to Jesus and believe in him and in what he says, we can’t be left in any doubt that there must be more to our faith than mere words. Our faith in Jesus must be accompanied by works if we’re going to be justified, if we’re going to be in and stay in that right relationship with God that’ll bring us the promised reward of our covenant relationship with him, the resurrection to eternal life.

So how can we understand justification and what we need to do to be justified? Justification, put simply, means to be right in God’s eyes. To be justified we need to be in a right relationship with God and to be in a right relationship with God means to be in a covenant relationship with him We’re offered that relationship through Christ and as his side of it God offers us the reward of eternal life. So let’s take our side of the relationship seriously by listening to Jesus and believing in him and his words and by putting his words into action through our good works. We’ll probably never be as good as we could be or do all that we could do. But, as long as we do try to follow Jesus, then in faith, we can leave the rest to God’s grace and loving mercy. 

Amen.

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The Propers for the 2nd Sunday of Lent can be found here.