On burning books and people

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

1^st March 2015 11.00am

You can listen to this sermon here: 

https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/sunday-morning-service-1st-march-2015?in=bloomsbury-1/sets/2015-services#t=34:00

Mark 8.31-38  Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.  ³² He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.  ³³ But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." 

³⁴ He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  ³⁵ For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  ³⁶ For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?  ³⁷ Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?  ³⁸ Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." 

The News Media this week reported that

            ‘Isis militants have … ransacked Mosul library,

            burning over a hundred thousand rare manuscripts and documents

            spanning centuries of human learning.’[1]

I am well aware that in a world of internet-beheadings

                        and other less visible atrocities,

            this is just one more tragedy amongst so many others,

but for this book-lover at least, it is heart-breakingly symbolic of the depths

            to which human beings can sink.

As I read this news story this week,

            I found a quote I’d thought I’d forgotten coming to mind.

It’s from a play written 1821, by the German writer Heinrich Heine,[2]

                        and it’s about the burning of the Quran during the Spanish Inquisition.

Heine said, ‘Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.’[3]

Ironically, his own works were themselves on the list of books

            destined for the Nazi book burning purges of the twenthieth century.

And, again and again, through human history,

            we have seen it to be true,

            on every side of the political and religious divide,

            that where freedom of expression is smothered,

                        and independence of thought is extinguished,

            so the destruction of persons inexorably follows.

Words become flesh,

            and both are burned.

From the Spanish Inquisition to IS militants,

            from Farenheit 451 to Orwell’s 1984,

book burning has functioned as a potent tool of suppression and control.

One of the earliest examples is found in the Old Testament,

            in the book of Jeremiah,

Where the King Jehoiakim of Judah seeks to silence the words of the prophet:

Jeremiah 36:22-25  Now the king was sitting in his winter apartment (it was the ninth month), and there was a fire burning in the brazier before him.  ²³ As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a penknife and throw them into the fire in the brazier, until the entire scroll was consumed in the fire that was in the brazier.  ²⁴ Yet neither the king, nor any of his servants who heard all these words, was alarmed, nor did they tear their garments.  ²⁵ Even when Elnathan and Delaiah and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he would not listen to them.

One of my great treasures is a photograph of the front page of John’s Gospel,

            taken from the first edition of William Tyndale’s New Testament.

It was given to me by my College Principal, a certain Brian Haymes,

            when I left my time at Bristol Baptist College.

Tyndale was the first person to translate the Bible into English

            from the original languages,

and he is the person Melvyn Bragg once called,

            ‘The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England’

There are only three copies of Tyndale’s first edition in existence,

            because they were seized as they entered the country,

                        and burned in bonfires in London,

            overseen by Cardinal Wolsey and Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of London.

In scenes which could come straight from Wolf Hall,

            six thousand of his New Testaments were burned

                        on the steps of Old St Paul’s Cathedral,

            despite Anne Boelyn and Thomas Cromwell’s efforts

                        to reconcile Tyndale to the King.

One of the three surviving copies ended up in the library at Bristol Baptist College,

            but is now in the possession of the British Library,

            who have it on permanent display just up the road from here at St Pancras.

When he heard that his Bibles has been burned,

            Tyndale famously remarked ‘no doubt they will burn me too, if it be God’s will.’

And sure enough, a few years later,

            he was caught, and burned at the stake.

You see, books are more than words,

            they are ideas made flesh,

they create worlds,

            and invite us to enter into the worlds they create,

            and to start living those worlds into reality.

Books are dangerous,

            words are inflammatory,

and ideas are incendiary.

And supremely this is true in the stories of the word-made-flesh.

When God speaks words of salvation and restoration,

            he speaks them in the person of Jesus,

and the written records of those stories of Jesus

            make these words real to us in our world also.

This was the insight of Tyndale,

            that the words of Jesus might take on fresh life

                        in new languages, in new cultures, in new ways,

            not restricted to Latin, or Greek, or Hebrew,

                        but rendered in English, so that everyone might hear them,

                        from the scholar to the plough boy in the field.

And this is why people burn books,

            and it is why people burn people.

They do it because world-shaping ideas must be suppressed,

            if those who seek to hold power are to be free

            to shape the world in the way that they want it to be.

And nowhere in literature do we encounter a more inflammatory idea

            than that which we meet today in our reading from Mark 8.

This, truly, is a text to turn the world upside down,

            and it is as inflammatory now

                        as it was when Tyndale first translated it into English

                        nearly five hundred years ago.

Just as Tyndale knew that his act of academic rebellion

            against the religious control of the scriptures

            had put him on a course which would end in his own death,

so here in Mark’s gospel we meet Jesus facing the future with a similar certainty,

            as he too takes his stand against the religious and political powers-that-be,

                        and sets his face towards the cross,

            knowing that he is starting down a path that can only end in his own execution.

‘Deny yourself’, says Jesus to his disciples, and ‘take up your cross’

            and in so doing he calls those who would follow him

            to similarly set their faces towards the cross.[4]

The link between words and death is made:

            as words become actions,

            and actions challenge power,

            and power retaliates in defence of its privilege.

Of course, the cross was not a religious icon in first-century Palestine.

            No-one wore the crucifix as an item of jewellery,

                        or gazed upon it as an item of devotion.

The phrase Jesus uses here, so moving rendered for us into English by Tyndale as               ‘whosesoever will follow me let him forsake him life

                        and take up his cross and follow me’

            was no metaphor for personal anguish or pious forbearance,

            in the way it is sometimes used in the contemporary world.

Crucifixion, at the time of Jesus, had only one connotation:

            it was the vicious form of capital punishment reserved by imperial Rome

            for those who were marked out as political dissidents.

As we all know, we still live in a world

            where violent and visible execution

            remains a potent tool of those who would seek to intimidate others.

There are those who still seek to silence voices and mute narratives

            in the interests of asserting dominance and control.

And there are those who seek to do so through the burning and desecration

            of anything that dares to speak an alternative reality into being.

Whether that be ancient Islamic texts in a library in Mosul

            or aid workers seeking to negotiate peace and protect the innocent,

            or civilians wanting to quietly get on with their lives,

            farming their farms, taking their tubes and buses to work…

Such terrorism plays to our deepest fears

The thing is, none of us wants to lose our lives:

            we are afraid of the bomb on the bus,

                        the outrage in the shopping mall, the man in the street with the knife.

It sometimes seems as if the terrorists’ greatest symbolic weapon

            is the ability to persuade people to sacrifice their lives for their cause,

                        taking others with them.

It is here that we hear Jesus’ potent words as he set his own face to the cross,

            inviting others to do the same:

³⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it,

            and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

³⁶ For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 

            ³⁷ Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?

Does Jesus sound like a terrorist here?

            Taken in isolation, he could certainly start to sound like it.

But of course, this is not a sound-bite of incitement to violence.

There is a fundamental difference

            between the faithful disciple who carries their cross to its bitter conclusion

                        rather than compromise their calling,

            and the suicide bomber who carries their cross strapped to their chest

                        intent on taking others with them.

Crosses were a common enough sight when Mark wrote his gospel,

            since there was a Jewish insurrection under way.

And in contrast to Judean nationalists

            who were recruiting patriots to ‘take up the sword’ against Rome,

Mark’s Jesus invites his disciples to ‘take up the cross.’

And this action of taking up the cross

            is to be understood as an action of self-denial,

                        understood not in terms of private asceticism,

            but in the context of a political trial.

Under interrogation by Roman state security forces,

            anyone who admitted allegiance to God rather than the emperor

would face in charges of subversion,

            because this was a world where Caesar alone claimed Lordship.

‘Self-denial’, in this context, is therefore about costly political choices.,

            And it is in this world that Jesus speaks words

            that restate the matter another way.

It turns out that if one attempts to ‘save one’s life’ by denying Jesus

            then one is actually losing grip on what it is to be truly alive (8.35)

And conversely, to live - and die - ‘for the sake of Jesus and the gospel’

            is truly to experience ‘life’ in all its fullness…

So, what does, ‘deny yourself, take up the cross, and follow me’ mean for us?

            How do these ancient words reach down the centuries to us?

            How do they translate into our language, our culture, our world?

In many ways, our situation is not so dissimilar to that of the first century.

Like the early followers of Jesus, we too live in an imperial society

            that has stretched its political and economic arms around the globe,

                        seizing the resources of the many to the benefit of the privileged,

                        and overriding the self-determination of other peoples along the way.

In such a world, what does it mean for us to deny ourselves,

            take up our cross,

            and follow the executed and living Jesus in our context?

To avoid this question is to refuse to encounter

            the powerful challenge of this text in our contemporary world.

To turn from its critique of our lives and our culture

            is to burn the words of live that call us to a new way of living,

            and which challenge, once again, the dominant power structures

            of the world in which we live.

‘taking up our cross’ has specific political and personal implications for us all,

            and we cannot afford to ignore them,

            lest we lose our grip on true life along the way.

Taking up the cross does  not mean

            shouldering the personal burdens put before one in life

            and carrying on in the hope of heavenly rewards.

The language of ‘it’s just a cross I have to bear’

            is a misreading of what Jesus is doing here…

The call to self denial does not mean

            the negation of experience, selfhood, human rights, or physical integrity.

Rather, denying ourselves, and taking up our cross,

            is about challenging the self as the centre of our universe.

In this language, Jesus calls us out of life centred on individualism and self-interest

            and into life lived in the reality of God’s love.

The call to take up our cross and follow Jesus

            is a call to walk in a path of radical love,

            that challenges all oppressive power structures,

            wherever they may be found

For some of us at least, this can lead to danger and even the possibility of death,

            because we live out this call in the midst

            of overwhelming forces of greed and violence

            which take no long-term prisoners

            and which fight back viciously when challenged.

Suffering, in the form of persecution,

            is not something any of us should seek out.

But we must recognise that for many who follow Jesus in our world,

            suffering unto death is the consequence of their discipleship.

For those of us in the relatively safe and affluent West,

            we must never turn our faces from the suffering

                        of our sisters and brothers elsewhere in the world,

            because when we look away, leaving them to the flames of persecution,

                        we turn our faces from the burning of the words of life,

                        and become complicit in the evil that would silence love.

To ‘take up the cross’, then, is to resist systems and structures

            that cause or perpetuate injustice.

It is to rebuild systems

            grounded in justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.

It is to resist the rampant and seductive narratives of nationalism

            which tell us the old Lie;

            Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori

It is never a beautiful thing to die for one’s country,

            for one’s sect,

            for one’s tribe.

It is to make our voting choices in the forthcoming General Election

            on the basis of values of justice, equality, and care for the poor.

Did you see the Bishop’s letter recently?[5]

            I didn’t agree with all of it, but, they said:

"The privileges of living in a democracy

            mean that we should use our votes thoughtfully, prayerfully

            and with the good of others in mind, not just our own interests."

The letter goes on to say that:

"In Britain, we have become so used to believing

            that self-interest drives every decision,

that it takes a leap of imagination to argue

            that there should be stronger institutions for those we disagree with

            as well as for those 'on our side.'

Breaking free of self-interest

            and welcoming our opponents as well as our supporters

            into a messy, noisy, yet rich and creative community of communities

            is, perhaps, the only way we will enrich our almost-moribund political culture."

Or, as Jesus might have put it, ‘deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me…’

And the thing is, wholehearted commitment to this way

            is the path to true life;

whilst not choosing this path is to choose the path of death-in-life.

So where now does Jesus call us to take up the cross and follow him?

Where in our lives are we called to resist self-negation,

            the culture of violence, the lure of consumerism, the justification of injustice?

And what are the possible consequences for us of following this path?

Another way of putting this might be to ask,

            what do we most fear?

It may be in our deepest fears,

            that the path to the cross through self-denial may become apparent.

And this will be different for each of us.

This is no one-scheme-fits-all ideology

            where we all behave the same, think the same, and vote the same.

But we do walk forwards towards the cross in community with one another.

Mark’s Jesus did not call people to walk the path of discipleship alone

            but to do so in loving community.

Bound to one another through disagreement and difference

            every bit as much as we are bound to one another

            through our shared commitment to the path of Jesus Christ.

What do you most fear in life?

            Illness? Poverty? The mocking voices of others? Uncertainty?

What do you most fear?

What does taking up your cross, and denying yourself mean, for you?

I’m going to close by quoting from a sermon by Sarah Dylan Breuer [6]

            This was a sermon that she wrote to her congregation,

                        so I’m going to steal her words, and let her speak to us.

            She says:

‘This is a powerful congregation.

            We have power by virtue of our education,

                        our relative wealth in the world,

                        our privilege in society, our voice.

‘It can be very tempting -- all too tempting –

            to seek nothing more than charity.

‘Charity is a start, but it can take us to a dangerous place

            in which we release some portion of our resources

            in order to get more power.

‘We maintain a death grip on the unjust privilege that makes us wealthy,

            that gives us the illusion of control,

            and then we give away just enough to feel generous

            without seriously compromising our privilege.

‘The way of the Cross -- Jesus' way of life -- calls us to let go of that.

‘Jesus' way calls us to be honest about the power we have

            -- both the worldly power we've got

                        because of our skin color, our gender, our social class,

                        our education, our birth in one of the most powerful nations in the world,

            and the spiritual power we have

                        as a community upon which God has breathed the Spirit

            -- and then to let all of that pour out –

                        “let justice roll down like waters,

                        and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24)

            -- to empower the poor.

‘We are called not only to make sure

            that the most marginalized have a place at the table,

            but also to recognize whose table it is.

‘The table around which we gather belongs to Jesus the Christ,

            who saw, as Peter in this Sunday's gospel [reading ]did not,

that true power is made perfect in self-giving love,

            that the way of abundant life leads to the Cross.

‘And the symbol of humanity's brokenness,

            of power corrupted to become domination,

            becomes a sign of peace, and freedom, and life.

‘Thanks be to God!’

Also used in shortened form at Informal Church 7/10/2012

---

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-burns-thousands-of-rare-books-and-manuscripts-from-mosuls-libraries-10068408.html

[2] Almansor

[3] Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen

[4] Parts of what follow draw verbatim from ‘Say to this Mountain’ by Ched Myers et al.

[5] https://churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2015/02/house-of-bishops%27-pastoral-letter-on-the-2015-general-election.aspx

[6] http://girardianlectionary.net/year_b/lent2b.htm

Honesty

Sermon preached at Wood Green Mennonite Church
Sunday 15th February 2015, 3pm.

Reverend Smith was shaking people’s hands at the door.

            One by one the members of the congregation filed past

            “Thank you so much…”

            “Lovely sermon today…”

            “very uplifting…”

            “Oh, you were so helpful today…”

Reverend Smith resisted the urge to reply

            “in what way?

            “how was it helpful?

            “what area of your life did it challenge?

            “how did God speak to you?

This really wasn’t the time or place

            Not with another hundred or so hands to shake

            Another hundred or so smiles

            Another hundred or so brief pastoral encounters

“Pastor, thank you so much for the worship”

            said one elderly lady with grey hair

            “you were really in touch with the Lord this morning.”

As she said this, Reverend Smith thought to himself “if only you knew”

            His mind was already on how he was going to try

            And sort out the argument he had had

            With his whole family

just before leaving home to come to church

He looked past her to his wife and children

            All smiling happily

            Keeping up the image of Happy families

And so the members of the congregation

            Smiled their way out of worship

            With the rousing tune of the final chorus

            Still ringing in their ears

They got into their cars,

            And set off back to their lives

            Back to the trials, stresses, strains,

            And problems which they had been able to happily forget about

            For the last couple of hours

Reverend Smith sat down,

            after another half an hour on the door,

And looked round at the small groups

            Still hovering in the corners

He thought back over the service

            Yes, it had gone well

                        The worship had been uplifting

            The music very professional

                        The sermon was one of his better ones

            Very challenging, and assuring people

                        Of God’s love for them

And suddenly it dawned on him

That through the whole time

            Not one person in the entire church

had demonstrated the slightest degree of honesty.

He had been operating out of a façade himself

            Forcing the pastoral smile

            While wanting to curl up and die inside

                        out of guilt at the things he had said

            only a few hours earlier

The congregation had, to a person,

            Not been honest with him or each other

If the answers to his often repeated “how are you today?”

            Were to be believed

            One hundred people were fine, not grumbling, and doing okay
            thank you for asking

Actually no, 99 were doing okay.

            John had indicated that he had a problem

            But there had been so many people queuing behind him

            That there had been no time to talk or pray with him.

            Or even to find out what the nature of his problem was

They had all rousingly sung the songs

            The volume of the singing

had been quite up to its usual standard

            if not slightly louder!

The Amens to the prayers had been resounding

            And the Hallelujah’s during the sermon

            Had been very inspiring

                        ………(Oh, nevermind!)

Well, thought Reverend Smith

            Is it likely that all those people

                        Were really able to worship happily today?

            Is it likely that they were able

                        To sing the happy songs

                        The songs which told God how much they loved him

            Is it likely that they managed to mean every word

Somehow Reverend Smith thought it unlikely

After all, if he was in pieces inside,

            And he was a Reverend

            Why should he expect more from the congregation

What if the truth was more depressing

What if two hundred people

            Had come together to meet with each other and with God

And had spent the whole time deceiving

            Each other

            God

            Themselves!

Surely this couldn’t be the case could it?

But what if it was?

What if the way the church was structured,

            the way they always did things

Forced people into behaving a certain way

            Smiling a certain smile

            Singing certain songs

            Praying certain prayers

When actually most of them could not

            In all integrity

            Mean a word of it!

What would it take for the worship of his church

            To allow people the space

                        to be honest about

            where they were before God

What view of God would be necessary

            For people to be able to own their hurt,

            Their anger, and their frustrations

            before God

What about those people who were angry with God

            For the way their lives had gone?

Was it really realistic to expect them to sit there

            and pray happy prayers, and sing happy songs?

And so Reverend Smith wondered…

What does the Bible say to people

            Who have had it up to here with happy songs?

Who feel that they never want to sing another happy song again?

And Reverend Smith’s thoughts turned to Psalm 137…

            That well-known psalm

            with the little-known ending

And it was especially to the last verse that Reverend Smith’s mind went

Psalm 137:1-9

    By the rivers of Babylon--

        there we sat down and there we wept

        when we remembered Zion.

    [2] On the willows there

        we hung up our harps.

    [3] For there our captors

        asked us for songs,

    and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,

        "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

    [4] How could we sing the Lord's song

        in a foreign land?

    [5] If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

        let my right hand wither!

    [6] Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,

        if I do not remember you,

    if I do not set Jerusalem

        above my highest joy.

    [7] Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites

        the day of Jerusalem's fall,

    how they said, "Tear it down! Tear it down!

        Down to its foundations!"

    [8] O daughter Babylon, you devastator!

        Happy shall they be who pay you back

        what you have done to us!

    [9] Happy shall they be who take your little ones

        and dash them against the rock!

The people of Israel in ancient times were a people of Song

            They had rhythm in the blood;

            and their whirling dancing,

            their praises to the one true God,

            everything about the way they were

                        shouted praises to the one true God

They were famous for their praise songs

            throughout the known world

Other nations looked at Israel’s worship tradition

            with awe

But the people of Israel were now in Exile

The Babylonians had conquered them

            And exported them to a foreign land

And so they sat beside the rivers in Babylon

            Looking wistfully at the horizon

            Remembering their beautiful land

            Their beautiful temple

Knowing that it was all in ruins

Their places of worship destroyed

Their homes burned

They knew they were never going back.

So what were they to sing now?

            How did their happy, renowned worship songs help them now?

And all the while the Babylonians tormented them

            “Come on… sing us a song

            “What about your famous worship?

            “What about your joyful dancing?

            “Come on… Give us a number!”

And the Israelites looked at one another in despair

            And there by the river, they wept

They wept with grief as they remembered their homes

            Their temple, their places of worship

They wept that all that had been so good

had been taken from them

They wept that God seemed to have abandoned them…

            How could they cope?

            What were they to do?

They cried out before God of

Their disappointment

            Their sense of bereavement

            Their loss

They asked how God could have allowed this to happen?…

And the Babylonians wanted them to sing a happy song of the Lord?…

So they hung their harps on the trees

            and said to one another

“how can we sing the songs of the Lord

            whilst in a foreign land”

They refused to sing their happy songs,

            because those songs were not the right songs to sing.

Not now, not here.

Singing happy songs now would be lying

            It would be mocking God

            It would be refusing to face up

            To what had happened to them

But they still sang…

They sang of their sadness

They sang of their anger

They sang of their disappointment

They were honest about their feelings

Not for them some effort to push their anger

            Deep down inside

            Where it would fester for years

            Before coming out to haunt them

Not for them some necessity to pretend everything was fine

            When actually everything was awful

They knew that God could take whatever they needed to throw at him

They knew that he could absorb their anger

            They knew that he could cope with their bitterness

            Meet them in their hurts

So they were honest before God, and with one another

And they sang before God

            “happy is the one who grabs the babies of the Babylonians

            and smashes their heads on the rocks”

---------

Well, you don’t get much more honest than that, do you?!

These people knew God well enough to know

            That he wasn’t about to disown them

Simply because they were honest with him about their feelings

Their relationship with God

            Was such that it could withstand

            The brutal honesty of emotions like this

And I wonder if we could usefully ask ourselves the question of whether,

if we hated somebody enough to want their children dead…

we would be prepared to admit it

            even to ourselves,

            let alone to others

            or to God?

Or would we still come along on a Sunday

            To meet with our brothers and sisters in Christ

            To meet with the living God

And behave like the congregation in Reverend Smith’s church?

            All smiles and happiness

            Fooling ourselves, others, and God.

What would it take for us to have a church

            Which modelled the example of the Israelites?

Where we could praise, and sing happy songs

            when we had things to praise and be happy about;

but where there was also the space

            To be honest and open about our darker emotions.

What would it be like to have a church

            where the voices from the dark underside of our humanity,

            could be heard from time to time?

What would it be like to have a church

            where honesty and integrity was more important than anything else?

How can we learn to be honest in worship?

            Honest with ourselves

            Honest with one another

            Honest with God

The first battle to be won here

            is probably learning to be honest with ourselves

A phrase from my days as a student at ministerial training college

            still sometimes returns to haunt me:

            “never underestimate our capacity to deceive ourselves”

It is all too easy to kid ourselves that we are doing fine

            to convince ourselves that we are coping,

            that our relationships are going well,

            and that other people can’t hurt us…

The reality for many of us is that when things get tough,

we don’t like facing up to the truth of what has happened to us

            or is happening to us

It’s much more comfortable to pretend

            that nothing is going wrong,

            not admitting even to ourselves the feelings we have

Possibly because they make us feel guilty…

If I wanted to smash someone else’s child’s head against the rock

            I think I’d feel pretty guilty about that emotion

Much more comfortable to ignore it, and

            Deceive myself into believing

            That I am doing fine.

Rather than admitting it to myself

            Facing the guilt

            And beginning the path towards healing

Of course, being honest with ourselves is only the first step

We may know deep down inside that things are far from right

But that doesn’t do anything about the public face.

            The happy smile

            And the twinkly eyes

            That belie the pain underneath

The problem with being honest with one another

            Is that we can’t be honest with one another all the time

We would never cope!

We don’t really want to hear everybody else’s problems

We are too damaged ourselves

            To be able to cope with everyone else’s honesty

But one thing that is worth thinking about here

            Is that one of the main criticisms of Christians

            By people outside the church

            Is that we are a bunch of hypocritical, self righteous whatsits

And if we go round giving the impression that we are eternally sorted

            Always having a happy smile

            with all our problems in the past

Who can blame people for finding that off-putting?

A bit of honesty from time to time

            Would go a long way towards rectifying this

If we could be honest about he fact that

            All we are is a bunch of sinners

            Who just happen to be forgiven

Maybe others wouldn’t find God so intimidating

Jesus, after all, didn’t hang around with the religious, sorted, people.

He said that they didn’t need him

Jesus hung round with prostitutes & foul-mouthed fishermen

                        He took drinks with adulterers

He spent time with people

whose sinfulness was so obvious

            that it offended the church-going types of his day.

And I fear that sometimes we are so dishonest with each other,

            in our attempts to appear holy and happy,

            that we alienate those who Jesus died for?

And my worry is that if this is so,

            we might find Jesus not wanting to spend much time with us

                        Leaving us to our singing

            Whilst he is off spending time with those who need him

But the truth, of course

            Is that we need Jesus just as much as anybody else

                        We still sin

                        We still hate people

                        We still have broken relationships

If only we could find a way of being honest about it

For some of us that place of honesty

            will be found through involvement in a small group of Christians who meet regularly,

a place where we can build the kind of close relationships

            where honesty becomes possible

and where we can find the support from our sisters and brothers

            That will help us through the tough times

Some of us will find the place of honesty as we meet with another Christian for prayer

            Being honest together about what we hear God saying to us

My own journey has found great honesty in the wise counsel of my spiritual director…

            a companion on the journey…

            who has helped me to learn to be honest with God

            and so to grow in my relationship with him

At a simple level, we can find honesty in the opportunities for prayer

that are on offer at church week by week.

            If only we learn not to leave, pausing only to pick up at the door

            our coat and the burden we put down when we walked in

            If life is awful, be honest with someone.

            Get some help, ask for some prayer.

Maybe in these and other ways

            We can be able to learn how to be honest with one another.

And a word of caution.

If someone trusts us enough to be honest with us

            We must treat them sensitively

            Because there but for the grace of God we go

But finally, let us seek to be honest with God.

            And in many ways this is the hardest thing

Being honest with ourselves is tough, and with others is difficult

But admitting our darkest feelings before God

            is a terrifying prospect

How is God going to react

            If I tell him I want to kill my enemy’s baby?

Well, the Israelites told him

            And he didn’t disown them!

Let us look at how we relate to God

            And consider what the opportunities

for honesty and dishonesty are…

What about our prays?

How we pray, and whether we pray,

            may tell us a lot about our relationship with God.

Do we always seem to be saying the same stuff to God

            or finding ourselves not bothering to pray any more,

            or only praying in the same old ways?

Maybe we might start to pay attention

to what it is that we are not saying to God

We may find that we are not being honest with God

            About some area of our lives

Maybe the time is upon us to own up to who we are before him

            And to receive his forgiveness and healing

Again, I have often found that talking to others can help here

            as we seek to understand how we are relating to God

And what about in our Sunday worship

            How do we do there?…

What are the opportunities for honesty or dishonesty

that Sunday presents us with?

We may not be quite up to Reverend Smith’s congregation’s standards

            But I wonder if we often we come close!

Many Christians have a tendency

            to expect victorious, joyous, Christian living

Which is fine - until their lives fall apart.

So sometimes we need to get real ourselves

            and ask just why we think we’re here on a Sunday.

Is it get an emotional lift out of the service

            that will see us through until at least Monday lunchtime?

Or is it to meet in honesty

            with ourselves,

            with others,

and with God

Who loves us, and longs to forgive us

            to heal us

            to renew us

            to refresh us

            And to comfort us

And to teach us to worship him

            in Spirit and in truth.