You can listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/sunday-morning-10th-may-2015
Acts 10.44-48 While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46 for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47 "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" 48 So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.
Acts 10.44-48 While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46 for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47 "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" 48 So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.
Romans 13.1-7 Let every person be subject to the governing
authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities
that exist have been instituted by God. 2
Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those
who resist will incur judgment. 3
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no
fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its
approval; 4 for it is God's
servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for
the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to
execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5
Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of
conscience. 6 For the same
reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, busy with
this very thing. 7 Pay to all
what is due them-- taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due,
respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.
Call
to Worship
Luke 1.46-53
My soul magnifies the Lord,
and
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from
generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he
has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their
thrones,
and
lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and
sent the rich away empty.
Opening
Prayer
Great God of all the earth,
we
come to you this day
to dedicate ourselves once again to your
service.
Pour out your Holy Spirit upon us,
that
we might become good news for the whole earth.
We pray for our nation,
for
those we live alongside,
and
for those who have to live alongside us.
May we be good neighbours,
may
we be good stewards,
may
we be good news.
Forgive us for those times we have acted
selfishly,
for
the times we have decided in our own self-interest,
rather
than in the interests of others.
May we learn to see the world as you see it,
by
the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.
So we ask that you will reveal yourself to us
today,
through
your son Jesus Christ.
And we pray together the prayer that Jesus
taught his disciples.
Our
Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your
kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.
Give
us today our daily bread.
Forgive
us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead
us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For
the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours
Now
and forever
Amen.
‘Be careful what you wish for, or you might get
it’,
the
old saying goes;
or, as Oscar Wilde memorably put it:
"When
the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers"[1]
Well, here we are, post-election…
Did
you get what you wished for?
Have
your prayers been answered?
Do you think the current leadership of our
country is good news or bad?
I’m going to come clean now, and admit to the
fact
that
I wrote this sermon, and planned this service,
on
and before Thursday, when the nation went to the polls.
This was partly because I like to get my
sermons written a few days in advance,
but
it was also because I didn’t want my pontifical ramblings
to
be influence by my own personal response
to
the outcome of the general election.
I do, however, very much think that our
passages this morning
speak
powerfully to a post-election scenario,
And so I made a commitment to preach this
sermon in this way,
regardless
of how the balance of power in government was settled.
And that is because in our short reading from
the book of Acts
we
encounter God casting his vote, decisively,
on
the question of who’s in, and who’s out,
and
in our reading from Romans,
we
hear Paul challenging his readers
as
to what they’re going to do about it.
But first, let me tell you about a hymn
that
I couldn’t sing on Wednesday evening.
Now, anyone who’s ever heard me trying to sing,
might
legitimately remark that, seeing as I can’t sing any hymns,
singling
out just one of them is rather unfair,
and
there may be a point in that,...
…but, whilst it’s true that I rarely raise my
voice in song,
and
more usually mouth along with the words for fear of being heard,
I do still consider my silent vocalization
to
signify assent to the words in front of me.
And if I can’t agree with them,
I
will, on occasions, keep my mouth shut.
Well, on Wednesday evening,
I
went, with a number of others from Bloomsbury,
to the Florence Nightingale memorial service
at
Westminster Abbey.
It’s a wonderful service,
and
provides a fitting annual tribute to an incredible woman,
offering a celebration of her astonishing
legacy
in
the work of nurses throughout the world.
I love it. I’ve been before, and hope to go
again.
And this year, the service included the hymn,
‘I
vow to thee my country’
set to the wonderful tune Thaxted,
adapted
by Gustav Holst from the Jupiter movement of The Planets.
I would sing it to you, but, well, you know…
Anyway, stirring stuff.
Except I couldn’t even mouth the first verse;
at
least, not in agreement.
I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands
the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the
price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
Cecil Spring Rice, a British diplomat,
published these words in 1918
to
express his nationalistic loyalty to his mother country,
and to reflect on the ultimate sacrifice paid
by so many
in
the trenches and battlefields of the Great War.
Interestingly, on Wednesday night,
especially
given that Florence Nightingale developed
her
nursing practices in the theatre of the Crimean war,
none of us were asked to sing the second verse
which
makes far clearer the call of Britannia
to
death and destruction,
I heard my country calling, away across the sea,
Across the waste of waters, she calls and calls to me.
Her sword is girded at her side, her helmet on her
head,
And around her feet are lying the dying and the dead;
I hear the noise of battle, the thunder of her guns;
I haste to thee, my mother, a son among thy sons.
And I find myself wondering…
Is
our national identity, really, the most important thing?
Are
we really defined by the borders that define us?
The commemorations marking the 70th anniversary
of VE Day this weekend
speak
to us powerfully of the ultimate cost paid by so many,
as
they fought and died in the service of their country.
And so I find myself wondering…
Is
Britannia worth dying for?
Perhaps depressingly, if the statistics are to
be believed,
a
good many of those who live here
don’t
even think she’s worth voting for…
Now, don’t get me wrong here,
I
love being English.
There are many things about my culture that I’m
proud of,
and
whether it’s democracy, tolerance, or warm beer,
I’m
happy to celebrate my Englishness.
And by the same token, I love to join with
others, from other cultures,
as
they celebrate all that is good in their heritage.
But England does not own my ultimate
allegiance.
That,
I’m afraid, lies elsewhere.
Which is why I cannot vow to my country
a
love that asks no question.
Interestingly, Cecil Spring Rice also
recognized the call of another place,
a
different allegiance.
Listen to his third verse,
the
one I could sing, or at least, pretend to sing, on Wednesday evening.
And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them
that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is
suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds
increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths
are peace.
And so we find ourselves confronted with the
problem faced by Christians
in
the face of nationalistic ideologies.
Those whose citizenship lies in the kingdom of
heaven,
owe
their ultimate loyalty somewhere other
than
the country of their birth or habitation.
Because the kingdom of God transcends human
borders,
it
joins people across cultural, linguistic, and social divides,
it
breaks down barriers, and demolishes walls.
The kingdom of God does not sit easily
with
any nationalist agenda.
And those who have sought to equate the two
are,
I would suggest, acting against the interests
of
the dawning kingdom of heaven.
… and back to the Bible:
This
is what is going on, in Acts chapter 10.
The back-story here
is
that, up until this point,
the
emerging Christianity had existed as a sub-set of Judaism.
The earliest Christians were Jews,
and
they had inherited a Jewish nationalist ideology, based upon
their
understanding of their nation as God’s chosen nation,
and their ethnic identity as God’s
chosen people.
And so, for many of the earliest
Christ-followers,
any
non-Jew who wanted to join them in following Jesus,
needed
to convert to Judaism to do so.
But then we come to Acts chapter 10,
and
Simon Peter, the Jewish disciple of Jesus,
goes
to visit the house of a Roman called Cornelius.
The thing is, Peter has just had a vision, a
vivid dream,
of
a tablecloth laden with food,
some of it ritually clean,
and
some of it ritually unclean.
As a good Jew, he could only eat the ritually
clean food,
and
yet in his dream, God’s voice tells him
to
eat food that is ritually unclean.
And then he comes to meet Cornelius,
a
Roman, not a Jew, and yet someone who is seeking after God.
And suddenly the meaning of the dream becomes
clear:
the
opportunity to encounter God through Jesus
is
not just for the ritually-clean Jewish people,
but
for the ritually-unclean Gentiles as well.
So Peter preaches a sermon,
summarizing
the gospel story
of
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus,
and the Holy Spirit falls on the Gentiles, the
non-Jews,
who
hear his message.
As I said, this is the point where God casts
his vote,
on
who’s in, and who’s out.
This is the moment that sets the agenda for the
future,
this
is the point where God’s manifesto is made manifest.
This is where the gospel starts to become real
for the world;
it’s
where the gift of the Spirit takes practical shape
in
the political sphere of relationships, nationalism, and power.
Because this is where God goes beyond one
nation,
it
is where God transcends any one society, however big it may be.
It turns out, as Peter discovers,
that
the kingdom of God is bigger than any nationalist agenda,
and
broader than any nationalist ideology.
And this makes demands on those of us
who
would consider our ultimate allegiance
to
lie with the eternal Kingdom of Heaven,
rather
than with the United Kingdom
of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The arguments in the run-up to this week’s
general election
primarily
focused on issues of national identity.
So we have been asked to consider, and vote,
on
the British economy,
on
immigration,
on
Scottish nationalism, Welsh nationalism,
and
the National Health Service;
on
National Welfare,
National
infrastructure
National
Security,
and
Social Security;
on
Housing, Pensions,
and
Local government;
on
the European Union,
and
The Environment;
to
name but some…
And in all of these we have been asked to
consider
where
our own interest lies;
either our own interest personally,
or
our own interest nationally.
And yet the message of Acts 10,
is
that the interest of the Kingdom of God
cannot be equated with what’s best for me and
mine.
The blessing of God falls beyond our national boundaries,
and challenges all our
attempts to confine our horizon
to our own, localised,
agenda.
So, the nation has decided,
at least for now.
But politics doesn’t end with the election,
and engagement by Christians
in the political life of our country,
does not stop at our
moment of decision making.
We may have cast our ballot,
putting down our cross in
the relevant box;
but the call on us is to take up our cross,
and to continue the
path of sacrificial living,
of focusing on others,
and seeing the kingdom
come
on earth, as it is in heaven.
We, whose primary allegiance is with the Kingdom of Heaven,
have an ongoing role to
play
in the life of our
nation.
The counter-cultural communities that we are called to in our churches,
are places of prophetic
witness to the wider society
of which we
are a part.
The drawing together in the name of Christ
of young and old,
of rich and
poor,
of different cultures,
ideologies, sexualities, and genders
embodies the kingdom of God
that will
not be constrained by borders,
wherever it
may be that people try to draw them.
As
the Cuban theologian Justo González puts it:
‘We have to be careful not to fall
back into the trap
of acting as if the
Church were only for people “like us”.
When in any of our churches people
are rejected because
“they are not decent”
or … because they do not share our
political ideology,
it is time for us to …
ask ourselves
what it means to declare that “God
shows no partiality”.’[2]
So
where does this leave us,
on the Sunday after a General
Election?
What
should our response be
to the powers-that-be in our land?
Well,
here I want us to spend a few moments with Paul,
and his letter to the church in
Rome.
‘Let every person be subject to the governing
authorities’, he says…
Which of course, in his context,
didn’t
mean the newly elected government
of
a democratic country.
Rather, for Paul, the governing authorities
were
the agents of the Roman Emperor,
who
was the head of all Roman society.
For Paul and his contemporaries,[3]
the
idea of changing the given social
order
would
have been unthinkable.
The social order, for them, was a stable as
nature.
Indeed,
it was considered ‘natural’.
The empire had endured for hundreds of years
before Paul,
and
would do so for hundreds of years after him.
It would be a misreading of this passage to
take it
as
the revelation of a distinctively Christian view of the state.
It is no such thing;
Paul
is simply responding to a social order that,
so
far as he can see, is ‘natural’
But just as we need to recognize that Paul’s
advice to the Romans
was
culturally-conditioned
So we also need to recognize
that
our own post-enlightenment perspective on the state
is
also time-conditioned and relative.
Our view of society is no more self-evidently
‘correct’ than is Paul’s.
Just as we now think it is ‘natural’
for
people to have a choice of who governs,
so we need to recognize that people up to the
Enlightenment
thought
that society is most naturally governed from the top down.
We still see this in the residual traditions of
monarchy
that
underpin our own democracy,
where the new Prime Minister must seek
permission
from
the monarch to form a new government.
So, how then do we align our own commitment
to
a crucified and risen messiah
with the reality of the social order in which
we live?
Possibly, if all civil authority is from God,
and
ordered under God,
then it follows that a civil authority that
does not respond to God’s will
might
be considered disqualified as a true authority,
and so might be resisted ‘for conscience’s
sake.’
If, for example, a state, such as that in
Germany under the Nazis,
took
to itself ultimate powers over conscience,
or
punished those who did no wrong except following their conscience,
then, as Christians such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer
concluded,
‘for
conscience’ sake’, such a regime can be actively opposed.
But in our world, this is not our situation;
and
in our democracy this is not, by the grace of God,
where
we find ourselves.
But there is a warning and message here
that
there is no ‘default Christian’ position on party politics.
There is no one party that can be identified
as
consonant with the politics of the kingdom of Heaven.
Whether we identify as a Christian Socialist,
or
a Christian Conservative,
or
a Christian Liberal Democrat,
or
a Christian Green,
or
a Christian conscientious no-voter…
Wherever we draw our boundary,
the
blessing of God falls beyond it,
onto
those we would consider unclean.
The Christian position in this post-election
country of ours,
must
surely be the prophetic living-out of an alternative society,
where
in Christ the boundaries that separate us,
and
divide us one from another, are challenged.
The transformation of society, which is the aim
of politics,
begins
with us,
and it begins again with us, here, today.
What divides us one from another?
There will be people here today who voted
for
each of the main political parties, I’m quite sure of that.
There will be people here today who disagree on
a whole range of issues,
from
the political to the ethical.
There will be boundaries and division within
and amongst us,
and
there will be walls that we construct around ourselves
to
differentiate ‘us’ from ‘them’.
Who do we look down on?
Whom do we exclude?
Where do we draw the line?
Well, the message for us this morning,
is
that wherever we would seek to draw it,
the blessing of God continues to fall beyond
it,
as
God is at work in Christ in the world,
drawing
all nations to himself.
