Don't tell me what to do!

A sermon preached at

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 

4 February 2018

1 Corinthians 9.16-23  

Mark 1.29-39  

Listen to this sermon here:
https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/2018-02-04-simon-woodman-dont-tell-me-what-to-do

“I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”

This phrase, uttered by Paul at the conclusion to our passage this morning

            from his letter to the church in Corinth,

has caused much debate amongst those

            who have tried to understand his motivation and methodology,

            particularly as they might apply to the missionary endeavours of the church

            to ‘win’ people for Christ.

Does becoming ‘all things to all people’

            constitute a call for relativistic pragmatism,

                        whereby Paul, and by implication all of us,

                        was willing to forgo his principles and convictions as long as some are saved;

            or is there something else going on here?

It’s a tricky one, because at the heart of this

            is the deeper issue of how the ethical perspective of the Christian

            should relate to the ethical stance of the world beyond the Christian community.

Are we to take a moral stand over and against the world,

            calling the world to live according to our standards;

or are we to enter the world and risk compromising our high ideals,

            for the sake of making the gospel of Christ heard more widely?

The history of the missionary movement is littered with those

            who have occupied the imperialist end of this spectrum,

            and it isn’t always pretty.

The great global missionary expansion

            that rode the coat-tails of European colonialism

was one which by and large sought to impose Christian morality

            by firm persuasion, and by force if necessary;

with colonised nations places such as South America

            being forcibly converted to Christ,

            and required to live accordingly.

Closer to home, and closer to our own time,

            the Western church’s current evangelistic efforts

often seem to revolve around trying to persuade people

            that there is something deeply wrong with their current worldview,

            to which only the church of Christ has the solution.

And so people are invited to leave their past behind,

            and move into the new way of living

            that is available to them through faith in Jesus.

This may even have been your own experience of coming to Christ.

I think that what it boils down to

            is whether we are going to seek to assert any kind of firm difference

between what we might call God’s culture

            and our lived experience of Human culture.

Are we going to seek to persuade, cajole, or require

            those who live in whatever passes for our prevailing culture

that they should, ought to, or must take on a new way of living,

            that we are going to assert is God’s preferred culture?

It’s really a question of whose rules are we going to live by?

            Shall we live in obedience to the rules of our dominant culture,

            or according to the rules of some so-called counter-cultural kingdom of God?

And in any case, what is the relationship between these two cultures going to be?

            And what does this all even mean, when we get down to the practicalities of it?

            What does it mean to live by God’s laws rather than by human laws?

                        Should I still pay taxes?

                        Or drive on the correct side of the road?

            Is it OK to educate my children according to my beliefs

                        rather than according to the best insights of scientific knowledge?

‘Living by God’s laws’ is good Christian-speak,

            but what does it really mean

            for those of us who have to live in the real world?

Now, I don’t know about you,

            but I have never really liked being told what to do.

As I child I was, what my father used to call, a contrary little whatsit,

            (I’m paraphrasing him here, you understand).

I can remember that I would deliberately do the precise opposite

            of whatever he was telling me to do,

                        even if I had been just about to do of my own accord

                        the very thing I was now refusing to do.

It wasn’t that I was by nature particularly badly behaved,

            it was just that my motivation came from within rather than from without.

In some way’s I’m still a bit like this;

            I’m much more likely to do something if I’ve decided that I want to do it,

            than I am because someone is requiring me to do it.

And I wonder about you, where do you sit on this?

            Are you like me, a rebel within a cause;

            or do you prefer being told what to do?

Do you respond well to being given a code of rules for how to live,

            that you can keep and get right, and know that you’re doing OK?

If so, you’re not alone.

            There is great comfort to be found in knowing where you stand on issues

                        because an external voice is telling you how to respond.

            Many of those who are drawn to religious faith

                        are in precisely this category.

I have often wondered, from my perspective,

            why those strands of religion

                        that offer very strong answers and very few grey areas

            are so attractive to highly educated people,

and I’ve come to the conclusion it’s because some people,

            particularly those who have to handle great complexity and nuance

                        in their engagement with the world on a daily basis,

            crave deep-down the kind of certainty of belonging and being

                        that a definitive religious community can offer.

And so people look to the Bible as a rule-book for living,

            to be read and followed uncritically;

and they look to the church as the arbiter of what’s right and what’s wrong,

            telling them how to live well and rightly in a complex and ambiguous world.

In the clash between God’s culture and Our culture,

            a church that clearly articulates what God’s culture looks like,

                        over and against the prevailing culture of society,

            is offering a highly attractive proposition.

And the thing is, there are so many voices

            competing for the right to tell us what to do.

It can be utterly overwhelming to have to try and choose between them;

            and we can cast around in vain

                        for a basis on which to decide who has the right to tell us what to do,

                        and whether we have to do it.

From the advertising industry telling us to buy this, or not to buy that;

            to political voices telling us to vote this way, and not that way;

            to moral voices telling us to do this, and not to do that.

The ability to distinguish right from wrong can become lost to us,

            as we find ourselves unable to work out

            whether the calls on us are absolute or relative.

In response, many of us turn to our friends, our families,

            our social networks, or our faith communities for guidance.

The rise of social media has created possibilities

            for new communities of moral and ethical reinforcement,

            as people are able to establish peer-groups across geographical boundaries.

The role of Twitter in everything from the Arab Spring of 2010

            to the most recent American Presidential election,

shows the power of such virtual communities

            to transform the geopolitical landscape.

And the questions over the ability of big data manipulation of such communities

            to achieve political objectives is deeply troubling.

It seems that if people no longer know, instinctively,

            where to turn for their moral compass,

            they will still find somewhere.

None of us live in a vacuum

            and we’re still going to get our ethical code from someone;

but if it’s not some external metanarrative

            offered by political ideology or religious conviction,

it will most likely be from peer-pressure

            or the moral outrage of the Twitter-storm.

The fragmentation of society into mutually-reinforcing groups,

            motivated primarily by self interest,

lies behind many of the movements

            to deconstruct the larger institutions that have held sway in recent decades.

The Brexit mantras of ‘I want my country back’,

            or, possibly, ‘I don’t want these Brussels bureaucrats

                        telling me what my money should be spent on,

                        or what shape my banana must be’,

have offered a highly compelling narrative

            to many who were seeking new rules to live by,

            and a new world in which to live.

Well, now we’ve got our freedom, and I wonder what we will do with it?

Just this week I watched Miriam Margolys Big American Adventure,

            and she visited a ranch in Arkansas, Trump territory.

She was speaking with the wife of the rancher who lived there

            about the America First ideology that is driving so much

            of the domestic and international political agenda of the current administration,

and they said,

            “y’know, our country was founded on people like us,

                        who went to work every day,

            y’know they left England because they didn’t want people telling them what to do.

                        So they come over here and they make the best country in the whole world,

            and then you have Obama that says ‘we’re gonna make everybody even’...

                        well that’s not right.

            If you don’t want to go to work every day,

            why should you have all the benefits that I do.”

A bit later in the programme, in response to the question

            ‘how would you like America to change?’,

the leader of an alt-right group, a church pastor named Mike,

            who believes that Jews, blacks, and homosexuals

            should be neutered, deported or executed,

replied that

            ‘well obviously I’d like it to change

            to be a godly country that enforced God’s laws’

And here we are, back again at the clash

            between God’s culture and Our culture.

And I honestly think that as Christians, we have to find a better way through this,

            and I think this is where Paul can be so helpful to us

            with his comments to the church in Corinth.

“I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”

You see, I am simply not satisfied with a version of Christianity

            that seeks to exert its own moral and ethical code

                        as normative and absolute on the world,

            and which then seeks to take enough power to enforce that code on others.

I don’t believe that God’s culture is in competition with Our culture,

            in such a way that we are in a battle with the world

            which we must win in order that people can come to know Christ.

I don’t think we should seek to create godly countries

            where people live by God’s laws.

I think it was a mistake when Constantine tried to do that in the fourth century,

            and I think it’s a mistake when Islamic extremists attempt to do it today

                        with the re-establishment of a caliphate,

            and I think it’s a mistake when Pastor Mike wants to do it in America

                        and votes Donald Trump in to do it for him.

And I don’t believe in the notion of England as a Christian country,

            and I wouldn’t want to live in it if it was,

            because Baptists have been persecuted by the established church in London before.

You see, the problem with any kind of Christendom

            is that when Christians become the absolute legislators,

they try to write their version of so-called biblical morality into the national law,

            and then require others to live by it

            as if this in some way saves or Christianises the nation.

And Paul knew this danger of absolutizing religious belief all too well.

            He had grown up in two very different but closely related worlds.

As a Roman citizen, he was raised in a city

            where the emperor required everyone to worship him;

and as a Jew he was part of a people

            who believed that God ruled their country absolutely.

His whole life was lived out in the tension

            between two competing religious orthodoxies.

And so he says,

“I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”

To the Jews, Paul is a Jew;

            to those who live under the Jewish law, he is one who lives under the law;

to the pagans who are not under the law,

            he is one who is himself outside of the law.

He is neither Jewish nationalist, nor Imperial worshipper;

            because he is free from all these demands.

And this means that we, too, are free from such compulsions.

Where Christians have gone wrong, I think, down the centuries,

            is that we keep setting up God’s culture

            in opposition to human culture.

We create a competing ethical narrative

            which we set up as an alternative

            to that which society has constructed,

and then we seek to impose our own moral code on others,

            either by conversion, coercion or force,

            in order to win the world to Christ.

And this isn’t what Paul has in mind at all.

When we simply seek to replace secular law

            with our own version of the law of Christ,

we just re-invent the wheel

            and reconstruct the very thing that Paul is so scathing about,

            we rebuild the very thing we’ve just torn down.

Paul’s great insight is that those who follow Christ

            have been freed from the law, be it religious or secular.

The ten commandments are not binding on those who follow Christ,

            any more than are any other attempts to codify human behaviour.

But, and here’s the key thing,

            Christians are not free to do whatever they like,

            with no thought to the consequences.

For Paul, God’s culture is always, definitively and absolutely, a culture of love,

            and it is made known in the person and example of Jesus.

And it is this culture of love

            which offers the only credible alternative

                        to all other human cultures,

            which are always, definitively and absolutely, predicated on violence.

There is no vision of human society which does not, in some measure,

            depend upon the threat of violence to en-force its requirement.

And when Christians seek to re-write society as God’s society,

            we end up in the same place of legalism and punishment

            as all those who have gone before.

But, if Paul is right, it is not our calling to re-write society,

            it is our calling to subvert it through love.

This message of good news,

            that Christians are to proclaim and embody,

                        is a gospel of love,

            it is an invitation to enter into a new world

                        where the sole defining absolute,

                        is the love of God in Christ Jesus.

The key question for Christians is therefore not what law they should keep,

            but how can they live in love.

They are free from all laws apart from this,

            because this is the only ethical absolute: that we should live in love.

And this culture of love

            is one that can take root in and among all other human cultures.

We do not need to create a law of love

            that we must argue for, defend, or impose on others.

Rather, we can live the law of love into being

            in the midst of whatever culture we find ourselves.

So Paul can be a Jew to Jews, and a Gentile to the Gentiles,

            he can be all things to all people,

because that is how he can make known the love of God

            to those who do not know what it is to live in love.

Those who have taken it upon themselves to live in the love of God

            do not enter human culture as a conquering force,

                        seeking power to dominate and impose,

            but rather to bring to birth the power of transformation from within,

                        to make known the law of love

                        which has the capacity to make all things new.

So our involvement in our society

            is one where we are the yeast in the loaf,

                        the active ingredient that transforms the whole,

                        the pinch of salt that seasons the meal.

Should Christians become involved in politics?

            Absolutely yes.

The structures of our society need transformation and redemption

            and we have a part to play in the drafting of legislation

            and the betterment of the common good.

It is our calling to speak love into places of hurt,

            to speak peace and reconciliation to places of division and strife,

to point to those places where love can be found

            and to proclaim the blessing of God on them.

Because not everything in human society is bad,

            and not everything in it needs re-drafting.

There is much that is good, and godly, and worthy of blessing and sanctification,

            and sometimes our role is to see where God is at work beyond the church,

            and to join our voices and efforts with those

                        who are outworking a message of love

            even if they look nothing like us,

                        and believe nothing like we believe.

God is the God of the whole earth,

            not just our little corner of it.

He doesn’t need us to defend his rights,

            he just asks us to make him known.

As Jesus went from place to place,

            crossing borders and entering towns to proclaim the message of God’s love for all,

            and bringing healing and transformation to the hurt and the vulnerable,

so we too are called to journey from our own places of security,

            into places where we are not always welcome,

in order that the reigning boundaries of power in our world might be challenged

            in the name of the one

            who continually transgressed those same boundaries in his time and place.

But we do this not because we are seeking to replace society

            with our own version of it,

but because we believe the good news of the love of God

            is a gospel for all people, and all cultures,

because we believe that in God and through Christ,

            there is a new creation where all are equally loved.

And this means that faith in Christ can have multiple ethical outcomes in this world,

            as long as they can all be fitted under the umbrella rubric of the love of God.

As Tom Wright puts it,

            ‘Christian freedom is not freedom to do what you like,

                        but freedom from all the things

            that stop you being the person God calls you to be.’

And so we take our place in society,

            becoming all things to all people

            that by all means we might save some.

Do not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

11.00 am, 28 January 2018

1 Corinthians 8.1-13  

Mark 1:21-28   

“But take care that this liberty of yours

            does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”

This week, I attended a training course,

            run by the Mennonite organisation Bridgebuilders,

            about handling power in church leadership.

And as preparation for the day, I was asked to do a bit of homework.

            I had to come prepared with a couple of examples,

                        drawn from real life in my time here at Bloomsbury,

                        relating to my experience of power.

Firstly, I had to think of an occasion when I’ve been conscious of exercising power,

            and I was invited to reflect on how I felt about doing so,

            and what I had learned about power from this experience.

And secondly, I had to think of a personal example

            of an occasion when I’ve felt powerless,

            and I was invited to reflect on what it felt like to be powerless,

            and what I did in response to those feelings of powerlessness.

I didn’t find this an easy exercise,

            not only because any kind of reflective practice usually has me running for the hills,

but because reflecting on power and powerlessness, on strength and weakness,

            is such a deeply personal experience, and potentially so emotively fraught.

There are, of course, some Christians who think we should never talk about power,

            and they will point to the example of Jesus,

                        who goes to the cross like a lamb to the slaughter,

                        laying aside his power, and taking on the mantle of weakness.

If we are to be authentically Christ-like, these Christians suggest,

            we too must lay aside all power

            and embrace weakness and powerlessness as a virtue of discipleship.

We must be those who turn the other cheek, who embody meekness,

            who reject all the temptations to act in strength.

But then, of course, there are those Christians

            who seem to talk about nothing other than power,

singing songs about there being power in the name of Jesus to overcome all evil,

            to cast out all demons, and to resist all temptations.

They would claim that if we are to be authentically Christ-like,

            we should embody this power in our lives,

            allowing the strength of Christ to flow through us

                        to bring healing and release to a hurting and damaged world.

I’m sure that you, like me, have met people at both ends of this spectrum.

            And I wonder where you sit on it?

I wonder where I sit on it?

            I suspect that personally, I gravitate rather more towards the powerful end of things.

                        Not in a name-it-claim-it, ‘begone from here foul fiend’ way,

                        but certainly in a kind of ‘highly competent for Jesus’ kind of way.

After all, I am a powerful person.

            I’m white, I’m male, I’m straight,

                        I’m married, I’m Western, I’m English,

                        I’m highly educated, and I’m comfortably off.

All of these things, in our society, give me power.

            Some of them I was born with, others I’ve worked hard for,

                        but putting them all together, a picture emerges, somewhat uncomfortably,

                                    of Simon as a fairly powerful person,

                                    albeit one who wants to use that power for good.

“But take care that this liberty of yours

            does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak…”

            …says Paul, to the powerful Christians of first century Corinth.

They were a strong bunch of believers,

            relatively wealthy, cosmopolitan, and broad-minded.

They were also a nightmare,

            as strong people often can be when they flock together.

But their issue here was that they had decided that it was perfectly OK

            to eat food that had been offered to idols,

on the entirely logical grounds that if the pagan gods don’t really exist,

            then the fact that their cheap lunch might have been offered to

                        these non-existent gods at some point

            is irrelevant to its taste and indeed, we might add, calorific value.

This is an example of how sometimes the strong, the powerful, and the logical,

            can be both entirely right, and entirely wrong, both at the same time.

Here I’m borrowing a phrase from my colleague Dawn,

            who said exactly this to me fairly recently

when I did something that was absolutely right from a logical point of view,

            but entirely wrong from and emotional perspective.

And this sums up the strong in the church in Corinth.

            Yes, of course it’s fine to eat food that’s previously been dedicated to an idol,

                        if you are sure in your conviction that the idol is a fiction.

            But if by doing so you cause someone else to stumble,

                        someone whose conversion may not yet have bedded in so thoroughly,

                        someone who still feels the pull of the old gods

                                    and is trying hard to resist it,

            then maybe, just maybe, eating that meat might not be such a great idea after all.

This is why many churches embraced the temperance movement, historically speaking,

            at a time when the evils of alcohol were ravaging society.

The artist William Hogarth captured something of the spirit of his age, so to speak,

            in his famous engraving Gin Lane, drawn in 1751,

            and set just round the corner from where we are sitting today.

Was there anything inherently wrong with alcohol? No.

            But if the church of the eighteenth century was to minister effectively

                        to those who still felt its destructive pull on their lives,

            maybe Christians for a time needed to set aside their freedom to drink,

                        in order that those who were seeking escape from alcoholism

                        could find a safe refuge in the community of Christ.

The legacy of this, of course, is that we still have alcohol free wine at communion,

            although we don’t have a blanket ban on alcohol in our church premises

            in the way that some, earlier, churches do.

So I find myself wondering what the issues are in our time,

            where strong Christians might be called to set aside their liberty

                        for the sake of the weak?

Alcohol is still certainly an issue in society,

            but I’m not convinced that reviving the temperance movement is the way to solve it.

Maybe on that one, modelling responsible drinking in moderation

            and helping people engage with counselling and therapy where they need it

            is a more productive perspective than avoiding it altogether.

But what about other areas where our freedom to be strong

            might cause others to stumble.?

One of my favourite singers is called Neil Hannon,

            who performs under the name The Divine Comedy.

If you haven’t heard his version of the hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’,

            I’d encourage you to go on YouTube and look it up.

One of his songs is called ‘Eye of The Needle’,

            and in it he highlights the way in which conspicuous consumption by Christians

            can cause others, including him, to look on in doubt:

They say that you'll hear him if you're really listening

And pray for that feeling of grace

But that's what I'm doing, why doesn't he answer?

I've prayed 'til I'm blue in the face

The cars in the churchyard are shiny and German

Distinctly at odds with the theme of the sermon

And during communion I study the people

Threading themselves through the eye of the needle

Another song, by the group Fat and Frantic, makes a similar point:

Freedom is a sweet word

A taste to savour, say it loud

Exercise your freedom

Freedom means you are allowed to make and guard your pile

            against the people who have freedom to do

As they please but haven’t used it so constructively as you

Freedom is a sweet word

It shines and glistens like a star

But where’s the joy in freedom

When you’re free to obey the colour bar,

            you’re free to starve and free to die

            and free to do anything but express

That Jesus never gave to anyone the freedom to oppress

You know that freedom is a sweet word

But freedom without justice is a freedom for a few

who have bought the right to tell us

            that their freedom lie is true

Freedom without justice

Grows up into slavery

If you’re not a Barclay card-carrying member of the free.

We simply have to recognise,

            if we are to appropriate our passage for this morning to our context,

that there is stuff that the world sees us doing

            that causes them to reject God.

Our freedom is a stumbling block to the faith of others.

It could be our wealth and our conspicuous consumption;

            or it could be our attitude towards minorities;

or it could be our unwillingness to engage in the issues that really matter to the world,

            and our obsession with issues that really don’t;

it could be our hypocrisy.

All these and so much more

            are places where we have the freedom and strength and power to act as we see fit,

but where our doing so is entirely wrong

            when looked at from the perspective of the weak and the powerless.

And all this is true, and we who are strong need to hear it,

            and we need to guard our hearts and our behaviour.

But it is not the whole story,

            and this sermon is not merely a telling-off for those who have power.

There is a cautionary tale here that the powerful need to note, and note well,

            but I think we can go further with this passage from Paul.

“But take care that this liberty of yours

            does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”

This verse has been used, and misused, down the years,

            to justify all sorts of oppression both within and beyond the Christian church.

I can think of one church, known to me for many years now,

            where the desire to not somehow become a stumbling block for the weak

                        was used to perpetuate a status quo

            that was profoundly unjust for some others in that same congregation.

The issue was whether women could speak in church,

            whether they could pray, and preach, and teach.

The tradition of the church was that they could not,

            but there was a new generation of women, educated and articulate,

            who were starting to say that they felt God may be calling and gifting them

                        for ministries of leadership, preaching, and teaching.

There was new insight emerging regarding how to interpret the Bible,

            as people found ways of reading the ‘problem passages’ about women

            in new ways which didn’t prohibit female involvement in church ministry.

‘Ah’, said the church leadership, who were of course all male,

            ‘we’d love to have women ministering,

                        but you see there are those in our congregation

                                    who have not yet got a point in their faith

                                    where they can cope with women in leadership,

                        because of the way they interpret the Bible,

                                    and the way they were brought up.

            Maybe in a generation or so things will be different,

                        but for now we mustn’t put a stumbling block in the way of their faith’.

And so the women were asked to keep silent,

            and the church was denied their ministry for another generation.

Here’s the point: The desire to protect the faith of the so-called-weak,

            can too easily become an excuse to perpetuate the abuse

            of those who are in fact far weaker, because they have no voice.

The people who didn’t want women in ministry had, in fact, a powerful lobby

            to get their argument across;

they had all the Bible passages lined up,

            and they had the friendly ear of the church leadership

            who heard their perspective loud and clear.

The women who wanted freedom had no power, no voice,

            and were entirely beholden to the decision of the male church leaders

                        who, frankly, had nothing to lose and everything to gain

                        by asking the women to keep quiet and in their place.

In fact, it was worse than this:

            the women were actually allowed to teach, but only children and other women.

It was a classic case of, ‘if you must do this, don’t do it where we can see you’.

And just in case you think this is a redundant issue,

            have you seen the furore just this week regarding John Piper?

He’s a highly influential American Baptist pastor,

            whose sermons and lectures are hugely popular on both sides of the Atlantic.

There will be many sermons preached this morning

            where the preacher has consulted John Piper’s writings as part of their preparation.

Well, this week, he said in a podcast

            that not only should women not be allowed to preach or teach in church,

            but that female academics should not be allowed to teach in seminaries.

And I would just like to raise the question,

            of where strength lies here, and where weakness is to be found…

“But take care that this liberty of yours

            does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”

And so we come to human sexuality.

Many of you will know that Bloomsbury is registered for same sex marriages,

            and we’ve so far had four same sex ceremonies here.

Mostly, the response of the wider Baptist family has been one of quiet disapproval,

            coupled with some quiet gratitude that we’re taking a lead

            where others are not able or willing to follow.

The bottom line has appeared to be that as long as we keep our heads down,

            and don’t make too much of a fuss about it,

            others are sort-of-reluctantly adjusted for us to do our thing.

However, a wedding we had here last autumn rather upped the ante,

            as it got us onto BBC1 as part of a programme with Sam Smith,

            who is apparently a popular singer.

Millions of people have watched the short video of the wedding,

            either live or on YouTube.

And suddenly, things changed somewhat,

            because Bloomsbury had transgressed the don’t-ask-don’t-tell status quo.

And here’s where it got interesting,

            from the point of view of our passage this morning.

It has been suggested to us in no uncertain terms,

            through the medium of a public letter,

            and on the basis of this passage from 1 Corinthians 8;

that in our exercising of our freedom to conduct same sex marriages,

                        and in our allowing it to be known about more widely, 

            we were using our power in such a way

                        as to cause others to stumble in their faith.

This, we (and everyone else) were told,

            was something that we should not have done.

Just because we have the freedom to offer wedding ceremonies to same sex couples,

            doesn’t mean that we should.

Can you see the similarity here between this argument,

            and the argument of the congregation I was talking about earlier

            who wanted to prohibit the ministry of women?

And the thing is, I don’t think that the weak party in either of these scenarios

            are those who have a problem with the exercising of liberty by the strong.

I don’t think people who argue against women in ministry are weak.

            I think they’re wrong, but not weak.

Similarly, I don’t think people who argue against same sex marriage are weak.

So if I affirm the ministry of a woman, or conduct a same sex wedding,

            I don’t believe that the exercising of my freedom to do so

            is causing my weaker brother or sister to stumble.

In fact, I think the opposite is true.

            The weak are those who are dis-voiced, excluded, marginalised, and oppressed.

            The weak are the women, the LGBTQ community,

                        and, if I may broaden it a bit, the asylum seeker,

                                    the person from an ethnic minority

                                    the person who has no home,

                                    the person weighed down by debt.

If I thought for one moment that my freedom to act

            was causing such as these to stumble,

            I would fall to my own knees in repentance.

But I don’t think that’s what’s happening

            when we take a stand of solidarity with the genuinely weak

            and join our voices with theirs to advocate their cause.

In fact, I would go further.

            Those who seek to use their influence and power

                        to restrict the ministry of women,

                        to prevent people of the same gender who love each other becoming married,

                        or to stop those in same sex marriages from entering ministry,

            are in my view at risk of the very sin of which they are accusing others.

The thing is, it is notoriously difficult for the powerful

            to judge who is weak, and who is strong.

Any loss of power by the powerful runs the risk of becoming, in their mind,

            an experience of persecution;

whereas in actual fact it might just be an equalising of power

            with those who until now have not had any.

And so Christians sometimes fail to challenge injustice

            because of our deep-seated, internalised, and unacknowledged commitment

                        to maintaining our powerful place in the status quo.

And we then end up passing judgment on others who challenge the status quo,

            because we have become so smugly entrenched in our position of strength,

            that we cannot see the alternative as anything other than an attack on our liberty.

Putting it very bluntly:

            one person’s stumbling block is another person’s justice issue.

And we need to take a long and hard look at ourselves

            before we decide whose side we are on.

And assuming we end up siding with the weak,

            we need to decide what we’re going to do about it.

How courageous are we willing to be,

            in the cause of lifting up the broken and the damaged?

What price are we willing to pay,

            in our efforts to welcome the stranger, and love the unloved?

This last week has been the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,

            and there have been many words preached, and many prayers prayed,

            for the unity of the body of Christ,

            both within and between denominations.

And amen to all of it.

            I would love to be able to share bread and wine with my Roman Catholic friends;

            I would love to be united in ministry with my Anglican colleagues;

            I would love to live at peace with my Baptist family,

                        both in this country and throughout the world.

But sometimes, I wonder if we prize unity over principle.

            Sometimes, I fear we turn a blind eye to the oppression in our midst

                        in the interests of preserving the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.

            Sometimes, I think we fail to realise that to discover true unity,

                        we will have to unite around a cause

                        rather than around avoiding an issue.

I just don’t think that sweeping issues under the carpet and hoping they’ll go away

            is a viable strategy for Christian unity.

The thing is, you can stumble trying to avoid something,

            every bit as much as you can tripping over it.

The issue of women in ministry is not going to go away,

            however much some might still wish it does.

Neither is the issue of same sex marriage

            and our broader response to the LGBTQ community.

The issue of asylum seekers is not going away,

            neither is the issue of homelessness,

            nor our struggles with ethnic tensions.

Clearing the streets of Windsor of those who normally sleep there

            may make for better wedding pictures,

            but it does nothing to solve the problem

                        of vulnerable lives lived in hardship and danger.

Sometimes, the way to help the weaker to not stumble in their faith

            is to shine a light on the object that might be causing them to stumble,

to highlight the issue at hand.

Trying to hide things in plain sight is a far more dangerous path,

            certainly for those who are weak and most likely to trip.

So perhaps we shouldn’t worry too much that as a church

            we’ve put a stumbling block in the path of Christian unity

                        by allowing our voice to be heard loud and clear

                        as we speak and act to include the excluded.

Perhaps we should instead focus on highlighting the issues

            so the truly weak can learn to stand tall and feel welcome,

while those who persist in tying themselves up in knots over it all

            can use our light to begin untangling themselves.

After all, when Jesus met the man who heard voices,

            he didn’t say that he should be locked in an asylum,

            hidden away from others because of his disruptive behaviour.

Rather, Jesus spoke to him, and loved him,

            and took decisive action to restore him to his rightful place in society.

And new issues that challenge our worldview will continue to emerge,

            and so will people who make us feel uncomfortable

            because they aren’t quite like us.

Our definitions of normal will continually be re-written if we allow them to be,

            because normal for me is not normative for all.

And we will have to decide, again and again, what we’re going to do

            with our power, and our privilege, and our freedom to act.

Will we take decisions that include the excluded,

            restore the broken,

            and empower the weak?

Will we allow the Spirit of Christ to guide us

            into new places of being,

where we are no longer threatened by the loss of our power,

            because we have learned to give it willingly to those who have none?

“But take care that this liberty of yours

            does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”

One final song lyric to close:

I went this week to see the Welsh singer Martyn Joseph in concert,

            and his ability to take my soul and strip it bare,

            and bring tears of sadness and anger and repentance to my eyes,

            is as strong as it was when I first saw him perform thirty years ago.

And he sung his song for the NHS, celebrating the vision of Nye Bevin,

            who dreamed of a society where no-one was left behind.

The song’s chorus is a combination of quotes from Nye Bevin and Nelson Mandela,

            and on this note I’ll close:

“The purpose of power is to give it away

This is my truth tell me yours.

Freedom isn’t freedom until poverty is gone.

So Nye your dream’s alive and strong.”

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