MARGARET THATCHER vs. THE GOOD SHEPHERD: Jesus as a leadership role model

It is axiomatic that Britain is a divided society, and few recent events have done more to expose our internal divisions than the death earlier this week of Baroness Thatcher. I spend quite a lot of time online – perhaps more than is healthy – and I’ve seen at first hand just how polarized reactions to the news have been­: not just across the country but among my own friends and acquaintances.

At one extreme, one old school-friend of mine was distraught at the news. For him, Margaret was not just the greatest British leader in living memory, but a symbol of everything he admires in our British heritage. At the other extreme, I heard from someone who feels such a backlog of anger over Margaret’s record in government that he can find nothing good to say about her even in death. And in between those extremes lies a whole spectrum of less polarized responses: many feel a poignant sense of loss, whether or not they shared Margaret’s political vision. Others simply put the politics aside, and pay her the respect due to anyone who has passed away. Everyone here will have their own perceptions, their own emotions. And before continuing, I am going to leave a few seconds’ silence here, in mid-sermon, so that we can each offer up our thoughts to our Father God……

Closer to home, most of us are still in shock over the loss of another leadership figure. This is our second Sunday without _____ and his family: the first week of our interregnum. This afternoon, several of us will be representing our Parish and Benefice at ________ for his installation as Archdeacon, and from the moment he is formally appointed to his new job, the process of consultation can begin to find a successor here in _________.

These two events – the divided national response to the death of Margaret Thatcher, and our search for a successor to ________ – should set us all thinking about the kind of leaders that we need at national and parochial level. There is no one right formula, of course; a leadership style is a very individualized thing, and what works in one place will not work for another.

But in general terms, Jesus himself gives us a vision, a guide as to what to look for in a leader. And today’s reading from John’s Gospel is just one of many passages in which Jesus holds himself up as a role model for enlightened leadership. Now it’s easy, looking back from the 21^st century, to miss the impact that Jesus’ teaching would have had on the people of this day. And to get us thinking about the implications of what he says, I’d like you to imagine that you are on an interviewing panel.  In front of you sits a candidate for an important post: perhaps a seat in parliament, or a senior management position, or indeed a parish incumbency. And you ask this candidate what qualifies him or her for this important post. Imagine your surprise if you heard them say, “I’d make a great fast food operative… or a superb hospital nurse… or a brilliant bodyguard…”

A fanciful picture, you might think, but when Jesus wants to set out his leadership credentials, he says, “I am the Good Shepherd”. And if we look back past the distorting prism of our own culture to how Jesus’ original hearers would have understood his words, we come to some surprising conclusions.

Firstly, in the minds of the people to whom Jesus was speaking, a shepherd – even a good one – was at the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder. To be a shepherd was like street sweeping or working in a fast food chain: grueling, unappreciated, humbled in the eyes of everyone else. In Jesus’ eyes, to be a leader was not to lord it over others, but to be a humble servant.

Secondly, being a shepherd was (and is) a caring job, in the same way that nursing is a caring job. It involves dealing with ailments, treating wounds, delivering young, comforting those who are frightened. And you can’t be a nurse or any kind of professional carer without getting your hands really, really dirty. And for Jesus, this was central to his idea of leadership.

Thirdly, being a shepherd was a dangerous job. It involved defending the sheep from brigands, wild beasts and natural hazards. It could involve going into dangerous places like caves or ravines to rescue animals that had wandered off and become trapped. Ultimately, in Jesus words, a good shepherd had to be willing to lay down his life for the good of the flock.

In Jesus, we have a leader who is all those things: A humble servant who did not exalt himself over others; a dedicated carer who sought out the sick and the needy and didn’t shrink from getting his hands dirty; and a courageous bodyguard who laid down his life for the sake of others.

Jesus offered himself as the definitive role model for all those who aspire to a position of leadership in any community that calls itself Christian. Different times and situations call for different individuals, but may we bear Jesus’ example in mind whenever we have a say in electing new leaders, in the church or in wider society.

INTO THE WILDS (Lent 4)

Galatians 4.26-end; John 6.1-14 

I wonder what sort of mental picture you get when you hear stories from the Gospels. It’s very easy to see things through the filter of our own culture. Lent is not a particularly stressful time for most people in our society. We have such a big safety net in the form of supermarkets, deep freezes and so on. When Jesus first went out into the desert for 40 days to plan his ministry and confront his human weaknesses, there was no safety net. It was a brutal regime: 6 weeks without food - approaching the longest anyone can go without eating without risking long-term health damage. 

And what of the ordinary people who followed him out into the wilds to receive his ministry? They too were making a considerable sacrifice of comfort and safety. They would have become dehydrated in the heat. They wouldn’t have had a nice layer of stored body fat to keep them going like most people in the west today. And villages weren’t just economic units: people gathered together for mutual protection. Out in the open there was danger from wild animals, outlaws and not least bands of occupying soldiers who could treat the people of the land with wanton cruelty.

But these people knew that the sacrifice was worth making for what Jesus had to offer them. In John’s Gospel, the author stresses that they came for healing. Other Gospels refer to Jesus teaching them, but whatever it was they wanted from him they wanted it badly enough to take a risk with their comfort and safety. 

And when it came to the crunch, Jesus didn’t just teach them, he didn’t just heal them. Unexpectedly, I’m sure, he also fed them. It must have had enormous impact on the early Church, because all four Gospels tell the story in considerable detail - it was evidently one of the defining moments of Jesus’ earthly ministry. We don’t know for sure whether he took this step as evidence of his divine power, or out of concern for the well-being of the people who had followed him, or as a symbol of his ability to feed people spiritually. We don’t have to make an either/or choice: it was a dazzling lesson however we take it. Certainly the Church down the centuries has embraced every interpretation: we are called to declare Christ’s glory,  to feed the poor, and to feed people spiritually. 

But here’s the main point I want to make: As we continue through Lent, we are all, here and now, symbolically engaged on a pilgrimage into the desert with Jesus. It’s a two-fold journey: one in which we stand alongside him in the fight against temptation and the devil, and one in which we kneel before him to receive his teaching and his healing. And as an added bonus, on this symbolic journey into the hardship of the desert, the Lord who would not turn a stone into bread for his own hunger feeds us - not with bread but with himself. We will celebrate that spiritual feeding once again later when we take the bread and wine.

Of course, not everybody observes Lent in the same way, and that’s appropriate. Our reading from Galatians reminds us that we are not slaves to Law, but men and women who have been freed from sin to be friends with God. And similarly our observance of Lent is not about obeying a law or bowing to peer group pressure. The point of Lent is to transform our approach to the rest of the Christian year, to strengthen us, to empower us, to help us get more out of our fellowship with God and with one another. And the best way to do that is to balance the negative (giving up) with a positive (taking on).

Let me mention just briefly some of the things people often take up at this time of year:

A more regular discipline of prayer, either privately or with others... more Bible reading... perhaps a more conscious study, like the Lent Course that Peter is running... joining a house group, helping out with something in the church or wider community... asking ourselves questions about what they could or should be doing with the rest of their lives... The possibilities are almost unlimited, but they all have two things in common. They all involve a sacrifice of some sort, even if only of our free time. And they all help us to receive from Christ. 

Lent is a time not just for giving up food, but for being fed by Christ. And the experience of Christians down the centuries is that doing Lent with a bit of determination reliably turns into a major blessing. Some talk about going into the summer with a new sense of cleanness after dealing conclusively with something in their past. Others talk about a new strength to resist temptation. Some talk about a renewed sense of God’s presence in their lives, or a new vision for the future, or a fresh commitment to living life God’s way, or a resilient new sense of joy and peace even in difficult times.

Easter is a time when we reflect on all that God has done for us in Christ. But it is equally about what he can do for us in the future, and what we can do for him. No one can predict how this Eastertide will change you, if at all. But by giving things up and taking things on during the preparatory season of Lent, we offer ourselves to God to be changed and renewed, and line ourselves up to receive a blessing from him that will transform the year ahead and possibly the rest of our lives....

As we approach Passiontide, may those of us who have given up something specific for Lent maintain our resolve and learn more about resisting temptation and the devil. May we each receive from Jesus the teaching and the healing that we need. And in our spiritual hunger, may we truly feed on him in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving. 

  

JUST GIVING UP? Thoughts for Lent

Lent is traditionally a time for giving something up, and most of the things people abstain from at this time of year are themselves quite traditional: Alcohol... smoking... chocolate... sweets... even meat... all these have been regarded in some quarters as rather self-indulgent – perhaps even as vices – and when someone is considering what to give up for Lent these are tend to be the first things that come to mind.

But some of the things people give up for Lent are less obvious. There are people who cook normally at home but give up restaurants and takeaways. I know someone who has given up computer games for Lent. I’ve heard of people putting their mobile phones away for 6 weeks, unplugging the TV and the stereo, or disconnecting the internet. I’ve even heard of giving up fashionable clothing for Lent.

These approaches may seem odd to anyone who has grown up with a traditional idea of Lent, and to society at large the idea of abstaining from anything without an ulterior motive is somewhat bizarre. Dieting and quitting tobacco are fashionable enough, of course, but for every voice encouraging self-control we hear a hundred urging us to pamper ourselves, to give in to temptation, to gratify our desires. And in this context, it’s not what we give up Lent that matters, but how we choose it.

Of course, Lent was originally a time for giving up food - hence the point of Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day): to use up yummy, filling foods like flour, eggs and fat, so that they wouldn’t go off over the 6 weeks of Lent and wouldn’t be lying around the home to tempt people. But it is temptation that is the real focus of Lent – and learning to fight that temptation. 

And the fact is, we have so many more temptations to deal with than our forebears did. They didn’t have chocolate and sweets and ice cream and banoffee pie and so on to tempt them, as we do every time they turn on the TV or go into the supermarket. They didn’t have TV and recorded music and the internet and computer games to distract them from their walk with God. For them, clothing was about keeping warm rather than making a fashion statement. 

So it is right and proper, if we are gong to observe Lent, not to do it by numbers, not to copy others, not to give up things that we feel we ought to give up anyway. Rather, it’s a time to reflect on what it is that really tempts each one of us. I’d like us each to think for a moment: Is there one thing that really does suck you in? Something that whenever you see it, you want it? Something that you think about when it’s not there?..... A type of food or drink? A habit? A pastime? A website? I’m not asking you to admit it to anyone, unless you really feel led to. But, if something did come into your mind when I asked the question a moment ago, and if you are going to give something up for Lent (and it’s not to late to do so) then maybe that is the thing you could consider giving up between now and Easter - and perhaps longer. 

And while Lent traditionally focuses on giving things up, it’s not just about giving things up. In fact, I want to suggest that it’s just as much about two other things: taking something on,  and receiving something from God.

Firstly, Lent is a time for taking something on. I think it’s remarkable how many people do simply and faithfully give something up at Lent, year after year, without taking on anything new. I mean to say, I am really impressed by their determination. Because giving up without taking on is not unlike handing over your money in a shop and walking away without the goods. 

The point of Lent is to transform our approach to the rest of the Christian year, to strengthen us, to empower us, to help us get more out of our fellowship with God and with one another. And the best way to do that is to balance the negative (giving up) with a positive (taking on).

Let me mention just briefly some of the things people often take up at this time of year: A more regular discipline of prayer, either privately or with others... more Bible reading... perhaps a more conscious study, such as a Lent Course... joining a house group... helping out with something in the church or wider community... and above all, Lent is a time for asking asking questions about what we could or should be doing with the rest of our lives... The possibilities are almost unlimited, but they all have three things in common. They all involve a sacrifice of some sort, even if only of our free time. They all enrich our lives. And they all (whether directly or indirectly) benefit other people around us. And this points forward to the final point about Lent that I mentioned in passing earlier.

Lent is a time for receiving something from God. The experience of Christians down the centuries is that doing Lent with a bit of determination reliably turns into a major blessing from God. Some talk about going into the summer with a new sense of cleanness after dealing conclusively with something in their past. Others talk about a new strength to resist temptation. Some talk about a renewed sense of God’s presence in their lives, or a new vision for the future, or a fresh commitment to living life God’s way, or a resilient new sense of joy and peace even in difficult times.

Easter is a time when we reflect on all that God has done for us in Christ. But it is equally about what he can do for us in the future, and what we can do for him. No one can predict how this Eastertide will change you, if at all. But by giving things up and taking things on during the preparatory season of Lent, we offer ourselves to God to be changed and renewed, and line ourselves up to receive a blessing from him that will transform the year ahead and possibly the rest of our lives.

DESTROY THIS TEMPLE - A Reflection for Candlemas

(John 2:13-22)

I wonder what Jesus would think – the historical Jesus of Nazareth, that is – if he walked into Canterbury Cathedral today, or the Vatican City. As he watched the goings on in the headquarters of the Christian faith, what would he think? What would he approve of? What would he disapprove of? And above all, how would he react?

I’m not going to even try to answer that question, but it’s a good starting point for our reflection. Because the Bible tells us that when Jesus walked into the Temple in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the Jewish faith, he trashed it. According to John’s Gospel, the supposedly meek and mild Jesus made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

It's ironic that Jesus should have entered the Temple – the place supremely dedicated to his own Father – and violently rejected what it had come to stand for. To many Christians the meaning is obvious: this story has been the inspiration for countless rants against the church and it’s attitude to money. And indeed, there must be a number of tables in this and any other church that Jesus would like to overturn, and perhaps a few people he would drive out if he walked in today.

However, that’s not what the story is really about. It’s actually making a much deeper point – a point we can easily miss because we’re so well primed as Christians to look for present day meaning in every Bible story. But this story is not about religious buildings in general; rather, it’s anchored in the Temple itself and what it represented to the Jewish people. What Jesus is giving here is a lesson about the Temple – what it was and what it is. And although the building has been gone for nearly 2,000 years, the teaching is of as much relevance today as it has ever been.

Let’s think for a moment about the history of the Temple. It started out as the Tabernacle – the tent which the Hebrews carried with them during their nomadic existence and erected in each place they stopped. As they left their nomadic way of life behind and settled in cities they built a series of stone temples, but the basic basic concept and purpose remained the same: In a world divided into ‘them and us’, the Temple was what made ‘us’. Does that make sense? Put another way, the Temple was what sanctified the people of God and set them apart from the other peoples around them. In their eyes, it was the place in which the transcendant God of eternity (who was their God and not the God of the other tribes around them) broke through into our physical universe. And thus tt was the one and only place in which they could come into God’s presence.

But just as a tent had outlived its usefulness when the people settled in one place, so a single stone building was no use if the knowledge of God was to break out of its geographical straitjacket and spread throughout the world. And Herod’s Temple in particular, the one Jesus disrupted, had become an instrument of oppression that ruthlessly excluded the struggling masses even within the nation of Israel. In fact in Jesus’ eyes, and in the eyes of the New Testament authors, the Temple hadn’t merely outlived its usefulness; it had become a real obstacle to faith and belonging for the majority of people.

And Jesus could see an even greater catastrophe looming, one that threatened the very survival of a community devoted to the service of Yahweh. He clearly foresaw that the Temple itself was doomed; in fact less than 40 years after his ascension to Heaven it was burned out and razed to the ground. If it had remained the central symbol and home of faith in Yahweh, the heart would have been ripped out of the people’s faith.

What was needed was a new way of understanding God’s presence among his people. And when Jesus says to the authorities, ‘destroy this Temple and I will raise it again in three days’, he is pointing to that new reality. In short, Jesus is consciously supplanting the Temple with a new vessel of God’s presence in the world – his own body.[1]  God continues to be among his people, but no longer in the dark Holy of Holies, where just one man is allowed to come into the divine presence for a few minutes each year. God’s presence among his people is now manifested in the person of Jesus, to be encountered not just by a solitary priest, but by all the masses of people Jesus meets in his travels.

Even that is not the end of the Temple’s evolution, because Jesus’s body was not going to be on earth for much longer. But when he ascends to his Father, he sends the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit lives in the hearts of all believers, directly interacting not with one priest, not with thousands of one-to-one encounters, but simultaneously with the billions of Christians throughout time and space. Everyone who is in relationship with God is now a Temple; why else would St. Paul write, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Co 6:19)

And thus the Temple has evolved, becoming at each stage the point of contact with God for a wider cross-section of humanity. It has gone from tent to stone building, from one body (Jesus’) to billions of bodies – everyone who has a relationship with the risen Christ. God has always been everywhere, even when his people saw him as occupying a specific physical space. But now, because of what Jesus has done, we are a nation of priests, all of us living in the Holy of Holies at every second of every day. It should be both a source of comfort and a challenge to our lifestyles, knowing that we are constantly in his presence. 

Where does that leave the church today? Many of us find a sacred space reassuring – a place of peace and quiet without distractions, and a visible, tactile symbol of God’s presence. I do myself. Many find that singing worship songs together, or joining in a  liturgy, creates a sacred space wherever we happen to be. I know I do. But we don’t need sacred space. We don't need worship songs. We don't need liturgy. God is, in a telling phrase from the Qur’an, closer to us than our own jugular vein.

While we are here, let us enjoy one another’s fellowship and the beauty of our surroundings. Let us revel in the sense of God’s presence as we lift our voices in song and come together in the Eucharist. But later, as we step outside into the dark, let us remember that we are not leaving the sacred space behind; we are taking it with us.

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[1] In the same way, at the Last Supper, he supplants remembrance of the Passover and Exodus from Egypt – the foundational event in the story of Israel – with the remembrance of his body and blood.

LOVING UNITY (1 Corinthians 12:12 - 13:13)

Some familiar words: If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

I imagine that most of us will have heard these words before; they’re the opening lines to one of the best loved passages in all of Scripture. They’re sometimes called the Ode to Love, and they’re by far the most popular choice of reading at Christian marriage ceremonies—which is precisely where many of us will have heard them.  

However, Paul wasn’t writing about romantic love, but about caring love. He was actually lambasting the Christians in Corinth – for their spiritual pride, their selfishness, their festering internal divisions. The point he was making to the letter’s original recipients was this: For all your impressive gifts, you’re just empty noise; for all your impressive faith and understanding you're a waste of space; because you've lost sight of what it means to love one another.

Some people here will have noticed that I’ve spent the last two or three minutes talking not about this morning's NT reading – the second half of 1 Corinthians 12, but about 1 Co 13—the passage immediately following on from it. And I’ve done so because the two adjacent passages shed light on one another—they were written to be read at the same sitting. The passage about different parts of the body was written as a lead-up to the Ode to Love. And in it we find the reasoning, the justification, for Paul’s conclusion: that caring love is infinitely more important than all the impressive gifts, the pride and the factions that you find in every church including our own. In fact, it’s to help us understand why caring love is essential that Paul asks us to think about a human body in the first place. 

He begins very simply, by pointing out that a body has many different parts: parts that look very different and perform very different functions. My hand, I think you’ll agree, looks nothing like my ear; if you could see my pancreas, which I’m glad you can’t, and you’re probably equally glad you can’t, I’m sure you would never mistake it for a kneecap. But as Paul points out (v12), all these many parts form one body, and the church is similarly one body. However different we may be as individuals, we’re all part of an overriding oneness, a unity of being, based (Paul says) on the shared gifts of baptism and the Holy Spirit that make us Christians.

This may at first sound a little trite, but when Paul illustrates his point by referring to Jews and Gentiles, and slaves and freemen, it stops being trite and becomes radical—even threatening. Because Jew and Gentile, slave and free were the deepest divisions the Christian church has ever seen. Beside them, the deepest divisions in the modern church – male and female, gay and straight, high and low, traditional and modern – are skin-deep by comparison. And if such divisions as these are meaningless, then a lot of fresh thinking is needed if we’re ever going to be more than ringing gongs and clanging cymbals.

So Paul’s first point was that the church is like a body with many different members. And his second point is that all the different members are needed for the body to thrive. As he says (v17), If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? And Paul’s conclusion, which he clearly intends his hearers to apply to the church, is this: God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. Once again, this is radical when applied to our own setting and all our diverse types: evangelicals and anglo-catholics; those different from us in gender, sexuality or marital status; our quiet contemplatives and our happy clappers; our organists and our guitarists, our preachers and our cleaners, our flower arrangers and coffee makers… In Paul’s words, they are all different, all needed, all where God wanted them to be.

And finally, Paul warns us that no one member can tell another, you don’t belong. (v21) The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, he continues, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honourable we (have to) treat with special honour. In other words, not a single member of the church is dispensable, and what we think of them is quite irrelevant. It’s all too easy (Paul is saying) to honour the gifted and influential members, the people who in a human body would be brains and tongues and hearts. Paul challenges our value system: the more humble someone’s position in the church, and the less influence they wield, the more we should value them.

It should be getting clearer how all this relates to the following chapter with its famous “ode to love”. We can easily fail to see the connection, because in our culture we use the word ‘love’ so carelessly: I love chocolate, I love my best mate, I love my children, I love God – quite a different meaning in each case. But when Paul wrote of love, he used a Greek word that means something quite specific: namely, the kind of love that Jesus showed when he died for us on the Cross – in others words, the kind of love that we show when we make sacrifices for the benefit of others.

Jesus promises that if we show this kind of love to one another, everyone will recognise us as his disciples. Paul warns that without this kind of love we are nothing, no more than noisy gongs and cymbals.  And in case there should be any doubt as to the kind of love he’s writing about, he goes on to describe it in detail, in those famous words: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Paul’s famous ode reaches its climax with the observation that until Christ comes again we have to rely on three things: faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these, he says, is love.

I was going to end on that note, but I can’t finish without mentioning that today is Holocaust Memorial Day, the day each year when the world remembers the six million Jews and four million others who were massacred by the Nazis (including Romanies, Homosexuals, Freemasons, people of mixed race, the elderly, the disabled, the disfigured, and religious dissidents like the famous Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

One of the most unforgettable experiences of my life was visiting Auschwitz less than two years ago, and witnessing the horror of what a Christian society – let me say, considerably more Christian than Britain today – was capable of doing when adherence to rules and cherished traditions became more important than love.

The world hasn’t learned from the Holocaust. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are very much a continuing part of the modern world. Before I finish, I’d like us to spend a few moments in silent respect for the victims . . . . 

Heavenly Father, we’re sorry for all the ways we have failed to show love to those inside and outside the church. Help us to be more than clanging gongs and clashing cymbals. In the name of Jesus…..