WHO’S TO BLAME?

On By revrayvincentLeave a comment

A Sermon preached at St David’s Uniting Church, Treforest on the Second Sunday of Advent 2025

“Peace on earth” is not a distant dream that we pray for – it is something we can make here now.
Perhaps the first step is to stop blaming. It’s easy to say there would be peace if Netanyahu or Putin or Trump came to their senses. But that isn’t true. The causes of war and terrorism are much more complex than that.
After this morning’s service we are going to take part in the Red Line for Gaza. This is a campaign organised by many organisations as well as Christian Aid. Today we are following Christian Aid’s suggestion of making a red line. If we are standing outside, anyone passing by will see us, but even if we are inside it will be photographed and widely publicised. People will know which side we are on.
Some people may ask: is it right for a Christian church to be taking sides on a political issue? Thinking of that well-known passage in Ecclesiastes 3, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven”, we could add that there is a time for balance and compromise and there is a time for taking sides. The consistent teaching of the Bible is that God is on the side of the oppressed against those who oppress them. Although God said the Jews were his chosen people, there were times when he was with them and there were times when he was against them. It depended on the situation at the time. The appalling situation in Gaza today is one in which we are called to take sides with the oppressed against those who oppress them, and that means with the Palestinians against the state of Israel.
The reason given for what Israel is doing in Gaza is that two years ago Hamas, without warning, attacked Israel and killed about 1200 people and took about 250 hostages, including innocent children. Of course, Israel couldn’t just let this happen. The declared aim of Hamas is to completely do away with Israel as a state, and the Israelis had to defend themselves. But their reaction has turned out to be out of all proportion. Rather than seek out the culprits and bring them to justice, they have devastated the whole region of Gaza. They have cut off essential services, killed many thousands of men, women and children, and inflicted mass starvation and disease on the population. There may be arguments as to whether this should be defined as genocide, but there have certainly been many war crimes, and we have to say “enough is enough”. This must stop.
There has been a long history leading up to this. Israel, the Palestinians and Egypt have been fighting over the Gaza Strip for decades. It has become a prison, enclosed by barriers so that the people were living in poverty with no chance of escape. At the same time, Israel has never ceased to expand its borders at the expense of the Palestinian inhabitants. On the other side of Israel there is the West Bank, which Israel occupied illegally in 1977 and has been taking over bit by bit ever since.
In 2018 some of us from this church made a journey to the Holy Land and saw the situation for ourselves. We visited refugee camps where Palestinians still nurse a grievance over the way they lost their homes in 1949. We also visited the Tent of Nations, a farm belonging to a Christian family, and we saw and heard the pressure they have suffered over the years. Though they have owned the land for generations, the Israeli lawyers have persistently refused to recognise them as the legal owners, and the neighbouring settlements have put them under constant pressure. Their driveway has been blocked off with heavy rocks. We had to get off our coach and walk the rest of the way. This was possible for us, but of course impossible for the farm to bring in supplies and bring out their produce to market. For this they have to take a roundabout trip adding miles to the journey.
The neighbouring settlers, with the support of the Israeli Government, have destroyed their crops and prevented them from building, so that they live virtually underground. Through it all they keep their contact with the outside world and have support and visitors from many countries. They are determined to live at peace with their neighbours and keep saying, “we refuse to be enemies”.
This kind of thing happens all over the West Bank, and since the start of the war with Gaza it has increased. Palestinians are driven from their land, often violently, and their crops and homes are destroyed – all with the support of the Israeli Government. The Hamas attack two years ago was a reaction to all this.
But who is to blame? The history goes further back. After the terrible Nazi Holocaust there was a huge wave of sympathy for the Jewish people and a strong feeling around the world that they must have a home of their own where they can feel safe. That was the reason for United Nations recognising the State of Israel in 1949. The Nazi regime in Germany and the people who supported it must surely bear a portion of the blame for what has happened since.
But where does blaming stop? Before the First World War, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled over a vast area of the Middle and Near East for more than 500 years. The First World War brought it to an end, and during that war the British Foreign Minister, Arthur Balfour, issued a statement saying: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. It included the clause: “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.
When the war ended, Britain was given the responsibility for Palestine. But after the Second World War, in their eagerness to get a Jewish state established, the British government wasn’t particularly careful about making sure that the rights of the inhabitants were recognised. They kept one part of their promise but neglected the other. This resulted in a violent conflict in which many of the Arab communities were destroyed and the people lost their land and homes. Generations have grown up with a bitter feeling against Israel as an occupying invader. So the British people are not quite innocent in this situation.
And it goes back further still. A few weeks ago I happened to see on television the film Fiddler on the Roof, one of the most popular musicals ever produced. It gave us characters and songs that we still remember today. It portrays the life of a Jewish village in Russia in the early 1900s, a close knit community with rich traditions. Its main character is a man who struggles with maintaining the tradition but has to adapt his attitudes to a world that is changing, even within his own family. In many ways it is a charming and humorous film. But the end is tragic. All the little struggles going in the community become insignificant when local government officials decide the village must be demolished and the inhabitants are given three days’ notice to pack their bags and leave. Those people had built the village themselves. It had lasted for at least three generations, so for most of them it was the only home they had known. But within three days they were all scattered. Some went to other parts of Russia, some to Poland, Germany and America, and the community with all its memories and its rich traditions was no more. The last scene of the film shows them pulling their carts, loaded with as many possessions as they can carry, out into the unknown.
This brought home to me the fact that for centuries Jews in Europe have had a precarious existence, sometimes tolerated, often hated and persecuted, and never secure. And this goes back to the early days of Christianity. Jesus preached a message that could have renewed the Jewish community. His first disciples were Jews, but before long their ways had separated and there was Christianity, an all-powerful religion that persecuted Jews. I’m sure that’s not what Jesus intended, but it was one example of the way human beings have a constant capacity to mess things up.
Who is to blame? I don’t believe in “original sin” in the sense that we are all born under the wrath of God because of the sin of Adam and Eve in eating the forbidden fruit. But it is obvious that there is such a thing as universal sin: no human being is innocent. We are born into a world of wrong, and we are part of it. Noe of us can ever be innocent. We have the potential to do good things that make it a beautiful world, but we also have the capacity to mess things up. And that gives us the potential of doing really atrocious and wicked things and making the world a hell.
This is why we believe that Jesus came into the world not to rescue the Jewish people from their enemies but to rescue the whole human race from itself. Sometimes we have to stand up for those who are suffering, and condemn the actions and attitudes that cause the suffering. But at the same time we must recognise that we can never simply divide the world into the innocent and the guilty, much less assume that we are the innocent! There are no pure saints and no pure villains. No matter how good or how bad people are, they are all human beings.
War isn’t created by a few nasty people. It’s something we all have a part in. Some years ago when I was travelling in China, I was impressed by the way ordinary Chinese people welcomed visitors. I went on a trip down the famous river Li with its spectacular scenery. Every time we passed a village, people were standing on the riverbank waving to us, and every time we stopped, children would come up and practise their English on us. They were delighted to meet us.
I found myself thinking, “Ordinary people everywhere want to be friendly: then why is there war?” I think the answer is that we all want peace but we also want the things that can only be achieved by aggression and competition and war. We want a more comfortable standard of living. We want more things and more money to buy things, and we care more about having things for ourselves and our families than about the welfare of other people. We are afraid of immigrants because we may have to take a smaller share while they take a bigger one. We know people are starving in other parts of the world, but we don’t want to sacrifice our hard-earned wealth for them. Idealism makes us want peace, but materialism makes us want things that can only be obtained by competition and conflict.
Surely the most important question we have to be asking as Christian believers is not what the politicians should do or what the rich and powerful should do, but what can we do to open the world for the kingdom of God to come in.
What are the practical things we can do every day to create peace? We can:
• work for justice not just by campaigning but by starting where we are: by being just
• start trying to see things from other people’s point of view
• make friends with people of different communities and cultures: we’re already doing it in this church by making contact with refugees and asylum seekers and reaching out to people of other faiths and cultures. But we can do more – how well do we know our neighbours?
• make friends not just with people who are different from ourselves in interesting ways, but people we profoundly disagree with (including other Christians!)
• listen to people instead of just telling them they are wrong: try to understand why they feel as they do.
It’s easy to make conflict. It’s harder to make peace, but that is what we are called to do, and the world needs it more than ever.

Looking for a King?

On By revrayvincentLeave a comment 
A Sermon preached on 24th November 2024

This last Sunday before Advent has been given the name “Christ the King Sunday”.
Many of us don’t like the idea of calling Jesus a king. Jesus himself rejected the title. When he had miraculously fed a crowd of 5000 men, plus women and children, the people wanted to make him king. They were already organised in groups of 50, like an army. But Jesus disappeared into the desert.

What we will be celebrating at Christmas is God’s coming into the world as a human being. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. Looking at him, we see all we need to know about God – he is like Jesus.

But the earthly Jesus certainly did not behave like a king. He spoke with the authority of a prophet, and he acted with the power of a healer, but he showed no ambition to be a king. So are we right in even comparing him with a king?

The controversy goes right back to the Bible itself. It seems that parts of the Bible were written by royalists and other parts were written by republicans. In the early days of Israel as a nation, they had leaders. They were not hereditary leaders nor official – they emerged and became leaders as the need demanded. There was Moses, who brought them out of slavery and led them to the Promised Land. Then there was Joshua, who took over when Moses died. The story continues in Book of Judges – a rather misleading title. It is not about sober old men sitting in the court wearing a wig! Some of them were judges of a sort, but mostly they were people God raised up to exercise his judgment and put things right. When things were bad for Israel, someone appeared and led them to victory, peace, and prosperity. One of the first was a woman, Deborah, who challenged and rallied the men to rise against the Canaanites. Then there were the ones whose stories entertained us as children: Gideon, Jephthah and Samson.

We have seen this happen down through history: Joan of Arc, William Tell, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. These were people of ordinary beginnings who found themselves in a cruel situation, did what they felt needed to be done, and unintentionally became leaders who changed the world.

The last of the Judges was Samuel. When he became an old man, the people came to him and said they wanted a king to rule over them permanently, like other nations.
God was displeased with this. It showed a lack of faith and a turning away from God who was their only true king. But he told Samuel to agree to their request.
Samuel warned them that they would regret it. A king would take away their lands, their crops, their cattle and their freedom, all to increase his own wealth and power. Behind this we can probably see the experience of the reign of Solomon, with his hundreds of wives and concubines and his enormous wealth that caused so much discontent that when he died the kingdom fell apart.

But in the meantime came David, who was a great and highly respected king whose descendants reigned in Jerusalem for hundreds of years. This created a mystique of the king, and the belief that the Kingdom of David was chosen by God and eternal. Though many of the descendants of David were bad kings – and David himself was far from perfect – there was the undying hope we find in passages like Isaiah 11 – the vision of a truly good and just king who would bring the people peace and prosperity.

In the course of time the nation lost its freedom and became more dominated by the powerful empires around it, but there still remained the hope of a Messiah, the “Anointed One”, the “Son of David”. And so the idea of a king is in the very name we call Jesus – the “Christ”, that is, the “Anointed One”.

Still today, people pin their faith on a great leader who will give them the kind of nation they long for. The Americans have elected a President who promises to lead them into their "golden age” and “make America great again”. Here in Britain we have got rid of a tired and unfair government and have hopes of better times under a new leader. Poor Keir Starmer looks as if the honeymoon is already over, but there is still ground for hope. Right down through history, people have tended to look for a great new world to be brought about by a new leader. But too often the new leader turns out to be as bad as the others, and even if he or she is genuinely and sincerely trying to do good, the task usually turns out too hard for them. We talk about Jesus as the King and the hope of the world, but after 2000 years the world doesn’t seem to have changed much.

But there is another vision in the Bible. Although Jesus was called “King”, “Lord”, and “Son of God” – all titles used for the old kings of Israel – the title he himself preferred was “Son of man”. What does this mean? It comes from the book of Daniel. Daniel has a dream of four great fierce beasts dominating and terrifying the world. One by one they are destroyed, and then comes “one like a son of man”, who is given “an everlasting dominion that shall never pass away”. This “one like a son of man” is interpreted not as an individual but as “the people of the holy ones of the Most High”. Not a Messiah, but a messianic people!

This is surely the ultimate hope. Real change in the world will not come by any leader – not even by putting Jesus on a pedestal and calling him a king – but in the hearts of the whole people. The Kingdom of God is the kingship of God, when God gets his way with humanity. And that is brought about by a community. That's why, in the New Testament, the Church is called the body of Christ.

And I believe that the Church is not a group confined to certain patterns and boundaries, but God’s vision for the whole of humanity – starting, of course, with you and me.

Why Theology is Important

On By revrayvincentLeave a comment

Why Theology is Important

I often feel very frustrated when listening to services on the radio. Most of them seem to be planned for the benefit of churchgoing people or those who are housebound and would go to church if they could. They include congregational singing of hymns of which no-one can understand the words unless they know them already. They encourage us to have faith in the loving God who looks after us, without ever facing the question “how do we know?” They urge us to follow Jesus more closely, without spelling out what that might mean in practice. In short, most of them are just bland.

When you watch a television programme or listen to a radio talk about the natural world, or history, or the universe, you learn things you didn’t already know. If you watch a programme about quantum science, cosmology or relativity, you may not understand much of, it but there’s something fascinating and inspiring about listening to someone who is an expert and an enthusiast in their subject, and your mind is at least stretched a bit. How often does this happen in a broadcast religious service?

It is probably even less likely to happen when you go to a service in your local church. The only churches where you are likely to hear any serious biblical exposition or theological discussion are those with a very conservative theology, and even they have generally become blander than they used to be. Look in any high street Christian book shop, and you will find plenty of nice bibles, hymn books, prayer books, charity greetings cards and little easy-reading devotional books, but where will you find anything that will stretch your mind? Christian faith today – like politics and many other areas of life – has gone through a great dumbing down.

This is weakening the churches and the Christian faith generally. Without theology, churchgoing people are resisting change because they have never really thought about what the church is for. They are holding doctrines and moral dogmas that perpetuate prejudice and treat certain kinds of people cruelly. When unbelievers challenge their faith, they have no idea how to defend it. And without theology they can become unbelievers themselves if they have to face serious illness, bereavement or misfortune for which their faith has not prepared them.

I am not suggesting that Christians should read more heavy academic theological books. Such books are certainly available, and as someone with a theology degree I find them interesting. What I mean by the theology we need more of is something much more down to earth. Theology is people talking about their experience of God and their thoughts about God – and that is something we can all do. Most churchgoing people don’t do it because they have questions in the back of their minds that they are afraid to ask in case of being told they should have more faith, or they shouldn’t let their doubts undermine other people’s faith.

I mean questions like: how do we really know there is a God? Does prayer really change things? Why do bad things happen to good people? What really happens when we die? These questions are very difficult to answer. Even some of the biblical writers struggled with them without finding a straightforward answer – see Job, Ecclesiastes and some of the Psalms. But they are not academic questions. They are questions that affect us personally, questions we all need to grapple with if we are to have a faith that really helps us to live our lives.

Jesus once asked his disciples, “Who do people say I am?” After hearing some of the answers he asked, “Who do you say I am?” This is the difference between academic theology and the theology every one of us needs to have. As a minister, I know more than most people about what others have said and written about God, but as far as the really difficult questions are concerned, I’m no wiser than anyone else. Really useful theology begins with the question, “Who do you say I am?” That is a question only you can answer. And it’s no use trying to pull the wool over God’s eyes: God already knows what you think. God is infinitely loving, understanding and forgiving. If you are wrong, let God, not other people, put you right.

Does It Work?

On By revrayvincentLeave a comment

There is much food for thought in the saying of G K Chesterton: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” 

Following the radical teachings of Jesus has certainly been found difficult, right from the beginning. The Book of Acts gives us a picture of the earliest followers of Jesus living communally, not only eating together but sharing everything. It tells us that “there was not a needy person among them”, because those who had land or houses sold them and brought them into a common fund to help those who were in need (Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-37). Special mention is made of Barnabas, who sold a field and handed over the proceeds to the apostles. But this special mention could imply that even in those early days not everyone did that kind of thing. As the principle of sharing became routine in the life of the early Church, it inevitably had to be organised and eventually institutionalised. Human nature being what it is, complaints began, and a committee had to be set up to ensure that it was properly organised and fair (Acts 6:16). And so we find already in the New Testament a tension between the radical teaching of Jesus and the realities of communal life and human nature.

As the Church grew in numbers, its general character drifted further away from its radical beginnings. Once Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, and then of the nations of Europe, it largely ceased to challenge the order of society. The Christian civilisation that evolved was nothing like the close, sharing community of the early Church. Such ideas as pacifism, the discouraging of wealth, and the breaking down of class divisions were no longer acceptable. The idea of “the kingdom of heaven” was no longer seen as a new world of peace and justice here on earth. It became the place we go to when we die, so long as we have the right faith.

But despite the difficulties and even sometimes the loss of the original vision, the attempt to live out the radical challenge of Jesus has been a constant feature of Christianity.

In the Roman Empire the idea of rich people giving their money away was already familiar. It was a matter of honour and prestige. Wealthy citizens would compete with one another in paying for a dole-out of food or providing free games in their cities. Poor people received some of the benefits of this, but only if they were Roman citizens. There was no tradition of giving to the poor just because they were poor. When Christianity became the predominant religion of the Empire, there was an influx of rich people into the Church. For them, the tradition of generous giving was transferred from the city to the Church. Many rich Christians endowed the Church itself by paying for ornate new buildings, festivals and so on, but many also made provision for poor fellow-Christians whom they now regarded as fellow-citizens of the City of God.

In mediaeval Christendom, rich people would share their wealth by endowing alms-houses, schools, and other charitable agencies. It was a culture in which the doctrines of Christianity were unquestioningly believed as fact. Life was often short, and death was much more a part of people’s daily experience than it is for most of us today. Heaven, hell, and purgatory were very real. Rich people believed they could atone for their sins and build up credit in heaven by their charity. They saw laying up “treasure in heaven” as simple economic prudence.

During the 1170s Peter Waldo, a wealthy French cloth merchant, gave up all his possessions and became a vagrant preacher, gathering followers who lived in what he and others came to call “apostolic poverty”. His followers were at first admired by many, but their radical criticism of the Church and their efforts to change it led to their being excluded as heretics. However, the movement persisted and eventually became a recognised Protestant denomination. Its chief heartland was in northern Italy, but it now exists in several other countries. The Waldensians, as they are called, still have a great emphasis on serving the marginalised and promoting social justice.

A little later we have the more widely known figure of St Francis of Assisi (1181-1226), who also left a life of luxury and pleasure behind to become the leader of a community of vagrants. The difference between him and Waldo was that Francis remained firmly within the Roman Catholic Church and received permission from the Pope to form a new kind of monastic order. Franciscans did not give up private property and pool it in a monastery – they became penniless vagrant preachers living on what people gave them.

In more recent times we have the example of evangelical “faith missions”. George Müller (1805-1898) provided homes for over 10,000 orphans during his lifetime, and schools for more than 120,000. Through all this, Müller never made requests for financial support, nor did he go into debt – he trusted in God to provide. On one well-documented occasion, thanks was given for breakfast when all the children were sitting at the table even though there was nothing in the house to eat. As they finished praying, the baker knocked on the door with sufficient fresh bread to feed everyone, and the milkman gave them plenty of fresh milk because his cart had broken down in front of the orphanage.

Hudson Taylor (1832-1905) founded the China Inland Mission. In its rules he stated that all who went out as missionaries should go in dependence upon God for temporal supplies, with the clear understanding that the Mission did not guarantee them an income – it would only help support them as the funds sent in from time to time might allow. The Mission was supported entirely by “the free will offerings of the Lord’s people”, without any personal solicitations or collections, and it would not go into debt, because that was seen as lack of trust in God’s provision.

In the twentieth century, Albert Schweitzer gave up a glittering career in scholarship and music to become a doctor serving sick people in Africa, and Mother Teresa devoted years of her life to caring for the poorest in India.

Chuck Feeney, who died recently, was born during the Depression, of relatively humble parents. He was a genius at making money – at the age of 10 he was already selling Christmas cards door-to-door! In the 1950s he began selling duty-free liquor to US navy personnel and went on to be a co-founder of the very successful Duty-Free Shoppers (DFS). But in 1984 he transferred his entire share of the company to a charitable foundation he had set up. He did this secretly: not even his DFS partners knew that he was no longer making any personal profit from his share in the business. The foundation gave substantial help to charitable causes all over the world, including among other things universities and schools, AIDS clinics in South Africa, numerous medical agencies, and earthquake relief in Haiti. In his lifetime he gave away more than $8 billion. He refused to have any buildings or projects named after him, thinking that others might make bigger contributions in hope of getting the organisation named after them. He himself lived a frugal life, living in a modest two-bed rented flat, travelling by coach, and wearing a watch that cost $15.

Another outstanding example is Oseola McCarty, a black woman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Because she had to leave school at the age of twelve to care for her ailing aunt, her ambition to become a nurse was never realised, and her life was spent working as a washerwoman. From childhood she was taught the habit of saving, and this remained with her all her life. She never married, and never owned a car. She walked everywhere, except for having a lift from friends to go to church on Sundays. She pushed a shopping trolley nearly a mile to get groceries. She did not subscribe to any newspaper, and had only a black-and white-television. Even her Bible, which she read avidly, was held together by adhesive tape because she did not see the point of spending money on a new one. At the age of 87, she signed an irrevocable trust allowing the bank to manage her money. Setting aside some money for her church and a few relatives, and a basic pension for herself, she gave the remaining $150,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi to set up a scholarship fund to enable poor students to get the opportunities she herself had not had. This action inspired others to give to the fund. It has now been running for nearly thirty years and about a dozen students each year are benefitting from it.

Chesterton’s statement that the Christian ideal has been found difficult and left untried is not the whole truth – there is a long and honourable history of brave attempts to put it into practice. And we must also bear in mind the vastly wider circle of Christians, people of other faiths, and people who do not profess any faith, who under the influence of the example of Jesus have been kinder and more generous than they otherwise might have been.

Good News for the Poor – but what about the rest of us?

On By revrayvincentLeave a comment 
When Jesus stood up to read from the Scriptures in the synagogue at Nazareth, he read the passage which begins: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18; Isaiah 61:1). This was the opening statement, the manifesto, of his mission.

But where does this “good news” leave those of us who are not poor? Most church-going Christians in the developed countries today are middle-class people with a comfortable home and a steady income. What is the gospel, the “good news” for people like us?

There is a story in three of the Gospels about a man who asked Jesus what he should do to have eternal life. He looks rather like many idealistic young people today. He had grown up taking for granted the comforts of what we would call a middle-class life. He was honest, law-abiding, and faithful to his religion. But he felt something was missing. Perhaps he thought Jesus might show him the way to a deeper spirituality. The answer Jesus gave him was an invitation to sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor, and then, “come, follow me” (Mark’s version adds the touching little detail that “Jesus, looking at him, loved him”). The answer was not the one he wanted to hear, and he walked away disappointed.

Much Christian preaching today presents the gospel as an extra dimension to life. Life, it says, can be more than just a comfortable home, a happy family, and a steady nine-to-five job with a good pension at the end of it. Christian faith offers a richer experience: a personal relationship with God, and the prospect of going to heaven when we die. But this is a pale and cheap version of what Jesus said to that young man. The “personal relationship with God” offered to him was not a richer prayer life: it was a practical life-changing experience, leaving all his wealth and security behind and joining Jesus on the road. Jesus seems to be saying that eternal life, a deeper spirituality, blessedness, or whatever you want to call it, is not “the icing on the cake”, something we can just add on to what we already have: it comes at a price.

In the teaching of Jesus, “good news for the poor” seems to go together with bad news for the rich: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. … But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” (Luke 6:20-26)

In Luke’s Gospel (16:19-31) we find the misnamed story of “Dives and Lazarus” – misnamed, because the rich man doesn’t have a name. “Dives” is simply the word for “rich” in Latin, the language of the Catholic Bible. Of all the stories Jesus told, this is the only one in which one of the characters has a name. Because of this, preachers came to think the other character should have a name too. This is not only an unnecessary addition to the story: it is a misunderstanding of its whole point. In real life the rich man would have a well-known, respected name, a name that could get a lot of things done if mentioned in the right places or signed on the right documents. The poor man sitting outside his door would just be known as “that beggar”. By giving a name to the poor man and not to the rich man, Jesus was turning the values of “normal” society upside down.

When the rich man dies, he is buried, and presumably given a dignified funeral procession and a fine tomb. The beggar’s body would probably just be tossed into a common grave or rubbish dump. But beyond death their status is reversed. The poor man is taken up by the angels to sit with Abraham in heaven, but the rich man is suffering in the underworld. Why is he being punished? Nothing is said about any sin he has committed. He is apparently being punished just for being rich while the man sitting at his gate was destitute. The story seems to be saying that sin is not just in what we do but in what we tolerate without doing anything about it.

In today’s world the richer nations happen to be mostly those of a Christian tradition, those who sent missionaries to preach the good news to the rest of the world. Meanwhile, in those “mission fields”, millions of people are living every day with grinding poverty, undernourished, exploited, sick with no access to medicine, held back by lack of education, working in dangerous and unhealthy conditions to provide luxury goods for the rich. Those of us who are comfortable and well fed need to hear both sides of Christianity, the good news and the bad news, the promise and the warning.

“THIS IS THAT”

On By revrayvincent1 Comment

A Sermon preached at Tonyfelin Baptist Church, Caerphilly, Pentecost 2024

I remember when I was a small child going with my parents to some special service. I don’t remember which church it was or who the preacher was, and I was too young to understand much of it, especially the sermon. But the one thing I still remember is the preacher's text. He kept repeating it from time to time in the sermon. It was “This is that”. I remember that even as a small child I was thinking, “What a daft text to take!”

When I was a bit older, I realised it was from the story of Pentecost in Acts 2: "But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel”. I also came to realise that choosing those three words for a text was not a silly gimmick at all. The words are actually very significant and central to the nature of our Christian faith. Peter was explaining to the people the meaning of this strange event that was happening – the excitement, the speaking in tongues, the joyful praise of God. He was reminding them of the words in their Scriptures and inviting them to recognise how that prophesy was coming true before their very eyes: “This is that”.

In a sense, those words express something essential to the nature of the Christian faith. It is a faith that looks back and at the same time looks to the present and the future. We read the Bible, and we look at the world around us and at our own lives, and every now and then there is a moment when we say, “Yes! This is that!” Whether it's the stories and the teaching of Jesus, or whether it's something we read in the Old Testament, we sometimes have what is called an “aha moment” when we say, “This isn’t just something that happened thousands of years ago – it’s happening now!” In a way every sermon is a “this is that” exercise – the preacher takes a story or a saying from the Bible and connects it with something happening now in the world or in our lives.

So, what does this story of Pentecost mean to us today? In what way can we say, "This is that"? Most of us don't understand this “speaking in tongues” business. What was it that really happened? Was it a miracle that everybody heard the disciples speaking their own language, or did it feel like that because there was a communication and a sense of sharing beyond words? We don't know. What we do know is that we don't see ourselves in the church today getting so wildly excited and telling the whole world about Jesus because we can't keep it to ourselves. For us, "witnessing", telling others about Jesus, is something we feel we ought to do but somehow don’t do for much of the time. This old story is just that – an old story, and we're not quite sure what to make of it.

I would suggest that its meaning for us today is very much connected with the bit we often leave out because we don't like it! Quoting the words of Joel about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, Peter includes the verses that follow them: “… and I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

We sometimes forget that the early disciples were convinced that Jesus, who had been condemned to death by the religious leaders, was coming back very soon as a judge. Peter was appealing to the people to repent and acknowledge Jesus so that their sin would be forgiven. That's why he ended his sermon with the urgent plea, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation”.

That sounds more like the world we live in today – “portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and smoky mist. The sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood”. That doesn’t sound as far-fetched as it used to. So much of the news today frightens us: war in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Yemen and so many other places; the terrible possibility of nuclear war; the extreme weather conditions threatening our life on this planet because of the way we have polluted the soil, the sea and the air; conflict in outer space. The day could soon come when there will literally be blood on the moon.

The numerous wars and civil conflicts going on the world, the ever increasing streams of refugees, the increasing bitterness and violence in politics and in society generally, make us wonder whether we are facing the collapse of our whole civilisation. If ever the world needed someone to save it, it's now.

Peter stood up courageously in front of the crowd and said, “God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified”. Here again we can look at today's world and say “this is that”. Innocent people are dying cruel deaths everywhere, killed by war and terrorism or starved to death by poverty. We can't just blame villains like Putin or Netanyahu or the terrorists or the big companies or the super-rich. It's the whole nature of our society, of the way the world is run, that is killing innocent people. We are all part of this and must share the guilt of it. We are crucifying Jesus over and over again. We are destroying the image of God in human beings.

The people's response to Peter's speech was to say, “Brothers, what should be do?” The answer was simple: “Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”. The answer is the forgiving, loving grace of Jesus. And this is just as true today. God is alive and working through Jesus to save the world from its sins. Not in just the way it happened at Pentecost, nor in the way things happened in revivals in the past.  God is the same always and yet always doing something new.

New things are happening. There are many signs that we are not without hope. There are people in the world who are concerned about what is going on and who believe that things can be different. Some of them are very young and doing things that are inspiring and hopeful, challenging their elders and sometimes putting them to shame.  Yes, young men are seeing visions. Old men are dreaming dreams too – I like to think I am one of them.  The older I get the more convinced I am about the good news of Christ. It's not about getting more people to come to church, and it's not about me and my personal salvation. It's about the new world that God has promised to create, a world where, in the words of Amos, “justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”.

And it’s just not just about ministers, or clever people, or powerful people. It's all classes of society: “even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy”. People who have been ignored or downtrodden – women, children, people of different races, poor communities, disabled people – are finding their dignity and their voice and playing their part in changing the world. Yes, there are many signs in the world today of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit "on all flesh", if only we read the promises of God in the Bible and look around and say “This is that!”

And where are the churches in all this? Mostly it looks as if they are bypassed. God sometimes seems more active in the world than in the church. The people striving to change the world are often those who don’t go to church, those who say they are “spiritual but not religious”, and many who don’t believe in God at all. I believe the Holy Spirit is in them and God is using them. But I believe God still has a place for the church – only it must be a church very different from the one we see now.

The Church must change. And that doesn't necessarily mean having guitars and drums instead of an organ, singing modern choruses or changing the order of service. We need a church that is geared to demonstrating the kingdom of God by living in a radical new way, a church that has its eyes on the good of the whole community and not just its own members; a church that shows the love of Jesus by being inclusive; a church where people of different ages, races, nationalities and cultures, different sexuality, different life experience, can be together and demonstrate that human beings can be a family instead of a lot of divided tribes; a church where people whose lives are in a mess are not condemned or excluded but embraced with the love of Christ; a church in which people are willing to give sacrificially in order to make the world fairer and happier; a church that is a little colony of heaven on earth.

We need to recapture the vision of the early church, where all who believed were together and had all things in common and would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all who had need; a church where barriers were broken down, with Jews and Gentiles, rich and poor, slaves and free people eating together. 
Being this kind of church won't change the world overnight, but it will light a candle in a dark world, and as more and more candles are lit, the dark world will become lighter.

And this is not all struggle and serious business. It is joy. The second chapter of Acts closes with words describing the life of the early disciples and saying: “day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” Of course, there was persecution to come. For us, too, the call to be the true church is not always an easy one. But there is something at the heart of it that is full of hope and joy. The church God wants to see is a happy church and an attractive one. Are you and I in it, and if it is still in the future, will we be in it?

EASTER: THE UNFINISHED STORY

On By revrayvincentLeave a comment

A Sermon preached at St David’s Uniting Church, Pontypridd at Easter 2024

The end of Mark’s Gospel is very mysterious. In most of the old manuscripts the book finishes at chapter 15, verse 8 with the words: "So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid." Some Greek scholars think this is not even a finished sentence. The last word is gar (for), a word that does not normally end a sentence: the grammar seems to demand it should say what they were afraid of. The rest of the chapter was added at some stage, or perhaps in several stages, by people who thought the story ought to be finished. But the way they finished it was by adding brief summaries of stories in the other Gospels.

Why does the book end in this strange way? Perhaps the last page book was accidentally lost. Perhaps the book never got finished: maybe the writer died. Or did the writer deliberately finish it in that way? Whatever the explanation, I feel there is something very significant and symbolic about the way Mark's Gospel ends. The resurrection is a mysterious, disturbing, and unfinished story.

The way we understand it is still an unfinished story. People still discuss the question: what really happened? The stories contradict each other. How many women went to the tomb, and who were they? The four Gospels all differ on that.  And what did they see? An angel? A young man in a white robe? Two men in dazzling clothes? Or, as in John's Gospel, two angels who conveyed no message at all but just asked Mary Magdalene why she was weeping? Paul, summarising the resurrection message in 1 Corinthians 15, doesn't mention the women or the empty tomb at all.

Then there is the much bigger discrepancy about what happened afterwards. Matthew and Mark say the disciples were to go to Galilee: Matthew says they went to a certain mountain in Galilee, and Jesus gave them his farewell message there. Luke says he appeared to them in and around Jerusalem and gave his farewell message before ascending from the Mount of Olives, specifically telling them to stay in Jerusalem. John says he appeared to them twice in Jerusalem and some time later in Galilee.

There are other puzzles too. Why did they sometimes not recognise Jesus? Luke tells us that two of them walked and talked with them without knowing who he was. In Matthew's Gospel it says that "some doubted". In John it says: "None of the disciples dared ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord." What an odd thing to say!

So, was it a real bodily resurrection, or was it a spiritual one? Were the appearances visions? Or did the disciples from time to time have a life-changing encounter and realise on looking back that they had met the risen Jesus? The history tells us that something very big must have happened to change the disciples so drastically. The science tells us that vital parts of the body begin to decompose as soon as death takes place, and it's just impossible for a dead body to come back to life after three days. In previous generations the story of a bodily resurrection helped people to believe that Jesus was the Son of God: for our modern scientific minds, it puts a problem in the way.

I am torn about it. If the story of the resurrection is spiritual and symbolic, that doesn't in any way affect my faith in Jesus and in the love of God. But I have no wish to pour cold water on anyone else’s faith. And in any case, if God really is God, all things are possible. Our God is a God of surprises. So I prefer to just think of the resurrection as a glorious mystery, a story we will never finish thinking about and trying to work out its meaning.

In other senses too it is an unfinished story. Our faith tells us we will share the resurrection. For us, death is not the end but beyond it there is everlasting life. The resurrection is a promise waiting to be fulfilled. It is also still an ongoing process in our life and in the world. When someone who is in despair begins to find hope, when hurt people find healing, when those who have lost a loved one find there is still love in the world, when enemies find a way of forgiveness and reconciliation, when someone whose life is in a mess finds a second chance and a new life, when a seemingly dead end situation is resolved and transformed... resurrection is happening all the time.

Where is the body now? The Creed says that Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God. With our present-day knowledge of the universe, where is this heaven? But the New Testament writers already had a different way of answering that question: we are the Body of Christ. That's where the body is now. In the words of St Teresa of Avila: "Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours; yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which he walks to do good, yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body.

It is our job, and our privilege, to carry on the unfinished story.

Radical Incarnation: What Does Christmas Really Mean?

On By revrayvincent1 Comment 

My awakening to the wonder of the Christian message happened when I was seventeen and studying English for A Level. Part of the curriculum was the poetry of Browning, which I very much enjoyed. My teacher recommended reading G K Chesterton's book about Browning, and some ideas in that led me back to his poetry to see its meaning in a new light. I had reached a stage when the conservative Baptist version of Christianity I had grown up with and the sermons I heard every Sunday seemed not only boring but questionable as well – and we weren’t encouraged to ask questions that were too challenging. The literature I was reading in school was much more exciting. But after reading Chesterton's book I suddenly realised that Browning was a Christian. Some of his themes were a fresh and meaningful expression of the message of Christianity. This gave me freedom to think, and in a very short time I had become an enthusiastic Christian.

One of the first things that excited me was the idea of the incarnation. From Browning's and Chesterton's point of view, part of its meaning was that God the Creator wanted to complete his experience, so he came into the world in Jesus because he wanted to know what it was to be one of his own creatures. Somehow, the teaching I had heard in church had never clearly brought home to me the wonder of ‘the Word made flesh’. We were taught to reverence Jesus as a sort of supernatural being, not quite real as a man – a sort of half-god walking with his feet not quite touching the ground, doing miracles, and knowing everything while pretending not to. But God becoming a baby and growing up to be a real man – that was something new to me.

This revelation came to me just before Christmas. Our church was without a minister at the time and the young people had been asked to take the Christmas morning service. I was to be the speaker. I had done that kind of thing several times before and was quite capable of coming out with acceptable cliches, but this time was different. For the first time, I really, passionately meant what I was saying. The weather that Christmas was cold and fine, and it was a thrill to look up to the stars at night and think how, in Jesus, God who created them had looked up at them with human eyes. When I became a minister, the Incarnation was a central part of the faith I preached, and Christmas was always a magical time for that reason. In the words of Christina Rossetti’s beautiful carol:

‘Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain.

Heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.’


Over the years I began to have questions about the incarnation as a literal truth. In what sense can we say ‘he came down to earth from heaven' if he was born in the way we all are? What does this really mean? Even the New Testament is not explicit and unanimous about it. Different writers express it in different ways. They talk of Jesus as ‘the Son of God’ more often than as ‘God’. Even the writer of John's Gospel says, ‘the Word was made flesh’, which, although he has already said ‘the Word was God’, is not quite as direct as saying ‘God became flesh’.

Now that we have a sense of the universe as vastly greater and older than we used to think, we are bound to question: why, or in what sense, did God come into the world as a human being just 2000 years ago? Did the relationship between God and humanity suddenly change at that comparatively late date in human history, not to mention the history of the planet? Hasn’t God always been ‘Immanuel’, God with us? Hasn’t God always been loving, caring and forgiving? I find a lot to think about in books like Diarmuid O’Murchu’s 'Ancestral Grace'. Surely God was working in and with human beings from their very first origins, and with other animals too, and indeed all living things, even all created things. Is not the universe itself the incarnation of God? 

This understanding of the incarnation does not take away the sense of wonder – it even enhances it. The real magic of Christmas is surely that it focuses on a newborn baby, reminding us that every time a baby is born, even in the poorest circumstances, God has become incarnate again and a new hope has come into the world.


Nor is this universal incarnation absent from the New Testament. The teaching there is that, as God was in Christ, so God is in those who believe. Paul often talks of us being ‘in Christ’ and the church being his ‘body’. The resurrection means that the Jesus who died is still alive in his disciples – indeed of all who share his nature and do what he would do, whether they know it or not. In the familiar words attributed to St Teresa of Avila:

‘Christ has no body but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes with which He looks with compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which He walks to do good, yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world…’

It is in ordinary human beings that God is present and active in the world today. The incarnation is a permanent reality. Jesus is not a being different from other human beings. He is fully man and fully God, the most complete and human being we have seen in this world, the one who most surely shows us the nature of God, both in his character and in the story of his life. But we are all part of that incarnation.

Uncomfortable Reading

On By revrayvincent1 Comment

I recently heard a preacher say that he had often heard testimonies from people who said something like: “My life was in a complete mess, then Jesus came into it and put it all together”. He said his own testimony would be more like: “My life was quite neatly sorted, then Jesus came into it and messed it up”.

It’s true that many people come to Christian faith from a sense of failure or chaos in their lives – a history of crime, addiction, abusive relationships, or homelessness. Often with the help of Christians who have shown them love and told them of the love of Christ, they have a spiritual experience that sets them on the path to a new life. But what does the Christian message mean for those of us whose life is reasonably comfortable and in good order? What should it mean? Is it just the icing on the cake? Does it just add a spiritual dimension and the promise of heaven when we die? The gospel is described as “good news for the poor”, but is it good news for those who are not poor?

It is something of a cliché to hold up the Sermon on the Mount as the classic pattern of a good life and a good society. It starts (Matt 5) with comforting and innocuous statements like “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted …”, and so on. But it soon becomes much more disturbing:

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well” (Matt 5:39-40). Is that sensible?

“Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you” (Matt 5:42). Anyone who has ever passed a beggar on the street should feel uncomfortable with that.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth … but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matt 6:19-20). Does that mean I shouldn’t have a savings account?

The last part of that sixth chapter of Matthew (vs 25-34) seems to speak on three different levels. There is simple common sense: “can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?… do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” Then there is a comforting message of God’s care for us: “Look at the birds of the air… consider the lilies of the field… if God clothes the grass of the field… will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith?” Then comes the promise: “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Does this mean that if I try to live a good life God will provide for my needs? Probably not quite that. “Righteousness” in the Bible does not usually mean just “being good” in the sense of living a decent, honest life. It is another word for justice. When Jesus says, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled”, he doesn’t just mean that those who eagerly long to be good will have their desire satisfied: he is referring to oppressed people desperate for justice. And that is probably what “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness” means – it calls us to make the active pursuit of justice the centre of our lives.

In three of the Gospels (Matt 19:16-30; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30) we find the story of a young man who came to Jesus and asked what he should do to have eternal life. He was rather like many idealistic young people today who have grown up taking for granted the comforts of a middle-class life and are looking for a higher level of spirituality. He had lived a decent, law-abiding life since childhood, but felt somehow that there should be something more. The answer Jesus gave was, “Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  The man walked away sadly. Then Jesus said to his disciples, “It will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God”.

Matthew also gives us that vivid picture of judgement, when the nations will be separated like a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The King will call those on his right side to possess the Kingdom, “for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”  When they are surprised at this, he says to them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  Then he will point out to those on his left that they did none of these things, and the story concludes: “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”. (Matt 25:31-46)

No Christian who has ever passed by a homeless person on the pavement, or not bothered to give to a famine relief appeal, can feel comfortable with sayings like this.

Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount (sometimes called “the Sermon on the Plain”) is even more challenging. Instead of “the poor in spirit” it talks directly of the poor:

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh… But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” (Luke 6:20-26)

Luke (16:19-26) also gives us the misnamed story of “Dives and Lazarus” – misnamed, because the rich man does not have a name. The Latin Bible was virtually the only one used in Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages, and “dives” is simply the Latin word for “rich”. This story is unique among the parables in that one of the characters has a name. At some stage, preachers came to think the other character ought to have a name too. This is not only a mistranslation, but it misses an important point. Jesus, in giving a name to the poor man and not to the rich man, is deliberately subverting the values of society. In real life the rich man would have a well-known and respected name, but the poor man sitting outside his door would just be “that beggar”. In telling this story Jesus is making the point that, well known as the rich man might be, the poor man too was a person known and important to God.

When the rich man dies, he is buried – a privilege accorded to rich and “important” people. The beggar’s body would probably just be tossed into a common grave. But beyond death their status is reversed. The poor man is taken up by the angels to sit with Abraham in heaven, but the rich man is suffering in hell. Why is he being punished? Nothing is said about any sin he has committed – he is in hell simply because he was rich and allowed the man sitting at his door to be destitute.

Today, in a world where the richer nations – which happen to be mostly those of a Christian tradition – enjoy luxury, security, and high standards of health care while millions in other countries are undernourished if not dying of starvation, we are surely ignoring the message of the Bible and the essence of Christian faith if we do not take these words of Jesus and the prophets seriously. The question is: do we, and can we?

Why the Trinity?

On By revrayvincentLeave a comment 
I don't know whether the Athanasian Creed is recited very much these days. It begins:
‘Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.

And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost…’

Then it goes on for a very long time, and ends with:

‘… This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.’

For me, this prompts at least three questions:

  • What does it mean?
  • How does he know?
  • What kind of God would condemn us to hell for not believing a complicated doctrine?

The Holy Trinity is often presented as a test, to let the right people in and keep the wrong people out. This is quite contrary to the whole spirit of Jesus.

So, what is the use of the doctrine of the Trinity?

It’s not clearly stated in the Bible, but there were reasons for the early church to develop it.

In essence, I believe it is an attempt to recognise the fact that the whole idea of God is not a simple, straight-forward one. God is not a man with a beard sitting on a throne up in the sky, listening to all our prayers and giving us what we ask for if we deserve it.

The Bible is the record of people’s experience of God over a period of more than 1000 years. The people who wrote it were Jews, and then Christians, who shared a common tradition. That tradition was one of dialogue, questioning, discussion, and often disagreement, as they tried to work out the meaning of their experience. Sometimes they got it wrong, or only partially got it. Nobody ever gets it completely right.

The ancestors of the Jews had some remarkable experiences of a God who came to their rescue. They were slaves in Egypt and by what seemed a miraculous series of events they were set free and found a land they could live in.

They had other experiences too, when their backs were to the wall. They unexpectedly won battles against overwhelming powerful armies attacking them. They were convinced that there was a powerful God who was on their side and had chosen them as his own people.

Many of us today have experienced God in that way:

  • times when we were in danger and perhaps miraculously saved
  • times when we have faced problems and felt we were being guided through them
  • times when we have been brought low by illness, bereavement, or betrayal and have found that we are still alive and life is worthwhile
  • Times when we have prayed and our prayers have been answered

That is what God means to many people. But we experience God in other ways too.

The Jewish people who wrote the Bible, as well as many other people the world over, were moved to wonder at the greatness and the beauty of the world around them.

This is an experience we all have and the reason why so many of us love the 8th Psalm:

‘When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?’

The person who wrote those words knew far less about the universe than we do. They thought the sky was just a bit further up than the highest mountains. But how much more wonderful it is for us, who know that those stars are other suns and worlds billions of miles away, and the universe is vast beyond anything that we can imagine.

It makes us feel very small, and yet at the same time, like the writer of the Psalm, we know we have remarkable powers and abilities, and with the Psalmist we can say of human beings:

‘You have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honour. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under their feet.

We today are more than ever aware of the power we human beings have. We have power to change the whole planet for better or for worse.

The problem is that most of the time we seem to change it for the worse. Life is full of meanness and selfishness, fear and greed, war and cruelty. Even when we try to do good we so often seem to fail.

But there is one person we look to who seems to be so different from all others. We read the stories of Jesus and we listen to his teaching and we think, ‘If only the world could be like that!’ He is the one who gives us inspiration and hope.

The people who first met Jesus were Jewish people proud of the fact of believing in one God and one alone. And yet in meeting Jesus they felt that they were directly meeting God – the God of love. And so they gave him titles like ‘the Son of God’, ‘the Image of the invisible God’, ‘the Word of God made flesh’.

Jesus is the practical, physical way in which we have experienced God here in this world.

But there is much more to the experience of God than that. We experience God as love: the love of our friends, partners, children, even a kind stranger we meet only once. And not only the love we get from other people, but the love we give them.

When two or three people are sharing deeply together, supporting one another, helping one another, listening to one another, God is there. Somehow that experience is God.

In a sense the question is not ‘Is there a God?’, but ‘What is the meaning of everything we experience?’

The idea that there is a God up there ruling the world from above is crude and simple. When people say they don’t believe in God I feel like saying ‘I don’t think I believe in the God you don’t believe in either!’

I think part of what the Holy Spirit means is that God is in us as well as outside us. We don’t need to look outside for evidence of God we can find God by looking deeply within ourselves.

The Bible talks of God showing himself in different ways one common expression is ‘the Angel of the Lord’.

The word ‘angel’ means a messenger. Sometimes in the Bible story someone sees a vision of a divine being, but sometimes the angel is a human being, and sometimes no one is quite sure.

God appeared to Abraham in the form of three men. Abraham took them for passing strangers and invited them in for a meal. But as the story goes on it gets more confusing. Is it three men, or one? Is it an angel, or is it God, or God and two angels?

In the story of the Resurrection, when the women go to the tomb and find it empty, what do they see?

In Mark, a young man in a white robe. In Matthew, an angel. In Luke, two men. In John, two angels.

Most of us don’t ee heavenly angels, but we have all had the experience of some stranger helping us in a special way or teaching us something. We can say that person for us at that moment is ‘the Angel of the Lord’.

The Bible talks about other aspects of God too.

The Spirit of God features in the Old Testament in different ways:

  • At the beginning of creation, ‘wind of God’ sweeps over the waters
  • God instructs Moses to appoint a man called Bezalel to design the Tabernacle, because ‘I have filled him with divine spirit, with ability, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft’ (Exodus 31:1-5)
  • When Samson was threatened by a lion, ‘the spirit of the LORD rushed on him, and he tore the lion apart with his bare hands’. On another occasion his enemies tied him, but ‘the spirit of the LORD rushed upon him’, and he broke the ropes and went on to kill 1000 men (Judges 14:6; 15:14). Nothing very holy about that spirit!
  • Then the day of Pentecost fulfils the prophecy of Joel 2:28-29, where the Spirit of God is the Spirit of prophecy.

In Proverbs, ‘Wisdom’ is described as a woman accompanying God at the creation and present in the world now, calling people to follow her.

So, already in the Old Testament there is nothing strange about God showing his different aspects in different ways.

When we say that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but one God, we are naming three of these aspects, but the main point is that we are expressing the belief that God is not just a Person up there or out there somewhere, but a deep, complex and mysterious reality.

The question is: how do you experience God? Think about it, and then ask: how do I respond to that experience? How do I show it in my life?

This brings us to probably the most revolutionary insight of all. The New Testament goes as far as to say that in a sense we are God. We are the body of Christ. The world knows God not just through the story of Jesus or the Bible but through us and the things we do.

The Wisdom of God, the Image of God, the Angel of the Lord, the Word of God made flesh is now made flesh in us. What a challenge!