Christian | hughdbryant

I’m very happy to reproduce this paper, which my dear friend John Schofield has written in the St Mark’s CRC (Centre for Radical Christianity) Newsletter, Spring 2016.

John Schofield, CRC Chair writes

Dear Friends,
As we begin a year in which there is the distinct possibility of a referendum on the question of our membership of the European Union, it is salutary for Christians to think about the origins of what has become the EU as we know it, and the part Christians, and the Christian worldview, played in its creation.
In Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s the cry went up: Why? Why did the war to end all wars not end all wars? Why has this happened again? And from this was born the determination to do things differently, to have faith in God as salvifically interacting with the world, in humanity as redeemable, and in the power of reconciliation. It is no accident that Christians were deeply involved in the processes that led to the European Union being formed. People for whom God pitching tent among us, the cross and the Easter message are at the heart of faith, understood that something different had to arise. Three in particular should be mentioned: a Frenchman, Robert Schuman; an Italian, Alcide de Gasperi; a German, Konrad Adenauer. David Edwards wrote of them that
they all had a passionate sense of Europe’s unity. But they were also tough and determined politicians. They had collaborated in the European Coal and Steel Community from 1952. The coals of fire which warmed their commitment to the reconstruction of Europe in unity had been left in their hearty by the experience of the defence of “Christian civilization” or “Christian principles” or “Christian values” against Nazi, Fascist or Communist evils….This Christian influence in the shaping of society has been surprisingly and movingly strong.
and elsewhere in the book he says:
the word Christian in the title of (their political parties) has meant most obviously “attempting to reconcile”.
It is my belief that, however much this vision has got bogged down in an over heavily bureaucratised machine in Brussels, of which many are deeply suspicious, the vision itself must not be lost; and we, as followers of Jesus who brought reconciliation, should still be seeking to do all that we can to enable human flourishing through reconciled lives. This can best be done in concert with our European partners, rather than in little Englander isolation.
I believe that as Christians we have a vision to pursue. And we must do it in practical ways, particularly through staying at the heart of Europe. It’s that vision, based on the hard won reconciliation of God to the world, the world to God, that bringing of new life through death in reconciliation, which must urge us on, not forgetting the past, but neither being in the power of the past.
I still remember being at a meeting in the 1990s about my then diocese’s desire to build deeper relationships with churches in Europe. We were telling one another how our interest in Europe really began. One – an incurable romantic – told of doing some work at Heidelberg University in the late 70’s. One evening he was with a multinational group of people on the ramparts of Heidelberg castle, with the moon picking out the silver stream of the river Neckar flowing down towards the Rhine. Together they sang Gaudeamus Igitur – and at that moment he knew he was a European, sharing a common culture and a common destiny,
And I told of being in Berlin as an 18 year old in 1966 on a visit organised by the London Diocesan Youth Council, and spending a day on the other side of the wall, during which we met some East German Christians from an organisation called Action Reconciliation. And on that day it dawned on me that it really mattered that I was a European every bit as much as these people I was sitting with and talking to were Europeans. I also realised in this meeting of Christians in a communist country that Christianity really is all about reconciliation, and that being a Christian means a great deal more than just being an Anglican. Christ calls people in every nation; in Europe, Christ calls people particularly to work together “that it may not happen again.” That day, my being a Christian and my being a European came together, and has never left me. This year, as we face being inundated by words about staying in or coming out, I still hold to that vision of hope in Christ, and of hope in our brothers and sisters in Christ across this great continent of ours. We who are the Church are called on to look beyond the narrow boundaries of personal or national self-interest.
Of course, not even the most passionate pro-European can ignore the need for reform: the bullying treatment of Greece by the Eurozone members, the patchy and at times xenophobic response to the refugee crisis, the inevitable magnification of the bureaucratic mind given the sheer size that the union has now reached; all of these things need attention. But the greater good, the continuingly necessary response to the history of Europe in the twentieth century, the impetus to do something positive: all these should keep the Christian mind focused on the vision that set the European Union going, and that is increasingly necessary today.
Happy new year, freues neu Jahr, bonne année, felice anno nuovo, to you all.
John

http://www.stmarkscrc.co.uk

Sermon for Evensong on the Sunday before Lent, 2nd March 2014
2 Kings 2:1-12; Matt. 17:9-23 – Elijah and Jesus

I’m not quite sure whether you still find some of the stuff in the Bible surprising or not: just in case it did just flow over you, I will just highlight a couple of surprising things which we have heard in this evening’s lessons.

In the second Book of Kings, we heard about the prophet Elijah being taken up into heaven – but first of all, parting the waters of the River Jordan, so that he and his successor Elisha could pass through to the other side: ‘They went over on dry ground’ (2 Kings 2:8). And then ‘a chariot of fire appeared, and horses of fire, and took Elijah up in a whirlwind to heaven’ (2:11).

Then if we turn to St Matthew’s gospel, we have picked up the story, as Jesus, Peter, James and John the brother of James were coming down the high mountain on which they had seen Jesus ‘transfigured’ with Moses and Elijah. A bright cloud had suddenly overshadowed them and a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him’ (Matt. 17:5).

And then as they came down the mountain, Jesus cured a man’s son who had epilepsy, by ‘casting out a devil’ which had made the boy have fits. Jesus challenged his disciples by saying that they did not have enough faith: ‘If you have faith no bigger than a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to there: and it will move. Nothing will prove impossible for you.’

What do you think? Is there any way these days that we could understand Elijah suddenly appearing with Moses and Jesus, in some way ‘transfigured’? I’m not sure what ‘transfigured’ really means. There is that wonderful piece of music by Arnold Schoenberg, ‘Verklärte Nacht’, Transfigured Night, a night of strange light, a supernatural aspect. What do we feel? Are we in the camp which feels, along with C. S. Lewis, that anything is possible for God, and therefore there is no reason why God could not make miracles like the Transfiguration, or Elijah being taken up into heaven?

Elijah being taken up into heaven, of course, is somewhat like the Ascension of our Lord Himself. So are we comfortable saying, ‘Because of the omnipotence of God, there is no reason why, given that Jesus was God, he shouldn’t be able to have transfigurations and ascensions: and no reason that Elijah, as the prophet of God – as the other great prophet with Moses – couldn’t be taken up into heaven in the way described?’

On the other hand, we could be sensitive to the charge of humanists and rationalists, who object that everything that we believe in ought to be subject to the same rules of logic and science, and that you could not make sense of stories such as Elijah being taken up to heaven in a whirlwind or the Transfiguration in the normal way: just contrast the way in which you would describe the arrival of a number 38 bus with the way in which these stories about Elijah and Jesus are told. Quite different.

We can generally agree that if I tell you about seeing a number 38 bus, you will know what I am talking about, even though perhaps what you and I actually see when we look at a number 38 bus might in fact be different. We can’t get into each other’s heads to prove what it is exactly that we are looking at: whether it is the same thing. Nevertheless it’s sufficiently similar for us to be able to communicate about it successfully. What it is for something to be a number 38 bus is sufficiently similar in my understanding to what it is in yours for us to be able to talk about it.

But on the other hand, if we talk about something like Elijah going up to heaven in a whirlwind, or Jesus being transfigured with Moses and Elijah, we can’t necessarily be confident that we will be understood by everyone in the same way.

Jesus adds a twist, by asking whether or not the disciples have enough faith; if they do have enough faith, even the tiniest quantity, it will be sufficient to move mountains.

But – are you going to beat yourself up over the fact that you aren’t able to go out there and transpose K2 for Everest using pure will-power and faith? Nobody else has done it. So what did Jesus mean? Clearly we are in a different area, different from simple mundane questions like whether the 38 bus has arrived or not.

Of course some of the Oxford philosophers of the 50s and 60s, like the late, great, A. J. Ayer, would have said that, unless a statement is verifiable, in the same way that something about the number 38 bus would be verifiable, then it is meaningless. So everything about Moses and Elijah, transfiguration, being caught up to heaven in a whirlwind and so on, is, according to Prof. Ayer and others, meaningless.

So on the one hand you have C.S. Lewis accepting miracles and saying, ‘This is just the sort of thing that an omnipotent god would do’, and on the other, you’ve got a sort of common sense view, either that they’re not true, or that there’s no way in which we could make sense of these stories in any literal way.

Does it matter? We are just about to start Lent. Ash Wednesday is this Wednesday, and in fact our Lent courses are going to start on Monday morning, so that we can get six sessions in before Holy Week. We’re going to be studying St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, under the heading, ‘Be Reconciled’.

St Paul wrote, ‘He has made known to us His hidden purpose – such was His will and pleasure, determined beforehand in Christ – to be put into effect when the time was ripe: namely that the universe, all in heaven and on earth, might be brought into a unity in Christ.’ We will be studying all the various aspects of this ‘unity in Christ’, this reconciliation, over the next six weeks.

But for the purpose of this sermon, I simply want to draw attention to the process, to the way that our faith can work. There must be a very strong suspicion that unless something very remarkable did in fact happen, it’s tempting to feel that no-one would have said that Elijah was a prophet, someone through whom God spoke.

Without the miracles, the revelations, perhaps no-one would have said that Jesus was not only a prophet – as the Moslems and Jews acknowledge – but was in fact God on earth, the Son of God. But it’s not so much a question how God manifested Himself through Elijah, or became incarnate in Jesus Christ, not a question of how, but that He did. The exact mechanism is beyond our powers of understanding.

One can say that these big miracles, like the Transfiguration, or Elijah being taken up into heaven in a whirlwind, are indeed beyond our power fully to describe or explain. But that doesn’t mean to say that they did not happen in some sense. Because if they did happen, we can recognise through them that God cares for us, that God is involved with us.

And in the light of that wonderful fact, we ought to be reconciled, to be reconciled with God and with each other. Sin is being separated from God: salvation is being brought back together, reconciled.

So much for this rather philosophical excursion. You might be rather scornful that I could stay in this rather rarified vein in the face of all the momentous events which have been happening this week. As Christians preparing to rehearse, to act out, the drama of Jesus’ Passion, prepared to accept the reality of God on earth, how do we look at the conflicts in the world, in Syria or in the Ukraine?

Nearer to home, what do we think about the two criminals who murdered the soldier, Lee Rigby? ‘ROT IN JAIL,’ in bold capitals, read the headline on the front page of the Daily Mirror. What is the Christian perspective? How would we see it if we ourselves had just come down from the mountain with Jesus?

Who are the good people and the bad people in these stories? What happens when the dust has settled? When the Syrians have finally stopped killing each other, and the Ukrainians have decided whether they want to go with the Russians or with the Europeans, where are we going to stand as Christians?

Are the killers of Lee Rigby really condemned to rot? Is there no redemption for them? Clearly now the killers don’t appreciate that what they did was wrong. They have a crooked justification for it. But let’s suppose after years in gaol, they appreciate the wrongness of what they have done, and they repent. What shall we say then? Jesus’ message was a message of forgiveness, not ‘rot in jail’. How would it feel to us if we had just come down from that high mountain?

The same with the civil war in Syria and the terrible divisions in the Ukraine. Will people be reconciled? In these situations the church can speak. The church can remind the world of Jesus’ message of forgiveness and reconciliation: we Christians should be fired up by the thought of that mountain-top experience.

We can be prophets; we can let the Holy Spirit speak through us. Let us pray that, at the end of the conflicts in Syria and the Ukraine – and in all other places where there is a breakdown of law and order, where there is civil war or civil unrest – that there will be a resolution, not based on victors’ justice, but rather on true reconciliation. Truth and reconciliation, in Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu’s words: truth and reconciliation. Come down from the mountain. Be reconciled.

Christians and Europe

The View from the Mountain Top