Christ in ourselves

Some of you will know the hymn, Brother,sister, let me serve you, which goes on to read, Let me be as Christ to you. What exactly does this mean? To find an answer, we need to look in different directions. First we need to look at Christ in ourselves as to how Christ being within us changes us, directs us, compels us.

On Monday evening I spoke of Christ in our world offering compassion, love and forgiveness as his arms are stretched on the cross. Yesterday evening I spoke of Christ in our community – breaking down barriers, inviting humanity to look to the cross as the means of salvation. Compassion, love, forgiveness, barriers broken down so that we can come in, salvation: all these are ours. They inhabit our being when we live knowing and believing and living with Christ in ourselves. As these inhabit our being, they change us, direct us and compel us – towards Christ’s heart and very self and thus towards Christ’s heart and very way.

I referred yesterday evening to Rowan Williams saying. “Mission is finding out what God is doing and joining in”. With due credit to my esteemed colleague, Mr Powell, who gave it to me, I use this quote from D T Niles, who, when speaking of the faith we follow, said “Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread”. It goes without saying, we are each beggars. We have each been shown by others where bread is to be found, and we are each called to show still others where they can find it too. This bread – the bread of life – is Christ in us.

Listen to this story from the Second World War (as recorded in the book, 'Sleeping with bread':

During the bombing raids of World War II, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care. But, many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night. They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food. Nothing seemed to reassure them. Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime. Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace. All through the night the bread reminded them, "Today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow."

Christ in ourselves is the gift of bread we have received and Christ in ourselves is the bread we offer. Christ in ourselves means we have been fed and Christ in ourselves means we are ourselves food. Christ in ourselves means we, as the hungry, have received, and Christ in ourselves means we, in turn, offer to feed the hungry.

Rather like the children who could not sleep, and like our ancestors, the Israelites in the desert, who collected quails and manna and trusted that they would be there again, we are given bread – the body of Christ – into our hands and this is life. The bread is placed into our hands; we must place it in the hands of others. We must do this so that they may know and have life – and live in hope for the new day.

Having looked first at how Christ within ourselves changes us, directs us, compels us. The other direction we must look is how Christ within ourselves means we are like Christ in changing others, directing others, compelling others. As we recall, Let me be as Christ to you. This might sound as though we become dictatorial – far from it. The generous, gentle, compassionate heart of God is one that provides and gives and endows – without measure and without end. Christ within ourselves – within you and me – changes others by the manner in which we treat them and speak to them. Christ within ourselves directs others towards a way of seeing, of understanding and of being that offers a new way and a new life.

I know – as we probably each do – that I fall, I fail, I stumble and I get it wrong – this goes without saying – but I go on, because Christ lives within me and he goes on. Christ has sought us out, Christ has chosen to live within us, and Christ longs for the world, like us, to choose him.

As we prepare for the Triduum Sacrum, the Three Holy Days, it is worth remembering that salvation has already been accomplished. We are already saved and we have already been shown where to find the bread of life. As we journey into these holy days, we are Christ-bearers: Christ is in our hands and our hearts. With Christ in ourselves, let us be as Christ is, light to the world. 

Brother, sister, let me serve you,

let me be as Christ to you;

pray that I may have the grace to

let you be my servant too.

We are pilgrims on a journey,

and companions on the road;

we are here to help each other

walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ-light for you

in the night-time of your fear;

I will hold my hand out to you,

speak the peace you long to hear.

I will weep when you are weeping;

when you laugh I’ll laugh with you;

I will share your joy and sorrow

till we’ve seen this journey through.

When we sing to God in heaven

we shall find such harmony,

born of all we’ve known together

of Christ’s love and agony.

Brother, sister, let me serve you,

let me be as Christ to you;

pray that I may have the grace to

let you be my servant too.

Richard A. M. Gillard, 1977

Christ in our community

Yesterday evening, the reflection I offered wound, in part,  around the phrase, “the last place I would have expected to see”, referring to places and times and seasons where we might not have expected, or expect now, to find Jesus in our world.

When speaking of the Mission of the church, Rowan Williams said, “Mission is finding out what God is doing and joining in”. Mission is the work of God – seeking out the people he has created for himself, and bringing them back to himself. We see this missiological activity lived out in God’s self from the moment of God’s walking through the Garden of Eden in the evening breeze, looking for Adam and Eve to speak with them – through to the Holy Spirit coming on the disciples to assist them in speaking the languages of all people’s so that they could know of God’s love for them.

When reflecting on the phrase, Christ in our community, I find myself doing a kind of word association game with that word ‘community’. Try it for yourselves sometime: community focus, community spirit, community service, care in the community, Clare in the Community even – if you are a listener to Radio 4.

The concept of community brings with it all sorts of hopes, dreams, fears and wonderings. It also brings with it a subtle judgement – often unspoken – as to who is and who is not ‘in’ any given community. I suggested yesterday evening that:

often, the Church can find itself – in many subtle and unspoken ways – saying, the last place I would have expected to see – as if the Church has a monopoly on the ways and workings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Some of us will find ourselves doing this about members of our community – in both our church community and the wider community. There will be people who seem to fit naturally, who it is easy to invite along to something, who make themselves known, who seem to reflect something of ourselves – even if we aren’t sure why or don’t even speak this truth. Then there are those though who are on the fringes, who don’t use the lingo, who don’t even know that there is lingo to be used. These remain something other to us, to the church and, so often, to the wider community.

This word community though – just what does it mean for us? A collection; a gathering; a self-selecting group who, by choice of practice, dress, geographical location, school, church, politics even.

Throughout his ministry, we witness Jesus breaking down the barriers of communities, and in doing so challenging the pre-conceived stereotypes of those who are to be classed as in or out of the spiritual landscape he inhabited. In doing so, he challenges the spiritual landscape for Christians across time. This is a truth that is hard to live with – but it is a truth that is liberating and freeing, full of possibility and potential. If we allow Christ to have broken down the barriers of community delineations, it means that no-one should ever have to worry about whether they are in or out ever again – and this includes each one of us: for we are one with Christ – part of his body – in the world that is his for eternity.

Christ in our community seeks to embrace the whole of humanity, because this is exactly who Christ tells us he came to save. As we read: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Christ takes his place in our community in his very self, through the Holy Spirit, but Christ also takes his place both within the people whom we encounter and how we encounter them and the way in which we are encountered by these very people too. What vibes do we give off? What do we see? What do we hear? What do we hear as we listen to the words of the world? What of Christ is revealed or heard or made known – by us, by others, by the work we allow Christ to do?

For me, as for so many I suspect, “finding out what God is doing and joining in” often bumps against “the last place I would have expected to see”. I am not always so good at seeing God at work – or displaying God at work. When we look for Christ in our community we will often be surprised where we find him at work, in whom we find him at work, and how we find him at work. Community focus, community spirit, community service, care in the community: none of these are so very far from the truth. If Christ is there – and he most certainly is – then let us join him – or, indeed, let him join us.

Christ in our world

Some of you will know the painting, Christ of St John of theCross by Salvador Dali. It hangs in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and HistoryMuseum in Glasgow in an unprepossessing position, easily missed and walked by. The gift shop more than makes up though if you do happen to miss it: with posters, scarves, postcards, key rings and so forth. The Art Gallery and Museum holds an eclectic mix of ‘stuff’ and it is easy to while away an age drifting around the galleries and corridors being amused, entertained – and occasionally surprised. I was amazed when I saw the Dali there as I didn’t know it was there at all.

The painting was bought for £8,200 by Dr Tom Honeyman, the head of the Glasgow’s city art galleries in 1952. In June of last year, BBC Radio Scotland broadcast a programme about the painting, and of it was said:

From the start there was uproar: art students, religious bigots, critics, stingy rate-payers were all appalled that Honeyman had spent so much money and bought this atypical Dali with its mesmerising stigmata-less, floating crucifixion. But Honeyman put them at defiance… He saw himself as a showman, whose job was to show pictures and to pull the people in. He recognised from the first the unique pulling power of this extraordinary painting which has stormed the hearts of Glaswegians.

It is interesting to note that the radio programme went on to record, The painting can't be so much as moved within the gallery without exciting comment and opinion from the public to whom it is THEIR painting - how dare some curator move it!

I first saw the painting at the Seeing Salvation Exhibition at the National Gallery in 2000 and I guess the last place I would have expected to see it would be in an Art Gallery in Glasgow: something so famous, something so well-known and celebrated across the world, something so loved by Christians – as we see Christ hovering above the world, hanging on the cross, arms stretched out in embrace, in love, in compassion, in self-offering, in sacrifice.

And the clue to where I am going is in that telling phrase: the last place I would have expected to see. I imagine that those who encountered Jesus 2,000 years ago could easily have said, the last place I would have expected to see… Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, the light of the world – and so on.  

Being surprised by Christ is what the Christian life is about. Christ is found in unexpected places. Christ lives in unexpected people. Christ is revealed in unexpected ways. So often, the Church can find itself – in many subtle and unspoken ways – saying, the last place I would have expected to see – as if the Church has a monopoly on the ways and workings of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The Dali painting is not only compelling, it is also strangely beguiling. Many are fooled into a sense of reverie. Sea-like colours, a benevolent sentinel Christ, the boat resting on the edge of still waters – all these belie the truth that the crucifixion was violent, that Christ’s suffering was not without a level of resistance, and that the price he paid was for the sake of all humanity – all humanity, without exception.

            In this week, at the start of which we prayed, give us the mind to follow you and to proclaim you as Lord and King, it is good to ask ourselves when we last said of anything to do with faith: the last place I would have expected to see – in terms of a judgement that might suggest Jesus didn’t belong there, or we wouldn’t have put Jesus there, or even that we didn’t want Jesus to be there at all. Christ’s embrace, love, compassion, self-offering, and sacrifice – all that we see in the painting by Dali, and that we believe to be the truth of the cross – all these are for the world, Christ’s world, the world in which he lived and moved and had his being. We live and move in this world too – and Jesus chose to be here with us. I close with a poem by R S Thomas:

The Coming

And God held in his hand

A small globe. Look, he said.

The son looked.

Far off,

As through water, he saw

A scorched land of fierce

Colour. The light burned

There; crusted buildings

Cast their shadows: a bright

Serpent, a river

Uncoiled itself, radiant

With slime.

On a bare

Hill a bare tree saddened

The Sky. Many people

Held out their thin arms

To it, as though waiting

For a vanished April

To return to its crossed

Boughs. The son watched

Them. Let me go there, he said.

R.S. Thomas

The way of faith - Lent 3 2013

We capture today, across all the readings, the reality of some people being in and some people being out. Some are caught up into heaven and eternity whilst other are left far behind – having been found wanting and somehow irredeemable. These are hard things to hear – unless, of course, one is in the business of judging and condemning and living with a sense of being ‘holier than thou’. Righteous condemnation masquerading as righteous indignation, perhaps – and all on God’s behalf because, of course, we can do it so much better than him – all things considered.

If we begin at the beginning, with the reading from Isaiah, the earliest of the texts written, we see that there is an invitation. There is an invitation to drink of the water that money cannot buy. There is a call to change from the current way of living to seek that which is on offer for just a while: Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts;

            Whether or not the love of God is on offer for just while only is a matter for debate – for God’s time is beyond our own – the call throughout our readings – and through time – is to change the focus from that which is immediately attainable around us every day to that which is also immediately attainable but from which we so often turn our gaze. Let the wicked forsake their way and the unrighteous their thoughts. Who are these wicked? Who are these unrighteous? I guess we might say the members of al-Qaeda who seem so intent on killing those who are not of the Muslim faith. We might also say those who are members of gangs in South London, who carry knives and guns so that they can get ahead of any who stand in their way. We might say the ‘fact cats’ of the financial world who cream of the profits to award themselves fat bonuses.

These may appear to be caricatures, and we may prefer the ways in which Isaiah speaks into the human condition in all the varying ways with which we seek to fill our lives with meaning: work, food, money. However, how ever nicely we dress these things up – the fear that we will never have enough, that others will have more than us, that we will not be good enough in whoever’s sight is held to be the most powerful on that given day – how ever we dress these things up, they are as nothing compared to the hope that we may have in God.

Alas, the apparently meaningful preoccupations and self-preoccupations that are preferred by so many are, ultimately, meaningless. This is something that the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes knew all too well. If we read the opening of his Book: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” The only thing that has meaning is God’s love and God’s supreme power. We may look for other things, we may gain other things, but it is the love of God that is over and above them all.

So what difference does knowing this make then? You are here, I am here, and we get it already – right? Perhaps so, but the reading we heard from Corinthians makes salutary reading if we think we have it all sown up. As we read: I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud… all passed through the sea… all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, ³and all ate the same spiritual food, ⁴and all drank the same spiritual drink… they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. ⁵Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. They did things right, it seemed… and yet, God was not pleased with most of them. It’s like saying to a child after Parent’s Evening: Your teacher said you are doing really well, but you could try harder. Well, almost like it, I imagine!

We catch some glimpse of what has gone wrong: ⁶Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. ⁷Do not become idolaters… ⁸We must not indulge in sexual immorality… ⁹We must not put Christ to the test… ¹⁰And do not complain…” What sad examples for humanity, for so many of us walk so close to these very things as well.

The reason for recording them though: ‘¹¹These things happened to them to serve as an example…’ There are things that will come to try us, there are things that will lure us away for a while, there are things that we may prefer sometimes. If this is so, we are warned fully here:  ‘¹²So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.’

I preached a fortnight ago about observing Lent. For the first time in a long time, I have given up something for Lent – and it is proving to be hard work. I have taken things on too – and these are proving just as hard. Lent is nothing though compared to the whole Christian life – a way of being that is actually about giving up many things. It is about refining ourselves with the grace and power and love of God so that we will not be like those who followed but fell, like those who believed but whose faith was not enough. Lent, as with the whole of life of faith, is a time of testing, though Lent may be more about proving to ourselves that we can do it than to God: we test ourselves in a simpler fashion – or not – to remind ourselves of the greater, longer, test upon which we are all embarked: the test of being found fit for heaven. Do we carry knives or guns? Probably not. Are we members of al-Qaeda, intent on killing those who do not follow the faith we follow? Probably not, but the history of Christianity is pretty bloody, when we face it. Do we take vast Bonuses on top of our Salary or Pension. This one might sit rather closer to home for some who worship here or in other churches near here.

‘Judge not less ye be judged’ is a good maxim to live by – but sometimes we fail to judge just ourselves. These are hard words to hear, and I know colleagues who are preaching today who have also found this message to be unpalatable. Judgement is not just about condemnation though – it is about being honest. It is about discovering where we fall short and letting ourselves be honed and made pure and lovely for God. Paul writes: ‘¹³No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.’ The question is always, do we believe this? Do we believe that God is not only our judge but also our great reward? If we do, then we are blessed beyond belief – and the challenge and the test is to remain close to God’s ways. If we do not believe – or we fear the judgement more than we hope – then the promise Isaiah heard is the first thing to reach and out grasp to ourselves: ‘I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David.’ Let God love you fully, with abandonment and without reserve, so that you might do the same to him.