andygoodliff

Launching Rhythms of Faithfulness

October ended with a great occasion today at Spurgeon's College. (The month began with me submitting my PhD thesis and also hosting Sam Wells at the church I serve). Today folk gathered for a day of theological reflection on the Order of Baptist Ministry, but really it was an excuse to surprise and present Rev Dr John Colwell with a festschrift that I have edited with my father Paul.

Rhythms of Faithfulness: Essays in Honor of John E. Colwell (Pickwick, 2018) is a collection of eighteen essays that recognise the contribution John had made to be many of us as Baptists but also wider. The title of the book borrows from John's own book The Rhythm of Doctrine and it reflects some of its contents as part of the book reflects on the different seasons and feasts of the Christian calendar that shape John's sketch of Christian doctrine. The other half of the book is a theological exposition of the Daily Office of the Order of Baptist Ministry, which John help found in 2009.

We hope this book both honours John, but also is a contribution to the life of the Order of Baptist Ministry and an encouragement to Baptists and other Christians to reflect on the place of daily prayer and liturgical life that participates in the Christian story.

The books contributors are Geoff Colmer, Chris Ellis, Sean Winter, Richard Kidd, Margaret Gibbs, Joseph Haward, Anne Clements, Ian Randall, Sally Nelson, Steve Holmes, Nigel Wright, Anthony Clarke, Paul Fiddes, Ruth Gouldbourne, Helen Paynter and myself and my father Paul. We are also thrilled to have a foreword written by Stanley Hauerwas who has played such a big part in John's own theological life and writing.

John we thank you as one who has been a teacher (at Spurgeon's College where we met today), a pastor, a theologian, a colleague, a mentor and a friend. 

 

Shopping: A Sermon

There’s a parable that goes like this:

‘There are these two young fish swimming along

And they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way,

Who nods at them and says,

‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually

One of them looks over at the other and goes

‘What the hell is water?’

The immediate point of the fish story is

that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities

are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.’ [i]

In preaching on screens last week

and shopping this week

I’m attempting to name some of the water in which we all swim,

and to help us recognise how this water shapes, seduces, and speaks

to our loves and imaginations with particular visions of the good life.

The every day stuff of life

is full of unconscious habits and rituals

that can be good and not good for the soul.

Jesus says, ‘follow me’

and we say ‘ok, but how?’

Jesus says, ‘I will make the difference in every bit of your life’

and we say ‘ok, but what does that look like?’

In first century Palestine,

There were four ideas of how God’s kingdom might come. [ii]

The first was to accept the situation as it was.

The Romans were in control,

any hope for change must begin with reality.

The key is to discover what is possible.

This was the strategy in the gospels of the Herodians and the Sadducees.

Let’s make the best of the situation,

which meant maintaining a breathing space for the Jewish people

and their way of life,

especially by keeping the temple open as a place of worship.

The second strategy, is the complete opposite.

It believed in righteous revolutionary violence.

This was the position of the Zealots.

Let’s raise an army and create God’s kingdom by force,

ridding ourselves of all opposition.

A third strategy, was the desert.

We don’t want to get too close to the Romans

and we can’t beat them in a fight,

so let’s withdraw and escape to the desert

here we can be pure and perfectly faithful.

These folk were the Essene community.

They disengaged themselves from the wider world.

A final fourth strategy was that presented by the Pharisees.

This option was what we might call ‘proper religion.’

We live in the midst of everyone else,

but we keep ourselves separate — certain agreed areas of life,

including certain coins, crops, persons, occupations, days were taboo.

This is the option of let’s be spiritual, but not political.

These where the four options going in Palestine,

when Jesus emerges on the scene.

They are the four options still on the table today.

Option 1, let’s get close to those in power,

say we are one with you, and hope they let us be.

Here nothing much separates Christians from anybody else,

apart perhaps from that hour on a Sunday morning.

We swim in the same water, doing the same strokes.

Option 2, let’s overthrow it all, down with the banks,

with globalisation, with the elites, with capitalism.

Here Christians put themselves in direct opposition to the world

and is only negative about it.

Option 3, let’s just step out of the mainstream,

and do our own thing — withdraw into our own enclaves.

Here the difference between option 2 and 3 is that instead making a lot of noise,

option 3 is almost indifferent to the wider world,

it’s consumed with its own life and being.

Here Christians are concerned perhaps only for other Christians.

Option 4, let’s get on with religion

and don’t say anything political, let’s keep stumm.

Of course to keep quiet, is to basically endorse or even baptize

the politics of the day.

Here Christians will have a tendency to focus on heaven,

rather than on earth.

All that matters is getting to heaven.

What does Jesus do?

How does Jesus show us the way God’s kingdom comes?

First, he rejects all four options.

He does not look to get close to anyone in power,

especially not Herod or Pilate.

He does not call for any overthrow.

At no point does he actually say the Romans need to go.

And he never endorses violence.

He does not suggest that his followers should withdraw from the world

and create a separate society.

And he does not pretend that God’s kingdom is anything but

political and spiritual,

earthly and heavenly.

What does Jesus do?

He creates a new community in the world.

A community which you can’t be born into,

but can only join through repentance and a kingdom commitment.

A community which is mixed.

It goes beyond gender, status, race, financial-means, background.

A community which practices forgiveness, non-judgment, non-violence,

generosity, dispossession, dependence on, and hope in, God.

A community that lives with the way of the cross in the light of the resurrection.

A community in the world, with the world, for the world,

but committed to God and the kingdom.

What does this mean for shopping?

Option one would say, shop til you drop it doesn’t matter,

as long as you’re here on Sunday morning.

Option two would say, don’t shop, avoid it all costs, cut up your credit card,

close your bank account, live in constant protest.

Option three would say, let’s start our own farm, all move in together,

and keep to ourselves.

Option four would say, its ok to shop, but not on a Sunday

and would probably have a list of shops you could visit and those you couldn’t.

Jesus I think might say four different things:

When you shop

avoid greed,

embrace creation,

love the neighbour

and practice Sabbath. [iii]

The problem with shopping is the temptation always to buy more than we need.

We get overwhelmed by our desire for things:

out of envy, out of a belief that whatever it is will make us happy.

Jesus, I suggest, would call us to avoid going down that road

and find a different path.

He tells the parable of the man who kept getting more,

so he kept building bigger barns,

and God calls him a fool (only parable to do so).

Let your desire be for God and kingdom first.

What might help us avoid greed?

I suggest committing to honest relationships,

who can hold us to account.

Find three friends and swap bank statements and shopping receipts

and help each other think through the choices we make.

Where are we vulnerable?

Alongside avoiding sin, is the more positive: embrace creation.

Shopping is not bad.

‘While the Devil might wear Prada or Primark,

shopping can be virtuous.’ [iv]

It can be a means of enjoying creation.

It can be done with thankfulness for the blessings of this world.

It can be a way of showing kindness.

It can be a source of kingdom investment.

It can be a way of embracing the goods of culture.

Here the question is what or who am I shopping for?

What’s the telos, the purpose?

What would it mean to shop with a goal

and not simply as a means of my happiness.

Jesus would say,

when you shop, shop in such a way that loves neighbour as well as yourself.

That is don’t shop to the extent that you are unable to be generous

towards those in need, that you spend all you have on me and mine.

And don’t shop in ignorance of the neighbour hidden from view:

the factory worker, the warehouse employee, the courier.

(I have in mind the unjust and unloving practices of the likes of Amazon.)

Here the question is can I shop with justice and fairness?

Can I shop in such a way that is good news for the poor,

that sets others free?

Can I shop sacrificially where I might become poorer,

so that others might become richer?

Can I shop in such a way that means I avoid,

with the parable of the Good Samaritan in mind, of walking by?

Can I shop in such a way that makes relationship,

that gives others dignity, livelihood.

Shop without greed,

shop in ways that embrace creation,

shop as means of neighbour love,

and shop in a way that practices Sabbath.

In other words, find times when we rest from shopping,

buy nothing days,

or buy just the basic weeks.

Balance fasting alongside feasting.

Taking a rest from shopping

means we can give attention to other things,

things that matter more.

Taking a rest from shopping

Can instil the habit of knowing when to stop,

Of knowing that we are not the sum of our shopping bags.

Taking a rest from shopping

teaches us to practice simple living.

Taking a rest from shopping

gives space for the opposite of buying

for sharing without cost, of being generous.

In these four ways,

we can shop in such a way that Christ makes a difference.

In such a way that embraces the world in which we live,

but with discernment and humility,

conscious that shopping is both a spiritual and political activity,

that we can shop well and shop badly.

Shopping well takes attention and imagination.

It is to see it as a means of following Jesus

and not as something separate.

Let me end by saying we can never shop for God

and the gifts of God can never be bought.

In this God is the opposite of consumerism.

God is the giver of free gifts:

salvation, forgiveness, friendship, faith,

love, joy, peace,

prayer, communion, scripture

and more

are the free gifts of God

and God gives them that we might be his image-bearers in the world,

lived out in the ways that practice friendship, marriage,

eating, screens, shopping and the every day things of being alive.

God’s desire for us is that we might be fully alive,

and to be fully alive, said one person,[v] is the glory of God.

Amen.

 

[i] David Foster Wallace cited in James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love (2016)

[ii] I owe this next section to John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution.

[iii] These four ideas come from Laura Hartman, The Christian Consumer (2011), but the exposition is largely my own.

[iv] Brutus Green, ‘On Popular Culture: To its Religious Despisers’ in Generous Ecclesiology (2013)

[v] Irenaeus

Ben Myers, The Apostles' Creed

Ben Myers, The Apostles' Creed (Lexham, 2018)

I spent some of the afternoon reading this new book by Ben Myers which expounds the Apostles' Creed line by line and in some cases word by word. It didn't take long to read, which might suggest its a light read, but its brevity and simplicity is joined by a beautiful and truthful and profound description of Christian belief. It would make a great gift to one who is preparing for baptism and for anyone who needs a reminder of the essentials of the Christian faith. Ben, in this book, writes with lots of references to the early church fathers, showing that in many ways that all the questions and queries of Christian belief were already addressed in the first 3 or 4 centuries. This book will sit aside another short-ish book on Christian doctrine — A Theology in Outline — by Robert Jenson. Both books demonstrating that theology can be readable, understandable and brief and so books to easily return to. We need more of this kind of writing.  

 

A Sermon on Eating

 

Have you ever realised that Jesus liked his food.

He enjoyed a good meal.

He liked a good meal so much that he was accused of being a glutton

and a drunkard.

In one of the gospels, Luke, we have eight dinner scenes.

The first is the banquet Jesus shares at Levi’s house.

The second is the dinner he has at Simon the Pharisee’s house,

                        during which a woman interrupts to wash is feet.

The third is a meal in the wilderness with over five thousand.

The fourth is another meal with a Pharisee

                        where Jesus doesn’t wash his hands.

And the fifth is yet another dinner with another Pharisee,

a prominent one we’re told

                        where Jesus heals a man with dropsy.

The sixth is when Jesus has tea with Zacchaeus. 

The seventh meal, the climatic meal, is the one Jesus shares with his disciples in

an upper room that we call the last supper.

And then there is one more sit down meal.

Its at Emmaus

when two disciples ask him, not knowing who he was, to stay for dinner.

So much of Jesus’ life, his ministry,

happens round a table, eating with people.

Each of these meals are lessons in about living in the kingdom.

And the stories he tells, also feature food

like when the prodigal son returns the father’s response is ‘let’s feast!’;

or when a man throws a great banquet he ends up inviting those in the street.

I want to ask then what difference does Jesus make to how we eat,

what are the connections between food and faith.

Eating is such an everyday thing,

we don’t think about it much.

We might think I wonder what to eat today,

but beyond that we probably don’t go much further.

We have lost the connection between eating and God.

If you go back to Genesis 1,

we get more detail about the vegetation – about food than almost

anything else.

            Genesis makes the link between God and food clear. [i]

            We are told that there is food enough for all.

Worship for Israel was connected to the harvest.

The deep connection between eating and agriculture and God

            was one that was everything

            in a way that it is not for us.

The mystery of food was about the providence of God

            and this led people to prayer and praise.

We’ve lost the mystery about the food we eat,

to the extent that often we have no idea what we’re eating.

The difference Jesus makes to eating

is to reconnect eating with worship and prayer.

In the gospel Jesus models that eating and discipleship go hand in hand.

Eating can be a spiritual exercise:

            As the Psalmist sings: ‘taste and see that the Lord is good.’

Eating matters.

Eating matters so much that the best thing that Jesus can give his disciples

            is a meal, a meal that is to be shared over and over again,

            so that it might shape every meal

            and that we might be surrounded by the mystery of

                        the One who gives – who gives in creation

                        and who gives himself for the new creation.

Jesus says

If you want to follow me,

If you want to understand who I am

and what my life means

come and sit round my table and eat.

We learn what discipleship means by eating round a table

where bread is broken and wine is poured.

Here at this table we learn how to eat

at every other table.

The Eucharist or Communion

is the Christian meal par excellence

Its an invitation to eat at God’s table

as God’s friends,

in anticipation of the great feast we will one day all share.

And if this eating causes us to look forward,

Its also leads us to see every meal as eucharistic.

Eucharist means thanksgiving.

Jesus took the bread, gave thanks, and broke it

And if every meal is a eucharistic

we are saying every meal is one in which are thankful.  

Every time we eat we are brought into a relationship

with farmers and cooks and the land and with God,

the Great Giver, the Lord of the Harvest. [ii]

Every time we eat there is an opportunity to celebrate and honour these

relationships.

The act of saying grace is a recognition that what we eat

comes from the one who creates and gives.

We live by the grace of God.

We beseech the blessing of God in his provision of daily bread.

The act of saying grace can also remind us of those who

have grown and prepared the food that finds its way to our kitchens

and onto our plates.

We beseech the blessing of God on the farmers and milkers, the grocers and

butchers, the bakers and chefs.

The acting of saying grace also acknowledges those we are eating with:

We eat as family, as friends, as church,

We eat amongst strangers and neighbours

and in Communion we eat as poor and rich,

old and young, black and white, Leavers and Remainers.

And in this meal, in the act of grace,

we say it is good you are here,

you are welcome as I am welcome.

If you’re not in the habit of saying grace, start today.

And so if the first way Christ makes a difference to our eating

is the act of saying of grace, of speaking a blessing

to renew our relationship to God, and land, and the production line from field to plate.

The second way Christ makes a difference to our eating

is in the act of sharing bread.

Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them

To share bread at this table

is to say everyone has a place at this table.

To share bread at this table

calls us to see the person next to you as wanted by God. [iii]

God wants their company as well as yours.

Eating at this table changes the way we see each other.

One challenge here then is to ensure that no one eats alone

all the time,

that we ensure we all share a table with others at some point during the week.

For eating with others is not often a silent affair,

it's the point where story telling happens,

at the Lord’s supper we tell the story of Christ,

and so we begin to see at other tables how our stories are woven into his.

Eating with others is where bonds are made,

within a family or a community, where new threads of fellowship are found.

I dream of a church that has learned the habit of invitation and hospitality,

where we regularly ensure there is enough food for one more person

to join the table,

not just on a Sunday morning.

I wonder what might grow in this church

if we each made the commitment to share one meal a week

with one person or more who don’t already live in our home.

That’s one way eating is an act of discipleship.

This kind of eating happens when we remember Jesus in communion,

when we open ourselves ‘to draw near enough to Christ that

our thinking and feelings are transformed.’ [iv]

To sit at the Lord’s Table is to allow the gospel to work in you,

to discover a new pattern to eating,

to encounter the good news of sharing food.

But sharing bread goes further than this,

because it reminds us that eating with Jesus is a justice issue.

That the bread we share at this table

calls us to share bread with those without enough.

When I was hungry you gave me something to eat

Eating as disciples is about not only the people who are present at your table,

but those hidden.

At every Communion there is bread left over,

just as at the feeding of the 5,000.

It is a reminder that gospel challenges the myth of scarcity

that there isn’t enough,

and say with Christ we are given everything we need and more.

God gifts are abundant,

God’s creation is blessed,

and so we are called to share that abundance with all.

So to eat at this table,

is to challenge how we eat at our table at home.

I wonder what would it mean for us to eat justly at home?

A first step might be to not be ignorant of what we eat,

but to pay attention to where our food comes from.

This might cause us to adapt where possible our choices in the food we buy.

Other steps might be to consider eating less meat, [v]

or giving to our Foodbank,

or growing our own food,

or learning how to cook new meals.

It might mean as a church we host a meal with an open table.

To eat justly is then an act of imagination,

to pray that God’s Spirit might lead us to new habits

of blessing and generosity

that reflect God’s kingdom.

In all of this we seek to see that every meal we eat is a potential holy meal,

a meal graced by God’s provision

and the presence of Jesus.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks,

broke it and began to give it to them.

Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.

So go, go and eat,

eat with thankfulness,

eat with new people round your table,

eat with justice and mercy,

eat in anticipation of the great banquet

at which we will one day be God’s honoured guests and friends.

Amen.

 

[i] I owe this point to Ellen Davis, ‘Being a Creature Means You Eat’ in Preaching the Luminous Word (2016).

[ii] This section was helped by Norman Wirzba in Making Peace with the Land (2012).

[iii] This thought is from Rowan Williams, Being Christian (2014).

[iv] Norman Wirzba, Making Peace with the Land.

[v] On this see the articles by John Barclay, Tim Gorringe and David Grumett in the Expository Times (2010, 2011).