andygoodliff

Making Connections: A Pentecost Sermon

I once read that ‘Christianity is connections’ [i] and it's a sentence that has lingered in my mind ever since. I’ve found it helpful to talk about the church as a people and a place centred on making connections. There’s always something more to discover, another connection to be made. This way of seeing the church is founded on abundance. That can be a surprising way of describing the church, because more often than not what we can see in church is what we lack, where we’re short, what we don’t have. And so to say the church is founded on abundance is to learn to see the church differently, to look what we have been given, what are the gifts among us and that is to make connections again, to draw every person into the picture, to stop suggesting that some of us are givers and others of us are receivers, but instead all are of us are giving and receiving sharing in the cascade of grace from God through Jesus and the joy of the church is the work of making connections.

Why am I talking about making connections on Pentecost Sunday? Because I believe making connections is another way of talking about the work of the Holy Spirit. The joyful, wonderful work of the Holy Spirit is to make the most surprising, astonishing connections in our lives. At its heart is the connection the Spirit makes between us and Jesus. We know Jesus through the connecting work of Holy Spirit, through baptism and communion, through prayer and scripture, through other people and creation.

Acts 2 is a description of the Spirit’s connecting work. The gift of the Spirit causes the international crowd to find a connection with the disciples — ‘each one heard their own language being spoken.’ The gift of the Spirit causes Peter to make a connection with the prophetic word of Joel and see it as a word for the present. The gift of the Spirit is to enable the connection to be made that God was in Jesus and God is now in this moment pouring out his Spirit on all people. The gift of the Spirit is hearts open, of repentance, baptism, forgiveness, and so a new connection with God through Jesus. The gift of the Spirit is a growing church, of new people being added, new connections created. The rest of the book of Acts goes on to give an account of the Spirit’s connecting work, of lives being threaded together, of prison doors being opened, of powerful words being spoken, of lives healed, of new revelation.

What we celebrate today is how the Holy Spirit works to connect us with God, with each other, and with creation in ways that cannot be predicted or always anticipated, in ways that often just happen and we find ourselves lost in wonder, love and praise. I wonder how the Holy Spirit has been showing up in your life recently?

I think the Holy Spirit has shown up in the telephone. I’m thinking of the commitment of some of you to making connections through the telephone. Making connections is better understood here as befriending, keeping alive the opportunity of conversation, of connection, of community that pushes against feelings of loneliness, isolation and separation.

For some of you this has become a new ministry, and I believe it is a ministry of the Holy Spirit, a ministry that receives as much as it gives. It is characterised by kindness which originally has its origins in the word kin meaning family. [ii] Kindness is about treating one another as family, as our kin, as our brothers and sisters. This is what God does in Jesus: Jesus is the kindness of God with us, He becomes our kin, that we might become his kin and the Holy Spirit continues to grow in us kindness that we might recognise each other in Jesus as our kin, our family. In this time we’ve been separated from one another, the Holy Spirit has been teaching us how to show kindness to one another, how to see one another as kin.

I think the Holy Spirit has also shown up in a renewed sense of solidarity, the Spirit brought us together, not just as church, but as local communities, in the simple activities of making rainbows and stopping to clap. And these were not ideas of the state, but local ideas that spread like wildfire, they were Spirit-inspired. They have been a form of hopeful imagination,a concern for the neighbour working on our behalf, a desire for a more just society. The divisions that have separated us from one another politically in the last few have been put away as we have found ourselves separated physically. We have found new connection to an idea of being a united kingdom, its fragile, and is already fraying, but I am suggesting that perhaps the Spirit has been stirring again within us, between us, a new connection to one another and to the virtue of justice shaped by love. If the Spirit is teaching us about kindness as a form of kinship, I think the Spirit might also be teaching us about solidarity that calls us to see that which is unjust — I name just one example, the treatment of care workers. The Spirit’s connecting work is not just spiritual, but political and economic.

And I wonder if the Spirit has been turning up in our zoom gatherings, enabling us to here different voices, and seeing each other’s faces, joining us together in prayer, and in sharing communion. This is a connection with faith, encouraging one another to trust in God, to be patient, to laugh together and share in sorrow. The Spirit has been showing us that we are not abandoned by God, but God has been more present in this adversity and challenge. This time has been, I suggest again, a strange gift for our faith, not one we choose, or I think is God ordained, yet nevertheless one God has been with us in.

The Holy Spirit who showed up at Pentecost, is the same Spirit showing up yesterday, today and tomorrow in our lives, resting his power and presence on us, calling us to kindness, solidarity and faith. The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost was like the coming of a virus that spread from person to person, not with death but Life, it overcame social distance, making new connections across race, gender, class creating a patient community of hope and faith and blessing.

The same Spirit is still changing the world. The same Spirit is still breathing the name of Jesus into hearts. The same Spirit is still enlivening and enlisting us into God’s kingdom companions, believing that ‘the future is bigger than the past.’ [iii]

Come, Holy Spirit, come.

 

[i] Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company (1995), xiii

[ii] Drawing on Janet Martin Soskice, The Kindness of God (2007)

[iii] This phrase originated with Sam Wells. See now his book with that title.

Reading James McClendon's Systematic Theology

James McClendon's Systematic Theology is an astonishing achievement for a Baptist theologian. Other Baptists have written systematic theologies — e.g. Stanley Grenz, James Leo Garrett and Millard Erickson — but McClendon's stands out, for its originality (he starts with ethics before doctrine) and its desire to be baptist. McClendon's work has been received and engaged with by a group of Baptist theologians in the US — e.g. Curtis Freeman, Barry Harvey, Steven Harmon, Beth Newman, Scott Bullard, Jeff Carey, Ryan Andrew Newson — and some in Europe, especially by Parush Parushev at IBTS and now also by VU Amsterdam and its establishment of the James Wm. McClendon Chair for Baptistic and Evangelical Theologies. There has been a more muted reception history in the UK. Its not that McClendon has been ignored, but there perhaps not been the kind of serious engagement that his theology arguably warrants. 

With this in mind I wondered whether it might be possible to encourage a group to read systematics. It was an idea thrown out which found encouragement from Curtis Freeman and Steven Harmon. The plan is to read a chapter a month and then offer an opportunity to discuss it via a zoom conversation.

The first zoom will be on Thursday 18th June, 8pm (UK time) to discuss chapter one of Ethics: Systematic Theology Volume 1. We'll be focused on the 2002 revised edition published by Abingdon and republished by Baylor University Press in 2012. (If you can only get hold of the 1986 edition that's fine, part of the discussion will probably included the changes McClendon made in the second edition.)

 Its open to anyone.

We hope this might encourage a new generation to engage with McClendon's thought, and perhaps others to revisit it.

 

 

 

Motherhood: A Confession by Natalie Carnes

If you read this book it will likely be one of your books of the year. Motherhood: A Confession is beautifully written. (In the acknowledgments there is thanks given to Lauren Winner, who has helped so many others with what we might called theological memoirs and has written several herself.) It is a powerful reflection on being a mother and a disciple of Jesus. Inspired by St. Augustine's famous Confessions (well known to many from its early line 'all hearts are restless until they find their rest in you) — Carnes is a professor of theology who has taught the work numerous times — this is very much her own confession. It borrows its shape from Augustine's work, following the chapter themes and in some way it might be considered a commentary, but Carnes brings her own confession on becoming a mother and the impact that has on herself and her faith and of course on her daughter. As she explores motherhood she does in conversation with Augustine, and also scripture (Mary and Martha, the mother of Moses, Mary and Joseph, and more) and with the saints.

I must confess I've never read Augustine's Confessions — I have a copy and have been meaning too, perhaps now I'll get round to it.

I read Motherhood in just over a day — I found no rest until I got to the end! — but it is perhaps better read slowly and patiently because her reflections although her own, will be recognised and shared by lots of other mothers (and fathers), at least, if you live in the West. I am not a mother, but I am a father, and the both brings out some of the shared questions every parent faces and as well offers a perspective into what its like to be a mother — it might help us understand our spouses (I recognise conversations I've had in Carnes' descriptions of what motherhood is like).

While the whole book is rich in spiritual and practical awareness, the chapters on mercy, suffering, desire, temptation and domination are especially remarkable in insight, not least in that common conundrum of when you want a child to say sorry! This is an honest book. Carnes covers questions on how do we both protect our children from suffering and let them experience it; how do we balance work and play; how do let go of trying to enforce our will on another and more. My only wish was that Carnes might have reflected on motherhood when a second or third child come along (Carnes has 3 children) and how that is another re-adjustment in love and desire. 

Having read Motherhood, I now want to read her earlier work — On Beauty and Image and Presence — which explore her interest in the theology of the arts.

This is a book for mothers, but also, as I've suggested, fathers too. It won't tell you how to parent, but it might help you reflect on (what Marcia Bunge calls) the vocation of parenting. It is a book for pastors (in understanding the parents in their congregation) and a book for anyone who wonders what its like to love God and neighbour, and in particular, little neighbours.

 

Together: a sermon for 4th Sunday of Easter

If we read Acts 2.43–47 I wonder what word is most important after God. This is a short description of the church or perhaps we might say this is a short prescription for the church. It’s full of important words. Here are some potential ones: devoted, teaching, fellowship, bread, prayer, awe, signs, believers, give, home, praising, added.

We might say what’s most important is being devoted, its about being committed, being dedicated, being faithful. Your heart’s got to be in it, your body’s got to turn up.

We might say what’s most important is teaching. The most important thing is the Bible, reading and understanding it. This is the source of our faith, this is where we find truth and wisdom.

We might say what's most important is fellowship, lives being shared, supported, friendships being made and strengthened. We pray for the fellowship found, received and shared in the Holy Spirit.

We might say what’s most important is bread, the bread of Communion, the receiving of the bread broken for us. Jesus is the living bread who feeds our faith and nourishes our hope.

We might say what’s most important is prayer, the most important thing is a people who pray with energy, expectation, and enthusiasm. Nothing happens without prayer, it’s like breathing, we wither without it.

We might say what’s most important is awe, being taken beyond this plane into a higher plane, into an experience of the deep presence of God. We want the Transfiguration, Jesus in glory and us being there. We want to experience a vision of the throne of God like John of Patmos.

We might say what’s most important is signs, miracles, wonders, tangibles acts that point to the existence, the power, the heart of God to save, heal and transform. It's about evidence to a disbelieving world, it’s about the kingdom of God now.

We might say what’s most important is believers, it’s about people with faith, belief, trust, who can declare that Jesus is my Lord and Saviour. What changed the disciples, what changed the church was its faith, a faith worth dying for, a faith that trusted through fire and storm.

We might say what’s most important is the word ‘give’, it’s about sharing what we have received. Its about generosity, its about taking what we have and making sure no one goes without, its about fairness and justice.

We might say what’s most important is ‘home’, that place of living, eating, resting, playing, that place of warmth and safety, where we are surrounded by memories, and people we love.

We might say what’s most important is praising, its about worship and song, its about giving thanks to God for his mercies, its about being ‘lost in wonder, love and praise.’

We might say what’s most important is the word added. It’s about growth, about seeing people saved, lives changed, higher attendance, regular baptisms.

All those words are important, they all tell us something about being church. They are perhaps a checklist, a set of ingredients. In the church of your imagination is there somewhere for each of these words? If this is our checklist, our set of ingredients, I wonder how we are doing in lockdown, are any missing? Are we struggling anywhere? Are we doing better on any? I wonder how we were doing before lockdown? I wonder how we might do after lockdown?

There’s one other word I think might be important, it’s the word ‘together’, it crops up twice: 'All the believers were together' and 'Everyday they continued to meet together.' It's the word that connects — teaching, fellowship, bread, prayer, awe, signs, belief, giving, home, praise, growth is the result of this new community that is together; a community that is a response to the resurrection, a community that is being gathered by the Holy Spirit.

The whole story of the Bible can be summed up in the word together. The story begins with God, humanity and creation together, there is life and joy and friendship, and then they come apart, they become separated, when humanity turns away, we refuse the togetherness. We seek a togetherness without God, a togetherness without creation. We see only competition, power, scarcity and that threatens the possibility of togetherness, it creates the concept of the other as stranger and enemy, rather than friend or neighbour.

The rest of the story is how God acts to bring us back together again with Him and with creation. At the right moment God comes Himself in Jesus, to be with us, to be joined together to our life, our condition, in order to heal, liberate and transform us into those who know what it is to be together with each other, together with creation, together with God. The gospel is God’s togetherness plan, Jesus is God’s togetherness plan. In Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection we are invited by God to be with Him as God comes to be with us:we are adopted into God’s family, we are befriended into the Spirit’s community, we are made citizens of the kingdom, we are given a place in the body of Christ.

What is the church? It is a people who have been grafted into togetherness with God, with one another, with creation. God did not create us for isolation, separation, individualism, nationalism, but created us and creation in a story of gift and grace. At the heart of the story is God’s gift of grace Himself that creates a community of gift and grace, where we see we need one another, that we are given to one another for our shared health and flourishing, where we receive grace, but we don’t hold it tightly, but share it, we pass it on, knowing that it is abundant, that we are together in worship and prayer, in fellowship and mutual support, in faith and growth. This community of resurrected people described in Acts is a vision of a community together not just in worship, but in all of life, economic, domestic, social, cultural. This is what happens when Easter is joined to Pentecost, a community of hope and faith and love is born.

We are at the moment rediscovering what togetherness means. We are not together as we knew it, and we long to be again, but we are together in new ways and I don't mean just on zoom. I don’t want to idolise this current time, we’re too in it to see it properly; though I do think let’s be open to how God might be using this time to reveal, to renew, to resurrect something new or something lost about togetherness.

I am finding myself caught between two moods. The first is a longing to get back to being church like it was now eight weeks ago. The second is a wondering if this is a time to ask the question about what being church is. We are in this place where we are being church but not as we have known it. We are being church through zoom, through the telephone, through social media, through helping with shopping, through a brief conversation at a window or front door. Something has definitely been lost, we are grieving from being able to gather. But in that we are perhaps discovering (or might discover) being church as something more church than it ever has been. The first Sunday we can be back, will it be back to what was before or will it be forward to something new?

For Israel exile was the biggest low point, it was a deep trauma, an open wound, the promise to land, to monarchy, to temple, to people was unravelled as Jerusalem was destroyed and many were carted off to a foreign land. But it was also a renewal of its faith and life that never would have happened otherwise: dry bones lives again; a new covenant is promised, a new understanding of the uniqueness of God, the Creator and Redeemer, a new vision of social justice. For the disciples the cross and the resurrection was loss and gift mingled together, was pain and hope joined anew, it was a renewal of everything they thought they knew from Jesus, into something in which the future now was even bigger than the past.

Is this an opportunity to dream church again, to say in what does the church consist and how do we live that together? At the moment we are having to improvise, but is this all temporary? Or could it be a renewal? Is this time a catalyst to birth a new vision, a new understanding, a new conviction about what matters and what matters to God? Today is an invitation to lift our eyes up, to look around, to start imagining what we might learn in this time that we can carry forward into whatever will be after this. Israel was in Exile for 70 years, I don’t think we have that long (I hope not!), so lets not hang about. The God of Easter, the God of resurrection is into resurrection, into giving new life.