Words for Worship

Ministry Today

I often can get incensed

by the things

that come on telly

but not so often

on the radio.

 

That is why I surprised myself

when listening

to one of those

morning discussion programmes

so beloved of radio 4.

 

For, the talking heads

were discussing religious belief.

 

One took the stance

that the whole faith business

was dangerous nonsense

that needed confronted

when ever encountered.

 

The other was hooked on

a more round about route.

 

To him faith was

indeed

nonsense

but that those with it

were logical

within their own lights.

 

In other words

we are rational

within our own delusion.

 

Actually, it was

this man’s approach

that annoyed me the more.

 

Because it is one thing

to come to face to face

with opposition

but quite another

to be patronised as a lunatic.

 

It was then I wished

more than ever

we had St Paul alive today.

 

For it was he

who was the first great mind

to take up the Christian faith

and make it

not just logical

within its own scheme of things

but a living reality

to the 1st Century  world.

 

As a result,

he brought

the light of divine reason

into a pretty brutal empire.

 

He brought truly good news

to the rich and the poor.  

 

And he remains

an outstanding example

for us facing

the closed minds

of militant humanists of today.  

 

Because it has to be said

openly

that those

who place their complete faith

in humans alone

must have more than

one Nelsonian blind eye!

 

Whilst those with faith

have a better historical basis,

as Paul suggests,

for their shamelessness.

 

Let’s now hear

what Paul has to say to us

today

And our first lesson is read by…………….

 

Romans 10.5-15

 

Anthem

 

Well today

we come to the end

of our short prophets’ series.

 

And we are going to look

at the prophets of the future.

 

Now, of course,

we ourselves

will continue

to be prophetic voices –

seeking courageously

to form the world

into the way God wants it.

 

However, we must also

prepare our young

to take on

this prophetic mantle too.

 

We must aid them

to look maturely

beyond the material;

to be sufficiently self aware

to know

that there is more  to life

than the physical atoms

of our bodies

and to be open-minded enough

to trust in the experience of encounter.

 

And so we need to explain

the faith to them.

 

We must show them

how to make sense

of the greater universe

they are inheriting.

 

Indeed, we are required

to help them

find what God is saying

today

of their possibilities

to mould the their future.

 

In simple terms then,

if we want future prophets

we must teach them.

 

Teach them like Paul.

 

Teach them Krista Mcauliff

who lost her life

in the Space shuttle challenger disaster

and said –

I touch the future I teach.

 

Teach them as Jesus Christ taught.

 

For who can doubt

his vision of change

is founded on

the ultimate reality of God’s will

rather than the delusion

of physical man

right or wrong.  

 

In all honesty,

who can doubt that

the next lesson,

which is the blue-print

for the perfect future,

could have come from

anyone else

but the source of ultimate good

himself.

 

Here to read to us is……………….

Matt 5.1-12

 

It comes at the start

of the narrative

in Umberto Eco’s famous novel

the name of the Rose.

 

It happens as the medieval monk

William of Baskerville

and his novice Adso of melk

approach the monastery

high in the Italian Apennines

in which

the whole drama unfolds.

 

They meet

the abbey’s cellarer

hunting for the Abbots horse.

 

William describes it perfectly

and where it has gone.

 

The other monk is stunned

when William admits

he has not actually seen

the horse

but has deduced

all of his statement

from various clues –

Real Sherlock homes stuff.

 

In other words,

he used his mind

to make the invisible visible.

 

And this illustrates

our way of teaching

the next generation of prophets.

 

For we must teach them

to really see everything.

 

Then to interpret the clues,

so that their minds

can know the invisible.

 

For only then

can they truly experience

what is going on around them.

 

For only with that teaching

will they reject

the new paganism

of human adoration a

nd find something higher to worship.

 

Yet if we try to force them

to believe

but one source

of knowing God’s presence

then we offer them a cramped,

imbalanced

even vulnerable teaching.

 

Rather we need help them

to find God’s revelation

in all he has shown humanity

and is showing to us now.

 

Because then we will be

on the right track indeed.  

 

Because then

they will be equipped

to be the inheritors

of the kingdom of God.

 

Because then we will

improve their sight

in a culture

that is voluntarily going blind!

 

So let us start

with what God

has said

in the physical world around us.

 

In other words,

what God has said in science.  

 

Now as a scientist,

for at least a period of my life,

I am the first to acknowledge

the wonders

that science has revealed.

 

Not only that

but the huge benefits

that science

has given us

from the essential to the frivolous.

 

Yet as any researcher will tell you,

there is much

that science does not yet know.

 

It is a far from

a complete description

of the universe.

 

Not only that

but at the moment

it gives little personal hope.

 

For, its more traditional findings,

point towards

the whole of creation

as winding down

to a cold wasteland

and ourselves

mere molecule collections

in it.  

 

Yet there are other

more hopeful signposts.

 

Not least that the construction

of our stable universe

was a billion to one

long shot

and so its happening

suggests someone

severely shortened the odds.  

 

Quantum physics

now proposes that

the future can alter

the past

and their is an atomic basis

for collective consciousness.

 

Less high flouting –

but maybe more in evidence

to the layman –

is the beauty of all

that is nature –

beauty too great

surely

to be mere randomness.  

 

So for our future prophets

we need to teach them

to see the world

and be open

to what it tells them.

 

Indeed, to know their science

and to tangle

with its mysteries.

 

But just as important

let us remind them

to ponder beyond

the how

that science

assists with

and into the why

that only God can answer.

 

For then they will

not just be given the tools

to change the world

but the designer’s vision

of that change as well.

 

Sir Ernst Gombrich

in his vastly famous book

‘the story of art’

says that in it

he sadly

has included

no amusing monstrosities

for light relief.

 

And who has not shaken

their heads

at the latest social study

such as someone we knew

researching into

the effect of the film babe

upon the pork industry.

 

Who has not been exasperated

by latest ridiculous winner

of the Turner Prize.

 

Nevertheless we do not doubt

that the social sciences

have given valuable insight

into our living together

and the patterns

that can become ingrained

in the mind.

 

The arts also have enriched

our world immeasurably

and been the cause

of our better seeing

what perfection

might be like.

 

Yet we acknowledge

as well

the great failures

of social experiments

that placed humans

before all else

including God.

 

Those experiments

have often started out

with good intentions

but end in catastrophe.

 

No wonder then

we associate

the French revolution

with the guillotine,

communism

with the gulag

and to a lesser degree

60’s grandiose housing schemes

with dilapidation.

 

May our mentoring

of our future prophets

again say –

use the wisdom

of the social sciences

and revel

in the inspiration of the arts

but don’t ever think

they are the be all and end all.

 

For then

that vision of beauty

and of possibility

will turned into a nightmare.

 

Rather hold fast

to the spiritual engineering

of the sermon on the mount.  

 

See with the eye of God

the artistry

that only faith opens.

 

For then

the human’s superficial prettiness

will be transformed

into the profound beauty

of those

who not just believe the good news

or bring the good news

but live through the good news.

 

Or put another way,

let us wisely

hand on the wisdom

that we honour humans

best

when we honour God first.

 

Have you heard about

the invisible man

who married

the invisible woman.

 

Well, it turns out –

their children

were not much to look at.

 

But how are we going

to do William of Baskerville’s trick

of showing

the invisible to be visible?

 

If the sciences

and the arts

give some clues

as to knowing an invisible God,

where is the greater evidence

for our faith’s logic

that makes it

more than

a self-supporting delusion age.  

 

Where indeed

is the proof and motivation

for future hope and change?

 

 

Well, like most things

that are invisible,

knowledge comes from experience.

 

Oh ho says our humanists

all experience can delude.

 

What I cannot touch

I cannot know.

 

Ok says I –

what about love,

what about hate

and even

what about the radio waves

that are carrying your voice to me?

 

For each is invisible –

yet each we have experienced.

 

So too have countless generations

believed in an invisible God

because

they have been struck by him

in Christ Jesus.

 

In truth, if you think about it –

that is what the bible is all about.

 

For surely

it chronicles humanity’s encounter

with God.

 

And as a result

it has risen

from the caves

and brutish survival

to the pinnacle of moral thinking

that is the sermon on the mount.  

 

The very epitome

that Paul tells us of

as being the basis

of every active life

that is righteous.  

 

Let us then counsel

tomorrow's prophets

to read the scriptures again

with an open mind,

to see the real beauty

that is in the mind of God

and know  the sense

of the perfect ethics of Christ .

 

So too have the prophets

of all the ages

shown by their actions

what is possible

even against the odds

and social rules.

 

Therefore consideration

of those who set out

to abolish slavery,

to gain genuine regard

for one human for another

and to nurture

a real valuing of all of creation

shows one principle.

 

And it is this.

 

The most important things

in life

may or may not be free

but they are invariably

invisible.

 

Invisible at least to start with –

invisible until people of faith

makes them clear

and right

for all to see.  

 

Finally, we should tutor

our nascent prophets

from our own personal experience.

 

Don’t underestimate that.

 

For in Le Carre’s

The spy who came in from the cold,

Loomis meets up

with a girl

who for all the right reasons

had chosen her vision

as communism.

 

So when she invited

to visit the former East German

she was agog to see

that humanist system’s achievements.

 

Moreover, she waited impatiently

to experience a people

who had taken

their vision into their own hands

and had hope of achieving it.

 

Needless to say

she found a barrenness

of empty rhetoric, injustice

and unbridled self interest.

 

Yet that cannot be the way

for Christians

in 21st Century Britain

at least.

 

For what brought you and me

here this morning.

 

Certainly not to be seen

in the right circles

nor out of self interest

or the following

of some hollow and hopeless dogma.

 

But rather, it is here

in the company of each other

and Jesus Christ

that we experience

just a glimpse

of what God’s vision

could really be like

if fulfilled.

 

We feel how his community

will one day transcend

even the ethical

to find the loving.  

 

Because here we

indeed

have not so much

another clue

to the better future

but the merest sliver

of its golden evidence.

 

Yet, I must ask –

is that enough?

 

Well Gombrich

says in his book,

that there is

not really a present

only a point

that is the equilibrium

between the past and future.  

 

Let us then realise

that we are

the people of Christ

that straddle

this bridge for the moment.  

 

Let us then bring to life again

the Prophetic treasures

of the past.

 

Let us meld them

with the riches

of our present.

 

Then let us pass them

augmented

as gifts

to the prophets of the future.  

 

Because then

our memory

becomes their memory;

our hope, their hope

and the sense of God,

our unbroken commonsense.  

 

And that is –

just as surely as eggs are eggs –

more than enough!

 

Amen

 

Our offering will now be received

as we sing seated

HYMN……………..

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow’s Prophets - Hand it on!