When Karen and I were planning this set of sermons exploring
the way our Christian lives can be shaped and built up we noticed that we would
arrive at the fourth spoke of the wheel on Remembrance Sunday.
There seemed an appropriateness to the way it worked out.
In the Spiritual Formation workbook the heading for this
section is Practising the Compassionate Life.
The whole section is then linked, as each section is, to a particular
tradition in the life of the church.
This week that tradition is ‘the social justice tradition’.
Karen and I re-named this section – Making a Difference in
the World.
A wheel is round – and our Christian lives need to be
‘rounded’ – our Christian faith touches every part of our lives.
We began with prayer, went on to think of the way we need to
draw on God to resist temptation, have Godly thoughts, seek Godly living. The third spoke of the wheel was a reminder
that we can do none of this Christian living thing in our own strength. The wonderful thing about our Christian faith,
what makes it good news, is that we have a strength we can draw on from beyond
ourselves, the Holy Spirit. So it was we
focused last week on the need in our Christian living to rely on the Holy
Spirit, that strength of God, unseen yet so real, we can draw on in the living
of our lives.
However personal faith may be, the Christian life can never
be something individualistic, set apart from other people.
The reality is that “God cares deeply about how we treat one
another.
Not only does the wheel of our Christian lives need strong
spokes, the wheel needs to be ‘balanced’ too.
The two great commandments Jesus identifies have exactly
that sense of balance, that sense of roundedness.
Love for God
And
Love for Neighbour
That’s what’s all important.
“That call to love another, to love your neighbour is grounded
in God’s love for us. God loves us, so
we should also love one another. If we
could see the world through the eyes of God we would look through a filter of
compassion.
“God cares about our needs, our hurts, our broken ness. God
is ready to forgive, to heal, to restore us.
And the Lord longs for us to see others as he does – priceless, unique
people who need love and compassion.
Jesus lived a life of compassion ‘for the least’. And in the person of Jesus God shows us how
to live. That involves a commitment to
social justice, to seeking the good of others.
True service … flows out of a relationship with God, makes no
distinction between the large and the small, is content with hiddenness, is
free of the need to calculate results, is indiscriminate, meets needs, is
on-going, builds community. [notes
adapted from Spiritual Formation Workbook]
This is the roundedness of the Christian life. This is the balance the wheel of our Christian
life needs.
Nowhere is it better expressed than in the words of the
parable of the sheep and the goats.
31“When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with
him, he will sit on his royal throne,32and the people of all the nations will
be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a
shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.33He will put the righteous people
on his right and the others on his left.34Then the King will say to the people on
his right, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father! Come and possess the
kingdom which has been prepared for you ever since the creation of the
world.35I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a
stranger and you received me in your homes,36naked and you clothed me; I was
sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me.’
37“The righteous will then answer him, ‘When, Lord, did we
ever see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you a drink?38When did we
ever see you a stranger and welcome you in our homes, or naked and clothe
you?39When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?’40The King
will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you did this for one of the least important
of these members of my family, you did it for me!’
[41“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Away from me,
you that are under God's curse! Away to the eternal fire which has been
prepared for the Devil and his angels!42I was hungry but you would not feed me,
thirsty but you would not give me a drink;43I was a stranger but you would not
welcome me in your homes, naked but you would not clothe me; I was sick and in
prison but you would not take care of me.’
44“Then they will answer him, ‘When, Lord, did we ever see
you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and would
not help you?’45The King will reply, ‘I tell you, whenever you refused to help
one of these least important ones, you refused to help me. ’46These, then, will be sent off to
eternal punishment, but the righteous will go to eternal life.”]
Thirty-seven years ago when I started in my ministry there
were people in the church, in the village and also Felicity’s grandfather in
our family who remembered fighting in the First World War. With my passion for history I wanted to find
out about what they had done. Without
exception they did not want to tell of what they had experienced, such was the
horror they experienced.
In al my time at Highbury there have been older people who
fought in the second world war – I will remember the moving way Vic Lewis
shared his thoughts on a video clip I made from his home – still on our web
site. Now those who fought in that war
have died. Confronted with the evils of
Nazism there was a driving force for good in the overthrow of evil. The awfulness and horror of that war
I have always felt that to honour the memory of those who
died we must remember the longing they had for peace to come. We honour their memory by pledging ourselves
to work for peace.
This year, our minds turn very much to the first world
war. And this centenary troubles
me. That was not so clear cut – in many
ways the culmination of the clash of the Empires of the Nineteenth Century.
And the settlement at the end of the war with its imposition
of punitive reparations and the establishment of nation-states with
straight-line borders around the Middle East had within it the seeds of more
war as happened in 1939-45, and the seeds of the war that now rages in Iraq and Syria
and around the Middle East .
There is another strand for us to remember and I believe
honour in our church family and in our memory of those wars too.
At the beginning of August 1914 150 Chrsitians attended an
ecumenical conference in Constance ,
Germany Germany ,
Austria , Russia and France not to go to war.
The conference came to an abrupt end because war borke out while they were meeting. The delegates hurried out of
Among the delegates to the conference were Dr Henry Hodgkin
an English Quaker and Friederich Siegmund-Schulze, a Lutheran Pastor and
Chaplain to the Kaiser.
The two travelled together as far as Cologne .
There at the railway station as they parted, they shook hands and said:
“Whatever happens, nothing is changed between us. We are one in Christ, and can never be at
war.”
Back in England ,
Henry hodkin reconvened the conference.
He felt that a common statement of a more radically Christian nature
should be made.
130 gathered in Cambridge
and founded a movement that this year celebrates its centenary, The Fellowship of Reconciliation.
The key to their thinking was in the words of the centenary
history, was this:
“It was not just saying ‘no’ to war’ but ‘yes to the
expression of the Christian faith in the whole of life. It had a firm New Testament basis in the words of St Paul :
“If anyone be in Christ they are a new creature; old things
are passed away; behold all things are become new. And all things are of God who hath reconiled
us to himself by Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation
(2 Corinthians 5:17-19)
The FoR basis has five points.
- That love as revealed and interpreted in the life and death of Jesus Christ, involves more than we have yet seen, that is the only power by which evil can be overcome and the only sufficient basis of human society.
- That, in order to establish a world-order based on Love, it is incumbent upon those who believe in this principle to accept it fully, both for themselves and in relation to others and to take the risks involved in doing so in a world which does not yet accept it.
- That therefore, as Christians, we are forbidden to wage war, and that our loyalty to our country, to humanity, to the Church Universal, and to Jesus Christ our Lord and Master, calls us instead to a life-service for the enthronement of Love in personal, commercial and national life.
- That the Power, Wisdom and Love of God stretch far beyond the limits of our present experience, and that He is ever waiting to break forth into human life in new and larger ways.
- That since God manifests Himself in the world through men and women, we offer ourselves to His redemptive purpose to be used by Him in whatever way He may reveal to us.
So how does that work out in practice?
It’s the kind of thinking that inspired two of the older
members of Highbury who welcomed Felicity and me when I first arrived.
Sussex
Cheltenham
It’s an organisation still in existence aiming to enhance understanding
and friendship between people of all nations.
At Hy-Way we still song the vesper Clare Clucas shared with us – it was
lovely speaking to Clare on the phone as she told me something of Arthur’s
story.
London
He went to work on the land in agriculture in Heston – what prompted him
to be a Conscientious Objector was his Christian commitment to living out the
life of love mapped out by Jesus and so he joined the local Congregational
church and there, in a routine maintenance day, found himself sharing the same
paint pot with a girl who was there picking tomatoes. His first girl friend had ditched him because
of his views on the war; but Clare and Arthur were together for the rest of
their lives - and together gave Felicity
the warmest of welcomes back in the early 70’s when she used to come to
Highbury first and to both of us in 1991 when we arrived here.
Covent
Garden
Bath
Clare recalled how taking such a stand meant big differences within
Arthur’s family. Though she was pleased
to discover many years later that a cousin had married a Conscientious Objector
who had been parachuted in with the D Day landings completely unarmed, but just
a medical kit on his back.
Having myself, with Felicity, belonged to the Fellowship of
Reconciliation since I was in the sixth form at school, I felt that at this
Remembrance Sunday as we mark the centenary of the First World war that this
was a dimension of remembrance that was good to honour as well this year.
To live a rounded Christian life we are called in our own conscience to
work out what it means to Love God and Love our neighbour – and then to let that,
through prayer and relying on the Holy Spirit, shape the whole of our lives.
In a moment we are going to think of practical things we can do wo that
we can indeed practise a compassionate life and make a difference in the world.
A Hy-Spirit song
Practical Suggestions
- Write a kind, encouraging letter or email. This may seem like a small task but it can work miracles!
- Volunteer to help with CCP’s Hamper Scamper appeal for Christmas – this is an extension of the Foodshare programme we support week by week.
- Guard the reputation of another person By refusing totake part in discussions that focus on half-trughs or fault-finding, you can contribute to the death of a rumour or criticism.
- Look for an injustice and address it in the home, at work, in the world at large. There’s a petition about the persecution of Christians and the injustices there are in our world at the moment to sign in church. Do something for another cause this week.
- Take a stand Is there racism, sexism, or some other form of discrimination in something you are involved in that you need to address?
- At this time of remembrance where do you stand on war and peace? Is there something you could do or say to be a peace-maker?
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