Tag: bible

And it happens to be International Women’s Day …

TonyLeave a comment

In the congregation where I celebrated the Eucharist and preached this morning were two distinguished public figures and writers whom I didn’t know by sight. And whom I won’t name, for security reasons. On leaving they thanked me for my ‘brilliant’ sermon. When the churchwarden told me who they were…! That may not have been the, but it was certainly one of the high points of my ministry.

And here’s the sermon:

Living Water


We tend to take water for granted, don’t we? (In spite of the present state of Thames Water.) We turn on the tap, and water flows freely. We don’t expect to have to walk down to the end of town and fill buckets at a well, to carry home water to drink or cook with, or wash. And yet in Jesus’ time, that was the way it was done. Water — an essential of life, and a refreshment and pleasure not only to people living in arid climates — was a hard-won thing, something to be treasured and not taken for granted.

We heard in John 4.5-26 how Jesus passed through Samaria on his way from Galilee to Judaea. Samaria was roughly the area of what had been the ancient northern kingdom of Israel. It was conquered by Assyria in the 8th century B.C., and its people taken into exile. The King of Assyria then brought people from Babylon to resettle the land, and subsequently sent one of the priests who had been taken into exile, to teach these settlers the ways of the God of Israel. (Improbable? But you can read about it in 2 Kings 17.) So by the time of Jesus, the Samaritans were a mixed race (Israelite, Babylon etc), not pure-blood Jews, holding to a form of Judaism, mostly only the Torah, and of course not the ‘proper, orthodox’ Judaism of the Jerusalem Temple and authorities.

So in this setting, Jesus sat down beside Jacob’s well at noon and met this woman. It’s a great story, and one we’re so familiar with that we forget just how strange and transgressive were the things it describes. Jesus, a devout Jew, talking to a woman, a foreigner, a heretic, who furthermore had a probably disreputable personal history. This is the kind of thing, John is telling us, that the incarnate Son of God does.

And it’s interesting that Jesus doesn’t begin by denouncing the woman, or preaching to her, or telling her he’s going to save her. He asks her to do something for him, to give him something. Putting her in a position of equality or even superiority. And that allows her to be curious (Why is he, a Jew, talking to a woman, a Samaritan?) It begins the kind of conversation which happens quite often in John, where people at first don’t understand what Jesus is saying, or seem to be talking at cross purposes, until Jesus finally explains it to them and helps them to understand what he means, what he is offering, who he is.
“If you knew the gift that God is able to give, and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” And when this arouses her interest and she asks how it’s possible: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.” Again: how can this be? But it has certainly got the woman interested: if she could have water like that, it would save her this daily, several-times-daily, labour of fetching water from the well.

But then it’s as if Jesus goes off at a tangent, asking her to go and bring her husband. Well, we know that’s a sore point for her, and apparently Jesus knows all about it too (how?). So she changes the subject: to religion. For religion to seem like a ‘safe’ subject, the issue of her marriage must have been a very sore point. But, Let’s talk about the differences between what we Samaritans and you Jews believe. About where and how to worship God. Here is where Jesus becomes quite dogmatic. He tells her that the Samaritans don’t know what they’re worshiping, but the Jews do, because salvation is from the Jews. They worship God in spirit and in truth, and that’s how all people must worship God.

This woman is quite a feisty character, I think she’s actually pushing back at Jesus’ telling her the Samaritans don’t know what they’re worshiping, when she says I know that Messiah is coming (who is called Christ). You see, we do believe in a coming Messiah and Saviour, just as you Jews do. And this gives Jesus the opportunity for the self-revelation that makes all the difference. Jesus said to her, I am he, the one who is speaking to you.

The I AM sayings are one of the characteristic, key points of John’s Gospel: Bread of Life, Light of the World, Good Shepherd, Resurrection and the Life, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And I AM is the Name of God, revealed to Moses at the burning bush, when he asked God what is your name? And God replied I AM who I AM.

When Jesus says I am he, the one who is speaking to you, it’s a claim, in effect, that he himself is God in bodily human form, yes, standing there talking to her. And offering her, as he is uniquely able to, this gift of the water of life, living water, gushing up to eternal life

We are bound to connect this with what we read later in John’s Gospel, when Jesus went up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, and on the last day of the feast he stood up and cried out (this is John’s way of saying listen up, this saying is really important, it’s meant for everyone’s ears): “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” And John adds: Now he said this about the Spirit which believers in him were to receive, for as yet there was no Spirit because Jesus was not yet glorified.

The ‘living water’ that Jesus promises is the Holy Spirit: God’s life, God’s very being, within everyone who believes. How could we imagine, or wish for, any greater thing? For this is not a promise of a few drops, but it speaks of God’s superabundant generosity: rivers of living water, gushing up to eternal life.

Lent is a time for reflecting on our spiritual health, seeking to know God better and deepen our relationship with God. What better way to do this, than to be sure we are asking for all the abundance that God desires to give us, receiving it with thankful hearts, and living in that abundance day by day?

Here we are, Lord Jesus. We come to you, we believe. Give us, we pray, that living water of the Holy Spirit which is your gift to your people. We receive it with joy, and thanks be to you, God, for your inexpressible gift!

Seeking a more biblical Church

TonyLeave a comment

When I was on retreat at Mucknell Abbey at the beginning of December, Fr Stuart Burns recommended a book I hadn’t heard of before: David F. Ford’s The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary. It promises to be an excellent read, touching on many of the themes I now realise I need to pursue about John’s Gospel. Ford urges that the Church and the world need a new ‘Johannine Renaissance’, rediscovering, or more deeply discovering, Who Jesus is, and Why Jesus Now? 

Among so many passages I want to reflect on and remember, today I made a note of this:

“The Psalms are the part of the Bible that probably is most fully part of Christian (and Jewish) personal and community prayer and worship, most committed to memory, most set to music, most important in shaping the imagination. They take up into poetry and worship leading themes of Israel’s Scriptures and the main elements of its faith and practice — creation, patriarchs, the exodus, the law, prophecy, wisdom. Both Jesus and John were, clearly, steeped in the psalms, and continually reading the psalms in conversation with the Gospels deepens understanding and nourishes fuller faith, further following, and richer worship.”

Yes! And I wonder, then, why the Psalms are so routinely omitted from much (I’m tempted to say, most) of contemporary worship? Dare I say, especially in ‘Evangelical’ churches? In the days when I used to think it was the Evangelical wing of the Church that I felt most at home in, I firmly believed it was the Bible, and its authority, which were the features that attracted me. Since that time I’ve come to believe that, in fact, the major weakness of ‘Evangelical’ churches is that they are so unbiblical. Instead of proclaiming what the Bible says, they are more likely to proclaim what the preacher, or their favourite church leader, says the Bible says. They’ll hammer home the parts that say what they want the Bible to say, while ignoring the parts of the Bible which contradict their favourite message. 

David Ford’s commentary is honest about the apparent contradictions and different viewpoints, for example in the ways the Bible has often been used to preach a ‘supersessionist’ message, and contempt for Judaism. The remedy is to stay with that question of Who Jesus is, until we fully understand what it means that Jesus shows us, and leads us into relationship with, a God who is for all people, and for all creation.

A Chuckle from the King James Version

TonyLeave a comment

The Authorized / King James Version of the Bible isn’t exactly known as a book full of laughs. But I got a chuckle from it yesterday, seeing something I’ve never seen or thought of before. In Numbers 22, part of the story of Balaam and his ass:

27And when the ass saw the angel of the LORD, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam’s anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff. 28And the LORD opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? 29And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee. 30And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? And he said, Nay.

Read it aloud, and it sounds as if, when the ass has started to speak like a man, the prophet Balaam started to speak like an ass. It would be lovely to think the King James translators had that in mind when they translated לֹא as Nay instead of just No. But I suppose it’s too much to hope for.

Thoughts on the Makin Review

TonyLeave a comment

Long, long ago, I used to think I was a ‘Conservative Evangelical’. Maybe I even was one. All through theological college, while I was studying for my B.A. in Theology, and other qualifications for ordination, I somehow felt that I had to ‘hold the line’ against the liberalism (or whatever?) of modern academic theology. I have no idea where this came from… Perhaps it’s matter for another blog post sometime.

This didn’t survive for very long when I went to serve my curacy in a ‘Conservative Evangelical’ parish. I quickly learned that this wasn’t quite where I stood after all; I wanted something different and maybe broader; I realised there was more to truth than I had thought.

The things that I valued about the tradition I thought I belonged to were: love of Scripture; devotion to Jesus; personal faith and commitment. Somehow, unaccountably, I had learned that these were the special characteristics of this brand of Christianity, which were not shared by any of the other groups that called themselves Christian. Again, I have to ask where this came from, and how I could possibly have believed it. It’s one of the mysteries of my reflection on my faith journey, the way we pick up and believe and live with and find it so hard to move on from, what we are taught (or sometimes only imbibe subliminally) in the tradition we find ourselves in.

Looking at the Makin Review makes me not only wonder how I continued to think of myself as a ‘Conservative Evangelical’ for so long. It makes me wonder how anyone can still feel happy to subscribe to the narrow beliefs of that particular subset of God’s people. Of course, not every ‘Conservative Evangelical’ is going to be an abuser. Most people who call themselves ‘Conservative Evangelicals’ will have been as appalled as the rest of us, at the report of the Review’s findings. But at the same time, it’s obvious that John Smyth’s long history of physical, sexual and spiritual abuse, of his family first, and later of hundreds of boys and young Christian men, had its roots in the kinds of belief that were, and still are, often found in ‘Conservative Evangelicalism.’ A particular kind of emphasis on sin and repentance which focuses more on sex than on any of ‘the weightier matters of the Law’ like injustice, love and mercy, the abuse of power… Together with patriarchy, misogyny, homophobia, belief in corporal punishment, self- and body-hatred. The image of God that Smyth must have had, to believe and behave as he did, must have been a hideous, cruel and bullying, idol.

I was particularly horrified by the quote from one of Smyth’s victims, describing the policy of the Iwerne Trust and its summer camps:

“The philosophy was … that you could only really serve God with a dog collar around your neck in the Church of England and that the job, the mission, the task, the quest was to get boys of real promise to become ordained in the Church of England, to become bishops and archbishops, and for the Iwerne tribal, evangelical, narrow-minded brand of Christianity, which is anti-gay, as Smyth was with the Whitehouse trials, to infiltrate the whole of the Church of England and to take it over.”

The sectarian arrogance of believing ‘We’re right and every other variety of Christian is wrong’, and ‘Therefore we plan to take over the whole of the Church of England’ beggars belief. It’s as if they had never read the Bible, either the teachings of Jesus, or St Paul’s injunctions to love one another and consider other Christians better than oneself. In the end, I guess that was one more reason why I left ‘Conservative Evangelicalism’: I wanted to be a biblical Christian; and for all their claims and posturings, I don’t believe that’s a priority for ‘Conservative Evangelicals’.

One more thought about the Makin Review, is about all the men who were involved in covering up Smyth’s abuses, not only when they first became known around 1981, but even after he had fled to Africa where he continued his activities. I knew some of these men, I went to some of the churches where they had been active. They were apparently sincere, honest, intelligent, educated men. So how could be so stupid? One of them, David Fletcher, explains why he did nothing to pass on what he had learned about Smyth’s abuses:

In an interview with us, David Fletcher said: “I thought it would do the work of God immense damage if this were public.”

How could he really imagine it would not inevitably become known some time down the line, and by then do even greater damage to the ‘work of God’?

Another leading Evangelical figure, also now deceased,

said that he was told of the abuse by a curate at Winchester College and was “sworn to secrecy.”

It’s a strange kind of morality that gives more value to ‘keeping a confidence’ than speaking out against evil, and telling the truth, even if it means ‘betraying’ a confidence (which should never have been asked for by a Christian clergyman in the first place), if it means saving not one but hundreds of victims from harm and trauma. Surely, that’s a sorry kind of modern Pharisaism, like the one that believes you can protect the work of God from damage by covering up the Truth?

I haven’t read all of Makin’s review, and don’t know if I have the stamina to get to the end of it. No doubt the repercussions will run and run. Who else will resign or be called on to resign? It’s good if we now have a culture of safeguarding which brings abuses to light sooner than the 40+ years it took for Smyth’s to be fully known. Or do we, yet? I pray, and long, for this battered old Church that I love to become a safe and inclusive space for everyone. Sooner, rather than later.