Starting Again
We finish our short series with clips from Dr Who by thinking about new starts. The rather dreadful Blon has caused havoc on earth and through some trickery tries to use the Tardis to get away from the Doctor who has arrested her. The Doctor is intending to take her back to her own planet where a rather grisly end awaits her. Something goes wrong however and the power of the Tardis makes Blon regress into being an egg again. She has been given a new start.
Up until then those who had been watching the show would have been forgiven for thinking that Blon was pretty irredeemable. She has killed people, tried to take over the earth and is now pretty happy to destroy a city to suit her own ends. No one would have really believed that she was able or willing to change. Indeed it is only through a rebirth – or perhaps I should say a re-hatch – that she will be able to change. The parallels with the gospel are obvious.
Irredeemable
One of the hardest things to grasp in the Christian faith is that all of us can be loved and redeemed. Sometimes we think it hard to imagine that some of the most dreadful people we have heard about can be redeemed, sometimes it is even harder to believe that we ourselves can be loved, valued and redeemed.
We find it hard to believe that we are lovely, that someone else can love us – whether that be another person or God, often because we don’t love ourselves. As a priest I find that time after time the problems people come to speak to me about are bound up with feelings of not being loved and of the person not loving themselves.
This is bound up with how we have been taught to feel about ourselves and how society often treats us. It is why coming out is such a vital process for those of us who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. If those closest to us don’t value or approve of us for who we are we can learn not to value or approve of us ourselves. If we are not accepted by wider society then we will not easily learn to accept ourselves.
One of my favourite soaps is the Archers on Radio 4. One of the story lines at the moment concerns a gay couple, Ian and Adam. Ian wants to have kids, or at least to foster, but Adam is vehemently opposed to the idea. As the story has continued it becomes clear that Adam’s reluctance is around how society will treat any child they have or foster because their relationship is not normal. In the show, Adam is reflecting internalised homophobia which makes it difficult for him to think and react clearly. He doesn’t value himself for who he is because his world is not that accepting.
St Paul
In our reading from the book of Acts we met another rather unlovely person. Saul of Tarsus a religious fundamentalist who was so filled with hatred and anger he persecuted the earliest Christians. Who would have thought that he would be lovely or redeemable. Yet his encounter with the risen Jesus made him realise his errors and started to teach him about love and being valued.
His experience of the Risen Jesus was an experience of encountering pure love which started a process in him of realising that he was loved and valued and brought with a great price.
Over the years that experience of love informed Paul – as he became – as he wrote, thought, planted churches and supported the leaders of those churches. Whilst Paul’s conversion was sudden, he spent the rest of his life learning and reflecting on the experience he had had.
Growing in Love
It takes years to believe that we are not loveable. It takes years to believe that we are worthless and so, it also takes years to start to believe the truth about ourselves. As we learn that we are loved we start to love ourselves. As we start to love ourselves we are more able to love others. For many of us the challenge in Jesus’ saying to love our neighbours as ourselves is to actually love ourselves! Over the years as your pastor I have seen so many of you gradually start to love and like yourselves, to value yourselves more, to treat yourselves better and to realise that that truth about you is now what you have been told in the past. As we learn these things we become better people and we learn to love others better.
Starting Again
Love and starting again are at the heart of the Gospel. In our clip we see that Blon is, literally, about to be born-again. From our reading we hear of Paul’s dramatic encounter with the Risen Jesus that allows him to start again and live a very different life. All of us have been given chances to start again. When we became Christians we were given the chance to set aside all that had gone before and to change the direction of our lives – not negating that which had gone before but improving on those things. For those of us who have yet to take the plunge into Christianity you are being offered that new start. A start where the love of God will enthuse you and allow you to both be forgiven and to forgive yourself. A new start which builds on all the experiences which have made up your life but which allows you to grow beyond those experiences.
But the Christian life is full of opportunities to start again. We find that time and time again we need to take stock of our lives, review how we behave, the things we value, the way we treat others and the way we treat ourselves. Sometimes this reflection brings us up short and we don’t like what we see and perceive. This is why every Sunday we have a form of confession to remind ourselves that we are sinners and to allow ourselves to be availed of God’s grace of forgiveness and of a new start.
So this week is an opportunity for all of us to start again. We can bring those behaviour patterns, thoughts, ways of being and thinking to God and ask to both be forgiven and given the grace to start again.
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.