Introduction
One of the pleasures which Ian and I experienced when setting up home together 5 years ago was that we had to go and get lots of furniture for our new house. We wanted to get some nice pieces of furniture and we love the modern feel of IKEA. We had great fun selecting the different things we wanted for each room - whether it was as simple as bookcases or as complex as units and wardrobes. Shopping at IKEA is great and they even delivered all the stuff we wanted. However, the fun really started when the delivery van pulled away. Because then we had the challenge of putting the stuff together!
IKEA pride themselves of producing very simple instructions without words - this is so that they don't need to produce different instruction leaflets for different countries. However, what they think is really simple is, to many of us, a form of purgatory. We stare at the instructions, we try to make sense of them, the thing we are building doesn't work and then we realise that we have the blessed things upside down and need to start again.
Interestingly as we put more and more of our furniture together the simpler it became - we went from being rather dense people to becoming quite expert at putting this stuff together. We became experts!
The Church - A Place for New Folks?
The Christian Church often falls into the same trap that IKEA does. IKEA thinks its instructions are simple, many of its customers disagree. Christians think that the concepts we teach and believe in are very simple; in reality they are very difficult for some folks to understand. We don't help matters by using odd language to describe things either. One house church leader once said: "We wear third century costumes, worship in 12th Century buildings, speak 16th Century English, sing 19th Century hymns and wonder why people don't believe Jesus is alive today." He had a point.
We often confuse people about Christianity. We do it in one of two ways; we can either use a specialist vocabulary to describe our experiences or we are unable to separate out core Christian ideas with ideas which are of secondary importance.
Language.
There are specialist vocabularies in all walks of life. As a newish magistrate I am getting acquainted with a range of legal terms and others from the Criminal Justice system. As a theology student I learnt lots of theological terms to try and explain Christian ideas and thoughts. A few weeks ago in our worship training I introduced a lot of different ideas about Holy Communion and gave the technical terms for them. I suspect very few of us could, however, explain what such terms as
" Substance
& accidents
" Transubstantiation or
" Consubstantiation
All mean! But even in general Christian life, as opposed to theological studies, specialist terms are used which confuse those who are outsiders. I know what some Christians mean by saying they are "saved" or "born again" but many others don't. I know what some Christians mean by "charismatic", "Pentecostal","anointed", "blessed", "slain in the spirit" but others don't. I know that a "novena" is nine days of prayer, an "indulgence" is time of purgatory and that being "washed in the blood of lamb" means, strangely, that one has been forgiven, but those outside the Church, or a particular part of the Church, won't have a clue!
Similarly, with theology or ideas about God we are often tempted to get people to believe exactly the same as us if they are to really seen as a true Christian. Of course we will disagree what we may have to believe in order to be a true Christian. I may think that it is necessary that all of you believe Jesus is bodily present in the bread and wine served at Holy Communion, that prayers to the saints are a good way of praying, that you should eat fish on Fridays and fast on at least Good Friday and Ash Wednesday. I may even think my ministry would be spiced up if you all came to confession regularly - you may disagree that these things are essential to being a Christian! Paul might say that the essentials of the Christian faith include speaking in tongues and worshipping in a specific way with bouncy music and lots of long sermons!
All of us who come from other church backgrounds forget that there is a profound difference between the bare bones of the Gospel - that God exists, loves us, and wants to be in relationship with us, that Jesus died so that we could be forgiven our sins and the Holy Spirit fills us with power to be disciples in our world - with all the rest which Christians will be debating until the end of time. One of my heroes, Queen Elizabeth I, said in an age of great religious intolerance "there is one faith, one God and one Lord Jesus Christ - all the rest is a dispute about trifles." A more modern thinker says "all that matters is the gospel, the rest is disagreement about tactics".
We Are Different
The papers yesterday were full of stories about the Archbishop of Canterbury going off to Rome to see the Pope. Ruth Gledhill, the rather excitable religious affairs correspondent in the Times, said that this is all about seeking unity between the Anglicans and the Catholics. Of course many in those churches want unity; but it will probably never happen . We are all different, we need different styles of church, different expressions of faith, and different understandings of Christian ideas. Some people like quiet, peaceful and simple expressions of worship and the Christian faith, others like majestic liturgy which draws us into the mysterious presence of God, others still need to feel a continuity with the tradition of the Church, others need to feel contemporary language and music to draw them closer to God and each other. We all have a unique experience of faith and all put our interpretations upon that. It is difficult to present the simple challenge of Jesus to follow Him, when instead we want to present our understanding of all that following Jesus may entail. We need to recognise that in our different understandings of what it means to be a Christian there is much strength.
St Paul summarised the message of the Gospel as "Christ crucified". We might want to enlarge that by saying "Christ crucified and risen" - as indeed St Paul would have done too if asked for a formal summary of Christian faith. We need to be careful about adding too many extras; we may believe that many of the things I mentioned earlier are important, but they are not essential. We are not called to win people over to our particular understanding of the Christian faith, we are not called to make more Catholics or more evangelicals or more charismatics, nor even dare I say, more MCCers of whatever theological hue. Instead, we are called to proclaim Jesus Christ and to leave the rest to God.
Prayer
Gracious God,
We thank you for the simplicity of the Gospel,
The message of your great love shown in Christ.
We thank you that it is not about clever words or subtle concepts,
But about the concrete expression of your love.
Forgive us for complicating that message -
For cluttering it up with our ideas and prejudices,
Our attempts to define and delimit,
Our interpretations and terminology.
Open our eyes again to all you have done for us,
And help us to communicate the simple message
Of Christ crucified and risen.
In his name we ask it.
Amen.
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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