Rampant Lions: Confusing Gods!

A sermon on Psalm 121 preached at Cromwell College UQ

As you came into the Chapel this morning, if you looked back, you may have seen the Cromwell College logo on the end of the dining hall.  I can remember on more than one occasion looking up to that symbol during my years as a resident here at Cromwell.

Now as I prepared for today’s service the image of the Rampant Lion got me thinking about Oliver Cromwell, the so called Lord Protector.  The person the College is named after.  It was this that led me to the sermon theme, “Rampant Lions: Confusing Gods”. 

But a sermon is not a history lesson but as I said before is an opportunity to reflect on God speaking to us through the words of scripture.  So, as I was looking at the readings set down for the day, I kept coming back to Psalm 121 and its very first line:

I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?

This line has some powerful ancient imagery associated with it.

This Psalm is one of a group of the Psalms known as the Psalms of Ascent.  What this means is that, this Psalm is one of a group of Psalms that were sung or recited, as the Jewish people travelled to Jerusalem for the festivals at the temple: maybe, Yom Kippur or Pentecost.  They were sung to prepare people’s hearts and minds for the religious event in Jerusalem.

The reason this first line of the Psalm comes as a question is not surprisingly because that is exactly what it is: from where will my help come?

Anyone who has travelled through southern Europe and the Middle East may have noticed what is on many hills in those regions.

Temples!  There are temples to the Greco-Roman Gods to Mars and to Venus, to Aphrodite, to Zeus and to Apollo and shrines to other minor deities.  You can imagine the dusty travellers literally looking to the hills, seeing the plethora of belief systems of gods on offer:  I lift my eyes to the hills – and there is Apollo and there is Zeus! ‘From where will my help come?’ they ask.  In response to the alternatives they are reminded of their faith and their history.  Will my help come from any of these no, “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

This statement is loaded in its spiritual and theological meaning. The Hebrew people told a different story about creation to other ancient cultures.  They wrote down their story during the time of the Babylonian captivity, over 600 years before Christ.  It is a story that stands in contrast to other ancient world views about a single unoriginated God who made everything.  It seems logical somewhere back there is one single coherent cause of all things, an ultimate truth: God.

This is the God in whom the pilgrims put their faith and it is the same God we come to worship on this day.  It is also the same God made more fully know and present in the world by Jesus.

Yet, despite this allegiance to the creator of all things how we think about that God and how we might follow that God are certainly questions which are up in the air.  As human beings there is always a limit to our comprehension of god and the world we live in, so it is that more often than not our portrayal of God is unhelpful.

To given an example of this let me return to Oliver Cromwell and his symbol, the rampant lion.  What kind of God is found in the legacy of Cromwell?

Cromwell was a puritan and a devout man: he opposed the celebration of Christmas; he shut down theatres; he was deeply concerned about drinking; he prayed fervently; and, he certainly had a sense he had been called by God to what he was doing.

Yet the rampant lion reveals something of his understanding of God, the creator of all things, as a God who supported violence and war.  Cromwell was involved in the English Civil of the mid 1600s, where he rose through the ranks to become a leader.  He was involved in decision to execute the King, Charles I and he led campaigns in Ireland and Scotland.

The negative impact of his life is still felt today.  Just the other night I was down at the school chatting about my weekend with a couple of parents who just happen to Irish, so I mentioned Oliver Cromwell.  Immediately, the both declared “To Hell or to Connaught” and went on to explain how hated Cromwell was in Ireland and how he is still held responsible for much the angst and anger of the Irish against the English.  Almost, 400 years later this negative legacy holds.

Just to fill in a tiny glimpse of his Irish campaign Cromwell led the English army into Ireland to subdue the Irish, especially the Catholics.  It is reported at the siege of Drogheda and of Wexford his army committed massacres killing somewhere around 6000 people.  Among those killed at Wexford were many women and children.

After Drogehda Cromwell famously said, “I am persuaded that this is a righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches.”

When we look to the hills, as the Psalmist invites us to, and see the alternatives and when we are presented with Christian history in which we encounter such images of people that followed God like Cromwell what do we do?

Is this the God of whom the pilgrims sang? A God that condones violence and bloodshed and even encourages it?  A God who could very well be represented by a rampant lion?  After all Psalm 137 finishes with these disturbing words:

“O daughter Babylon, you devastator!

Happy shall they be who pay you back

what you have done to us!

Happy shall they be who take your little ones

and dash them against the rock!”

If this is the God we believe in, the God that Cromwell believed justified the violence of his troop’s actions, then I wonder what hope there is for the church.  And I am little surprised when most of my contemporaries look to the hills and see other options as far more palatable.  Not so much other Gods but other choices about the worldview they well adopt.

It is little wonder that the inheritors of the work of thinkers like d’Holbeck and Marx and Nietzsche people like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, and A C Grayling have so great an appeal. 

The conundrum that I am speaking of, which we are participants in, might be more simply expressed in the fact that our congregation has too many vacant seats on a Sunday and that chapels like this one are rarely used for worship.  Churches are closing in Australia and only around 6-7% of Australians actively engage their faith by involvement in regular worship.

Can we here still look to the hills and choose to put our trust in the Lord who made heaven and earth?  I think the answer is yes and I believe the door has been left open even by the new atheists to look to the creator of heaven and earth.

A few years back atheists in England took out advertising on buses in England.  On the bus are the words, “There’s probably no God.  Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”  ironically, by saying ‘probably’ ‘ they leave the room for the possibility that there might still be a God.

The answer is yes but I also believe it is an answer which comes with humility.  We must admit that there are times we do not know and cannot express the fullness of our creator and, more than that, that through our history misinterpreting this God has led to much heartache and pain.  we need to listen carefully to the story of this God and shaping our understanding of the creator of all things is the story of Jesus.  The appearance of Jesus in our human history and in our lives is undoubtedly a touchstone for us.

In the few verses I read from the New Testament we heard what for many is a well know phrase in the words of John 3:16.  It is a phrase grounded in this God’s love by sending Jesus into the world and we are told that this occurs because: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The creator’s intention, the one to whom we look, is a God not interested in condemnation, and might I dare to suggest punishment and violence against others, but in salvation.  This God is about all people living in the fullness of life and in the gift of community within the creation.  In Jesus there is a vision and an encounter with the maker of all things which gives us hope because we believe, ‘in him all things in heaven and on earth and have been reconciled’.  This is a message of hope for everyone.

The other day I was talking with the young woman who was making my coffee at Briki.  Many of the congregation know of my regular visits across the road for my caffeine hit!  She asked about the Commencement Service for the University that we just had and she wondered whether people her age were interested in religion.

My answer was to ask her did she think her friends were interested in questions like; where does the world come from, or how should people behave, or what is the meaning and purpose life.  Of course she answered yes for herself and she admitted other young people think about these questions too.  These are spiritual questions and I shared that for me the church is a place in which we explore these very questions.

She was right to point out the many different places people can explore these questions.  When people look to the hills there are many options but for me logically there can only be one creator of all things.  And, for me, the church and its faith are a place in which the exploration of who that creator is takes places.  More than that, it is the place in which we encounter the story of that creator walking among us in the man Jesus from Nazareth.

It is this story that shapes our hope and helps us as we explore the ambiguous images of God handed down to us by Christians through the centuries.  Oliver Cromwell believed in God and believed he was called by God to do what he did.  His faith was deep but looking back I am deeply troubled by the way he understood that God.  And maybe this is a reminder all of us only see a glimpse of the truth.

But as I come to the end of this sermon with the confused images of God we have encountered I am also reminded of a scene from the “Life of Brian” where the People’s Front of Judea are meeting and asking what have the Romans ever given us: clean water, sanitation, roads, education, peace...

Despite the ambiguities of Christian history when we ask what the church has ever done for us, a bit like the skit, we might begin to expand our vision and see how the story of God has been active: a sense of community, universities, scientific methodologies, schools, hospitals, social welfare, spirituality, a framework for our lives and the list goes on.

I believe this is good news for any person any person young or old and worthy of sharing in their search for meaning.  Yes, there are many choices but lurking behind them all is a single story, a single truth. It is a truth revealed in ancient words:

I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

And sent his son among us not to condemn the world,

But in order that the world might be saved through him.

Making Promises: Baptism!

Is it important to keep the promises we make, especially ones made in public?

Ask any of the Australian public about it at the moment and I am sure the answer would be yes. The thought that our PM may have reneged on a promise seems to be unforgivable.

But maybe its some promises we make and not others?

I have recently been reflecting on baptism (here) and it's integrity in our contemporary setting.

Many families who come seeking baptism are not currently attending church and once the baptism is done are rarely seen again. This, despite promises to engage in the life of the church that they make in the context of the baptism service.

When discussing this recently with congregation members I described the promises made in baptism as at least as important as the ones made at a wedding. They are a life-long commitment and involve choices about daily life and involvement in the worshipping life of the church.

This means as part of the conversation I begin to open up a commitment to attending church and church membership.

The question raised was whether or not it was right for me to put the 'hard word' on so early. The example given was that when you make a choice to marry someone you go through a courting period, then an engagement, before reaching the altar.

After reflecting a little more on this, what I have realised is, that for those people who have come simply to get the kids baptised the promises they are making are a bit like an arranged marriage. The people make the promises and then develop the relationship.

Of course we could be critical of this approach but I am caught in two minds as I picture Jesus walking along a beach and saying follow me to a bunch of fishermen. He called them and then they developed the relationship.

I continue to think that as long as I seek to faithfully convey the depth of promise that is being made, and being made in a public setting, then it is up to the family to live out that promise and the congregation, that also makes promises, to help them do so.

The question that parents and congregation should consider is that when the children we baptise are all grown up whether we will be able to answer the questions they might have for us:

Why didn't you take me to church?

Why didn't you tell me about God's love in Jesus?

Did you do everything you could to help me understand the Christian life?

You taught me about everything else, why not faith?

Why did you let others indoctrinate me?

Baptism with Integrity

How do we recover a sense of the central importance of baptism?

Some churches have sought to do so by rejecting infant baptism in favour of adult baptism, yet whilst those adult baptisms I have done have been particularly meaningful, there is something to be said about the wonder of grace expressed in baptising an infant.

The words of the baptismal prayer from the French Reformed Church capture this wonderfully "for you, little child, event though you do not know it."

However, again and again the significance of the event appears lost on people and whilst grace may be proclaimed in that moment the ongoing witness of a life lived in Christ appears so often either obscured from view or simply neglected.

In his book Atheist Delusions David Bentley Hart provides a snapshot of anancient liturgy and the commitment involved in entering the waters of baptism (p111-113).

He describes how, in the ancient world, baptism and the inculsion in the Christian community of faith invovled a clear turning away from other gods, from the realm of darkness and the devil.

It meant turning towards Christ and living following his way.

Whilst I was baptised as an infant, Hart's words nonetheless reminded me of my own conviction that my baptism, is core to my life. Living as a person baptised into Christ's body is the determinative marker of my life.

This means that I view baptism as one of the most, if not the single most, significant events of my life. Through baptism my life has been drawn into Chirst's and the Spirit shapes my life now as a witness to God's love and grace.

Baptism, which signifies for me my life live in Christ and as a disciple of Jesus, shapes me and informs me in my vocation, my marriage, my role as a father and as a friend. The list could go on.

My memory of the event has little importance to me but my living of it is central to who I am, for now I am not simply my own, set adrfit in a universe alone, but I am Christ's.

I find great empathy for Hart's reminder of the central importance of baptism and all that it meant so long ago.

Similarly, I find a great connection to Ben Myer's parable about baptism, and ask are we clergy too ready to give a wink and a nod to those who come askign to have their child christened?

How do we proclaim that uncondiotional grace which has a necessary response without turning grace and faith into judgement and works?

Maybe it is in witness? So I give thanks for parents and for a church who in faith and in trust gave to me this gift of baptism and to the God who has been faithful to me in nurturing and guiding me.

Peter Lockhart

Trinity Sunday: An old sermon!

Peter Lockhart

An sermon from 2007 Year A Trinity Sunday... what to do this week?

Today the lectionary gives to us a gift from the church – today is Trinity Sunday. The reason that I say that it is a gift from the church is that the concept of the Trinity does not come to us directly from Scripture because the Bible does not use this language, this word Trinity, to describe God. Rather, in reflecting on the depth of God’s revelation to us in Jesus Christ the early church in its struggle to articulate the truth of God’s existence adopted this language of describing God as Trinity.

This comes to us as gift in the context of the struggle of humanity to know its creator and to understand the creation. In his book The Mind of God the eminent mathematician and physicist Paul Davies declared ‘While we assume there is a design behind the physical reality, science can’t really tell us anything about the designer, the nature of God, or God’s relationship with human beings.’ (end quote)

To seek to understand God and to listen for the story of God does not mean turning away from scientific inquiry and reason but marrying it with the revelation of this very creator in our midst. For, to borrow a phrase from another physicist and theologian John Polkinghorn, to describe God as trinity is not a case of doing some ‘speculative mystical arithmetic’ but is grounded in the very narrative of the revelation of God found in the scriptures.

Jesus’ claims concerning himself and his relation with God and the Holy Spirit give rise for us to speak of God in this way.

John asserts Jesus to be the eternal word of God.

Jesus claimed that he was in the Father and the Father was in him and that those who had seen him had seen the Father.

The promise of the Holy Spirit is the promise of the Spirit sent from the Father, the same Spirit that was seen descending on Jesus at his baptism.

And, Jesus command to go and baptise in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit further makes this description of God appropriate.

Here in these passages and others we encounter God not simply as some monad but that God in Godself is a community of existence – a communion of being.

If we listen to the very first story found in the scriptures this truth of God’s very nature as existing as a communion is found as we hear that we are created in God’s image:

“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness:

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.”

Here we find that to be made in God’s image is to be made male and female – not male or female, but both together – a community. To be in the image of God is to be one, yet one with distinct entities. The fullness of being human in the image of God is being humans together, just as God is one yet three.

This helps us to make sense of the statement that God is love. To love involves both a lover and an object of that love. If God in God’s very self is love then that love is a love expressed in the mutuality of existence of the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

This gives to us the context of our own existence created to love and be loved by God and by each other – to do less than this would be to deny the reality of our being created in God’s image and thereby to deny what it means to be truly human.

Yet the narrative that unfolds in the pages of the scriptures is that this exactly what human beings do: rather than live in the communion of love whereby we exist as one for each other we as human beings continually seek our personal end, our personal gain.

The story of Adam and Eve is not some isolated event in prehistory but is each of our own stories – we deny the reality of our existence and seek more as if what we have already been given is not enough. And when we are questioned about this we try to blame someone else.

But God’s love for us is so deep that he gives to us himself, his son, the incarnation – Jesus with us to live for us. Here the work of God as Trinity becomes clearer and even yet more confronting. Jesus fully human and fully divine shares our human existence living in communion with God and the creation.

The culmination of Jesus share in our existence as well as our estrangement from God and each other is found in the cross and resurrection. The theologian Jürgen Moltman describes Jesus death as an entirely Trinitarian in which Jesus human cry of abandonment, ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ is matched by the desolation of God the Father as mourns the estrangement of humanity in the death of his only son.

Here we begin to have an insight into the concern of God at our suffering and of God’s will that this not be the last word for the cross without the resurrection leaves us without much hope. The Spirit descends into the realm of dead to – a place complete oppose and devoid of God’s existence to meet Jesus there and bring him to new life.

To contemplate this is to understand that even in the place of death to which Jesus descends, a place of complete separation from God Jesus is retrieved. The Eastern Orthodox churches speak of the days between Jesus death and resurrection as the time of his descent into hell. There is no place in this life or in our death that God has not been and that God cannot reach us.

This God, who is love, loves us to this point of self sacrificial giving so that we might be with God eternally. The sending of the Holy Spirit to us makes us one with Jesus in his action for us and in the church we are made to be a sign of hope for the world as humans existing as human beings created in God’s image are meant to – as community.

The church is meant to be God’s people living in respect to how we were created and were recreated to live, but it does not take a genius to see that we do not live this way as the church, even though this is the church we believe that God calls us to be. Like those who lived before Jesus death and resurrection our fall into temptation, to live as if we are not in created God’s image and so to seek something other, is continually there.

The rampant individualism of the post enlightenment world, both modernism and post modernism, have so impacted on the belief of the western church that for so many our faith is private or personal matter. Evangelists continually emphasize our personal relationship with Jesus as being the central reality of faith, but unless we understand that as persons we are not drawn into a one on one faith experience but into the community of God’s existence which includes not only other people but the fullness of creation then we have turned away from the truth of the gospel.

To be Christian means to be the church – for the church is the body of Christ, it is the Church in the power of the Spirit. Bound together by God’s love and into God’s existence together we celebrate our risen Lord.

This understanding of the church came up in my lecturing on Thursday when I was quoting a passage from John Calvin’s Institutes written in 1559.

“For when we believe the Church, it is in order that we may be firmly persuaded that we are its members. In this way our salvation rests on a foundation so firm and sure, that though the whole fabric of the world were to give way, it could not be destroyed.”

Half of the students reacted to this understanding of the church expressing that whilst the ideal and imagery is great it had not been their experience of the church. Many had been hurt and burnt within the community of the faithful – a reality for most of us.

Yet within the arms of the church that we believe, the church that God has made through the power of the Spirit, our hope is that we do share in the Trinitarian life of God and we become fully human.

Calvin, being the realist he was, declared:

"But in order to embrace the unity of the Church in this manner, it is not necessary, as I have observed, to see it with our eyes, or feel it with our hands. Nay, rather from its being placed in faith, we are reminded that our thoughts are to dwell upon it, as much when it escapes our perception as when it openly appears."

Being church is as much a matter of faith and an expression of God’s Trinitarian life as our hope in the promise of Jesus that we will find our way home in him.

The depths of the mystery of our faith stand alongside the mystery and wonder that is seen in the creation by the physicists and biologist and ecologists. Our unity with God who is Father, Son and Spirit, our unity with each other, our unity with all living things humbles us and gives to us place in this world, in our lives and with our God.

Giving thanks for this mystery we can echo the wonder of the great Albert Einstein:

One cannot but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one merely tries to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

So with him and millions before us and millions to come let us pass into silence before the mystery of the Trinity and seek the face of the one who loves us.

Believing is Seeing!

Thomas’ doubt that Jesus had risen is the classic case of ‘seeing is believing’.

‘The other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”’

Now I have long thought that Thomas has received bad press being labelled ‘the doubter’ because the rest of the disciples did not believe until Jesus appeared to them. However, that anomaly in Christian tradition aside I want to explore with you this morning the interplay between belief, doubt and revelation.

To begin with whilst we have a tendency to think that seeing is believing I heard a sermon in January in which the minister asserted it is actually the other way around. What we believe determines what we see, or at least shapes our seeing.

To give an example of this, consider what you believe about people who live in poverty. You might believe that there are enough opportunities in this life so that if people work hard enough they should not live in a state of poverty. In other words some people believe that we make our own beds and therefore logically must lie in them. So if a poor person turns up whilst you might have some compassion for them there would also be a level of blame going on, most likely subconsciously. This person has gotten themselves into this mess.

On the other hand you might believe that people who live in poverty are victims of circumstance, which might include things like socio-economic surroundings, education opportunities or health issues. So when a poor person turns up when you look at them you see the person as a victim of the difficulties that life can throw at us. Once again there would probably be some compassion and maybe a sub-conscious thought like there but the grace of God goes I.

Now of course there would be a whole range of beliefs that people could have towards those who are poverty stricken and we might even find a blend of beliefs in the same person based on the idea that different situations mean different things. So we might find a belief which can accept a poor person in a developing country but not a first world country which has greater welfare and employment opportunities.

The point is that what we believe shapes how we see things, how we see events and people. If you listen carefully to each other most of us can hear what other peoples belief systems include because most of us have a tendency to sprout our beliefs somewhat unknowingly. Most of us have little sayings which are like our life rules – they are our beliefs and they shape how we see people and things and how we respond to them.