Sermon preached at Christchurch; St Mary’s, 25th July 1999
Gen 29:15-28
Rom 8: 26-39
Matt 13: 31-33; 44-52
As you know, Ruth and I have come from Bristol, and
while we were there I heard of a curate who, when he was just about to get up to
preach his first sermon, heard a West Indian nun mutter this in his ear: “Curates think they have all the answers,
and they tell them all in their first sermon.”
So here goes!
There is so much to say about these passages, but I
thought I might start by telling you a little bit about myself, and what some
of these words have meant in my own life and my own experience of God. I’ve got one thing about the past, and one
thing about the future. First the
past. As some of you may know, although
I left Swindon when I was young, I was born in Princess Margaret hospital - I’m
glad I’ve got here before they knock it down, and it gives me goosebumps
whenever I pass it - unfortunately there were complications at my birth. I was the wrong way round, and after a long
labour my Mum had an emergency Caesarean.
I had to be placed in intensive care, and stayed in an incubator for a
number of days - I almost died. At some
time in all this process I was given oxygen.
Unfortunately the oxygen levels were not set right and I got a measure
of brain damage as a result of this which made the right hand side of my body
weaker than the left. You have probably
noticed, or thought you have noticed, that my right arm is weaker than my
left. Well, that is the result of this,
although as I now realise, the extra oxygen, while damaging my body,
simultaneously increased my intelligence, good looks, and virility.
Why am I telling you this? On one level it’s because from the start I want you to know you
can mention it, or chat about it without worrying that you are going to offend
me. But more importantly it’s because I
think it shows how we can make sense of something that Paul is writing about in
this letter we have read this morning.
What does it mean when we say that all things work together for the good
for those who love God? Where was God
when I was in that incubator? Where was
he when I was a teenager and had to struggle with being physically different in
front of my peers? Or how can things
possibly work for good in Kosovo, Northern Ireland, in the rest of the
difficulties and mess that so often make up our lives? As Simon reminded us last week, it’s a
difficult thing to be a human being.
It’s a big question.
But I would now say that, while I still have this weakness, despite
having sought God’s healing for it in the past, God has worked for the good in
my life through having this very defect.
I have come to see that in many ways I can be a better person because of
it, and not despite it. A few years ago
whenever anyone asked me about it I would have smiled sweetly but inside have
been muttering all kinds of things.
Getting up and talking about it today is a measure of how much he has
brought healing and acceptance to me, largely through the love of Ruth and my boys. It isn’t that he wished it on me, or willed
my suffering, just as it isn’t that he has wished for any of the barbarity of
Kosovo. But the mystery of his love is
that it is through my weakness that he has been able to show me how much he
accepts me, on how much deeper a level is his love for me. And I hope that in some ways what I have
learnt through this can help in my ministry to touch others who are struggling
in whatever way.
All things work together for the good for those who
love God. This is because we believe in
the kind of God who specialises in turning our hardships into his victories,
our tragedies into his triumphs. It’s
almost as if he finds it easier to work with us when we have messed things up,
because it is only then that we become aware that we really do need him. My power is made perfect in weakness God
told Paul in 2 Corinthians. If we look
at verse 26 in Romans 8 we see the same idea again. The Spirit helps us to pray when we don’t know what to say. When we are driven to the point of having
little or nothing to offer in our own strength, God acts.
We try to love and follow God, but more often than not
we mess it up. We have committed
ourselves to being a joyful vibrant community which expects God to move, but we
know that in many ways we have a long way to go, and every church has its
moments of failures. But it is our very
brokenness that qualifies us for God to move in our lives, because he is the
one who turns tragedies into triumphs.
We don’t have to be crippled by what we are not, or have not been. I am not a bruising athlete, but God has
used that very fact to bring his grace into my life. You might not feel you are a great Christian, but God says, “My
power is made perfect in weakness” We
might feel we have a long way to go as a church, but we can believe that all
things work together for the good for those who love God.
I said I would say something about the future. It’s important to be those who look back,
but it is equally important to focus on the future. Here I face a question.
As I begin my time here what is the one thing that God wants me to do
more than anything else? Answers on a
postcard please! I believe it is
actually pretty simple, and it’s the one thing that he wants all of us to
do. And it is this: to touch people
with the message that nothing can separate us from the love of God and if he is
for us who can be against us? If there
is one wish I have for my time here it is that every encounter I have with
people in this parish would be one which let each person know in some way that
God is for them. If I can leave here in
three to four years and there are some people who can say I understand a little
bit more how much God loves me then my ministry will have served a useful
purpose. But after all, isn’t that the
role which we all have? Aren’t we all
ministers of God’s love in whatever field of life we plough our particular
furrow? What would it be like if for
this week we all decided that by God’s grace every person would know through
meeting with us that God was for them?
To know this in our bones is to be changed. If we can grasp right down in our bones that
God loves us unconditionally then everything else we long for will follow. But we find it so hard to hear because we
simply aren’t used to experiencing that kind of love. The other day I heard it a little bit. I have three boys, and most of the time they are really quite
sweet. However, to present a slightly
dramatised but typical scenario, the other evening Ruth was out and I was
putting them to bed. The two older boys
were in the bath while I was changing Toby in the next room. You know that feeling when everything is
just a little too quiet? Apparently
overflows are put on baths to stop the water flowing over the edge. Ours wasn’t working. John calls out, rather delightedly, “Hamish
has been naughty!” There is nothing
that makes John happier than when Hamish has been naughty. I shove Toby in the baby bouncer and dash
into the bathroom. I do a salvage job
on the floor, pull the plug out and tell Hamish he’s been naughty. Hamish laughs and puts his finger in the
swirling water going down the plughole.
Toby starts screaming. I run out
and he is still in the baby bouncer, but only by one leg. There is sick on the floor. I can’t put him to bed with the mess in the
bathroom still at danger level so I try and put him back in the bouncer. Have you ever tried putting a moving baby
into a swinging bouncer? I’m there for
several minutes, still can’t do it.
“Help! I need the toilet!”
shouts John. “Get on it yourself,” I
reply patiently. “I can’t! Help!” yells John. I put Toby on the floor.
He starts screaming again. I
can’t do anything about him now. I put
John on the toilet, I get Hamish out of the bath. I put his nappy on and wind the sellotape around it that we have
had to put on ever since he started taking them off in bed and making us run
out of clean sheets. I get John off the
toilet, and get his pyjamas on. Toby
still screaming, so I shove a bottle in his mouth. He goes off - that’s one down.
I read the other two their stories, say their prayers. We forget about doing teeth tonight. I turn off the light and close the door,
leaning against the wall, savouring the silence, and thanking God that I
managed to get through that without shouting, swearing or screaming. I have nothing on my feet. I feel something cold and wet between my
toes. I look down. It’s Toby’s sick, still not cleared up. I scream.
All this does have a point, because it’s later when I’ve calmed down and
gone to sit in their bedroom that God speaks to me. There is nothing that can make you love your children more than
when you look at them asleep. They are
so vulnerable, so peaceful, and I found myself thanking God for them and
telling that no matter how terrible, how difficult, how mediocre, how stubborn
they could ever be I would love them more than anything else, and I would never
hold anything back from them, and I would even die for them if I had to. And as I watched them breathing quietly in
their beds I felt God turning those words back on me. I know as God’s child I can be as difficult, rebellious,
seemingly uncaring as my children sometimes are, but God showed me that the way
I care for my own kids is the way he loves me - it’s actually only a fraction
of it. God is the Father who can love
us through everything and has even already proved that death is not too great a
price for us.
God can work all things, the seemingly good and the
seemingly tragic, together for good.
Nothing can separate us from his love - he hasn’t even withheld his own
son from us. God says today to us at
Christchurch, Old Town, “I am for you”.
I know that God is for me here, and I’m looking forward to the
future. If I needed proof of that, as
we were leaving Bristol for the last time, and getting on to the M32, the last
thing we saw was a billboard which read - Swindon a better place to live. What more proof could you need? As we finish, I want to reread those last
verses again, and I want us to hear them as a church as words for us. We need to know at the root of everything
that God is for us as a community, so let’s listen to him speaking to us. As you listen, try and open your heart to
God and let him speak to you.