From a sermon preached at Roker United Reformed Church, Sunderland,16thJanuary 2011 by Revd Ray Anglesea
George was a baby boomer. Born in Manchester in 1946, George will collect his state pension later this year. As he does so he may ignore the biblical calculus that a man's span is three score years and ten and think about the possibility that he, like 10 million other Britons alive today, may become centenarians in 35 years time, according to a recent Government report. George, as he says so himself, was one of the lucky ones. George will have enjoyed a life of free love, free school meals, free universities, defined benefit pensions, mainly full employment and a 40-year-long housing boom, and George - like many others - will bequeath to their children sky-high house prices, debts and shrivelled pensions. George is a very privileged, fortunate and blessed human being – an object of resentment as much as admiration – for in this harsh cold winter season at the start of a desolate New Year - austerity and spending cuts will dominate the national conversation.
George is also a Christian; I came across a similar character in Roger Walton’s beautiful new book “The Reflective Disciple.” According to Roger, “George had been a Christian for over 50 years and even before he committed himself to the faith he belonged to a Christian family and went first to Sunday school and then to church with his parents. He had lived and worked in Salford for the whole of his life and during this time he moved churches three times, on each occasion because the congregation had grown too small to be viable and so he joined with another church of the same denomination. He used to be active in several of the church’s activities: Bible study, men’s fellowship and prayer breakfast. He was also involved in his trade union activity and saw this activity as part of his Christian duty. He no longer speaks about God much. At best he can talk about the church what it was like and what it ought to be like. He does not engage much with the bible, apart from hearing it read in church and he is no longer involved in the weekly meetings at church. He wonders sometimes now if he has been faithful and whether the decline in the church life, is, in part, his fault. He attends Sunday worship regularly, gives his money and tries to show kindness and friendship to the church members. There is much talk about from the minister at church about new ways of being church, but Fresh Expressions sounds more like a lavatory cleaner and it is hard for George to imagine what these expressions might be – it sounds very different and unfamiliar. He wonders what God wants him to do now.”
As St Paul said, “Salvation has crept up on us and we are disturbed.” Creeping disturbing words also came from the crazed figure of John the Baptist whom we met in this morning’s illustrated gospel reading with his tattered clothing and disgusting diet who baptised all-comers in the muddy waters of the Jordan. Two of John’s disciples defect to the young pale Galilean John had pointed to on the river bank and invites them, in not so many words, to transfer their loyalty to this new Mediterranean peasant teacher and healer. We heard in our King James Version of the bible that one of the two disciples, the attractive Andrew, intrigued by Jesus’ teaching leaves to find his brother Simon, later to be called Peter, the Rock. Both brothers are called by Jesus. They are called to follow. They are called to repentance and change, a spiritual process that would continue for the rest of their lives, as they continually repent, continually change, and continually see the world anew.
As we discovered in our two reflective readings this morning the idea of following Jesus for Hannah, Michael and now George is not easy and straightforward in today’s culture, as we follow Jesus “in a strange land.” But was discipleship ever easy? I suspect not. The fact is borne out by evidence found throughout the New Testament. We find discipleship means different things for different groups of followers of Jesus. But whatever tensions and difficulties there are - one thing is straightforward. Whether you were a disciple in the 1st or are a disciple in the 21st century - it is the person of Jesus who is the centre and focus of discipleship. It won’t be a Coronation Street train crash or an Archer anniversary episode in which lives will be changed forever. Jesus’ call - and his continuing call - on our lives will change us forever. In the beautiful four-part drama “Nativity” written by the former Easter Ender script writer, Tony Jordan, shown on prime time televisions on BBC1 before Christmas there is a lovely one-liner from Thomas the troubled young shepherd as he leaves the table: “He has come for people like me!”
With your permission I would like to address this morning the re-calling of the Georges/Georgianas of this world, the retired or retiring baby boomers whose life of faith might have begun in the optimistic brash, fashionable, modern bewitching world of the swinging sixties, and who are now making sense of a different age, a different culture in austerity bonus squeezing Britain. For today we live in confusing days of theological, ethical and moral uncertainty where many of the old answers don’t fit; we have less confidence in them because they were fashioned for a different world. We find the church – its power and influence diminished – we as church people and baby boomers find ourselves on the margins of mainstream society. We are dismayed to hear of the slaughter of Catholic Christians in Baghdad before Christmas, the bomb attack on an Egypt Coptic church on New Year’s Eve and now the arrest this week of Iranian Christians in a new wave of persecution.
Roderick Strange writing in The Time’s “Credo” column in Advent last year suggests that Faith is a gift that comes as invitation. We are invited to believe. We are invited to follow Jesus Christ. Over the years of sitting in pews, working in the world and church communities I have discovered that one of the most exciting things that has been so startling about that invitation to follow Jesus is that he has shown me the old world and the old theology in a new light. In one way nothing is different. In another way everything is different. Why? Because as a result of following Jesus Christ, this pale Galilean and son-of-a-virgin, the young Prince of the House of Israel, we begin to see the world in a different way. We may call it call it revelation. We may call it spiritual vision. If God, as we say, is in all things then the logic follows that he can reveal his character through all things. As Geoff Astley mentions in his book Christ of the Everyday “The knack is to see it.” Of course this is just bread and wine, of course he is just the carpenter’s son, of course this congregation is a bunch of miserable sinners. But we are also the body of Christ, full of grace and truth. And he is the Lord, the Saviour. This is my body given for you. It’s the way we see things.
As spiritual people we are nothing particularly special, except that we have learnt to follow this field preacher, this Jewish rabbi, and tried to understand and follow his teaching. As our discipleship has grown and developed over the years we see the remarkable in the mundane - we see nature, friendship, joy and struggle as “holy things” – things that express God’s rule, his hand and intention in our private, church and world affairs. We have learned to spot the Kingdom, the realm of God as it grows secretly like a mustard seed. We may have few other advantages, few worldly gifts and little status, but we rejoice as “senior” disciples of many years standing because we are spiritually blessed – for to be able to see the signs of the kingdom is to be a sign of the Kingdom oneself. And that is what we baby boomers have been given in our discipleship, in our walk with him, our journey of faith – we can see. We can spiritually see.
I started my journey with Jesus Christ after a conversion experience at university. Fresh exciting heady days they were too, full of youthful idealism and hope. But on my birthday last week when I looked back on my birthdays of the past and marvelled at the grace of which they are milestones I would want to say now that to be converted is, in the end, not so much a matter of seeing different things, as of seeing the same things differently. It involves seeing and living in a confusing world of intense hope and joy and vulnerable sensitivity to pain, rejection and despair. It involves seeing this child, woman or man, this country – or this slice of the natural world or sliver of historical time - as holy, as sacred as God’s. Hence my call to self supporting ministry. Worshipping and finding God in my workplace. God has given me and you the eyes of faith to work out that calling and that discipleship. How well I remember that phrase from the concluding sermon of my selection conference. “Having the eyes of faith.” To have the eyes of faith is the most important component of being a person of faith, a disciple of Jesus Christ. To see things differently. And to see things differently we have to change our hearts and minds. A point President Obama touched upon at last Wednesday’s memorial service in Tucson, Arizona as he honoured the victims - he called, not for the first time, for change – “a change in the way that people speak of what matters to them.”
As disciples of Jesus Christ we pray for a pure and open heart that is open to the world, to other people and ultimately to God. As Karl Barth said “the church is only holy “in its openness.” Christianity involves change and learning. All learning is change and Christian learning is the change in attitudes, beliefs and dispositions wrought through the process of becoming a disciple and continuing to be a disciple. Following the master is a wide ranging form of learning, or as we would say today a life-long learning process, a life-long learning experience.
One of the funniest adverts of the television at the moment is the one “You should have gone to spec savers!” We baby boomers on the threshold of retirement may need to adjust our spiritual vision, perhaps a different focus, through new lenses adjusted to the possibility of a new and fresh call – “to see thee more clearly” as the old prayer goes. A call not as it was. But newly minted according to this time, our age, our situation, in the light of our experience, for better and for worse. So we wait to be called again, a new call perhaps in this coming New Year of hard times, as David Cameron said in his New Year message, a year “of heavy lifting,” which Nick Clegg in his recent “walked through the fire” speech makes clear – the hard times will only intensify. But with our learning, spiritual wisdom and insight we baby boomers are well prepared to look to the future as so many of our friends and family face hardship in the wake of the financial crisis and public spending cuts, as the government proposes to shift the burden of responsibility for the poor to underfunded voluntary groups, as there are hints of industrial unrest in the Spring.
We are able. We are strong. We have the eyes of faith. We have adjusted our spiritual vision. We see things differently. We can change. We look to the future for new and even richer exciting adventures of discipleship.
May God refocus our vision and help us in our re-calling to follow the master, Jesus Christ.
Amen
Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in local church partnerships across the Northern Synod
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