what do you believe?

I haven’t published a sermon for a long time.  They’re available on the St Ninian’s website but it felt like following the events of the last weeks and months this was something that needed said.  You can listen and the text is below.

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A sermon on 1 John 1:1-4

1 John is a letter about the humanity of Jesus.

The community that grew up around John’s Gospel were profoundly influenced by the mysticism of it.  Jesus is the Messiah who performs signs and wonders and is so much more than just a mere mortal.  And they travelled down that route.  Christ is divine.  And they forgot about the other part, the part that is so important to the Gospel of John… Jesus was God incarnate.  God in the flesh.

The earliest arguments in the church were about who Jesus really was.

One line of thought, Docetism, was the belief that Jesus’ physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion; that is, Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die, but in reality he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die.

This first letter to John is countering the heresy of Docetism, the idea that Jesus was in effect God just pretending to be human.

These first sentences of this letter manage to balance those competing ideas beautifully.

The Message says it this way:

From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands.  The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen!  And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.

We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ.  Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy

The divine and the human… together in Jesus.

We have seen it!

We have heard it!

We have smelled it!

We have touched!

That Jesus is divine, the Son, part of the Trinity, is hugely important.  We don’t worship just a man.  We worship God… But we worship God revealed to us in human form.  Jesus shows us what God is like.

This letter starts with a reminder of the beginning… Genesis.  In the beginning God creates the humans and says “Let us make them in our image”.  

All of them.

Not just some of them.

Not just the men.  Not just the white people.  Not just the ones with blonde hair or who are heterosexual or who don’t have piercings and tattoos.  Not just the ones who call God by the name we use, in fact people who don’t even believe God exists at all.  

All of them.

All of them.

Over the centuries the Bible has been used to justify horrific things.

It has been used to justify war, and still is.

to justify slavery, and still is.

to justify the subjugation of women, and still is.

to justify beating children, and still is.

to promote racism, and still is.

to justify homophobia, and still is.

to promote greed, and still is.

This week we have seen the Bible used to promote the separation of children from their parents.  

This week we have seen the Bible used to justify the detention of children in camps.

It says in Romans that you should obey the law. 

Immigration isn’t just an issue in America.  It’s an issue here too.  It’s one of the biggest issues we face.  And it’s used as cover for all kinds of other things because it allows us to talk about ‘them’ as different to ‘us’.

But when the Bible is used to defend separating children from their families, it is time for all of us to decide…

When the Bible is used to give one group of people power over another, it is time for all of us to decide…

When the Bible is used to justify Empire, it is time for all of us to decide… what do we believe?  I mean really believe!

The first Christians lived in a brutal world ruled by dictators with cruel laws enforced by the biggest military power ever seen.  They lived in a world where they were persecuted and tortured and killed because they made a bold and faithful statement… Jesus is Lord, not Caesar.

But that statement was underpinned by a way of living that was different.  They didn’t just say that Caesar wasn’t lord, they acted like Jesus was lord.  They lived like it.

Because they had seen God.

They had heard God.

They had smelled God.

and they had touched God.

God incarnate.  God in the flesh.  The man called Jesus.

I think we make two mistakes with our faith.

The first is what we might call ‘social Christianity’.  We come to church to see our pals.  The rest of it is just the price of meeting up.  It’s ok, and sometimes it’s even good, but it’s not the main reason we are here.

The second is over spiritualising or intellectualising our faith where we live our faith in our head.  Or we spend all our time in prayer and study and never get beyond that.

Marcus Borg, the American writer puts it this way:

“The point is not that Jesus was a good guy who accepted everybody, and thus we should do the same (though that would be good).

Rather, his teachings and behaviour reflect an alternative social vision.

Jesus was not talking about how to be good and how to behave within the framework of a domination system.  He was a critic of the domination system itself.”

People who say that religion and politics don’t mix mystify me.  Unless they are politicians and then I totally get why they think that.  Jesus is dangerous.  Especially if you are trying to keep hold of power, especially power over other people.

People, voters, you and I, people like us who thing that religion and politics don’t mix, that I don’t get.  If faith in God isn’t the single most important thing in your life then what is?  Self interest?  Your bank balance?  Your own status?  Your house or car or clothes?  What else should influence our politics if not our faith?

What we believe matters.  What we do with what we believe, the way that affects our lives, that matters just as much.  If we don’t live out our faith then what’s the point of it?  It’s supposed to show.  We are meant to be changed by it.

The early church new that.  It matters that Jesus was both divine and human.  To recognise the humanity of Jesus is to recognise the responsibility we all share to each other.  It’s just not good enough for us to shrug and think that it’s ok because they are not like me.  

They are like you!

They are us because we are all humans, just like Jesus.

Ah… but charity begins at home.  The Bible says so.

Yes.  Yes it does.

That saying comes from a passage in 1 Timothy about our responsibility to each other.  It’s a passage about how the believers should behave and provide for those most in need in their community.  And it’s there because the early believers were just like us.  They were greedy and self interested and didn’t really want to share their stuff or their money or their food with others because they had bought into the same lie that we are told;

That money gives you status.

That to be poor is somehow your own fault.

That to be in need is someone else’s problem because I pay my taxes and the government should fix it.

Charity begins at home comes from Jesus’ teaching… ‘Love God, love your neighbour and yourself’.  If you can’t live that out in your own house what chance have we of living it out in the world where we discover that Jesus’ neighbour was the foreigner.  The enemy.  The outcast.  The person who you think is most unlike you, but who is exactly like you because God created humans and said “let us make them all in our image”.

I wanted to write that a time is coming when we need to decide.  But the reality is that the time is already here.  It’s been here for quite some time.  Right wing nationalism is on the rise.  And let’s not be lazy and conflate that with whatever side of the Scottish Independence debate you’re on.

Racism is on the rise.  It always happens when times are tough.  We look for people to blame.  People who are different from us.

It’s always a lie.  Every time we’ve seen it in history it has been a lie.  It was a lie then and it’s a lie now.

And it has to stop.

It has to stop!

It has to stop, not because I’m some kind of bleeding heart liberal snowflake who believes fake news and doesn’t understand how they come here and bring their different languages and food and customs and they undermine our society.  Scotland is full of immigrants.  The Scots came from Ireland.  And the Vikings.  The Normans.  The Anglo-Saxons.  The Indians and Pakistanis.  The Italians.  The Poles and the Syrians and the Somalis.  We all come from people who came here from somewhere else.

So this has to stop because they are us and we are them… and all of us, every single one of us are made in the image of God.

We know this because the disciples told us.  They writers of the Gospels told us.  The writers of the Epistles told us.

And they knew because they had seen God and heard God and smelled God and touched God.  They had met God and he was called Jesus…  And his message was one of love.

And God looks like us, and sounds like us and smells like us and feels like us… all of us.  Not some of us.  Not people like us… but all of us.

It’s time for us to decide what we believe because each one of them is us and could be us.  But more than that, each one of them is Christ.

And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”  Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?”  Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”