Pilgrim Soldier

At the recommendation of Gordon Cotterill I’ve been reading Alan Jamieson’s Chrysalis, which is about those times in our Christian walk that St John of the Cross called the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’. It’s an excellent little book, only 112 pages long, which gives some valuable insight what can be a very difficult period in a person’s faith journey.

One of the things that jumped up of the page at me was a definition of what faith is. Jamieson writes:

…faith is far more than a set of beliefs, a creed or a set of doctrines. The faith that Jesus modelled involves our whole intellect, our passions, our convictions and our willpower. It is an intrinsically relational endeavour. It is not something we could ever do, or could ever sustain, alone.

…Christian faith is also far more than just making meaning; it is living fully within the meaning we make.”

I think this is one of the things that I have been challenged most about during my time at the college. If my faith was simply a set of beliefs then quite simply my time here would have torn it apart because my ‘belief system’ has been challenged. However, the reality is that my faith is not only a set of creeds and doctrines, instead it is a living reality that makes an ever increasing difference to the way I live my life.

One of the more controversial Bishops I have ever met was the former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, Richard Holloway. If anyone hasn’t heard of him then let’s simply say that given his very liberal viewpoint it wouldn’t be that common for me to quote him. However, in the latest issue of ThirdWay which dropped through my letterbox this morning there is a transcription of a discussion between the most famous of the so-called ‘Militant Atheists’ Richard Dawkings and Richard Holloway. Whilst I can’t agree with a lot of what is said I had to agree with the former bishop when he said this:

“…Christianity is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s not a faith that you can hold in any abstract way, it’s a journey, it’s a way of being, a way of travelling.”

Maybe if more church-goers saw Christianity in this way we would be closer to fulfilling God’s plan!

The following is part of my sermon for this morning. The sermon as a whole is based on the story of Peter walking on the water, and why he started to sink.

I believe that Jesus is desperately trying to reach out to many Christians who are floundering in their faith because they have taken their spiritual eyes of him. The tragedy is that many of those he is reaching out to, don’t even realise they have a problem! They are like the church in Ephesus that is spoken to by the angel in Revelation 2:

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.

When we are first saved we are so in love with Jesus that we follow him unreservedly. We would get out of the boat and walk on water for him, but slowly but surely there is the danger that we allow the problems of our lives to divert some of our attention from Jesus. And slowly but surely we lose the gleam of that first love. We stop taking risks for him, whilst at the same time carry on doing the stuff that he has asked us to do. Our willingness to be busy for Jesus takes over from simply being with him, and we become like Martha in Luke 10:38-42 where she is so busy making sure everything is right, that she is in danger of missing out on simply spending time with Jesus.

And of course the real problem with Martha is that she didn’t even realise that what she was doing was wrong. In fact, she wanted her sister to join with her!

In Jesus’ response to this situation there is a sense of a gentle chastisement. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” I get the image in my mind that Jesus was gently patting the cushions next to him, trying to convey the sense that he simply wanted to spend time with her!

The root of everything that goes wrong in our faith is when we stop focussing on Jesus! When we concentrate on him then we can deal with whatever comes our way and our faith need not suffer. Of course it’s difficult, but its the only way!

The other evening Zoe & I were sat up talking and at one point we were talking about God and how small some people’s image of God is. As we talked I got the memory of a song that I remember being sung by a guy who I really respected about 20 years ago. I have no idea whether it was a song written by him, or by someone else, but it was called ‘God in a Box’. I can’t even remember how the song goes, but the title has stuck with me ever since.

There really is a sense in which we have tried to stick God in a box in our faith. The size of the box varies from person to person and the contents vary on the basis of our theological and political worldview, but on the whole many of us have God stuck into a box like so much screwed up newspaper. I guess that this is some sort of defence mechanism in many ways simply because God is too big for us to understand.

If, by dint of some relevation we have managed to get God out of the box, many of us still manage to restrict our view of Him. We tend to look out of a set of windows that surround us and can see aspects of God. So some will look out at Him through the window of Wesleyan Holiness, others through the window of Pentecostalism, still others through the windows of Roman Catholism. To these we can add windows of conservatism, liberalism, progressiveism etc. But our view is still limited! It’s still an attempt for us to constrain a God that trancends constraining.

It reminds me of the Dougie Dug Dug song, “Have we made our God too small?”

The other day Zoe blogged on a quote from Bill Hybels that talks about being a Prayer Warrior! Hybels said this:

A ‘prayer warrior’ is a person who is convinced that God is omnipotent – that God has the power to do anything, to change anyone and to intervene in any circumstance.

We believe in the omnipotence of God, but subconciously I think we’re terrified by it. It is simply too big for us to comprehend and consequently our minds retreat into a safety net of boxing God in, or looking at Him through from the safety of a window.

What would our faith look like if, instead of trying to understand God from our point of view, we were simply to allow God to speak to us? Instead of us trying to fit God into a nice little box that suited our own ideas or looking at Him through the windows of our own liking, what would happen if we entered a dialogue with Him, with a totally open mind, that allowed Him to shape our views?

Within The Salvation Army there is a word that has, for my generation at least, become an unacceptable part of the vocabulary. It’s as if this simple 4 letter word has become, in English slang, a ‘four-letter word’ and to even whisper it in polite company will earn you frowns of disappointment.

The word is ‘duty’!

Why this word has become such an anathema to many Salvationists is a combination of the age we now live in and its poor use within Army circles. For any of us who grew up in the Army of the 70’s, 80’s and early 90’s, duty was used almost solely in respect of our brass band and songsters. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve heard the phrase “The band [or songsters] is on duty!” Almost without fail it meant that you would be seriously looked down upon if you weren’t at the particular event that the ‘duty section’ was in! It didn’t matter whether you had arranged something else, even months in advance, because there would always be someone who would find fault at you not being there, after all it was your duty!

This is not to say that this use of the word is particularly bad. If you commit yourself to be involved in a band or choir, of course you should be prepared to make your programme fit around its programme. However, the problem is that little, if anything, was ever mentioned about our duty to follow Jesus and be obedient to him.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why the song ‘Pathway of Duty’ has become so unpopular. Perhaps the words serve as a reminder to us of being on ‘duty’ at concerts that held little or no interest to us, and which never really seemed to bring anyone into the Kingdom.

We live today in a world that concentrates on the rights of the individual and a reluctant, tacit acceptance that many people have given up on being responsible members of society. Duty is unpopular as it suggests a reigning in of freedom and forces us to conform to certain societal ideals.

Yet duty is important, and we do have a duty in our walk with Jesus. At the root of our faith is a duty to be obedient. Without obedience our faith cannot grow. Bill Hull, in his book Choose the Life, has written that:

Many people have studied the Bible and considered following Jesus, but until we actually step out in obedience to him, we can’t experience the transformation of our character.

Many of us in the church are obedient to the rules of reading our Bible and praying every day, yet when it comes to being obedient to the Holy Spirit in our lives we ignore him. We choose the path of religiosity in our faith rather than being followers of our Rabbi who is also the Son of God.

Our duty as Christians is to put aside everything of ourselves, surrender our self-control, and to become disciples whose every step is a step of obedience. By embracing this duty of obedience to him, we will in the words of that old, often despised song discover that “while we walk this path of duty we will find our needs supplied from the river of God’s mercy that is flowing close beside.”

Today I had a long conversation with the leader of a CA group and it was probably the most satisfying conversation I’ve had about faith since being back in the UK. This man, who was a similar age to me, had no problem at all saying that he was totally reliant on God. During the conversation it was clear that this was someone who constantly sought the will of God in his life, and that he is seeing God at work.

The problem though is that he doesn’t fit into the standard mould of what a Christian should be. He hasn’t prayed any sort of ’sinner’s prayer’; he doesn’t recognise Jesus as the Son of God; and he’s never read the Bible. He does however seek to live by the famous Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and has read Emmet Foxes book ‘Sermon on the Mount’ and in it found a lot that challenged him.

Yet, his sense of faith is staggering and also humbling. Like many of those who go through the 12 step programme, his expression of concern for others puts most Christians to shame. He is willing to discuss his faith with anyone who wants to listen, but won’t force it upon anyone who isn’t, again putting many Christians, who can’t sometimes even articulate what they believe, to shame.

So how did we finish? Well I suggested that he pick up the book that is the real source of much of the texts in the Big Book and contains the real Sermon on the Mount, and an invite to chat about any questions that reading it might raise. Hopefully, he took away a sense of a Christian who was willing to respect his position, whilst being challenged to discover more about Jesus. What I took away though was an uneasy sense that far too many of us in the church are not as willing to discuss faith as easily as he was!

In his book on Christian Community, “Life Together” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote these words:

“The Old Testament day begins at evening and ends with the going down of the sun. It is the time of expectation. The day of the New Testament church begins with the break of day and ends with the dawning light of the next morning. It is the time of fulfilment, the resurrection of the Lord. At night Christ was born, a light in the darkness; noonday turned to night when Christ suffered and died on the Cross. But in the dawn of Easter morning Christ rose in victory from the grave.”

At dawn on that first Easter morning, almost 2000 years ago, there was no hope; there was only desolation in the hearts of that handful of women who made their way to the garden tomb to anoint the body held within. It must have been a sombre and soul-destroying walk from their rented rooms to that borrowed grave.

Imagine for a moment the horror there must have been when they saw the tomb lying open. Surely it must have brought into their minds the ultimate finale to the events they had witnessed. Not only had Jesus been brutally flogged; not only had he been nailed to a cross; but now his burial place had been desecrated. How much more were they doing to have to bear?

But then, as they peered through the entrance to see the damage they feared had been done, they saw an angel; an angel who pronounced that Jesus was no longer there but had risen to life again.

This is the message that is the centre of our hope; this is the message that forms the centre of the gospel which we are called to proclaim!

This was no ordinary resurrection, if there can be such a thing. This was not the sort that we read of in the Old Testament or even like those in Jesus’ miracles. No this resurrection was unlike any ever witnessed, either before or since, for Jesus died full of our sin but rose empty of it. He took our sins to hell and then left them there so that we could stand blameless before our God.

This is the hope of this morning’s dawn; this is the hope of Easter; this is the hope of the gospel; that Jesus died and rose again, so that all who declare Jesus as Lord may not only live in eternity with him, but may also be signposts of that hope in this dark world.