Sermon Details

THE MOVEMENT OF A CURTAIN

A Sermon preached by Rev Norman Wallwork

at the Mint Methodist Church, Exeter on 16th October 2011

Which do we imagine that is of more interest to God - the recent publication of a new Methodist hymn- book or the recent publication of a report on how our hospitals treat the elderly?

 

When Jesus advised his critics to render to Caesar what belonged to Caesar and to render to God what belonged to God - it is often assumed that he was drawing a clear distinction - between the world of politics - and the world of faith.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Where there are good lines of communication between the community that governs and the community that prays there is the optimum chance of the greatest good for the greatest number.

When  there  is  a  breakdown  in  communication  between  the  community  that  governs  and  the community that prays - both are profoundly and seriously impoverished.

The political power that disengages itself from the community of faith puts its people at great risk and the community of prayer that is indifferent to those in power is in danger of becoming irrelevant.

Which do you suppose is of greater concern to God - what has gone on this week in the corridors of the

Palace at Lambeth  or what has occurred in the corridors of the Palace of Westminster?

Do we believe God has more interest in who will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury or who will be the next Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom?

Do we think God feels safer working through TEAR Fund or CHRISTIAN AID rather than OXFAM or the

RED CROSS?

Do we presume that God is more interested in a just political resolution for Christians, Muslims and Jews in and Palestine or in a better way forward for Hindus and Muslims on the India-Pakistan border?

Do we feel that the prayer of a Christian congregation for a priest with cancer is likely to be more effective than the prayer of a community of Tibetan monks for their abbot suffering from leukaemia?

Again and again we need to revisit the charge levied against Christianity fifty years ago by J B Phillips ––

‘Your God is Too Small’

Jesus intended us to be deeply aware of what belongs to Caesar’s community of government and what belongs to God’s community of faith but not to pitch the value of one against the other.

Indeed it is the interdependence of the sacred and the secular rather than a sharp distinction between them that lies at the centre of scripture and the heart of the gospel.

‘I am  recovering  the  claim’  pleaded  George  McLeod,  ‘that  Jesus  was  not  crucified  in  a  cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves, on the town garbage heap, at a crossroad so cosmopolitan they had to write his title in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.  It was the kind of place where cynics talk smut, thieves curse, and soldiers gamble.  That’s where he died’.

This Biblical tradition and this gospel imperative of the interdependence of the sacred and the secular is never more clearly established than in today’s appointed Isaiah reading.

500 years before the birth of Christ - God looks upon the faithless Israelite community and informs their prophet, Isaiah, that he is about to raise up an anointed servant from a foreign faith and an alien power

– no less a figure than the Persian conqueror, Cyrus the Great. So we read in Isaiah chapter 45

Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped

to subdue nations before me and strip kings of their robes.

Cyrus, who will open doors before me —

and the gates shall not be closed:

2 Cyrus, says the LORD,

‘I will go before you

and level the mountains,*

I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron,

3 so that you may know [Cyrus] that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.

4   I surname you, though you do not know me.

5 I arm you, though you do not know me,

6 so that the nations may know, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.

7 I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe;

I the Lord do all these things.

This is one of the most disturbing moments of all Biblical theology which we neglect at our peril.

God is just as surely and certainly at work in the community that governs as he is in the community that

prays.

Whether the world we regard as sacred is more open to God’s bidding than the world which we regard as secular is a moot question.

The prophet Isaiah was informed that it was through an anointed secular power that God was going to knock the sacred community back into shape.

How often – in the Church’s public intercessions - we discern an imbalance in the proliferation of requests for its own ministries and enterprises and the paucity of its prayers for the world in which it lives and the justice for which it cries out.

In response to a recent question as to why there are no prayers in the Methodist Prayer Handbook for the  nations of North Africa the reply came that as we have no Methodist mission partners or congregations there - we don’t specifically pray for them.

All of us are in the kindergarten of intercession whether we bring before God issues that we regard as sacred or concerns we broadly presume to be secular.

When we place any concern before God in prayer what do we really think we are doing?

Are we trying to explain the situation to God because we think he may not have understood it?   I

sometimes suspect that at the end of our prayers God simply responds – ‘Too much information!’

Do we sometimes turn up the heat or volume in our prayers because we think the more people who pray about something the more likely God is to do something?

What sort of a God doesn’t do the best he can in any situation unless we pray about it?

Do we believe prayer changes God’s mind or is the primary result of intercessory prayer that it changes the attitudes and transforms the actions of those who are praying?

When we prayed for a change of heart in Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness where did we expect God to be at work?

When we prayed for the downfall of apartheid in South Africa how did we expect God to proceed?

How do we expect God to be at work in Zimbabwe or Fiji or Rwanda before we pray and when we have prayed?

Does God still raise up in secular communities modern day Cyruses who though living outside the community of faith are anointed by God to bring about seismic changes on the world’s stage.

The community  of  faith  is  for  ever  commanded  to  offer  up  its  prayers,  sighs  and  tears  for  every conceivable situation close at hand or far away.

There is a story told of a Rabbinical Court held in a German concentration camp. The Jewish community in their suffering presented the case both for and against God for what they had suffered at the hands of

the Nazis.  Was God responsible? At the end of the inquiry the vote went against God.  ‘Guilty’ said the presiding Rabbi – ‘now let us say some prayers’.

There is for all of us our own place on the spectrum of faith as to what is the purpose of our praying, how our prayers are received in heaven and indeed what difference they really make.

At one end of the spectrum are those who believe all you have to do is pray hard enough and long enough and the situation will be transformed – prayer is seen primarily as siege warfare in the titanic struggle between good and evil.

In the centre of the spectrum of faith are those who believe God’s ability to transform a situation is profoundly dependent on the skill and heart-change of the praying community itself.

At the most sceptical end of the community of faith are those who never give up on prayer but are never claiming too much for the interface between the secular and the sacred:

R S Thomas – ever the faith-filled realist - reflected on his own priestly interceding stretching across an entire a life-time:

Prayers like gravel

flung at the sky’s

window, hoping to attract the loved one’s attention . . .

. . . I would

have refrained long since

but that peering once through my locked fingers

I thought that I detected

the movement of a curtain.

Order of Service

Welcome and Notices

Call to Worship from Psalm 96

O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name;

tell of his salvation from day to day.

Declare his glory among the nations,

his marvellous works among all the peoples.

Worship the Lord in holy splendour;

tremble before him, all the earth.

Say among the nations, ‘The Lord is king!

The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved.

Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;

The Lord is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth.

Hymn STF 677 Christ is made the sure foundation (see screen)

Prayers: Approach, Penitence, Collect

Ministry with Young People: ‘A Good Image’

Hymn STF 115 Praise ye the Lord (see screen)

The Peace

Leader: Let us share The Peace Adults: The peace of the Lord be with you Young People:   And also with you

Leader: Go in peace

Old Testament reading: Isaiah 45.1-7 (p.731) Anthem: Jesus Springing by Bob Chilcott

(words by Kevin Crossley – Holland (b.1941))

I am the heart that houses the cone the cone enclosing the cedar

I am the cedar sawn for the cradle Forest of the body, body of the tree. I am the cradle rocking the baby

I am the baby containing the man I am the man nailed on the cross Tree of the body, body of the forest. I am the cross sawn from the cedar

I am the cedar enclosed in the cone I am the cone housed in the heart here in my heart Jesus, springing.

New Testament reading: Matthew 22.15-22 (p.990) Hymn STF 329 Jesus, the First and Last (see screen) Sermon: ‘Just once, I thought I saw the curtains move’ Hymn STF 251 Jesus Christ is waiting (see screen)

Prayers: Thanksgiving and Intercession and Lord’s Prayer

Offering

Prayer over the gifts

Hymn STF 319 Christ Triumphant ever reigning (see screen)

Blessing

Voluntary: Tantum ergo sacramentum – Naji Hakim.