Am I alone in thinking every time I see one of those photographs of the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet sitting around that big meeting table at Downing Street and let’s face it that photographer has been pretty busy recently with all the ministerial changes – what a bunch of misfits?! A lot of my friends and former work colleagues tell me after a long management career, I should enjoy watching the TV series “the Apprentice” which I generally avoid. I wonder why? A bunch of seeming misfits with huge egos sent out by Lord Sugar into the community to deliver a business venture or task and come back with a profit or not. My ignorance of the fundamentals of the programme may illustrate that I really do not watch it but if I have got even the barest outline of the Apprentice then where might I find an early template for the Apprentice albeit with the profit motive replaced with a missionary one? Well here it is from 2000 years ago in Matthew 9 and 10. If you were choosing a team of missionaries would you really have picked fishermen, tax collectors, political activists? Would they be the perfect fit? When I went to Uganda earlier this year, I travelled on the same plane as a vicar I know from Stamford who was leading a mission to Rwanda. As we arrived at the gate waiting to board our flight there was Canon Martyn doing short first-time interviews with members of the team who in a few hours, he would send out as a mission team. Now I am not suggesting these people were misfits – I am sure they came with many skills and qualities but in the limited time they had in Rwanda how could they best be used for Jesus in the harvest? It actually was harvest time in Rwanda but this was a different harvest – a harvest of souls. Meanwhile I was waiting to board wondering what God would call me to do during my visit - well the answers are found in my presentation on our Church Near You website details on your pew sheets if you have not yet seen it. Might it have been better if that Rwanda team had x skill or y qualities? Might it have helped if I was better equipped for whatever I would be doing or if I too had a team? Probably but God uses us. We may feel like misfits but God uses us and works with the skills we have and the gifts God gives us. How often do I hear across our 6 churches that there is so few of us and we are struggling to cope or wish more people would come forward? That same prayer was going up in 1st century Galilee because Jesus commanded people (chapter 9 v.38) “So pray the Master of the Heaven to send more workers to harvest his fields.” I suppose we need therefore to ask the question – are we grumbling or are we praying? One commentator I read observed of this passage that the writer of Matthew could have just recorded this incident in a few words or even ignored it completely but chose to set out the detail of what the disciples were to do when sent out, which places to visit and not to visit, what to take or not take, what research to do, how to approach and how long to stay. The reason that commentator gives for such detail is because it is good practice for all of us for all time and I think that is right. I remember attending Canon Martyn’s church some years ago and hearing a young student who had gone from their university with another person they hardly knew. All they took was their passport and were given a return flight ticket. They were flown to Romania I think and taken to a university in a remote city. There were no Christians there. They had no money and spoke no Romanian. Somehow, they found someone with some English who knew someone who would put them up on their college floor, fed them and found a venue for a mission and several people became Christians. So, it happened 2000 years ago it has happened in the 2000s and can still happen even in small rural churches. What led those students to the right people and what leads us when we despair at how few people there are? It was prayer and it is prayer accompanied by obedience and being willing to serve. That is why all that detail is there and that is why there can be a solution. Of course if we would rather do it all in our own strength well just look around at how many closed churches there are and then pray to the Master of Heaven. We may feel we are misfits. The world may look at us and confirm we are misfits but God uses us just as we are and shows the way. What a privilege it can be to be a misfit!! Amen
Matthew 28:16-end – Is God a hybrid?I am indebted to Revd Dr Giles Fraser, Vicar of St Anne’s Kew for introducing me to the nurseryman Mr Thomas Fairchild of Hoxton in East London. Fairchild who lived from 1676 to 1729 and is believed to be the first person in 1717 to create a hybrid of two different plants, recorded as the Carnation and the Sweet William to form a new plant called the Fairchild’s Mule. Now a mule was a sterile plant so once it has gone unless you manage to get cuttings, it is finished. Thomas Fairchild had the foresight to take some cuttings, dry them and two remain with the Royal Society today which had been formed a little over 50 years before Mr Fairchild donated them so botanists can closely examine what this first ever man-made hybrid plant was like.But Mr Thomas Fairhild was not at all happy with what he had done because he was a devout Christian and believed that the world had been created divinely by God and feared, and indeed some critics told him as much that any attempt to tamper with God’s creation amounted to blasphemy. So perturbed was Mr Fairchild that he left a bequest to his local church, St Leonard’s in Hackney for a sermon to be delivered every year warning against tampering with God’s creation by playing God and creating new forms of life. A sense of that crops up again in 19th century novels like Frankenstein. The sermon is always delivered in the week leading up to Trinity Sunday and this year that honour fell to Revd Canon Dr Giles Fraser.In around 2011 a botanist tried to recreate Fairchild’s Mule and suspected the carnation Fairchild used might have been a Pink rather than a carnation and produced these magenta looking flowers which closely resembled the Fairchild’s Mule specimens at the Royal Society. They were indeed sterile and attempts to take cuttings of this prolific little plant failed and eventually it flowered itself to death. This picture of these replica Fairchild’s Mules is therefore all we have. Perhaps Thomas Fairchild was right to be fearful and leave the bequest he did!!Today hybrids of plants and animals of two or three or more types are common and use of hybrids is constant to get the best strain or crop or variety. So, is the Godhead also a hybrid and was Fairchild playing at God’s game? To which my answer is emphatically no. For that to be the case someone would have to have made God and the three constituent parts of the single godhead and no one ever did. Last year we celebrated the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea where the Nicene creed was drafted and approved affirming the Holy Trinity. In it the writers wrote that we believe in “Jesus Christ the only Son of God begotten of the Father before all ages.” We know that the Holy Spirit was brooding on the face of the waters at creation. All three persons of the Godhead are eternally begotten. No one created God. We believe in one God who was and is and is to come who as well as being one is God in three persons. And we are commissioned by Jesus in the penultimate verse of the last chapter of Matthew’s Gospel to go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Note the word “name” is used just once and in the singular. We baptise into the name of one God Father, Son and Holy Spirit and we do so because we are making disciples across all nations: disciples of the living God, Father Son and Holy Spirit. Yesterday as a JPCC we were looking at and reviewing the Mission Action Plan for our 6 churches so that we have a plan for how we deliver that great commission. By next Sunday lunchtime we will have had 4 baptisms in our Stodden churches compared to just one baptism in 2025 and we know there are more baptisms to come in the second half of this year and maybe by refocussing our mission action plan there may be even more. This is our job; it is what we are here for. We have also had 4 confirmations in the last 6 months – the first confirmations across our churches in over a decade but only two of our fonts have been put to baptismal use since I came and our confirmands have come from just 3 of our churches. So, there is lots of scope for our 6 churches going forward. Yes the Great Commission does challenge us to go out to all nations but let us at least go out to Pertenhall, Swineshead, Dean, Shelton, Melchbourne and Yelden getting people ready to be baptised – why not join us at Melchbourne for afternoon tea this afternoon and make a start so we can be baptising in all these places in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit as Jesus commissioned us to do. Amen
John 14:1-14 The Way the truth and the life Something we would often do when I was in Africa in February was to find a motorcycle or boda-boda driver, pay them a couple of quid and follow them to where we need to get to like a hotel or a restaurant. We were unable to do this in Kisumu, Kenya because we arrived late and after a certain time the drivers all go home, so we had to rely on Google maps to find where we were staying but in Uganda that never happens because shops rarely shut and drivers rarely sleep. Then, when we found the right road by now in the small hours of the morning, we had to find the right gate to get us into the private road then find the right gate to get into the right house. What would it be like? It looked OK when we booked but was it and would there be enough room? Both gates opened for us and a young man; the askari came out of his own house in the grounds to let us into our house. It was huge as he kindly took our bags in and showed us round. Each of us had our own huge bedroom with our own bathroom and bed nicely made. We slumped on the huge sofas as the last bags were brought in. “You won’t see me in the morning said the young askari but there will be someone coming in later - but welcome.” We apologised for being so late but he was all fine. Before long we were all asleep in our rooms eventually awoken later that morning by vervet monkeys scrambling over the roofs and tapping the windows! We did meet our young askari again and invited him to join us for dinner and discovered he was a graduate and a local church worship leader. The picture my Kenyan experience portrays illustrates much of what Jesus is conveying to us in our Gospel reading. Some of this passage is frequently chosen when someone dies – in my Father’s house are many mansions and I am going to prepare a place for you provides a lot of reassurance to many mourners which Jesus prefixes with the words that start this passage “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” This is a promise from God who loves us. And, Jesus continues, you know the way to the place where I am going” to which Thomas who is always good for saying what everyone else is thinking, says “no, Jesus we’ve got no idea where you are going – how can we know the way?” And Jesus responds a little like my boda-boda driver by saying I am the way. You don’t need a map or a satnav – just follow me. Not only that but I am also the truth. You do not want to stray away from the course Christ has set before us and I am the life. Only through me, says Jesus will you have life and life everlasting. Many Christians wish Jesus never said this and regard it as the height of arrogance. How dare John or anyone put these words in Jesus’ mouth. How dare Jesus suggest he is the only way. Others and I would include myself in this, take the opposite view. This is one of the most powerful passages in the Bible and Jesus says this not out of arrogance but simply because it is true. But more than that, you cannot dethrone Jesus out of some misguided notion of political correctness without enthroning someone or something else, be it Buddha or Mohammed or Krishna or Mamon. As Bob Dylan once sang – you’ve gotta serve somebody and it may be the devil or it may be the Lord but you’ve gotta serve somebody. And it is not just this passage. Jesus made this claim at various times in different ways. I am the gate, the good shepherd, the true vine. The whole new testament affirms this as did the early church and as do we over 2000 years on. I had to get through several gates and doors to get into our house in Kisumu including 2 international border crossings. But Jesus is our means of access to the Father. For us Christians there is no room for replacement with vague general truths. As baptised believers we claim union with the Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life. That is what baptism signifies being baptised in the name of Jesus, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, being redeemed, bought back by the love of God through what Jesus did for us on the cross. What Jesus says in this passage is not the claim of an arrogant mad man. It is the truth of a God who loved us so much he came to live among us, die for us to buy us sinful people back to him. To rise again for us and promise us eternal life with him. That does not sound like arrogance to me but simply amazing love. Amen
Luke 10:25-37 Whenever I read this most famous of parables – the Good Samaritan my mind is drawn back to the journey to Entebbe Airport, the main international airport in Uganda which is situated on a peninsular into Lake Victoria about 45 minutes out of Kampala. It sounds like a lovely setting and in a way it is but most flights back to London leave at night or in the early hours of the morning and the only reason any vehicle driving that road at that time would be to get to the airport to fly out of Uganda and the probability someone white and wealthy might be in that vehicle is more than sufficient to tempt bandits to hold up your vehicle and take what they can. So, the safer option is to book into an airport hotel the night before and book a driver to drop you safely off at the airport ready for your flight. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was just as dangerous, situated in a gulley with steep hills rising on either side offering opportunities for bandits to hide and leap out and attack anyone who looked good for the money seemed like open season for the bandits and that his the fate the befell the man in this parable told by Jesus in response to the question the lawyer asks Jesus “who is my neighbour” when the law says love your neighbour as yourself. It is also the question Lord Atkin had to consider in probably the most famous English court case from 1932 when Miss Donoghue drank an opaque bottle of ginger beer that had been bought for her and in which was a decomposing snail. Mr Stevenson was the provider of these bottles of ginger beer. He didn’t know Miss Donoghue and had no contractual with her since Miss Donoghue did not buy or pay for that bottle of beer. So, the Judge had to ask himself “Who, then, in law is my neighbour?” and his answer was persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected.” And yes, this is word for word what Lord Atkin said and so a link was created between Miss Donoghue and Mr Stevenson that made the producer liable because Miss Donoghue was his neighbour. Jesus answers this question in a slightly different way by recounting the reaction of the 3 different characters to the plight of this injured and now penniless man. No one knew this man but all saw his condition but only the third passer-by offered any assistance to this unfortunate man and I think it is fair to say, he went the extra mile; taking him to a nearby inn and pays for all his care and returns on his way back up to Jerusalem to settle any outstanding debts. Now, I should say something about the comparison between Jews and Samarians. ~Both believe in the same God but Samaritans only relied on the first 5 books of the Bible as the word of God and so like the Jewish Sadducees did not believe in life after death. Samaritans also believed that Holy of Holies was on Mount Gerazim, not Jerusalem. But because of these differences Jews hated Samaritans and vice versa. The very suggestion of a good Samaritan to a loyal Jew like this lawyer was hard to take and so when Jesus asks the lawyer which of the 3 people who encountered this man turned out to be his neighbour, he cannot quite bring himself to say the Samaritan but rather “the one who showed mercy to the injured man” was his reply and Jesus tells this lawyer to go and do what a Samaritan had done in that parable, to identify with him and that would be a hard pill to swallow for the lawyer. For us it carries none of the same impact but the practice of identifying with Biblical characters is a good spiritual discipline going back to Ignatius of Loyola and beyond. Are their equivalent people to a Samaritan in our own society that we can substitute? Or do we identify with someone else? In reading up for this I discovered that a survey had been done in America and Africa – sadly they did not say where in either continent on who you identify with. Americans tended to go for the 3 passers-by - the Samaritan, pries and Scribe. I was not surprised from conversations I have had about this passage that most Africans asked, identified with the injured man. How you read a Biblical passage like this can and should affect how you should act and respond. Mr Stevenson in that court case tried to argue that he had no responsibility for Miss Donoghue after she drank that ginger beer. She did not purchase it from him and he did not even know her and yet the Court held they were neighbours. He produced it, she drank it. Jesus says whoever you encounter or become aware of is your neighbour who you should love as you love yourself. Why? because it forms part of the law of God in the summary of the commandments but equally because it reflects the world wide reaching extent of the grace of God that should be reflected in the lives we lead however challenging that might sometimes be for us. Amen
