The Wisdom of Crowds vs The Wisdom of God - Palm Sunday 2017

Palm Sunday could be described as the tale of two crowds. The jubilant hero-worship of the crowd who welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, and the angry mob who bay for his blood in Pilate's palace and then taunt him on the road out of the holy city to his execution. Of course, at the centre is the same man. The question could be asked, which crowd if any, was right? 

In 1907, Charles Darwin’s cousin Frances Galton pointed out that the average of all entries in “the guess the weight of the ox” competition at a country fair was startlingly more accurate than any individual guesses or those of alleged cattle experts.

This notion that the judgement of crowds is surprisingly accurate was explored in James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds. But is it always true that the average judgement of a crowd will converge on the right solution? Surowiecki points out that the crowd is far from infallible. Research in 2011 at the Swiss Institute of Federal Technology demonstrated the undermining effect of social influence. Groups were asked to guess the values of things such as the length of the Swiss-Italian border. As information increased about the guesses of other group members, the individual guesses become narrower, degrading the accuracy of the overall average. In other words, as more information became available about each other’s guesses, the groups were tending towards a consensus to the detriment of accuracy.

The instinct in human behaviour to herd towards something arbitrary and even dangerous shouldn’t surprise us. All of us know what it is to be swept up in the emotional momentum of a group – peer pressure being an obvious example. The Swiss team tell us that the herding effect is likely to be much more detrimental in decisions that have no objectively clear answer. This may well explain some of the recent political upheavals in the West and indeed something of the behaviour of the two crowds described so vividly in our Gospel readings this Palm Sunday.

As Jesus enters Jerusalem the crowds shout “Hosanna to son of the David”. You may be surprised to learn that this chant “Hosanna” appears only here in the English Bible. It picks up on the word used exclusively in Psalm 118.25 of the Hebrew scriptures. More interesting, is that the Hebrew word – Hoshi’a na - is inserted into the sentences in the Gospels that are otherwise all in Greek. Why keep the Hebrew for this word and translate the rest?

Hoshi’a na, which literally means “save now,” has subtlety shifted in its meaning from simply being a prayer of supplication to God to something closer to a statement of confidence. Psalm 118 was very popular in the time of Jesus and gave expression to the deeply longed for emancipation of Israel from Roman rule. Is this what the cheering crowd expect and even joyfully demand of Jesus as he enters Jerusalem? Likewise, does disappointment soon spread into collective betrayal and then anger when Jesus does not deliver on this desperate expectation? “Even the criminal Barrabas is of more use to us than him!”

And yet, it could be argued that we in fact encounter three crowds this Palm Sunday – the joyful crowd, the angry mob and the silent bystanders. This third group are the people who are no doubt present at both of the pivotal events which shape Holy Week. They might describe themselves as ordinary people simply getting on with busy lives and not wanting any trouble. They have come to Jerusalem, which always seems to be in some kind of political turmoil, to celebrate the Passover. Perhaps this man called Jesus is the messiah, perhaps he is nothing more than a blasphemer or a self-obsessed charlatan.

Our silent majority have things to do; accommodation to find; food to prepare and cook; children and elderly relatives to care for. Even though they don’t really have the time to get involved they may have waved a palm branch or stopped to stare at the badly beaten prisoner dragging his cross up the hill amidst the mocking and jeering.

Like the disciples, the closest friends and confidants of Jesus, we may find ourselves in all three of these crowds but participation in the third does not demand much of us. “Let’s just see how things play out, there is so much to do and we have many problems of our own. After all, this man has said and done some very controversial things. The taunts of the chief priests are cruel but surely true “He saved others; he cannot save himself… let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.” Matthew 27:41-42

The picture of a father carrying his dead child in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun this week should be burned into the retina. We should not be able to escape it by folding up the paper or closing our eyes. The use of sarin gas by the regime of Bashir-Al Assad is now undisputed.  Who is crying to God on their behalf to “save now”?

Three crowds. Three types of human response. Who is this man and for whom does he die? Recognition comes late to the centurion and those who remain after Jesus’ death. “‘Truly this man was God’s Son!" Truly the innocent have been slaughtered by the guilty, for the guilty. Have we cheered? Have we jeered?  Or worst still, we have stood by and watched?

Sacred Vision Sunday

There is a very telling scene in a new TV series called “The Young Pope”. A young (that’s 50 something), conniving, emotionally malnourished and yet purportedly saintly Pope Jude Law is in conversation with one of his mentors. He insists that the church needs to become more mysterious again, closed-off, distant and demanding. This Pope believes that mystery, discipline and detachment will provoke curiosity and desire for God. This will bring people back to orthodox Christian belief. His wise mentor responds that belief in God is no longer the problem. The relevance of God, in other words “Do we really need God?”, is much more the challenge for the contemporary Church.

Despite the many challenges for Christianity in post-secular societies such as our own - the rise of a very vocal fundamentalist atheist movement; the numerical decline in all mainline denominations, unchecked individualism and conspicuous consumption - belief in the supernatural has not diminished but rather grown. Simply shepherding people into a tried and tested formula of belief about God and Jesus Christ will not serve us now and I would argue has never been the true calling of the church.

Are post-secular people, particularly those living in a global city such as London, lying awake at night worried about their personal sin and the eternal safety of their souls? Perhaps, but I suspect that most, if not all of us, have sat awake wondering what the point of all this is? If we allow the 10 o’clock news to break through our well-guarded consciousness and prick the soft underbelly of our delicate consciences, we may find ourselves deeply troubled with thoughts like: Why do some have so little and others, and I, so much? Why must some suffer such terrible pain, terror and loss while the only potential threat to others, to me, is the loss of wifi access?

The terror of meaninglessness and insignificance looms large for all of us in the West. Add to that the anxiety about our part in global inequality, economic upheaval begun in recent memory with the 2008 financial crisis and now crystallising around Brexit, social upheaval manifested in new waves of immigrants and asylum seekers, political upheavals seen in the threat of terrorism, conservative reactions to all of the foregoing and embodied in the election of President Donald Trump and ecological upheaval in the form of the devastating effects of climate change and the possibility that it may be too late to reverse the damage.  

If God is simply an idea about the divine what use is that? Or more telling, if access to the divine is only possible via a compulsory, narrow and bigoted religious system, surely this is a fraud. No one in a post-secular society is going to buy that, if that is what we are selling.

We all yearn for something more than just the perfect artisan coffee and an annual ski holiday. We yearn for substance, identity, purpose and solidarity in ways that are accessible and life shaping.  In other words, we long for meaning that reveals something fundamental and beautiful about who we are; that can be felt and shared. The installation by the artist Tracey Emin on the west wall of Liverpool Cathedral gives expression to this deep human longing and hunger in very contemporary terms. The words “I felt you and I knew that you loved me” written in bright blue neon script across a wall in a significant place of worship. 

You see, we are led to believe by our scriptures that we are all created by God in love and that all of us, yes all of us share in the dignity of his image. If the divine thumbprint is the heart of our being then Christ is in you and in me. Certainly, we may turn our back on this gift or like Peter deny it completely. This is the sanctity of free will given to us by the God of love and is of course the basis of what we call sin. But the role of the Christian community is to be a mystical family in which we are living reminders to each other and our neighbours that Christ has died, Christ is risen and Christ will come again in you and me. That is what it means to be a priestly people. The kind of people Peter is talking in our first reading –  “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light." Together we are trying to live from within the deeper mystery of God’s love – reflecting this to each other and the world.

The stirrings of faith are not to be found in monolithic adherence to a system of well-formulated religious beliefs but in the felt presence of love incarnate in our daily lived experience. It is encounter with humanity made divine - “I felt you and I knew you loved me”. That is what moves human hearts and lives. That is promise of Christ - “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

The Mission Action Plan you have in your hands is the product of over a year’s reflection, consultation and prayer. It is also the convergence of the many lives, perspectives and faith experiences of the people of St Barnabas. The more the PCC and I reflected and listened to you, the broader community, each other and hopefully the Holy Spirit, the more it became clear that our mission needed to be rooted in the human experience of God’s love. That is why we are here. That is why we believe. 

How then is love incarnate being felt or to be felt? Through what we have come to call “unexpected hospitality”. We were all moved by the story of one parishioner who had little or no contact with the church. That is, until someone arrived on her doorstep from St Barnabas with a parcel of food and simple condolences when her mother had died. Nothing was expected in return. A gift freely given and freely received. Basic generosity in human form. In and through that act of simple hospitality the presence of God was felt and that person knew they where loved. It is the very same unexpected hospitality that we share at the Eucharist, the meal of Christ, in which we are fed irrespective of who we are, what we have done and where we have come from? 

It is to this that Christ is pointing in the Nazarene Declaration that was read in the Gospel of Luke this morning. Unexpected hospitality is not a tame platitude, it is a movement of transforming love incarnated in, and facilitated by, the ordinary people of God. Whenever we share our resources and our selves hospitably, we embody that declaration of good news to the poor, sight to the blind, freedom for the prisoner and the oppressed. In our common life, today, this is being fulfilled. Today.

And yet we have asked in what specific ways should this happen? In other words, to what are we committing our limited time, resources and energy? Three clear categories emerged through the consultations: worship, grow and serve. In our worship we seek to make communion with God, each other and the stranger through prayer, praise and adoration. We are very serious about being inclusive, welcoming and tolerant in this sacred place and in our sacred actions.

We are consciously looking to grow both spiritually and numerically. That means we want to deepen in our faith and share the gifts it offers with others.

We have a particular passion to serve each other and our local community. Surveys and consultations with congregation made it overwhelming clear that we don’t want to be just a felt presence in the community, we want to make a tangible difference in it. You will note then, that each of these three categories have specific actions listed against them for this year. And on the reverse, you have the full three year action plan.

A final thought. This Mission Plan is not meant to be a rigid grid but rather a living document much like a living faith. It will change and adapt as we move into the future. The fact that we have placed “the unexpected hospitality of Christ” at the very heart of what we believe God is calling us to, means that rather like the congregation in synagogue that morning Jesus stood up to read from prophet Isaiah - we should expect to be surprised, confused, shocked and delighted by the one who comes to us as abundant life. Amen.

In remembrance of Freda Pepinster, 12 September 1924 to 28 October 2016

“I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to babes,” Matthew 11:25.

We have already heard about Freda’s great love of the natural world and the beauty of poetry. As Jesus suggests in that reading from the Gospel of Matthew, the instinct to be available to something more, what you might call the transcendent, in the everyday moment is anything but conventional. Indeed, it is an openness to Christ himself, who we believe is constantly communicating the joy and gentleness of God’s grace to us – “rest for the weary soul, an easy yoke and light burden.”

Freda shared in that self-effacing indomitable spirit of her generation. Her character would have been tested in a crucible of social, political and economic upheaval, an age where history seemed to be turning in on itself. It seems to me that the life we celebrate today is one of resilience, good humour and quiet determination.

So, perhaps I should go further to say that Freda’s delight in the beauty of God’s creation began with a deep reverence for the beauty of human dignity. A passion for the common good, that “all who labour and are heavy laden” should have that dignity enhanced and protected. And let us do this with a smile.

I would say that this is more than simply the product of a warm, wise and outward facing temperament. It is faith - an instinct to the hopeful higher things in a manner that is well earthed. To quote Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore: “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”

So today, above all things we give thanks for Freda’s participation in a reality much greater than that which meets the eye, the reality of the dawning of the world to come. It is into the loving embrace of God’s gentleness that we commit her soul today. To quote from Wordsworth’s Daffodils, a poem she recited to Catherine very boldly in her final years:

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

Amen.

In remembrance of Ernest Suffern, 24 December 1927 to 4 December 2016

Psalm 23, like most of the psalms, is not just sacred scripture. It is a song. So the words, poetic and beautiful as they may be, were actually written to be sung. This is certainly a recognised custom for Jewish families as they sing it at the third Shabbat meal on Saturday afternoon. And of course, we have that very famous metrical version of the psalm to set the tune called Crimmond – singing “The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want."

The reason I go on about singing is because Ernest Suffern was, among his many other qualities, a passionate singer. He was very familiar with Psalm 23 and indeed Crimmond. It seems that his singing career began at an early age when he was chosen to be one of the Ovaltineys. This was a children’s club established by the brand Ovaltine to promote the drink in the United Kingdom. I am told on good authority that Ernest was part of the group of children who helped to sing the jingle for the radio show. And it went something like this: 

We are the Ovaltineys
Happy girls and boys,
Make your request we'll not refuse you
We are here just to amuse you.
Would you like a song or story
Will you share our joys?

“Make your request we’ll not refuse you…Will you share our joys?” reflects something of the character of this wonderful man. In an insert for the parish magazine entitled “And the song goes on!” the then Vicar’s wife, Valerie Reddington, writes about his courage and strength whilst undergoing treatment for lymphatic cancer. “In spite of his condition,” she remarks “Ernest was determined to honour a singing engagement he had set up with his group to make money for the church hall project. Those of us who went to this delightful evening 'Alma and friends' will remember the moment when it was Ernest’s turn to sing, and how he joked about his breathlessness.” He and Valerie were kindred spirits when it came to music-hall entertainment and the variety show.

It seems fitting that we should remember Ernest as one who tried to live his life as song of joy for others. In this way the light and love of God shone through him very brightly. ”Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” could well describe his approach to life and the basis of his faith.

So I think he would have identified approvingly with the image of Jesus the shepherd sung to us in Psalm 23. The Lord who tenderly but stoically nurtures and protects his flock, with them unceasingly night and day in all of kinds weather and all types of threat. It is especially poignant because, as we have already heard, there where many dark valleys for Ernest and Edna to endure. The loss of their son Colin Paul was possibly one of the darkest.

But Ernest would want to point towards the mountain tops, “my cup runneth over” he would be singing with gusto. In our conversations he would talk of his many great joys. His long and satisfying service in the British Council. His pride in his son Neil and his beloved grandchildren. And how he was the luckiest man in the world when he met the beautiful Edna, the love of his life and his wife of 63 years. They have been inseparable and will remain inseparable by a love that is stronger than death.

On Christmas Eve this year Ernest would have been 90 years old. It is a significant birthday that will now be celebrated with the whole host of heaven in glory. For those of us who remain on this side of eternity, we will remember a man of genteel manners, humour, generosity and determination – a person of the type of character that is fast becoming a lost generation. Whenever we hear a melody that lifts the spirit and brings a smile to the face we will the share in that joy he sang about as an Ovaltiney - ”Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” Amen.

Called to Perseverance not Preservation - Vision Sunday 2016

St Barnabas, Ealing. Vision Sunday, Sunday 16 October June, 2016. Readings.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

If I were to coin a governing principle for the life of the local church I might say something like this: we are not called to preservation but perseverance. There you have it. Let tweets be tweeted. Of course, the encounter with the resurrected Christ in our gospel reading today does a much better job at conveying the power of this message than any slogan could. Jesus appears to his disciples and as with the other post-resurrection appearances they do not, at first, recognise him. This group of disciples return to their former occupation of fisherman and decide to set out to fish in the Sea of Tiberius. They catch absolutely nothing throughout the night. Then Christ asks them to cast their nets to the right side of the boat. This time, not only do they get results but the catch is so large that the nets strain to hold it.

The Gospel of John does not record the reaction of the disciples to Jesus’ prompting, but it does recount that he asks them to acknowledge they have caught nothing. I think it’s fair to surmise that these men felt it would probably make no difference whatsoever to the state of affairs whether they cast their nets to the left or the right of the boat. I would also think that by this point they would have been exhausted and most likely somewhat exasperated by the request. And yet, they comply. At the prompting of this compelling stranger something makes them persevere. 

There is an even deeper poignancy to this moment. Everything that they thought they had received from or understood about Jesus had been shattered by events in the preceding days. They had abandoned and betrayed their teacher to the malign agenda of the temple authorities and the ruthless machine of Roman imperial rule. The messiah had been executed. The bright hope of change, of a better future had been snuffed out. What was there left to do? “Nothing but to survive, to revert to form. Let us go fish. But even this leaves us empty handed.” The mood must have been shot through with shame, desolation and confusion.

The turning point in this story is not necessarily John’s sudden epiphany that this the Lord. The transformation begins earlier with the surprising willingness of the disciples to comply with an illogical command from a stranger who seemed familiar but was as yet unrecognised. The resurrected Jesus not only points the way to a seemingly impossible future, it is through both his presence and power together with the cooperation and perseverance of his followers that it is realised. In my mind there can be no better vision for the local church. We are the hope of the world not because of who we are or what we think or even necessarily what we do. We are the hope of the world, because the one who was dead is now alive and he is with us and makes us his own. He is with us even when we don’t feel it or recognise him and he guides us into a future of abundant life and renewal, justice and peace for all creation. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the well-known German Lutheran pastor who was imprisoned and later executed by the Nazis for being associated with a plot to assassinate Hitler, said this about the calling of the church:

“It is not we who build. Christ builds the church. Whoever is mindful to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it, for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it. We must confess, he builds. We must proclaim, he builds. We must pray to him, and he will build…It is a great comfort which Jesus gives to his church. ‘You confess, preach, bear witness to Me, and I alone will build where it pleases Me. Do not meddle in what is not your providence. Do what is given to you, and do it well, and you will have done enough…”

An authentic and life-giving vision for the church is one that helps us to resist the delusion that we can usurp the work of the Saviour – unwittingly or otherwise. In our time this most often takes the form of anxious preservation. We are not called to preserve an institution or to prop-up a vaguely Christian form of the rotary club, what Bonhoeffer would identify as, “the building of temples to idols without wishing or knowing it.” First and foremost, we are called to be with Christ, to belong to him and to persevere with that belonging and responding even when all else seems lost. And this is where we began: the vocation of the local church is not preservation but perseverance with the good news that Jesus Christ is present, that Jesus Christ is the good news, that Jesus Christ is Lord of today and tomorrow.  

Our usual form at this time in our calendar is to consider a draft budget for the upcoming year. That exercise helps to refocus our minds on what we want to be achieving in the next 12 months and whether or not we have achieved the aims we set out last year. It also a habit of reminding ourselves to review our giving. But this centenary year offers us the golden opportunity to reflect on the quality of our emerging vision for the next decade and even century. This will eventually take a more concrete and pragmatic expression in our developing Mission Action Plan – a road map if you like. The PCC and Ministry Team, together with ongoing feedback from you have been working hard on discerning and distilling a way forward, listening to the promptings of Jesus Christ. We will meet for an away day in November which will be exclusively focused on mission planning. In January during Epiphanytide – the season in which the church celebrates the spreading of the good news in the world at large – we will refine and then launch that plan. Today, let us reflect together on what it means to be a local church with an authentic Christian vision – a Christian community persevering to live out and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ for the next generation.  

At the Willesden Clergy Conference from which Deacon Jill and I have just returned, the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, outlined four attributes of the church’s calling. They are abundance, humility, hope and audacity. All four of these are echoed in the encounter between the risen Jesus and the disciples on the beach in John 21. All four are ways of making explicit the unspoken vision we have for our local church and indeed our world – because for Christians the two are inextricably connected. 

Abundance

“…they were not able to haul …in (the net) because there were so many fish.” (John 21:6)

We could translate abundance to mean generous blessing or even the gift of resources.

(Write down) Where do you experience abundance or blessing in your own life? Where do you experience abundance in the life of our church?

So often in the church we begin by focusing on scarcity rather than the generous provision we already enjoy. This is a habit that has sadly taken hold of us at St Barnabas at times. By pointing this out, I am not trying to minimise the pain we have been through in our recent past nor I am suggesting that we should take proper management lightly, financial or otherwise. Both would be a simplistic denial of our reality and our calling. However, our instincts are more often than not fine tuned to what we don’t have or to an anxious prediction of what might happen rather than on what we do have and are being given. The latter is a springboard for a future, the former is a script for a depressing self-fulfilling prophecy. If we are obsessed with our lack could we hear the voice of the saviour saying “cast your nets to the right hand side”, would we be even willing to take the risk?

The time has come to acknowledge and to celebrate that we are a very blessed parish church – blessed in finances, blessed in the gifts, talents and generosity of our people, blessed by our location and community. Thanks be to God.

I am delighted to be able to celebrate with you this morning that we have finally paid off our organ loan. Thanks must go to the perseverance and hard work of Hugh Mather and the generosity of all those who have supported this project. As a result of this, I am also delighted to celebrate with you that we will not only return to paying full common fund in 2017 but will be able to give in excess of it. We are once again a net contributor to the mission of the Diocese of London. 

If we are co-operating with Christ to build his church, we should be patiently expecting his generous provision but if we convince ourselves that we know best, that we are going to charge of this, then we have chosen to take the place of our Saviour.  Our calling is about perseverance not preservation.

Humility 

“Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” (John 21: 4- 5)

If we find our identity as the church in the resurrected Christ then he will draw us into confronting the stark reality of our situation and then in response to it, lead and share with us in the ordinary service of love. In this way we participate in the kingdom of the servant king. Humility of heart and mind and purpose.

Jesus does not make a dramatic entry into this scene as a hero figure, the proverbial knight in shining armour; he stands on the beach and simply meets the disciples in the midst of their situation before guiding towards the future he as prepared for them to share in. 

While we have much to celebrate and give thanks for at St Barnabas we too need Christ to keep us mindful of the absolute reality of our situation. The percentage of people attending Church of England parishes dropped below 2% of the population this year but the national census in 2011 showed that 59% of population identify as Christian. What are we doing to grow and nurture the next generation of Christians in this part of West London? This church like many others, relies heavily on the generous time and talents of many older or retired people. What are we doing to raise up the next generation of lay leaders in our parish? We recently received the results of a 5 yearly buildings inspection report from the Diocese. Whilst our buildings are in good condition, the report showed that including the restoration of the apse painting and a host of various smaller works a sum of approximately £180000 should be spent in the next 5 years. How can we responsibly maintain, enhance and evolve our physical plant – these buildings – to enable our witness and mission? Every year we host the night shelter for six weeks. How are we serving our local community in ways that aren’t just recreational but also transformational? How are we allowing the local community to serve us?

(Write down) Can you think of a time you were touched by another’s humility?  Can you name one way that we have succeeded and one way that we have failed to be humble as a Christian community?

Hope

 “That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, ‘It is the Lord!’ “ (John 21:7)

An opinion piece on the rising crisis of human isolation this week reminded me about the state of suffering in our world. Written by George Monbiot, it lays the blame for our current social pathologies (plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness) at the feet of neo-liberalism. He says pointedly: “Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology. Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.” By “everywhere” he means government, the education system, the jobs market and the media.

The question for us is: do we really believe that the local church is good news for our neighbours? You see, whilst I applaud Monbiot’s passion for pointing out the alienation exacerbated by particular political or economic ideologies, the answer to the deep ache of loneliness so prevalent throughout human society is not simply more or even differing systems of ideas. To echo the reaction of the apostle John on the beach, “It is the Lord!” Are we a sacramental community that proclaims and reflects the joy of that recognition because we know that in the presence of the risen Christ peace, healing and flourishing for all creation is unfolding? In other words, do we dare to be a people of resurrection hope? This is not optimism or wishful thinking but witnessing to the resilience of the crucified and risen Christ standing in the midst of our suffering and despair. Do we dare to persevere for a future that is not already evident?

(Write down) What is one way that the church is good news for our local neighbourhoods? Where have you found signs of hope in your daily life?

Audacity

“So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn.” John 21:12

To quote the Bishop of London, “there is far too little ambition in the Church of England.” If we belong to the risen Christ, the one who is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end why are we frequently so introverted and timid about his kingdom? Can we dare to dream big dreams for God or more to the point could we imagine that God in Christ is using us to fulfill ambitious things for his kingdom?

“The Spirit of God comes to us from the future,” says theologian Ray Anderson. Like the disciples on the beach, we cannot fully see the future in God’s terms, we may not even think there’s one at times and this can paralyze us. We pray “Your kingdom come”, not ours. With that conviction in our hearts and listening for the cues from one who is eternally present in all time, we cast out the nets expecting to be surprised and sometimes even astonished.

(Write down) How can we be ambitious and confident for the God’s kingdom in our neighbourhood? Has God been nudging you to take a particular risk even though you can’t see the future?

For us at St Barnabas, we have seen how God has already been at work through a spirit of unexpected hospitality and we should be audaciously expectant about this work of the Holy Spirit in the years to come. On the beach, Jesus takes the fish the disciples have caught and then shares a meal with them. They are guided, welcomed, blessed and fed for the work ahead. So may it be for us.

The people of God are not called to preservation but perseverance in the things of God. A local church that sets its gaze on the risen Christ and reminds itself constantly that it belongs to him, calling itself back to that cosmic identity and salvation cannot help but be good news for the world.

In a sermon given on the night before he was assassinated Martin Luther King Jr said the following:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

“Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish.” (John 21:4-6)

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.