Anyway, here is my address at the morning services, based on Ephesians 6.10-20 and John 6.56-69:
“From that time on, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”
Having based last week’s sermon on the first line of a hymn, today I found myself with a song by the Eagles in mind, as I started to think about what to say. I’ve always liked the Eagles. Many of their songs are thoughtful and a few are quite challenging; often they have something to say, and they make good music.
Air guitarists (real ones too, I guess) may go for ‘Hotel California’, but the song in my mind was ‘New Kid in Town’. It’s a song about the being the latest thing; the kid who, having just arrived, is an overnight sensation, the guy they all want to know. Malcolm became an instant celebrity in my school. He arrived out of nowhere part way through our first year; his dad was in the RAF, so he’d seen quite a bit of the world - Germany, Cyprus, even Singapore. For a while he was a shining light in our little school (and, all these years later, we’re still friends).
But as that Eagles song goes on to say, being the new kid in town only lasts until the next new kid arrives. And when that happens you may find that just as quickly you’re forgotten, once there’s a new latest thing, a new star to rave about.
That’s life, I guess. Things come into fashion and then they go out of fashion again; crazes spring up, for a while everybody’s doing it, then they burn out and the next latest thing takes over. People too come into favour and then go out again. Boris is always doing it. The charts are littered with one hit wonders, and you get sporting heroes who for a moment or two can do no wrong, then turn out to have feet of clay. Today’s society like none before seems obsessed with celebrities, people very often famous mostly just for being famous, followed on Twitter by thousands, and then just as quickly dumped.
But as we found in our Gospel reading, even some of the disciples of Jesus walked out on him. After this point in the story they no longer went about with him. Why was that? The celebrity culture of their day, perhaps. Now that Jesus was no longer new and fascinating, it was no longer trendy to be seen with him. After a while the latest thing starts to seem a bit tarnished. Maybe other rabbis were around, with more interesting stories to tell.
Or possibly less challenging things to say. One reason why people had started to walk away was that they were beginning to find the things Jesus was saying difficult to take. Some of his words sounded quite shocking. Maybe they’d started to feel he was demanding too much; maybe they were worried about the way he seemed to be offending some of the religious leaders of the day. Not only was it no longer trendy to be seen with Jesus, it was perhaps beginning to feel not all that safe, as Jesus began to ask more than some were ready to give, and to challenge things they weren’t prepared to change.
Perhaps they’d been following their own idea of what the Messiah should be and how he should behave. They couldn’t cope with the real Jesus, who said difficult things, and made big demands, and wasn’t always comfortable or safe to be seen out with. There are times in life when you have to stand up and be counted, and there were some among his followers who weren’t up for that.
Church used to be much more popular, and certainly more secure in its place in society, than it is now. I think we’ll all agree about that. I remember how as a little boy at evening service I couldn’t see up the church because the pews in front of me were all full of big grown-up people. That was probably harvest festival, but even so, people went to church in a way they now don’t.
Things change. And while there are times when everyone’s happy to hear what we believe and say as Christians and churchfolk, we shouldn’t let it go to our heads, because there’ll also be times when no-one wants to know us, and when people make fun of us, or worse. It’s when things are not so good that you find out who your real friends are. It’s when the road gets tough that you need people with some stickability about them. That’s the point we reach in today’s Gospel. The real friends of Jesus, his real disciples, were the ones that stayed with him when others turned against him. The ones that were more than fair weather friends, and who weren’t there just so that a bit of his celebrity would rub off on them.
Stickability was much needed in the early days of the Church. Things were often tough. St Paul wrote many of his letters, including his Letter to the Ephesians, to people who knew what it was like to face opposition and even persecution. Today we’ve heard from the closing chapter of Ephesians, and as he wrote Paul clearly had in mind the very effective armour with which a Roman soldier was kitted out. So he instructed his readers to put on the whole armour of God.
That’s how we’ll stand firm against the wiles of the devil, says Paul. By taking the armour of truth, righteousness, faith and peace. This is the armour we take when we choose to live in an honest, open, scriptural and loving way, when we’re looking to the power of the Holy Spirit, when we’re bonded by the Spirit in fellowship together, when we’re firmly joined to the example of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The fundamental base for this is prayer. Paul writes that we need to be watchful and alert as we pray, looking out for whatever temptations might lead us astray, taking account of the troubles, needs, challenges, opportunities that face us in our daily lives.
Bishop Alistair quizzed me about my prayer life when I was interviewed. If I’m honest I don’t find prayer easy, and I hugely admire those people I’ve met who’ve been deep and natural prayers. But I do know how necessary it is to all I do as a priest and indeed as a Christian, and I need the discipline of regular prayer. But it isn’t so much about keeping monastic hours of prayer or using the right words. It’s about being deliberately and faithfully open to God’s presence. Words, in fact, can sometimes get in the way. Any discipline of prayer needs to make space so we hear what God might be saying to us.
Paul talks about praying at all times. In monasteries, as well as the hours of formal prayer, everything done is done prayerfully – from reading the scriptures to greeting guests to cleaning the kitchen to digging the monastery garden. It’s all done to the glory of God, offered to him, in all that is done, God’s help and direction and presence is sought. For “to pray is to work, and to work is to pray,” as the saying goes.
My prayer can be a matter of "new kid on the block” enthusiasm, I'm afraid, in that I take it up with great gusto, and for a while I get a lot out of it, but then as perhaps it begins to feel burdensome and difficult, or squeezed out of my schedule by other stuff, I start finding excuses to miss. In other words, it can easily go the same way as all those other things I try to do: that course of study or healthy diet, or all those New Year resolutions - it becomes one more thing I enthusiastically start but don’t keep on with as I should.
But I shouldn't give up; prayer is not an optional extra, it's the vital heart of the thing. Having the whole armour of Christ requires us to build our lives around a discipline of prayer. The soldier doesn’t don his battle armour only when he feels like it, or give up on it when other more interesting things come along. He just does it, for he knows his life depends on it. Our best efforts may fall short, and we can be fickle and half-hearted in our allegiance. But God is never less than whole-hearted with us. His love for us never fails, and we can trust in that love; it's a love in which each one of us is personally known and treasured. That's what I believe anyway. And so with Peter I say: “Lord, to whom else can we go? You have the words of life.”
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