Sunday Thoughts

A very pleasant man came to my door the other day to tell me all about Mr Glyn Davies’ election campaign. We had a chat about the political realities as the campaign hots up. “Can we rely on your vote for Glyn?” asked my visitor. “No” was my reply; or not yet, anyway - I’m a floating voter, and I’ll continue to float until I get to the polls. “There’s only a couple of weeks,” my visitor reminded me. Well, someone once said - was it perhaps Harold Wilson? - that a week is a long time in politics.  Anything could happen.

Anything could particularly happen in this election. There’s a definite undercurrent this time of a general discontent with politics, or perhaps with political parties, right across the board.  Mr Farage has been quick to exploit this; we’re different, he tells us, we believe the same things as you do, not like the “conventional” parties, so called. Somehow I’m not convinced. But I do think there is a general perception that politicians are just in it for themselves, that no-one really listens to what real people want, and that the whole process is mired in corruption and sleaze. They’re a sinful lot, politicians, said someone to me last week.

In contrast with that perception, I’d have to say that most of the politicians I’ve met, nationally and locally, have seemed to me genuine people who came into politics because they wanted to be of use and service to others. I’ve known a couple who left politics because they decided they’d be able to do more good elsewhere. The problem with any system is that you can end up serving the system itself rather than what the system is supposed to be producing or delivering, and our political system isn’t immune to that. Nor is the church, by the way. For the record, one senior politician I knew quite well and thought well of is now an ex-MP, having been caught out claiming expenses he wasn’t entitled to - so maybe my judgement isn’t exactly foolproof anyway.

We're right, of course, to expect the very highest standards from those in political power. They should be leading the nation not only in terms of the status they have and the fact that they hold the reins of power, but also in their behaviour, and in the example they set. Those who make the law are by no means above the law, and should not only comply with the law but be clearly seen to do so. It’s not surprising then that when they do fall, it’s quite a fall.

Today's news, as they say, is nothing more than the wrapping for tomorrow's chips. When election day comes round, who knows what the number one concerns in voters’ minds may be, or what events, speeches, gaffes or catastrophes might have shaken things up. Who knows what sins may find people out in the next two weeks or so, what incompetences might be exposed, or whether today’s popular politician of the moment might in a week or two’s time have lost their shiny charisma.

Sin, incompetence and unpopularity were all part of the story of the Passion of our Lord. There was an element of political sleaze about it too. This story isn’t about sin on its own; those other two things, incompetence, unpopularity often go hand in hand with sin.  The story of the cross includes the incompetence of the high priests and their allies, who hadn't the vision to see beyond their own little political games, and even then could hardly make their charges stick, or back them with reliable witnesses; and it includes the unpopularity of Pontius Pilate, who didn't dare listen to his own inner conscience, but listened to the mob instead.

In the reading I used this morning from the Acts of the Apostles, we find Peter and John being challenged over their healing of a lame man in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. A hard challenge, but I think Peter was in fact quite generous in his reply to it. He could imply have condemned the Jewish faithful for their part in the murder of the Christ, but he didn’t.  Instead, we find him telling them he knows they acted in ignorance - and though what they did was sinful, the consequences of their actions were a fulfilment of what God had planned and the prophets foretold.  He could have told them they had blood on their hands that nothing could ever wipe away; but instead he says “Repent, turn back to God, and he is ready to wipe away your sins.”

I want to reflect a little on what sin is and what we should be doing about it - starting right here, where we are. Someone I know well has just had their ceiling collapse. A pipe had been quietly leaking for quite some time, it seems, and damp had been building up unnoticed, until all of a sudden, disaster; everything gave way. It’s often true that though things look more or less OK, underneath the surface there’s more to sort out than you might imagine. Having heard his story, I spent a while carefully looking around everything at home, just in case. Mind you, his house is quite an old and historic building, while my place was built only about thirty years ago.

You do need to be vigilant if you're looking after an old building, and I’ve worried over a fair few of them in my time. Only the other Sunday at a chapel I often attend in Coedway I was agonising with the steward over the five year inspection that’s almost due. Do you have those here? All Church of England and Church in Wales churches have to have a quinquennial inspection, leading to an architect’s report. It’s good, it helps the vicar and churchwardens know what's urgent, so priorities can be set for maintenance and repairs. But of course, it all costs. If you miss something though, it can work to bad effect unseen for years, till by the time you realise things are wrong, they're very wrong indeed.

The other day I was looking through a little leaflet I found behind something else on a shelf, entitled “A Guide to Church Mission and Ministry”. I must have been given it at some time in my past ministry; anyway, it was interesting to note that the first chapter wasn't ideas for house to house visiting or setting up a prayer group or how to run your youth club; it was about keeping the church gutters and drains clear.  Why is that mission, I wondered? But then again, why not? Each church and chapel building is itself a proclamation of the Christian faith, and it does that proclaiming job all the better if it’s in good order, and cared for well. Chapter two, by the way, was about how to re-order your church so that it provides the welcome and the resources you need.

But regular maintenance is as vital for church folk as it is for church buildings.  Bad habits or foolish indulgences, left unchecked, can take us over;  and good practices like prayer, Bible study, or churchgoing, or even just checking to see how the neighbours are:  leave them undone and you may well get into the habit of not doing them.  Charity too: for the Christian needs to be more than an occasional off the cuff thing - for us giving, caring and acting need to be a regular and disciplined part of our Christ-centred living.

And sin, to get back to that little word I mentioned earlier - sin is what happens when we’re neglectful. My friend’s house was tidy, nicely decorated and furnished, well-swept; but the ceiling still fell in, because some vital things hadn’t been done. Sin’s a bit like that. Most of us don’t do much that is bad. We’re nice, we’re law-abiding, we’re here on a Sunday morning when we could be washing the car or playing Sunday league football or lying in bed reading the Sunday papers or the latest Danielle Steel. But that actually isn’t quite enough on its own.

The old prayer of confession in the Prayer Book of 1662 includes these words: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and there is no health in us.” I think the prayer gets those the right way round, making “leaving undone the things we ought to have done” first on the list. For most of us, that’s the bigger part of our sin: the chances we let slip, the times when we can’t be bothered, the times when we think it’s someone else’s job.  If we’re not attending properly to this aspect of our lives, then it’s like the damp building up, that’s there and doing damage, even if the ceiling hasn’t yet fallen down.

We have rules to live by, of course. Many of our churches and chapels have the ten commandments inscribed somewhere; in one of my former churches, four one side and six the other, of the holy table. We can tend to think of sin as breaking the rules, therefore; but that’s not exactly it. Jesus wasn’t averse to breaking the rules on occasion, after all. Healing folk on the sabbath, for example. Simplest definition of sin - sin is letting God down. It's not so much that we break the rules as that we break God's trust.

The Greek word 'amartia’ is what we translate into English as 'sin'. ‘Amartia’ has as its origin the idea of falling short, of missing the mark, of not doing right; it means those things more than being about actively doing wrong.  John in his letter says that to sin is to break God's law, and if that's the case we need to consider what that law is at its most basic:  love the Lord your God, and love your neighbour as yourself.  Or as Jesus said to his disciples:  'I give you a new commandment, love one another, as I have loved you.'  Sin happens when we lose touch with the love of our Lord, when we become self-centred and not God-centred.

Politicians get labelled as corrupt and self-serving, even though often that’s more an excuse for people to be idle and apathetic and not bother exercising their democratic right to choose, than a genuine and justifiable analysis. Churches, ministers and church folk can get just as easily labelled, though, and I’ve heard it said: “Self-serving, hypocrites, only care for their own, no better than they ought to be” - I’ve heard it all said and sometimes I’ve had it said to me. Again, it’s more often an excuse than a reasoned argument, said, likely enough, by people who don’t want to do get involved, but feel a bit guilty so need to justify their inaction.

So we need to look after ourselves, our buildings, our institution - to make ourselves and our church as Christ like and as Christ filled, Spirit filled as we can. Paul often says this sort of thing to the churches he founded; people need to look at us from outside and see nothing to offend, nothing that detracts from or runs counter to the message we offer, and the claims we make.

The Easter season, which we’re still in, was for the first disciples a time of re-connecting, of discovering and engaging with their Lord who was the same as he was and yet was not the same, for he has moved on, he is now beyond death and dying - raised, as Paul tells us, as the first fruits, so that all may follow.

'I'm not a ghost,' Jesus assured his disciples, in the Gospel story we heard this morning from St Luke.  'Touch me, and see the wounds;  come, share your food with me, and watch me eat.  Believe.'  Belief in the risen Christ is relationship with a person, not just the adoption of an idea. That’s how it was for them, that’s true for us as well.

For us as for them the message of Easter is that love is the way to live, and the way to life.  That's why people built our churches, and that's why we worship in them on a Sunday (as opposed to any other day).  And while we won't ever quite shake off, in this life, our tendency to sin, incompetence and an over-large concern for our own popularity and standing, we are called again and again by our Lord, and challenged, to be repentant, to accept forgiveness, to be enriched by grace, and so rise above all that, as God gives us strength and vision. For us too, the Easter season is an opportunity to re-connect with Christ, to know his healing and redeeming touch, and to become what we need to be for the sake of the world - not just people who talk about God, but who do God, who are open to his indwelling presence and active in his service: faithful witnesses to the resurrection, and to the power and wonder of that divine love the grave could never hold.