Why I am a Christian (5)

The Yearning for Meaning in the Human Heart Points to God

In 2012, I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I came up with 26.

The first four reasons spring from the realm of science and they are foundational to my understanding as to why I think that belief in a creator is plausible and not irrational. 

The next two are more to do with metaphysics than physics. They are rooted in the mysteries of the human condition.

One of the endlessly repeated Richard Dawkins quotes you hear is the one from River Out Of Eden (1995) in which he says: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

The question I ask is this: if the universe really were purposeless and indifferent, where did Dawkins’ evident interest in meaning and understanding come from? 

Would people ever ache for something that does not exist? Even if they could, where would that sense of longing spring from in a meaningless, pitilessly indifferent cosmos? 

What we all experience as human beings just doesn't fit Dawkins' vision of reality.

I think that the human soul’s yearning for meaning points to the existence of meaning in the universe. And the existence of meaning in the universe points to the existence of God.   

Have you ever thought about what it is that marks us human beings out from all other beasts? We, like them, eat, sleep, procreate, and defend ourselves from danger.

But unlike them, we know the difference between knowledge and wisdom. We have an existential awareness of ourselves. We explore the nature of our existence, asking questions such as “Who am I?”, “Where do I come from?” and “Why am I here?” We appreciate artistic beauty. We have a deep awareness of our mortality. We need meaning and purpose in our lives. We have an innate aspiration for significance. For all these reasons, we are not the same as other beasts. Because of these differences, human life is sacred.

We have a soul. “Soul” is a difficult word to define. It’s like the essence of a person, the self. It is what makes me me and you you. I don’t know where the soul is. Like the psyche, it isn’t hemmed in by a physical location. But I know I have a psyche, or a consciousness, just as much as I have a brain. And I know I have a soul just as much as I have a body.

Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University in La Mirada, California J. P. Moreland has defined consciousness as “Our introspection, sensations, thoughts, emotions, desires, beliefs, and free choices that make us alive and aware. The ‘soul’ contains our consciousness and animates our body” he says.

Radio journalist John Humphrys tried to articulate this in his book In God We Doubt: Confessions of a Failed Atheist:

“Biologists like Richard Dawkins know a thousand times more than most of us ever will about how our bodies work and how we evolved… But there is that other mysterious attribute, about which so many scientists are curiously incurious. There is our soul, our spirit, our conscience or whatever else you want to call it… We sense a spiritual element in that nobility and in the miracle of unselfish love and sacrifice, something beyond our conscious understanding.”

The Judaeo-Christian understanding of this phenomenon is that we are more than a tidily arranged ensemble of atoms and molecules and we are not just another species. We are created in the image of God.

Saint Augustine’s famous prayer “You have formed us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in you” gives voice to this reality. It shows that this existential yearning was known and felt in the 3^rd Century so it is not a new phenomenon. And it is all the more striking that it was written by an intellectual giant who, as a young man, lived a wild and hedonistic lifestyle. His lavishly promiscuous youth left him empty handed and still searching for meaning.

Bertrand Russell was a leading atheist in the mid-20^th Century. He wrote an essay called Why I Am Not a Christian. But tellingly, when his daughter Katharine Tait wrote a biography of her father she wrote:

“Somewhere in the back of my father’s mind and at the bottom of his heart, in the depths of his soul, there was an empty space that had once been filled by God and he never found anything else to put in it.”

Most people would admit that they have a restless sense of something deep down that is not satisfied by any material thing. The pleasure gained by any new purchase, however eagerly desired beforehand, soon wears off. That suggests that the soul can only be fulfilled by something less tangible than the stuff we accumulate.

I find it striking (but unsurprising) that, in a century that has seen the cultural influence of Christianity recede in the U.K. - influenced by Russell’s atheism - unhappiness in marriage leading to family breakdown and world-weariness leading to drug abuse and binge drinking are at record levels. When our souls are starved of meaning and purpose our relationships become unfulfilling and we seek escape from the inevitable emptiness we are left with.

The Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias once fielded questions from an auditorium of University students in the USA. He had been commending the case for God and, as is the fashion, had received a frosty reception. One student raised his hand and stated that Mr Zacharias had been wasting his time talking about real meaning in life because there is no meaning in life. “Everything is meaningless.”

Zacharias asked him to stand and replied, “Sir, I take it that when you claim ‘everything is meaningless’, you assume that what you have just said is meaningful. If your statement really is meaningful then everything is therefore not meaningless, and you have unwittingly proved your statement to be false. But if you still maintain that everything is meaningless, including your statement, by your own criteria you have essentially said nothing of consequence and you may sit down.”

O.K., perhaps it was a little unkind to the student to so publicly expose the fatal weakness of his argument. But the premise was wrong anyway. Everything is not meaningless. It just feels like it is when you have denied your soul the oxygen it needs to thrive.

There are many ways this image of God expresses itself but today I just want to observe that some kind of spiritual expression is practically universal – and seems innate.

Swedish-American author John Ortberg writes about a little girl who asked her atheist father “Who made me?” The father started to talk about the Big Bang, random mutations, blind chance and the absurdities of this vastly meaningless universe. She listened to him and looked down at her shoes, a little disappointed. Then the father said, in the interests of balance, “Oh, and there are some other silly people who believe in an all-powerful being called *God* and that he loves everyone and that he made us all.” The little girl started to dance around the room shouting excitedly, “I knew what you told me wasn’t true! It’s him, it’s him!”

What is it in the human soul that, in all cultures in all history seems to draw so many to a sense that there is something - Someone - greater than oneself to worship? Even in cultures that violently suppress or relentlessly scoff at such a view, for example Soviet Russia and the 21^st Century Western world, nothing seems to be able to snuff out this spiritual flame in the human soul. Could it be because we are made in the image of a God who is worthy of praise and worship? I think so.

Thinking with this framework in mind makes sense to me and it helps me to make sense of the world around me. As C.S. Lewis so memorably put it in Is Theology Poetry? “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

The Bible expresses it this way: [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3.11).

In other words, human beings instinctively sense there is an eternal, spiritual dimension to life (though they may suppress such feelings) but can never work it all out with their finite minds.

Those who reject this vision of the human condition tell us that our existence is just an unlikely fluke; we are all alone, having arrived completely by chance in a universe that has no design, no destination, no point and no meaning.

They need to explain, better than they have so far, why human beings are on a restless quest to interpret deeper meaning, and discover an overarching structure in life, the universe and everything.

They need to tell us why we seem hard-wired to probe the realities of our existence and see meaningful patterns there.

They need to enlighten us as to why people ask themselves “What’s it all for?”

They need to get across why people so often ask themselves “Is there more to life than this?” especially when they seem to have everything they need or could want.

Maybe we do live in a universe with “no purpose… nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” But it doesn’t seem like it; quite the reverse.

As C.S. Lewis (again) once wrote in Mere Christianity, “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Exactly. 

Or as Philanthropist Sir John Templeton put it: “Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?”

Strange indeed...

The Deadliness of Sin (2 Kings 17.5-17 and Galatians 5.16-26)

An Ash Wednesday Address

Introduction

So… we all know now what the Pope is giving up for Lent don’t we? (*Benedict XVI had just handed in his resignation as Pope).

According to a survey I saw last week, chocolate is the number one thing people give up during this season. Facebook or other social media is number two. Alcohol is number three.  At number 80 is “caring” apparently.

On 30 August 1991 in the Shinjuku stadium in Tokyo, Japan, an American athlete named Mike Powell pulled off a sporting achievement that no one had managed for 33 years. And, 22 years on, no one has matched it since.

He broke the world record for the long jump. The distance he jumped was 8.95 metres (or, in old money, 29 ft, 4¼ in).

That’s just numbers, so let me illustrate that for you if I may… (takes tape measure and mark out the distance). That’s without the hop and the skip. That’s a different event. This is just the jump!

How achievable would it be for anyone here this evening to match that record? Would anyone like to have a go? Do I have any takers? Of course not.

The gap between the point where Powell set off and the point where he landed is just completely unbridgeable, even for all but the very best elite athletes on Earth – and even then, only once ever in the entire span of human history.

If we were to pick the fittest, most athletic, person here this evening (I know you’re thinking that must be me!) and if we were to give him intense training and put him on a special diet and design a super streamlined kit and engineer some new high tech shoes we know that he could never, ever be airborne that long and jump that distance.

It’s impossible.

Our Problem: Sin

So let me ask you a question as we begin. How far do you think it is between where you are and the intense brightness of God’s infinite moral perfections?

How far do you think it is between your sinfulness and his righteousness? And what could you possibly ever do to close the gap?

This is a question that God is particularly interested in. He mentions it quite a bit in his book. You see, the Bible says in Romans 3.23 that all have sinned. That’s everybody; all have sinned. You, me, and from Mother Teresa to Genghis Kahn - all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God.

Just like in the long jump, we all fall short. No matter how hard you try, how long you train, you know the chasm is too wide.

Now God isn’t unfair. In a way, God made it quite simple for us. He gave us ten simple rules to live by; the Ten Commandments.

Ten simple rules. That shouldn’t be all that difficult should it? With a bit of self-discipline and a bit of hard work most people should be able to manage that shouldn’t they?

So let’s see how we do. The first simple rule is this: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Doesn't sound too complicated does it? Let’s see how we measure up. Who among us here this evening has never, ever put anything in their life in front of God?

Let’s have a show of hands. Raise your hand please if you have never, not once in your life, ever considered something or someone to be more important to you, more valuable to you, than God.

You see, nobody here (and in fact nobody on the entire Earth) can even get past number one of God’s 10 simple rules. The Bible is right. All have sinned and have fallen short of God’s standards.

In our day, hardly anything could be less appealing to most people than listening to a talk about sin. How many of you tonight said, “Quick, get your coat on, let’s get going down to Saint Mary’s on this bitterly cold evening to hear John Lambert talk for 20 minutes about sin! This is going to be the highlight of my week. This should be great. Bring it on! I can’t wait!”? Did you find yourself saying that?

Sin is basically human rebellion against God. We are not inclined to want to hear about that. We are inclined to want to feel good about ourselves.

We have become numbed to words like ‘sin’ and ‘wickedness’. We want to hear about things that cheer us up instead.

In our culture, we have largely lost any real sense of the fear of God (which is the beginning if wisdom) and the seduction of sin and the danger of hell. They have almost become taboo subjects – even in church.

We want to hear about a God of love - and our God is a God of love - but he will also judge the living and the dead whether people want to hear about it or not.

The season of Lent disciplines us to get real about ourselves. We are not virtuous people in need of entertainment. We are sinners in need of grace.

Israel’s Disobedience

Our society in 21st Century Britain is, in some ways, quite similar in attitude to the society in Israel in the 8th Century B.C.

In those days, prophets like Isaiah, Hosea and Amos warned their people that, if the nation continued on the path it was on, rejecting God and flouting his laws, there would be real trouble ahead.

But people just said “Here we go again, another sermon about doom and gloom.” Have you ever heard people say “Cheer up, it might never happen.” Well, that’s what people said then.

But it did happen. Everything the prophets predicted came to pass. The Assyrians laid siege to Samaria which was the capital city of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. They surrounded the city for three years until it finally fell in 722 BC.

27,000 Israelites were forcibly deported, and carried off into exile, never to see their homes again. It was the end of their existence as a nation; ten of the twelve tribes of Israel were erased from the face of the Earth.

Lest anyone was in any doubt, 2 Kings 17.7 comments on why this happened. “All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt.” Sin is deadly.

When you look through the list of all the things they did to stir up God’s wrath, and it doesn’t make for light reading, it boils down to worshipping idols, following superstitions and rejecting God’s clear commandments.

But what started for them as just offering a little pinch of incense to a pagan god spiralled down to offering their sons and daughters in the fire.

Of course, we would never sink to such a level would we? Except that the most dangerous place for a child to be in 2012 Britain was in its mother’s womb, where over 200,000 lives were ended before being sent to the hospital incinerator. Let's not pass judgement on a society that sacrificed its children in the fire. Ours does that even more than they did.

I don’t say that in any spirit of condemnation by the way. Only those who are without sin are in any position to throw the first stone. 

But our nation is defying God and I’m afraid we are on the same trajectory as rebellious Israel in our first reading.

There is a way back from sin though. Jacob was a cheat, Peter had a temper, David was an adulterer, Noah got drunk, Jonah ran away from God, Paul was a murderer, so was Moses, Miriam was a gossip, Martha was a worrier, Mary Magdalene was promiscuous, Thomas was a doubter, Sara was impatient, Elijah was self-piteous and Zaccheus was a thief.

The Bible is full of flawed heroes; people who got it wrong - sometimes badly wrong but who found their way back to God.

That should give us all some hope. Because, the Bible says, “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” (Romans 5.20).

Deadly Sins

In the 4^th Century AD, a humble monk with the instantly forgettable name of Evagrius Ponticus drew up a list of vices with the aim of educating Christians about fallen humanity’s tendency to make destructive moral choices. So he came up with these: anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust pride and sloth.

We’re going to be thinking about these seven deadly sins through Lent this year. What was the name of the monk again? You see, I told you his name was instantly forgettable! In Evagrius Ponticus’ day the seven deadly sins were a big hit.

People found it very helpful to have an understanding of how they might offend a holy God and so do all they could to avoid doing so. And they really took seriously the adjective “deadly”.

In our second reading in Galatians 5.18-21, there is a right rotten old list of bad stuff: "sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like."

Why do we call sin deadly? Because Paul goes on to say In v21 “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this (that is to say who go on living like this, unrepentant and unashamed) will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

Sin is deadly. If I told you there was one thing that had the power to rob you of your joy, to disturb your peace in Christ, to break up your relationships, to lose you your job, to fritter away your pension, to make you dangerously ill and keep you out of heaven you’d want to know what it is and how to steer clear of it. Sin can do all those things.

Did you ever play with magnets when you were a child? If you did, you'll remember that the closer they got to each other, the harder it was to pull them apart.

Sin is something like that. The closer we flirt with it, the stronger its attraction will be on us. In fact, if we’re not careful, the time may come when it will be almost impossible to pull away from it. Hebrews 12 says that sin “so easily entangles.” It’s like a spider’s web that traps its prey.

But this isn't the end of the story! In spite of our rebellion, in spite of our complete inability to keep all the rules, in spite of our failure to even get past rule number one, God loves us so much he sent His Son into the world to forgive us and cleanse us and give us new hearts. However far we’ve gone down sin’s path we can be right with God again through faith.

The power of Christ’s death and resurrection is greater than the power of sin. Has Christ forgiven your sins? Make sure by turning to Him in faith tonight and trusting Him alone for your salvation. Jesus’ promise is for you: “Whoever comes to me I will never drive away.”

Conclusion

Tonight, we’re going to mark a sign of the cross with ash on each forehead.

The ash - dirty and lifeless - reminds us of our utter powerlessness to live a perfectly good life.

The cross reminds us that by putting our trust in Jesus’ utterly good life we are saved from the deadly consequences of sin.

As I close, let me leave you with an illustration that Martin Lloyd-Jones used to use about two fields to describe our relationship to sin as Christian believers.

I used to live in a field, he said, where Satan and sin controlled my life. But now I have been lifted out of that field and placed in a field where Christ and righteousness controls my life. I can still hear Satan’s seductive voice over the wall, [provoking anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride and sloth]. But my goal now is to move further and further away from the wall where I can no longer hear him.

May we all move further and further away from his field during this time of Lent.

Sermon preached at Saint Mary's Long Newton, 13th February 2013

Why I am a Christian (4)

The Unlikely Story of the Appearance of Life on Earth Points to an Author

In 2012, I jotted down all the reasons I could think of why I am a Christian. I came up with 26.

The first four reasons (to do with the origins of the universe, the fine tuning of the universe, the life-favouring properties of the Earth and the improbable appearance of organic matter on Earth) contribute to my understanding as to why I think that my belief in a creator is credible and not unreasonable. 

So this is the fourth of 26 reasons I am a Christian; the unlikely story of the appearance of life on Earth points to an author.

To sum up where we have got to so far, pause to consider these things if you will: (1) The unexplained and instantaneous appearance of everything there is, with no raw materials to work from, at the beginning of time. (2) The mind-bogglingly precise physics necessary for anything and everything to continue existing. (3) The amazingly exact coincidences of everything being perfectly calibrated on earth to support flourishing life. And (4) the staggeringly complex feat of getting dead matter -completely unassisted- to become complex, self-multiplying organisms. If that doesn’t make you wonder, then maybe you should wonder why.

In short, to embrace naturalism (the belief that nature is all there is and there is no spiritual realm and no possibility of a supernatural being) you have to defend, with explanations, a belief that:

•   Nothing just produced everything

•   Chaos just produced precision fine-tuning

•   Non-life just produced life

•   Unconsciousness just produced consciousness

Could even the simplest life forms have come into existence, all by themselves, from inanimate -dead- components? And if so, how did they do it? 

(And incidentally, if life could and did just materialize from dead matter why is the resurrection of Christ so far-fetched? But let’s not get into Reason 14 just yet).

How life was ever assembled from non-life is the biggest conundrum in biology. It made the staunchly atheist philosopher Anthony Flew think the unthinkable. “It has become inordinately difficult to even to begin to think about a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism” he confessed. Flew ended up abandoning atheism altogether and writing a book called There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

The problem that unsettled Flew’s curious mind is summed up well by Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School Jack W. Szostak and biochemist Dr. Alonso Ricardo: “It is virtually impossible to imagine how a cell’s machines, which are mostly protein-based catalysts called enzymes, could have formed spontaneously as life first arose from nonliving matter around 3.7 billion years ago. To be sure, under the right conditions some building blocks of proteins, the amino acids, form easily from simpler chemicals, as Stanley L. Miller and Harold C. Urey of the University of Chicago discovered in pioneering experiments in the 1950s. But going from there to proteins and enzymes is a different matter.”

Proteins and enzymes and DNA are exceptionally complex molecules that just do not self-create any more than laptop computers self-assemble or pullovers self-knit. Flew admitted that it was folly to keep pretending that they do.

Biochemists have tried simulating the creation of life from non-life with the most advanced experiments in high-tech laboratories and they cannot get anywhere near it. 

If our most intelligent minds cannot pull it off in the most sophisticated conditions, should we not be sceptical when we are told that it just managed all by itself on a messy and primitive Earth?

Geneticist Dr. Michael Denton, who describes himself as an agnostic, explains why we should not be surprised that this quest to replicate the creation of life has always ended in disappointment. “Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological systems, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive. Even the tiniest of bacterial cells is a veritable micro-miniaturised factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of 100 thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world.”

No wonder fair-minded atheists like Anthony Flew and others, who have the courage to follow where the evidence leads, have found all this so troublesome to their prior assumptions. 

Honest sceptics know full well that they cannot say that the appearance of living organisms points to the non-existence of God. On the contrary, when they look at the evidence objectively, some reluctantly concede that the case for some kind of creator is overwhelming.

Personally, I think the notion of a wise, all-powerful God is as reasonable as anything else that has been suggested. It fits with the facts of our inexplicably well calibrated universe and with God’s self-revelation in the Bible where he is referred to as “the Author of Life" (Acts 3.15).

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth… he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.” Acts 17.24-25.

To sum up, here’s the deal: twenty different amino acids are involved in producing proteins and each amino acid has to be arranged, often duplicated, in precisely the right place in the molecule to form the protein.

Oxford Professor of Mathematics John Lennox, in God’s Undertaker, spells out the overwhelmingly improbable scenario necessary for that to occur. “If we had a pool consisting of all twenty [amino acids] the probability of getting the correct amino acid at a specific site in the protein would be 1/20. Thus the probability of getting 100 amino acids in the correct order would be (1/20) to the power of 100, which is 1 in 10 with 130 zeros after it. But this is just the start… For these calculations concern only a single protein. Yet life as we know it requires hundreds of thousands of proteins, and it has been calculated that the odds against producing these by chance is more than 10 with 40,000 zeros after it to 1.”

I take this as compelling supporting evidence against blind chance as a satisfactory explanation for the origins of life on Earth.

At this point, some will be asking themselves “What about evolution then?”

This series is about why I am a Christian, so I am focusing more on advancing positive arguments about why I think Christianity is true than on answering objections from others who think it is false.

But this particular issue is so important and is such a stumbling block to belief in God for so many. I can hardly avoid addressing it before I leave my reflections from the world of science and move on to more philosophical ground.

I have looked at evidence from the fossil record, from genetic research, from biogeography etc. with an open mind and followed where it leads. It seems very highly likely that species are related to each other and have undergone modification over great periods of time. I know there are Christians who disagree. I respect them and, who knows, it may be that they end up being right, but I don’t think so. The evidence for an ancient universe and natural selection is compelling and as a Christian I say that without embarrassment.

It is regrettable that the debate about our origins has become so polarised and reductionist in some circles. It is as if there are only two choices available to us; we must accept that we are the result of a random, godless accident in a meaningless universe or we must sign up to an ultra-literal six 24-hour day, young-earth scenario.

In fact, most (not all but most) Christians I know accept that there has been descent with modification in living species without any erosion whatsoever of their belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God.

The narrative of divine direction of natural processes is entirely coherent. In much the same way, when Christians marvel at God’s handiwork after a baby is born, they do not deny that it required sexual intercourse between the child’s mother and father as well. Nor do they see the parents’ role as an argument against the existence of God.

David Robertson in his book The Dawkins Letters lists Asa Gray (botanist), Charles Walcott (palaeontologist), Theodosius Dobzhansky (evolutionary biologist), RJ Berry (geneticist), Owen Gingerich (scientific historian) and Francis Collins (Head of the Human Genome Project) as but a few examples of internationally distinguished scientists who are also Christian believers. There are many more of course. Christians in Science has over 1,000 members including senior scientists engaged in research and development, university lecturers and scientific writers. The idea that science and faith are incompatible is simply false. (Incidentally the popular notion of an overwhelming rejection of Darwin’s Origin of Species from the church in the 19^th Century is an urban myth as has been pointed out on the TV show QI).

As has often been said, science asks “how”. The Bible explores “why.” We get ourselves into hot water when we force science to explain “why” and misinterpret the Bible as a book that was written primarily to tell us “how it all happened down to every last detail.”

How do I read the Bible then on questions related to scientific enquiry?

I acknowledge the nuances of ancient Hebrew literary genre and I interpret Genesis with due attention to its context. Most Christians I know do the same. That does not at all interfere with my belief that it is truth revealed by God. I see Genesis 1 as theological truth (telling me things about God) and presented in the genre of a story.

Consider this comparison: Julius Caesar existed. Shakespeare’s brilliant play about his life is a broadly accurate depiction of the great turning points of his life. But no one would claim that the object of the play is to reproduce verbatim the historical dialogue between Caesar, Brutus and Mark Antony. 

Critics who would reject the play because some of its verbal exchanges may not be absolutely factual miss the point. Shakespeare’s genius and inspiration is to bring out themes like power, free will, fate, loyalty and betrayal for us to reflect on through the framework of real history. 

I see Genesis 1 in a broadly similar way. Genesis tells me about God’s ex-nihilo creative power, his careful ordering of the universe, his wise authorship of life on earth and the special place humankind has in his creative plan - unique over all other animal life. Bringing everything that exists into being was effortless for God. As we might say, "Oh, it was all in a week's work to me."

In short, Genesis 1 is a beautiful and inspirational artist’s impression that explains the divine reason why everything is as it is, and who is behind it - in language a child can understand.

Who knows, the theory of evolution may one day be demonstrated to be fatally flawed but I think, at the present time, it offers the best explanation of the mechanics of natural history we have.

But it absolutely does not explain everything. One step back from natural selection (which I accept), evolution fails to account for the origin of life itself which is the main point I have tried to make above.

Bill Bryson writes: “It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake – but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life.”

Natural selection doesn’t even begin to explain how or why there is anything to select in the first place!

And what of the great chasm that exists between human beings and all other animals? True, 97% of our DNA is identical to a chimpanzee’s but we share 60% of a fruit fly’s DNA too!

In fact, similar percentages may be observed between different models of car made by the same manufacturer. That doesn't mean that the differences must have occurred by themselves. No one denies that the differences are due to design. Manifestly, they are.

And that 3% that distinguishes us from our nearest genetic cousin... Our consciousness, our search for meaning, our appreciation of art and beauty and greatness, our facility for love, our yearning for the divine, our capacity for selfless philanthropy and noble self-sacrifice, our intelligence that has propelled us to the moon, our ability to reason, to feel shame, to smile and laugh and hope… 

I believe all these point to the Image of God in us, which is what I will start to write about in two weeks’ time.

My Eyes Have Seen Your Salvation (Luke 2.25-32 and 1 Peter 1.3-4)

A funeral sermon for a remarkable Christian woman. Names have been changed as an expression of care to the family.

When I first arrived here in this slightly back of beyond parish, I was startled to discover that I had in my new congregation a leading member of General Synod, the Church Commissioners’ Pastoral Committee, the Central Board of Finance and the Crown Nominations Commission – the body that appoints bishops. Moreover, she was on first name terms with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I confess that I began to wonder if I had made a huge mistake coming here. What ecclesiastical misdemeanours would be fed back to the bearded man in Lambeth Palace with the legendary eyebrows? What finer point of canon law would I unwittingly (or more likely intentionally) transgress only to be hauled before some disapproving committee?

But, as I got to know June, I discovered a woman who, yes, liked things to be done decently and in order, but who had the wisdom to see that, for a church to flourish, it needs to be led by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and not be a slave to endless legislation and procedural correctness.

Archdeacon Michael has given an outline already of June's immense contribution to the life of the Church of England. She gave so much to her local parish as well. I would like to record here the debt that this church owes her. We are so grateful to God for her long and full life.

I became a great fan of her delightful habit of calling me over one minute before a service was about to start to tell me about something she had said that week to some bishop I had never heard of. It always added a flurry of excitement to the start of a 9:00am service. Wild horses wouldn’t drag out of me the slightest hint of an admission that services were ever delayed for this reason. For that and her unfailing dedication and loyalty and support and wisdom and her generosity - and much more - I will miss her very much.

I have read the words from our Gospel reading at funeral services many times, as it’s in the funeral liturgy.

It’s about a devout old man called Simeon who expected to see the Messiah before his death and, having met Jesus – a babe in arms – knew that his life was now somehow complete. Now he could die, satisfied that his life had fulfilled its purpose, that God’s promise was true and that spiritual deliverance was ready to come to the world.

So he spoke these words:

Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,

you dismiss your servant in peace.

For my eyes have seen your salvation,

which you have prepared in the sight of all nations.

It seems particularly appropriate, fitting and poignant to reflect on these words today.

I say ‘appropriate’ because the event it describes – the presentation of Christ in the temple – is celebrated every year in the church’s calendar at Candlemas which occurs on February 2^nd. The nearest feast day to June’s death was Candlemas, falling just two days afterwards.

I must confess that, before I sat down to write this sermon, I only vaguely knew that Candlemas was about the presentation of Christ in the temple. Being an incorrigible Low Church minister, it’s really not the sort of thing I take much notice of.

I can just picture June, cradle Anglican that she was, looking at me wide eyed and incredulous that anyone in holy orders could actually be ignorant of such a thing. She would sometimes patiently instruct me in such matters for she was, with the aid of her trusty stick, a walking encyclopaedia of the unfathomable mysteries of the Church of England.

I say ‘fitting’ because the last time I saw June, unconscious and breathing with the aid of a ventilator, in the last hours of her life here on Earth, she looked assuredly at peace.

Simeon had said, “You let your servant go in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation.” Having suffered a very severe stroke just hours earlier, there was no hint of any ordeal or trauma on June’s face. She lay serenely, comfortable, and (like Simeon) evidently ready to depart once her family had had the opportunity to say farewell.

And I say ‘poignant’ because, while Simeon got to see the long awaited child before leaving this world, sadly June missed the birth of her first great grandchild by little more than a month. Part of our sadness today is that, though she lived a good decade beyond the three score years and ten, it seems that June had to leave us just a little too soon.

The suddenness of June’s death confronts us with the overwhelming power of the unexpected. We are, as the Bible says, as fragile as the wild flowers and meadow grass, growing today and gone tomorrow.

But though June’s death was sudden, the truth is that she was completely prepared for it.

It’s not a question we really care to ask ourselves very much, but if this day were to be our last, if we were here today and gone tomorrow, would we be ready to face what comes next, whatever it is?

If you’d like to consider the Christian response to that, we have some free booklets at the back called “Why Jesus?” You can take one on your way out if you are interested.

June was ready. She could confidently echo the words of the Apostle Peter in our second reading:

“In [God’s] great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you…”

June knew that the inheritance kept in heaven for her was not, and never could be, some kind of prize for distinguished service in the church or for volunteering for the Samaritans, or for being a faithful wife and wonderful mother, noble though those things undoubtedly are.

June knew that her inheritance kept in heaven was a gift from God to be received by faith alone and nothing at all to do with her achievements.

She knew there was something that cut her off from God and that had the power to keep her out of heaven. It’s the inclination we all have to live independently of God that the Bible calls sin.

I have never yet met anyone who can even get through one day, let alone a whole life, without doing or saying or thinking something they know they really shouldn’t have.

We can't get rid of our sin by ourselves. Someone has to come and take it away for us.

June knew that this is what Jesus Christ came to do for her - and for everyone - because of his great love for the world. No matter how weighed down we are by the weight of sin - Jesus took that burden upon Himself when He gave his life for us on the cross. The Bible puts it this way, “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3.18).

June knew that the key to life was to simply turn away from sin, and turn to Christ.

June claimed God’s promise which says: “To all who received [Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1.12).

She was ready, so she was able to face death with no fear.

And so, Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, now let your servant depart in peace. For her eyes saw your salvation.

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 11th February 2013

Why We Resource Other Churches (Acts 11.19-30 and 2 Corinthians 8.13-15, 9.10-15)

Introduction

I hope you have been enjoying this little series of talks on why we do what we do; why we invest so much into youth ministry, why we place such a high value on work among children and families and why we care about retired people. 

All Saints’ is a missional church. We know that the church worldwide is potentially only a few decades away from extinction.

If this generation of believers doesn’t tell this generation of unbelievers what we were told about Jesus there will be no church after we’ve gone.

Why should we tell other people? The first reason is because Jesus commanded us to go and to tell. The word “go” appears in the Bible 1514 times. It appears 233 times in the New Testament and 54 times in Matthew’s Gospel alone. Jesus said “Go to the lost sheep.” “Go and invite those you meet.” “Go and make disciples.”

The second reason is because of the needs of other people. The singer Sinead O’Connor said this, “As a race we feel empty because our spirituality has been wiped out, and we don’t know how to express ourselves. And as a result we’re encouraged to fill that gap with alcohol, drugs, sex, or money. People out there” she adds, “are screaming for the truth.”

So far this year, we have been focusing on our priorities for mission in our own community here. I hope you have a much better feel for what goes on here all through the week in this place. But as we draw towards the close of this series, I want to share a little about why we see ourselves as a resource - for other churches and communities as well.

All Saints’ is like a storehouse. If we try and keep it to ourselves it will just go mouldy. It’s no use having a storehouse full of grain when there are people outside dying for a loaf of bread. God is pouring out abundant blessings here and we want to give it away.

Let me give you three examples of how this works.

1. Resourcing Saint Mary’s

First of all, we are committed to our association with Saint Mary’s. We’ve been working with Saint Mary’s for about 15 years now. When All Saints’ began that partnership, Saint Mary’s did not look like a very promising mission field.

It was a church with a demoralised congregation of about 8 rattling about in a building with hard pews and no heating. It was excessively traditional. There was limited contact between the church and the school in the village.

Frankly, it was a prime candidate for closure. It was not a viable church.

But the Scriptures say that “God gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” (Romans 4.17).

We were inspired by the vision and dynamism of the early church.

In our reading from Acts 11 this morning you see a compelling picture of what the church should be like. It was a mobile movement with travelling leaders, imparting different gifts and graces.

In just 11 verses, six different places are named; Phoenicia, Cyprus, Antioch, Cyrene, Jerusalem and Tarsus as well as reference to the entire Roman world. So it wasn’t “you in your small corner and I in mine.”

Five distinct and different ministries are mentioned; evangelists, teachers, encouragers and prophets as well as sharing financial resources so the poorest are helped to flourish.

Four different named individuals (Stephen, Saul, Barnabas and Agabus) are mentioned as well as a reference to unnamed groups of itinerant believers. All that in just 11 verses.

We believe in this model. We don’t say “All is going well at All Saints’ – too bad for everyone else.”

And the Bible says that God is “able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3.20) doesn’t it?

So this is what happened at Saint Mary’s:

We planted out some of our people there. We prayed around the village and prophesied over it. There was a bit of spiritual warfare to do; binding and loosing. Work got started on the building.

By the grace of God, we put some sound foundations back in there. For example, Saint Mary’s started giving away the first 10% of its income to mission outside the church. We went into the school with assemblies and worship and started a fresh expression service called Godzone. As the church grew, we trained some of their people in leadership – and that led to further growth and health.

Now, 15 years on or so, the building has been reordered with toilets (alleluia!) and a kitchen area. The seating is no longer like a medieval instrument of torture!

There is a friendly feel to it and the preaching there, led by a very capable team of lay people, is sound, Bible based and relevant to people’s lives.

Sunday attendance now regularly reaches around 50-60. In the short time I’ve been here in the North East the numbers of people coming on Sunday at Saint Mary’s have increased by 80% - something I take little credit for as I’m only there one Sunday a month (though obviously in midweek as well). There's a great team of lay leaders there really doing a brilliant job.

Giving has gone up from £3,000 a year to £17,000 a year in the last 12 years there.

There’s an explosion of spiritual life in the school now.

None of that would have happened, in my view, without the giving heart and missionary spirit at All Saints’. And yet, all the glory to God. As the Bible says, "one planted, another watered but God gave the growth." (1 Corinthians 3.6).

We’re doing an Alpha course at Saint Mary’s after Easter. Over half the speakers will be from All Saints’ so we’re still investing ministry there and giving away some of the blessing God has poured into us here.

The more we give away, ministry wise, the more the kingdom grows, and the more the kingdom grows, the more grace returns to us.

Jesus made this very clear when he talked about giving out in Luke 6.32 (and this isn’t just about money, it’s about our whole approach to life): “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.”

In other words, as we give out, freely and not counting, the Lord pours back in – and more abundantly still.

No one can ever say to God “you owe me one.” He always supplies abundantly over and above all we dare to expend.

2. The Church Tithe

Secondly, for years now, All Saints’ has given away the first £1 for every £10 we receive. We give it away to support mission and works of mercy, both locally and internationally. Why do we do that? 

Because we want to feed the hungry and clothe the naked as the Lord has commanded. As we do that to them, he says we’re doing it to him.

And because we want to minister healing and wholeness to the sick and broken as Jesus has commissioned us to do.

And because we want to see churches planted all over the earth, especially where Jesus is not known, in obedience to his great commission.

“Go and make disciples” he said, “of all nations, baptising them and teaching them to obey everything have commanded you – and surely I am with you ‘till the end of the age.” (Matthew 28.19-20).

By the way, if you’re not really feeling the Lord’s presence at the moment, go and make a disciple. That is the context of Jesus’ promise to be with you. Go and tell someone about the Lord or share something that you have learned about Jesus with a younger Christian.

We want to have an impact way beyond Eaglescliffe.

William Wilberforce, as a Christian believer, worked to abolish the slave trade. Martin Luther King, as a Christian leader, campaigned against racism. 60% of AIDS help programmes in Africa are run by churches. Christians get involved in acts of kindness, most of which never get noticed or make the headlines. Our tithe contributes to that work of global mission.

Last year, thank God, we were able to give away about £18,000 (one tenth of our total income) because of our principle that, whatever our needs here, however pressing they are, the first tenth is the Lord’s.

If every Christian and every church on Earth gave away their first tenth, trusting God to look after them with the 90% left over, the resources would be in place for the entire world to be evangelised within two generations.

Where did we get this figure of 10% from? We got it from Malachi 3.10 which says,

“’Bring the whole tithe [meaning 10%] into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.’”

And we testify today that God has abundantly blessed us – but take in the truth of God’s word this morning; God is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine.

3. Parish Share

The third way that we act as a store house church, giving away blessing to others, is through what we call Parish Share. This year, 2013, we are committing £83,000 (that’s huge, that’s about 46% of our income) to this – so it’s the biggest single budget item we have.

The pie chart you see projected represents how All Saints’ will spend its money this year. The orange area is the tithe I just talked about. The green area on the left is our own ministry costs; staff salaries, outreach and so on. The white area is everything else; insurance, admin, maintenance etc. And the blue area is Parish Share. 

What does that blue chunk of pie go on and why is it such a massive slice? Why are spending so much on that?

Well, firstly Parish Share pays for clergy training, salaries, pensions and housing. Part of Parish Share isn’t really giving out to others at all because it includes the cost of providing ordained leadership here.

But most of our Parish Share goes on supporting mission and ministry elsewhere. Some people think that the Church of England is publicly funded in some way; it isn’t. All its income comes from its giving members.

If you’re not from an Anglican background, this is perhaps hard to get your head round. But the thinking goes like this: the Church of England is the only church in this country that is absolutely committed to ensuring that there is a Christian witness and community in every corner of the nation.

And that means that the more prosperous parishes voluntarily support mission and ministry in poorer areas. It’s not a tax we have to pay. It’s a share we choose to commit to out of principle.

We don’t want the Church of England to only be for the rich and privileged. So Parish Share is a love offering.

It’s a bit like what we read in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 this morning where Paul writes to the prosperous Corinthian church about the church in Jerusalem suffering from the famine that was prophesied in the Acts reading.

He says: “Your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality… And [God] will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.” (2 Corinthians 8.14 and 9.10).

We’re seeing a harvest. 'M' and 'S', with us this morning, are living testimony to that. They have converted to Christ and in one year have led 34 of their fellow countrymen and women to Jesus. That ministry is supported indirectly by you at All Saints'.

Stockton Parish Church was on the verge of closure five years ago. Like Saint Mary’s, it was just not viable. Any businessman would have shut it down. But nothing is impossible with God.

Thank God that he called Alan Farish, my predecessor here, to pioneer new ministry there. God has answered our prayers and blessed that work.

But here’s the thing; humanly speaking they would never have been able to do it without the support of Parish Share. But our sharing in their need has enabled the church to be built up under God.

Remember what Jesus said: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” (Matthew 13.31).

Parish Share supports hundreds of similar situations elsewhere. To all of you who are givers – thank you for your partnership in the gospel. Be blessed today. Your generosity is empowering the church in our region and changing the face of our communities.

It’s ironic that this is the first Sunday at All Saints’ since Janet’s death. She was a passionate supporter of parish share on PCC and she was always exhorting us to give away more by faith, trusting that the Lord would pour back to us exceedingly abundantly more grace. I know she would have been nodding enthusiastically all through this sermon were she with us this morning.

Ending

We know All Saints’ is all about reaching out to this immediate parish. That’s our mission field. But let’s own our vision for the wider church.

Having an exceptionally generous heart for mission and ministry further afield is the difference between a good church and a great church.

Let’s be a great church, a storehouse church, living by faith in our great God.

Shall we stand…

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 3rd February 2013