Sermon preached by
Canon John Howden

Passion Sunday, 21st March 2010

Why am I a Christian? I don’t know.

So let’s come at this a different way:  2 stories in the news last week.

1.    Soldier’s wife collecting George Cross for bravery, honouring her husband, an army sergeant killed in action in Afghanistan saving his men in extremely dangerous circumstances.

2.    The Vicar in Sheffield who has banned a group of elderly ladies from using his church hall for Tai Chi sessions, because he said it was anti Christian, coming from Chinese martial arts.  NB several of the ladies are members of his congregation

Which person strikes you as being Godly?  The soldier or the Vicar?

My reaction:            The Vicar is plainly bonkers, or misguided or both.  IN his action he thinks he has to defend God, but God does not need defending.  I felt empty, sad and dejected.

                  The soldier is also bonkers, by any normal standard, but guided by an urge to, at all costs even his own life, to serve those he leads – he did not set out to show God – he acted as Gods ambassador in that place – to his team he showed what Gods love is all about.  I felt full, joyful and aware of Gods presence.

St Ignatius of Loyola observed these two states in himself – the one of fullness the other emptiness – and called the fullness Consolation and the other Desolation.  The first energising, constructive, the second destructive.

I am a Christian.  I should go the first way, but I often fail and go the way of destruction.  I need some other force, not my own, to guide and drive me.

So who is this me?

I was born of CMS missionary parents in Iran.  Father a priest – liberal evangelical – family brought up to church 2 or 3 times on a Sunday, church youth club. Christian union at school, only associate with Christian young people and families.  My grandfather was also a priest – Victorian conservative evangelical – very strict, no playing cards, no radio on Sunday, no ballet (it is wicked to display the limbs in that way, my grandfather could not believe that Roman Catholics were Christian.

At 15 told my father I could not hack his God any more.  He said, ‘GO and find out’ and I did!

10 years – architectural school – beer – girls – jazz - protest (Aldermaston etc)– theatre as a designer – liberal life – no God at all – then I met Sue and actress in the company I was working in – one day off in the week and that was Sunday.  Sue was and is a Christian and if I wanted to meet her on Sunday I had to go to church.  God always gets in on the act!  God nudged when I was working in  Colchester – went to see my uncle, a canon in Chelmsford Cathedral who was also DDO – He said he thought that I was called to be a priest shock horror – I was selected – got married – and went to theological college in the Catholic tradition in Salisbury – suddenly through colour, drama, incense and the Eucharist, God became real and Jesus emerged not as the restrictive bully of my teenage years but as a role model.  IN the words of Desmond Tutu – ‘Jesus risked mockery and opposition because he dared to heal, raise the dead and minster to others.  Through his actions Jesus is an agent of forgiveness and healing.  He is the Son of God whose love is poured out for us.’  This was a God I could follow.  Jesus’ ministry was all about people not buildings, PCC’s, organs, diocesan returns, treasurer’s reports and heating systems.

Yes this is why I believe – and we were encouraged at college to believe that could change the world and make a real difference.  Ordination and reality set in!  So let’s leave our struggling newly ordained priest for the moment.

Today’s Gospel-Mary the costly ointment and Judas

•     Mary expressed her love of Jesus and did not care about the costs.  The perfume of her love was beautiful.

•     Judas was concerned only with cost grabbing – the bit about the thieving is a later addition I feel – Judas did not recognise how handsome Mary’s gesture had been

•     Jesus?  Did not condemn Judas or belittle him or Mary for that matter.  He gently chided Judas and it was all done with love

Again consolation and desolation.  I want to go one way and I go the other.  Judas was a disciple yet driven by his very narrow vision – Mary could only see her radically changed life and how much she owed to Jesus.

I am called to pastor people.  Walk the walk, Talk the talk, heal the sick, help the blind to see, set the prisoner free.  But I become obsessed with beautiful liturgy, and re-ordering the church, with what colour to wear and did I choose the right hymn.

I am like Jonah, he of the whale, when he was called by God to go to Nineveh and he thought ‘blow that for a bunch of bananas’ and he went to Tarshish instead.  God called in the troops in the shape of a whale and Jonah gave in and went to Nineveh.  Unfortunately he was not a success there either, but he had answered Gods call, eventually, and we are not told what happened afterwards.  Perhaps you would like to write ‘Jonah the sequel’

I am a Christian because God has called me, first and foremost to be myself.  It is after all all I have to offer.

Isaiah had to say in the end ‘Here I am send me’  The result was some of the finest writings in the Bible.

I am a Christian because it seems to be the only sane thing to do.  I may fight it like Jonah and Judas and feel alone and unloved.  But equally I may just allow God and feel cherished and alive.  Where does this lead?  Silence in the presence of our awesome God who loves us so much that he gave us His Son to show us the way to fullness of life.  He gave us bread and wine that we might share in His life.  He gave us this world to love and nurture.  He gave us each other to serve.  I am a Christian because it is the only thing that makes any sense and I am loving most of it.  I feel like Desmond Tutu who said after apartheid had finished ‘I am free!’

Amen.

© Canon John Howden 2010

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