Sermons to Self

Touching God

Christopher Ward

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781498204217
  9781498204231
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498204224
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The Christian faith is difficult--intellectually, morally, and spiritually. People struggle to make sense of it, and to live it. Many give up. Sitting in the pew (an increasing rarity), with a Christian upbringing and education behind him, Christopher Ward finds the practice and the preaching of the church unhelpful in resolving these struggles. He is tempted to give up and reject it all. Before he does, however, he is determined to make one last attempt to explore what it all means to him, guided only by what he hears and reads in the Bible Sunday to Sunday. Christopher Ward takes the four readings appointed for each Sunday in one year and identifies those verses that have a particular resonance for him. He then explores his personal response to them, unaided by academic study or biblical commentary, and analyzes their cumulative impact on his thinking. This exercise results in unexpected discoveries, and new trains of thought, plus many frustrations and much perplexity. In the end, his struggles are rewarded by a realization that his faltering faith has more to support it than he first believed.

First Sunday of Advent

Anticipation and Expectation

Isaiah 2:1–5 Psalm 122

Romans 13:11–14 Matthew 24:36–44

Always remember that this is the hour of crisis: it is high time for you to wake out of sleep, for deliverance is nearer to us now than it was when we first believed. It is far on in the night; day is near. Let us therefore throw off the deeds of darkness, and put on the armour of light.

Romans 13:11–12

Keep awake, then, for you do not know on what day your Lord will come. Remember, if the householder had known at what time of night the burglar was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into.

Matthew 24:42–43

Hold yourselves ready, therefore, because the Son of Man will come at the time you least expect him.

Matthew 24:44

In my pew-sitting days, I was never conscious that the first Sunday in Advent was the start of the Christian year. Guided by the Lectionary I realise now that there is an absolute logic that it should be so. Christ’s birth must be a starting point and Advent of course looks forward to that. There is however both a looking back, and a looking even further forward. For me, the latter is easier to engage with than the former. Old Testament writings which “foretell” the coming of Christ, which in the past I have taken at face value, with an almost wilful “suspension of disbelief”, now seem less convincing. The eclectic influences and writings that form what we now call The Bible are used to justify a continuity of thought and imagination that while very real two thousand years ago, is now merely historically interesting.

The logic lies in the here and now, not in the then and there. This however is the start of a story whose end we know, whose intermediate chapters are familiar, and whose emotional context has been part of our lives since we understood that Father Christmas was something really to look forward to.

The fact that we know the end of the story gives added poignancy to the beginning. Always at the back of our Christian adult minds is the thought that this birth, unusual if not miraculous in conception and delivery, is full of contrasts: poverty of location against heartfelt and expensive gifts, all the happiness that accompanies any birth against a systematic massacre of young children, and in the end, in all senses of that phrase, a belief that none of this will make sense until the child grows up and is killed. There is more than a hint of menace in the air, bitterness to reduce the sweetness that if allowed to predominate becomes cloying. It is the “Three trees on a low sky” in T.S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi. A hint of death to come in the middle of new birth.

The first Sunday in Advent is then a time of expectation. We know what is going to happen and we are looking forward to it. It is also a time of anticipation. Something else is going to happen, and we must be ready for it. So don’t get too comfortable.

The three passages above, from Romans and Matthew, emphasise this. Life has moved on. Christ’s birth and death are now part of history, but his promise that he would “come again” is a living belief and hope. We can, with some difficulty, think ourselves back to the time when Paul and Matthew were writing, and in so doing we can empathise with them but does a “second coming” hold much meaning for us now?

The Bible passages encourage us to be ready, to keep awake, to behave appropriately, and to recognise that this is the eleventh hour, a very critical time. But what, in the early part of the twenty-first century, are we “keeping awake” for?

I have no expectation of another miraculous birth. That was then, this is now. I have no expectation that some man, or woman, will capture the headlines as the new leader of right-thinking people. It is illuminating however to wonder how such a person would fare in our divided and over-populated world. How swiftly would he or she be driven into obscurity by secular cynicism, religious intolerance, or the selfish reluctance that lies in all of us to be told what to do?

If we accept (and I am not sure that I do accept this in an absolute and unquestioning way) that God’s plan (though the word ‘plan’ seems pathetically inappropriate) is for the promises initiated by Christ to become and remain real in the lives of everyone, what would be the most effective way of confirming this?

I believe that for each of us this will be different. Some are not troubled by such questions. They have a literalistic belief and an unquestioning faith that provides comforting security.

Others, myself included, are bedevilled by conflicting thoughts, wavering convictions, insubstantial beliefs, emotional ties, and irrational prejudices. We live in hope that we can find a way through this turbulence, or at least find some way of making sense of the storm.

We need guidance, but we may not recognise or accept it when it comes. We seek conviction but are too apathetic to seek it. We are bound to the good and the bad in our upbringing which we are embarrassed to retain or work hard to contradict in our behaviour. We pursue the rational, yet we know that what we talking about goes beyond our mental capacity to understand it. We need a voice crying in our wilderness.

“Keeping awake” then has something to do with expecting the unexpected, recognising that there may be events, people, situations, personal crises that open our eyes to new possibilities that give us new insights. Being ready for these is really the best that we can do, and the best that we can hope to do. The one fact is that in all our lives there are “three trees” that remind us that we are not here for ever. In that case, is trying to make sense of what we are here for, what we are here for?

Second Sunday of Advent

New World Order

Isaiah 11:1–10 Psalm 72:1–7, 18–19

Romans 15:4–13 Matthew 3:1–12

On him the spirit of the Lord will rest: a spirit of wisdom and understanding; a spirit of counsel and power; a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord; and in the fear of the Lord will be his delight. He will not judge by outward appearances or decide a case on hearsay; but with justice he will judge the poor and defend the humble in the land with equity; like a rod his verdict will strike the ruthless, and with his word he will slay the wicked. He will wear the belt of justice and truth will be his girdle.

Isaiah 11:2–5

Then the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion will feed together, with a little child to tend them. The cow and bear will be friends, and their young will lie down together; and the lion will eat straw like cattle. The infant will play over the cobra’s hole, and the young child dance over the viper’s nest.

Isaiah 11:6–8

The scriptures written long ago were all written for our instruction, in order that through the encouragement they give us we maintain our hope with perseverance.

Romans 15:4

For me the Old Testament is almost always a struggle. The more I read it, the more I have sympathy with Richard Dawkins arguments in The God Delusion. I then repeat to myself the response to Dawkins voiced by many, “I don’t believe in a God like that either.” So reading the Old Testament is more often than not an exercise in confirming what I don’t believe, rather than supporting what I do.

St Paul in his letter to the Romans offers some very practical advice that is as relevant today as it...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1: First Sunday of Advent - Anticipation and Expectation
• 2: Second Sunday of Advent - New World Order
• 3: Third Sunday of Advent - Patience
• 4: Fourth Sunday of Advent - Believing the Unbelievable
• 5: Christmas Day - Trappings, Traditions and Words
• 6: First Sunday of Christmas - Testing Times
• 7: Second Sunday of Christmas - Grace, Truth and Rejection
• 8: The Epiphany - Birth and Death
• 9: The Baptism of Christ (First Sunday of Epiphany) - Start of Life’s Work
• 10: Second Sunday of Epiphany - Conundrums of Calling
• 11: Third Sunday of Epiphany - Rhetoric and Reason
• 12: The Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Candlemas) - Struggling Thoughts
• 13: Fourth Sunday before Lent - Salt and Spirit
• 14: Third Sunday before Lent - Tough Talking
• 15: Second Sunday before Lent - Creation and Anxiety
• 16: Sunday next before Lent - Clouds of Not Knowing
• 17: Ash Wednesday - Ritual Reminders
• 18: First Sunday of Lent - Tempting Offers
• 19: Second Sunday of Lent - Uncomfortable Words
• 20: Third Sunday of Lent - Meat and Drink
• 21: Annunciation of our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary - Questioning Acceptance
• 22: Fourth Sunday of Lent - Seeing and Believing
• 23: Fifth Sunday of Lent - Sorrowful Doubts
• 24: Palm Sunday - Triumph and Tragedy
• 25: Maundy Thursday - Significant Acts
• 26: Good Friday - Truth and Betrayal
• 27: Easter Day - Loss and Discovery
• 28: Second Sunday of Easter - Beyond Doubt
• 29: Third Sunday of Easter - Excited Understanding
• 30: Fourth Sunday of Easter - Herd Instincts
• 31: Fifth Sunday of Easter - Paths to Truth
• 32: Sixth Sunday of Easter - Groping in the Dark
• 33: Ascension Day - Rising to New Heights
• 34: Seventh Sunday of Easter/Sunday after Ascension Day - Humble Knowledge
• 35: Day of Pentecost/Whit Sunday - Varieties of Gifts
• 36: Trinity Sunday - What About God?
• 37: First Sunday after Trinity - Losing and Finding
• 38: Second Sunday after Trinity - Prophets of Good
• 39: Third Sunday after Trinity - Burdens of Guilt
• 40: Fourth Sunday after Trinity - Fruitful Seeds
• 41: Fifth Sunday after Trinity - Mixed Messages
• 42: Sixth Sunday after Trinity - Painful Images
• 43: Seventh Sunday after Trinity - Enough Food
• 44: Eighth Sunday after Trinity - Storms of Faith
• 45: Ninth Sunday after Trinity - Crumbs of Learning
• 46: Tenth Sunday after Trinity - Skills and Belief
• 47: Eleventh Sunday after Trinity - Harsh Words
• 48: Twelfth Sunday after Trinity - Love and Orgies
• 49: Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity - Forgiving Ourselves
• 50: Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity - Personal Worth
• 51: Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity - Real Authority
• 52: Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity - Proper Fruit
• 53: Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity - Reluctant Guests
• 54: Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity - Paying Our Dues
• 55: Last Sunday after Trinity - Sales Talk
• 56: All Saints Day - Personal Failures
• 57: Fourth Sunday before Advent - Ends and Beginnings
• 58: Third Sunday before Advent - Be Prepared
• 59: Second Sunday before Advent - Hidden Talents
• 60: Sunday next before Advent - Touching God
• Conclusions