Living in hope

I’m thinking about hope because on Wednesday I joined 14,000 others in the O2 in London to hear President Obama speak. He wrote a book didn’t he called the audacity of hope. In underground stations they have signs called all on the board. This one was at North Greenwich station where you alight for the O2. I’m glad Lis found it on line for me as I was in the middle of 14,000 in the station and couldn’t get near it. He once said … Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.”

What do you hope for? For yourself? For your church? For the world? 

Yesterday at Masham Sheep Fair we had a chatterbox space where people could stop for conversation and write prayers. People hoped for peace in Gaza and Ukraine and Sudan, sunshine, the 70’s back in Leyburn, those were the days, a stop to deforestation, for my sheep to win its class and for compassion and understanding.

It was an absolute privilege to one of the 14,000 people on Wednesday night listening to President Obama. Maybe history will view him as one of the greatest American Presidents although the current one wants to be remembered as THE greatest doesn’t he? As I reminded you earlier Obama viewed hope in one of his books as audacious. He said this famously:

“I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us, so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.” So hope is something to do, something to believe, to work for something that will come. The late theologian Walter Bruggemann said the prophetic tasks of the church are to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion, grieve in a society that is in denial and express hope in society that lives in despair.” 

We need hope. Hope never disappoints. 

The Bible warns us that if our hope disappoints us, it’s because our hope rests on the wrong object. There is only one place to look for hope that is secure, no matter what. Consider these verses:

You are my hiding place and my shield; I hope in your word. (Psalm 119:114) 

O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption. (Psalm 130:7) 

The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love. (Psalm 147:11) 

I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11) 

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:24) 

Hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:5) 

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13) 

Notice what each of these verses does. Each confronts us with the radical, life-reshaping truth that ultimately true, lasting, and secure hope is a person — the Lord Almighty. Hope — the kind that transforms your life, gives rest to your heart, and ignites new ways of living — is attached to him. Scripture repeatedly invites us, commands us, and implores us to hope in the Lord, and it gives us reason after reason to do so. 

We express hopes every day. I wasn’t going to join the queue and scramble back to the underground on Wednesday night after President Obama had finished and I got out of the O2 which takes some time. So I joined a slightly shorter queue for a taxi to get me back to Kings Cross.

My taxi driver called Joel hoped for a lot of things —- 

He hoped his football team, West Ham, might do a bit better - “Potter needs to be sacked.” He got his wish as Graham Potter was sacked yesterday. He hoped the traffic jam might end soon. He hoped we might all get along - growing up in the East End he was introduced to curry and Jamaican food and “ a decent kebab.” And he hoped for a Nigel Farage government. 

£72 later I got out of his cab. We had “had a nice chat.” 

Joel’s hopes though relied on human intervention. A board at a football club making a decision to change the manager, a decision to be made not to dig up around the 02 again when a American President is visiting, a common humanity deciding to understand each other, an election and democracy and political leaders trying to persuade us our hopes can be realised by them bringing a new order to things. Napoleon Bonaparte gave this very unique statement to leaders when he said, “Leaders are dealers in hope.” We need some of those leaders don’t we? 

Christian hope is about God. And it never disappoints and it is eternal. 

Hope is always fueled by some form of desire. It may be the desire to be loved, to be cared for, to be protected, to be understood, to be provided for, to be accepted, to experience comfort or pleasure, to have control, to be forgiven — the list could go on and on. Also, hope always has an object. I look to someone or something to satisfy my desire. Lastly, hope carries an expectation of when, how, and where the person or thing in which I have placed my hope will deliver what I have hoped for. 

Almost every day, you entrust your smallest and largest longings into the hands of something or someone with the hope that your longings will be satisfied. To be human is to hope. And when hope isn’t there it’s just well, empty. 

Lis and I went to a funeral this week of one of the ladies who came to the craft group. It was a humanist funeral. I’d never been to a humanist funeral before. We celebrated the lady’s life. We watched pictures of her while Queen sang these are the days of our life. The celebrant told those assembled their only comfort was memory and being together. I wondered how the thing would end. He stood in silence and then thanked people for coming. The family gathered round the coffin which was still there visibly upset. There was no proper ending and no hope and no consolation and no God and no eternity and we left feeling something vital was missing. The service disappointed. Hope does not.

Back in the 2nd World War when England was going through some of its most trying times, Sir Winston Churchill went to a place called Harrow, an exclusive prep school. He began to give a speech and in the middle of that speech he said these words, he said, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.” Then he said it again, “Never give in.” What he was saying at that time to the people of England was, don’t ever give up your hope. And I say to you as a people today the same thing, don’t ever give up your hope. 

We hold on and we hope for what we don’t yet see…

In some African folklore, there is a tale of a small, bright bird known as the Hope Bird. This bird doesn’t sing when the sun is shining. It doesn’t wait for clear skies or calm winds. No—the Hope Bird sings before the storm is over.

It’s said that you’ll hear its voice while the rain is still falling, while thunder still echoes across the plains. Long before other birds dare to chirp again, this one begins its tune. To the people, it became a symbol—an icon of faith before sight, of believing good is on the way even while everything still looks bad.

That’s what hope in God’s promises looks like. It sings before the answer comes. It praises before the healing. It trusts before the breakthrough. Romans 8:24 reminds us, “Who hopes for what they already have?”

So maybe today, your skies are still grey. Maybe the downpour hasn’t let up yet. But if you have God’s promise, you can sing early. Hope does not disappoint.

So are we hopeful or hopeless? I hope it’s the first of those. We have a gospel to proclaim to our communities. The God of hope goes with us every day, we live in hope.

The feast day of Saint Matthew

I was sent the readings on the notice sheet for our LEP the other day and there are two alternatives to go with this week - 21 September is the The Feast Day of St Matthew, for the bits of church that do saints. Apostle and Evangelist, Martyr. Patronages – accountant, bookkeepers, bankers, customs officers, financial officers, money managers, guards, security forces, security guards, stockbrokers, taxi drivers and tax collectors…

I was driving down the A 1 last night in torrential rain delivering a missive for the folk at Boroughbridge to have to read out this morning. It turned into a long evening as most of Boroughbridge was flooded and after I’d left the missive in the vestry I went and used the necessary before coming home and I found water dripping through the vent and a lake on the floor. So I was there a while mopping up and placing a bucket to catch the drips. My work is varied! Driving there I was catching up with Radio 2 programmes and Michelle Visage on a Friday nightwho plays some upbeat stuff. She always begins by saying what the rules of the party are: “everybody is welcome, everybody is equal, and everyone single one of you is a superstar.”

In the Methodist safeguarding material, we are reminded of our purpose. The phrase ‘all are welcome’ is characteristic of the Methodist

Church: you’ll find it on Methodist noticeboards and notices all

over the place. It says something important about who we are as Methodists, and our experience and understanding of God. At its heart, ‘all arewelcome’ is a statement about God’s limitless love and grace and

it is therefore about so much more than human hospitality.

It speaks of the never-ending boundless love of God for every

person, no matter who they are, and God’s constant invitation to,

and promise of, salvation. It’s that assurance of God’s ceaseless

love and grace for us that guides, inspires and shapes our life

together as part of Christ’s Church.

 

The Methodist Church’s desire to welcome all is a part of its own

response to God and its witness to God’s love in Jesus.

 

This involves seeking to be a community marked by love and care

for one another and for all whom it encounters, especially the

marginalised and hurting and those who have been outcast in

some form.

 

Sounds alright doesn’t it? All are welcome. Really?

 

But we should mean that and embody that. “The church is a people called out of the world to embody a social alternative that the world cannot know on its own terms. The idea that the church is to be the body of Christ is not just something to read about in theology books and leave for the scholars to pontificate about. We are literally to be the body of Jesus in the world. Christians are to be little Christs—people who put flesh on Jesus in the world today.”

― Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals

 

Imagine Jesus were President or Prime Minister or King. Imagine Jesus on the council. I think Ripon City Council might need him at the moment. Would we cope with his radical and inclusive agenda that all are most definitely welcome and everybody is equal and everybody is a superstar.

So there’s the context Matthew comes into. He’s called Levi too, son of Alphaeus. Some scholars suggest that the tax collector simply had two names, one for each language in the region. “Matthew” might have been his Greek name, while “Levi” was his Hebrew name. This practice of having both a Hebrew and a Greek or Roman name was not uncommon in Jewish society.

To fully appreciate the call of St. Matthew, his background is a remarkable part of his story. Before embracing the path of discipleship, he served as a tax collector under Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee. Tax collectors, also known as “publicans,” were held in low regard within Jewish society during Jesus’ time. They were often seen as collaborators with the Roman oppressors who occupied the land of Judea. The tax collection system, fraught with potential abuse, allowed collectors to gather more than the prescribed amount, pocketing the surplus for themselves. This encouraged extortion and corruption, leading to the accumulation of wealth through dishonest means.

As devout Jews, association with Gentiles, like the Romans, rendered individuals ritually unclean, and tax collectors’ constant interaction with Roman officials further tainted their reputation.

Consequently, their income was considered impure, rendering it unfit for religious dues or temple offerings. These factors combined to socially ostracise tax collectors, categorising them among the “sinners” in many New Testament passages, reflecting their low moral and social standing. So note the religious muttering about this new preacher about: “he welcomes sinners and eats with them.” All are welcome? Yes but not him. He’s no superstar, he’s a cheat and not a nice person.

Understanding this context makes the call of Matthew remarkable.

St. Matthew’s church, Westminster has a statue of him holding a book and a quill pen. Is he about to make an entry in a tax ledger or write a gospel? The Jews had to pay taxes to the Empire. To make matters worse, collection was not the work of civil servants but of private contractors. So tax collectors were collaborators, traitors, part of a system of oppression. They were allocated a sum to be raised from their district. They received no salary, so they added their cut to the assessment. The wealthy would, no doubt, find ways of reducing their liability – a judicious bribe here and there – so the burden would fall disproportionately on ordinary people. Collection was backed up with force, so they had no choice but to pay up and see their hard-earned money go to support imperial armies or the grand building projects of the Herod dynasty.

Matthew knew what it was like to feel excluded. Although he was Jewish, he was shunned by other Jews, because his work as a tax collector made him a collaborator with the hated Romans. Socially, he was an outsider, and outcast. His fellow countrymen wanted nothing to do with him.

When Jesus encounters Matthew sitting at the customs house collecting taxes, he issues a simple yet profound call: “Follow me.” Matthew immediately arose, leaving everything behind to follow Jesus. Jesus dined at Matthew’s house with more tax collectors and sinners that night. This incident drew the ire of the religious leaders, prompting Jesus to declare that He came not for the righteous but for sinners, emphasising the importance of mercy over sacrifice.

Jesus’ choice to openly associate and dine with tax collectors and sinners, including Matthew, stirred controversy among religious leaders of his time. However, this association embodied Jesus’ mission to seek and save the lost, demonstrating God’s boundless love and grace, even for society’s most sinful and marginalised. The Gospel may be in miniature in this call. The mercy of God is wide.

Our doors are open. But there are churches where the message still needs to be be preached and heard. And even here, where inclusivity seems part of the DNA, we always need to be asking ourselves: “Who are we excluding? Who is not made to feel welcome here? Who does not have a place at our table and in our ministry? Who are our tax-collectors and sinners?”

All are welcome? Including us! I like what C H Spurgeon has to say about Jesus finding the unlikely…

We do not know that, even if Matthew had wished to follow Christ, he would have dared to do so. He must have thought that he was too unworthy to follow Christ; and if he had dared to attempt it, I should suppose that he would have been repulsed by the other apostles. They would have snubbed him, and asked, “Who are you, to come amongst us?” They dared not do so after Christ himself had said to Matthew, “Follow me,” but certainly there is no indication that this man named Matthew was seeking Christ, or even thinking about him; yet, while he sat taking his tolls and customs, Jesus came to him, and said, “Follow me.”

 O my dear hearer, if you have been converted, it may be that something like this was true in your case! At any rate, this I know is true; you were not the first to seek Christ, but Christ was the first to seek you. You were a wandering sheep, and did not love the fold; but his sweet mercy went out after you. His grace made you thoughtful, and led you to pray; the Holy Spirit breathed in you your first breath of spiritual life, and so you came to Christ. It was so, I am sure; you did not first seek Christ, but he first sought you. Let us who are saved present the prayer to God now, that many here who have never sought the Lord may nevertheless find him; for it is written, “I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.” See, then, the freeness of the grace of God, the sovereignty of his choice. Admire it in the man named Matthew; admire it still more in yourself, whatever your name may be.

Jesus says, it is not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick. One of my favourite quotes about church is that a church should be a hospital for sinners and not a museum for saints. Jesus is making the point loud and clear that the reason he came into the world is the same reason he came into Matthew’s life that day – not to affirm the self-righteous but to heal the sick, which includes the sick of soul.

The call of Matthew should say to all of us that no matter how we think we stand with God nonetheless he is always there to heal and redeem us. No one is beyond the love and grace of God. In fact the sicker and further off we think we are the closer God stands to us and wants to heal us. And for those who may have been walking with God for a long time we should never allow ourselves to become self-righteous and Pharisaic about those who seem most unlike us or who seem most un-Christian in our eyes – for they are exactly the ones that Jesus may choose to sit and eat with.

What happened to Matthew?

Following Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, Matthew remained in Jerusalem with the other disciples, receiving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. As an apostle of the Lord, he dedicated his life to spreading the Gospel and leading the early church. Matthew’s profound teachings and insights into the life of Jesus culminated in the writing of the Gospel according to Matthew. Matthew designed his Gospel to establish Jesus as the Messiah, particularly for his Jewish readers.

Beyond his written legacy, Matthew’s apostolic journey is steeped in rich history and tradition. Early Church fathers like Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria suggest that Matthew initially preached the Gospel in Judea before embarking on missions to other lands, with Ethiopia often cited as one of his destinations.One notable tradition associated with Matthew involves his encounter with King Hirtacus in Ethiopia. Matthew’s steadfast devotion to his faith led him to confront the king for lusting after Ephigenia, a nun consecrated to God. Matthew’s rebuke, delivered at a Mass, ultimately led to his martyrdom, solidifying his commitment to his faith.

So what to learn from his call on his feast day? Methodist theology asserts that every person reflects God's image and therefore possesses intrinsic value that must be celebrated. All have to be welcome else we aren’t the church of Jesus. We live in a world this day that wants to say all aren’t welcome. We get a letter as minister from the Secretary of the Methodist Conference. He was reflecting on the rally of the far right in London last weekend.

 “Accounts of the numbers at the rally in London that day vary, but most estimates are something over 100,000. That is about the same as the number of members of the Methodist Church in Britain.

I was worried that afternoon on the train by the attitudes I saw displayed and the falsehoods that were being repeated, but I cannot despair because I serve a Church whose calling is to respond to the love of God in Christ. If the woman on the train was right, and 100,000-plus people listening to hate-mongers can make a difference, how much more can 100,000-plus people who listen to the gospel and speak words of grace change things for the better?”

 All are welcome. All are equal and yes Michelle, even the Matthew’s can be superstars!

God of mercy, you chose a tax collector, Saint Matthew to share the dignity of the apostles. By his example and prayers help us to follow Christ and remain faithful in your service. Through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Searching for and finding the lost

Are you good at losing things? What things do you lose and panic until you find them? 

I’m very good at losing keys, clerical collars, bits of paper I need right now, my car in a multi storey car park but I’m better now because I take a picture of where I park the car and the door of the floor I go out of. I also lose my phone a lot. 

We lose our phones at home and we ring the one that’s lost to find it! We had a rental car recently and a woman said as you opened the door after the journey “excuse me, you have left your phone in the car!” She became rather annoying.

Have you ever been so lost on a journey you just go into a tailspin? It usually happens to me when I’m driving in Leeds and in the wrong lane. I love the picture of people lost in the woods, one says help we are lost in the spoom! The other says “you’ve got the map outside down!” 

The story of our God is that he keeps trying to find us. Even when we are wayward. In the reading from Exodus today we’ve just heard he considers not helping - the people are stiff necked! But he changes his mind. We know Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. 

This Sunday in my service we celebrate that God is love. We are reminded of that in a baptism. Louise and Nathan bring little Aston and to say thank you for him. As we share this sacrament let’s be reminded that our God keeps searching for us until like keys and bits of paper and cars and phones we are found.

Saint Luke has in his fifteenth chapter three stories of things that are lost. The third story of a lost son rather overshadows the other two. A story of a lost coin and a lost sheep. 

Jesus is in trouble once again for hanging out with the wrong people.  As “all the tax collectors and sinners” come near to listen to him, the Pharisees and scribes begin to grumble: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  

In response, Jesus tells the scandalized religious insiders two parables.  In the first, a shepherd leaves his flock of ninety-nine to look for a single lamb that is lost.  He searches until he finds it, and when he does, he carries that one lamb home on his shoulders, invites his friends and neighbors over, and throws a party to celebrate.

In the second, a woman loses one of her ten silver coins.  Immediately, she lights a lamp and sweeps her entire house, looking carefully for the coin until she finds it.  Then, like the shepherd, she calls together her friends and neighbours and asks them to celebrate the recovery of the coin: “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” 

It used to strike me as very unlikely that a woman could expect her friends and neighbours to come to a party in the middle of the night to celebrate the finding of a single coin. There was also a question in my mind about the shepherd who had a hundred sheep and found that he had lost one of them. We are told that he left the ninety-nine in the wilderness to go after the one he had lost. But maybe the stories are about the joy and celebration in the finding again.

Think about it - when you find your keys or your car or your phone or your clerical collar (although I have been known to put a piece of paper in the place it goes at times) there’s a sense of relief and life can go on again. When we find our way back to safety even being vulnerable in our lostness there is joy and relief. 

We live at home with indoor rescue cats who don’t do going outside but last week I inadvertently let Toby the tonkinese out the back door while I was getting some washing in. We put it on social media he was missing and notes through our neighbours doors to keep a look out for him. One of our neighbours rang a few days later to say they’d seen a cat in their garden they didn’t recognise. The next night I went with a light on my phone to the ginnel behind our houses and Lis went to the front of the house where he was seen. We both called him and heard a faint miaow. It was a nightmare getting him through the undergrowth and into a cat carrier to get him back indoors to safety. He’s not interested in the back door now! 

The lost sheep in the first parable belongs to the shepherd’s flock from the very beginning of the story — it is his sheep. Sheep are stubborn and wayward. I love to watch them as we drive to take the service at Dallowgill.  Likewise, the coin in the second parable belongs to the woman before she loses it; the coin is one of her very own. 

We get lost over and over again, and God finds us over and over again. Lostness is part and parcel of the life of faith. The great Christian hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer said“God loves the lost.”

But what does it mean to be lost?  It means so many things.  It means we lose our sense of belonging, we lose our capacity to trust, we lose our felt experience of God’s presence, we lose our will to persevere.  We get lost.  We get so miserably lost that the shepherd has to wander through the craggy wilderness to find us.  We get so wholly lost that the housewife has to light her lamp, pick up her broom, and sweep out every nook and cranny of her house to discover what’s become of us.

And here’s the good news today. The good news our church is here to share. God experiences authentic, real-time loss.  God searches, God persists, God lingers, and God plods.  God wanders over hills and valleys looking for his lost lamb.  God turns the house upside down looking for her lost coin.  And when at last God finds what God is looking for, God cannot contain the joy that wells up inside.  So God invites the whole neighbourhood over, shares the happy news of recovery, and throws a party to end all parties. If Jesus’s parables are true, then God isn’t in the fold with the ninety-nine insiders.  God isn’t curled up on her couch polishing the nine coins she’s already sure of.  God is where the lost things are.  God is where lostness reigns.  God is in the darkness of the wilderness, God is in the remotest corners of the house, God is where the search is at its most urgent. 

And maybe the church today is the broom sweeping and the shepherd looking and maybe the church is a place where people who feel lost can be found. We need to be a place where those who’ve got questions or feel lost in the world with worry or because of where they find themselves can find that party happening. 

Let me end with a story. 

A lady called Edith didn’t care at all about God or religion, she said, but one Sunday morning she was struggling with inner discontent about life; she felt hopeless and helpless. She decided to go to a church near her house, and that Sunday morning the text for the day was Luke 15. The preacher got up and read from the King James version verses 1 and 2. He got to the end of verse and read what it said, “This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them.” But here’s the way Edith heard it, “This man receiveth sinners and Edith with them.” She sat upright in her pew and eventually figured out what happened. God began that day to work in her the gospel that she was a lost sheep, and Jesus had offered to become her Shepherd.

People might need our church so we need to be accessible and visible. Harrogate Road where I will preach this is being talked about. Why? Let me share the thing people have said to me this week: “have you seen that posh new fence?” What a fab fence! It’s made the church more visible and open I think. And they won’t have to cut that hedge anymore. And maybe too the church needs a new commitment to sweeping and searching. The 13th century Sufi mystic, Rumi, said, “What you seek is seeking you.” 

Friends, that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we share it in worship, in communion, in baptism, at coffee mornings, wherever we are.  God will say come rejoice with me. The lost will be found.