Holiness or holier than thou?

Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

I began writing this sitting writing this outside one of the coffee shops in Ripon on Thursday afternoon watching the market. I love Thursdays as I meet all sorts of people. Coffee morning this week was very busy with groups of coaches from Darlington and Thornton Cleveleys. I’m glad to have been here long enough to have local knowledge! I was asked where the cathedral is. The folks were looking at it! I’ve also heard stories of people who’ve come to Ripon looking for the city centre not having realised they’ve driven through it!!

It’s lovely to see positive interaction in community. We are it seems increasingly in a climate where you can’t speak to a real person if you want anything. We are encouraged to book on line, download an app, use AI. Someone even told me a robot brought them a cup of tea at a garden centre recently! Hence, we are seeing loneliness and isolation.

I’m not going to give away any Celebrity Traitors spoilers. But I do want to mention Miranda Hart. She has been very seriously ill with ME and Lymes disease which has left her debilitated and fed up. This series has been the first foray back into doing what she loves, so we’ve seen her galloping around the castle having fun.

"I can't believe how emotional I'm getting, she said. “Wow. Connection and laughter and joy are bigger than this game and to meet someone and just play and laugh - it's all us humans need.”

We are called to live in community. More than that, we are called to be holy. And the proof of our holiness is now we live with other people.There’s an African word which talks of theinterconnectedness of individuals with their surrounding social and physical worlds. "Ubuntu" is sometimes translated as "I am because We are". 

 

Who have we spent time with this week? Has it been a good experience? What about church people? We all get on don’t we? Do you know people who are holier than thou?  The phrase comes from the King James Version of the Bible in Isaiah 65:5, where people say: "Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou." God is rebuking religious hypocrites who isolate themselves, show off their outward rituals, and look down on others with spiritual pride. In the text, God describes this self-righteous attitude as "a smoke in my nose" (offensive and irritating). Sometimes the King James Version is fab!

So to our Gospel for this week. The Pharisees and Sadducees wanted to trap Jesus by askinghim difficult questions.  

he is asked which is the greatest commandment. 

Perhaps they expected Jesus to take a while, to ponder all of the Jewish laws, to think through all the rites and rituals observed in their community, before giving them a well-thought-out answer. 

There are 613 commandments in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, so which one is the greatest? We know the Ten Commandments, surely it is going to be one of those? Instead, Jesus sums up all the 613 commandments with these words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” He goes on to say the second greatest is “Love your neighbour as yourself.On these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.” The answer was resolute: this is the heart of what it means to be holy and in community.

The two commandments go together because to show that you love God, you surely must love God’s creation. Therefore, we must love our neighbour whoever they may be. 

Both of these commandments are mentioned in the Torah. Deuteronomy 6:5, which is part of the Shema that Jews say twice daily, contains the first and "love your neighbour", is taken from Leviticus 19:18 our Old Testament reading. So, it is not new, but Jesus has pulled these two together to summarise how we can truly worship God. It is how our Christian lifestyle is defined; the vertical dimension of loving God crossed with the horizontal direction of loving our neighbour.

I know you are the perfect church here. You love God. Your discipleship is strong. Your worship is vibrant. God is here! And I know you love your neighbour. You care for each other. You have community projects like Wednesday welcome and Saturday coffee and outreach at Maple Creek and reaching out to the town. When I become your minister next year I will be here on a Saturday for coffee to meet with you but I’ll also be walking around the market meeting people and I’ll drink coffee in the coffee shops. My ministry is about being in community with people where they are. Someone walking through Ripon with me recently said  “don’t you know a lot of people!” 

The Church is only credible if she gets involved being Christ in the world. And how on earth do we have credibility if we know nothing nor care. 

After many years of not going to church, an elderly lady decides to go one Sunday. Although very poor and with worn-out clothing, she dressed in her best and headed out. As she approached the church, she saw all the people dressed in splendour. Not a stain, not a rip or tear on any of their clothes. The preacher and stewards stood and welcomed people as they entered.

She began to walk up the stairs when one of the men stopped her and explained that they had a dress code. He explained that clothes must be pristine and sharp to show respect to the Lord and turned her away.

Dejected and embarrassed, she left and sat on a nearby bench, crying and composing herself, wondering why a church of God wouldn't accept her. As she sat, God sat down next to her. He puts a comforting hand on her shoulder and says, "Don't worry, they won't let me in, either."

 

Holiness flows from the heart. Verse 17 of Leviticus 19, you shall not hate your brother in your heart. Verse 18, you shall not bear a grudge. But instead, verse 18, you shall love your neighbour. Now notice how the rest of verse 18 goes beyond the prohibitions of this section. This is more than just “do not”, “do not”, do not do this to your neighbour”. God is calling his people to love the other...as you love yourself.

Where are the churches that are holy, credible and community minded? In the mess of life…

On September 11, 2001, Trinity Church stood one block from the World Trade Centre — directly in the path of the collapse. It sustained no structural damage and not a single broken window.

What followed was a remarkable display of civic resilience: for nine months, the chapel operated around the clock as a relief station for first responders working at Ground Zero, staffed by volunteers who provided meals, rest, and support to those carrying out the recovery effort.

 

 

 

Less than 100 yards from the World Trade Centre, St. Paul’s Chapel miraculously survived the destruction of September 11, 2001. In the months that followed, the chapel welcomed thousands of recovery workers. 

Shifts were gruelling, and responders found respite in the 235-year-old chapel and its churchyard. Rescue crews, police, and firefighters found their way to St. Paul’s to rest and wash up. Volunteers from across the country arrived to offer care for the workers’ weary bodies and souls with food, personal supplies, counselling, and prayer.   

During the nine months of ministry that followed, St. Paul’s Chapel became much more than a place to eat or sleep. It became a community of hope.

One of the chaplains to the fire service was heard to say “if you descend into somebody’s private hell and stand there with them, it ceases to be hell.” 

Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

Let me tell you about Zion Methodist Chapel in Aberfan. Its Sunday school usually welcomed dozens of children from the Pantglas school.  

‘A lot of the children from the school used to come to us because we were an English-speaking chapel,’ he explains. ‘Every Monday evening, at 6 o’clock, the chapel would be full of children coming to our club, called Sunshine Corner. We sang choruses and played games. Everyone used to sing heartily.

The Methodist minister Irving Penberthy there 60 years ago says: 

‘Aberfan was a typical Welsh community. People lived in terraced houses which had no front gardens. I remember neighbours sitting outside their front doors, having put chairs on the pavement, and they would chat to one another across the street. There was a very friendly atmosphere.’

On the morning of the disaster, Irving was travelling to Pontypridd. He recalls the thick mist in the air.

‘As I was driving, I noticed one or two emergency vehicles passing me,’ he says. ‘I didn’t take much notice, because where there’s a mine, there are often accidents. I carried on with my journey, going past the junction for Aberfan, and then an inner voice seemed to say to me: “You must turn back.”

‘I carried on driving, but I couldn’t get away from this strong thought, which was telling me to turn around. I didn’t know why I had to go back. But I obeyed.’

Looking back, I always called my work at the Aberfan disaster a ministry of tears. I cried with parents and held their hands. We were numb. We didn’t know what else to do.’

But they were there. In the middle of pain like the church on 9/11.

The Jews around Jesus would have known about the first bit of what we know now as the Greatest Commandment, you were meant to live in community but Jesus makes that even clearer. Jesus elevated the second commandment to an equal status with the first in terms of importance. In other words, we cannot claim to love God, if we do not love our neighbour (1 John 4:20).

A helpful nick bits for the sermon website says this: “Love for God must always manifest itself in love for people. Here, love is defined as a concrete responsibility. It is the act of being useful and beneficial to others as an expression of our love for God. To help our neighbours might mean, feeding, clothing, protecting, assisting them with their burdens and needs. Loving our neighbours is an unconditional commitment to serving imperfect people. Jesus concluded his answer by saying, ‘All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’ Picture a door hanging on its hinges. Without the hinges, the door is useless; it cannot swing open or close. It just lies flat on the ground. The same is true of our faith. The entire Old Testament, with its 600 plus commandments, its ceremonies, its prophecies, and its wisdom literature, all of it is designed to swing on the twin hinges of loving God and loving others.”

Because we believe in a God that hears our cries, we must hear the cries of those around us. Our love of our neighbour must be just like our love of God. 

It is through the treatment of our neighbours, those who are most vulnerable, that we live a holy life. These are the instructions Jesus clarifies for us, the people of God, on what it truly means to live a life set apart, a holy life.

Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.

 

Friends, remember Christianity isn’t just words it’s action. I love that while we have contact details on the bottom of our e mails our new. District Chair has this powerful quote from Maya Angelou: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

One body many parts?

The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian church, "We are one body and many parts." It's a letter to a fractured community, an early Christian community, that was disunited, and some people thought they were better than others. Later in that 12th chapter of Corinthians, he says, "One part of the body cannot say to another, 'I don't need you.'" And then in the 13th chapter, of course, perhaps the most famous part of scripture, he talks about love. Love being the highest attribute of humanity. Love that comes from God. 

I don’t  know about you, but I look at the world on this October day and wonder whether we've forgotten how we live together. We're as bad as that Corinthian church, thinking, "I'm better than you." How can it be that in the 21st century, the supposed most civilized, advanced nation on Earth can decide to live stream a killing by firing squad? Killing by firing squad, in my view, is wrong. I am anti the death penalty, as I know most of my readers will be. This is not some past barbaric  time, where people queued up and bought tickets almost to watch somebody hung on the gallows. What sort of world is it also where, however wrong she did, somebody is sentenced to death by lethal injection, again, in the most civilized nation on Earth, and both those injections don't get rid of her, and she ends up shackled to a bed, and we don't know what her future is? Lord have mercy.

I was revisiting some Harry Enfield sketches from the 1990s. He had many different characters. And one of them was a rich man who liked to belittle people around him, including his own family. And he would say, "I thank God that I am considerably richer than you." And in one sketch, his brother had lost his job and clearly needed help. And the rich brother said, "I feel sorry for you, but we don't do charity," and walked away. 

What is it that we need to do to change the world? Well, I'm writing this in Saltaire, in West Yorkshire. And Titus Salt, remember, formed community for people and bound them together as one. It's an amazing place to walk around. As I've walked around it on Saturday afternoon, I sense history around me. I've just been dodging the wind and rain in a community cafe by the canal, by one of the locks, just along from Salt's Mill. That place clearly is a gathering place for all sorts of people. Walking, out with families, elderly people meeting for a cuppa, people who clearly meet there regularly. We still yearn, I think, in a world that is becoming more and more isolationist for community. 

One of my pet hates is the machine in the supermarket, the self-service machine, which is meant to speed things up. But what happens is you put your item on the scanner and it bleeps at you. "Unexpected item in packing area," or, "Put item in packing area." And you have to wait for a real person to come along to sort you out. I went to Manchester on the train recently. I bought a car park ticket on my phone. I didn't have a physical ticket. It was an app with a countdown clock. I bought my train ticket online, which appeared on my phone with a barcode. My ticket was not checked by a person. When I arrived at Manchester Victoria, my phone with the barcode got me through the barrier. I didn't interact with anybody. I went to London last year for a meeting and had to stay overnight. The same process happened. I stayed in a hotel near King's Cross. Again, my phone got me into the building. My phone got me into the room. There was no key, and I locked the door behind me when I left. Again, no interaction with anybody. 

In a world where we could be extremely lonely, I think the church has a lot to learn. We need many more groups like the cafe here in Saltaire for people to gather, as they are, to bring their joys and their sorrows and their problems and their concerns and share them with one another. One place I like to go to if I'm in Thirsk and have time to kill is the Farmers Mart, the auction mart, and in there is a cafe. And I notice elderly men who are in there every day for a decent hot meal and companionship. They've all lost their wives, and they come from a generation of men who can't cook, nor did they think they had to. So these men meet their friends about 12 o'clock every day, leaving their farm. They have some banter, they have decent food, and they go back to work in the afternoon. Isn't that great? 

We're bound together in community still in a world that wishes to pull us apart. Paul says, "If one part of the body suffers, we all suffer, and when one part of the body rejoices, we all rejoice." Friends, in a world where we easily despair, I believe this weekend there is still hope, because I still believe we need each other and we want to be with each other, and deep down, we still care about each other. Paul says, "Love never fails" in 1 Corinthians 13. So if you're feeling fed up in a Trump world, and a Putin world, and a world of firing squads and lethal injection execution, in a world where we push and shove and want our rights because we are owed them, remember, love never fails. 

Someone wrote once, "I cannot fix all the world's problems. If I have a ladder, I can only reach what that ladder can reach. I can't do any more." I don't condone climbing ladders. I have a steward in one of my chapels who has ladders and climbs them with nobody else there. That's another story. But I see what the saying is saying. We can only do what we can do. But if we do more of what we can do, we can change our bit of world, and there will be a snowball effect as different bits of the world learn from our experience that they might do the same, too. 

Our district chair, Romeo, reminded us in a sermon recently of the African word ubuntu, I am because you are. So friends, we are one body with many parts. Let's celebrate our diversity. Let's celebrate that we still have community, and let's celebrate today that God loves us just as we are and yearns for us to share that love with those who need it most.