SERMON 5 February 2006 Presentation of Christ in the temple

Readings:     Malachi 3: 1-4        Psalm 24        Hebrews 2: 14-18        Luke 2: 22-40

May our hearts and minds be open to the challenge and embrace of God. Amen. 

At the beginning of March, Canberra will be saturated with advertising for the ‘Jesus, all about life’ campaign. From 6 march there will be 6 weeks of television advertising, radio advertising, billboards and banners – even advertising on the backs of buses – encouraging people to take a look at what Jesus said about life. 

Some months ago Alice, one of our wardens, and I went to an information session and saw the TV ads. They target 3 distinct demographic groups: older people, families with children, and younger people. They are very well put together. The message is simple: short and snappy and doesn’t try to say too much. Having prepared myself for almost anything, I was actually quite relieved when I saw them. 

There is one problem: they distance church from Jesus’ teaching. They use the kinds of phrases that we hear people say all the time; statements like: ‘I’m not a religious person’, ‘I don’t think much of church’ and then add a ‘but’: ‘but what Jesus said makes a lot of sense’.  

The ads are aimed at people who are not currently churchgoers – they may have gone to Sunday School 20, 30, 40 years ago and still have a child’s understanding of faith; they may have had a bad experience in a church community, they may never have been to church. And so the ads identify with their thoughts and feelings about church and encourage people to look at the heart of it all – at the person and teaching of Jesus.  

This campaign may not bring hundreds of people flocking to our doors to find out more. It may not even bring one person to our doors, but I can guarantee that it will be a conversation point. And so, we need to think about it and about our responses to it. Here is a tool for us to use – how are we going to use it? 

The Gospels challenge us to spread our faith. It crops up time and time again: we are not to hide our light under a bushel, we are to be the light on the hill, we are to go and make disciples. This focus has tended to be hijacked in recent times by the evangelical movement but it was also at the heart of the Oxford Movement, the anglo-catholic revival in the 19^th century Church of England.  

But most people find it hard: it seems intrusive, even rude perhaps, not to mention counter-cultural and embarrassing. This morning I want to look at 4 common reactions and talk a little about them. They are reticence and its close cousin, embarrassment; a sense of inadequacy as a Christian and finally, the language question. 

Reticence seems to be a deeply ingrained characteristic of Anglicans. There is much to commend it. The Gospels tell us not to parade our faith, not to stand in the market place praying. We do not intrude into each other’s private beliefs, we do not presume to foist our own thoughts and beliefs uninvited on to others. This gentle tolerance means that people have space to find their own way within the parameters of worship and study. We offer questions and a framework within which people can find their own relationship with God.  

Closely linked to this is an embarrassment about talking about things that matter deeply to us. We seem to have a group of thing we find it hard to discuss seriously, and faith is one of them. It’s OK to joke about God, about sex, about family relationships – it’s a darn sight harder to have a serious and thoughtful discussion about them without getting uncomfortable. Sitting behind this can be a fear that is we do start to talk about these things, our previously easy relationships will become awkward. 

Reticence and embarrassment are a powerful cocktail!  

A third ingredient is a sense of inadequacy. I suspect that many of us feel we are not ‘real’ Christians. We have some kind of mental image of what a Christian should believe and how a Christian should act. And we know that we are not like that. There may be bits of the Creed which really don’t make sense to us; there may be parts of the ritual which seem arcane; we may find some of the teaching simply untrue to our experience; we may feel we have too many doubts or we don’t feel that amazing fervour we see on some of the TV broadcasts of Christian worship;  … and so it goes on. Add to that a strong desire to deny any connection whatsoever with the kind of Christianity that is peddled by tele-evangelists or fundamentalist Christians, and there are still more reasons to feel as if you are not a ‘real’ Christian and so not qualified to talk about it. 

Finally, if all of that hasn’t stood in your way, it can be hard to find words to say what you want to say in a way that you are comfortable with. Even if an opportunity is presented to us on a platter, if a friend says something like, ‘you go to church, why?’, it can be really hard to say why. The simplest response is to flick it off with a partial reply or with a joke. ‘I like the stained glass’, or ‘I like giving away my money to lost causes’ …whatever. As much as anything, this is a language problem; not having a thought-through answer which says something real about your faith but doesn’t go into uncomfortable territory. 

And so, what are we going to do? My guess is that this advertising campaign is going to give plenty of opportunities to say something about Jesus, about church, about the life of faith. It might come up in any way: a straight question from a friend or colleague who knows that you go to church; a comment about the ads, positive or negative. ‘Great ads!’ or ‘Those ads are awful’. The question for us is: are we going to use the opportunity? 

I hope we will. The ad campaign will break through the first two obstacles I have talked about – the reticence and embarrassment. We haven’t had to raise the subject – it’s out there. We can ask people what they think of the ads, we can respond to someone else talking about them. It’s there – we don’t have to drag God into the conversation.

But then of course, we hit those nagging doubts about our adequacy. Will we be giving a ‘correct’ answer? Will we be doing God justice? The greatest gift you can give is honesty. You don’t have to have bought the whole package in order to be ‘real’. Wherever we are at is an authentic statement about our faith and a gift to others. I cringe when I think of some of the things I have said to people over the years – and yet I know that sometimes they have been of great value to other people in their search for God. Sharing your doubts as well as the things you are sure about is reassuring to people who have a stereotyped view of Christians. We learn constantly  - if we had to know it all, believe it all, have it all sorted out before we could say anything or think of ourselves as followers of Christ, then there would be lot of empty pulpits and a lot of empty churches. 

Having resolved then that we will say something if the opportunity arises, what will we say? I encourage you to think through what you might say – something that you are comfortable with, that is honest, that doesn’t stop the conversation stone dead, and doesn’t leave you feeling you have just indulged in some kind of spiritual strip tease. It sounds contrived but it is really worth it. Years ago when I was a Lifeline counsellor I found it really useful to have a set of phrases that I could use to ask questions that didn’t sound judgmental, to express sympathy without necessarily agreeing with someone’s interpretation of an event and so on – phrases to cover tricky situations. It works.  

You might want to say that you find in Christian community a sense of the presence of God that is hard to explain; you might want to talk about the beauty of holiness. Why do you come to church? It may be about belonging and having a sense of something greater than ourselves. It may be because you have had an experience of the presence of God in your life and this seems to be the way to honour that and nurture your spirit, or that Christianity provides the touchstone for your life – the lens through which everything makes sense and had purpose.  

Through Lent we are being offered a great opportunity – let’s find ways to use it. It may be that some of you would like to get together and talk about how to do that, discuss non-intrusive, comfortable ways of talking about faith. If so, let me know and we will organise a meal together.  

It is a wonderful and challenging thing to be drawn into the life of faith – do we have enough confidence, enough trust, to use this opportunity and share our experiences and thoughts? My prayer is that we will and, like Simeon and Anna in today’s Gospel passage, that we find ways to speak of what we have seen and understood about Jesus.  

If we stretch ourselves a little beyond our comfort zone, we will find God there before us, preparing the way. Amen.