Why Christians don't get involved in politics!

This is a copy of my church magazine article for February 2011

‘What are the top six reasons Christians don’t get involved in politics?’

That was the question posed by Andy Flannagan, Director of the Christian Socialist Movement, at the recent Mainstream conference that I attended. These are the answers he gave with which, I suspect, we would also agree. I’ve also added a very brief response to each question, which begins to answer why Christians should be involved.

1. ‘Politics is dirty.’ The recent and ongoing MP’s expenses scandals would certainly suggest that to be the case. Yet not all of politics is corrupt, and anyway, the darkest places need light the most.

2. ‘What’s the point? We’re doing other good things.’ Yet politics can bring change for the better, and offer more choices to people over their lives.

3. ‘Politics is not a priority. We should spend our time ‘saving souls for heaven’.’ Yet we pray, ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.’

4. ‘Jesus was servant, not a Caesar.’ Yet following Jesus does not mean you can’t be a politician, it just makes you a different kind of politician.

5. ‘I am involved in politics, just not party politics.’ It may be that you have not found a party that embodies all of your views, but that is true of churches as well. We learn through relationship and may influence one another within a political party or church!

6. ‘I don’t know how to get involved.’ If you have internet access, check out www.susa.info for all sorts of information, including links to the various Christian wings of our main political parties. You can even answer a fun questionnaire to see who would be in your cabinet if you led the nation!

You may be interested to know that I asked a question of Andy! ‘Is it all right for clergy to reveal their political leanings to their congregations? And should they seek to influence their churches in their own chosen direction?’ In a typical piece of political-speak, we might think, the answer was that mine was a very good question, and that clergy cannot help influencing their congregations from the pulpit, even if not revealing their political affiliations. So there you go!

I’m glad that we have Bella Saltmarsh in our congregation. Bella is a local councillor and deputy-mayor for Peterborough. Do pray for her! Yet I think it would be good for more of us to be involved in politics. After all, Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, bringing flavour and shining into a dark world (Matthew 5:13-16).

How is God calling you to be involved? How is God calling me?

New Beginnings

Once again, it is that time for new beginnings and New Year’s resolutions. I wonder if you normally make a resolution and if you do, whether it is trivial or serious?

I want to challenge us all to make a resolution for 2011, that has the potential to be life-building and world-changing! Will you (and will I) make the commitment to read something from the Bible every day? I believe that the Bible reveals the Word of God to us. It is our book of faith containing guidance for life. If we don’t read it, we will miss out on much that God has to say to us. If we do read it, we won’t – simple as that!

It is our practice, as a church, to have a bible verse as a motto that highlights a special emphasis for the coming year. In 2011, the verse will be:

‘Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.’ Psalm 119v105

Four hundred years ago, the King James Bible was published in Great Britain. It has been life-building and world-changing in its impact. It is universally admired for its prose and poetry. Many of its phrases have become part of everyday language. It made the Word of God available to the masses in this country for the first time (to those who could read, and afford it) rather than just to a small group of ‘professionals’. It meant that, for the first time, people like you and I could read the Bible and meditate upon it and let it direct our lives.

Will you take up the challenge of reading the Bible daily? Our programme at Park Road Baptist Church can help you! During the first part of the year, I encourage you to join me in reading the ‘Essential 100’ Bible readings. These will be introduced through Sunday morning sermons and discussed in our small groups. Would you think about joining one of these, if you’re not in one already, for help and support?

Our motto as a church is that we be ‘a Light for our City’. Our Scripture verse for 2012 is that God’s Word be ‘a lamp to my feet and a light for my path’. May the two come together so that we can shine brightly for Jesus, the Light of the World!

Note to blog-readers: What are you launching in your church? I'll be interested to hear!

Secularism and the King James Bible

Three cheers for BBC Radio 4, who next month will be broadcasting a day of readings from the King James Bible, in celebration of the 400^th Anniversary of its publication. No cheers to the National Secular Society who are claiming that the 16 hours or so that will be given to the event are disproportionate to the number of practising Christians in the UK.

The latter may or may not be true. Christians would often claim that the place of the Christian faith is not given great enough prominence on our airwaves, particularly when it has shaped so much in our nation. Yet every time a religious broadcast is planned, it seems that one man is given a disproportionate number of inches in our press. That man is Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society. I am not sure I have ever read of him saying anything positive about any religion, ever! Nor do I believe I have heard of him saying positive things about secularism. There lies the big weakness of the secularist agenda. It hangs on the condemnation of every idea with which it does not agree. It does not promote a better way of finding a moral compass in life, but is defined by that in which it does not believe.

Perhaps Christians can learn from secularists how not to share our beliefs. I think we need to be defined not by what we don’t agree with, but by what we do agree with; not by what we don’t believe but by what we do. In other words, let us speak and live positively the good news of Jesus Christ!

What Wesley didn't say about sermons!

Last week, I threw out a load of my old sermons and I thought back to John Wesley’s oft-quoted comment about getting rid of his sermons after seven years as surely he could preach better ones by now. Except that it turns out Wesley did not say it! Here’s the entry in his journal of 1778, which must be one of the most misquoted of all time!

‘Tuesday, September 1 — I went to Tiverton. I was musing here on what I heard a good man say long since—"Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I could seven years ago." Whatever others can do, I really cannot. I cannot write a better sermon on the Good Steward than I did seven years ago; I cannot write a better on the Great Assize than I did twenty years ago; I cannot write a better on the Use of Money, than I did nearly thirty years ago; nay, I know not that I can write a better on the Circumcision of the Heart than I did five-and-forty years ago. Perhaps, indeed, I may have read five or six hundred books more than I had then, and may know a little more history, or natural philosophy, than I did; but I am not sensible that this has made any essential addition to my knowledge in divinity. Forty years ago I knew and preached every Christian doctrine which I preach now.’

Not being an avid reader of Wesley’s sermons, I really cannot comment on whether he might have done better with the examples that he mentions. There is, though, a clear implication that he repeated sermons previously preached and was satisfied with the doctrine he presented therein. It gets me wondering who was right – the man who destroyed his sermons every seven years, or Wesley who did not? Can we preachers be content (I recognize that not all of my potential readers are preachers, but many are) with re-using old sermons (or classic sermons, as I like to call them!), or should we do better?

As I looked back through some of the old sermons, I had different reactions. How did I preach that?! That was good, but it was for a particular time. That was great (occasionally!) and is relevant for any time, any place, anywhere! That was OK, but I could do better.

Let me come clean: I have revisited old sermons for use in different places. As a wise church secretary used to say, at a church I visited often as a lay preacher, ‘If it’s God’s Word, it’s worth saying again.’ I have to say, though, that it needs to speak to me again before I can preach it to others. Also, I doubt that it is really the same sermon when preached again. You see, I do have to adapt it to reflect changes in my thinking, and to update it to acknowledge changes in the world. And hopefully, it is better at the second time of preaching than the first.

A few words of warning. It does not do to repeat the same sermon at the same place it was originally preached. Someone always remembers! My father, who was pastor at the same church for 27 years, once tried it after a time lapse of ten or more years and yes, someone remembered!

PS I confess: the paper copies of the old sermons were thrown out, but I have retained the electronic copies. I doubt that I’ll use them again.

Archbishop Oscar Romero: Martyrdom

I've just come across this quotation from Oscar Romero, spoken a couple of weeks before he was assassinated. It speaks for itself, but what an awesome attitude!

‘I have frequently been threatened with death. I ought to say that, as a Christian, I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me I will rise again in the people of El Salvador. I am not boasting, I say it with the greatest humility. I am bound, as a pastor, by a divine command to give my life for those whom I love, and that is all Salvadoreans, even those who are going to kill me. If they manage to carry out their threats, from this moment I offer my blood for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Martyrdom is a grace from God which I do not believe I deserve. But if God accepts the sacrifice of my life, then may my blood be the seed of liberty, and a sign of hope that will soon become a reality. May my death, if it is accepted by God, be for the liberation of my people, and as a witness of hope in what is to come. Can you tell them, if they succeed in killing me, that I pardon and bless those who do it? But I wish that they could realise that they are wasting their time. A bishop may die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never die.’

From J Sobrino, Romero: Martyr for Liberation, Catholic Institute for International Relations 1982, p.76

Get in the Picture!

This is a copy of my Pastor's Page for our December Church Magazine. I hope you enjoy it.

I wonder what picture springs to mind when you hear the word ‘Christmas’?

For many people, it will be the traditional nativity scene of Mary and Joseph at the stable with the baby Jesus, accompanied by shepherds and wise men. That’s not surprising, as such an image appears on many of the Christmas cards we send and receive. I wonder, though, if you have also imagined yourself as being in the picture?

Around the country, and at our ‘Love Came Down at Christmas’ shop in Peterborough city centre, people are being urged to ‘get in the picture’. You will be able to dress up as one or the biblical characters, or just appear as yourself, and get in the picture as someone takes a photo of you and others. Later that day, you’ll be able to check the website (www.getinthepicture.org.uk) and download the photo as a memento. It’s an innovative way in which people can learn more about the Christmas Story.

Yet there’s more to it than that! You see, with God we really can get in the picture. We can become a part of the never-ending story that begins with God’s love. Out of that love, God made the heavens and the earth, and all that is in them. Out of love, he has allowed freedom to his creation to learn what it is to love and be loved, and often to make mistakes. Out of love, he has made a way for imperfect human beings like you and me to be put back on course. In the infant Jesus, God has put himself into our picture of frail humanity, so that we can get in his picture of perfect love.

That’s the message of the picture we’ll be sharing again this Christmas. I do hope you will join us and ‘get in the picture’.

Without God, culture is lost

A day after Jonathan Sacks in the Times (see blog below), Eleanor Mills has written a piece in the Sunday Times News Review entitled ‘Without God, culture is lost’.

To cut to the chase, Mills points out that Christianity is woven into British life. However, today’s students no longer have the basic knowledge of the faith that is required to appreciate classical literature and art. ‘How can you enjoy the wonderful poems of someone such as George Herbert without knowing the psalms on which they are based? How can you understand Milton if you know absolutely nothing of the Bible?’

Mills concludes, ‘The physical fabric of the church can easily be reinvented to serve modern life; to save and give meaning to the intellectual inheritance of our Christian past in a secular, scientific age is much harder. But if we are to hang on not only to our culture, but also to the morality that underpins it, we have got to try.’

Amen to that!