It is almost a Church of England tradition that God goes on holiday in August. Well, it’s not quite August yet, but God – or at least his Hampstead choir – is seemingly on holiday and apparently He or they won’t bother us for a month. We can – not least because we are delighted to have a stand-in choir – we can be glad that his choir can take a rest, but is God really on holiday, and, if so, what is He up to?! If He is indeed away on holiday we are left to cope on our own. How good are we at doing that? I suspect that He is as much aware how lost we are, trying to cope on our own as my wife is aware how lost I am when she goes off on holiday and I have to cope on my own.
But for some, of course, He is always away in the sense that for them He is never here, because they don’t believe in his existence, even if at some moment of stress or strain they call out “Oh, God!”
Maybe it will be of value for those of us who do believe in his existence to spend a few minutes of His, or our, month’s holiday, reflecting again on what He is, what kind of thing or person He is, whether one, or three in one or one in three or whatever. What are we taking Him to be?
Looking back to a sermon that I preached here in January 1995 in a service which was very kindly treated as a thanksgiving for my ministry up to that date, I find that I asked the question “In what kind of God do you believe” – not “What kind of Christ are you looking for?” which had been the theme of my very first sermon here but “In what kind of God do you believe?” I went on to suggest that if our God is loving and forgiving we will tend to be loving and forgiving people [however often we fail], but if our God is a judgmental and punishing God, we shall tend ourselves to be judgmental and punishing.
Any of us who heard and saw the excellent staged reading of The Lark some ten days ago will have seen/heard of the judgmental and punishing type of God at the time of St Joan of Arc in the 15th century. If that is our God, I hope that He will be on holiday for a very, very long time, if He truly exists at all. Similarly, I hope that the somewhat similar type of God propounded by fanatical Muslims today – I emphasise that I am talking of fanatical Muslims and not moderate Muslims – will go on a very, very long holiday also.
In my dictionary the word “glib” is defined as “fluent, more voluble than sincere or sound”. As it seems to me, we often talk about God – whether from a pulpit or otherwise – very glibly, pretending to know what or whom we are talking about without really knowing.
The early Israelites refused to, or rather could not, name Him. Jesus said God is spirit [in the Greek the word for spirit is the same as that for wind]. God is spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth”. Jesus also said, as you will remember, that “the wind bloweth where it listest: you can hear the sound thereof but cannot tell whence it comes and whither it goes; so is everyone who is born of spirit.” In other words, you cannot grasp God, you cannot put Him in a box, you cannot wholly define Him.
Following my very first sermon in this church one of those present – who thankfully is still very active here – kindly said to me “I can see that you are going to encourage us to think”. Well clearly old dogs don’t change, except that 20 years ago this old dog may have been emphasizing too much thinking with the mind, whereas today I would prefer to speak of thinking with the heart, just as I believe it to be more important to pray with the heart than with the mind, if we cannot bring both together.
Christ changed, Christ changes, the stock answer, the politically correct, the religiously correct kind of God whom we too often appear to propound. We see that reflected in this evening’s passage from Hebrews. God, it had been believed and as Jesus surely had been taught to believe as he grew up, had made a binding covenant with his people and it was that covenant by which his people were to live and in the main did live, but now there was a new covenant.
Hebrews told us in our reading that “If the first covenant had been faultless there would have been no occasion, no need for a second covenant. In speaking of a new covenant, he treats the first as obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”
Jesus came telling people that if they wanted truly to live they must change. They must change their attitudes, and their ideas about God. Judge He might be, as had been believed of old, but it would be better to think of Him as Father, as Daddy if you like, who loves and cares for each one of us whoever, whatever and wherever we are, just as He cares for and feeds the birds whoever and whatever and wherever they are.
What Jesus came telling people two thousand years ago he is telling us today. The great question for each of us in today’s mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world is “Will we listen?” It is as simple as that “Will we listen?” We may prefer to be like St Augustine who at one time and in one context answered God “Yes, Lord, but please not yet”.
OK, but don’t let us wait too long, if we want truly to live ourselves and if we want also to help [we can do little more than just help] this old world of ours not to vanish away in clouds of nuclear destructiveness which seem to come closer week by week.
He said then “Come unto me”. He says to everyone today “Come unto me”, yes even amidst the horrors of what we glibly, yes, glibly, speak of as just a Middle East war He is saying to all “Come unto me” but so few of us seem to hear Him calling and so few are those speaking for Him because even if we do hear Him, will we truly listen?
Whatever they may talk about at Conferences such as that in Rome the other day one may be forgiven about being sceptical whether any progress will be made, unless at least there is a prophet in their midst – a Christ if you will, a sort of Mahatma Gandhi if you will permit me to say, a man [like Jesus] much despised by many at the time but following his assassination [also like Jesus] too soon forgotten by most, a man who though not a “Christian” always carried a copy of the Sermon on the Mount with Him [how many of us Christians I wonder can claim to do that?!] Perhaps such a person could get the leaders to listen, who knows? But perhaps that is hoping for too much.
But while the world lives in the midst of great anxieties and sadness at the present time we Christians can remember with confidence Jesus’ words “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me”. That drawing goes on today in a myriad of ways, even though it may not be obvious to us. Whether we realise it or not, He is drawing us who are here this evening – ” This Happy Band of Brothers” – and Sisters!
God on holiday? No, because of his love for his creation, He is working still, here in this church, here in Hampstead, elsewhere in England; He is working in all parts of the world for which, if we will listen, we can truly “Thank God”.
May we even now hear Him calling “Come unto me”. May we listen and respond rightly to his call and let any old attitudes or ideas which we may have which are really obsolete or growing old vanish, as Shakespeare himself would have said, vanish “into thin air.”
Derek Spottiswoode