A Future of Abundance or Culture of Scarcity?

GUEST POST by Fr John Ackland, preached at Croydon Minster Sunday 6th February 2022

Isaiah 6:1-8; Luke 5:1-11

 

In this sermon I would like us to explore what could be called Theological Psychology -  but then I thought far too pompous and I might have some of us rushing for the door! But the intention is to consider how we ‘think as Christian people’ and how we respond to those thoughts?

Our Gospel repeatedly makes us look at the  church, each other and ourselves from our Lord’s perspective.

 

We are called to reimagine the church through the eyes of God.

 

Often at  our Ministry Team Meetings held every Tuesday we have explored the concept of what it means to have a Culture of Abundance or a Culture of Scarcity. It has been truly fascinating! Personally, I love this sort of inquiry because it really makes me think! 

 

"Is the glass half empty or half full?" is a proverbial phrase, used rhetorically to indicate that a particular situation could be a cause for pessimism (glass half-empty) or optimism (glass half full), So if we replaced the word pessimism for scarcity and optimism for abundance, well, we can ask ourselves- does our Minster church have a Culture of Scarcity or Culture of Abundance? Half empty? Half full? And why does it matter?

 

Well, this scarcity/abundance dynamic is at the heart of so many human encounters with Jesus.

 

Do you know that there is only one miracle that is found in all four gospels, only one that we find in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? What is it? It’s not the calming of the sea or raising Lazarus from the dead or changing water in to wine: it’s the Isaiahfeeding of the five thousand. It starts with ‘scarcity’ -so many miracles and parables begin from a perspective of scarcity.

 

Just five loaves two fish and five thousand people. Quite clearly there is not enough food. In the moment the disciples reflect that culture of scarcity! “we haven’t got enough, we cant do it” And rightly so in one sense. There is’nt enough food amongst so many. Scarcity.

 

But Jesus reflects that culture of abundance and miraculous things can happen when we have a culture of abundance.

 

So let’s briefly explore today’s Gospel reading.

You have probably heard this reading many times.

 

The scene is set; it is morning. Crowds have gathered to listen to Jesus on the shores of the lake.We see two fishing boats. The fisherman have been fishing all night without success.

 

So, they are washing the nets before returning home to eat and rest.

 

As more and more people gather to listen to Jesus, he decides

to climb into one of the two fishing boats asking Simon to put out into the water so he can speak from there to the crowd. Sound over water is amplified and he is now facing all the people and he speaks- but we don’t know what he says!

 

When he is finished he tells Simon to put out into deep water and let down the nets. Bearing in mind they had been working all night they are exhausted and the nets have already been washed, it was a big ask.

 

But he does it anyway and, as we know, miraculously, the nets are overwhelmed with fish. The nets threatened to snap so he calls for the other boat to help and they both came back to shore weighed down with the weight of the catch.

 

Simon Peter says to Jesus to “Go away! ….I am a sinful man”

Jesus says “ Do not be afraid, you will be catching people”

Then they all left there boats and everything else in there lives and followed Jesus. 

 

What does that mean?

Did you spot the culture of scarcity at play? We find it twice-  once because they fished all night and caught nothing, what’s the point of doing it all again- a scarcity mindset.

Second- Simon tells Jesus to “go away” he feels he is not good enough nor ever will be-a scarcity mindset!

Abundance is expressed in the catch of the fish. Abundance is expressed in the faith Jesus has in the imperfect Simon and the fisherman. 

 

In today's Old Testament reading, the magnificent Isaiah is in the presence of God and is being called by God to take a message to God's people. How does Isaiah react? He protests and says "Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”. A statement of scarcity.

 

Both Isaiah and Simon Peter feel the magnitude of their unworthiness, there ‘feeling not good enough-ness.

 A seraph cleanses Isaiah lips with a burning coal  and’God asks Who shall I send and who shall; go for us?” and Isaiah says “Here I am, send me!” and Jesus has words of abundance for the fisherman “be not afraid I’ll make you catchers of people!”

 

Whatever troubled their hearts was let go as God set them on a new course and empowered them for new work in the kingdom.

 

That half full or half empty observation is linked to our ‘mindset’.
Our mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how we make sense of the world and ourself.

 

A very recent national Church report speaks of a church “captivated by scarcity”. That’s an interesting phrase- “to be captivated?”  The Cambridge Dictionary tells us that Captivated means

 

to hold the attention of someone by being extremely interesting, exciting, pleasant, or attractive:

 

 

Oh- so how does that work with being Captivated by Scarcity? Now I don’t know for sure yet because I am following up with that report to find out exactly what they mean.

But could it be, could it possibly be, that actually, a culture of scarcity is attractive and seductive because it is easier.

 

After all, ‘the church is struggling’, ‘we’ve done that or this before, didn’t work’, and ‘we don’t have the funds’… ‘Whats a church to do?’ You see how menacing it is. Scarcity can become a captivating interpretation because it makes no new demands, no need to change, you see?

 

Remember,  a Culture of Scarcity is a culture without hope!

 

Whereas abundance speaks of endless possibilities, yes, but it also speaks of risk! The safest, easiest way, is to do nothing- but God does not call us to do nothing- his call is abundant!

 

Research shows that mindsets play a significant role in determining life's outcomes. By understanding, adapting and shifting our mindset, we are told, we can improve our health, decrease our stress and become more resilient to life's challenges.

 

We are all imperfect Christian people and we are called to create that mindset, that culture of abundance that we find everywhere in our Christian Gospel- God wants this for us …. for our Minster church, for our faith and in our hearts and lives.

A culture of Abundance.

 

We have had two grim years of restrictions and prohibitions of previously unimaginable struggles.

But something happened in our Minster church this Christmas, an event that was the clearest example of what can happen when we are guided by a culture of abundance instead of scarcity and it was at no small risk!

 

 We had Carols of the Green- ‘Abundance?’  Yes, this event was to be as professional and generous as we could make it.

Those transforming Christmas lights in the trees, the quality of the food prepared with hired professional catering equipment and hot drinks, the wonderful Salvation Army Band. a log bonfire burning brightly and chocolates for all……if we had welcomed 150 people-we would have been delighted, whereas we had over double that amount. Most of those three hundred people were strangers to us.

 

People of all ages all backgrounds it was, truly, 

‘joyful and triumphant’

 

Risk? Yes. Of course. One cloudburst and it would have been a washout. Where there is culture of abundance there is always risk.

But the Minster church did it anyway.

 

There was great fear and risk for those lakeside fisherman who dared to follow Jesus

But they did it anyway.

 

There was fear and risk for the great prophet Isaiah.

But he did it anyway.

 

Of course, we must always be careful and act with wisdom and discernment in the decisions we make…to be prudent-of course- we must always be good stewards.

But our gospel calls us to be bold and brave.

 

Again, we are reminded that where there is a Culture of Scarcity there is no hope.

Where there is abundance there is hope-filled ambition where we reimagine the church through the eyes of God.

 

I’ll close by recalling our Pre Pandemic Minster Awayday- it seems an age ago. On that day the Minster people said wonderful things about what they wanted for the Minster church, words like ‘alive’ ‘a place of belonging’, ‘welcoming’ and ‘joyful’, ‘a church reaching out to the people of Croydon’.

 

That is the ambition of abundance!

 

And, in God’s name,

In God’s name…..….we can do this………AMEN

 

Standing up straight & praising God

Preached as sermon at Croydon Minster on Sunday 25 August, Tenth Sunday after Trinity.

‘When Jesus laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God’ (Luke 13.12)

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This morning’s gospel reading tells us about an encounter that is both beautiful and disturbing at the same time.

Beautiful: because in it a woman who has been bowed down for eighteen years regains her stature and dignity of herself in in the sight of others.

Disturbing: because the reaction to this act of restoration and healing sparks indignation from those who should be most joyful that another human being has her dignity restored.

The woman typifies those who are bent over and weighed down, physically yes, but psychologically or spiritually too. This isn’t just physical: how often are the physically afflicted spiritually upright?!

This crippling aliment, described as a ‘spirit’ by St Luke, but not defined by him, has oppressed her for eighteen years.

The period of eighteen years will have had interesting connotations for the people gathered in that synagogue on that Sabbath Day.

In the book of Judges it was for eighteen years that the Israelites had to serve the foreign king Eglon of Moab (Judges 3.14) and for eighteen years the foreign Ammonite kingdom ‘crushed and oppressed’ the Israelites (Judges 10.8). The number eighteen is associated with oppression and being crushed down.

Intriguingly also, according to the Jewish numerological tradition, the number eighteen also signifies ‘life’, ‘alive’ or ‘living creature’.

So a woman oppressed for eighteen years, becomes a newly ‘living creature’ who can stand up straight and praise God.

Beautiful.

The fact this took place on the Sabbath Day is also deeply resonant and filled with meaning.

Observing the Sabbath is a good thing. A day of rest, a day when the pace of life changes, a day to know the gift of life; a day to honour God our Creator: it is telling that our society in all its turmoil and dis-ease neglects Sabbath.

But we miss the point of Sabbath if, like the synagogue leader, we cannot show mercy and loving kindness on that day. If we cannot show it on that day can we ever show it on the other six?

The Creation begins on the first day as God says ‘let there be light’ (Genesis 1.3) and unfolds over six days. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week when God rested, seeing that all was good.

Yet the creation is marred and disfigured. People are oppressed, bowed down externally and internally, physically and mentally, and in the words of the hymn ‘Just as I am, without one plea’, we come to Jesus, the Lamb of God,

…tossed about

with many a conflict, many a doubt,

fightings within, and fears without’

We, like the woman, come to him now. And he beholds her; he beholds you; he beholds me.

To Jesus Christ we are not problems to be manged we are living creatures, who are loved, to be restored to life, to be released from all that bows us down.

So this act of restoration on the Sabbath Day anticipates the eighth day of creation, the first day of the new week, the Day of Resurrection, the Day of Life, the day of the New Creation, a day that has dawned today.

In the act of restoring that woman to dignity the crowds came to see that God’s priority is the lifting up of people from the dust, the gutter and into life.

The action of baptism is the Church’s sacramental sign that raises up men, women and children sharing in the raising up of Christ through his Resurrection.

‘If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God’ (Colossians 3.1)

Being baptised is an act of restoration and with this gospel reading we learn how we might approach God and our neighbour.

As Christians we should not be able see another person without beholding them as Christ does. In a brief walk outside this church we will see many people bowed down in spirit: Christ raises them up when they are freed from addiction, poverty, pain and we respond to them with kindness, hospitality and love. That is a sign of the Kingdom of God.

And what of our approach to God? This question comes not least in relation to the first reading today concerning the awe and majesty of God which perhaps prompts us to fall to our knees in reverence and humble devotion. Kneeling is a right and proper posture in God’s presence: just as how we bow reverently before the cross; bend our knee in genuflection at Christ’s presence in the sacrament; or kneel to receive Christ in Holy Communion.

But that is not the only posture of a Christian. Christ says, ‘stand up’ to the woman, ‘reclaim your dignity as a daughter, a child, of the Most High. Our Eucharistic Prayer says, ‘We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you’ (Common Worship: Services and Prayers for the Church of England, Prayer B). Standing as a posture of prayer bespeaks dignity, presence and attention.

In church standing when a priest enters is not about doing the priest honour but rather saying that together with the priest we are the church, ‘a royal priesthood, a holy people’. Worshippers are not spectators but participants.

We are citizens of the Kingdom not consumers of it. As Jesus says, ‘Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21.28).

Of course kneeling or standing is not easy for everyone, or not for prolonged periods of time. But even in sitting we can sit in an anticipating way, a receptive, attentive way, with open hands and relaxed shoulders; or we can choose to button up, with our arms folded, and sit as if at a show.

Liturgy is not a performance; we are all ministers of it. Never allow your posture to turn you into a spectator whatever is going on in front of you, because in worship we are in the presence of the Living God, just as the letter to the Hebrews describes:

…since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe; for indeed our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12.29)

It is for this that we are made, to praise and glorify God in the gift of life given to us by birth and renewed in baptism: ‘When Jesus laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God’ (Luke 13.12)

Going Beyond Merriment: The Banquet of Life

A sermon preached at Croydon Minster on Sunday 4^th August 2019, Seventh Sunday after Trinity. The readings were, Colossians 3.1-11; Luke 12.13-21

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The ‘Parable of the Rich Fool’ is a wonderfully vivid portrait of the way a life can totally lose sight of the deepest priorities of what it means to be human. It features a comfortable, overfed, over-wealthy, rich man who sees nothing more to his padded life than to ‘Eat, drink and be merry’.

This man has it all; in fact he has more than he can possibly want. And it’s pretty clear where his priorities lie.

It is a parable for our times.

The parable asks us to reflect on what really sets the bearings in our life; what is our hope and destination?

Will the many things we have, and the comforts we enjoy, blind us to the needs and pains of our world and her people?

The ‘eat, drink and be merry’ approach of the man in the parable is about self-adoration, self-satisfaction and self- gratification: ‘haven’t I done well? aren’t I marvellous? dash everyone else.’

For those us who were alive in the 1980s, it sounds a little like the character, created by Harry Enfield, called ‘Loadsamoney’ who just sneeringly bragged about how much money he had and waved wads of cash in the face of everyone else.

The ‘Loadsamoney’ character of the parable disregards everyone else and sits back to eat, drink and be merry. All that matters to him is a dogged pursuit of personal preferences and fulfilment. In that outlook other people are then either just tools to extract more money from or people to be pitied because they haven’t got what I’ve got.

The parable tells us about ourselves, or at least where we might find ourselves going if we take our eyes off the deeper, richer priorities of being human: of loving and adoring God; of seeking the Common Good; of seeing the legitimate and good generation of wealth as a means of creating a banquet in which all can share and no one be overlooked.

It has a personal and a societal dimension. It explodes the approach of ‘me, me, me’.

That self-absorbed approach to life was taken to its most horrific extreme in a story from the news last week: a mother who put her pursuit of eating, drinking and being merry above the care of her children and led, shockingly, to her killing them because they got in the way of her lifestyle.

Now that is a gross extreme, but a salutary example. How do I, how do you, prioritise our comfort, preferences and desire for security in relation to other people and indeed to our world and environment?

After all, since the industrial revolution our western world has effectively said ‘we’ve got everything we want, we have the comforts that previous ages don’t have so let’s eat, drink and be merry.’

It’s an approach that has led inexorably to the devastation of nature, the eradication of many species and as is becoming clearer and clearer towards a climate emergency that puts our own species under threat. We’re killing the environment in the pursuit of material comfort and security or just a bit of fun.

Politically there is a grave and current temptation and danger for our leaders to wish away complexity, to put their preferences over the Common Good and then to try to simplify real challenges by using the optimistic ‘eat, drink and be merry’ approach that says surely all will be fine.

The ‘me, me, me/eat, drink and be merry approach’ has not served human society and community well. The parable asks us to reflect on the priorities of our own lives and how we connect to other people: family, friends and wider community.

So where does all this take us?

Jesus promises abundant life (John 10.10); St Paul speaks of ‘taking hold of the life that really is life’ (2 Timothy 6.19).

The wonderful twist to all this is that we can ‘eat, drink and be merry’ when we are directing our lives to the feast of life, the banquet of heaven, from which spills out generosity, care for the weak, loving the creation rather than devouring the poor, the weak and anyone or anything who gets in our way.

What we are doing now in celebrating the Eucharist is the antidote to all of this and reframes the rich man’s phrase:

we eat the bread of life;

we drink the cup of salvation;

we enter into the joy of the Lord.

Life shaped in this way means that eating, drinking and being merry is a vision of a banquet to which all are invited, welcomed and fed.

It means that when we celebrate the Eucharist we are not self-indulgently consuming our own private, spiritual feast, that disregards everyone else, but we are participants in an action that tells us and the world what abundant life looks like.

We are anticipating the banquet of heaven, but making it real here and now!

This way of life puts away the old self, as described in our first reading; it cultivates habits that open us up to others and doesn’t shut them out; it reminds us that we are not self-made creatures worshipping ourselves; it reminds us not to exploit the creation or other people.

It is a strikingly different vision of the world from prevailing contemporary notions: that I am the master of my fate; that no one else can possibly impede me and what I want; that the way I see the world is the way the world is.

Through this banquet; through this eating, through this drinking we go beyond merriment -we go deeper – and enter into the abundant life and joy promised by the Lord.

Life in Christ: 'O lively life, that deathless shall persevere'

First preached as a sermon at Guildford Cathedral. Readings, Galatians 3.23-29; Luke 8.26-39

‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you’.

So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him’ (Luke 8.39)

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If you picture in your mind a prisoner or captive you will perhaps see someone with hands and legs bound, or in a cell behind bars.

It is a sad reality of human society that some people are imprisoned for punishment, or for their own protection or that of others. Either way imprisonment is a pitiful image. Even more shocking is when someone is held as prisoner of conscience or the victim of a miscarriage of justice; imprisoned unjustly, as Jesus himself was.

Imprisonment means deprivation of liberty, the restriction of movement and of seeing the world in its widest perspective. Imprisonment narrows down how we experience life. In contrast astronauts tell us about the wonderful experience of tasting fresh air, the vibrancy of colours away from the confines of a sterile, enclosed confinement on a space station. Something Tim Peake will be experiencing about now.

But we can also say that we are not only imprisoned behind bars. Imprisonment can be a metaphor deployed to describe a situation where one feels trapped and unable to leave and to be free. This is what Rowan Williams calls, ‘life shut in on itself’.

The political rhetoric of the European referendum debate illustrates this metaphorical use of imprisonment. For some people membership of the European Union is a prison in which the UK is trapped and fettered, where it is not able to be free to make decisions and pursue its own path. For others, precisely the opposite is the case. Remaining within the EU is a liberating position where free trade, freedom of movement and basic human freedoms can be protected.

The decision, as they say, is yours. But whichever way you decide please do decide, and when Thursday comes, if you have that right, do exercise your vote. All of us, whether able to vote or not, must pray for discernment in the decision making and have trust in the outcome, even if it’s not the one we want.

Both our readings today also illustrate the imprisonment and liberation image.

The gospel reading tells us about a man, a loner, calling himself Legion, who clearly has what today we would know as a serious mental illness. He went round naked, something shocking and unacceptable then as now.  And there in the tombs he was ‘kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles’. He was in quarantine, living in the cemetery, held at a ‘safe’ distance from where mainstream people live.

All his associations are with death, dead bodies and fear. In his nakedness he represents on the one hand the innocence of Adam before his rebellion, but also the discomfort that the naked body can present: vulnerability and suspicion. Because of this suspicion he is bound by chains, not free in any meaningful way.

We instinctively recognise life lived differently, lived freely and without inhibition. The coverage following the horrible and untimely murder MP, Jo Cox, tells us that she lived a life not shut in on itself but opened out in service to others, the poor overseas and those in her constituency, which ultimately took her life. It is the costs of living life open to others that generates the sort of society that we all cherish, and for which Jo Cox is a martyr.

Life in Christ shapes this way of living, and, if we live out that way of life and adopt its habits, we infect, in the best way, those around us. The call from this morning’s readings is to live ‘life in its abundance’ (John 10.10).

As well as being a man who has real needs for compassion, reconciliation and freedom he is a metaphor for life outside the resurrection, life not lived in Jesus Christ. Away from Christ he and we live a manacled, lifeless life contaminated by death, exposed and vulnerable.

Jesus Christ goes to the tomb for us and with us, is stripped of his clothes and dignity with us and for us, and is bound for us and with us, in order that, like with that disturbed man, we might be led out of slavery into freedom in the Promised Land.

So we begin to digest what this might mean for us, this liberation, removal of the shackles, this taking hold of ‘the life that really is life’ (cf 1 Timothy 6.19). The task of digesting what life with and in Christ means is tackled by St Paul.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul speaking of the liberating power of faith says: ‘Before faith came we were imprisoned under the law until faith would be revealed’ (Galatians 3.23).

Let’s be clear though, Paul is not talking about the criminal or even civil law. He’s talking about the Law revealed to the people of Israel. The Law for Jews was and is the way in which they remain faithful to the promises of God.

For Paul, the question is how might those who are not part of the People of Israel, who are not Jews, can live in covenant with God. It’s a hard question for him because as a Jew, a good and righteous Jew, the Law and its observance had been the way in which he was right with God.

For Paul it is faith in Christ that is the key that unlocks the Law so that all people may be brought into relationship with God as God’s children. The way of life that binds us now to God, is life in Christ.

This is the paradoxical relationship that the second collect from Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer talks about: ‘whose service is perfect freedom’: how can service be perfect freedom? Paul answers by saying that by being in Christ, we are no longer bound to God through what we are compelled to do or not to do, but through our relationship with God in Christ in the communion of the Holy Spirit, a relationship formed in faith and love.

This action of liberation is seen when a person moves into Christ, as Paul puts it: ‘As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ; there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3.28).

                                      

We are not prisoners or free people, but persons in Christ. Those who respond in faith are heirs according to the promise, the promise of Jesus Christ at the heart of the Gospel of life in all its abundance: as a poet put it, ‘O lively life, that deathless shall persevere’.

It’s little wonder then that when Jesus said to Legion, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you’...he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him’ (Luke 8.39)