Shield of Faith: Notes and Essays

Copyright © 2016 by Bernard Thorogood.

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Scripture quotations taken from the Revised English Bible, copyright © Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press 1989. All rights reserved.

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Rev. date: 02/03/2016

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Themes for Witness: Pointers Towards a Living Church

My Quiet Time

25 Significant Events in My Lifetime

We Believe … …

From the Beginning

Faith in Question

Your Kingdom Come - Here and Now

My Top Fifty

The Always God

OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR:

Risen Today

The Flag and the Cross

A Guide to the Book of Amos

One Wind, Many Flame

Letters to Paul

Our Father’s House

Gales of Change (Ed)

Looking at Leisure

Reef Passage

Crossing the Bridge

A Minister’s Minutes

Introduction

Over recent years I have written several pieces for friends in my local community and have brought these essays together to make this volume. I have always been a questioner. Perhaps that may be a weakness, for there are many who would opt for the unquestioning faith as the foundation. But I was not made like that and so have sought, throughout a life in ministry, to face the hard questions of the life of faith in this age of science and technology and consumerism.

Coming to this suburban area of Sydney in my retirement I have been blessed to be part of the Uniting Church congregation in Pymble. I cannot imagine a more thoughtful, open-minded and generous company, surrounding me with care as I get older. For me they are the Shield of Faith and so I offer them this little collection as a Thank You.

I have no special skills in biblical scholarship, so please read these essays as the working papers of one who seeks to hear the Word in the words.

Bernard Thorogood

Pymble New South Wales

Themes for Witness: Pointers Towards a Living Church

Opening

As a society of human beings, the church has always had a tendency to become enclosed, setting boundaries and tests to mark it off from the rest of humanity. Those within can share the confidence of membership. Their belief and commitment admit to membership. This clarity about the borders has protected the church from being absorbed by the milieu in which it has been set; it is not like a virus that runs unseen but as a clearly visible entity with the walls of faith and the moat of baptism. The negative is plain. The blessings of those inside may, to those outside, seem to the street people of a city to be a good club with a restaurant and swimming pool. It is not for me, I don’t speak their language, or It’s all right for those who like that sort of thing.

If the church of Christ is ever to become the spiritual home for all, then it will have to face the ambivalence of the fences. This has been an issue since the earliest days, when the apostolic church had to consider the faithful Jewishness of the small group and the clamour of the Gentile world. Should the Jewish law be a requirement for all who would come for baptism? It was a critical question. It had not been dealt with in any of the teaching of Jesus, as we have received it. It was the shattering experience of Peter at Caesarea that had changed his thinking (Acts 10) and persuaded him that the ancient law could no longer contain the spiritual power that stemmed from the resurrection. His witness, and that of Paul, changed the direction.

Throughout the succeeding centuries, there were other ways in which the Christian society was fenced: by the laws of Constantine, by the dominant powers of the bishops of Rome, and in the East, by ethnicity. The great reformers fenced their followers with the creedal statements to which they had to subscribe and, in England, by their loyalty to the crown. Some reformers went to extreme lengths to protect the in-group, forbidding any social contacts outside, particularly any romances, and building isolated communities where purity could be retained.

This is not just a historical matter. We hear of some of the African churches today that actively share in the persecution of homosexual people, excluding them from any possible participation in the communal life of the followers of Christ. We may meet strict Baptists and even stricter Brethren. We have to admit that there are many people who find peace and security within tough rules. It is the ancient Pharisaic syndrome. It appeals to all who feel at home in a life of observance, ritual, and obedience as their key to salvation. We may not write off that kind of devotion, but both the gospel teaching and our experience suggest that it is not adequate as the way of witness for today.

What might it mean to be a church of openness? Surely there have to be some fences, some demarcation, some distinctiveness.

First, the only possible distinctiveness that is foundational for the church is whether you are a sincere seeker of truth and hope as it comes to us through Christ. It may be a vague or hesitant beginning of the faith journey. There may be a complete blank about the Trinity and the liturgy and just a longing for some deeper awareness of life’s meaning or some admiration for the character of Christ. It may be tears of loss. Or fears of nemesis. Or bewilderment in modernity. The starting point does not matter, for it is the direction that is important: whether or not we are seeking the reality of God’s approach to us in Christ. All the gifts of grace should be available to all who seek: the life of the community, the sacraments, the prayers, the support networks, and the teaching. The message Come, and welcome stands without questioning the past life and opinions, for the only question is What are you seeking?

There is another level of openness that is needed today. It is that the governance of the church should be an open book and not hidden in the secret files. We have had far too much clerical secrecy, as though there are some Masonic secrets to defend. This has made the whole of Catholic Church discipline and order a disturbing, unhealthy old men’s club with entry only by pontifical appointment. Why? The people of the church should know how seriously and carefully the leaders are discussing great issues and whether partisan politics and personal ambition have a place at the table. The Protestant churches have been a little better at this, with fewer closed books, but there are still some old-boy networks in operation.

Openness also means that there should be no closed questions for the church—provided they are serious questions and not raised in order to threaten or mock. For example, the Protestant churches should be open to discussing the question of the papacy as the ecumenical symbol of unity and what reform the current papacy needs for it to be accepted by all. The Catholic Church needs to reopen the questions surrounding the place of women in church life and leadership. The Orthodox churches at some point have to reconsider their relationship with nationalism in all its unsavoury ambitions. The questions may disturb, but they are not petty and are not to be brushed aside as inconvenient. To declare that a question is closed, as the Vatican has done about the ordination of women, is to say that there can never be any fresh evidence, argument, revelation, or logic that may suggest amendment or reform. The secular world needs to know that our faith is ready for such challenges.

All who have served in the ministry know that they do not have a special spiritual power that is denied to the laity. They have particular authority to serve the community of Christ but no special wisdom or holiness or closeness to Christ. This reality needs to be made evident in the life of the church, for when this is revealed, as it has been over recent history by the evidence of clergy misconduct with children, then it comes as a media shout of alarm, the disclosure of a secret. Yet it has always been true that clergy are just people. They are, we pray, dedicated, educated, and wholly committed but still with the limitations and the temptations of humanity. It has been one of the sorrows of Christian history that the priesthood was marked out in terms of the religious practice of the Roman world rather than as the shepherd with Christ as the model.

In such ways, openness is a key, and the physical symbol is surely the open door of the church building itself. It is one of the unfortunate effects of modern economics that the greatest churches now charge for entry, and not small sums either. This sets them out to be tourist sites to be ticked off the itinerary, and they are so treated by the tour operators. They are run as businesses in order to save the roof from falling, but if they have lost that openness for all seekers—all mourners, all who love silence and prayer, all who would grasp some spiritual hope in the middle of our cities—then they might as well be handed over—reredos, crossing, tower, and all—to the National Heritage. I wonder if the entry charge was scrapped and contribution boxes were well placed at exits, with suitable information, would the dean and chapter be any the poorer?

Listening

It is one of the joys of a life in the ministry of the church that familiarity with the New Testament never obscures its surprises, suggestions, wisdom, and challenges. It is a short collection of writings but a deep well from which to draw the water of life. Let me give one example.

It is only recently that I have been struck by one of the distinguishing marks of John’s gospel: the total absence of reference to the more formal aspects of Christian life. There is mention of John the Baptist but no mention of Jesus’s being baptised. There is a Last Supper but no mention of Jesus saying, Do this in remembrance of me. There is no Caesarea Philippi declaration of the foundation of the church and no final commission to go and teach all nations. But we have those long discourses that can hardly be verbatim records of what Jesus said but rather are meditations on the core of his words. Yet since John was the last of the gospels to be written, we might expect that the church had become a little more formal and structured by that time. The writer appears to be affirming for his readers that the fellowship of Christ is a spiritual matter, that it is about our relationship with God, before it is an institutional matter with membership, ritual, and order. The wind blows where it wills; you hear the sound of it but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going (John 3:8). These are dangerous words—unsettling words—for any incipient canon lawyers or bishops. Or for those, like me, who have been church bureaucrats.

Listening to the Word of God means taking care as we read these words of men. If we claim to be preachers, we first have to be listeners of the word. It is very easy to misunderstand the Bible through the presuppositions we bring to it and through the sheer distance in time and human culture between the pages and us. To hang the whole weight of doctrine on a single verse is a dangerous exercise that is likely to lead us astray, for each verse needs to be set within the overall message of each book of the Bible. For example, the verse John 15:16 You did not choose me; I chose you, has been taken as the evidence for predestination, that God chooses which human beings will be citizens of the New Jerusalem and which will be thrown into the darkness. But the context makes it plain that the reference is just to the close friends and followers gathered around Jesus; there is no suggestion of universal application. So we have to listen with care if we are to share in the Ministry of the Word.

Second only to that, we have to listen to the voice of the people. The Japanese theologian, Kosuke Koyama, in Three Mile-an-Hour God has a powerful criticism which western Christians need to hear.

This religion called Christianity is, it seems to me, most interested in teaching people, but not interested in being taught by people. It speaks to people, but it does not listen to them. I do not think Christianity in Asia for the last 400 years has really listened to the people. It has ignored people. Ignoring things is not so bad, but ignoring people is serious. It has listened to its bishops, theologians and financial sponsors. But it really has not listened to the people. (SCM Press 1979)

This is not all that needs to be said, but it is a great word for those of us who have been involved in the missionary activity of the western churches. We have been so confident of our agenda that it was the framework which others had to accept, whether or not it appeared to them as vital. I caught a glimpse of this when I was doing a good deal of work with the World Council of Churches. This gathering of churches, formed in 1948, had a European bias in all its formative years. The agenda of its meetings reflected their concerns – the unity of the church, the doctrine and faith of the church, evangelism and mission, Bible study, refugee service – these were prominent. As the churches of the south gained in strength and maturity, their voice was increasingly heard and their agenda had to be recognised. Nation building, power politics, oppression, economic imperialism, racism, the arms trade, slavery – it was such matters that they wished to be discussed and faced by the churches of the world. It was not easy for those of us from the West to adjust to the change in emphasis and budget, and that just indicates that Kosuke Koyama was right, and we had not been listening as we should to the concerns of the people.

If we fail in this then we risk a genuine irrelevance, for we shall be answering questions which have not been asked, offering medicine for sicknesses which are not causing suffering. In Luke 18:41 we have the account of Jesus being heckled by a blind man in Jericho. The man was brought before Jesus, who asked him, What is it you want me to do for you? Let the sufferer speak; it was not for Jesus to make the assumption. So, in all our attempts to witness, we first have to listen. What are the primary concerns of the people?

At this point we have, as churches, been partly responsible for being pushed to the periphery of public life, for there was too long a period when we have treated the sin of the world and the fear of hell as the main concern to be addressed, long after that ceased to be what was the chief concern of the hearers. We were addressing medievalism in a world of secular modernity. What are the chief concerns today? Insecurity must surely be one, in jobs, in physical safety, in the economic pressure of the poverty trap and in politics, a sense that we do not live with secure foundations in a stable environment. Being left behind is another, behind in the technology stampede and in the race for affluence, and loneliness in old age. Cynicism or hopelessness is another; distrust of all politicians, of all clerics, of all hope of peace, of all big corporations – ‘There is nothing we can do.’ Another concern, hardly ever mentioned in religious contexts, is the western world’s focus on sex, the exploitation of sex by the pornography industry, sex tourism and the effect of this barrage on the realities and strength of marriage. And to such common concerns we now have to add that militant Islam is a threat which millions have to face in daily life.

Christian traditionalists may assert that all such deep concern reveals our guilt for human sin, but such language does not resonate as once it did. Much more could be said by people telling their own stories and by social workers who attempt to deal with domestic tragedies. But listening is not only about the darkness of life, it is also necessary to listen for the signs of joy and release and hope, for there we may discern that the Spirit of God is present.

There is another sort of listening which we have to learn. It is to hear what those with knowledge would share with the church, knowledge about all the specialisms of the modern world. The laity are the great resource and the clergy are the students in a host of puzzling modern dilemmas. Yet we are often reluctant to listen. The Vatican might have avoided the serious error in its teaching on contraception if the priests had listened longer and with more humility to the laity. Now it is lumbered with an embargo which makes no sense to thousands of faithful people. In bio-ethics, peacekeeping, the arms trade, AIDS, climate change, tourism, nuclear physics – all such areas on which the churches from time to time wish to make statements, it is to the laity that we must turn for the evidence before we attempt to make some theological assessment. If the minister is indeed the shepherd, with pastoral concern for each person, the laity have never been less like sheep.

By emphasising listening there is no suggestion that the church must stop teaching, but that the listening always comes first, for it only then that we face reality.

Serving

Like the note of a heavy bell, the call to service runs through the music of the Gospels; it is inescapable. It is the antithesis to the temptations of power which Jesus met in the desert before beginning his public ministry. It is the very meaning of ministry – not to be ministered to, but to minister; not to be served but to serve. It was there from the first chapter of the earliest Gospel where we read of Jesus touching a leper, to the end of the latest Gospel, where Jesus kneels to wash the feet of the disciples. If I then, your Lord and Master, wash your feet, ought you not to serve one another in humility, as the servant of the household would do?

It is always that combination of authority and humility which amazes us in the Gospels, how the Master, Messiah, Lord of life could be the suffering servant of Isaiah 53; that is the mystery of incarnation. But so it is, and so it marks the followers of Christ in every age. There is no other pattern for ministry in the church of God. The service is not a light thing, not just signing a cheque, but carrying some burden, some offering of personal love, care, sympathy and sacrifice.

There is a frequent misunderstanding about the churches involvement in service, that it is somehow different from all the other agents of humanitarian concern. There are some who feel the need to fly a Christian flag with every free meal for the destitute. I think this is a false direction. Those who serve with personal dedication may come from any religious background or from none, but the quality of their service is not to be doubted. Who could belittle the efforts of Medecins Sans Frontiers, or the Red Cross or UNICEF or Oxfam or those dealing with the ebola epidemic because they carry no religious title? The work itself is the key. Are the sick being treated, the hungry fed, the refugees housed, the poor given hope? There is nothing distinctive about the church-donated sack of flour. We are collaborators in the service of human need and must be thankful for all who share in it without self-regard.

Nor is the service offered as a preliminary to evangelism. There was plenty of talk about rice-Christians in the nineteenth century missionary movement, and no doubt there were many who were attracted to the western mission community because of the hand-outs of food or the path to education that were offered. We cannot go back over that story but neither can we repeat it, for it smells of bribery, something underhand; it was part of the colonial story, our strength over their weakness. Christian service is offered as the essential response we make to the Gospel, so is itself our witness, not needing any preaching to make it blessed by the Spirit.

For the Christian community, however, there is something distinctive in what is being done, since it is meeting Christ. The scarred hands of Christ are revealed to us in the hands reaching our through the barbed wire of the refugee camp, the voice of Christ is heard in the cries of a hungry child, the vulnerability of Christ is demonstrated in women battered in domestic violence, the footsteps of Christ are followed when we walk with the terminally ill. It is astonishing to the philosophers, but this is the Gospel, that we draw nearer to God as we become neighbour to the world of suffering. It is not by climbing up to the pinnacles of human achievement, not by becoming Superman, that we approach God, but by dropping into the well of human pain. Such is the revolution of faith. It is, indeed, turning the world upside down. We have to confess that it does not feel like that, for we all have very human reactions to others and may be dismayed by the dirt or the smell or the drunkenness or the curses or the apathy that we meet, yet through it all the voice is heard – ‘You did it to me.’

Christian service has a long history. A commentator in South America once said that Jesus Christ ‘let loose compassion into the world.’ It was a very hard world and we know very little of the many Good Samaritans who were active in the early centuries of the church but from the time of Francis of Assisi we can trace the more organised work of religious orders in the Catholic areas and of the Celtic fathers in the west. Early in the story were the knights of St John of Jerusalem with a hospital to care for sick pilgrims, the prototype in 1095, and then all the great religious orders, Fransiscan, Benedictine, Augustinian, Cistercian held to the service of the sick as part of their devotion. It has become a highly organised part of church life, since the scale of human need is shown to be so vast that the individual effort to help is insufficient. Thus it runs into the very same temptations as all institutions, that they become self-defensive and self-perpetuating, separate from the congregational life of the people of God. All the great Christian aid agencies are aware of this; they have to whisper prayers of confession every day.

It has been one of the risks in Christian service that we adopt a Lady Bountiful mentality, giving from our wealth in small presents to the needy, but without any thought to changing their status. This goes back to the days of "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at