Lent and the Baptism of Jesus

We continue through these days of the coronavirus lock down with all the restrictions on the freedoms we normally take for granted. This means of course we are unable to assemble for public worship. But I've noticed how some ministers have really taken to the internet, keeping in touch with their congregations by posting video recordings of their daily reflections. Others are now providing regular Sunday services through a tool known as Zoom, which as most of us know, is basically a form of video conferencing over the internet. For various reasons Zoom is not an option for all congregations, but I think that a prepared video may be a good alternative. It's what I've decided to do.

The only thing is, one has to talk into a camera, so to speak. When I'm doing this, I'm reminded of those days before mobile phones, when telephone answering machines came into popular use. And I remember that a lot of people when met with a recorded invitation to leave a voice message would simply put the phone down and perhaps call again later. I think we can understand this because as people would say at the time, there seemed to be something awkward about talking down a phone to someone who isn't there. Ideally, one would like to leave a short breezy message but there is also the danger that it might degenerate and record as a pointless ramble, or even worse! 

Alas! I soon discovered that before the camera, I was prone to the 'telephone answering machine syndrome' myself and came to realise that I have very little talent for such relaxed spontaneity. After some experimenting, it became obvious to me that I would have to rely on a script. Perhaps the best thing I can say about those scripts is, at least I've written them myself which I admit is not much of a recommendation!

Now, to help me get over the 'telephone answering machine syndrome' I thought I would ask my wife Sue, if she would read my Lenten reflection of 31^st March 2020, in which I stated that Lent begins with John the Baptist. I asked her to offer me some questions that I thought I could work on. In the event, she kindly provided a number of very interesting questions.  But I have found that the first question she asked has been enough to keep me busy.

Her question is as follows:

Why does Lent start with John the Baptist? I thought that Lent was the period of forty days and forty nights when Jesus was in the wilderness.

I can only say, well you've got me there Sue, you are right, except in my mind at least, I do find it helpful to see the trials of Jesus in the wilderness set in the context of his baptism by John at the River Jordan. In this story, John appears on the scene with all the fire and the passion of the prophets of old as announced in the pages of the gospel: 

'In the prophet of Isaiah, it stands written: 'Here is my herald whom I sent on ahead of you, and he will prepare your way. A voice crying aloud in the wilderness, “Prepare a way for the Lord; clear a straight path for him”.

(Mark 1:2-3)

This dramatic opening promises a great deal. As the story moves on, we discover that we are not going to be disappointed not just in terms of literary drama but because in its unfolding message, we may be thrilled to realise that the life of Jesus is a paradigm for the religious life; it's a personal message pointing towards one's own spiritual potential and destiny. Jesus said:

I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you (John13:15) 

John baptised others at the River Jordan for the forgiveness of sin. Of Jesus, he said to others, 'I have baptised you with water; he will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. Now, when Jesus asked John to baptise him, we know that John did not feel it was necessary. In any case, John didn't feel that it was his place to Baptise Jesus and he had already declared that he felt that he wasn't worthy enough even to untie his sandals. But we have these words of Jesus who replied, 'Let it be done to fulfil all righteousness.' The righteousness Jesus speaks about it is this: There were many, at that time, at the River Jordan receiving baptism for the forgiveness of sin but Jesus took his place in the queue with everyone else seeking no preferment thereby fulfilling all righteousness We may remember that Jesus' said:

For whoever exalts himself will be humbled; and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

(Matthew 23:12)

And so, Jesus was baptised in the waters of the River Jordan. and as he came up out of the water, we are told that the Spirit of God descended upon on him as a dove and a voice from heaven was heard to say, 'This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.' In this transcendent moment the blessing of God rested upon him as he received the Holy Spirit.

For a young man, it is reasoned that there should come important and significant moment perhaps at the time of graduation or marriage in which he should be acknowledged as a man in his own right and thus receive the approval or blessing of his father; 'This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased'. In the old fairy tales, we see this happening as a young man sets out into the world to make his fortune. Thus, the story begins with a blessing and departure. Who knows what adventures, dangers and opportunities any young person may encounter in their journey of life whether they be man or woman? Inevitably, there will be testing times, times of trial, difficulties which must be faced, but the good wishes and the approval of a father, important as they are, are not enough. In the end one must stand on one's own two feet to deal with the challenges of life with faith, with courage and personal strength.

At the River Jordan, Jesus received his baptism and his blessing from God the Father, the Spirit of God descending upon him as a dove. In a different story a son received his blessing - an inheritance from his father - only to squander it in a far-off country and then, found himself in want. St Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians (10) warned the early Church that the blessings of baptism could also be squandered. He pointed to those who were baptised into the fellowship of Moses and yet failed he said the desert was strewn with their corpses.

Immediately following his extraordinary baptism, Jesus was led or driven into the wilderness by the Spirit of God where he remained for forty days to face the hunger, the hardship and the temptations of the world, the temptations of Satan. The days of Lent therefore represent the days of Jesus' trial in the wilderness but for me, his baptism at the River Jordan is an integral part of that story.

In this letter to the Corinthians Paul wrote:

If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.

1 Corinthians 12-13

In closing I would say that in our own wilderness days in the days of trial that our faith will surely help us to endure. At his weakest point in the austerity and harshness of the desert Jesus kept faith with God. We can imagine that he would have gathered strength and would have been sustained by his memory of that transcendent moment at his baptism.  

You Must be Born Again

At the present time we, in Britain, are living under conditions popularly described as ‘lockdown’. We are all experiencing this as a result of government measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus and at the time of writing, sadly the death rate from this infection is continuing to rise. We all have concerns for the future and long for the resumption of normality. I believe the prime minister will end all the present restrictions as soon as this threat to human lives recedes. In the meantime, let our thoughts and prayers be for the sick, the bereaved and for others who are finding this a time of stress and difficulty.

Whatever is happening out there in the world, we should also try to find time to turn our hearts and minds to matters spiritual, to put things in perspective and to try to see things as they really are. After a long winter, these past few days have brought blue skies and glorious sunshine, the mornings are lighter and the days are warmer and soon it will be Easter.

In the meantime, let us remember that we are still in Lent. We are still in that period that begins with John the Baptist, ‘the voice crying in the wilderness’, who ‘preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.’ John said that he baptised with water but that Jesus would baptise with the Holy Spirit. John baptised Jesus and as Jesus came out of the water the Holy Spirit descended upon him ‘like a dove.’ Thus, Jesus was able to say in the synagogue at Nazareth:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.

In this time of Lent, once again, we are brought face to face, with the challenges and suffering that Jesus met. The meaning of Lent may be summed up in his words:

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

When Jesus came from Galilee to the River Jordan to John, to be baptised, John presumed that Jesus had no need to be baptised. In fact, John felt that it was more proper that he should be baptised by Jesus. But Jesus insisted that John should baptise him, saying that this was to ‘fulfil all righteousness’ and so John did as he was asked.

Humility demands that we must abandon our own sense of self as Jesus did before John at the River Jordan. We have to leave our own egos at the door in order to ‘fulfil all righteousness.’ Humility is a virtue of the Christian faith it is exemplified in John the Baptist, a great spiritual leader with his own following and disciples, who publicly confessed that he was not good enough to untie the sandals of Jesus.

Jesus said, ‘I and the Father are one’. He also said, ‘Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect’. In these words of Jesus, we are shown that the object of the spiritual life is to achieve unity with God. There are no perfect people on this planet but in moments of surrender we may get a sense of the presence of God; the kingdom of heaven within. In the presence of God there is perfection. Of this quest to transform our lives, Thomas Merton wrote: 

We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves."

In the Gospel of John, we have the story of Nicodemus a Pharisee not an ordinary man but an educated man, a Pharisee, who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. Nicodemus was perturbed and confused by the presence and the godly power of Jesus. So perturbed and confused was he that he came to visit Jesus at night; secretly. Perhaps he didn’t want to damage his reputation in the world by being seen with Jesus. Now Nicodemus was not just an educated man, he was a teacher. He was a man of such great standing that Jesus referred to him as the teacher of Israel. It would almost be an understatement to say that Nicodemus knew the scriptures inside out. Yet Nicodemus must have felt that somehow, he was missing something, for in Jesus was a man who could preach like no other man. In Jesus something of God was revealed. Nicodemus was a man of great learning but Jesus showed that there was something more:

Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.’ But Nicodemus could not understand and so he said to Jesus

How can someone be born when they are old? Nicodemus asked. Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!

Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.

Faith is an affair of the heart for there is no academic learning that will give us that peace which passes all understanding. It is only in contrition, humility and love that we may be truly born again. As Easter approaches with its story of the death and the resurrection, we will be reminded, once again, that love conquers death. And so, we too must learn to die to ourselves as Jesus taught:

 I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity.

No Hell Below Us?

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us

Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

This song written by John Lennon was originally released as an LP by the same name (Imagine) and according to the Guinness World Record British Hits Single Book it's the Second Best Single of all time and it's also been sung and recorded by dozens of other artists like, Joan Baez, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and Elton John. I can hear you thinking if 'Imagine' was the second best British single of all time, what was the first? (Can you guess?). It was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Anyway, the song Imagine was apparently inspired by one of Yoko Ono's poems in which the reader is invited to "Imagine the clouds dripping, dig a hole in your garden to put them in." The other inspiration for the song came from a Christian prayer book. John Lennon said that, "The concept of positive prayer ... If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion—not without religion but without this my God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing—then it can be true . . ."

This song has inspired millions of listeners, whilst others will have dismissed the song as being hopelessly utopian, a dreamer's song as in the lyrics, 'you  may say that I'm a dreamer but I'm not the only one'. It is of course a gentle subversive song because it appears to turn the values of the world upside down, a world with only people, a world without all that nationalistic flag waving, a world without war, a world of peace and a world without possessions, perhaps a world of common ownership without the excesses of power and wealth. The song sounds like it could have almost come from the lips of Jesus and maybe it could have. This morning / afternoon I would like to discuss the idea of heaven and hell and the role of religion. These are concepts of course that John Lennon deals with in his song and they are concepts which Jesus appears to address in his teachings, and in his parables. I think that the simplistic response we often hear in regard to the presence of religion in the world is that religion is the cause of all wars. There is also  this idea of heaven and hell and I refer particularly to the idea of hell, and that the supposed existence of hell, and suffering in eternity is a threat, a  tool of fear, a tool of control used by the church.

To be clear, what I am preaching on today will come down to this question - does hell exist? And I'm going to be very unambiguous  on this question, and I'm going to tell you in my usual diplomatic way that yes, hell does exist! John Lennon's song invites us to imagine that there is no heaven or hell and 'only people living for today' In this case I might say 'define your terms John', because the phrase  'only people living for today' is ambiguous because it can seem to have nihilistic and dismissive overtones but I'm sure it wasn't meant like that. Alternatively, it can mean that 'only people living for today' is that we should live our lives in the present moment, live our lives in the now which in a sense is to live in a grounded realistic way in which we are in touch with the depths of our own being and there is of  course a spiritual dimension to this, for in this way of being we may gain a sense of  peace and unity in our own lives and the world in  which we are part of.

Recently I became embroiled in a little debate concerning this same question, of hell or if you like, of No hell below us - Above us only sky. It happened that I saw a post on a Methodist Facebook page and this page showed a video clip of  John Shelby Spong who is a retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church and a renowned liberal Christian. This film clip seemed to have been posted, to promote him and to support what he was saying. But I was taken aback a little to hear this retired bishop basically claim that hell is an invention of the Church that they use to induce feelings of guilt in order to control peoples behaviour, he said that religion is in the guilt producing control business. He went on to say that, "If you have heaven as a place where you are rewarded for your goodness and hell is a place where you are rewarded for your evil then you have control of the population and so they create this fiery place which has literally scared the hell out of a lot of people throughout Christian history".

I mean, it's not that I don't believe that the threat of eternal suffering in the afterlife, in hell, has been used by the church as a form of control, of course it has but so have a lot of other church doctrines too, including of course the doctrine, the dogma of the Trinity. No, why I was taken aback was the assertion that somehow, that the concept of hell was actually created by the church. But the fact remains, as we have already heard (this morning), that  Jesus himself in the Gospel of Matthew, referred to eternal punishment in his Parable of the Final Judgement. And no doubt you will recall the story of Dives and Lazarus we heard a couple of weeks ago, in another parable from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus tells how Dives suffers torment in the afterlife as a punishment for his thoughtless selfishness. Well, in the course of this short debate I was told that  all this is wrong and that hell doesn't really exist in the Bible, that the translation is all wrong and its just the rotten power hungry church that just wants to frighten and control people by fear.

When I was a kid, I mean about 10 years old, I was given a leaflet by a certain Christian who was handing them out on the street. I have to tell you that when I read this leaflet it literally scared the hell out of me too; at the time. This leaflet described in graphic detail the horrors and the torment that would be waiting for me should I continue to live a sinful life. It scared me for a time and then the fear wore off. One day I had this leaflet with me and I clearly remember standing at a market stall with my mum in Ashton. I'll tell you what I did with it, I folded it up nice and neatly and I dropped it into a woman's shopping bag when she wasn't looking and then secretly hoped she'd  find it and read it when she got home and that it would scare her as much as it scared me. We are often taught fear as children, strangers that shouldn't be trusted, canals with whirl pools that can drag you down to the bottom, another one at the time was the unpredictable behaviour of Alsatian dogs that can kill a grown man and then when I was 14 I read Bram Stoker's Dracula that definitely gave me a few sleepless nights! And it's not as if we need to go to church or read the Bible to be given scare stories, you only need to see the on line media, or Facebook or pick up a copy of  the Manchester Evening News to read frightening stories, scare stories of 'internet trolls' and 'stalkers' and drug crazed maniacs, they're all out there waiting to get you. I mean why pick on the Church as if its been the only organisation responsible for spreading stories to frighten people?

And so I return to something I said earlier and its quite simply this and it may be unfashionable in such enlightened times to say this but hell does exist. Of course its not some underground Hades that is all fire and sulphur but it nevertheless exists and I think we can understand the prevalence of hell when we really consider the mission of Jesus because the whole point of Jesus' ministry was to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to point to it. Jesus who came into a world of darkness to bring to bring light, to bring enlightenment, to bring the power of truth. Howsoever, our Bibles may be translated his message and teachings shine through and can be received. And in the teachings of Jesus, we don't find complicated theological discourse in fact rather the opposite. His lessons are short and direct and simple, so on the question of the Kingdom of God, you might say the Kingdom of Heaven, he tells us directly, he tells us in straight forward terms that the Kingdom of God is not out there, rather its within. Not only that - we can glimpse it right here and now. As he said, "the Kingdom of God is at hand"  That being the case, Hell too is in the same place. We have a choice between good and bad, love and hate, or heaven and hell. My friends, we make our own heaven and our own hell. And talking about 'friends ' the, simple truth is that in making that choice for heaven or hell we have another choice, we can decide to be our own best friend or our own worst enemy which is it to be? In the times of our  greatest difficulties we could just ask ourselves one simple question and that is, "What would a best friend say to me right now?"

I know it seems easy to say these things, they sound like platitudes, clichés that easily roll off  the tongue but Christianity didn't become a great religion because the teachings of Christ were, superficial, platitudinous, or  wrong. No! Christianity became a great religion because the teachings of Christ were and are absolutely right and perfect and are so even for our modern times. I'll give you an example. Currently one of the best books concerning personal well being, which by the way includes a free CD of guided meditations, is Mindfulness for Health by Vidyamala Burch and Danny Pennman. This won the British Medical Association's First Prize in 2014 for popular medicine so be in no doubt this is cutting edge stuff. In his foreword to this publication Mark Williams says, "But Vidyamala and Danny don't just give a clear and up to date scientific explanation of how this happens; they also provide a step-by step guide to help you through your suffering. The meditations and the essential message of this book is that we as a species, as a people have grown up and evolved to see threats and to feel fear and other negative stimuli, as a form of self protection for our own self survival.  But this, in effect, our own negativity bias is the fundamental cause of our suffering. Our task in life is to work to rebalance this bias and the rebalancing through the meditations  can according to Burch and Pennman help us to 'see more clearly, act more effectively and be less distracted by day to day life. It will also create a sense of open hearted calm; the warm  and tingling love of life that you probably experienced when you were far younger.'

The accusation against the Church is that Jesus said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." And that somehow this is a way for the Church to control people by making them child like and naive. It's been argued that people should ignore these words of Jesus and grow up instead. But the problem is that we have all grown up in the ways of the world. It's not growing up that is the problem but perhaps a need to wake up to the suffering in the world, the personal suffering that we can create for ourselves. Hell of course, does exist. Some one once asked, "If you can't be happy in this life, how can you expect to be happy in the next? And to some extent, you know, I think its a fair point. In the afterlife, I'd hate to become a miserable earth bound spirit wandering around scaring people, moaning and clanking chains! Let our faith and the teachings of Christ be a message of joy and personal liberation. Let me close with this well known prayer from an unknown author:

Give us the spirit of the child.
Give us the child who lives within – the child who trusts, the child who imagines, the child who sings, the child who receives without reservation, the child who gives without judgement.
Give us a child’s eyes, that we may receive the beauty and freshness of this day like a sunrise. Give us a child’s ears, that we may hear the music of mythical times.
Give us a child’s heart, that we may be filled with wonder and delight.
Give us a child’s faith, that we may be cured of our cynicism.
Give us the spirit of the child, who is not afraid to need, who is not afraid to love. Amen