12 March 2006Lent 2
The Reverend Sam MacBratney
Genesis 17 : 1 – 7 & 15 – 16 ; Romans 4 : 13 – 25 ; Mark 8 : 31 – 38
‘Walk before me …’
Abraham has a lot to answer for! Jews, Christians and Muslims all claim
to be his children, yet we are slow to recognise each other as
siblings. We fight for our right to claim to our heritage and for
control of holy sites. Perhaps is Abram has been able to see in the
future he might have counted himself blessed to be childless!
So God makes covenant with this 99 year old Iraqi. And as with all of God’s covenants, it has three elements:
The position of chaplains on the edge of higher education, often with few resources and little more than good will, serves to remind us all of our Abrahamic heritage
Firstly, it is dependent on God. God is NOT an equal-opportunity
employer in this regard. The duties in the covenant are not equally
shared. It is God who initiates covenant and it God alone who
guarantees covenant. Therefore, only God can break it.
This brings us to the second element – that God’s covenants
are eternal. There has been a lot of nonsense talked in Christian
theology about supersessionism, the idea that later covenants are
better than earlier ones. Covenants are not like hoovers – the
latest model doesn’t make the earlier ones obsolete.
When God makes covenant with Abram and Sarai, it is for all time and
for all their descendants. Johnny-come-lately Christians ought to
respect that.
The third element of covenant is responsibility. God says to Abram – ‘Walk before me and be thou perfect.’
It is the idea of travel that I want to focus on this morning.
‘Walk before me’ is, of course, a demand from God that in
everything Abram does, he should acknowledge the presence of the
divine. ‘Remember I’m around when you’re doing the
dishes ….’ But we also know from Abraham and Sarah’s
story that they are called to move, to leave their home in Ur and
become pilgrims to a land unknown.
It is that call to pilgrimage which is the foundation of our faith as
Abraham and Sarah’s children today. For we worship a God who
remains a wanderer, uncomfortable with permanent fixtures. Here is a
God who prefers tents to temples.
Religious institutions are therefore more about human need than divine
command. We see again and again in the Bible that as soon as faith
becomes formalised and structured, God creates an oppositional force, a
prophetic voice to critique it. Religion is, for the writers of the
Bible, a struggle between two forces: institutional religion and
prophetic movements.
Isn’t that what the Wesleys were about in 18th century England?
They stood in the tradition of institutional reformers which includes
St Francis and St Dominic. Again, with the early Methodists, their
mission was about movement, seeking to live out the gospel beyond the
walls of the Church.
They were followed in the 19th century by the missionaries, reaching
out beyond these shores, and the likes of the Salvation Army, taking
gospel care to the forgotten. Again, activity characterised by movement.
The 20th century will be seen, for good or ill, as the ecumenical
century, when Christians sought to move beyond denominational barriers
to embrace others.
It’s too early to assess how the 21st century will be seen, but
there are already signs of a religious revival. Unfortunately it is a
revival characterised by division, with fundamentalists attempting a
whole scale takeover. But alongside that, there is also a growing
desire for understanding among faiths and a deepening dialogue between
them.
In all these movements, university chaplaincy has been at the forefront, often leading the changes.
The Protestant Reformation, for example, began as a university
movement. I was trained at a theological college built on the site
where Thomas Cranmer compiled the Book of Common Prayer, possibly the
greatest Protestant work.
I have an American t-shirt which proclaims John Wesley as a university
chaplain. Stretching the point, perhaps, but reinforcing the fact that
universities were key in the success of the Wesleyan movement.
And who cannot acknowledge the huge debt the ecumenical movement owes to the Student Christian Movement?
Chaplaincy has had to adapt to the changing shifts in Christian life
and mission. It has not had the luxury of institutional protection from
such forces. As the church has moved from defining mission as
institutional expansion in the 19th century to engagement and
partnership with others in the 21st, so it is in chaplaincy where this
shift is most clearly seen. Gone is the idea of chaplains building
little outposts of Christianity within secular institutions. Instead,
our focus is on dialogue and partnership with all people of good will.
This sometimes leads to misunderstanding. As chaplaincies better
reflect the institutions we serve and become multifaith, those working
with the old model of chaplaincy think we are creating a new religion.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Chaplains are there to
challenge their institutions, but also the faith communities from which
they come. The position of chaplains on the edge of higher education,
often with few resources and little more than good will, serves to
remind us all of our Abrahamic heritage. God’s call to us is
often not to put down roots or build institutions, but simply to go and
seek our fellow pilgrims. To rediscover what it means to walk before
God without the securities we cling to.
To do this, God says: ‘… be thou perfect.’ This is
not a demand for moral purity. Rather it is a challenge to total
commitment. ‘Be completely engaged’ is perhaps a better
rendering.
The children of Abraham are called, just like our great forebears, to
be radically open to God’s surprising and gracious future.