Revd Dr Michael Wilson
Wesley Methodist Church
20th September 2009
10.30am
James 3: 13 – 4:3, 7 – 8a
Mark 9: 30 – 37
The reading we have just heard comes from St Mark’s gospel, when Jesus sets a child in the middle of the group and says, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.’ It’s tricky – one of those things where you think ‘Yup, I’ve got that,’ only to think a moment later, ‘No I haven’t.’ I don’t pretend this morning to have got it. I merely offer you where it and the other reading, from St James, has taken me.
Is this incident about power, or influence, or belonging – or all three? Just before, the disciples have been squabbling like children, as if Jesus was the leader of their playgroud gang. Who, they wanted to know, would have the best seats when they get to the heavenly party?
Jesus is top dog. They want to know who is next in line. It is, they assume, in his gift. To which Jesus says, ‘It’s not like that at all. The first shall be last and the last first.’ And then he takes the child from the edge of the group and places that child in the best place of all, by him. Not his child. Any old child.
It’s another example of how Jesus turns the values of the world on their head. ‘He has put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted the humble and meek,’ sings the young Mary as she learns of the child she is to bear. That, she believes, is how God works. That is how her son will work. And how we, in our turn, must work.
So much of what we Christians have to say is about power. Jesus himself very often puts it in terms of money – but surely money is but a token of power? So stories about money are stories about power.
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Money and power : the curse of the church. That is your Mike Wilson proposition for this morning: Money and power : the curse of the church
It has been so from the very beginning. Jesus was betrayed by Judas for money. Jesus was killed by the Jewish/Roman authorities because he threatened their power structures. And if you have the good fortune to be female, please don’t sit there thinking ‘Power and money - this is stupid man-stuff.’ According to St Matthew, in another such incident, it was the mother of James and John who petitioned Jesus to get the best seats for her children. You women are so sneaky: you persuade us stupid men to fire your bullets for you – and we do, time and time again. (One day I’ll preach on the folly of firing other people’s bullets -but not today.) So let’s not kid ourselves that women are any less interested than men in power and money. After all, who goes for what my daughter calls ‘retail therapy?’ Men and women, we are in this together. As Mr Dawkins would tell us, we all want to make sure that our genes survive. It is just that males and females need slightly different power strategies to achieve their aims, on account of the different kinds of genetic investment they are equipped to make.
So, whether we are male or female, money and power are the curse of the church, and always have been.
It occurs to me that you might want to say ‘Actually, clergy are the curse of the church.’ I think I’d go along with that in large measure. But I would want to add that the reason so many of the church’s troubles involve the clergy is that the clergy wield a lot of the power in the church. And clergy are no less tempted to abuse power than anyone else.
All of which is me talking my way round from the gospel story about the child taken from the edge and placed beside Jesus, to our epistle reading from St James.
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We have been having a very solid dose of the epistle to St James recently. I have found it sober going. Was it last week we heard about the rich favouring their own and pushing the weakest to the wall? ‘You have dishonoured the poor!’ protests James. ‘Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?’
In today’s reading, he remarks, ‘Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.’ I wonder whether it is true to say that whenever the church is at sixes and sevens, underneath all the surface arguments, there is always a power battle going on? It would be an oversimplification, but my guess is would not be far from the truth. The wisdom that comes from above, says St James, is ‘pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.’
Pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality (favouritism) or hypocrisy.
The way that St James wants us to do our business is the very opposite of a power battle. The phrase from that list that hits me most forcibly is ‘willing to yield.’ It is an interesting and provocative rendering.
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Willingness to yield: I am utterly certain that that expression doesn’t crop up by accident in James’ letter. Why did the first disciples teach their congregations to be pure, peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality (favouritism) or hypocrisy? It seems to me that it just must be because they learnt these things from Jesus. Jesus shows no partiality. He is happy for a mere child to sit beside him.
Willingness to yield: St James teaches his people that they must be prepared to back off. Why? Because that is what Jesus taught his disciples.
As I enter the fourth year of my ministry in this circuit, I find myself saying over and over again that I am deeply shocked at how much of my time so far has been spent agonising with colleagues who have been worn to a standstill by the effort of trying to reconcile utterly irreconcilable parties within their congregations. They know, as Christian ministers, that their ministry is one of reconciliation. The members of their congregations know it too. But then, in a move that defies all logic, they say ‘And the way to resolve this is for me to win.’ It is, in Christian terms, a disaster. It is, literally, killing our congregations and destroying our ministers.
It leads me to ponder afresh that most basic of tasks – the task of being good - or, in more Christian terms, because Jesus protests about the possibility of being good – the task of being a disciple.
Jesus himself warns that it is a hard road, entered by a narrow gate – one, incidentally, that the rich find it particularly difficult to enter. It is straight-forward to think of the harshness of the disciple’s road as one of deprivation, denial and humiliation. It is less familiar to think of it as something that is difficult or demanding in an intellectual sense – though that is a thought that comes very easily to the likes of Aristotle. Perhaps I am thinking of something somewhere between the two – what might perhaps be called intellectual discipline. Christian discipleship requires intellectual discipline. I think the best I can do is to illustrate what I mean by an example.
Many years ago now I was involved in a church building scheme. It was, rather unfortunately, my idea. It was, of course, quite brilliant. Nevertheless, bless them, the church council accepted it, and we set about raising the money. For us, it was a huge sum.
Our treasurer at the time was the managing director of one of the largest firms in Hull, in fact one of the largest in the North-East. He argued strongly against the scheme. Although many took his view, he lost the argument. I left the circuit just as building work was starting. (One of the wiser moments in my unspectacular ministerial career.) Many years later we bumped into each other. He said to me, ‘Mike, I don’t think I’ve ever said this. About the development scheme – you were right.’ I deeply regret that I did not seize the moment properly, and say in reply, ‘And I’ve never said to you, Thank You. Having lost the argument, you stayed on. You didn’t go off in a sulk. You never gave me a hard time. You came to worship. You came to communion. And you worked hard for a scheme that you had voted against because you knew the majority had voted for it.’
I didn’t say it because only now, as a superintendent surround by needless and destructive sniping and squabbling, do I fully understand the stature of that man. It took determination, mental discipline, restraint, humility, courage and a willingness to yield - sustained over several years - to do what he did. Just one self-indulgent outburst at one business meeting would have destroyed his position. Just one ‘Well, as you all know, I never believed in this hair-brained scheme in the first place,’ could have done us in. He never, ever, said it. Instead, he faithfully financially managed the entire scheme for us.
That is what I mean by intellectual discipline. But it is emotional discipline and spiritual discipline too. What St James calls Willingness to yield is no small thing. Are we talking hundreds of thousands of pounds here, or candles on the communion table and power-point projectors in worship? Willingness to yield - it is crucial for our shared life in Christ. And the lack of it – in congregation after congregation – is destroying us.
It occurred to me early this morning that perhaps the best thing I could do for my old friend is, after lunch, to send him this address.
It’s time I said thank you.
Amen.
