Sermon by the Rev. Canon Dr Charlotte Methuen

In the name of God, who creates, redeems and sanctifies us.

It has been quite a few weeks for Church news. Mainly it has been the Church of England hitting the headlines, first with the House of Bishops’ amendments to the Measure to admit women to the episcopate. And then with its statement on that same sex relationships cannot partake of marriage. Whatever your views on either of those issues, these news reports confront us again with the question of how the church does and should relate to the world. How should the church respond to, react to, act as a beacon for, or seek to restrain – developments in society? These are not simple questions to answer. But neither are they new.

Churches – Christians – have often found themselves on both sides of such discussions. On slavery, on war, on the role of women, on support or otherwise for particular monarchs or their replacements (I am thinking in particular of James VII and II and William of Orange, but there are others). On whether the church may be established, or, looking back to Constantine in the fourth century, whether it is proper for Christianity to be an imperial religion. Or, looking back even further, whether the gospel should be preached to the gentiles, beyond the religious boundaries of Judaism. On the church’s relationship to racism, and to apartheid. All these are questions which have divided Christians over the centuries, and all of them raise the question of how the church should relate to the world in which it exists.

Sometimes it can seem in retrospect very easy to see what the answer should be: In the 1930s, churches in Germany were confronted with the question of how to respond to the national socialist regime and its laws excluding Jews and those of Jewish extraction from official and professional posts, including in the church. The Barmen Declaration of 1934 was unequivocal:

We reject the false doctrine, as though the church were permitted to abandon the form of its message and order to its own pleasure or to changes in prevailing ideological and political convictions. (Barmen 3).

And yet, at the time, others could and did defend the values of National Socialism as Christian. People looking on from outside – such as Bishop George Bell in Chichester – did not always find it so easy to see where God could be found in these questions. The same could be said of apartheid South Africa, where churches found themselves on both sides of the argument, although the Christian world communions tended to condemn churches which bought into apartheid. It is not always easy to discern when you are in the middle of a situation whether the church is in danger of abandoning its message to “prevailing ideological and political convictions” or whether those “prevailing ideological and political convictions” are in truth a prophetic call to the church. Or rather – you may not find it difficult to discern at all, but you may not find that everyone agrees with you.

Perhaps it can be comforting to realise that these dilemmas are not new. Indeed, our readings today offer further reminders of the dilemmas of the relationship between church and world, whilst making the point (I think), that in the face of these dilemmas we cannot simply withdraw from the discussion. Paul in 2 Corinthians seems to be longing for a simple answer, a longing which I expect we all have. Why can’t these questions just go away and leave me in peace? He couches the question in somewhat dualistic terms: We know, he writes, that “while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord”, and “we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” It is a bit like that classic answer to a request for directions: if I wanted to get there, I wouldn’t start from here. Paul would really much rather not be here in the world; he wants to be reconciled with God. But despite that wish, he recognises that what we do here is not irrelevant – how we engage with the world is not irrelevant: we will be judged, that “each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.” Wanting not to be in a situation does not release us from the consequences of having to live through it. In other words, I think, Paul is saying that we are responsible for – will answer for – our actions, for how we behave. Our motivations are really important: we need to look beyond outward appearance to discern what is at the heart – in our hearts, in the hearts of those who disagree with us. And he gives hope, which it can sometimes be hard to hold onto in the midst of conflict: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

Holding on to the vision that “everything has become new” can be very hard, especially in times of conflict or despair when it seems that everything is disintegration. Mark’s parable of the farmer in today’s Gospel reading is a reminder that this process of making new is not in our hands but in God’s.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

This parable has sometimes been used as an argument that we are not involved in growing the kingdom of God. On that reading, the bringing about of the kingdom is God’s work. And of course that is part of what it is saying: the seed sprouts and grows, and the farmer does not know how, does not control it. The earth, the weather, the seasons, and – as we now know – the processes of photosynthesis, of biology, bring from the seed a seedling, and from the seedling a plant, and from the plant the ripe grain. And yet: the farmer has a part to play. He plants the seed (or, in fact, the Greek says, he scatters around or just drops the seed – there seems something less intentional here than even sowing). And then he is needed at the harvest. Otherwise he gets on with other things – sleeping and rising, his daily business. And that allows the seed to get on with growing.

I can’t remember which children’s book it is in which two children plant gardens. One is eager to see how the plants are getting on, and so he (I think it is a he in the story) constantly digs up the seeds to see what is going on. And of course that kills them. The other plants the seeds and goes away and leaves them. She is the one who ends up with a garden full of fruit and vegetables. And yet, in the processes of the world, simply going away and leaving it is sometimes clearly not the answer. Patience yes; apathy no.

Perhaps the question here is really that of discerning the proper time of harvest, which is also part of Mark’s parable. Any farmer will tell you that this is not simple. The hay, the harvest, is so nearly ready, and the weather is good, so do we haymake or harvest now, or wait a week, when it should be better but the weather might be awful or a storm might have wiped the whole field out. When that proper time comes, there is a lot to do. Harvest, haymaking, gathering in, is hard work, and getting the timing of that right is important.

Discerning the time of the harvest – perhaps the time of our engagement – is important. Martin Niemöller’s famous text reminds of us of the dangers of leaving our involvement too late:

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left

to speak out for me.

Niemöller, a submarine captain in the First World War, became a leader of the confessing church during the Third Reich. He knew meant to discern when to speak out. And he knew too what it was to be at odds for reasons of faith and conscience with those whom he had regarded as colleagues and friends.

This is not a sermon with answers. Perhaps it is rather a reminder that if our faith means anything real to us, then sometimes we will find ourselves responding in faith to developments with joyful acceptance or with rejection. We may be very clear ourselves of the rights and wrongs of preaching the gospel in a given situation. And that is right, and important, that we have that clarity and speak out for what we believe is right. But we may be hurt and stunned and offended that others do not share our clarity, when others disagree. It seems to me that this is part of living God’s gospel in the world. It is not easy. But neither is it new. There are really times when with Paul, “we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” – but we are here and we are called to be a part of exploring what living the gospel here and now means. That is what the Church of England is struggling with a the moment, but if we are honest, it is something we all struggle with, in our different ways, in our different contexts. This is a part of bringing about the gospel vision, of making all things new: “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

Amen.