Sermon by the Rev. Bryan Owen at the Patronal Festival

These past few weeks I have been thinking about perversion. In fact, I’ve been thinking about two perversions in particular and I’d like to share them with you this morning.

But I’ve also been thinking about horses – and I’ve been thinking about two horses in particular and I’d like to share them with you as well.

The first perversion I’ve been wrestling with is the dreadful perversion of religion by the ISIS jihadists in Iraq. I have a number of Muslim friends and they are all distressed at how this group of cruel and fixated men have perverted the teaching of the Prophet and the Qur’an.

You will have seen some of the dreadful atrocities perpetrated by this group of extremist who in the name of Allah have executed Yazidis, Christians and moderate Muslims as well. And you will have seen reports last week of the beheading of an innocent American – an act of inhuman brutality by someone with a British accent, someone who grew up here in our own country.

Every normal person, religious or not, will have been horrified by all those atrocities carried out in the name of God. Moderate Muslims have branded these ISIS fighters as heretics while the jihadists accuse the moderates of not obeying the teaching of the Qur’an – the very Qur’an that says, ‘There is no compulsion in religion… Whoever … believes in God, then he has grasped the most trustworthy handhold that will never break.’ (Sura 256)

Throughout Islamic history, the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) have been treated with compassion in Muslim societies because the Prophet Mohammed set an example by treating them well himself.

So when ISIS fighters massacre minority Christians they are disobeying the teaching of their own Qur’an – but why do they do that? Indeed, why does anyone become an extremist? Is it because they have not read the whole Qur’an, perhaps, in the same way that many who call themselves Christian have not read the whole Bible? Or is it because they are already predisposed to violence so that when they come under the influence of a charismatic personality they follow that leader wherever he says they should go? Isn’t that what many Christians did in 1930s Germany?

Within human kind there is a common sense – a shared common sense - that knows when something is not right. As Christians we believe that all people are made in the image of God and that which is of God in us opposes extremism. Ultimately fascism and communism were both overthrown, for example, because people innately knew they were perverted ideologies that contradicted our deepest shared values.

ISIS will be defeated for the same reason because such extremism will ultimately turn against itself – as it did in the French Revolution – and those who have lived by the Kalashnikov will themselves die by it.

As Christians we believe that all people are born with a conscience, and all people are born with the capacity for and need for love. That means that when a group renounce their basic humanity (as the ISIS fighters have done) the rest of us rise up against them not in the name of religion or politics but in the name of our common values. That is why we have responded with medical supplies and tents and clothes and water purifiers for all those who have been displaced.

Now lest we think that religious perversion belongs solely to Muslim extremists I want to share with you my concerns over a second perversion that is found on the edge of Christianity. It’s been in the news recently and is called the ‘Prosperity Gospel’. It’s found in some hard-line evangelical churches particularly in America but also in South Korea, Nigeria and other poor countries in Africa as well as here in the UK.

The ‘Prosperity Gospel’ is a pseudo-Christian doctrine that says that financial blessing is the will of God for all Christians, and that if you donate to particular Christian ministries God will reward you with increased material wealth.

The doctrine is based on a single verse in the Prophet Malachi (3:10) who says

‘Bring to the storehouse a full tenth of what you earn so there will be food in my house… and I will open the windows of heaven for you and pour out all the blessings you need.’

What these churches teach is that if you give ten dollars to that church or ministry God will bless you with a hundred dollars. It’s an economic and arithmetical nonsense, of course. It’s playing with people’s needs and it’s manipulating them in a very cruel way.

Based on this one verse and on the Parable of the Talents in the Gospels churches teaching ‘prosperity theology’ have seen significant growth in the Developing World where men and women mired in poverty are taken in by the promise of material wealth. Meanwhile, their pastors live very comfortably indeed saying ‘all this can also be yours’. And they do this in the name of God.

Almost all ‘Prosperity churches’ reject the idea that a pastor should be accountable to a group of elders or to a bishop. Contrary to the accepted teaching of the New Testament pastors of prosperity churches appoint themselves to be the highest authority figure in their church. They are above contradiction. They are dictators in their own little worlds. This kind of theology appeals especially to ego-centric personalities who want their own way without ever being called to account.

So Jesus' statement in Mark 10:25 that ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God’ and similar statements about wealth are ignored.

Nowhere in Scripture are we told that Christianity will make us either rich or secure. What we do learn is that Christianity gives us the courage to embrace and face the insecurities of life. Our faith gives us the courage to live creatively when there is no peace, and to continue putting one foot in front of the other when we are faced with troubles.

Those who preach the prosperity Gospel, or who preach that Christians will have peaceful and secure lives, are wrong. The prosperity Gospel is grand theft by another name… and is very similar in its dynamics to ISIS and other pseudo-religious extremists elsewhere in the world.

Extremists ruin people’s lives. What is common among them are dominant personalities who take one idea from their religion and then run with it to the exclusion of all else, gathering weak personalities and gullible people in their wake to feed their hubris.

Those are the two perversions I have been thinking about this month – now for the first horse!

We are celebrating the life of St Aidan this morning and I guess we are all familiar with the stories of Aidan’s life that we find in the Venerable Bede’s history.

If so, you will remember that after Aidan left Iona he learned to speak the Anglo-Saxon language and went out walking the trails and paths of Northumbria, talking to all the people he met and preaching to them the Good News of Jesus Christ. He and his monks visited and revisited the villages where he sowed the seeds of faith and in time local Christian communities were formed.

On one occasion King Oswald, worried that Bishop Aidan was walking like a peasant, gave him a horse but Aidan gave it away to a beggar whose need was greater than his. This act of generosity shocked the king but Aidan didn’t want to ride. He wanted to walk, to be on the same level as the people he met.

Today, Pope Francis behaves similarly, eschewing his luxury car and being driven around Rome in a Renault 4 with 190,000 miles on the clock.

“It hurts me when I see a priest or nun with the latest-model car," Francis said. "You can’t do this. A car is necessary to do a lot of work, but, please, choose a more humble one. If you like the fancy one, just think about how many children are dying of hunger in the world."

Aidan’s horse and the Pope’s old car are indicators of a more humble approach to human living, a more humble way of following the Lord Jesus who was himself born in poverty. He, too, walked about Galilee going from village to village proclaiming the Kingdom was near.

The second horse is not really a horse at all – but a smaller version of it… a donkey, the one Jesus rode on when he entered Jerusalem at the beginning of his last week of life.

While extremist jihadists are entering towns and villages with guns, and extracting brutal revenge on their inhabitants in order to establish their Caliphate of hate and violence, so Jesus entered Jerusalem on a donkey with no weapons and no threats of violence whatsoever.

Do you see the essential difference between people whose faith is genuine and those who use religion for their own ends?

From our Christian perspective we are called to be humble, to bow the knee before Jesus, to put on Christ (as St Paul says) and – as we heard in our Corinthians and Gospel readings this morning - become a servant of all. Extremists don’t do humility whether in Islam or Christianity.

But reflect on St Aidan and his walking from village to village, reflect on his simple lifestyle that he might reach all the people of Northumbria for Christ.

Reflect on Mother Teresa in the slums of Calcutta, or Archbishop Tutu living a simple but powerful life among his people in South Africa, reflect on Pope Francis using an old car and living in the same Vatican guest house where visitors stay.

St Aidan sets us an example, living his life for the benefit of others in the genuine service of God. Amid the turmoil of these times, amid the atrocities perpetrated in the name of religion, amid the terror and pain and suffering of our fallen world, our best response – our only response - must be to treat one another as we ourselves wish to be treated. As Aidan followed the Carpenter from Nazareth so do we – and in Him, in Christ - we find our pattern, our way our life and our salvation. Amen.