Semons for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Sunday 25th January 2004

Preached by Rev Paul Hewitt and Rev Brian Parker

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be now and always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord our Strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

There was a famous series of experiments carried out in the United States in the late 60’s by a Psychologist called Milton. The experiment was set up in such a way that volunteers, ordinary members of the public, off the street, kind of thing, were asked to perform a simple task. All they had to do was to ask a series of questions to another person in the same room. In front of them was a device by which they were able to administer an electrical shock to the other person. Whenever the other person got a question wrong, the person asking the questions was to flick a switch, and thereby administer an electrical shock. After every wrong question they were also required to increase the voltage by whatever small amount.
The person answering the questions was not a real volunteer, but a professional actor. He wasn’t actually given a shock, but only pretended. The person asking the questions, the real ‘volunteer’, however, didn’t know this.

What Milton wanted to find out was how far ‘ordinary’ people were prepared to go, given certain experimental conditions. And the first experimental condition was when the person asking the questions was actually in the same room as the person answering. Even then, although some were prepared to administer an electrical shock to another person across the same room, many, indeed most of them, refused altogether. Then the conditions changed slightly and the person answering the questions was now placed in the next room. And Milton found that people were far happier about administering stronger electrical shocks to complete strangers if they were as far away as in the next room. Then Milton moved the person answering the questions down the corridor. Although he was clearly out of sight, the actor could still be heard ‘screaming’ when an electrical shock was administered by the ‘volunteer’ who was quite content to increase the voltage quite considerably. Milton was astounded. When he moved the actor to another building, Milton found that the person asking the questions would go to an extraordinary degree in administering a very strong electrical shock to another perfect stranger, who simply got a question wrong. In fact, the voltage that the person administered was dangerously high, and would’ve caused serious injury.

This all happened in a clinical situation, the person wasn’t forced to do anything, and the person could’ve walked out any time. And yet, given all that, many were flicking switches on a machine believing that they were inflicting actual pain onto another individual, just because he answered some questions incorrectly. The further the individual was removed from the questioner, the more ‘pain’ the questioner was happy to inflict.

What I find most extraordinary of all is that, whatever about distance and all the rest, I find it amazing that they were quite happy to inflict serious pain on another individual in the first place!

It is hard not to mention the fact that Tuesday, 27^th January, is Holocaust Memorial Day. For any of us who have read up things about the Holocaust, who know about its evil, for those who appreciate the Jewishness of the gospel, or for us who have visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, it is a day that cannot be ignored. This is the Fourth Annual Holocaust Memorial Day and it is being hosted here in Northern Ireland; a place that knows about destruction. ‘Shoah’ is the Hebrew word for the Holocaust and it means ‘destruction’.

As you know well, at the height of the genocide in World War 2, Auschwitz Concentration Camp alone was killing 10,000 Jews every day, and children were thrown into the furnaces alive. These kinds of stories make you reel in horror. Yet to a large extent these horrendous acts were being carried out by ordinary, ‘normal’ soldiers and officers, many of whom would go home at the end of the day and play joyfully with their young children before popping them into bed, and, yes, even saying their prayers before sleep. These executioners did not have horns; they didn’t live in witch’s covens. They were very ordinary for the most part…just like you and me!

Could it ever possibly be that if we were in the same situation, and given exactly the same condition, and the same teaching and philosophy, and born in a different country, yes, we too could’ve been capable of carrying out the same kind of atrocities…just like them? A scary thought. Isn’t that the whole point, we are in so many ways, ‘just like them’?

If our psychologist friend could find people who were quite happy to administer serious pain to individuals they don’t even see, in such clinical and sterile conditions, I am asking, then, if the situation were all very different, in a different age and with a different philosophy, we, any of us, could be capable of… anything!

To know about forgiveness, and healing, and salvation puts us in a very blessed position indeed. We live in a state of grace. That’s incredible, and we should be thankful for it every day.

When we pray for the forgiveness of mankind, for the appalling things that we are capable of doing to each other, from the Shoah to Rwanda, we are praying for ourselves also.

The Gospel reading this morning brings us to Luke 4, which I love. Nothing of Jesus’ ministry had happened as yet; he has just come from the wilderness, and he went straight to Galilee. And they loved him! In Galilee ‘everyone praised him’. And then in Nazareth (v.22), as it says in another version, ‘Everyone remarked at him; they were astonished at the words coming out of his mouth – words of sheer grace’…’words of sheer grace’. How desperately we need to hear ‘words of sheer grace’. It seems so far removed from words like Holocaust, genocide, hate, violence… and the list goes on.

Jesus (the one who is offering us this grace) says himself that this is the reason I am here… but we are not listening. Just look at the passage he read in that synagogue. He is here to preach good news, to proclaim freedom to prisoners, to recover sight for the blind and to release the oppressed.
Which one of us doesn’t need his grace? Which one of us doesn’t need to hear good news, to quest freedom, to have vision, to not be oppressed!

You see, we are basically all the same…

We all desperately need his grace and forgiveness and love. What a world that would be, if we all just listened to him!

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The Hard Gospel

Over the next few weeks the Church of Ireland is to make plans on how to deal more positively with sectarianism and other forms of difference both within the church and in society.

The springboard for all this is a study of attitudes within the church. The study revealed many things about ourselves: it could be regarded really as an attempt to take a hard look at ourselves and to stir us to make hard decisions in the way we live out the gospel.

The study was entitled ‘The Hard Gospel’. The title came from a quote by a clergyman who reflected on how hard it is to love God and to love our neighbours.

So in the light of its findings it is now hoped to go forward by equipping individuals and parishes to deal positively with such things as theological differences, political differences, ethnic differences, age differences and so on.

Perhaps it’s all about getting back to the basics of the gospel imperative- learning to love one another.

I remember Canon Tom Haughton used to say: “You don’t have to like everybody – but you do have to love them”.

And this basic imperative of the Gospel compels us to go into the world as servants of Christ – serving in all sorts of practical, demanding ways.

A Sudanese archdeacon once told me that his family lived on one bowl of porridge a day. That was to feed himself, his wife and two young daughters.

We talk about getting back to basics – in the Sudan they know all about basics – like learning to survive.

Of course through the centuries the church has been trying to show the world how to love one another. In many areas of life the church has done well – helping to change social environments, punching its political weight in shaping social policy, speaking up in support of the disadvantaged and the terrorised – often at great cost.

But the church has also had its failures. It has still many hard lessons to learn.

‘The Hard Gospel’ initiative in the Church of Ireland is an opportunity for us in our time and place to learn lessons.

Its been said that ‘ each generation has discovered something more of the riches of God’s grace’. The Christian life is truly about discovering and knowing what to do in response to Christ.

It is also about Our Lord’s assurance of his ever-present help. And so we pray with confidence using the words of that beautiful communion prayer:

“Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that the words, which we have heard this day with our outward ears, may through thy grace be so grafted inwardly in our hearts, that they may bring forth in us the fruit of good living.”

We should be encouraged by the testimony of St Paul. He lived out his Christian faith with confidence and optimism.

He learnt in all circumstances ‘to be content’, to be positive. In the darkness and injustice of his prison cell he ‘rejoices in the Lord’. The grace of God was grafted in his heart.

George Herbert described this as ‘the divine spark’ in a person.

Brian Keenan, the Belfast man held hostage in Lebanon for some five or six years described how he and his friend John McCarthy survived.

In his book An Evil Cradling Keenan wrote: ‘we had a threefold way of dealing positively with our sense of hopelessness; physical exercise, the companionship of a friend and the gift of the Spirit which is divine.’

In the Gospels we read of the disciples, Andrew and Phillip, learning to respond positively to a basic human need – hunger.

5000 people needed some food. It’s the sort of problem that faces Christian Aid and other aid charities every minute of every day.

Andrew and Phillip were in a learning situation and Jesus was their teacher.

Like all good teachers Jesus set his pupils a test. He asked them how can we feed these people – how can we find a solution to this basic problem?

Philip’s response was a quick calculation – estimated costs.

Andrew’s response was to go into the crowd and invite a boy to share his picnic. The boy responded and in front of the crowd shared his picnic with Andrew and Jesus.

William Barclay described this result as ‘a people solution’. He suggests that whatever Jesus did that day by way of a miracle it was with the co-operation of people.
All kinds of people were involved - people with differences, people who came together around Jesus, people prepared to give, to share and to care.

People with a divine spark grafted in their hearts.

Whatever ways ‘The Hard Gospel’ in the Church of Ireland is lived out in years to come it will surely involve such people.

It’s working out will be moved forward because faithful people decided to get involved, to go into the crowd, to meet and greet the stranger and to co-operate with others for the good of all.

And such people will do this in a spirit of optimism – the kind of optimism that can take hard knocks, hard disappointments and hard feelings of hopelessness.

Sir Matt Busby, the great Manchester United manager, always advised young players to ‘go out and enjoy the game, express yourself’.

Our Lord commands us to ‘express our faith’.

In ‘the troubles’ over the past thirty years and more, we have seen faith expressed in so many ways. Not least by the ‘Business as usual’ slogan that went up after bomb blasts had devastated whole communities. It’s a slogan that expresses a resolute faith - in effect it says ‘things can get better’.
In the same vein, I remember an architect who was given the task of re-building a town centre that had been blown to bits. When he first considered the task he was very depressed.

But then he started to work and very soon he shook off any negative thoughts. When his plans were complete he said: “This town will never be the same as it was 40 years ago, but it can be better.”

‘The Hard Gospel’ says things can be better for all of us when we learn to co-operate with God and with one another; when we learn to do the right thing with courage and determination; when we learn to live positively with differences.

Of course it’s not easy – it’s very, very hard. But playing safe by simply making rigid calculations gets us nowhere. We need to be moved and to move forward in obedience to Our Lord’s command – ‘love God, love your neighbour’.

That’s ‘The Hard Gospel’. It challenges us to get results in terms of reconciliation and goodwill. Our response is imperative to the building up of Christ’s Kingdom.

Philip responded by seeing the problem.

Andrew became part of the solution.

Amen.