Blair Converts to Catholicism!

Former prime minister Tony Blair has finally done what was widely expected and converted to Roman Catholicism.

There's been a certain amount of indignation from Anne Widdecombe who points out that Blair has not taken the Catholic line on abortion in several votes in the House of Commons. Has he changed his mind, she wants to know?

I don't really think that's the point. The greatest appeal of the Roman Catholic Church is not its teaching but its claim to be the original church of Christ.

Perhaps he is following a path that he has already trod in secular politics. There was always a feeling that Blair was a late convert to the Labour Party; and it's perhaps suprising that a man of his generation, background and beliefs didn't join the SDP. But he judged that his dreams needed to be achieved within the Labour party, even if it needed to be thoroughly transformed before this was possible.

This sits very neatly with the Roman Catholic cry that whatever objections we might have we have a greater duty to belong to the original church - that we should be protesting Catholics rather than Protestants.

He's never really talked about his faith, for fear of being labelled a 'nutter', so we can only speculate. So here goes:

1 He really believes not only the truth of Catholic teaching but its authority
2 He's pretty vague about his beliefs but wanted to worship with the rest of his family (all Catholics)
3 He's desparate for absolution as tens of thousands of people have lost their lives as a direct result of his decisions.
4 He wants to be the Pope
5 He wants to use the Roman Catholic Church in the same way that he used the Labour Party, to build a political power base.
6 He wants to 'save' the Catholic Church in the same way that he's 'saved' Britain, the Monarchy, the Labour Party, Iraq, Northern Ireland etc.


Now more than anything I want the Pope to tell him that he was wrong about Iraq.

The Meaning of Christmas

It has been said that if you're looking for somewhere to hide something from someone the best place is under their nose. And that's what's happened with Christmas in some respects. Underneath the pagan Christmas, the consumerism, the materialism, Santa Claus and Christmas trees, is the nativity.

The nativity play is, thankfully, still considered an essential element in Christmas. This in itself does not mean that people are hungering and thirsting for Christ at this time of year, but it still forms part of indigenous Briton's tradition, and therefore identity, and so people want to hang on to it.

But how many people watching nativity plays this last week have understood its meaning?

Behind the story of a child in a manger is a wonderful, shocking, and incomprehensible event. God, the creator of the universe, the Supreme Being whom we cannot see or even conceive of, has taken on human form.

And behind this event, this incarnation is the decision God has taken, that he will not be a distant God, he will come into our world. He will not be the cruel and pitiless God that we might suppose him to be when we look at the injustice and suffering in our world. God becoming human means that all disease and death and misery is not the final word, and he will be a healing, restoring, loving and merciful God.

We cannot think why the creator of the Universe should be concerned with our lives but because God became one of us, one of His creatures, we know that he is.

Do we think about this when we read the story of the shepherd's and the angels, or of the Magi? How many children singing about the baby Jesus at this time of year know who or what that baby was?

Let us never forget that Mary's pregnancy was planned. Behind the events of the nativity lie a decision, taken by God, that He will be for us not against us. He will be with us not far from us. He will be merciful and forgiving and he will draw us near to him, both in this life and in the life to come.

This decision is an eternal decision. It's not something that happened in the past that we must recreate in plays and films so that it's kept alive. It's a decision that cannot die. It's an eternal decision and it's a final decision.

So this Christmas lets try to remember what lies behind the nativity. Christmas is celebrating the birth of Christ but it's more than a birthday party. It's about that decision God has taken, that he will be our God.

Read the story, go to church, watch a nativity play at school. Lets keep the nativity play alive, lets delight in it, and lets protest when people try to remove it from the Christmas experience.

But lets not forget what the nativity represents. As we celebrate Christmas lets keep in mind that we are celebrating all the events and symbols through which we come to realise that God is for us and is with us. Lets not confuse the wrapping with the gift. The nativity is is the wrapping, God in Christ and in the Holy Spirit is the gift.

Happy Christmas!

The First Shall be Last

I want to tell you about something that I heard someone say on the radio. It wasn’t a religious programme and as far as I know she isn’t what we might call a ‘religious’ person but what she had to say seemed to chime with the gospel so clearly that I find it hard to say that it wasn’t the gospel. Do you need a label to speak the truth of the gospel? We’re all aware that calling yourself a Christian, being a regular churchgoer or even holding some official title within the church, is no guarantee that we will be able to hear the gospel, let alone speak it.

In the Sermon on the Mount Christ tells us something about the Kingdom of God. The first shall be last and the last shall be first; the meek shall inherit the earth; blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. These are staggering words, powerful, mysterious, beautiful words and hard to comprehend. It seems that God’s kingdom is utterly at odds with our world, our society, the last shall be first; the first shall be last.

What does Jesus mean by telling the crowd about the Kingdom of God? Is he telling them what heaven will be like, when we die? Is he telling them to go and build the kingdom of god? At the time many Christians thought the world as they knew it was going to end any minute and the Kingdom of God would be established. Then when it didn’t happen they had to adjust, to admit that although they had been seized by the idea of the Kingdom of God they hadn’t quite understood it. And that describes us still. The Sermon on the Mount is dazzling yet baffling.

What about the Lord’s prayer? Jesus refers to the Kingdom of God in the words we all say in every Sunday. ‘Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’. Well it definitely says that the Kingdom of God is coming. On that I think all Christians will agree. The next line, ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. What’s at issue here is the relationship between the two lines. Are they both part of the same thought – that the kingdom of God will come when and if God’s will is carried out on earth like it is in heaven. ‘Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done’. Is it saying that one is the result of the other? If it is it doesn’t answer the question of whether God’s will is going to be carried about by his people or is it somehow going to be imposed on the earth, that God is going to make all this happen without our help.

Or are they two separate actions? ‘Thy will be done. Pause. Thy Kingdom Come’ Remember that this is a prayer, and I think that’s the key. Like all good prayers, and lets not forget it is the prayer that defines what a good prayer is, it involves praise, confession and intercession. The two lines we’re thinking about here: ‘Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done’ are a prayer of intercession. That means it’s something that we’re asking for.

I always struggled with the idea of prayers of intercession. Philosophically it caused me all sorts of problems. Why should we ask God for something? Doesn’t he already know what we want?

Do we think that we can change his mind? As if God thinks to himself ‘I was going to let you fail that exam but since you put it like that I realise that I’d better make sure you pass it instead.’ Then it dawned on me. Prayer is all to do with our will. We ask God for things, as a way of training ourselves to want the right things. Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies. Our enemies don’t need our prayers, but we need to pray for them. We need to bend our will, to discipline ourselves to want what we should want. We know that we should forgive the person who burgles our house or calls us names or rips us off. We know that we should forgive them. We’ll know that we have forgiven them when we’ve prayed for them, when we’ve sincerely wished for them to be happy. The prayer of intercession is how we bring our will into line with God’s will. If we pray to win the lottery it will do us no good at all (even if we win it). But when the things that we ask God for are the things that Jesus says we should be asking for, then we start to change. We become better people. We start to become proper Christians.

So it’s a prayer, a prayer of intercession. ‘Thy Kingdom Come. Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.’ It’s two separate things that we’re asking for or wishing for. Please, please God. Let your Kingdom Come. Please, please God let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

If it’s something that we are asking for in prayer then it really doesn’t matter if the Kingdom of God is going to be made by us or by God. It doesn’t matter if we only see it in heaven or in the resurrection, or in glimpses or not at all. What matters is that we are praying for it. We don’t know what the kingdom of God is exactly, Jesus doesn’t tell us, but he tells us to ask for it, to will it into existence, to want it, to want it badly.

You know what it’s like to really want something. We really want our children to pass that exam, to get that job. We want the result of the hospital check up to be all clear. We want to get the house we’ve made an offer on. I don’t find it easy, or if I’m honest even possible, to want the Kingdom of God as much as I wanted to have the offer we recently made on a house accepted. Isn’t that terrible? But that’s what we’re like and that’s why we’re told to pray this way so that we can start to get better.

So we’ve got to pray that the first should be last. How can we do that if we don’t even know what it means? Who does he mean when he talks about the first and the last? First and last in what?

In school we’ve always known. It starts with the school you go to, is it a grammar school or a secondary modern? Where did it come in the league tables? And from the moment you start you’re getting measured for CATS scores, SATS scores, KS3 levels, and GCSE results. All the way through teachers tell pupils, quite rightly, that they shouldn’t compare themselves to others. ‘If you were level 3 last year see if you can get to level 4 this year, don’t worry about anyone else’. But we do worry. The kid with the level 3 knows that most of the class is on level 4 or 5. He or she knows who’s first and who’s last.

And of course those kids in your class with the best scores went on to get the best jobs. Our leaders, at work or our politicians, they’re all first-rate people. What sort of leadership would we get if we put the people that are always coming last in charge?

Maybe it means that we should make it easier for someone from a humble background to rise to the top, like Joseph in Egypt or John Major who became Prime Minister of the UK without ever going to university? We might listen to the Sermon on the Mount and then conclude that that is exactly the sort of thing we should be doing. I couldn’t argue with that. I think every Christian should believe in equality of opportunity. But suppose we succeed in making a society where everyone has an equal chance in life. Does that mean we’ve done it, we’ve created the Kingdom of God on earth as in heaven? No it doesn’t. The Kingdom of God isn’t a place where the last can become first; there are no self-made men in the kingdom of God. The last shall be first.

Last in what? We’re meant to be praying for this to happen, so what does it mean? Does it mean the last in ability? What good would it do putting them in charge, and what good would it do them? I’m absolutely useless at science. I have no natural ability for it and I didn’t get a single qualification in science when I was at school. In the Kingdom of God would someone like me be made the top scientist? I’ve about as much chance of finding a cure for cancer as I have of playing for England, and I don’t think I’ll be doing that in the Kingdom of God either!

The gospel can be mysterious, but it’s never nonsense.

Does it mean those who are last in morality? Well in one respect we can say that it does. At university they teach you that the more you know the more you realise how little you know. In Christianity we learn that you can only become very good by realising just how bad you are. You and I cannot say that we are closer to God than even the most heinous criminals. Seriously, someone sitting in prison right now who is totally and tragically aware of his or her guilt, and who has put themselves entirely at God’s mercy will, we believe, receive his free grace. We know what the deal is, be aware of your sin and confess it in helplessness. Reach the point where you finally accept that there is nothing you can do to change it and cry out to God in total helplessness and you will get your reply. In that respect the Kingdom of God is already here. Ask and you shall receive.

So should we put these people in charge? No. Not necessarily. Christ came to save sinners and being the biggest sinner in the world does not mean that you cannot be saved. But he didn’t come to put the sinners in charge. Now if you were in the privileged position of choosing the next Pope or Archbishop of Canterbury, or even a Congregational Minister you would, in a sense, be putting someone in charge of morality. If you were on the interview panel I think a very good question to ask would be ‘what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’ I don’t suppose you’d be able to ask that, but you would, I think, want to be sure that the person you choose knows what it is to be bad and what it is to be forgiven.

And I don’t suppose it’s just co-incidence that the apostle Paul, without whom there would be no such thing as Christianity, to whom we all are personally indebted for our faith, was before his conversion a very bad man.

But what this amounts to is that in the Kingdom of God those who are last in morality may become first, they aren’t automatically disqualified, and in some circumstances they may be nearer to the kingdom of God than you or I. But they aren’t automatically qualified either. The Kingdom of God is surely a place where evil is transformed into goodness but it’s not a place where evil is called good.

All of which brings me to the remarkable woman I heard being interviewed on the radio the other day. She’s called Jill Hicks and she gave me an idea about what it might mean this enigmatic phrase ‘the first shall be last.’ As I said, she’s not religious as far as I know but something incredible happened to her and she’s written a book to try to tell people all about it.

She was sitting on the tube next to one of the young men who set off the bombs on July 7, 2005 in London. She very nearly lost her life; she did lose her legs.

She was asked why she’d written the book. I expected her to say that it was a sort of therapy, a way of getting all the pain and distress out. A way of channelling her anger and confusion into something creative. Getting it all down on paper so that she can move on, start to heal. All that would have been perfectly understandable and it would have been a good book.

But that wasn’t it. She wrote it to ‘try to put into words the gratitude she felt…’ Not just to the people who’d risked their life to rescue her, or the doctors and nurses that saved her life, or to her partner and family for their love and support. She feels overwhelmed with gratitude to the strangers who did so much for her simply because she was a human being. And she feels overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude to life itself. Life is so sweet to her, every minute, every conversation, every sight and sound is so precious to her. She doesn’t feel bitter. She feels lucky.

She’s so overwhelmed by this feeling, and the insight that comes with it that she simply had to share it. She’s in no doubt that it’s only through the extreme suffering she’s endured that she has become the person that she was. She described herself before it happened as someone who was ‘interested in the world but totally oblivious to it.’

She described sitting on the tube on her way to work and suddenly being in darkness and feeling like she was falling. Then she heard people screaming in the dark. She thought she’d had a heart attack and these people were screaming at her. Then it dawned on her that something much worse had happened and people were screaming for themselves. Those who could got out of the tunnel, but those who were too injured had no choice but to stay where they were and wait for help. She said that there was an eerie calm on the train among the few that were left down there, calm and an incredible feeling of goodwill between them all, encouraging and consoling each other.

She heard two voices. One was the voice of death calling her and she said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She struggled to put this into words when she was on the radio, it was beautiful in a way that surpassed anything she’s ever experienced. It was calling her and she was so drawn to it, she said she desperately wanted to go to it, but then she became aware of another voice, the voice of life. The voice of life wasn’t beautiful it was angry and brittle. At this point she realised that her life wasn’t about her. Her death would mean the distress and devastation of her partner of her family; her friends and she made a decision to live. She feels that this decision was at the root of everything that happened from that point on.

She woke up in hospital, with her legs amputated. But she was seized by gratitude that she was alive and she’s felt like this ever since. Her life is precious, everyone and everything is precious to her. Every minute, every conversation, every event. She was moved to write this book because she couldn’t contain the way she felt. She feels lucky, grateful, blessed. She lives in a state of grace.

Grace is a Christian concept, and what’s at the heart of it is that you can not earn grace, it’s a gift. But what a gift she’s had! Unbearable pain and trauma, disfigured and permanently disabled, yet she talks as though she’d won the lottery! Or does she? We’re getting used to reading about lottery winners cracking up. Celebrities going into rehab. The most envied people in our society are some of the most miserable, maladjusted, and desperate people you could wish to meet.

So who are the happiest people in our society? People like Jill Hicks. I don’t think you’d find it very shocking if I were to say to you that a hospice is where you would find some of the most joyful people you could ever wish to meet. Jesus says that we must lose our life to gain it. In the resurrection we can see this happening literally. Jesus gains life after losing it and we hope that this will happen to us too. In hospital wards and hospices, in war zones and in our homes over and over it is proved true that those who are closest to death are the most alive. Is this something of the new life that they are gaining? They truly are alive, aren’t they? Those who are dying. Those who know that they will never recover. Those who know that death is a real danger each day. They can be the most joyful and alive people, can’t they?

Whatever the Kingdom of God is it seems that Jill Hicks has a greater share in it than someone like myself who still walks around as though he’s going to live forever. When we pray for God’s Kingdom to come, for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven we are learning to see the world her way, to want what she wants. We’re training our will. We pray for the Kingdom to learn to really, really want it. We’re learning to delight in life, its riches, its beauty, its grace.

We’re asking to be a little bit more like Jill Hicks. She made sense of the phrase ‘the first shall be last’ and ‘the last shall be first’. Listening to her I thought that maybe the Kingdom of God is a place where people like her are in charge and where we do things her way.

And as to how this Kingdom will come about – we have to start by really wanting things to be like that. The question of how God’s Kingdom will arise cannot really be considered by us until we have resolved that this is really, truthfully, what we want. So we should pray every day for God’s Kingdom, yes in the hope that we will see it, but first and foremost in the hope that we should actually desire it and that we should be able to bring our will into line with the will of God.

Paul or Apollos? Wonderful Diversity or Shameful Disunity?

Our Old Testament reading from Micah reminds us that God has every reason to be displeased with us. If we could take seriously the fact that all of us, every single one of us, is as guilty as hell then I wonder if we would still find it in us to argue amongst ourselves.

The Gospel is God’s word in which he bestows wonderful freedom and blessings on us. But receiving the Gospel should also put to death the idea that we, us humans are of ourselves righteous. It should produce in us such humility, such gratitude that we stand together united in our guilt. Whatever the degree of superiority whether physical, intellectual or moral that one human being has over another it is as nothing compared to the degree of difference that there is between perfect God and sinful man.

But it hasn’t turned out like that has it? Even in Biblical times, among disciples who had known Jesus in his earthly ministry there was division, boasting and score settling. The Early Church that Paul raised up was itself beset with division and it’s been like that ever since.

So we can’t be satisfied that Christians do not all worship together in unity and friendship. But there again, I have to say that in some respects I am glad of the division that currently exists.

If it had not been for the fact that there is division and disunity in the church I don’t think I would have become a Christian (or rather become again a Christian). If I had not discovered that there are many Christians, including ordained ministers, who do not believe that homosexuality is a sin then I would have remained in a state of spiritual conflict and poverty – attracted to Christ but repelled by the seeming homophobia of the Bible and of the Church.

In this respect, at least, I’m very grateful for the current division that exists. There are no end of issues on which Christians are split and lets face it, our inability to agree has been a feature of the church since the time of Jesus.

Personally I can’t make sense of my faith without putting myself on one side or another of a load of controversies. I’m Protestant rather than Roman Catholic or Orthodox and I’m Reformed rather than Lutheran. These are differences that really matter to me. I could not be part of a church that has a priesthood and prays to Mary, and I couldn’t worship in a fellowship that expects me to condemn homosexuals.

So in one way I’m glad that there are these disagreements that produce different churches and different theologies. After all, if there were only one church how likely is it that it would be to my liking? Or more to the point how sure could I be that I would be to its liking?

And yet these words of Paul, addressing divisions in a church that he himself had founded
should make us uneasy about the division that is part and parcel of Christianity and always has been.

‘Are you not mere men?’ he asks of the quarreling Corinthians, making it clear that division and dispute do not come from God but from us. It is clear evidence that we are ‘still worldly’

Wouldn’t it be good if we could be more honest with ourselves and each other about the source of our division. On questions of human sexuality we are in a bad habit of claiming that our opponents are simply disobeying God. On both sides of the debate we too often talk about our opponents as though they are simply ignorant and prejudiced. As Professor Robin Gill, my tutor at University of Kent at Canterbury put it once ‘The older generation think it’s just about sex, the younger generation think it’s just about homophobia’

As a mere man let me make it clear that the views I subscribe to, whether on the subject of sexuality or the sacraments, on confession or consubstantiation are the views of human beings. They are not God’s opinions, they are human opinions of what God’s opinions are.

Since we are trying to match our opinions with God’s the debate is very important – given what is at stake it ought to be heated and highly charged. But at the end of it I have to say that although this is what I believe to be true – I could be wrong!

I ought to be able to say this and so should anyone else in the debate. It doesn’t mean that we really give even an inch as far as arguing our case is concerned. But it does mean that we respect the integrity of our opponents. Because, as Paul makes clear, we are all motivated by Christ – not by an idea of Christ but by the living, risen Christ.

Paul certainly doesn’t make our differences of no account. In other epistles he is knee deep in theological disuptes and in verse 10 he says ‘By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds.' And he goes on to talk about the consequences of both good and bad theology.
So the argument is important, for Paul and for us, too important to leave out of politeness. But there is something even more important that we should all bear in mind:

What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe— as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.

This means, I believe that all of us who claim to be Christians possess our faith by the will of God. The direction and the expression that this leads to can be a matter for the most intense debate and disagreement but we must never forget that the faith that is in each one of us, motivating us within the debate is from God almighty.

The metaphor of the seed and the gardener is brilliant. Planting a seed, watering it, are all important even necessary acts – but to compare the gardener with the creator would be absurd.
Theologians should have the same humility about what they are capable of. The Gospel is not an idea that originates in the minds of humans no matter how brilliant they might be. The task of the theologian, like the gardener, is to harness and tend to the creative act for which they claim no authorship or credit.

Controversial right-wing MP Enoch Powell was once asked if he was a Christian and he replied that he was an Anglican. But are you a Christian? The interviewer persisted. I’m an Anglican he replied again. From the other political wing Clare Short once described herself as an ethnic catholic. Both these politicians were describing, honestly, the fact that they wished to belong even though they didn’t really believe.

We who claim to believe should make sure that our belonging doesn’t overtake our believing. Some years back I realised that I found it easier to tell people that I was a member of a particular church than to say that I was a Christian.

I was exactly the sort of person Paul was talking to in this epistle. I was giving more credence to the things of men than the things of God.

To define yourself as a protestant or a catholic, as an evangelical or a liberal, as traditional or modern, is to give yourself a human label. Yes these labels are important because we are sincerely striving to be as close to what we, with our limited human intelligence and wisdom, consider to be God’s truth. But this label must always be secondary. First and foremost we must be labeled as Christians.

We are Christians because we are attracted to, devoted to, united to Jesus Christ. When you call yourself a Christian you’re making no reference to what human beings have said and done.
We would do well, all of us, to take heed of the last 3 verses in this reading.

So then, no more boasting about men! All things are yours,
whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future— all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.

Are Christians being marginalised?

Radio 5 live's morning phone-in today was asking if Christianity is being marginalised in the UK. It focused largely on instances of Christmas cards or greetings being banned in various institutions for fear of offending other faiths.

Christianity no longer has any real power and authority in our society yet for many people nowadays it's something that others need protecting from rather than receiving protection itself. It's not that long ago that belonging to the church was the equivalent of belonging to the communist party behind the iron curtain, it was what you did to become part of the establishment. The collective memory of Christianity is that it fluctates between being oppressive and irrelevant, having in its time been used to justify slavery, homophobia and sexism.

For centuries the church has either turned a blind eye to or actively assisted injustice. It has had a privileged position in society and has expected respect without doing anything to earn it. Christianity may have lost its power over society but most people are not yet ready to think of us alongside other vulnerable minorities that need protection.

Maybe we need to become completely disassociated from the state. Despite most people's ignoring of the church bishops still sit in the house of Lords and the head of state (The Queen) is head of the Church of England. Its hard to argue that we are an oppressed and misunderstood minority when we have such symbolic power in the country still.

There's a lot that we have to do to change the perception of our faith in the UK. But I do think there are some grounds for complaint towards the media.

I wish that the media, in particular the BBC, would:


1 Make the distinction between what certain rent-a-quote spokespeople have to say on certain issues and what most Christians actually, believe say and do. The people who want to prosecute the BBC for blasphemy or who want legal protection to discriminate against homosexuals do not speak for me!

2 Invite Christians to speak on big issues such as asylum and immigration, poverty and global warming. These are the things that preoccupy large numbers of Christians but the impression you get from news media is that Christians spend their life in a state of outrage to do with sexuality and blasphemy. It's just not true!

3 Treat Christians and Christianity the same way that they treat any other person with deeply held beliefs - mock us, criticise us, laugh at us, but in the same way and to the same extent that you do this to others. If it's OK to laugh at someone's beliefs then it's OK regardless of which beliefs these are. If it's not OK to make fun of Muslims or Hindus or Jews or Buddhists then it's not OK to make fun of Christians.

The Gospel has the Answers!

We often hear it said that the Bible has the answer, in fact it is claimed by some that the bible contains within it the answer to all life’s problems. What do they mean by this? Do they mean that each particular question in life will find a particular answer in the Bible? Or do they mean that it will give the answer to all the questions that matter – and if your question isn’t answered in the bible then maybe it wasn’t worth asking in the first place.

Or perhaps they mean that the Bible gives you only one answer but that one answer, Jesus Christ, is sufficient as the answer to any question you would care to ask, as the solution to any problem you could think of.

I don’t like the first idea - that the Bible has an individual answer to every individual question. I don’t think it’s true, I think it makes an idol of scripture and leads us away from Christ. The Bible is not the Qur’an and we should not treat it in the same way that Muslims treat their scriptures. For them the major miracle is the Qur’an. Muhammad is important because he was the means by which they receive what they consider to be the Word of God.

For Christians the opposite should be true. For us the major miracle, the word of God is the person of Jesus Christ, God-incarnate, second person of the trinity, saviour, redeemer, crucified, risen and ascended, powerfully present and available to us here and now. The bible is so important because it is the means by which we are able to receive Christ. Be clear about the difference, Muhammad brings the Qur’an, the Bible brings Christ.

The second idea is less likely to lead us so far astray. I think it serves us better though to say the Gospel has the all answers not the Bible.

When I say the Gospel I’m not referring to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Gospel existed in the years before these ‘Gospels’ were written. Think about whether you agree with that statement or not, and if you do what are the implications of it?

The Gospel – singular – means what God has done, not a book or story about what God has done.

God didn’t write a book, he chose a people and spent several thousand years communicating with them through prophets.

God didn’t write a book he sent his Son into the world to be crucified and resurrected.

God didn’t redeem us in the pages of a book, he really did it, he really did it when his Son died and rose again.

So when I talk about the Gospel I’m talking about God’s interaction with us. It means the incarnation, the resurrection, the pentecost. The book is not more important than these events described in it.

So I prefer to say that the Gospel has all the answers.


Remember the Gospel is God’s communication with us, God’s action for us. The Gospel is God incarnating, resurrecting, redeeming. What can we learn from these events?

Put like this doesn’t the Gospel give us more questions than answers?


The resurrection plants a huge question mark over everything else. The resurrection tells us that there is another world beyond this world and we know nothing about it. The resurrection tells us that there’s an eternity and infinity beyond our space and time and we have no knowledge of it. It puts up a wall, if you like. It tells us that there is more, much more to life than we can understand. It puts everything we humans achieve in the shade, every bit of human knowledge is shown to be really not very much compared to this other world, this other power, this other reality that is revealed to us in the resurrection.

So we’ve gone from saying that the bible has all the answers to saying that it’s the Gospel that has the answers. And we’ve gone from thinking about this revelation, this set of actions performed by God, as something that brings us questions every bit as much, if not more than it brings us answers.

We’ve been thinking about this on a very grand scale up to now. After all Jesus was sent for all people: he has redeemed people in every corner of the earth; this Gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached to men, women and children for ever such a long time and by the grace of God this will happen for a long time to come. So when we say that the Gospel plants a question mark over the human race we might think first of all about a question mark being placed over the grand achievements of humankind – our inventions and discoveries, our culture and history, all the towers of Babel that we always build; and of course our collective disgraces in the form of wars, famine, injustice, genocide.

I’ve no doubt that all of humanity’s achievements and disgraces have to be seen against the question mark of the Gospel. Putting a man on the moon or curing small pox are very small things if we take seriously the idea that God became man and offers us eternal life. War, slavery, the holocaust, all these things even are relativized by the cross – that is to say that no matter how evil or stupid or hateful humankind is we cannot overcome the saving love and forgiveness that God provides in Christ.

But Christ didn’t just die for all of humanity. He died for us as individuals. He died for you and me. He died for the man next door, for the person you sit next to but never talk to on the train, for the person going the other way on the motorway. And he plants a question mark on you and me.

We believe in a living God, and we have a living dynamic spiritual relationship with God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. This means that everything we do stands under judgement – there’s nothing that we can do, nothing we can achieve, no good work or brilliant idea that is really any good at all, that is really any thing at all when seen from the point of view of the cross. But there again there’s no sin that we might commit, no carelessness or stupidity or even evil in us that is enough to overcome God’s grace. Our goodness, our evil, our actions, our power, our authority, our everything is shown up as really very limited, as barely anything at all when put beside the cross – the cross that is a reality in each of our lives.

The Gospel, because it is a real and living spiritual entity, is not just able to give us answers– it is able to ask us questions. What sort of questions does Jesus ask of us?


‘What are you going to do today?’ That’s not much of a question, it doesn’t seem very profound and so when we ask each other this question we tend to get a rather ordinary answer.

Lets imagine then that when you open your eyes tomorrow morning Jesus will be standing in front of you, he calls you by your name and then asks you ‘What are you going to do today?’ If Jesus asked me that question I would think very hard indeed about the answer, we all would wouldn’t we? If Jesus asked me that question I would have to give a satisfactory answer. I think I’d have to change my plans.

If Jesus stood in front of you right now as you’re reading this and asked you: ‘What are you going to do for the rest of the day?’ What would you say?

And if Jesus phoned you up and asked you ‘What are you going to do with your life?’ what sort of answer could any of us give?

Isn’t it the case that the most simple, straightforward questions become profound and searching if we imagine Jesus asking that question of us. There’s something about who and what Jesus is, the fact that we cannot lie to him, we cannot bear to disappoint him, that should make us question ourselves constantly.

Because if we would live our life under the cross then the cross will ask questions of us. ‘What are you going to do with your life?’ ‘How will you act towards other people today?’ The most every day activity, the most seemingly unimportant matter is transformed the second that we imagine that Jesus is questioning us about it.

What are you going to eat for dinner? What are you going to say to the people that you meet tomorrow? How are you going to behave the next time someone does something to annoy you? What are you going to spend your money on? Jesus asks us all this because he is a living saviour, because he sees us, he hears us, and he loves us.

As a child it never occurred not to do what I was told by my parents. I used to marvel at some of my mates who would be called by their parents and they simply wouldn’t answer, they’d act like they couldn’t hear them, like they weren’t even there. Sadly I think I might have become someone who does the same thing but in a much worse way. The voice of Jesus calling us and questioning us, ‘what are you going to do about this?’ ‘how are you going to follow me today?’ I don’t just give the wrong answer and do the wrong thing. I pretend that I can’t hear him.

There isn’t a single thing that any of us will do today that can’t be transformed by the Gospel. There may not be a ready made answer in the pages of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or even anywhere in the Bible. But there’s a question mark there, always, against everything we do and everything we think. We believe in a God that isn’t buried in texts, in the pages even of scripture. Try letting God be active in your life by exposing yourself to the question mark that the Gospel has placed in front of you. In everything that you do Jesus asks you to explain yourself. Try it with the simplest of questions but imagine that Jesus is standing in front of you asking it and see what happens.