Time for God in prayer - Time for God in action

Date: 15th June 2008

Preacher: Rev. Hilary Barber

“Jesus went all about the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness”

This continuous reading of Matthew, during the Sundays after Trinity, draws us into Jesus’ life and ministry. The thrust of his time was spent being with people both in the towns and cities, and in the hamlets and villages. Jesus divides his time from being with people, to being alone with God.

This provides the church with a great model: time for God in prayer, and time for God in action.

Time for God in prayer allows for the reading of Holy Scripture: a chance to hear God’s Word as revealed in the written page, recorded for us by the gospel writers and those who wrote the Epistles, about who Jesus was in fulfilling the Old Testament Prophets, and of Jesus ministry to all people, Jew and Gentile, Greek and Roman. Time for God also allows time for listening to what God may be saying, both in silence and contemplation, and in conversation and dialogue. If we seriously want to deepen our Christian faith and of our calling to follow him, the theme of last weeks gospel, then the church needs to ensure that our business of buildings and finance, does not prohibit the real task of any worshipping community, to make time to be with God and with his Son Jesus Christ, in both prayer and study of holy texts.

One could perhaps be forgiven, if this looks a little self indulgent, and inward looking. Yet, if men and women around the world, both today and in the past have something to reveal, it is that the more we come to know God through Christ, the stronger the desire to serve him more fully, and that requires a positive response from those who have ears to hear the good news of Jesus Christ, and will result in action, as a result of prayer. Prayer is only the first part of responding to the call to follow, the second is responding in faith and hope through words and actions that reveal the love of Christ in the world.

Many Christians today struggle against dictators and evil regimes. Bishop Michael Doe, General Secretary to USPG, spoke on Thursday night at the Community of the Resurrection Mirfield, about Christians in Zimbabwe, where men and women have to pray in secret, and who are arrested, locked up, and torched for saying yes to following Jesus of Nazareth. These are the people who really understand the cost of discipleship. Remember those words of Bonhoeffer, there is no such thing as cheap grace, when God calls a person to follow him, he bids them come and die.

When Jesus was in those cities and villages he was proclaiming the kingdom of God. I can remember a conversation with a friend once who told me he had no need of God because he had everything he needed. Yet we know both at home and abroad that many people do not have the same opportunities or the power to change their lives. It is very easy to speak of foreign lands, much harder to challenge our neighbors and friends, when we see communities living side by side, who fear each other, who do not interact or explore what we have in common as human beings, let alone people of faith. There are those who struggle to make ends meet, whose education means their life chances are diminished, their health and well being not the same as those in close proximity, and whose experience of hope and of a future remains unfulfilled. This indictment is true both for the poor whites and for many of those from different ethnic backgrounds in our own town. Hence the policies of the British National Party become attractive in some of our communities, when life appears unfair and unjust.

Jesus went about bringing wholeness and healing to the broken hearted. Today, we the church, need to be honest about the sickness and brokenness of peoples lives here in Halifax. There have been times when the church has looked from afar, and played the role of the bystander, and been locked into naval gazing and self interest. But now, the time has come, when many citizens of our land no longer see any relevance in the church, which has systematically failed to speak up for the oppressed and the marginalized, and become a private members club, for those who feel better for having been to church.

Next week, this church will play host with Calderdale Council to one of the most important discussions for many years in this town. Representatives of the faith communities, together with elected members and officers of the Council, will begin the conversation about the future of the Halifax and Calderdale. The physical challenges posed by The Shay, Broad Street Shopping Centre, Piece Hall and The Railway Station, have to be linked in to welfare reform and issues of social cohesion. Regeneration has to include social capital resulting from community capacity building, creating strong relationships where there has been social breakdown, and where there remains mistrust and fear between peoples and communities living side by side.

One of the challenges that lies ahead is to begin to build bridges and mend fences which will enable a common and corporate vision to be discerned and articulated. Its only by working together that the kingdom of God will become a reality in our eyes. The Church of England Report Faithful Cities calls on faith communities to re engage with the communities around them, and in the report published this week Government ‘moral without a compass’ the Von Hugel Institute at St Edmund’s College Cambridge, calls on the government to take the Church of England’s current and potential contribution in the public sphere far more seriously as is the case. The Government both centrally and locally is challenged to review the social, economic and civic impact by Christian charities on the nation.

Yet, I believe that if the church is to be taken seriously as an agent of change for the better and reflecting the kingdom of God, then it will mean that the church in its institutions and in the lives of its followers, will need to demonstrate much more powerfully, the imperative to challenge injustice where it exists, and to promote a more equal existence for those who live on this great island of ours.

Here at Halifax Parish Church, the new Social Justice Vision Group will take up many of the issues raised: exploring new opportunities for us to support the poor and the vulnerable abroad; new ways to engage with existing agencies that work across the town; seek opportunities that promote social cohesion; and find ways of understanding God’s role in creation and ecology. Then we shall be able to demonstrate both prayer and action, and re engage with those who believe the church has nothing to say, and nothing to offer society.

I finish with words of the song writer Graham Kendrick

Beauty for brokenness, hope for despair,

Lord, in your suffering world this is our prayer.

Bread for the children, justice, joy, peace,

Sunrise to sunset, your kingdom increase.

Shelter for fragile lives, cures for their ills,

Work for the craftsmen, trade for their skills,

Land for the dispossessed, rights for the weak,

voices to plead the cause of those who can’t speak.

God of the poor, friend of the weak,

Give us compassion we pray:

Melt our cold hearts, let tears fall like rain,

Come, change our love from a spark to a flame.

Refuge from cruel wars, havens from fear,

Cities for sanctuary, freedoms to share.

Peace to the killing fields, scorched earth to green,

Christ for the bitterness, his cross for the pain.

Rest for the ravaged earth, oceans and streams,

Plundered and poisoned – our future, our dreams.

Lord, end our madness, carelessness, greed,

Make us content with the things that we need.

Lighten our darkness, breathe on this flame

Until your justice burns brightly again.

Until the nations learn of your ways,

Seek your salvation, and bring you their praise.