WALK IN THE LIGHT

Sermon delivered on the 4th Sunday in Lent (Mothering Sunday) the 2^nd March 2008 by Fr Nicholas J.G. Sykes in the congregation of St. Alban's Church of England , George Town, Cayman Islands.

Scriptures: 1 Samuel 16: 1-13     Ephesians 5: 8-14     John 9: 1-41

Ephesians 5: 8ff "For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of the light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), proving what is well-pleasing to the Lord."

THE CHURCH IN CHINA

It has been said that the primary message of Christians is not one of a Christless harmony or peace, but one of gracious good news linked to eternal consequences. There are many places in the world where the Church experiences great and enduring discord rather than harmony. One such place is China. Amongst a small branch of China's house church movement containing 500,000 members (less than one percent of all China's Christians), in statistics tabulated in October 2001 there had been over 23,000 arrested since 1983, which makes five percent or one in 20 of church members. In the year 2001 alone over 200 were sent away for "re-education through labour", 359 were forced to be on the run, 3 tortured to death, 2 made permanently handicapped, 60 under surveillance and 1008 people fined. And remember that all these numbers are those for a group that numbers less than 1 for every hundred Christians in China.

CONTROL

What is it about the Chinese situation that produces such discord between the society in general and the Christian church there? Clearly the chief factor is the godless and communistic nature of the government regime there. It is still a government that denies even the existence of God, and the result of this outlook is a series of overwhelming fears that whatever the government cannot control will disturb social order. And indeed it is clear to an observer that even with all the persecution the government in China uses, the church is growing at a rate they cannot control.

DESIRE TO DRIVE GOD OUT

We might think that in the West we are safe from such conditions, on account perhaps of the perception that communism died, starting with the turnaround of the Soviet Union in 1989. We should recognise however that communism sprang from an older root, which is still very much alive. That root is characterised by the active desire to drive the God of Christian revelation out from our language, our thought patterns and our public institutions, a movement which we could term atheistic humanism. Karl Marx himself made the statement, "Let us drive God out from heaven". Marx himself from his poetry and other literature even overtly favoured Satan over God. All this it is not difficult to see in the French Revolution, which purported to drive the God of the Christian church out from public life and to reconstruct "God" out of human reason. What happened therefore with communism in 1989 was far from being a rooting out of its underlying driving force. This driving force is at work fast and furiously not only in the historically Marxist countries but also in our western societies today. In today's Cayman even we see the desire to marginalise God out from public discourse, and substitute a framework of standards that overtly relies on things that are made and adjudicated by man.

SIGNS OF THE WESTERN TIMES

Denying the existence of God has resulted in government in the west as well as in the east having fears that what it does not control will disturb public order. The fact that "government" as a concept is being shifted from legislatures towards an overarching jurisprudence is one facet of this. Since there is no sovereign God, then what is uncontrollable by human authority must always be feared and resisted. Here therefore is the impetus upon governments for not being content merely to suppress those activities that going unchecked are agreed under the moral framework of our common Christian heritage to be criminally wrong and harmful in general. There is an increasing impetus through godless fear to control and if necessary suppress the very thoughts that produce the actions; and suddenly we enter the brave new world of hate crime legislation and human rights commissions, through which, paradoxically as it may seem, in the name of fairness a religion of blind and unreasonable certainty propagating itself by its energy and terror can be appeased, while trenchantly reasoned views and opinions can be persecuted and punished.

Ultimately there may be a silver lining in the cloud. Persecution always produces better Christians. Under such conditions Christian people may look forward to a greater dedication to God's Word and to a greater readiness to serve. We may the more make Isaiah's words our own: "Here am I; send me." Does it seem strange to think on these matters on a Mothering Sunday? If God is our Father, persecution may yet become the mother of a fruitful church in the West.

THE LORD LOOKS ON THE HEART

In one of the finest statements of the Old Testament, the Lord in the course of choosing David over his brothers to be the future king over Israel says, "The Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart." Yet our New Testament faith is not that the Lord chooses only good-hearted people. On the contrary, God sent His Son into the world to die for us bad-hearted people in order to make us good. The Lord looks on the heart not in order to condemn it but to save it, to release it from condemnation and then to make it progress in holiness towards the goal of salvation. Once we were darkness, says St. Paul, but by His grace rescuing and continuing to work with us, now we are in the realm of light, and we are to walk as children of light. The serious question we Christians in the West and we in Cayman must ask is what those parts of the church that are persecuted in China and elsewhere in the world would make of our present Christian walk here. To them, would we appear to be walking as children of light? To what extent, might they wonder, do we take joy in knowing God and doing His work? To what extent do we test and prove what is well-pleasing to God, or reprove the various works of darkness? St. Paul quoted what might have been an early Christian baptismal hymn, but it applies to our condition too: "Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light."

THE SEEING AND THE BLIND

In our Gospel today Jesus said, "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind." Jesus healed the blind and made them see, and is never recorded as having Himself intended blindness for any sighted person. Nevertheless, by our own hard-heartedness and obstinacy, rather as was the case with the Pharisees in our Gospel account, we can claim to see, while not walking in the light, or not unreservedly. William Law wrote about the intention to please God in all things. If we do not have that intention while yet claiming to be enlightened, we also could be amongst those who become blind. "For once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), trying to discern what is well-pleasing to the Lord."