Manifesto 2 - We Not Me (Jamie Haith)

The second part of our Manifesto series.

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Transcript

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Welcome to SGTM Talks. We hope you find this encouraging and inspiring.

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As we come to part two in our three-part mini-series entitled Manifesto. As we think about all the elections that are coming up and what it is to say who you are and what you believe in. What do we believe in as the church? And the three parts, as I introduced last week, him not me, we not me, and them not us. Last week we looked together at Ephesians 1 and at the first key area of church life, Manifesto 1. Church is all about him, not me. It's about worship. It's about our worship is the starting point for life. How when we come together and throughout our lives, we do a number of things. We exalt the extraordinary, the majesty, the otherness, the mystery of God. Secondly, we inspect we expect to engage. We don't just distance ourselves from a mighty God. We come close in intimacy and enjoy his presence with us. Thirdly, we express our emotion. There should rightly be some sort of engagement with deep down our emotions with that. It's not an intellectual process only. And then we expend out everything. The whole of our lives are our worship. Whatever our work is, our relationships, our family, all of it is worship to God. Next week, manifesto three goes under the banner, them not us. Mission. We'll be looking at Ephesians 3 and thinking together about how St. George's is not here for the sake of St. George's, but for all the people who don't come here. But today we have Manifesto 2, we not me. And what I want to look at together is this whole notion of community and how the Bible appears to be so deeply concerned with the we rather, not rather than, in balance with the me of faith. There were four points in the sermon last week. I'm afraid I only have three points for you this week. I hang my head in shame. I say points, but they're actually prayers. Three prayers that I found myself praying over and over as I've been reading this scripture and preparing this talk. Firstly, Lord, free me from me. Secondly, Lord, help me seek unity. And thirdly, Lord, please use me. And so without further ado, Lord free me from me. I have a confession. I love t-shirts. To be fair, it's not much of a confession, is it? You were really expecting something good and meaty then. But what I love mean is I love t-shirts whether something on them, something cool or something funny. It's basically like wearing a big sandwich board of individualism, standing you out from the crowd as you go around telling the world who you are and where you've been and what you believe. This is me, and I'm gonna tell the world what bands I like, what team I support, what I think of the world, what I find funny. Eloquently screaming in glorious technicolor and super big iron-on bubble capitals, what I would be too shy to say with my actual voice. Here's some examples. I like this one. I do all my own stunts. Thank you, Vivi. What's the next one? Here we go. Chuck Norris can speak braille. I could love a good Chuck Norris t-shirt. Who doesn't? Next one, please, Vivi. Irony, the opposite of wrinkly. I mean, it just shows how funny you are. And this uh I I found on um Amazon all of these, these t-shirts all say it's all about me. It's all about me. It's all about me. Even a dog is wearing one, and then the final one. You can't be on the outside looking in if you're the center of the universe. They're a great way of silently stamping your individual mark on any crowd, and that's the ultimate display of individualism. That last one. It's all about me. I'm the center of the universe. So easy to live our lives consciously or unconsciously, with that as our core belief. But it's so sad because the truth is it simply doesn't work if you even vaguely think like that. Just try having a decent relationship if you even vaguely think like that. Just try being a parent if you even vaguely think like that. Do you know what I wonder? Do you know what I wonder? Do you? Do you know what to know what I wonder? I wonder how much I let myself get away with thinking that when it comes to my faith. I've just done it there. My faith. I wonder if our ideas about faith can tend to be actually very individualistic. In the last few months or weeks, how many times have you said or thought the phrase my walk with Christ, my journey, my testimony, my devotional life? I say I wonder, I know the truth, I know the truth because all I have to do is extrapolate out from my own experience. I think we're all pretty much the same, and I know that's true of me. And so I found myself praying that prayer. Lord, free me from me. If you want homework for this week, open up the pages of the Bible and just start to read. I guarantee, as you read through the Bible, you'll be amazed at how much that collective concept of faith comes out. We, us together, our. God is constantly encouraging us that his people should be a we, not me people with that mentality. If you don't believe me, just look at Jesus. Jesus is emphasized this more than anywhere with his, I think with his teaching on prayer in Matthew 6. There he is, the Sermon on the Mount addressing the crowd, but the command is singular and personal. When you pray, go into your room, close your door, and pray to your father who is unseen, and then your father who sees what's done in secret will reward you. It's all very intense and personal, it's beautiful, it's so individual. Alright, Lord, so I go off into my room. Just me and my coffee and my journal and and and and one X, Lord. And then Jesus goes on. This then is how you should pray. Yes, Lord, tell me how I should pray to my Father in my room with my coffee. Our Father. Forgive us our daily bread. Hang on, what about me? Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Lord, I came here to get deep and personal, just you and me. And you want me to pray with and behalf on behalf of everyone else. And this concept continues. We looked at Ephesians 1 last week. We're going to look at Ephesians 2 today. Let's get St. Paul's perspective. I believe you see the same thing. Let me read verses 1 to 12, giving emphasis to the collective nature of our faith, our identity in Christ. Here we go. Made alive in Christ. Ephesians 2. Paul writing to the church in Ephesus. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ. Even when we are dead in transgressions, it is by grace you've been saved, and God raised us up and Christ with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you've been saved through faith. This is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by work, so that no one can boast, for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. Our we, us, us, us, us, us, us, we, us. In other words, despite the fact that I can and should enjoy a profound and unique and deeply personal relationship with God, my heavenly Father, the one whose wrath I should be under, because of his great love, I am now made alive and raised up and seated with Jesus. All of his kindness is towards me, and I've been saved by grace. By definition, this faith is lived out not in isolation, but in and around and through God's community, his family, his people. In other words, our faith is collective. In other words, it's about we, not me. The Bible is clear you cannot be a Christian by yourself. You cannot live out the fullness of this life in Christ in isolation. The Bible is clear that you realize your true identity by coming to know as by coming to know as Father, the God who created you. But it's also clear that that faith then finds its deepest security, its widest impact in the context of God's church. Now I'm not saying this because, as the rector here, I want us to be more committed to St. George's. That's why I'm preaching this today. This is an unavoidable biblical perspective. This is how the Christian faith works. Our faith together here today is something more profound than the gathering of like-minded people. It's so much more than a group of people who happen to have chosen Jesus as their hobby rather than fishing or football. This is not a club for Christians. This is something there's something far more profound at work here. We're engaged in a unity that has a deeply spiritual dimension to it, in which the whole is so much greater than the sum of the parts. And it's that unity that Paul moves on to speaking about as a practical outworking of that experience of God's salvation. That's why the first prayer in writing this sermon was, Lord, free me from me. But also the second prayer in writing this was, Lord, help me seek unity. Ephesians 2, from verse 15, Paul focuses on this extraordinary development, how Jews and Gentiles are reconciled through Christ. But from verse 11 of Ephesians 2, therefore remember that formerly you who were Gentiles by birth and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, which is done in the body by human hands. Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise without hope and without God in the world. So he's talking to the Jews and the Gentiles, he's making this distinction. And then he goes on in verse 15. He came and preached peace to you who were far away, and peace to those who were near, for through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit. Extraordinary. Paul is saying that even as the dividing wall between humanity and God has been smashed down by Jesus on the cross, so every war between us as humans, all of our differences, all of our distancing that happens naturally or that we choose to put in place, all of our tribes and allegiances and subsets and finer and finer and finer delineations and distinctions about who's with me and who is not, it's all been broken down by Christ. Paul is not just talking about Jews and Gentiles. That same call for unity is upon each and every one of us in this room. And not just in this room today, the truth is true across the globe. This truth is true across the globe, thousands of different churches, thousands of different denominations, sometimes very different. God wants unity amongst them all. And when we live like that, fully appreciating and fully honoring all of the differences between us, the similarities as well, it's so exciting, it's so liberating. For me, it was such an honor for many years to be involved in developing and leading and training the Alpha course globally back in the 90s and the noughties, especially with youth alpha, student alpha, that younger generation, because I'm so young and cool, or maybe I was slightly at one stage. And what I saw was not only how God brought people to faith through the course, but also how God used it time and time again. We would fly into some far-off country and do a two-day training conference. And it would work as this sort of extraordinary agent for unity between the denominations. Conference after conference after conference was filled with Orthodox priests and Baptist ministers and Catholic nuns and episcopal bishops. They were sitting and eating and worshiping together and sharing together around the common cause of making Jesus known. One of my loveliest memories is going to Kenya and going to Nairobi and going to this mission way outside Nairobi that was run by these Egyptian Coptic Orthodox priests on mission to Kenya. They were the coolest guys in the world, the biggest beards you've ever seen. They were proper priests, Peter. They really were. They were something else. But the loveliest men. We had the greatest time together. Totally different way of worshiping God, but joining together around Jesus and around mission. It was a polar opposite to this story I heard years ago. I've shared this with you before, but I love it so much. It's time for a comical interlude. I was standing in the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge admiring the view when another tourist walked up alongside me to do the same. I heard him say quietly as he took in the beauty of the view. What an awesome God. I turned to him, I said, Are you a Christian? He said, Yes, I am a Christian. I said, So am I. And we shook hands. I said, Are you a liberal or a fundamental Christian? He said, I'm a fundamental Christian. I said, so am I. So we smiled and nodded to each other. I said, Are you a covenant or dispensational fundamental Christian? He said, I'm a dispensational fundamental Christian. I said, so am I. And we slapped one another on the back. I said, are you an early acts, mid-acts, or late acts dispensational fundamental Christian? He said, I'm a mid-acts dispensational fundamental Christian. I said, so am I. And we agreed to exchange Christmas cards each year. I said, are you an Axe 9 or 13 mid-acts dispensational fundamental Christian? He said, I'm an Axe 9 mid-acts dispensational fundamental Christian. I said, so am I. And we hugged one another right there on the bridge. I said, are you a pre-trib or post-trib, Acts 9, mid-acts, Dispensational Fundamental Christian? He said, I'm a pre-trib, Acts 9, mid-acts, Dispensational Fundamental Christian. I said, so am I. And we agreed to exchange our kids for the summer. I said, are you a 12 in or a 12 out pre-trib, Acts 9, mid-acts, dispensational fundamental Christian? He said, I'm 12 in. I said, you heretic. And I pushed him off the bridge. I love that because it's so silly, but it's also so scary how close to reality it is. The truth is, no matter what our different churches look like, how we worship, how we interpret the finer details of one verse or another, or this particular book of the Bible, the bottom line is that we agree on far more than we differ. And crucially, that attitude of unity starts at home. It starts here. It starts here. And what does that look like practically for each one of us? I believe one way it's it starts with each one of us laying down our personal preferences, our individual tastes, in order to serve each other here in this local parish. What's the best way for St George's to reach central London in this season? It starts with laying down our lives for each other. And that will mean perhaps not getting our way. I mean, I think of what we're what we're doing with refurbishing, reimagining this church in the next four years. There will probably be some design element in the that you go, why are we doing that? I don't like that. But it's laying that down, our personal tastes, our personal preferences, laying down our lives for each other. Church is about getting stuck in. There's so much need because it's the expectation of the crude, true Christian life, but it's also fun doing stuff together. Laying down our like we talked about last week, laying down our sort of time and our preferences and and actually going, I I really want to be here in unity with each other. Church is simply, I heard this uh this saying, it's it's about share, care, prayer. Share, care, prayer. If you can't remember anything else from today's sermon, just remember that. Share, care, prayer, share with one another, care for one another, pray for one another. And not just the ones you know and the ones you like, but everyone. Love that this would be a house of prayer. We're doing this prayer meeting on Wednesday. Please come to that. It'd be lovely to see us all there. Uh in because I think I rethink this um, I truly believe, not really think, I truly believe, this um recovery course is coming at a very, very special moment for us, but also for the local community. But it's got to be founded in prayer, it's got to be rooted and bathed in prayer. And then what we're gonna do from September, because the um the recovery course will be rolling for six Wednesdays, what we'll do, let's do this. Let's do the first Wednesday of every month, six till seven, that's our prayer meeting. We come together first Wednesday, we have a cup of tea, you can go to the pub afterwards, after the recovery course, and and you can and we pray together. And that let that be a wonderful way of a starting point for unity. Something happens when you pray. It's quite hard to be annoyed with each other when there's when you're praying for each other and with each other. Prayer is a starting point for unity. So my first prayer in writing this was, Lord, free me from me. My second prayer in writing this was, Lord, help me seek unity. My third prayer in writing this was, Lord, please use me. Verse 19 of Ephesians 2. Consequently, you're no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, and in him you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. Let me finish this talk by talking about three things: a brick, a bee, and a bit. First, a brick. You know that expression, you're a brick. Have you ever heard that? You're a brick, he's a reason, he's a brick. It's a bit of an odd one. We don't really hear that anymore. When you call someone a brick, you're calling them a good, solid, substantial person that you can rely on. For your information, the expression is said to have originated with King Lycurgus of Sparta in the 7th century BC, who was questioned about the absence of defensive walls around the city. He replied by pointing at his soldiers and saying, There are Sparta's walls. Every man is a brick. Come to church and get fresh historical insight every Sunday. Paul uses this same analogy. Each of us is in this church is a brick. We're strong in ourselves, but stronger than we could ever imagine when we are built together upon Jesus Himself, because in him we rise up to make a wall, two walls, three walls, four walls, a roof, and that in that collectively formed space, God dwells. The way we fit together, each brick affects the next. You pull one part of the structure and the structure suffers. You know, Jenga. Do you like playing Jenga? The thing with Jenga is it's all interconnected. You've got to be so careful because one brick, the movement of one brick, has a deep impact on the one next to it. There's no avoiding it. And the church, I suppose, if you like, is a spiritual Jenga. The lives we all lead, whether we appreciate it or not, they have an immediate impact on one another. We need each other. And we need each other, as I say, as we necessarily focus on refurbishing and reimagining this beautiful building over the next four years, but it's not about the building. If all we do is make this lovely, and we haven't worked on who we are together, then what's the point? You are a brick. God is about tearing, as this is mixing metaphors now, tearing down the walls. Equally, his desire is to build in each of us and to build something very special. So let me come on to a bee. A brick, a bee, let me explain. Don't you just love those pots of honey with the big old lump of honeycomb inside them? I love that. I I just when I look at a honeycomb, I love that they're so phenomenal, the design, and they're also delicious. I can't stop thinking about how honeycombs are made by bees. Do you know this? I wonder if what Paul is thinking of this in some way as he writes this phenomenal letter that is now Holy Scripture. A corporately formed. Structure that is deep that holds something deeply precious. Paul tells us we are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit. The honeycomb is just extraordinary, a mass of hexagonal cells, you know what it looks like, built by honeybees in their nests to contain the larva and stores of honey and pollen. Did you know? Honey bees consume about 8.4 pounds of honey in order to secrete one pound of wax. In other words, they go to an extraordinary effort and they go to an extraordinary expense to construct those structures. And those structures are crucial because they allow the honey to be held. The all-important essence has to be contained or else it would just drain away. I wonder what if we were to transfer that onto what we have here at St. George's, the honey being the collective faith we have, and it's sweet and it's full of goodness, but without the structures around us, it would simply ooze away and dissipate. And like the honeycomb of our of our relationships, of our friendships, our prayer groups, our church services. I've talked about the prayer meeting on Wednesday. Let me also encourage you to find a couple of other people that you enjoy chatting with, that you enjoy drinking coffee with, that you like having a glass of wine with. And form a casual but real prayer triplet with those two people. Meet up with them, chat as as you like, but don't forget to say to each other, okay, let's pray. How can I pray for you? Make it into a WhatsApp group as well, and you'll be building that honeycomb like you wouldn't believe. And the honey of God's presence will fill up and overflow that honeycomb. So each of us is a bee doing our bit. You're a brick, you're a bee. We pray, Lord, use me, use me to build something here that's greater than me, because I don't want to live just for myself. And that brings us to the final image of a bit, a piece, a fragment. I want to highlight the Nicene Creed to close. Written collectively in the face of a heresy, and it brought about a greater togetherness and cohesion among believers. A creed was uh in Greek a sombalon means to join. It's a word that suggests incompleteness and a hint of a secret meaning, a fragment of the whole, that when placed together, the pieces make sense. You know, like in one of these sort of archaeology movies where they got a piece of something and they put it and they put another piece together and they suddenly see and it has this power. We come together, it's where we get our word symbol from. We come together and we worship together and we serve together and we speak out what we believe and we sing out what we believe, and we're breaking we're bringing my broken piece to make the whole. We're one bit of the whole. Brick, B, bit. We each bring our bit, our fragment, our own story, our own time, our own gifts, and we fit them together gently and humbly to make the whole. We bring the recognition that no single one of us has all the revelation in the world, and that's why we need each other to understand. And that's how the Nicene Creed, that's one of the big reasons the Nicene Creed was written in the first place, as a response to what one man thought, one man who thought he kind of knew it all. What a Muppet. Well, have a listen to this. One of the most widely used creeds in Christianity is the Nicene Creed, formulated in AD 325. So it's just had its anniversary, 325. That's that's quite a long time ago, isn't it, now? The first council of Nicaea. It was adopted in the face of the Arian controversy. Arius, a Libyan preacher, had declared that through, although Jesus Christ was divine, God had actually created him. And this made Jesus less than the Father and contradicted the doctrine of the Trinity. And Arius' teaching provoked a serious crisis. Affirmation of this creed, which describes the Trinity, is generally taken as a fundamental test of orthodoxy for most Christian denominations. Two things by way of response. Firstly, to say this: don't you love the beautiful Victorian raridos back there? You've got Abraham, Moses, Solomon, Peter, John, and Paul. I want to encourage you to do one thing today. When we come to the end, um, if this is your church home, I want you to come up closer. Anyone's welcome to come up nice and close, but come up with your coffee later and have a have a really good look at how exquisite it is. And just choose, choose choose one bit, just choose one tile from that mosaic. As you come to church each Sunday, from either way back here or right up close each Sunday, just come and focus on that one tile. That's that's my tile. And uh and and thank God for that one tiny little tile. You might choose a gold one if you're a bit bling. You might choose a green one or one of the in the faces or just something random, maybe in the eagle. Just have a look at it and choose one today. And when you come back to church each Sunday, thank God for your faith fragment, your little tile that you're bringing to be with all the others here today. When we come together as church, we bring, I'm just we're gonna bring my little fragment of faith. I haven't got it all together, but I bring what I can. I bring who I am, and we do our bit. Finally, to close, I'd love for us to stand and recite the Nicene Creed together, and then Monica's gonna lead us in our intercessions. Bringing together those faith fragments we each bear, the incomplete revelation of God that we each carry, uniting them together to make a whole in one act of worship. And as we do this, as we read the Nicene Creed, then have a check out how many times we say we, an us, an hour. And when we hit a we or an us or an hour, really give that one some welly. Let's stand together. Here we go. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

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