Highbury
Congregational Church
Congregational Church
A place to
share Christian friendship,
explore Christian faith and
enter into Christian mission
share Christian friendship,
explore Christian faith and
enter into Christian mission
John
A series of sermons preached between Christmas and Easter 2006 at Highbury by Richard Cleaves.
It was linked to the new visual Bible, The Gospel of John.
Matthew, Mark and Luke see Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.
As John opens with a celebration of the creative word of God and the larger than life Son of Man we are in the world of the third section of the Hebrew Scriptures ... That is the world of the wisdom literature.
The wisdom that is explored in the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and elsewhere in the so-called ‘wisdom literature’ of the Old Testament has been defined as ‘the ability to cope.
That’s the theme we have taken up in our series of sermons on John’s Gospel in the Spring of 2006.
1 Jan Wisdom and the abilitiy to cope John 1
8 Jan Coping with something new - John 2
15 Jan Coping with the Big Questions of the Meaning of life John 3
22 Jan Coping with differences in the church John 4
29 Jan Coping with the question of euthanasia John 5
5th Feb Coping with Religion
19th Feb Coping with our own frailty and weakness
John 7
26th Feb Coping with feelings of oppression John 8
5th March Coping with Growing Up - a Celebration of Baptism - John 9
12th March Parade Service
19th March Coping with Pastoral Care John 10 Psychiatrist, Kate Blazey reflects on Mental Health, Mental Illness and the church’s Pastoral Care
26th March Church weekend away - a visiting preacher
2nd April Coping with bereavement John 11
9th April Palm Sunday and a look
Forward to a major new series on the BBC for Easter about the miracles with David Waters who researched the programmes.
16th April Our Celebration of Easter
It was linked to the new visual Bible, The Gospel of John.
Matthew, Mark and Luke see Jesus as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets.
As John opens with a celebration of the creative word of God and the larger than life Son of Man we are in the world of the third section of the Hebrew Scriptures ... That is the world of the wisdom literature.
The wisdom that is explored in the books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and elsewhere in the so-
That’s the theme we have taken up in our series of sermons on John’s Gospel in the Spring of 2006.
1 Jan Wisdom and the abilitiy to cope John 1
8 Jan Coping with something new -
15 Jan Coping with the Big Questions of the Meaning of life John 3
22 Jan Coping with differences in the church John 4
29 Jan Coping with the question of euthanasia John 5
5th Feb Coping with Religion
19th Feb Coping with our own frailty and weakness
John 7
26th Feb Coping with feelings of oppression John 8
5th March Coping with Growing Up -
12th March Parade Service
19th March Coping with Pastoral Care John 10 Psychiatrist, Kate Blazey reflects on Mental Health, Mental Illness and the church’s Pastoral Care
26th March Church weekend away -
2nd April Coping with bereavement John 11
9th April Palm Sunday and a look
Forward to a major new series on the BBC for Easter about the miracles with David Waters who researched the programmes.
16th April Our Celebration of Easter
Religion and the Abuse of Power
... Making connections with John 6
... Making connections with John 6
Ask me how I cope with religion and I have to confess, sometimes I don’t!
What a week that was!
Defeat for the Government, Vindication for the BNP and those Cartoons
This has been some week for religion. First, came defeat for the Government in its legislation against incitement to religious hatred. Seemingly a victory for free speech. Then came the verdict in the trial of the leaders of the British National Party caught on camera inciting religious hatred. There’s no law against that, was their defence as they were tried for inciting racial hatred. And their defence held up. So, it’s fine to say hateful things against another religion.
Especially if you live in Denmark, or in France … isn’t freedom of speech at the heart of European culture … even if it’s hateful towards religion? The publication of cartoons doubly offensive to Muslims by breaking the taboo against producing an image of Mohammed and portraying him in the offensive way he is portrayed, gives rise to a backlash in the Muslim world that erupts in the very violence that supposedly is the concern of those papers. A self-fulfilling prophecy indeed.
Is this part of that clash of civilisations we have been warned of? I hate to say it but this is one of those weeks when I begin to find myself having some sympathy with Richard Dawkins in those TV programmes suggesting Religion is the root of all evil.
What should the Christian response be to all this?
The Sign of the 5000 and Its Significance for Religion
We have arrived this week at John chapter 6 and the only miracle that is recorded in all four gospels. The Feeding of the 5000. As you might expect the way it is recorded in John’s Gospel is different from the others. On the one hand it is given a lot more personal detail, on the other it leads on to one of those lengthy passages of teaching that John is so fond of recording.
In the Good News Bible it’s called ‘a miracle’. When you hear that word, remember that the word John actually uses is the word ‘sign’.
What Jesus is doing is a sign of something very significant. We need to be on the look out for the significance of the sign. As the teaching of Jesus unfolds he draws out the significance for us.
We are going to watch the story unfold from the beginning of John 6 through to verse 40.
First, there’s the sign of the feeding of the 5000, then another sign of the walking on the water – then Jesus begins to explore the significance of what’s going on.
Our dramatisation simply dramatises the text. Something larger than life is going on here. Something extra-ordinary.
The sign of the Feeding of the 5000 has significance in a world where religion has got it so wrong!
What does all this have to say about the troubles ‘religion’ has produced this last week?
It’s possible to get your religion wrong!
First, you can get your religion wrong. Indeed, most people tend to get their religion wrong. And Jesus offers us here an indictment of ‘wrong religion’.
A large crowd numbering as many as 5000 follow Jesus because of those signs he had done earlier in healing people who were sick. For them this sign at first caps it all … and confirms the religious convictions that have drawn them to follow Jesus.
Seeing this miracle that Jesus had preformed, this next ‘sign’, the people there said, “Surely this is the Prophet who was to come into the world!” You might have thought Jesus would be delighted at this recognition.
But no, the opposite is true. He sees through their religious understanding:
Jesus knew that they were about to come and seize him in order to make him king by force …
The longed for Prophet had come, the signs and wonders established it, he was none other than the Messiah, the king. By force, by power, they would take on the evil of Rome and establish him as king.
Religion equated with Power becomes Abusive
In the perception of those people religion was about power. They would make him king ‘by force’. Their religion would give them power over those they opposed. They would impose their religion by force on others around.
It is not only Judaism and Islam that have had a tendency to equate religion with power. The Christian religion has done that too.
The Christian religion has been used to exert power over people. As the Christian religion became formalised by the Roman Emperor Constantine it was used to exert and to establish a power base. The dark side of the history of the Christian religion is a history of the abuse of power, be it in the crusades, in the links between the Christian religion and the imperialism of the nineteenth century, or most recently in talk of a clash of civilisations.
The Christian religion can so easily become identified with western culture and it is so easy to imagine that it has to be established by force and defended by force.
But it is not only on that large scale that religion is linked with power.
On the small, local scale too it works.
Our first church after we married was in a small Yorkshire village where within living memory the mill-owner ran the church. If you wanted a job in that mill you supported the church and … in the church and in the mill you did as you were told.
It happens when people get together – and church is no exception. People can exert power, play power games … and religion, the Christian religion, is no exception. Indeed, talk to people who have left church, often it is because of the power play that goes on in a church, as religion and power go together.
In the political sphere, in the church sphere … it can also happen in the home, in the family sphere as well. Religion is equated with power.
Just as power corrupts, so too religion that is bound up with power has a corrupting, corrosive effect that destroys.
The image of Victorian religious life with the dominating power of the man at the head of a household in complete subservience is not a picture of a wonderful time when this was a Christian country: it is rather an indictment of the way in which the Christian religion has all too often become a vehicle for the exercise of damaging power and force.
Jesus rejects a religion that’s bound up with power ...
Jesus knew that they were about to come and seize him in order to make him king by force; so what did he do?
He went off to the hills by himself.
In doing that he was rejecting a religion that’s bound up with power.
Far from demonstrating that there’s strength in numbers as the teaching of Jesus in the remainder of John chapter 6 brings out the significance of the feeding of the 5000 something remarkable happens that if you blink you will not notice.
By verse 41 the amazement has turned to grumbling.
In spite of Jesus’ teaching, by verse 66 the grumbling has turned to disenchantment and we read
Many of Jesus’ followers turned back, and would not go with him any more.
By the end of the chapter he’s back down to the twelve and even one of those is already set to betray him.
... and his popularity slumps!
As many as 4,988 of the 5,000 men who had been drawn to following Jesus by the signs and wonders he did still wanted a religion built on power … and that’s the tragedy of John chapter 6.
The tragedy of the Christian religion down through the ages and for too many of its followers today is that people still want a religion built on power!
Jesus offers something very different ... Life!
What Jesus offers us is something very different. He offers us life. That life that is lived this side of dying and goes beyond dying, that life that is touched by God and breathed through by God, that life that is eternal life.
Never mind about the bread and the fishes. It is Jesus himself who is the bread from heaven. Take him into your very being and something of the God who loved the world so much that he gave his only Son will come through you and in you will be let loose into the world.
The best way to bring home to yourself the presence of this God and the reality of this life is to take some bread and eat it, take some wine and drink it … and know that Jesus himself is within you. It is as if the presence of God’s love let loose in the world through you.
I am the bread of life
Whoever comes to me will never be hungry
Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty
At the end of a week when religious hatred has been in the news we need to remember that it’s when religion is corrupted by power that it becomes the root of all evil.
God’s Spirit gives life ... Man’s power is no use!
Verse 63 says it all:
What gives life is God’s spirit; man’s power is of no use at all.
The words I have spoken to you bring God’s life-giving Spirit.
Religion Corrupted by Power Rejected as the Root of all Evil
Religion that is bound up with power is at the root of much that is evil. Jesus invites us to reject that kind of religion that is linked with force. Our task as Christians in response to the religious strife around us is to absorb Christ and to be absorbed by Christ. We need to feed on him for he is the one who channels the love of God into our hearts, and through us we can channel the love of God into the world around us.
Take Jesus seriously and it can be pretty overwhelming ... But fear not!
When the people wanted to make Jesus king by force, Jesus went off into the hills.
The twelve who by the end of the chapter are just about the only ones left with him still, found themselves alone in a rough sea that threatened totally to overwhelm them.
It can still feel a little bit like that if we reject a power-based religion, and opt instead for the offer of that much richer bread from heaven.
It is as we struggle and are on the verge of being overwhelmed, that we too can sense a presence. At first that presence may disturb us even more. That’s the point at which we need to listen: through the roar of the winds and the waves, we may hear the voice that says, “It is I: don’t be afraid!”
‘And as we are ready to take Jesus on board, we may find ourselves, sooner than we expected, at the harbour where we will be calm and secure once more.’
And once more ready to share the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
