Good morning friends. The location for this event – in the Crossway Church auditorium, and 50 metres from the Australian World Vision HQ – is all somewhat ‘deja-vu-ish’ for me: I spent nearly two decades working for a previous incarnation of these two institutions…

My first contact with a Salvation Army person was with Mrs Smart, from the
Rockdale corps in Sydney, when I was about 3 (72 years ago, but I’m not disclosing my age :-). She made clothes for my mother and for us two little boys.

But my most interesting memory   Salvation Army-wise, was when I gave a talk on ‘Stress and Burnout in Christian Ministry’ to a graduating class at the Training College in Parkville. I wondered why the students seemed distracted, but discovered why when after I’d finished they shot out of that class to the room next door to discover their ministry-placements for the coming year! The Lord leads in mysterious ways 🙂

Another bit of Salvation Army memorabilia was hearing about the officer at, I think, the Waverley Corps just down the road, who used the different benedictions each week from my Still Waters Deep Waters series of devotional books to bless his people. Some of them told me it was a highlight of their worship services. Those devotions weren’t written for that purpose, but I’m glad they were helpful.

Well, I’m talking to about 800+ sisters and brothers and most of you are nearer your death-day than your birthday. That allows you to be cheeky sometimes, you know. For example, when the checkout chick/fella tells me to have a good day I sometimes reply:   ‘And you too… unless you’ve made other arrangements!’ Watch their reaction!

I discovered in the 1980s that there were 10,000 ex-pastors in Australia – about the same number as serving pastors – and no ministry across the denominations to serve them. So on April Fools’ Day 1991 a group of us formed John Mark Ministries   -    named after the young apostle who ‘bombed out’ but was later encouraged by Peter and Barnabas to re-enter a leadership ministry. We do counseling (I’ve clocked up 23,000 hours since then), produce literature (eg. this website), talk at seminars, etc. etc. Pastoral leadership ministries are easier and harder as the years go by. I’d have loved the help of Google search when I was preparing three Bible studies/sermons a week. But the flip side to all that is that we communicators are competing with telegenic personalities: our people are watching them for an average of 20 hours a week! Young people have no trouble with Jesus – but they do have all sorts of problems with his retail outlets! The Salvation Army and the Uniting Church both head the list of denominations whose numbers have declined in Australia between 2001 and 2011 (6.3% and 6.1%). You might like to think about the reasons for that in your movement, but according to Rev. Dr. Philip Hughes (Christian Research Association) an important factor is whether a particular denomination attracts migrants (the Catholics added 320,000 migrants; the Baptists 42,000 for example).

Let’s imagine your grandchildren – or some other young people you are mentoring – ask you what wisdom you’ve accumulated over the years. How would you summarize it all? Here are my five points (yours may be different: that’s OK). They’re expressed simply, but we could spend a week on any of them. (‘I wouldn’t give a cent for simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity the other side of complexity’ – to paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes).

1. LIFE IS HARD, BUT GOD IS GOOD. The biblical stories about Joseph, Job and Jesus illustrate this truth. M Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled) made a lot of money teaching us that ‘Life is difficult’. Jesus promised his followers three experiences – constant trouble, constant joy, because of his constant presence. He told us we’d be persecuted – and we are, in many countries. (Why not buy and read each day Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo’s Heroes of Our Faith  – perhaps the best book of stories about the bravery of persecuted Christian since Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.)

But God is good. And if God is like Jesus, nothing is too good to be true! We can trust this God, and do not need to be afraid. The best song I’ve ever heard which reinforces this truth is Psalm 27, sung by The Imperials (have a listen!).

Friends, we can’t always choose the music life plays for us, but we can choose how we dance to it!

2. THE SECRET OF A JOYFUL LIFE: LOVE FOR GOD AND OTHERS! The American youth evangelist Scot McNight teaches his new converts to recite a mantra several times a day: ‘I will love the Lord my God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength, and love others as myself!’

Joy is not the same as happiness: happiness can be shallow and superficial; joy is deep. The joyful person is not affected by praise or blame!  

The best-put-together 20th century Christian I’ve ever heard of, in terms of joy, was  Dom Helder Camara. Look him up: a great man!

And love is costly: We love God just as much, and no more, than we love the person we love least!  (Dorothy Day).

3. DON’T EVER WISH YOU WERE SOMEBODY ELSE! This addresses the deadly sin of envy. Now I can understand that if you live with chronic pain you’d like to inhabit another body: but here I’m talking about the essential you! When God made you God did not make a mistake!

When I was a gawky 13-year-old, bottom of my grade at school, and quite insecure – and had never had a meaningful conversation with my father –   my Sunday School teacher, George Clark, use to invite me to his place to talk, do stuff together; he taught me to drive a car, and we discussed music and theology and life generally. One day he looked into my eyes and said: ‘Rowland, if you discover what God wants you to do with your life, I believe you’ll be very successful!’ Now what do you make of that? It’s both a blessing and a curse: the blessing – you have significance! The curse – your significance will be measured by how much you out-perform others!

My friends, when you’re mentoring young people, allow them to be just who they are, whether they come top of the grade or not!

In our John Mark Ministries retreats  there are two questions we face with retreatants which are always challenging: ‘Zero to 10, what’s your self-esteem most of the time?’ And second: ‘Would you be willing to do an inventory of all the stuff you’ve done in your life which has caused you to feel guilt or shame and displeased God?’

A Catholic church leader in Bangladesh said to me: ‘You Protestants/ Evangelicals know the Bible better than we Catholics do, but you don’t obey it. We Catholics don’t know the Bible very well, but we do obey it!’ He was referring of course to James 5:16 – ‘Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed!’ Now why don’t we do that? Pride and/or fear. And there’s a clue in the previous chapter (James 4:11) – ‘Do not speak evil against one another!’ Frankly, we don’t trust one another with our sins and confessions. But that’s not a good reason not to do it. When I got back from that speaking trip I booked into a monastery for a seven-day silent retreat, and wrote down everything I could think of which caused me guilt or shame. I read the list to my spiritual director; he prayed for me; and I walked free from that place! I’m currently seeing a Spiritual Director once a month: it’s a very important discipline!

Back to the idea of gratefulness (which David Steindl-Rast says is the heart of Spirituality/Prayer), there’s a great little song we teach out kids: ‘If I were a crocodile, I’d thank you Lord for my big smile… But I just thank you Lord for making me me!’

4. FOLLOW THE TRUTH WHEREVER IT MAY LEAD!

Last Sunday at St Martins (Collingwood) we read the gospel passage from Luke 13: Jesus’ Lament over Jerusalem: ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to it…’ Our theme for the service was fear. We talked to one another about our fears – and called out some of them – rejection, failure, ‘ethics committees’, being ridiculed, etc. When I listed mine, somewhere near the top was this one: Fear of a new idea, especially when it’s conveyed by a prophet. Every generation has its prophets, and prophets are people who shock us with something new. Now that doesn’t mean all new ideas are good or that all old ideas are bad. But the history of the church is littered with the stupidities of people who ignore their prophets…

I’m preparing a talk for a month’s time on ‘Paradigm Shifts’ in the thinking of the church. The Protestant Reformation was one of the greatest: the idea that the Bible should be read by ordinary people like us: and the Catholic church resisted that.

Another: Copernicus and Galileo both believed that the earth revolved around the sun – and their books were banned by the Church. However, as one wag put it, 300 years later, in 1992, Pope John Paul II gave the earth permission to revolve around the sun!

You’ve seen the movie Lincoln? There were two underlying paradigm shifts at work there: the idea of the equality of all human beings in spite of the colour of their skin (some Christians on both sides of the Atlantic called black people ‘primates’), and the notion that human beings should not be exploited as slaves by other humans. Between 11 and 15 million Africans were torn from their families and transported across the Atlantic, to serve as slaves in the Americas – and many Christians participated in this terrible trade. Treatment was generally characterized by brutality, degradation, and inhumanity. Whippings, executions, and rapes were commonplace. In the American Civil War, according to a recent study, 850,000 died – compared with half that number – 405,000 – in the Second World War… Awful!

On issues where we might differ, we range across an ideological spectrum – from radical on the left to traditionalist on the right. Radicals want to change lots of things; traditionalists want to change? Nothing.

Radicals like the quote from the economist John Maynard Keynes: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. And you sir?’

One of the key issues about paradigm changes has to do with power. When we’re in control of something – an institution; a set of ideas; etc. etc. and a prophet criticizes our use of power, or our insecurity about changing our thinking, we become uncomfortable.   David Marr has written a book called Panic  (2011) where he examines the way our politics are shaped by people who appeal to our insecurities. At the time of Federation it was fear of the Chinese; World War 1 the Fenians (Catholics) and the Germans (4000 people of German descent were imprisoned in rural concentration camps during World War 1, and not one case of German espionage within Australia could be substantiated). After World War II it was the communists: remember Bob Menzies’   ‘Communist Party Dissolution Act’? And now it’s boat people.

I remember teaching a Doctoral class in a seminary, and we talked with two women who had male bodies. They told their story about the horrors of being trapped in a man’s body, and it was, I think, the first time those mature-age students had met a transgendered person. But the question which puzzled one of them, who was fairly conservative about male-leadership-only, was this: if her body is masculine, does she qualify to lead in his denomination? He didn’t know! The Salvation Army has been a pioneering group in granting leadership status to women. Our good friend General Eva Burrows is related to our family – she’s our grand-daughters’ great aunt, and it’s been lovely to watch her sitting on the floor playing with those two little girls!

The statement which helps us in the quest for truth has been this one: The Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his Word!

Finally, 5: KNOW WHY YOU’RE ON EARTH AND NOT YET IN HEAVEN!

Some of you have heard my story about modern Pharisees. You can find it here.

Briefly: the Pharisees were ‘Bible people’ who were very judgmental against people on the margins. When Jesus said prostitutes and tax-collectors are ‘further into God’s kingdom’ than those Bible-people, they were understandably enraged. Come to think of it, I’ve never known a conservative preacher get excited about prostitutes being more accepted by God than Pharisees!

And Jesus had to tell those people, in his diatribes against the Pharisees, that Justice, Mercy and Faith (Matthew 23:23, paraphrasing Micah 6:8), or in Luke’s version, Justice and Love (Luke 11:42) are the key ‘Kingdom values’. Justice is the right use of power and addresses the causes of human pain; mercy treats the symptoms of a person’s pain; and faith addresses the root cause of our problems – our unwillingness to submit our lives to the perfect will of God.

I recall a Salvation Army leaders’ conference – I think it was in Healesville – where I was asked to talk about justice, mercy and faith. ‘We do mercy pretty well; our evangelism used to be more effective; but we risk alienating “the powers” if we get into justice issues too much’ I was told. As many of you know, George Bernard Shaw’s play Major Barbara is about that.

Is his recent book The Future of Faith  theologian Harvey Cox tells us the best Christians he’s ever met are ‘Latin American Pentecostals who make lists’. In other words, they have a vibrant faith expressed in heartfelt corporate worship, but also they’re in touch with people in their catchment-area who have particular needs. In Korea, I met with one of the hundreds of Full Gospel Central Church groups and learned that they knew everyone in their city block in Seoul, Korea, and would visit everyone regularly to ask if they had any needs – including prayer for healing… Many were added to the membership of that church through these front-line ministries…

So there’s my little list: Life is hard but God is good; Love for God and others; Don’t ever wish you were somebody else; Follow the truth wherever it might lead; and figure out why you’re on earth and not yet in heaven…

~~

You – yes you – are an unrepeatable miracle of God’s creation. God loves you as if you’re the only one to love: God does not share his love between all of his creatures: he gives all of his love to each of his creatures. And never forget: God loves you before you change, as you change, after you change, and whether you change or not.

Thank you Lord!

Amen.