Sermon: Bishop Michael Doe, USPG, Lent 1 2008
Genesis 2.7-9; 3.1-7 and Matthew 4: 1-11
Good things come in threes.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Faith, hope and charity.
Not quite in the same league, but USPG also has a triple way of talking about mission:
Mission is about God liberating people to grow spiritually, thrive physically, and have a voice in an unjust world.
The season of Lent also comes with a trio: the three temptations of Jesus:
(in the order today’s Gospel has given them to us from Matthew)
to turn stones into bread;
to throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple, and float safely down;
and to take power in the only way that the devil knows how.
Let me try and connect these three with what I said about mission.
The first temptation was to turn stones into bread.
Jesus refuses to become a cheap miracle-worker.
But more than that, he refuses to limit the activity of God to meeting immediate and obvious needs.
Man does not live by bread alone
It is the temptation to be primarily concerned with Products.
We live in a world where the main activity is making things,
and then consuming them.
We live in a world of products
where success is measured by productivity.
But man (or indeed, woman!) does not live by bread alone.
Each of us is a beautiful and vulnerable person created by God,
and we do not do justice to ourselves if we use all of that simply to become a consumer,
a consumer of bread
a consumer of any other product which the advertisers tell us we can no longer live without.
So Mission, we say, is about GROWING SPIRITUALLY.
In the Province of Myanmar- what used to be called Burma, the Church is living under a military regime, which has confiscated their schools and hospitals. They look to USPG for ongoing funding for their theological education. I went there to contribute to their first-ever Anglican Gathering, bringing together over two thousand Anglicans, many of them young people. When an army roadblock stopped us four miles away from where they were meeting, they had to come out to meet us, sharing their stories of being the Church in this challenging place.
If the first temptation is about Products,
the second is about Personality.
And again we know only to well about living in a world where the cult of personality reigns.
It is a universe created by OK magazine and Hello!
where Kylie and Britney are so well-known that they no longer need surnames
where whole TV programmes feature people who are famous just for being famous
where the line between the real world and what’s happening to a character in a soap opera has almost disappeared.
Become a star, says the devil to Jesus.
Throw yourself off this pinnacle of the Temple.
Thrill the people with your miraculous escape.
Hit the headlines
Become a “personality”.
The cult of personality treats people in the end as objects
lifted up and then dropped right down according to the needs of others
famous today, forgotten tomorrow.
In its superficiality it fails to recognize the whole of our humanity,
and that we are whole bodies and not just spirits.
But Mission, we say, is also about people THRIVING PHYSICALLY
There are so many places where USPG is supporting the Anglican Church in its provision of hospitals and clinics, its work with people who have Malaria, or HIV/AIDS. For example, the Church Hospital in Malawi....
Product, Personality, and... Power
Look, says the devil to Jesus, you’re a good bloke
you’ve got some good ideas
we’d all like to see these kind of things come about
but you know, and I know, that the world isn’t like that.
What I can offer you is real power
power to control this world in the only way that this world can recognize.
Go your way, and you risk everything, even yourself.
Come my way, and we’ll force our way through.
We live in a world where we rightly take pride in democracy and human rights
but prefer not to ask too many questions as to who actually holds the power over us.
For people in many other parts of the world it is only too obvious who makes them powerless
the elites within their own societies
the more powerful nations like our own who make the rules in the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank
great trans-national companies who wield more power than many nation states.
To reject this temptation is to recognize that power belongs not to the devil but to God and that power is to be exercised not in domination and control but in humility, in service, not to belittle and dehumanise others, but to lift them up as God has lifted us up.
To worship the Lord your God, and to serve only him
is also to make a radical choice as to how we exercise our own power in this world.
So Mission is about people HAVING A VOICE IN A UNJUST WORLD
In the Philippines the Anglican Church is opposing the Mining Companies who oppress indigenous people and destroy their environment.
In the Holy Land, the Anglican Church is in solidarity with the Palestinian people, as their lands and communities are bulldozed by the great “Security Wall”.
But let me tell you about what’s happening in Brazil, where on the outskirts of the satellite cities which have grown up around Brasilia, in makeshift camps for homeless people built from wood and plastic sheeting, without sanitation or running water, the Anglican Church is organising social care, Sunday worship and- remarkably- Bible reading groups where people are making the connection between their reality and the Gospel of liberation.
So Lent calls upon us to reject the culture of Product, Personality and Power which we see all around usand begin to build something different
something different in our own lives
and a different kind of world out there.
This is what the Church – including our Anglican brothers and sisters - are doing all around the world today.
And USPG exists to sustain the relationships between us all
Parishes like yours, which take world mission seriously,
and which take USPG seriously (not least through your generous giving every year)
should be proud to be part of this Anglican Communion
proud to stand with our fellow-Anglicans throughout the world.
So may God bless you in your mission here in Bedford Park
May God bless his servants in every part of the world
that together (in the words of your Lenten theme this year)
together we may delight in God
Bishop Michael Doe is General Secretary of USPG: Anglicans in World Mission