Leap for Joy

Today, we are keeping our Patronal Festival, a few days earlier than usual because I believe we have some important event next Sunday!

Let me begin by asking you to keep Carol in your prayers as she prepares for the exciting, and daunting, ordination to the priesthood.

I have always been fascinated by our Patronal Saint – John the Baptist. For a long time I was actually scared and put off by him because his biblical portrayal seems to be of a wild, unkempt and over-zealous man who breathed fire and brimstone wherever he went. He ranted at people that they were a brood of vipers and he cried his uncompromising call to repentance with no fear or favour.

He made lots of enemies amongst the religious leaders of his time and eventually, of course, he became a thorn in the side of King Herod who, angered by John’s condemnation of his marital choice, had John beheaded.

The description of our Patron given by Mark and Matthew painted a picture of someone you didn’t want to meet on a dark night! For years this was the only image I had of him. He was a fierce and daunting Prophet.

As ‘Forerunner’ to our Lord he stood firmly within the Old Testament Prophetic tradition yet he was pointing to a new age  - the age of Christ whose Gospel seemed somewhat at odds to what John was preaching.

Even Jesus drew the contrast between them, particularly when he was accused of festivity in comparison to John’s austerity.

But our Saint deserves better because there is evidence of a more gentle side, which shows him as humble and holy. In the wilderness he had lived close to God and as a result he knew his life’s purpose.

His Saying, on one occasion, of Jesus – “He must increase and I must decrease” brings us to the heart of the man. His life was totally dedicated to and centred on Christ.

This began before his birth when he was in his mother, Elizabeth’s womb.

When Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visited her cousin, pregnant with John, we are told by St. Luke that when Mary greeted Elizabeth, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leapt for joy.

I  have come to believe that this joy was always at the heart of John’s ministry because everything he did was determined by that moment. He felt the joy of God’s salvation coming into the world through Jesus. As a result, everything he did – his desire that people should turn back to God – was because he wanted that joy to be shared by others – because it would be the gateway to their salvation too.

And it seems to me that this is a good thought to build upon by a Church that has claimed John the Baptist as its patron.

For the sharing of God’s salvation in Jesus Christ is a joyful thing and it is something the Church should be embracing with enthusiasm and commitment.

That is the stuff of Mission.

But, of course, in order to share that joy with others, then we must know it for ourselves.

For that to be true we all need to experience what John experienced when he met Christ – a leaping for joy in the womb which we can interpret as a leaping for joy in the depths of our hearts and souls.

Part of that meeting with Christ comes through our Worship, our personal praying and our encounter with God in Scripture. All these are points of contact with Jesus and people who talk to me of spiritual elation, of having religious experiences where God comes alive to them, will understand that these are leaps of faith – leaps of joy.

But we also meet Christ in others and, hopefully, we meet him in the fellowship of the Church, in each other.

You may well have had experiences when talking with someone that there is a real meeting point of faith. Conversations that get beyond the trivia of church life or the negativity which seems so prevalent in our Church of England, are often real engagements of spirit with spirit. This is the meeting point in each other where we recognise Christ in someone else and our hearts leap for joy.

Or it may be a different sort of conversation where someone seeks a meaning for life’s existence – perhaps expressed more simply as just being fed up with their lot, and through some quiet witness or word or loving action, we manage to uplift them. That too is a meeting point with Christ for, even if it is not put into words as such, it is clear that the other person has a new vision of how life might actually be good.

Again, we meet Christ in a different way when we heed that central message of John the Baptist about Repentance. All of us, from time to time, get bogged down in our journey of faith. We give in to listlessness, to negative thinking, to the slow slide of apathy which turns our joy in faith into a careless wandering away from God. We stop making the effort, we find fault with the institution of the Church because that’s an easy defence against our own waywardness. We slide away from regular worship. We let go of the very things that could pull us through – prayer, Christian fellowship, Scriptural study – and, one day, we find ourselves in the wilderness, empty, aimless, insecure.

What we need to recognise is that this is sin. We have turned our backs on God. The ultimate sin.

Repentance, on the other hand, turns us back towards God and it only takes that slight movement of our hearts to find God leaping joyfully towards us again, showering us with grace, forgiveness and love.

This becomes a real meeting with Christ and often produces a leap of joy in our hearts.

So often, however, all these possibilities – and actually, certainties – of recognising Christ in our lives, are lost because the Church is currently prone to despair.

One of the other values of a Patronal Festival, apart from our learning lessons from our Saint that speak personally to our life of faith, is the way we are as a Church, a Fellowship of believers gathered together by the Holy Spirit.

Yet – all too often – we join the throng of disbelievers who are sadly filling our churches today.

For it is not the agnostics or the atheists in our Society who damage our Christianity. With them it is possible to have an honest and lively engagement.

It is those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ and yet deny his Gospel of salvation by their negativity.

I came across this earlier this week in a meeting of clergy.

You may have read of a report published recently  which is seeking to address some of the problems that get in the way of mission. It was headlined in doomwatch, and quite inaccurate, terms – the Church is about to sack 3,000 clergy because we can’t pay for them and is heading for extinction.

The clergy I met with shared the general despair and all I kept hearing was how bad things were and how the Church was gradually sliding towards extinction.

I took so much of this for a while before I, gently, exploded.

I had just returned from the Czech Republic where, last Sunday, I had to queue to get into a Church and where I had to search for a seat. I knew that this pattern was being repeated all over the country and in many other countries. Christianity is a very long way from being dead.

Ah, you might be tempted to say, that’s all very well in places which have known martyrdom and persecution and who now have a new freedom to worship. I agree. But 40 years of Communism and ten years of Nazi-ism couldn’t destroy faith. The Gates of Hell never prevail against God. And we have the proof.

But it is true that in comfortable, secular, individualistic, consumer orientated England, we Christians are up against it. I would maintain that we are in a position not dissimilar to those former communist lands. The only difference being that it is not tyrannical regimes that persecute us but the general apathy, indifference and the constant sniping at the Church which comes from Society at large.

What I plead is that we don’t fall into the trap of colluding with all this because, as with Communism and Fascism, it is the work of the devil.

Instead, we should be celebrating our faith and pressing it forward so that others may see and hear the truth. Christianity is not dead. Christ is Alive. We are baptised! We are the proof!

On Friday I was visited by the new Diocesan Mission Adviser. He wanted to know about exciting ventures of Mission that were going on in the area.

Well, I said, there’s ‘The Box’; There’s ‘Workspace’; There’s a thriving Toddler Church; There’s Tuesday Fellowship; There are prayer-groups; Market Day Coffee; there’s personal faith growth in all sorts of people,  and on and on I went. So much that we ran out of time.

And all this is happening in the Deanery? He asked.

I felt a bit guilty because he had come to me as Area Dean to learn of initiatives in the Deanery.

Well, actually, that’s just in Epping, mostly in St. John’s, I replied.

But the guilt was short-lived because I recognised that if what I had talked of – and more that I didn’t – was happening in one Church in the Deanery – how much more was happening all over the Deanery, the Diocese, the Church of England, the Christian Churches in England.

All over this land there are meeting points with Christ going on and hearts are leaping with joy as people recognise Him at work, claiming souls for His Father’s Kingdom.

That’s what we should celebrate. That’s the news we should publish. That’s what God is doing.

Forget the obituary – let us write with our lives the birth stories of faith awakened, of love ignited, of salvation experienced.

That’s what John the Baptist really did as he pointed people to Christ.

So, please, may we.