Nourishing minds
Preacher: Revd Richard Littledale, Senior Minister, Newbury Baptist Church
Readings: Philippians 2: 1-4; 3 John:1-8
Good morning, and thank you for your welcome. I have not trodden these hallowed flagstones, nor looked up at this vaulted ceiling since August 29th 1987, and it is good to be back. Since then, my journey has taken me to four different pastorates, to preaching engagements around the world, to the airwaves of BBC Radio 2 and 4, and into print with St Andrew Press and others. Since listening to sermons and addresses here, I have given them in places as far apart as the Houses of Parliament and standing beneath a statue of Lenin in a communist community hall in Serbia. The skills which I learnt here are put to use on a daily basis, whether that be in crafting sermons, drafting radio scripts, writing books for adults and children, or looking for the ‘God-sense’ in the mess and glory of pastoral reality. It is good to be back, even virtually.
‘What is the nature of your business?’. I was asked that at the end of a long phone call as I sat in my office at the church where I worked. Along the way we had talked about data speeds, extensions and phonelines. Almost as an afterthought I was asked that question: what is the nature of your business’? What should I have said, I wonder? Should I have quipped about mending souls, or coaching or maybe have said that I was in the building trade? All might have been true of the church in some shape or form. And what is the nature of your business, might I ask?
Today, Mothering Sunday, I have returned to my Alma Mater – my ‘nourishing mother’. She did indeed nourish me. She taught me to question inalienable truth. She taught me to separate opinion from conviction and fluffy theology from intellectual rigour. She taught me that neither study nor pulpit was any place for a sloppy argument. She taught me to recognise those things which shape me, and made me believe that there were others which I could shape. She taught me to ask questions which I would later be asking as a young pastor in a hospital ward and as a grieving husband at the bedside. She also introduced me to my late wife – whom I married a few steps to the right of where I should be standing now. For all these things, I am grateful. So, tell me, are you still in the nourishing business?
Writing from his prison cell in the letter to the Philippians, Paul sees his ‘children’ in the faith from afar – and urges them to value each other. Squinting through the notional bars – he urges them to make each other better. ‘Do that’ he says ‘and my heart will be glad.’ That is quite a claim from a man who would not see the free light of day again. For him, to do such a thing is a touchstone of truly Christian character. ‘If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ’, he says ‘you will do it.’ He explains that the seeds of such character are nurtured in the soil of attitude. Urging them to ‘be of one mind’ was not some ghastly form of 3D printed Christianity where everyone thinks the same thank goodness. This is about attitude, rather than opinion. Christians are by very definition those who are shaped by Christ. In order to take on that sacred likeness, they must shake off the habits inherited from birth and place the needs of others above their own. Conceit has no place, he says, and selfish ambition must be gone
The qualifier ‘selfish’ is an important one. Too often, the church of Jesus Christ has treated ambition as a dirty word. We see it as worldly or selfish or seditious in some way. The result has been that some of the most revolutionary ideas and the most irrepressible innovation has taken root outside the Christian church. I love the fact that Bill Gates once said ‘I can’t wait for tomorrow and I’m doing everything I can to make it happen’ – but I wish a minister of the Gospel had thought of it! It is hard not to be inspired by these words from the late Chadwick Boseman: you should rather find purpose than a job or a career. Purpose crosses disciplines. Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. How much more memorable they are than many of the words said by people like me!
Are you nourishing a selfless ambition to make the world a better place, I wonder? Are you shaping minds and stirring a restless sea of questions in such a way that the world will be different because of what happened here? Of course, so much of university is about the experience – and I encouraged my own sons to see it that way too. My experiences here included the dubious delights of Raisin Monday, and acting as steward for a duel at dawn beneath the castle ruins – to name but two. Let’s be honest, though, it is also about shaping minds. It is about nurturing those minds and not just filling them up.
There is a paperweight which has accompanied me to every desk I have ever occupied since leaving here. It was produced for the 450th anniversary of St Mary’s College. Engraved onto it is the coat of arms of the School of Divinity, and the motto: in principio erat verbum. (In the beginning was the word). Indeed, it was in the beginning – but the story unfolds from there with the unpacking and articulation of the word over all the centuries. Theology is a lifelong commitment to the articulation of the Word of Creator through the words of his creatures – St Mary’s taught me that. I used to love reading the graffiti on the desks in St Mary’s College during my lectures over there– some of it dating back many many years. One wag had scratched ‘if it weren’t for OT and NT Christianity would be ok’. Some days, I know just what they meant! Another particularly memorable one said ‘hang in there – we’ll all be dead soon’! When it comes to ambition, I think we perhaps we can do better! Perhaps it was just a very long lecture.
People often skip over the little letters of John, tucked away there towards the end of the New Testament. They seem like appetisers on the way to the main event of Revelation, with all its sound and fury. What they give us, though, is an insight into the heartbeat of the early church. Remember, this was a church on the margins, viewed by many as seditious, and reliant upon the committed service of preachers, pastors, missionaries and others. Gaius was one of those others. His was a walk-on part in the New Testament, and we know very little about him. So far as we can tell, his main role was to offer a kind of B & B service to the travelling gospel-preaching community. The verse which stands out especially is this:
‘Please send them on their way in a manner which honours God’.
What was this ‘manner’, exactly? Was it just to do with the nature of the accommodation? Were they simply to continue their journey well -fed, watered and rested? Or maybe it was something more. I suspect that as well as a square meal and a bed, they received that deeper form of hospitality which allows a soul to kick back and reflect. Maybe Gaius had that ability to ask the one question which would allow the stories to flow of the triumphs and mistakes along the Gospel road.
It has been my privilege to travel to many places around the world in the course of my ministry, and I thank God for those who have ‘made space’ for me in every sense. I thank God for the young couple on the edge of the jungle in Nepal who shared their joys and struggles with the traveller. I thank God for the students in Serbia who taught me so much when I was supposed to be teaching them. They insisted on calling me ‘professor’ which was entirely undeserved, even if welcome! At the end of a long day’s teaching, they wanted nothing more than to hear their professor’s story of how God had changed his life. I thank God for Boro and Snezana, from Macedonia, who let me into their tiny house and snapped their one remaining cereal bar in half so that my fellow guest and I could share it with our coffee. These things gave me so much more than a roof over my head. They nourished me, in the deepest sense.
To that list I could add every member of my different churches, young or old, who has given me the space to talk of God and to hear him too. They are people like Ian and Linda – invalided out of the health service, but radiant because that very experience had brought them to their knees and to Christ. They are people like retired lay-pastor John, who unexpectedly grasped my face in both hands and kissed me when I had administered what would be his last communion in a hospital bed. Whatever Gaius was offering, it was to do his guests good. His investment in them, of whatever kind, was to benefit them. If ever they came back, John writes that they should do so having been sent on their way in a manner which honours God.
And so, I come back – here to this chapel. For me, it is replete with memories. I remember standing here as bejant, awed by the spectacle and feeling so so proud of my scarlet gown. I remember standing here as a tertian, too, sharing early communion here in the round. It fell to me to pass the elements to a tutor whose theology was many miles from mine and who had crossed intellectual swords with me more than once. If I’ve a mind to, I can still feel the wince at his harsh critique of my naïve reasoning. None of it mattered on that day, at that moment though. On that day, at that moment he was not a lecturer and I was not a student. He and I were brothers in Christ – neither more nor less. That is a lesson I have carried with me to this day. And, of course, I remember standing here on my wedding day – August 29th 1987.
We prepared so carefully for that day. We pored over the guest list. We designed the invitations. We chose hymns and readings with such care. All the same, when it came to our final hymn – there was a typo which had slipped through the net. The words should have read: Not a grief nor a loss, not a crown nor a cross, but is blest if we trust and obey. Instead, it read ‘not a grown nor a cross’. Of course, we smiled at the time, and on many occasions since’ There have been quite a lot of ‘growns’ as it turns out, and a cross too – but all have been blessed, even the hardest. Some of the theological tempering which prepared the steel of my soul was forged right here, in this chapel and these buildings of St Andrews.
So, Alma Mater – it’s good to be back, and I thank you for nourishing heart, mind and character. Such is the nature of your business under God, and I hope you will go on doing it.