Trinity 19. One World Week
Preached at St Peter's University Church
Gen 32. 22-31 Lk 18. 1-8

So it's One World. One World Week. Is it? Or it the very idea some sort of joke?

Don't you get depressed about the world? I know I do. Every time I turn on the radio or TV there's more bad news.
Murders, droughts, famines, insurrections, bombings, ethnic cleansing.....
Hatred, hatred, hatred.

And look how much of it is bound up with religion... or perceived to be bound up with religion.
After all that is the 'common perception', isn't it?. 'There's been more wars caused by religion.....'
How many times have you heard that?

Religious people seem to be amongst the most intolerant on the face of the planet.
No wonder so many other people simply wash their hands of religion.
No wonder any self-respecting university - trying to be an inclusive and world-class place of learning - thinks VERY CAREFULLY indeed
about how it deals with religious folk like us.

And even we religious folk seem to be unable to agree about how to get on in the world.
That's why here at SPH we've set up a multi-faith reference group to try and set an example for good interfaith relations,
and to try and model, for here in the student quarter, how we'd like the rest of the world to be...

But even then we find ourselves criticised because we steadfastly refuse to say
that Christianity is the best, the only, the preferred way to God.
 
Such ideas may be true as statements of faith but they don't work to help make the world one world.
And if Jacob were preaching here today, I've no doubt he would say - as he so often does -
'Jesus told us to make disciples..... he didn't tell us to convert people'. There's a real difference there to be explored.
Perhaps it would help us all if we stopped thinking about religion in the world
and instead started looking for God in this one world.
Where and how can God be found in the world.
Where is the Spirit of the Divine One visible. active, at work, birthing, inspiring, creating, healing......?

It probably wouldn't be 'news worthy' to most people in the world, but it might well do a lot to encourage those of us who still believe in the possibility of God.

Now that might seem an odd thing to say if you come from outside Europe or the West:
talking about whether God is possible any more;
but that's how things are in the West.
My eldest daughter, on her return from Africa this summer, told me that religion is everywhere:
normal, natural, an accepted part of everyday life.

But here in the West you have to struggle hard to fight to make a space to publicly imagine and articulate
the seemingly mad possibility of belief in God.

Or at least, that's how it's always been during most of my lifetime.
But I wonder whether things are just beginning to change...?

Have you noticed how George Bush and Tony Blair keep talking about God and their personal beliefs....
Have you noticed both leaders have admitted to allowing their beliefs to influence their policies?
(While this may just have been true of earlier generations of world leaders, I don't think they ever admitted to such things publicly.)

And have you noticed how - just about everywhere you look nowadays - religious language and ideas are being used...
to sell things
to encourage us to buy things
to live certain lifestyles
even down to watching certain films and buying certain videos....?
So chocolate  - is now Divine chocolate
Body and skin products - are heavenly
Our bodies - are temples and we pamper ourselves 'because we're worth it' (and don't let anyone tell you you're not!)
Any number of pills will take away our ills and pick us up when we are down
Gardening programmes encourage us to create our own little paradises: refuges from the world
And lifestyle programmes tell us that we can find, make, swap or fit out a home that's finally heaven on earth.

Even the films we watch take us to other worlds and persuade us to believe in magic, in the impossible,
in people who possess healing powers, in celebrities who inspire us;
in webs, matrices and conspiracies of evil intent that surround the world
in redemptive journeys that need to be made by heros to save mankind from death.
(Ah, we are so afraid of death.
But that's another sermon.)

Believe! Believe! Believe! The cry is everywhere.
Believe this story! (And buy the video to watch at home, behind the safety of your double glazing.)
Believe this if you dare!
Believe that if you can!
But believe; find something to believe........
But don't mention God. And never mention Jesus...
(Yes. It's bad enough for Christians - but spare a thought for our Muslim brothers and sisters
for whom, to speak of God at all, is to risk life and limb these days.)

It's One World Week! - so let's celebrate; but no religion, please.
Let's keep God out of things.

We have our own beliefs to fulfil our needs. Thank you.
Every where there are things to believe in.....
People are stuck for choice...
and yet everywhere there is such need, such angst, such bleakness, such terminal doom.

Finding a god in the world today has never been easier.
There's one almost everywhere you look.
And how clever we are in making so many gods in our own image.
God has become a wish, a phantasy, and so opportunity, an industry, a product, a commodity,
a simulacrum, a fetish, a fake:
something that falls to bits in your hands two minutes after you've opened the attractive, sexy packaging.
('Some one should complain.... someone should take them to court and sue.')
Finding a god in the world today has never been easier.

But finding God in the world takes a little longer
because we need to adjust our vision and turn aside our gaze from the god-substitutes that the shops are full of
and because we need to be prepared - just as Bible Jacob was - to struggle with the diabolic forces of consumerism
that want to tear our bodies and souls apart;

and finding God in the world means that we must be
as persistent to succeed as was that unnamed widow:
to refuse to be silenced.

If we want justice,
if we desire a blessing -
and to be a blessing for others in this one world of ours,
if we want to encounter God in the faces of our sisters and brothers across the face of the planet
if we want to speak of what God has done, what God is doing, and what God will do,
if we want to play our part alongside God in redeeming, in making new, this one world of ours,
if we want to tell the healing stories of Jesus, then
although it may seem that everything is against us in this one world of ours,
the reality is that today's world is a world of real opportunity:
even for - especially for - inclusive Christians like ourselves.

The world that we have known for the last few hundred years is, it seems, coming to an end;
But the new world that God is birthing is still not yet fully visible to us - and that makes people afraid.
And so they clutch out to seize at anything that seems to take their minds off their pain.

We people of faith in this one world of ours know, suspect, trust and believe
that it's God who is ultimately present with us
calling us, guiding us, urging us,
as Christians people,
to be like Jesus was:
to live - in our very different one-world
the sort of life that he lived back then:

a life of welcome, inclusiveness and openness,
of radical friendship with the despised, outcast and the 'unproductive';
a turner-upside down of the tables of familiar belief
and the encourager of daring, newness......

Are you up for the struggle? Most of you are, I hope.
So a challenge to you.
Try to live that sort of life
for just one week
this coming week
in this one world of ours;
come back next Sunday and tell us all about it.

Terry Biddington

St Peter's Chaplaincy is a resource for exploring the life of faith. It seeks to be inclusive, open and welcoming, offering companionship on the Journey
Chaplaincy to Higher Education in Manchester		Manchester Metropolitan University University of Manchester Royal Northern College of Music
		St Peter's Church