|
John Schofield 16th September 2007 Changing Minds |
| When I was in Washington DC recently, as well as visiting various art galleries, there were two particular museums I went to. Both memorialised peoples who had been done great ills. One was the Museum of the American Indian, the other the Holocaust Memorial Museum. I was quite surprised by the different tone of the two; there is a shrillness about the American Indian museum that is lacking in the Holocaust museum. And in many ways, I found that surprising. |
| Now, several weeks on, and thinking both about today’s readings and what William was grappling with last week, I find myself asking ‘How would each of these museums in their different ways and with their different tones, have recorded the interchange between God and Moses at Sinai?’ Would it have been low key, or triumphalist? Who would be the hero, and who the villain or victim? |
| Life presents us with the necessity of making choices. This is inescapable. Good or evil; life or death. How do we react? Soberly, or shrill-ly? As heroes or victims? |
| Moses presented God with the necessity of making a choice. How did Moses present that choice to God? And how did God respond? |
| So often we hear the question, echoed last week: Where is God? or Where was God? or Why did God allow this? And, though we can always resort to the answer that says: ‘God’s ways are beyond our understanding, God’s ways are not our ways’, ultimately this is unsatisfactory. |
| But then we don’t look hard enough at what God has already shown us, and shows us to all eternity. God responds, and copes with the questions, by constantly focusing both the questions and our attention onto the cross. And then in the resurrection God gives us a sign that evil is not the end. |
| Have you ever thought about the cross as God’s argument with us? God trying to make us change our minds about the limitations of our perceptions, about the questions we ask, about what we see when we see the manger, the cross or the empty tomb? |
| Because today I want us to think about changing minds. The amazing, the shocking, thing about the argument between Moses and God over the golden calf is that Moses persuaded God to change his mind. God proposes something that, if we were to propose it, would be regarded as evil. He decides on ethnic cleansing – getting rid of this lot who constantly do what God doesn’t want them to do. And Moses stands up to him, says ‘Can’t you see what you’re doing? How would that look? What would the nations say? Give them another chance.’ And God changes his mind. |
| Now, of course, that’s different from the situation in which people say why couldn’t God have prevented the holocaust / 9-11 / Rwanda / 7-7 or whatever. For in this case God was the actor, the author of the proposed evil. Not so in those other cases. The only way God could change his mind about those contemporary situations is by God changing his mind about how he relates to his creation and his creatures. But God isn’t going to do that, because God has already shown us that God copes with the question by constantly focusing both the question and our attention onto the cross. And in the resurrection God gives us a sign that evil is not the end. |
| But there is something God can do and does, if only we had ears to hear and eyes to see. God can work with us to help us change our mind. That’s what Paul tells us when he says |
| I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. |
| God argues with Paul on the Damascus Road (and probably a bit before that as well, but we’re not told) and changed his mind. And we also know that Paul at times argues with God. So we too can argue with God. We won’t always win. God didn’t remove Paul’s thorn in the flesh (whatever that was), despite the fact that Paul pleaded with him three times about it. Because power is made perfect in weakness. |
| Of course, we may think we are of no account. It isn’t true. We may think we have nothing to give, are worth nothing. It isn’t true. We might think we are weak and our efforts of no avail. It isn’t true. Power is made perfect in weakness. |
| Think instead of the effect on the world if more of humanity changed its mind. We churchgoers might have been cajoled into thinking that repentance is all about self-examination and the expression of sorrow. It isn’t primarily about that at all. It’s about us changing our minds, changing the direction of our lives, putting God and the kingdom of God and the costly message of reconciliation at the centre of all that we are and do. |
| We’re not told whether the sheep or the coins changed their minds. And it’s hardly a question to ask, is it? But those conducting the search couldn’t have their minds changed until they had found what was missing. And surely many would have questioned the shepherd’s decision to leave the ninety nine in the wilderness of all places for the sake of one! |
| And perhaps the coin and the sheep represent you and me and those we are sent to search for, to talk to, to help them change their minds – people to whom God gives the supreme value of searching for until they – we – are found, until they – we – have changed our mind for God. |
| Sometimes we get such different pictures of God presented to us. And there is a tension within Christianity between the Hebrew and the Greek mentality. We mustn’t overdo this distinction, but we do need to recognise that the Hebrew scriptures present us with a much more involved and active God than some of Christian theology does, influenced as it is by notions of the unchangeableness of God. I believe that in the Incarnation, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, true God and true human, something in God changed for ever – for our benefit. |
| We are called to tell that story, just as Paul – or whoever wrote to Timothy using Paul’s name and appealing to Paul’s experience – is telling his story, a story of changing minds. And it’s no good changing your mind for God’s sake and the sake of God’s kingdom if you don’t tell your story to other people, in your words, and as often and as boldly as you can, making us ‘example(s) to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life’. |
| And when we do that we find that praise inevitably follows: ‘To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.’ says the writer to Timothy. This is a response to changing minds. And the shepherd and the women throw parties. And God wants to throw a party for us and all whose minds we’ve helped to change for God. |
| So don’t be afraid to argue with God. Don’t be afraid to let God argue with you. Don’t be afraid to change your mind for God. Don’t be afraid to tell your mind-changed, mind-changing, story. |
|
|