What Is Christianity All About?

When someone says they've seen a vision, it's hard for anyone else to assess exactly what that experience is. Is your vision the same as what I see when I have a dream? or is it more like what I mean by a daydream? Is it like watching a moving picture projected on a screen? or like a 3D tableau being acted out before your eyes? Or is it just a sort of bright idea? Some time early last year, a man of Eastbourne, specifically Revd Geoffrey Daintree, the vicar of Meads, said to Michael and Rosemary Green, Come over to Eastbourne and help us. It didn't seem appropriate to take a team of Wycliffe ordinands, or university students, to the parish; but it was Rosemary who suddenly thought: What about taking a team from St Nicholas church? She never said it was a vision - but maybe it was not all that different.

So here we are, back from Eastbourne. We survived, we did more than survive; we rejoice that we had an exciting, exhausting, exhilarating time. One of the really best things of all, was the sense we had of being held up, carried by the prayers of so many others: so thank you for your prayers. Please go on praying for Meads, because in one sense the work there has only just begun; and pray too for Marston, because the team have brought back so many impressions and experiences we need to nurture, and allow to bear fruit here. What's going to happen here, as a result of Meads' Celebration of Faith?

(We thought our strength was that we were just ordinary Christians from an ordinary church; but at the start of last week, Marion was being asked by people, And where are you going next week? - as if we were professionals.)

The Celebration ended lasted weekend with two events on Saturday and two services on Sunday at which Michael Green spoke and really presented the Gospel, in the way that he has a particular gift for, and invited people to make a decision or commitment to faith, or maybe renew one that had gone a bit cold. The trouble with doing that in church - as Michael would certainly agree - is that in a sense you're preaching to the converted, or people who think they are the converted, or at least people who have been around for years. You rarely get the complete outsider there, or person who has never heard this before, for whom the Good News really is just news at all.

So I did ask myself some hard questions along the lines of: Are we wasting our time, doing this? What's the point of it - if there is one?

And this was the answer; and it's a preacher's kind of answer. Suppose you had preached to a congregation for 10 or 20 or 30 years, and at the end of the day just one person in that congregation were to say, when it came to the crunch, But - I never knew that was what being a Christian meant. Nobody ever told me, that was what it was about. How terrible would that be?

So this morning I want to talk about, What Christianity is about.

Actually, it's easier to start with what Christianity is NOT about.

1 Christianity is NOT about Being a Good Person. This is a widely held misconception, it's the view of all those good people who say to vicars: Well, I believe you don't need to go to church to be a Christian. They are thinking that being a good person is, essentially, what it's all about. And of course you can be good without going to church: ask any good-living, moral atheist or Jew or Muslim or Hindu. In fact, you could argue that churchgoing is actually an obstacle to goodness because it presents you with so many stumbling blocks: thinks to get angry, annoyed, irritable, resentful about - and that's not even beginning to think about the danger of getting self-satisfied.

2 Christianity is NOT about Thinking you are good, or thinking you are better than the next person. Again, a widely held misconception. Those church-people: they all think they're better than anyone else. Of course, anyone who listens to the words we say will know this isn't true. We spend more time than most people admitting that things have gone wrong and asking God to forgive us. In other words, we aren't better, or worse, than the next person: we are sinners, just as they are.

It's people like the ones who are filled with such vitriolic hatred towards Maxine Carr - as if she were some kind of a monster - who are the ones who think they are better than the next person. Anyone who is a Christian will have a lot more realism about what's in their own heart, to make them cautious about judging and condemning someone else.

3 Christianity is NOT about Trying hard to please God. As if life was like passing an exam. For every mistake or wrong action you get marks deducted; for every good deed or virtuous act, you get marks added. At the end of the day, you would pass if the balance of those minuses and pluses worked out as a pass. The trouble is, no one knows, or no one is telling, what the pass mark is: 25%? 45%? OK, but suppose it's 98%? or 100%?

4 Christianity is NOT about Trying to sort out our ultimate destiny. This may, perhaps, be slightly more controversial? We Christians have sometimes preached the Gospel, as if the important thing about it was that it provided a guarantee about what happens to us when we die. As if the important thing about being saved was getting into heaven, instead of going to hell. All the medieval imagery, and all the jokes about arriving at the gates of heaven and being vetted by St Peter, feed on and contribute to this idea.

And no doubt, judgement and heaven and hell are realities to ponder seriously; but to my mind, they are not the great priorities of what Christianity is about. Christianity is much more down-to- earth, feet-on-the-ground, living for the present moment, than that.

When the woman with the flow of blood reached out and touched the hem of Jesus' garment, Jesus said to her, Daughter, your faith has saved you; go in peace, and be healed of your disease. When Jesus went on to Jairus' house and took his dead daughter's hand and said to her Talitha coum, which means, Little girl, get up! she got up and began to walk around - that was what being saved meant for her. It wasn't hereafter - it was life from the dead here and now; it was healing and wholeness here and now, so that that woman could live a normal life in the community, among people, rather than as an unclean outcast.

Christianity is about being saved, but being saved is something for here and now. Being saved is about having and enjoying the best quality of life and character of life that is possible; and these come from relating to a God who is real, and present, and active in the world; the God who created us, and who desires for us only what is good.

So how does this happen? What IS Christianity all about?

John 14.23 says: Jesus answered [Judas], 'Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make tour home with them.' There are many texts in the New Testament that you could use to sum up what being a Christian is all about, but this is quite a good one.

1 It's about Loving Jesus. I know someone who has said to me, this is the part she finds hard; because when she reads the Gospels what she sees is the harsh, forbidding things Jesus sometimes said. Hard things, to make people see the importance of their moral choices. What we do and say and think matters, we are accountable. But they are not meant to frighten us away. Look at him rather like that woman, who wanted to touch just the hem of his cloak, knowing that one touch would save her.

2 Keep his word. i.e. Know what Jesus says (read, listen to it) treasure it, respect it, DO it. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Jesus says. Jesus' teaching is meant to be intensely practical, instructions for actual living - it is what the people who call themselves his followers are supposed to do. (Looking at some of the people who call themselves Christians, including some of the world leaders, you might not always know this!)

3 God will love you, and the Father, and Jesus, will come to you and make their home with you. This is a very direct promise, that God will be with those who love him and live in his way. And this is a promise, a truth, an experience, which is meant to be ours every day.

Just as evidence that this is not just one verse, and different from all the rest of the New Testament, let me compare it with another similar one which is also often used to explain what Christianity is all about, and what becoming a Christian involves: Revelation 3.20, a classic verse of invitation to salvation and life: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door,, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me.

So, following that list of what Christianity is not about, it is about:

loving Jesus keeping his word receiving the love of God living in the presence of God, living with God, day by day.

I have come back from Eastbourne with renewed ambitions: That no one in this congregation will ever be able to say, But I didn't know that was what being a Christian was about. That the quality of our worship and fellowship and life together will be such that people will say: God is there. And that recognising this, they will go on to say: And I want some of that.

Preached in St Nicholas church, Marston, May 16, 2004