Sunday 31st August 2008 Romans 12. 9-21 Matthew 16.21-28
I was born in the age of new revolutions, new ideals and new liberty. 1968! French students nearly brought down their goverment, Martin Luther King spoke of seeing the promised land, and masses protested against the Vietnam War. Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Roy Jenkins, pronounced that we lived in permissive society, and the old morals and certainties of the past seemed to many very outdated. Now was the time to live day by day and make love not war. Yet the Age of Aquarius never arrived; the Prague Spring was broken by Soviet invasion, the student strikes came to nothing, Martin Luther, Bobby Kennedy, were assasinated, Nixon was elected.
Beyond the 1960s the age of ideals seemed far away, if not something comical and farsical. In Britain next ten years seemed even bleaker, with fuel crises, three day weeks, and strikes. When my grandparents returned from two years in Belgium, the collapse of the value of the pound decimated what little savings they had. The saving grace was that the hey days of the 1960s had meant that they had quickly payed off their mortgage.
Another ten years down later and I was starting university and my generations version of the 1960s was in full swing. The Berlin Wall collapsed and with it the Soviet presence and the spectre of World War Three. TV and Computer technology was changing the way we thought of the world. Round the clock news meant we could watch minute by minute the first Gulf War unfold. The media or medium was becomming the message and institutions, political parties, and even royality, had to wake up to a new reality.
Our attentions were caught on a new kind of free marketism which taught us that if you wanted a job you had to study very hard and think less of changing the world. With no guarantees of employmet we became studius. Noses to the grind stone and less protesting, and no student sit ins.
Within that period of late 80s, early 90s, I began to be nagged by a feeling of vocation. Yet like many of my generation, I felt, and still do feel, a stranger in the Church, an outsider looking in. At Sixth Form, few of my classmates had anything to do with Christianity. Over a generation the church which had confidently planted new buildings seemed to be wobbling. A generation before most middle class Britains went to church and a good section of their children went to Sunday School. I went to Canterbury to study computing half thinking I would find answers. in a place of pilgrimage. I did make lots of Christian friends. But I found the Cathedral to be something of a Disney park (sorry) lacking warmth. And at that time , 1988, the student chaplaincy, which one would have expected to be bursting, had about 20-30 members.
At the end of a Decade of Evangelisation, three years ordained, I personally wondered where we we where spiritually as a nation. The "decade" seemed a daft idea, a bit like the BBC having a day of broadcasting. It was not helped by national leadership on the millennium which seemed to want to take Anno Domini out of it and make it a secular knees up, a bit like 'community sing-song' in Brave New World. The new century dawned in all kinds of visions and ideals and things seemed up-beat. Then on September 11th New York American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 changed our mood of optism. A new iron curtain seemed to be rising which tore across civilisations, religions and cultures.
I can see much of the optimism of 1968 in Romans 12 but I think that the reality of being a Christian (and growing a Christian presence) has to be rooted in discipleship. (Matthew 16) It's easy to claim rights or speak of love and tolerance and forget sacrifice and duty. The apostles, like Peter, probably expected some kind of snap revolution which would bring down the Romans either by blood or flower power. Jesus' path to Jerusalem indicated another, more profoud way. Love, to paraphrase McCartney, 'may be all we need', but that love has to be rooted in the Cross of the Saviour. Has the Christian community in this country really appreciated this over 40 years? Or was it something that we tried to jettison so as to make the message more user-friendly? Time will tell.
Each generation has its own challenges, joys and grief. The baby boomers of 1968 are now approaching retirement and they have their own legacy, good and bad. People like me now find myself sitting at desks actually incharge of something and thinking 'How does this work?' and 'What can I say of any use?' and 'Am I middle aged?' Beyond all my pessimism and efforts to rubbish 1968, I find a sacred place within and without which prompts me to see that God will not abandon us and the Body of Christ, despite it efforts, will succeed.
