Readings: John 6:56-69; Ephesians 6:10-20
On Friday night, Matt, Nathan and I did what most of you have done, and went to see Les Miserables at the Regal. It was a great production and David, of course was the star of the show. If you don`t know the story it is about a criminal, Jean Valjean, who after being jailed for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread is released on parole. But he finds that he will be an outcast forever, and is embittered and full of hate. However Valjean is taken in by a saintly bishop, and when he steals the church`s silverware and is caught, the Bishop lies to the police to save him. He tells the police that he in fact gave the silverware to Valjean, adding another piece for good measure. After this significant event, Valjean decides to start a new life, contributing as much as he can to his community. However his new life comes at a cost. He breaks his parole and changes his name and is followed throughout the story by Inspector Javert, who is determined to recapture his errant prisoner. The story goes on and involves the care of a girl and a rebellion, but the main character, Valjean, remains throughout the story, an honourable and upright person, and when he has a chance to kill the Inspector, he lets him go instead.

The music is fantastic but the story of Jean Valjean, one of being reborn, of living a life consistent with his belief in love and forgiveness and God, is quite inspirational.

We forget how faith can and should have a big bearing on the life we lead. That is, do our actions really reflect the faith that we have deep inside of us? This is what the musical reminds us of, and what the readings are on about today.

It is interesting that the reading from John starts half way through the reading from last week about Jesus being the bread of life. From that reading we focused not on the idea that we and the people of his day were really eating and drinking him, but on the symbolic notion that through Jesus we see what life in and with God can be. Through Jesus we are given the heart of faith, which is not about what to believe but how to believe. He brings us the message and love of God, in which transformation can occur for ourselves, our society and our world.

In last week`s reading the Jews who opposed him couldn`t get the message, and kept asking whether it was possible that Jesus was going to give his flesh for them to eat or that something magical might happen if he does. Today it is the turn of his followers, who believe he has gone completely over the top. Jesus` claim that he had come to replace the Jewish law as the source of life was pretty radical. Yet Jesus declares, `the spirit gives life, the flesh is unprofitable`. John wants people to see that the true meaning of Jesus is through the spirit and through faith, through people opening themselves to a new way of being and allowing themselves to be reborn to a new life. Just as Jean Valjean did in Les Mis. Not by following the letter of the law. But by following their heart.

As Bill Loader says, `John`s religious language has one single core claim about life in relation to God. Jesus is the major image or icon in whom we see God`s light and life. The law is secondary to the life available with and through God`. Marcus Borg agrees, suggesting what makes Christianity Christian is centring in the God known and met in Jesus. In this way Jesus can become the bread of life, the everlasting spring, the light to us and to the world and the way to fullness of life.

Jesus has therefore turned what was a faith based on laws and rules into something far more fundamental, something that connects to our innermost selves. Transformation can only come from within, and from God, but once it takes place, the effect of it can be seen outwardly. For Jesus was not only intimately connected to God, he was intimately connected to those around him.

This way of seeing Jesus leads to a vision and form of Christianity which is deeply rooted in these two journeys, the inward and outward. While Marcus Borg also talks about this duality I would like to revisit Elizabeth OConnor`s ideas, with some thoughts from Borg.

Elizabeth O`Connor was a founding member of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, and suggested the inward journey for a Christian involves three engagements.

1. The first engagement is with oneself. To consciously move toward self knowledge, things that influence us, restrict us and restrict our response to others. This journey inward to our true selves helps us become whole, but unique people. People worthy of love and therefore able to love. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer`s Letters and Papers from Prison, he points out that the scripture verse, `Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect`, should actually be translated, `Ye therefore shall be whole or complete as your heavenly father is whole`. We often are divided, influenced by events and feelings that lead to contradictory thoughts and acts. One part makes resolutions, the other knows they will never be met; one part says they love unconditionally while another judges the people around them harshly. We need to give attention to our own prejudices, our own inadequacies and our own needs, so that our journey to wholeness is not compromised. Borg would say this is personal transformation into the likeness of Christ.

2. The second engagement is with God. It is not just head stuff, which I often get stuck in, but heart stuff. Ultimately our vision is deeply centred on God, who is at the heart of everything, the ground of our being as Paul Tillich would say. Many of us, including me, often think of God without really connecting to him, deep in our innermost selves, and yet this is what we are called to do through prayer, meditation, retreats and quiet times. The God within us is the power within us for transformation and renewal but we need to allow him space and time to influence and energise us. O`Connor calls these our spiritual exercises. Borg refers to this inner life as the way, the way to be followed in which beliefs are secondary. A way to be followed every day.

3. The third aspect of the inward journey is the engagement with others. And in this case what we are doing today is what O`Connor is on about. A Christian community is bound up with our whole concept of the church as a people committed to God in Jesus Christ and to one another. A deep commitment as described by Borg. Gordon Cosby, in O`Connor`s book, put it this way, `It says to a specific group of people that I am willing to be with you. I am willing to belong to you, I am willing to be the people of God with you. This is never a tentative commitment that I can withdraw from. It is a commitment to a group of miserable, faltering sinners who make with me a covenant to live in depth until we see in each other the mystery of Christ himself and until in these relationships we come to know ourselves as belonging to the Body of Christ.`

O`Connor says that in a Christian community where the basis is love and forgiveness, people can be free to act or speak, can be real together, can journey together. For when we gather together in Christ`s name we agree to live a life in depth, a life away from the superficial and inconsequential. And it is through this community, and for us it is here at Wembley Downs, that we are supported, nurtured, loved, and sometimes chastised, but always encouraged and forgiven.

So the inward journey involves knowing ourselves better and more honestly, growing closer to God and God`s spirit and being involved in a community of faith, belonging to the body of Christ in the world.

But there is an outward journey both for us and the church. A journey that involves engaging with, and influencing the world around us, just as Jesus did.

As O`Connor writes, `If engagement with ourselves does not push back horizons so that we can see neighbours we did not see before, if prayer does not drive us out into some concrete involvement at a point of the world`s need and if community of our Christian brothers and sisters does not deliver us from false securities and safe opinions and known ways then the inward journey is betraying us.` The outward journey takes what we find in our quiet dwelling places and uses it for service in the world, whether locally or globally.

Therefore these two journeys exist together, so that the inward must not be sacrificed to the outward and the outward to the inward for both are needed to follow God. We hear this message in the reading from Paul today who is writing from prison, and everything that he believes in is being challenged, including his own life. We see a Paul who is weighed down and fatigued by the call to announce the new kingdom against many who don`t want to hear. Yet he remains faithful and talks about putting on the armour of God, to be ready for the fight. This armour, the shield and sword, base plate and helmet, is a metaphor for personal empowerment in relation to Christ. It is about empowerment that leads to reconciliation, love and overcoming barriers as Bill Loader would say, not military might. It is our faith that God, who is in Christ, leads the charge and enables us to engage in the world which is full of powers, political and personal, which actively fight against the reconciling love of God. This God, the one we connect to at our deepest levels, is the one that enables us to carry on, and in time allows us to reach outwards to others with hope for new life.

Father, son and spirit are all words for God. Jesus is a model of what we as humans are required to do and say and be. He shows us what a life lived with God is like, a life based on an invitation from within, not a law from outside. He shows us what our faith should be like, something to be lived rather than followed. He is the window through which we discern what it means to be brothers and sisters together under God`s banner and in God`s love. The God who is at the heart of Christ is the God in us, always.