A sermon preached by the Revd Dr Trevor Jamison at a Churches Together in North Shields Joint Service, held at Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church, 27th July 2025
Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:6-13
This service was not livestreamed
‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’ (18:32) – God would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, that puts paid to any hope I had of treating you to a fire and brimstone sermon! Thirty years and more of preaching and I’ve still to deliver one; it will just have to wait for another day. Instead, let’s think about my relationship with British Telecom.
The house where I live is owned by the church. In our tradition the place where you house a minister is called a “manse.” The church also provides the broadband internet connection, which comes via BT. Since the contract is with an organisation, not an individual, it a BT Business account. Recently, when there was a problem with the internet connection, I contacted BT and arranged for a visit by an engineer to fix it. The date was set, and they would turn up between 8.00 a.m. and 1.00 p.m. So at 3.15 p.m. they rolled up and sorted out the problem.
Now, however, BT Business was more aware of me, the individual, and since then I have been receiving various business-oriented promotional emails from them. A recent one caught my attention because it was offering me “Five Ways to Get Ahead of the Competition.” That sounded good, but then I thought to myself, “Who is the competition?” “With whom am I competing?”
Is it the Baptists? Maybe it’s the Methodists. Could it be the Catholics, or alternatively, the Anglicans? When it comes to connecting people with God, never mind just connecting them to the internet, it’s a crowded marketplace. Of course, I don’t see my sisters and brothers in Christ as the competition. I don’t look at the others who are members of Churches Together in North Shields, and say to myself, “Now how can Saint Columba’s United Reformed Church get ahead of them?” – at least, not most of the time anyway!
More seriously, though, I don’t talk about the Christian churches here in North Shields as “the competition” because it sounds nonsensical. If the language of competition between churches does begin to sound as though it is making sense then that’s a pretty good indication that there is something wrong with the churches, or something wrong with individuals within those congregations who think in such ways.
So if I am looking for my competition I must look elsewhere. And it’s with talk of “the competition” in my mind that I have come to the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Christians living in Colossae.
‘See that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.’ (2:8) As far as identifying the competition is concerned, Paul has a wider vision than I have … and a much wider one than British Telecom: philosophy, empty deceit, and human tradition; the elemental spirits of the universe. To me, that sounds like a greater challenge even than the one posed by the Baptists!
The competition we face is what you might call “worldly values” ‘philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition,’ as Saint Paul puts it. That’s not to say that all human attempts to understand reality (philosophy), or all human traditions are inherently bad; and that Christian churches must be against them. It’s simply to point out that there are powerful value-systems, practices and traditions that don’t start from the same place that Christians are supposed to start from, and as a result sometimes they are in tension with Christian faith and sometimes they are in flat contradiction to it.
Think about that marketing email from BT, it assumed that as the holder of business account I must be in competition with someone; that I must be striving to get ahead of others; that I must be seeking advantage, which in turn will disadvantage them. That may make some sense in a commercial environment – some sense – but does any of that sound like a good basis for a Christian worldview, or the basis for Christian lifestyle and practice? I think not.
Yet the seeking of advantage, the achievement of power and status, is a thread that runs powerfully through this world. Businesses are in competition with each other. So are nations, all seeking economic growth – the first priority of our own government we are told – all forwarding their own interests, and sometimes pursuing national interests through threats, violence and warfare. You don’t need me to tell you that. You just have to read the papers, watch the news, or surf the net (if you have a working internet connection) in order to know that.
This is nothing new, of course, and one way we know that it is nothing is to read Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, where he warns his readers against giving into claims to the exclusive allegiance that political powers demand. Emperors in his day, and presidents and premiers in ours, vie for supremacy, but for us it is ‘Christ … [in whom] the fullness of deity dwells bodily … [Christ, as Paul puts it] who is the head of every ruler and authority.’ (2:9)
Now there’s a warning to all churches as they, as we, seek to relate to governments and political powers-that-be in ways that are appropriate for followers of Christ: remember that human government – which, as Paul tells us elsewhere in his letters, comes as a gift from God (Romans 13) – such government is never the ultimate authority; something that proves harder for churches to remember the closer their relationship with such governments.
For me, one of the good things about being part of the United Reformed Church is that this healthy suspicion of the claims of secular government is written into our denominational DNA – ’Christ gives his Church a government distinct from the government of the state. In things that affect obedience to God the Church is not subordinate to the state, but must serve the Lord Jesus Christ, its only Ruler and Head’ as the Statement Concerning the Nature, Faith and Order of the United Reformed Church puts it. Fortunately for us URC folk, this history, along with our marginal social status, spares us from having to negotiate our way appropriately through an inherited closer relationship with the secular state.
As Churches, then, we are in competition with any entity – commercial, economic or political – if it is based upon the acquisition of advantage through power, whether that’s financial, political or military advantage. And that stance flows from our understanding of the nature of God, the God that the Apostle Paul says dwells fully and bodily in Jesus Christ. (2:9) Power and status, if you believe the ways and traditions of the world, comes through taking; with God, though, it comes through giving.
Jesus, who Paul says is ‘the head of every ruler and authority’ (2:10) achieves this status through the giving of himself for the sake of others. We, who were helpless – ‘dead in trespasses’ as Paul puts it (2:13) – have been made alive through his death upon the cross (2:14). Indeed the political leaders of his time, with their all their military cohorts; the ones who thought they held all the power; the ones who believed they had disposed of a competitor when they crucified Jesus, were, so to speak, ‘disarmed’ (21:5) by God on the day of resurrection.
And God did all of this without destroying or sweeping anyone away. Just glance back to Abraham, even as we come towards the end of this sermon, which has spent more time with Paul. Abraham thought he had to persuade God into being merciful. He thought he had to haggle with God so that God could be persuaded or cajoled into doing all that was possible in the circumstances to avoid destroying a part of God’s beloved creation.
Perhaps Abraham went back home to his tent thinking he had talked God down from destruction. Looking back at that incident, though, and thinking about God’s character, made known to us through seeing God fully dwelling and at work in Jesus Christ, I’ve a strong suspicion that Abraham was pushing against a very open door. God does not see humankind as competition to be got ahead of or even destroyed. Instead, God sees us as creatures for whom it is worth giving things up, even at some cost, in order that we might live and flourish.
And since this is how God sees us, and how God works with us, through Jesus, for our advantage, then that must affect how we relate to others in today’s world. We are not all about taking advantage, but about giving to others, because God to gives to us. This puts us quite out of sync with how things are seen in what so often gets called “the real world”. BT Business might even call such giving rather than taking the Church’s “unique selling point” – the thing that’s supposed to set Christians apart from the so-called competition; to give, as God has given to us through the one who has given to us through the head over ever ruler and authority, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.