GOD LOVES YOU : NOW STOP WORRYING
“There is probably no God: now stop worrying and enjoy your life”
The text for my sermon today comes an advertisement placed by atheists on the side of 800 buses in the UK. The campaign has created quite a stir; and indeed it’s since spread to several other countries.
It’s been very controversial of course; and in some countries the campaign has been stopped or watered down after complaints to the courts. I think that’s probably rather a pity because the great thing about such public statements and controversies is that, however much you disagree with the message itself, it does at least get people talking and thinking about God. For or against, but God becomes a talking-point, and in a society that tends to ignore God most of the time, that can’t be entirely a bad thing.
So let’s think about what the atheists are saying:
“There is probably no God: now stop worrying and enjoy your life”
It’s quite nice, by the way, that they do hedge their bets by including the word “probably”; I suppose this was done to bring in the agnostics as well as the atheists!
But the really interesting thing about the slogan is that it’s based on the assumption that God is a source of worry - if we can just get rid of God, then we can stop worrying. Whereas belief in God gets in the way of living life to the full, he stops us enjoying life.
The underlying picture here is of a God of wrath. A fierce God, a stern, unbending God of judgment. A God to be afraid of. A God who is therefore a source of worry, of unease.
Up to a point, of course, you can see what they’re getting at. There is a lot in the Bible about the “wrath” of God. We are indeed told to “fear” God. And some Christian preaching has certainly emphasised this side of God.
I’m thinking of so-called “hellfire preaching”, preaching designed to scare people into salvation. The late medieval church was rather fond of this. Remember how churches then were so often dominated by a terrifying picture of the last judgment, with vivid depiction of sinners being dragged down into the flames of hell. Many Christians in those times were indeed basically scared of God, and even possibly of Jesus, which is no doubt why they fell back on the more reassuring figure of Mary.
But fortunately, or by the grace of God, the Reformation came along to rescue us from all this. (Which is not, by the way, to deny that later Protestantism didn’t often fall back into preaching this kind of scary gospel).
I don’t know whether you’ve been to see the film of Martin Luther that is currently on at the Star St Exupéry (though admittedly now only at the rather inconvenient hour of 11 in the morning). The film brings out well how scared of God the young monk Martin was. We see him lying on the floor, wrestling with his sin. His religion brings him no comfort. He is left with the agonised question: “how can I find a gracious God?”
Then of course, Luther starts reading the Bible for himself – something people didn’t, or couldn’t, do very much in those days. And he discovers that the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is not like that at all. Above all in the writings of St Paul, Luther finds the comfort he was looking for.
As in today’s reading from Ephesians:
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved...
Now we see that God is above all a God of mercy, a God of love. And, following from this – the vital key to Luther’s subsequent preaching - we are saved “by grace”. In other words, God’s salvation comes to us as a pure gift; we do not have to earn it, we do not have to struggle with evil and defeat “the devil and all his works” by our own efforts, because it’s all been done for us already by Christ. This realisation of God’s free and loving gift of salvation in Jesus Christ came to Luther as a tremendous relief. It released him from the fear of God which had been tormenting him.
The other great Reformer, John Calvin, built on the same foundation established by Luther. Now we’re going to hear a lot about Calvin this year, the 500th anniversary of his birth; and indeed some of us went to see the excellent Calvin exhibition the other day at the Protestant médiathèque on Quai St Thomas.
We were shown round by the librarian, Roland Kauffmann. I was struck by one thing he said. Calvin tends to have the reputation as a rather gloomy man with a rather gloomy concept of God. But actually Calvin’s basic message about salvation was, like Luther: there is nothing we can do to ensure our salvation; and there is nothing we need to do, because it has all been done for us already in Jesus Christ. It’s out of our hands. Therefore we can relax, we can stop worrying.
Which brings us back to the slogan of the atheists: stop worrying and enjoy your life. Now this is not so very different from the message of the great reformers, though they arrive at it by a very different route. The atheists can stop worrying because the scary God does not exist (probably!). Luther and Calvin can stop worrying because God is not a scary God at all, but a loving God who has gone to infinite pains to save us from all that is wrong with our lives and with the world. A loving God who has gone to infinite pains.
Which in turn brings us to today’s Gospel which sums the whole thing up in those so familiar words:
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
These words, John 3.16, used to be read at every Anglican Communion service as part of what the old Prayer Book calls the “comfortable words”, the words of comfort. And the message is the same: relax; stop worrying; because God loves you and he wants above all things to save you. In other words, God is on our side; he is not an enemy to be feared but a Friend to be loved. Or as Paul put it, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”
The atheists say: “stop worrying and enjoy your life”. But although, as I said, that in itself is not so far from the message of the New Testament, it won’t actually do as a summary of the gospel of Jesus. “Stop worrying” is fine, but the sequel “and enjoy your life” is a weak anti-climax.
Is that the purpose of life, is that all we are made for: just to enjoy ourselves, to have fun? Well, I’ve nothing against having fun, but surely we need something a bit more robust as the purpose of existence?
“Enjoy your life” is basically an appeal to selfish individualism. If you look at the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’s message was more like this: stop wasting your energy worrying, and put all your effort into seeking the kingdom of heaven. As we often sing:
Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.
This is what life is all about, not just enjoying yourself. Though if you concentrate on seeking the kingdom of God and his righteousness, the chances are that you will find enjoyment. Enjoyment not just in the sense of having fun, but the much deeper and lasting joy that comes from serving God and your neighbour. You will not just enjoy yourself; you will enjoy your neighbour and you will enjoy God.
So if I were able to put a slogan on 800 British buses, I think I might choose the following:
“God loves you. Now stop worrying and enjoy him for ever.”
Reverend John Murray, Strasbourg Anglican Chaplaincy
4th Sunday of Lent, Year B
Ephesians 2.1-10; John 3.14-21
