Vicar interferes with sermon again

Well, my latest sermon, based on “Velvet Elvis” by Rob Bell, seems to have gone down well. This despite the Vicar doing his usual act of interfering and asking me to do things differently form what I had planned. Fortunately I am used to him doing this now, and almost expect it. And to be fair, it is usually an improvement. But it does rile me that he does not implement his recommendations in his own sermons.

My son was on the PA system that night, and resisted all urges to turn me off.

My sermon was primarily about spiritual maturity, not getting dogmatic about things but being able to stretch ones faith and work with people who disagree rather than building exclusive doctrinal walls. Since it was a communion service, I was going to ask people as a practical exercise to approach the table with either a more or a less sacramental idea than they normally would. Mr Vicar extended this, by making me ask people to get up form their chairs and form groups – i.e. transubstantiation in that corner, consubstantiation over there, symbolic remembrance over here, etc. The idea was that people would then discuss these ideas, and possibly move to another group. Of course the groups comprised like-minded people, so it wasn’t 100% successful. But it made people think, and that was the main thing.

The disturbing thing is that our Vicar didn’t really seem to be aware of the range of opinion, and found this line of teaching to be quite informative. Since the Eucharist is central to Christian worship, I would like to think that an ordained minister in the Church of England has been fully trained in the theology around it.

Praying to Saints and Angels

So..

It was my turn to lead the workplace fellowship Bible study. I forgot until it was time to go. So I had a minimum number of minutes to get ready - couldn't even remember where we were up to in the gospel. So I jumped ahead to the story of the Gadarene demoniac, and did some standard questions on that, and in the end the Bible study went reasonably well.

I noticed that the only woman in the group had not said anything, so, by way of drawing her into the topic for inclusiveness I asked her what the perspective is on demons, exorcism etc in her church, which happens to be Roman Catholic. She was glad that I had brought her into the discussion, but was rather caught on the hop, not sure what to say, so she said that they normally pray to the Archangel Michael.

You can imagine that in our predominantly non-conformist evangelical fellowship this was met with a rather stunned pause. I was able to state that other views exist on the topic of praying to angels, and then later on disagreed with the Pentecostal guy so that RC lady wouldn't feel too 'got at'.

But then the next week, she brought along a printed copy of the prayer to Michael, so when while praying for the carol service I prayed against the forces of Darkness, she got out this pre-printed prayer and read it out.

Now in our fellowship prayers are normally net with a whole hearted 'AMEN', so when she had finished it was very obvious that only one person managed a half hearted amen that might have been a cough.

Now personally, I can't say amen to a prayer addressed to anyone other than a member of the trinity. To me the Bible makes it plain that we have access direct to God in prayer, without need for intermediaries. But I did feel sorry for her, trying to contribute, and trying to follow up on my query the previous week, so afterwards I thanked her for bringing the prayer in, and explained why it was not our normal practice. This lead on to a good conversation about the RC view of prayers to angels, the single communion of believers dead and alive, and that we ask each other to pray so why not ask those who have gone before, etc. She also emphasised that they do not worship saints and angels. So we parted as friends.

But on a theological note, I remain convinced that simply saying you don't worship something means little when you bow before its statue, kiss its statue, attribute miracles to the something, or answers to prayer to the something, or assume that anyone in the world can pray simultaneously to the something ie omnipresence/omniscience...then even if you say you don't worship it then you have in practice made a god out of it, and I still think it breaches the first few commandments, and that throughout the Bible any attempt at communication between the dead and the living is forbidden eg the Saul/Samuel incident at Endor, and Lazarus and Dives. And fundamentally, prayer to anyone other than God makes them take the place that should be occupied by God alone. Which is a polite way of saying that despite her assurances to the contrary, it is idolatry.