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That God should have chosen an obscure Palestinian tribe – not a particularly civilized or attractive tribe either – to be the vehicle of his universal purpose for humanity, is difficult to believe. But that this purpose should have been finally realized in the person of a Galilean peasant executed under Tiberius, and that this event was the turning point in the life of mankind and the key to the meaning of history – all this is so hard for the human mind to accept that even the Jews themselves were scandalized, while to the Greek philosophers and the secular historians it seemed sheer folly.

So the remarkable cultural historian, Christopher Dawson posed the problem for many in the first century and many since. It is certainly, as we have seen and know, still true today. In terms of "the facts", that primary value in the modern world, all that is not sheer folly. It is the truth.

That is why Christians have a duty to remind the world of these most fundamental of all facts. For it is what actually happened in history. It was the real intervention of God in the life of mankind directly at certain times on the clock and in certain places in the world.

That is why the Incarnation, almighty God becoming man, which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith is also the centre of history. It is utterly reasonable that our chronological system takes the year of the Incarnation as its point of reference and reckons in years backwards and forwards from that fixed centre.

Christopher Dawson also reminds us, too, that there was a uniqueness about these facts. I quote:

No doubt it may be said that the idea of divine incarnation is not peculiar to Christianity. But if we look at the typical examples of these non-Christian theories of divine incarnation, such as the orthodox Hindu expression of it in the Bhagavad-gita, we shall see that it has no such significance for history as the Christian doctrine possesses. It is not only that the divine figure of Khrishna is mythical and unhistorical; it is that no divine incarnation [in Hinduism] is regarded as unique but as an example of a recurrent process which repeats itself again and again ad infinitum in the eternal recurrence of the cosmic cycle.

So the simple facts relating to Jesus of Nazareth need to be asserted and witnessed to by Christians still, without apology, in the year of our Lord (Anno Domini) 2020. The incarnation was as real as that. However, it is hard so to witness to – we have examined some of the causes. But it always has been hard to witness to. However. we are in a situation of epochal proportions.

For the Church and the Western world that has been shaped by the Christian Faith is going through a huge crisis. Again this is nothing new. For there were two preceding crises of a similar magnitude.

Let me quote Richard Rex, a Cambridge history Professor, who explains:

The first of these was the one that gripped the Church from the Council of Nicaea to the Council of Chalcedon and beyond. This was an agonized and church-rending argument over the question, 'What is God?'The second great crisis was that of the Reformation … it was an agonized and church-rending argument over the question, 'What is the Church?'Our crisis, at least as great as those, is all about a question that would once have been expressed as 'What is man?' The fact that this wording is now itself seen as problematic, is a symptom of the very condition it seeks to diagnose. What is it, in other words, to be human?

Then he goes on to say that the problem includes what he calls "an entire alphabet of beliefs and practices." His list features such symptoms as "abortion, bisexuality, contraception, divorce, euthanasia, family, gender, homosexuality, and infertility treatment."

So what of the future? Well, in this last paper I'm going to suggest that we, and other Christians, aim, with God's help to do four things: first, RECOVER VISION; secondly, RESTORE CONCERN; thirdly, RENEW EVANGELISM; and, fourthly, REBUILD THE COMMUNITY.

So, first, RECOVER VISION

I should say to start with, these four aims came from J I Packer in his book Knowing Man which I commend but is now out of print. Published in 1978 it is still worth reading. These aims are from a short chapter at the end of part 1 entitled Counterattack.

He there writes:

But what can Christians do? What should they be trying to do? … I must reply: we must aim, with God's help to do four things together. First, recover vision, the vision of true humanness under God, the goal towards which Christian action in society must always be directed.

Then he comments on those other three aims.

But what is "true humanness under God"?

Made "in God's image", it is surely people being more godly and godlike. Jesus said:

You must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5.48).

And Paul spoke of someone who has and needs to cultivate …

… the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of the creator" (Colossians 3.10).

All that presupposes a person is "born again" by the Spirit of God. But that is only the first step. Then there is a life-time of "being renewed in knowledge after the image of the creator."

The original is "into knowledge" which suggests progressive understanding. But whatever it means, the fundamental truth of biblical anthropology is that we are made "in the image of God" (Genesis 1.26-27).

So, first, we can say that Paul understands true humanness under God to be marked by rationality – the ability to acquire knowledge and to reason. Certainly if, as Genesis reveals, the man and the woman were to have dominion over the earth as God obviously had infinitely over the universe, they needed a measure of reason. Similarly reason was necessary for the first pair to understand God speaking to them.

Secondly, creativity is a mark of true humanness – that is obvious. We are to be renewed "after the image of the creator". So it is good to be creative and we want to help people be creative in society today

Thirdly, dominion is also a mark – control over created things. Let me quote Packer over this:

Let them have dominion' – God made us with the intention that we should control our environment by harnessing and managing the forces of nature; thus our lives become an image of God's own lordship over all things. This amounts to saying that God summons men to create a culture, a civilization, in which through cooperation one with another life is made richer than otherwise it could be … 'Let them have dominion' is in effect God's directive to us to develop technology as a means of mastery. The creator is glorified when the possibilities of his creation are realized and developed … responsibly.

Fourthly, there is righteousness or obeying God. That was and is right at the heart of true humanness. God's good will for the first pair to "be fruitful and multiply" was essential to the survival of the species! And God's will is always good, being our maker's instructions.

So essential to true humanness and its flourishing are human rationality, creativity, dominion, and righteousness. Therefore, being "renewed in knowledge after the image of the creator" or sanctification isn't just becoming more "religious". It is being more human as God intended. That is the vision we should have and be working for in our own lives and in the Public Square as we are able.

After recovering that vision, secondly, we are to RESTORE CONCERN.

And Packer writes on this:

Avoid the tolerance trap, by which I mean a willingness never to tolerate the intolerable. I know that tolerant inaction is a prime virtue in a permissive society, but I also know that all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

I recently read a piece entitled Terminal Niceness. It is about good orthodox people who are …

… too open and un-militant to sustain orthodoxy … [and who] on the basis of the liberality born of decency and hope, cannot defend their terminally Nice churches against those who will liberalize them at any cost. They also fail, in their kindly consideration of errorists, to give due weight to the association of 'liberalism' (or 'moderates') with pure Evil and thus the attempt to destroy orthodox Christianity and orthodox Christians; [and this is by] a tireless application of lies and deceit and manipulation that must be clearly, forcefully, and with equal tirelessness, identified in all our dealings with those who have fallen for it, and not treat it as just a 'difference of opinion'.

But people are rightly concerned not to be "judgmental". Can I say, that, one, in such a situation you must not "judge" the people or person considered to be errant; but judge the error they are promoting.

So, two, we all ought to cultivate the virtue of "meekness". And remember it was Moses …

who was very meek, more than all people who were on the face or the earth (Numbers 12.3).

But what does it mean? Paul, who uses the word most in the New Testament, was educated and would have known how it was used in Greek literature:

In the New Testament the Greek word praus is translated "meek" in the beatitudes, "blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5.5); the same word, praus is translated "gentle" later on in Matthew 11.29 where Jesus says, "take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle (praus) and lowly in heart."

Aristotle, the Greek philosopher says in his Nicomachean Ethics regarding meekness/gentleness that it is the "mean" between too much and too little anger (I quote):

In respect of anger also we have excess, deficiency, and the observance of the mean. These states are virtually without names, but as we call a person of the middle character gentle (praus), let us name the observance of the mean, Gentleness (praotës); while of the extremes, he that exceeds may be styled irascible, and his vice Irascibility; and he that is deficient, spiritless, and the deficiency Spiritlessness.

How we need to pray for "meekness" in these difficult situations, so we don't spiritually die of "terminal niceness". But at the same time we need humility to make judgments in the right way, while also instinctively thinking, "there but for the grace of God go I."

So, restore concern.

Then thirdly, RENEW EVANGELISM making it our top priority to win our fellow men and women to faith in Christ.

Regarding bringing men and women to faith in Christ I believe we have consciously to think about re-institutionalizing the Christian Faith more than we have been.

Yes, we must continue to think of the "foreground" that Gehlen talked about, with things like Christianity Explored, Alpha and Franklin Graham's visit, invitation services and mission events – all of which are essential.

But we need also to think about contributing to the "background". That is where an environment is created where it is taken for granted you can, and will, talk about God and Jesus Christ and being at Church.

Thank God, that at Jesmond we have institutionalized Carols by Candlelight, and the Holiday Club is becoming institutionalized to good effect. But both have taken years.

However, they are not evangelism in the Public Square. For that, I fear, at the moment somehow Government has to be involved.

Setting up Christian schools fits the Bill if they can be unapologetically Christian. So we must try to make that a priority. For more schools we know are needed for Tyneside. But that involves huge time and huge effort – I know from being involved in the setting up of the Vardy Schools and our own attempt at a Free School.

Of course, a danger when the Government is to be involved, at whatever level, is this.

Christians choose projects or causes that deal only with things most people will agree on as being good, because of natural law or basic morality. But then the precise Christian message that grounds the natural law is forfeited. It is almost a matter of indifference what one's faith or metaphysics are. As Nigel Biggar, the Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, has said, this is where …

… the church is permitted to speak only in confirmation, not in criticism; only to second, not to propose. The Church may proclaim more loudly the good the world already knows; but not the good that comes to the world as news.

There comes a point in a nation's history when things are so awry that someone has to shout "No!" This happened in Germany and Karl Barth and others said, No! in the 1930s to denounce Nazism.

We are nothing like Germany. But, nevertheless, when homosexual relationships have become a primary value in our schools and universities, and transgenderism is venerated, something new is called for that is not just asking for something that all can agree with, but says that a change is needed because God and his will are being flouted to our peril.

However, nothing will happen until there is believing prayer. It is quite clear that we are up against more than intransigent individuals with political skills that take us in the wrong direction whether in Church or State.

Paul is quite clear (Ephesians 6.12):

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

That is why we need to "put on the whole armour of God" (Ephesians 6.11) – truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God. And we are to be …

… praying at all times in the spirit, with all prayer and supplication" (Ephesians 6.18).

And that is an essential factor in the way to true humanness as God intended.

So we must renew evangelism.

Fourthly, and finally, we must REBUILD THE COMMUNITY.

What, then, is fundamental about being human in God's image? Answer: God has made us social beings. Certainly in Genesis 2.18 God says, "It is not good that the man should be alone." And there is a hint of Trinitarian plurality in Genesis 1.26, "Let us make man in our image" and to which we are to conform.

We are made for relationships - first with God and to worship him, then relationships in the family, then in various intermediate communities (the church for the Christian being the most important) and then relationships in the State as we thought about yesterday.

So healthy human communities are needed for true humanness, As the poet John Donne famously said: "No man is an island". Among the first lessons you learn from the Old Testament is that we are not born just as human individuals. We have a corporate personality. Israel and Judah are names of individuals and tribal-national groups. So what has gone wrong in the modern world?

An important thing is the batting order of the ten commandments. For example, as Ian Garrett helpfully pointed out at our Education Service at JPC, the first of the second table above murder, adultery and theft is "honouring" father and mother. It seems the health of the family is the first lesson for society.

But the transition commandment, the fourth commandment, on God's relationship with the human community at large (and the longest of all the commandments), to "remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy" (Exodus 20.8), is generally ignored by people who would be conservative on, say, "adultery".

Craig Gay, of Regent College, Vancouver, and a Christian social scientist, in his book on capitalism, writes:

It is interesting and probably instructive that the one commandment in the Decalogue modern consciousness is least able to appreciate is the commandment to observe the Sabbath.

That is because it has been so ignored. And he goes on to argue that

the Sabbath symbolizes, and seems institutionally to have been intended to reinforce, a sharp distinction between God's creative activity and mankind's. The people of Israel … were … to put aside their own goals and projects, and to rest instead in the knowledge of God's goals and projects for them. Thus the Sabbath erected a fence around Israel's legitimate creative activity. It was a reassertion of creation and of Israel's createdness, and hence of the nation's contingency and dependence on God. Significantly business and commerce formed one of the principal threats to Sabbath observance in the Old Testament.

He then quotes Nehemiah 13.15-22 to prove his point.

Until the 1960s in the UK, most would have understood that. There was a firm tradition of Sunday Observance in Britain and the West. Certainly Roman Catholics and Anglicans agreed. There were some in the Reformed tradition that were antinomian. But the mainstream was clear.

The English Reformed tradition has argued that, one, the extremes of the Pharisees did not negate the basic Commandment; and, two, the early Church's transfer to Sunday, the day of Resurrection, instead of Saturday, was Apostolic. The Anglican Homilies are clear and the Canons today support them. And that transfer explained why the New Testament Christians were not to be judged by Judaizing parties over "days" and "sabbaths". So Constantine was institutionalizing what was already a special day by his decree on Sunday rest.

Even in the liberal 18th century you read in Blackstone's Commentaries:

The keeping one day in seven holy, as a time of relaxation and refreshment, as well as for public worship, is of admirable service to a State, considered merely as a civil institution

In the 19th century Lord Macaulay argued in the 10 hours bill:

We are not poorer in England, but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended … a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man … is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labour on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporal vigour.

But the loss of Sunday as a distinct day ensuring society as a whole has a rest corporately in the UK has been disastrous for community life in Britain.

J C Ryle was so prophetic when he wrote in Knots Untied – in Ryle style:

It is not too much to say that the prosperity or decay of English Christianity depends on the maintenance of the Christian Sabbath. Break down the fence which now surrounds Sunday, and our Sunday schools will soon come to an end. Let in the flood of worldliness and dissipation on the Lord's Day, without check or hindrance, and our congregations will soon dwindle away. … Nothing, in short, I believe, would so thoroughly advance the kingdom of Satan in England, as to withdraw legal protection from the Lord's Day. It would be a joy to the infidel; but it would be an insult and offence to God.

So, in the interests of rebuilding the community and re-institutionalizing the Christian faith, we ought to think about initiating a campaign to reduce and then stop Sunday Trading (except for necessary supplies) and apply these regulations to professional sport. This in the interests of family cohesion, the Christian faith, time for our politicians to think, sports injuries to be reduced, and society to rest. To underline, society as a whole needs a day of rest. That is why God has decreed that it is not any day in seven for rest but all are to rest on the same day (but as Jesus pointed out without Pharisaical legalism).

So where does that leave us? How should we conclude our thinking about the Christian faith and the Public Square?

By adding the most fundamental consideration of all.

When we think about the power of the State, we need to remember that Jesus Christ is not just head of the Church. In this present age, it is not God the Father but Jesus Christ the divine Son whose authority is mediated by the State. The risen Jesus said to his disciples that

all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (Matthew 28.18).

And 1 Corinthians 15.25 says that "he must reign until he has all his enemies under his feet." "Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father" (1 Corinthians 15.24).

So Jesus Christ is not only risen but reigning. And that is a fact, not a value!

Do we believe it?

For that is the ground of our confidence and hope for the Christian Faith and the Public Square.