‘How to be a better person’, like all the subjects we were looking at together before Christmas, is a huge question. You’d be right to ask me, ‘How on earth can you claim to know an answer to that that would satisfy everyone in the world, wherever they are and whatever they believe?’ Well, we’ve had one try last term, when
Dr Omar and I spoke on the topic: what is the purpose of human life. If anyone missed that, and wants to know what I said then, do ask me afterwards and I can get a handout to you. But today I’m going to answer just one part of that bigger question about human purpose and existence: what it may mean for someone to be a better Christian. As I’ve been saying all through these talks, different Christians will answer that question in different ways, and not every Christian here today may agree with me – but I’m sure if that’s so, we’ll find out about other possible answers in the question section. So here goes!

Even looking at ‘how to be a better Christian’ is no easy option – what do I mean by a Christian? If we take as our starting point that a Christian is someone who follows Jesus Christ, that gives us some idea. That is certainly the origin of the word Christian, a name given to people in the Greek city of Antioch who were among the first people after Jesus’ death and resurrection to decide to become his followers, and risked social stigma in making that decision. But several centuries later, the Roman Emperor Constantine decided that Christianity should become the official faith of the Roman Empire, and being Christian started to be a good thing for your career. In Britain the official state religion for centuries has been Christianity, and that turned into a default option. But in the twenty-first century, Britain is no longer an exclusively Christian society – as we can tell from our audience here today. And that legacy of a Christian Britain that’s no longer here can make it confusing to know what being a Christian means today. Now, the word ‘Christian’ can describe someone who believes in God and tries to live a good life, someone who thinks Jesus was a great teacher, someone who comes to church at Christmas, or someone who has a regular place in a church community.

Only God can say who is and who is not a Christian – someone inside a church who only comes because their parents used to come may not be, and someone outside a church who tries to find out and live out Jesus’ teaching may be. However, as far as I am concerned, following Jesus is not something you can do in isolation from other people. We learned before Christmas how Christians believe that there is relationship at the heart of God – anyone who wants to know in more detail what Christians believe about God is welcome to ask afterwards for my handout from last term. So to be a better Christian, I believe it is necessary to follow Jesus in the company of others – and that will usually mean getting to know a church community.

People used to think that someone wanting to enter a Christian community should learn to behave properly and believe rightly and then they would be allowed to belong. But in practice, that’s not the way it happens. It’s not easy to enter any new group of people, who behave in odd ways and believe strange things – so the first step is to find somewhere you feel you can belong. As you get to know people in a church, you’ll find out something about what they believe, and decide whether their beliefs make sense for you too. And if they do, your behaviour will start to change, in line with what you now believe.

Here we find two different ways of thinking about how to be a better Christian: believing and behaving. Some Christians and some churches lay more stress on what we believe about God, while others think it’s more important to decide what we should do in the world as a result of that belief. Of course, in practice it doesn’t make much sense to separate out the two like that, because what you believe is going to affect how you live. And that’s true of my second step in being a better Christian: public commitment to the church through the initiation rite of baptism.

Christian baptism involves both behaviour and belief. Practically speaking, it is a ritual cleansing through the use of water. Some churches sprinkle a little water on the head three times, in others you wade into a swimming pool or river for full immersion. Some churches baptise babies, some only adults.

Baptism also involves a public statement of belief in God as Trinity, either by the parents of a baby or by the baptised person. It has many theological meanings, including the washing away of past sins and the beginning of a new life with God, made possible through Jesus’ death and resurrection. People used to believe that those who had not been baptised would not go to heaven when they died, but that is wrong. Baptism is not an insurance policy to make sure God will accept someone; it is the Christian response to God’s accepting love that has already been shown through how Jesus lived. In the same way, people used to believe that only baptism could properly turn us into forgiven people, so some people only got baptised on their deathbeds, to make sure all their sins were taken care of. But that is missing the point too – baptism brings people into the community of the church in order to help them follow Jesus while they’re still alive!

So how can people be better Christians once they have been welcomed into a church community? Different churches will do things in different ways, but all churches have worship in common – meeting together, usually on a Sunday, to praise God, to remember the things we have done wrong and ask for God’s forgiveness; to thank God for the good things in life, and to ask for God’s help where there is injustice, pain and sorrow.

Sometimes Christians think once they have made a commitment to God the whole of life will be wonderful, but of course that’s not true – look at Jesus’ life. In fact, people are better Christians when they are honest with God about their fears, doubts, temptations to hatred and greed, pride and despair, than if they only bring the sunny side of their lives to worship, and stay away when things go badly for them or those they love. The Psalms of the Hebrew Bible are great examples of people being honest with God about all their emotions: joy and sorrow, love and hatred – and using them in worship. And while Christians have no obligation, like Muslims, to pray a specific number of times in the day, they are better Christians if they do not keep God in a sealed compartment of their lives, to be taken out and adored on Sundays and ignored the rest of the week, but pray through all the everydayness of life.

As well as prayer, for themselves and for the world, in public worship Christians also hear the Bible read and listen to sermons to connect God and the world they live in. They sing songs called hymns about their faith. And they celebrate Holy Communion, eating bread and drinking wine together as they remember Jesus’ meals with outcasts, his last supper with his friends before death, and meals he ate with them after his resurrection. Communion in some churches is daily or weekly; in others, a few times a year; but whenever and however it is celebrated, Christians believe they are spiritually refreshed and better able to follow Jesus by coming near to God in this way.

For a lot of churches, worship takes place for about an hour a week on Sundays. Some churches have study groups to learn more about God and the Bible, fellowship groups for different parts of the church to support one another, or action groups to live out their faith together, but people tend to live far enough away from the church they attend on Sundays not to see other members of their church except during worship or organised groups. So how can you be a better Christian the rest of the week, when you’re with family and friends, at work or in the shops?

Whether we like it or not, all people of faith are ambassadors for their faith. People will encounter one Christian, and believe that all Christians think or behave that way. So part of being a better Christian is for Christians to let their faith affect the way they live their lives, and to be ready to explain their position when ethical or religious questions come up. Both individual Bible study and the study, fellowship and action groups of a church give opportunities of thinking such matters through with others before the question arises for real. What would you do if your boss suggested you cut corners by illegal working practices? Would you choose fairly traded goods in the supermarket, even if they are more expensive? How might you respond to someone whose relation, painfully dying of cancer, wanted to end their life? Often there are no easy answers, even from a faith perspective; but learning how to connect life and faith is part of becoming a better Christian, and something that Christians go on working at for the whole of their lives.

It may seem strange that I’ve been talking all this while about Christians as followers of Jesus, but haven’t said anything about what he wanted people to do. Yet those of you here last term will be familiar with what Jesus called the two most important commands in the whole Jewish law: to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. I’ve touched briefly on how Christians can love God, through public commitment in baptism, through formal gathered worship and the experience of Holy Communion, and through everyday prayer. I’ve described just a fraction of how Christians can love their neighbours through making ethical decisions and through supporting the people they encounter outside the Christian community. But how can Christians better love themselves?

The idea of loving oneself as a religious duty sounds strange – we’re much more used to being told to put other people first. Some people, even some Christians, think they’re not worth loving, that God’s really angry with all the things they’ve done wrong, and the way their lives have been messed up. But when Christians start to hear and believe in their hearts the message of God’s love for them, they can start to explore the gifts that God has given them for the common good. And when Christians really believe that they are loved, they can start practising the really hard stuff: following Jesus in loving their enemies.

Of course, that’s no easier for Christians than it is for anyone else. When someone has injured us, we want to break off our relationship with them so we cannot be hurt again. And there can be no such thing as cheap forgiveness, or we are pretending that the original wrong doesn’t matter. But to follow Jesus, who forgave even those who killed him, being a better Christian involves the ongoing practice of forgiving wrongs instead of revenging them – and that can take a lifetime’s practice.

All this may seem an impossible ideal. But thankfully God’s forgiveness when we get things wrong isn’t a once-only special offer at baptism. In other words, being a better Christian involves trying to follow Jesus, getting things wrong and starting over again, time after time after time, until God perfects us all in heaven.