Readings: Psalm 90:1-61, Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18, Matthew 22:34-46, Galatians 5:1-13
Preached at Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, NY, October 29, 2023
There have been three questions that I have been asked on more than one occasion since I became a Presbyterian minister. Firstly, “Adrian, How did you come to faith?” Secondly, “What made you want to be a minister?” and thirdly, “What made you decide to come to America?”
As I’ve again been asked those questions since moving to Bridgehampton, I’m going to take three weeks to answer each of those questions. It’s something I’ve normally done near the commencement of my ministry in a particular church, but as I arrived in the middle of Covid, it did not happen this time around. Seeing as I’ve now transitioned from a part-time to a full-time position, it seemed like a good moment to revisit that tradition.
My aim is not to put myself on a pedestal or make out that I’m something special. I’ve made so many mistakes in my life, and when things have turned out well, I put it down to the Grace of God. My hope is that as I share some things about my own spiritual journey, you will be encouraged that if God can work in the life of someone like me, He can also do awesome things for you.
This morning “This is my story, This is my Song,” I’d like to share with you how I came to faith in Jesus Christ and some thoughts around Galatians 5:13; “You were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather serve one another in love.”
Freedom is one of the things I’d always searched for in my life. But when I look back to my school days, they were a fine example of the abuse of freedom. I started attending High School at a time when great changes were taking place within the Educational System in Merseyside, England, where I grew up. They introduced a system of “Fully Comprehensive Education,” which meant that the High School you went to didn’t depend on any grades you achieved but on parental choice.
I was sent to a school which until the year I attended had proudly been known as “Wallasey Technical Grammar School,” a school with a history of academic and sporting achievements. A school, which until then had screened very carefully the kind of students they would admit. The school had now been renamed “Mosslands Senior Comprehensive” and they had to take any child whose parents wished them to go there.
On my first day, the principal (who was not far from retirement) did his usual welcome speech, about how fortunate we all were to have been “chosen” and “allowed” to be part of his wonderful school. Most of us knew there was no question of being chosen or fortunate. He had to take the whole lot of us including those who in previous years he’d have wanted nothing to do with. So, my first day at High School, I’m sitting there thinking, “This guy is an idiot. The government’s changed the rules, but he hasn’t changed his speech. And he’s the Principal!”
So, like a typical teenager, I rebelled. I developed a great distrust and dislike of authority. I found having to wear a school uniform, have my hair cut in a certain way, being- told to work at things I really didn’t think were important by people in whom I had little confidence in, infringed on my idea of freedom. I wanted to learn about life - not how many hours it took Mr. X to get from A to B if he was carrying a load of ‘Y’ amount. Anyway, if ‘Y’ was so heavy, and it was going to take that long, why didn’t he take a taxi? I wasted so much time in High School, because I thought freedom meant doing whatever I wanted to do.
I should explain that I don’t come from a particularly religious family. My mum was a good Methodist but for the rest of the family; church wasn’t on the agenda. Because most of my family never went to church; Sunday morning was an excuse for staying in bed. Having to go to Sunday School was an abuse of my freedom. - Why couldn’t I stay at home like my father, and my elder brother and sister? Why did I have to go and sit on those uncomfortable chairs, in that musty old room with the out-of-tune piano and listen to those people going on and on?
So early on in life, I dropped out of church. I don’t think I had anything against God; I just objected to being told to go to this place that seemed to bear no relevance to the rest of my life.
I couldn’t say that I believed or not believed in God. I had other things on my mind.
The city that I grew up nearest to was Liverpool. One thing the city was famous for was soccer or as we called it football. The city, even today, is football crazy. One of Liverpool’s most famous managers was Bill Shankly. Someone once accused him of making football more important than religion. He replied, “It’s far more serious than that.”
The other thing Liverpool was famous for was “The Beatles.” They were, for the people of Liverpool, a glimmer of hope. It wasn’t just the music, it was the fact that here were these four working class lads, living in a city that was on the way down yet through their music and characters, they could rise above it and change the world.
The first recording (and I’m not talking downloads—I mean vinyl 33 1/3 records) we had in our house was “Peter and the Wolf.” The second was “Please, Please Me” by the Beatles. I was about 7 years old. I grew up with the sounds of both the classics and the pops in my ears. By the time I was in my late teens and going through a rebellious stage at school, the Beatles were history.
Other groups had come along. Music had become for some people, not just something you listened to, but a reason for being. I used to line up all day long to see concerts by bands like “Deep Purple” and “Black Sabbath,” dinosaurs of rock that were then spring chickens. As a teenager disillusioned with school, doubtful that if in the disintegrating economic climate of Northern England there would even be a job for me at the end of the road, I found that loud, rebellious, rock music was something I could really identify with.
I liked the message. “If it feels good, do it,” “Be free to be whatever you want.” A lot of the songs spoke about the hypocrisy of the establishment. “How can they tell us how to live our lives when they are making such a mess of the world? The politicians are liars, the religious people are hypocrites, the men of war want to destroy us, who are they to tell us what to do?” Much of it was a cry for freedom. It suggested that freedom could be found by hitting out at the hierarchies and doing whatever takes your fancy.
It was through rock music I eventually returned to the church. I’d grown up with the Beatles. Maybe if I could play the guitar, bang some drums... write a song, just maybe my life would amount to something. I could be in one of those mega groups and tour the world and party on for evermore. So, I taught myself to play guitar and keyboards and spent a lot of time dreaming.
I had some friends, who not only played guitar far better than me, but also went to a youth club in the Presbyterian Church at the top of the road where I lived. Occasionally they would have a local band playing at the church hall. Other times you could just go along and hang out. I started to be a hanger out.
One of the youth leaders asked me if I would like to join the club. He explained that as well as Friday nights, if I went along to the Youth Fellowship meetings on Sunday mornings, I would qualify for half-price entrance on the nights when they had a band playing. Sunday youth meeting wasn’t actually church, but a discussion group talking about God stuff. I didn’t think going to church would do much for my image as a cool-up and coming rock star. But, mind you, some of those girls at the church were really cute.
I went along. I discovered they talked about big problems like truth and honesty and peace, questions I was asking myself. An invitation was given to go on a course at a Youth college in a little Welsh town called Bala. I remember thinking, “A weekend away. And the church is paying half. This will be a laugh!”
When I arrived at the youth college the theme of the weekend was ‘Freedom.’ Boy, I was going to show those narrow minded, hypocritical, bigoted religious people what freedom was all about. I was expecting, because it was a church college, some very strict organization. I was surprised after arriving late nobody was hassling us to get to bed. I was getting tired when someone said, “Hey, let’s go to Epilogue.” I didn’t even know what an epilogue was. (An evening service to end the day)
What really got to me was, not the epilogue, but the basement coffee bar. I should explain that whilst I was heavily into rock music, I am grateful to God that I never got involved with drugs. I’d seen what they could do to people, and I wasn’t impressed. Be young, be free, get a little crazy, but when people started taking pills or sticking needles in their arms, that wasn’t clever.
Anyway, I had a secret craving. Mars Bars. Mars Bars in Great Britain are a bit like Milky Ways here, but thicker and yummier. If I was at a party and something illegal was being passed around, I could always pull out my Mars Bar and say, “No thanks man, I’ve got my M.B.”
But back to the basement coffee bar. When you went down there, nobody served you. You just went and helped yourself to whatever you wanted and there was a box, to put money in and help yourself to the change. Coming from an area where one of our churches had put barbed wire on the roof to stop the kids stealing the lead from around the roofing tiles, I thought to myself, “Are these people crazy? What is to stop you coming down here and helping yourself to the goodies and taking all the money as well?”
I went down there all alone and there was a whole stack of glistening Mars Bars on the counter. It sounds stupid now, but for the first time in my life I was conscious of having to decide to do right or wrong. “Do I just take a Mars Bar, or do I pay for it? No-one is going to know. It’s up to me... Surely these crazy people don’t trust you?”
Getting back to that text from Galatians 5:13:- “You were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature. Rather serve one another in love.” It would have been so easy just to pig out on illicit Mars Bars, but so unfair to these people who had given me the freedom to make a simple moral choice.
One thing we had to do this weekend was prepare an. item for a Sunday morning worship service. I’d decided I was going to keep my mouth shut and play guitar. But someone found out I’d written some songs and suggested that I could write something about freedom, to use in the service, the epilogue!
This really bothered me. Particularly after the experience all alone in the coffee bar. I liked these people. I didn’t want to let them down. Saturday night, a little group of us are talking. Two of them were committed Christians. They spoke about God, not as a distant concept but as somebody personal.
We talked about freedom. How we often abused it. I was so full of questions. God must have been with us that night because every question I threw at them, they seemed to find a bible passage that gave the answer in a way that I could relate to. (They confessed later that this wasn’t something they were usually so good at!)
It slowly started to dawn on me that there was a whole realm of freedom that I had never explored; the sort of freedom that was in the life and work and words of Jesus Christ. Here was this one man, who died horribly, yet praying that the abuses and mistakes we make with our freedom (mistakes He was paying the price for!) might be forgiven. After His death, His followers are saying that He is alive and that His love could be a living force in our lives — through the Holy Spirit.
I was hearing all this from some people who had a dimension to their lives lacking in my own. One of them prayed a prayer that night, asking Jesus to make Himself a personal reality in my life. I was worn out. In a way very uncharacteristic of a youth weekend I slept.
Sunday morning, I woke up and all I can tell you is that I knew life would not be the same again. It’s hard to put into words. It felt a bit like when you are on a jet plane, and you zoom down the runway and the power pushes you back in your seat. It was like starting over again. A bit like being born over again and given a second chance.
I knew the reality of Jesus Christ. I knew that God was my Father. I knew that the Holy Spirit was doing something inside of me that had not happened before. But I didn’t know where that journey was taking me, or how it would affect my life. I had come to faith. The freedom that had eluded me had now found me.
Such is my story; such is my song. But there’s more to tell and time has gone. But for those who asked how I came to faith, hopefully that answers the question. Next time I’ll try and answer; “What made you want to be a minister?
The Reverend Adrian J. Pratt B.D.
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