A Sermon preached at St Luke's on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, 25th January 2008, during a united service to mark the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
I have not had a Damascus Road experience. I have not seen a blinding light. I have not heard the voice of Jesus. I have not had a sudden ‘conversion experience’.
I grew up in a Christian home. I cannot remember a time when I did not believe. There have been moments when my faith has become more real, moments when my faith has become really mine. There have been moments when my understanding of God has changed. I continue to sense I am on the way.
But I have not had a Damascus Road experience.
So the account of what happened to Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus is of interest historically, but it doesn’t have much to do with me.
Or does it?
One book I have just finished and one historic event this week prompted me to think differently.
Look more closely at Acts 9. It is not the story of a conversion of an unbelieving atheist to one who believes in God. Before his experience on the Damascus Road Saul believed in the LORD God. After that experience he still believed in the same LORD God.
It is not the story of a conversion from one religion to another. Jesus and indeed at this time practically all his followers were fully Jewish.
At this time there were very different ways of being Jewish. Judea and Galilee were on the Eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. The Herodians were quite happy to collaborate with the Roman power – Herod the Great and the dynasty that followed him thought nothing of playing Rome off against Judaism. The High Priests in Jerusalem had to work in collaboration with the Roman power. Drawn from the elite, ruling classes their power base was supported by the Sadducees who had not time for the radical writings of the prophets and considered only the first five books of the Bible as truly the Bible.
The Pharisees considered strict adherence to the Law and to the Prophets and all the Hebrew Scriptures was key – but even among those there were different schools of thought. The school of Hillel was inclined towards a generous open hearted reading of the Law, while the school of Shammei was very much more exclusive, hard line and extreme.
There were then the militant tendency who wanted to take the sword against Rome – revolutionaries who wanted to rise up against the might of Rome.
There were those who said a plague on all your houses we will retreat into a monastic life in the Judaean wilderness and down to the Dead Sea – the Qumran community whose ancient scrolls were discovered just sixty years ago.
And then into this mix came John the Baptist, an Elijah lookalike who seemed like one of the prophets of old holding the powers that be, not least Herod the Great’s son, Herod Antipas to account. It was Herod who had him beheaded. He had come to prepare a way for the Lord through the wilderness. And then Jesus had come with a powerful prophetic message of love for God, love for neighbour and love for enemy too. He was the way. Perceiving him to be a threat to the power base they had built up it was the High Priests in collaboration with the Romans who had him arrested and executed. But his followers were convinced. He had risen from the dead. And they followed him. John had prepared the Way. Jesus was the Way. And his followers came to be know as the Way.
Saul tells us later in his letters that he was a strict Pharisee. He studied under Gamaliel a generous hearted Pharisee but had strict tendencies himself as well. When he first comes on the scene he is supportive of the Sanhedrin, the Council in Jerusalem and here he is working under the High Priest and therefore with those who are ready to work in collaboration with Rome. It is within his understanding of God that those who pose a threat to the power base of the Council, the High Priests and the Romans in Jerusalem should be hunted down, threatened and if needs be executed. Those who had studied under John and even more so under Jesus posed such a threat.
So it was that Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
Two things then happen. On the road to Damascus he encounters the risen Christ. And,
he is on the receiving end of the, albeit reluctant, healing ministry of Ananias one of those very disciples in Damascus.
The change that results in Saul keeps him in the synagogues of Damascus, but now he has moved to Jesus’s way of seeing God and so he proclaims Jesus in the synagogues, saying “He is the Son of God”. The text tells us that he proceeded to argue a very strong case that Jesus was indeed Son of God, the anointed one of God, the Messiah and that God’s rule had broken into the world through him.
It is telling that from that point on … Paul as he came to be known no longer has any room for vengeance, threatening language for less for execution within his understanding of God. He echoes the teaching of Jesus in the sermon on the mount and follows the Way opened up by Jesus
Let love be genuine; bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Do not be overcome by evil. But overcome evil with good.
What happened to Saul on that Road to Damascus and in Damascus was NOT a conversion from atheism to faith.
What happened to Saul on the Road to Damascus and in Damascus was NOT a conversion from one religion to another.
What happened to Saul on the Road to Damascus and in Damascus was more a TRANSFORMATION not only of his whole knowledge and understanding of God but in the Way that one God would have him live his life. And that transformation came about in an encounter with Jesus and through the healing ministry of one of Jesus’ followers on The Way.
What of us? This story is not just for those who have had or who hanker after a conversion experience. It is for all of us. We all need our whole understanding and knowledge of God, our whole relationship with God, to be transformed by the Jesus who taught the love of God, the love of neighbour, the love of enemy too. We need our picture of God to be transformed by the Jesus who brought healing into a hurting world, the Jesus who died and is risen and is alive.
At the same time we need to be open to the ministry of an Ananias who seeks to open our eyes to the realities of the God we believe in.
And that brings me to the novel and to the historic event of this week and two ‘Ananiases’ who have opened my eyes this last week.
‘Have you read The Shack?’ Howard Bartlett asked me on our New Year’s Day Walk. ‘No, I hadn’t.’ I have now. And it is a wonderful, thought-provoking read. Mack’s life has fallen apart in unimaginable tragedy. He has a clear enough picture of God. And the God he believes in has totally let him down. And then something happens. And he finds himself in the Shack in the company of a wonderfully loving threesome who turn out to be in a way I won’t spoil for you God. As the story unfolds you are drawn in a way I won’t spoil for you if you get hold of the book to the sheer love of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of love, a lot of joy, a lot of fun, and wonderful depths of feeling in Jesus and the other two Mack meets in The Shack.
But that love is too much for Mack. When ‘Papa’ – maybe not quite as you instinctively may imagine, says “I love the ones I am angry with just as much as those I’m not.” It is too much for Mack.
“What about your wrath? It seems to me that if you’re going to pretend to be God Almighty, you need to be a lot angrier.
“… if you are God, aren’t you the one spilling out great bowls of wrath and throwing people into a burning lake of fire?”
At that, Papa stopped preparations for the meal and turned toward Mack. Mack could see a deep sadness in those eyes.
“I am not who you think I am, Mackenzie. I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”
[See Wm Paul Young, The Shack – where tragedy confronts eternity (Hodder & Stoughton, 2008) 119f See http://www.theshackbook.com/
Speaking as it were for all three Papa says ‘with an intensity that caused [Mack] to listen very carefully, “we want to share with you the love and joy and freedom and light that we already know within ourself. We created you, the human, to be in face-to-face relationship, with us, to join our circle of love.”
[The Shack 124]
If there is any vestige of a sense of a God who would have space the kind of vengeance that includes threats and murder, a wrathful God, consider the Jesus Paul met with on this occasion, hear his voice, sense his light in the darkness of the world, discover the love of that community he brought into being, and discover a God who is very different, and a Way of life that can transform even the deepest darkness.
We need to have our eyes opened by a latter day Ananias in the form of William Paul Young. Try getting hold of the Shack and be surprised by the sheer love of God.
And another Ananias opened my eyes this last week. Her name was Sharon. And that takes me to the historic events of this last week.
The Inauguration Ceremony began with prayer. It ended with prayer. The ensuing lunch began with prayer. And as if that was not enough on his first day in office, President Obama, sat in church at The National Prayer Service and listened to the Rev Dr Sharon E.Watkins preach on a text from Isaiah 58:6-12
[Rev Dr Sharon E.Watkins, Harmonies of Liberty a sermon preached in the presence of President Obama at the National Prayer Service on 21st January 2009, with readings from Isaiah 58:6-12 and Matthew 22:6-40. Read the full text of the sermon at http://oikoumene.org/fileadmin/wcc-usa/files/2009/Obama_NPS_sermon_Watkins.pdf ]
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house;
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.
This is what she shared with the new President on Wednesday morning.
In times, such as these, we the people need you, the leaders of this nation, to be guided by the counsel that Isaiah gave so long ago, to work for the common good, for the public happiness, the wellbeing of the nation and the world, knowing that our individual wellbeing depends upon a world in which liberty and justice prevail.
This is the biblical way
This is the Way Paul discovered in that Damascus experience.
It was a transformation in his understanding and knowledge of the very nature of God. It was a transformation in his relationship with God. Where once there was space to breathe threats and execution, vengeance and wrath, now love is The Way. It is the Way that demands that evil be not overcome by evil but overcome only by good.
Whether or not we ever have a Damascus Road experience, our understanding of God needs the transformation Paul experienced. It will come about as we meet with this Jesus and those who have discovered the wonderful Way he has opened up for us to follow.
Sharon Watkins told a story attributed to Cherokee wisdom.
One evening a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.
"There are two wolves struggling inside each of us," the old man said.
"One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self‐pity, fear . . .
"The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love . . ."
The grandson sat, thinking, then asked: "Which wolf wins, Grandfather?"
His grandfather replied, "The one you feed."
She looked at the new President of the USA and said this …
There are crises banging on the door right now, pawing at us, trying to draw us off our ethical center – crises that tempt us to feed the wolf of vengefulness and fear.
We need you, Mr. President, to hold your ground. We need you, leaders of this nation, to stay centered on the values that have guided us in the past; values that empowered to move us through the perils of earlier times and can guide us now into a future of renewed promise.
We need you to feed the good wolf within you, to listen to the better angels of your nature, and by your example encourage us to do the same.
Do that and we shall be well on the Way to that transformation Paul experienced not only on the Road to Damascus in his encounter with Jesus but in Damascus as he received from Ananaias.
For further reading ...
Wm Paul Young, The Shack – where tragedy confronts eternity(Hodder & Stoughton, 2008) 119f See http://www.theshackbook.com/
Rev Dr Sharon E.Watkins, Harmonies of Liberty a sermon preached in the presence of President Obama at the National Prayer Service on 21st January 2009, with readings from Isaiah 58:6-12 and Matthew 22:6-40. Read the full text of the sermon at http://oikoumene.org/fileadmin/wcc-usa/files/2009/Obama_NPS_sermon_Watkins.pdf
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Drawing on the Power of God
What is it about our Christian faith that is of great practical help to us as face such a troubled and deeply troubling world? That’s the question I am prompted to ask as 2009 begins with such devastating tragedy unfolding in Gaza, in Israel and in Palestine, and with the immensity of the financial situation beginning to take a hold.
Last week I suggested there are two things about God that seem to me to be so crucial for us to hold on to.
First, our God is a great big God: that than which nothing greater can be conceived. As 2009 begins we mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of species; and we mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of a telescope with the International Year of Astronomy. Such scientific discoveries and insight do not phase me. Far from it, as I reflect on the immensity of the time scales of life on earth, and the infinitely greater immensity of the time scales of astronomy and the universe it prompts me to think that the God I believe in is greater still. It somehow keeps things in a proper perspective.
While the God I believe in is a great big God, this God is also a God who comes alongside us in the ordinary everyday mess of this world. Born a babe, he grew to be a man who brought healing into the lives of hurting people and mapped out a way of life for all to follow. He went to the cross and died the cruellest of deaths. But on the third day he rose again and as we meet in his name his presence is with us. He shows us that the smallest of things we do matter the world – this Great big God who comes in the smallest way as one of us asks us to do the smallest of things to real-ise the love of God.
Two sculptures come together in the Lido car park entrance to the hospital – Spa Ammonites is a reminder of the immensity of the God I believe in, and the Good Samaritan is a reminder that the smallest of deeds can make a world of difference as they make real, real-ise the love of God in this world.
The life on earth we are in awe of as Darwin’s story is told is closely related to the life forces of the planet we live on. Stand on Cleeve Hill not only can in the quarries the wonderful shell fish that once swam in a tropical sea, but look Westwards and you see in the Malvern Hills what is left of volcanoes that 600 million years ago let loose the energies within the planet in an awesome scale. Go 80 miles north and you reach a fault line that ran through the village we lived in in Shropshire – and it is still active as we found when we experienced one of the country’s biggest earthquakes as the children were evacuated from their school and chimneys came tumbling down in Shrewsbury. Tiny in scale to the much more active planet on the other side of the world. Such energy within.
I caught one of the programmes to mark the International Year of Astronomy on BBC 4 this week – all about the discoveries made by the Hubble Telescope time and again it came to the sheer energy there is in our sun, in every sun in the universe in the galaxies in the universe itself. Remarkable, awesome energy.
This time look at the sword that hangs from Orion's belt: with the naked eye on one of these crystal clear nights it's a fuzzy patch of light. Through binoculars it begins to look quite a spectacular haze. 
Last week I suggested there are two things about God that seem to me to be so crucial for us to hold on to.
First, our God is a great big God: that than which nothing greater can be conceived. As 2009 begins we mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of species; and we mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of a telescope with the International Year of Astronomy. Such scientific discoveries and insight do not phase me. Far from it, as I reflect on the immensity of the time scales of life on earth, and the infinitely greater immensity of the time scales of astronomy and the universe it prompts me to think that the God I believe in is greater still. It somehow keeps things in a proper perspective.
While the God I believe in is a great big God, this God is also a God who comes alongside us in the ordinary everyday mess of this world. Born a babe, he grew to be a man who brought healing into the lives of hurting people and mapped out a way of life for all to follow. He went to the cross and died the cruellest of deaths. But on the third day he rose again and as we meet in his name his presence is with us. He shows us that the smallest of things we do matter the world – this Great big God who comes in the smallest way as one of us asks us to do the smallest of things to real-ise the love of God.
Two sculptures come together in the Lido car park entrance to the hospital – Spa Ammonites is a reminder of the immensity of the God I believe in, and the Good Samaritan is a reminder that the smallest of deeds can make a world of difference as they make real, real-ise the love of God in this world.
The life on earth we are in awe of as Darwin’s story is told is closely related to the life forces of the planet we live on. Stand on Cleeve Hill not only can in the quarries the wonderful shell fish that once swam in a tropical sea, but look Westwards and you see in the Malvern Hills what is left of volcanoes that 600 million years ago let loose the energies within the planet in an awesome scale. Go 80 miles north and you reach a fault line that ran through the village we lived in in Shropshire – and it is still active as we found when we experienced one of the country’s biggest earthquakes as the children were evacuated from their school and chimneys came tumbling down in Shrewsbury. Tiny in scale to the much more active planet on the other side of the world. Such energy within.
I caught one of the programmes to mark the International Year of Astronomy on BBC 4 this week – all about the discoveries made by the Hubble Telescope time and again it came to the sheer energy there is in our sun, in every sun in the universe in the galaxies in the universe itself. Remarkable, awesome energy.
With the children not so long ago we took a look at Orion.
And then we traced the outline of the hunter. Just before Christmas we looked at the right hand star of his belt and one of my Astronomy books suggested it was 2,000 light years away. What a remarkable thought to think that we are witnessing energy generated in that light at the time Christ was born!
This time look at the sword that hangs from Orion's belt: with the naked eye on one of these crystal clear nights it's a fuzzy patch of light. Through binoculars it begins to look quite a spectacular haze. Come indoors and access the public domain Hubble Telescope images and you can actually see stars in the making. The hymn, the Servant King speaks of 'hands that flung stars into space'. Here are stars being created. What a wonderful sight!
At the heart of the universe, is energy - the energy that raises the sea bed to the mountain top, the energy unleashed in volcanic ranges, as the tectonic plates move along their fault lines, the energy that brings stars into being.
Energy, power, strength is of the essence of the God I believe in. The faith that is important to me is not simply a faith in a great big God that gives me a better understanding of things; it is not simply a faith in a God who comes alongside us and asks to us to the tiny little things that real-ise God’s love in our world; the faith that is important to me is faith in a God of energy, a God of power, a God of strength who comes within me to give me the strength, the energy the power to do things that on my own I am not capable of doing.
Jesus had come to the end of his ministry. It was the night before he would be taken out to the place of the skull, to be crucified. He had gathered all his friends together. One by one he washed their feet. They had shared so much, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. After all, that’s what he he had taught so much about – serving one another, serving others. And he had lived out that life of service making such a difference to so many people. And here they were on the night that unknown to them at that moment was to lead to their arrest.
He had talked about more and more as they had approached Jerusalem. The imminence of his death. He spoke of it once more. More graphically than ever. He broke bread, he shared a cup – he spoke of his body broken for them, his blood shed for them.
It was un-nerving. Somehow they felt he would always be with them. And now it seemed he wouldn’t. He kept on coming back to something that would mean more and more to them.
I will not leave you all on your own, he said. I will not leave you orphaned.
I will ask the Father, and he wil give you another Advoc ate, another Helper, another source of strength alongside you, another Comforter to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.
The Spirit. A power, a strength, an energy that would be around them, within them. A power, a strength an energy that would keep them going.
On the eve of his final departure the promise was even more explicit:
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.
And on the fiftieth day after his resurrection, the Day of Pentecost all of them were filled with this power, this strength, this energy of God, as the Holy Spirit came upon them.
There is an energy within God that is let loose into our lives as we share this faith together.
How often do people say, I was given strength I didn’t think I would ever have. This is the energy of God within and around us.
We are not alone there is a strength and a power of God around us and within.
Lord, help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today that you and I together can’t handle.
And the presence of God in his energy and his strength is present with us day by day.
Believing in a great big God does not just give us a better perspective. That Great Big God we believe in is the God whose energy is let loose into our lives. This Great Big God offers us a strength for the living of our lives.
That’s the first part of the prayer that Paul shares in Ephesians 3.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,* 15from whom every family* in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit
The immensity of God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name, the riches of his glory are immense and only glimpsed in the wonderful world of God’s creation.
It is this God to whom Paul prays, and it is this God who strengthens us in our inner being with power through his Spirit.
Paul puts his finger on a very real need we each have. It is in our inner being that we need strength. Our intellect may be drawn to this great big God, our instinct may be to follow the teaching of Jesus and to do likewise, doing little things to real-ise God’s love.
But what’s going on in our inner being. The bits that other people don’t see. That’s where the doubts can gnaw away. That’s when the sense of inadequacy can get the better of you. That’s where the will to go on is lost. The inner being is all important. That’s precisely the prayer Paul prays – that from the riches of his glory this Father God who is immense will strengthen each one of us in that inner being with power through his Spirit.
But it is not only the power and strength from the immensity of God that we can draw on. We can also draw on a power and a strength from the God who is one with us, the God who in Christ lived out that life of service, experienced suffering and death at its worst, the Christ who rose again from the dead.
Paul’s prayer is that we may have the strength of the immensity of God in our innermost being
17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love
The Great God becomes one of us and asks us to follow him … but this risen Christ can then dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are rooted and grounded in love.
The Spirit is that unseen yet very real force of God that brings alive today in our hearts the living Christ whose life, death and resurrection we celebrate as we now move on from Christmas towards Holy Week and Easter.
As this Spirit of God, this power, this strength, this energy is at work within us we may know on the one hand the immensity of God,
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth
On the other hand, we may know the strength, the power and the energy of the presence of the living Christ with us too …
to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
That love of Christ is not just something from the past we read about and learn at a distance and then follow. It is something let loose into our lives by the unseen power of God’s spirit in such a way that the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge is real within our hearts.
Here we reach the essence of a faith that can really equip us to face a troubled world that is so troubling.
But the important thing is that we then are empowered, strengthened to do what God calls us to do.
The little things are important.
What about a letter to our MP in response to the situation in Gaza? What about doing something, however little, to express that horror.
What about things we might do in response to a world of need closer to home. We came up with some thoughts and reflections at our church meeting – things we are responding to with other churches with regard to chaplaincy in our town, needs of our town, day and night time, the possibilities of Street Pastors. Support for families and children – the possibility of bringing together sources of support rather like the health and well-being event for older people, but for families and children. Interesting links with Gloucestershire College – and most important of all. Sharing our faith, a faith that can make such a difference – an Alpha Course again in the Autumn.
Not in our own strength … but by his power we can do things we didn’t think we could do!
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Jesus had come to the end of his ministry. It was the night before he would be taken out to the place of the skull, to be crucified. He had gathered all his friends together. One by one he washed their feet. They had shared so much, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. After all, that’s what he he had taught so much about – serving one another, serving others. And he had lived out that life of service making such a difference to so many people. And here they were on the night that unknown to them at that moment was to lead to their arrest.
He had talked about more and more as they had approached Jerusalem. The imminence of his death. He spoke of it once more. More graphically than ever. He broke bread, he shared a cup – he spoke of his body broken for them, his blood shed for them.
It was un-nerving. Somehow they felt he would always be with them. And now it seemed he wouldn’t. He kept on coming back to something that would mean more and more to them.
I will not leave you all on your own, he said. I will not leave you orphaned.
I will ask the Father, and he wil give you another Advoc ate, another Helper, another source of strength alongside you, another Comforter to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.
The Spirit. A power, a strength, an energy that would be around them, within them. A power, a strength an energy that would keep them going.
On the eve of his final departure the promise was even more explicit:
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.
And on the fiftieth day after his resurrection, the Day of Pentecost all of them were filled with this power, this strength, this energy of God, as the Holy Spirit came upon them.
There is an energy within God that is let loose into our lives as we share this faith together.
How often do people say, I was given strength I didn’t think I would ever have. This is the energy of God within and around us.
We are not alone there is a strength and a power of God around us and within.
Lord, help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today that you and I together can’t handle.
And the presence of God in his energy and his strength is present with us day by day.
Believing in a great big God does not just give us a better perspective. That Great Big God we believe in is the God whose energy is let loose into our lives. This Great Big God offers us a strength for the living of our lives.
That’s the first part of the prayer that Paul shares in Ephesians 3.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,* 15from whom every family* in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit
The immensity of God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name, the riches of his glory are immense and only glimpsed in the wonderful world of God’s creation.
It is this God to whom Paul prays, and it is this God who strengthens us in our inner being with power through his Spirit.
Paul puts his finger on a very real need we each have. It is in our inner being that we need strength. Our intellect may be drawn to this great big God, our instinct may be to follow the teaching of Jesus and to do likewise, doing little things to real-ise God’s love.
But what’s going on in our inner being. The bits that other people don’t see. That’s where the doubts can gnaw away. That’s when the sense of inadequacy can get the better of you. That’s where the will to go on is lost. The inner being is all important. That’s precisely the prayer Paul prays – that from the riches of his glory this Father God who is immense will strengthen each one of us in that inner being with power through his Spirit.
But it is not only the power and strength from the immensity of God that we can draw on. We can also draw on a power and a strength from the God who is one with us, the God who in Christ lived out that life of service, experienced suffering and death at its worst, the Christ who rose again from the dead.
Paul’s prayer is that we may have the strength of the immensity of God in our innermost being
17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love
The Great God becomes one of us and asks us to follow him … but this risen Christ can then dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are rooted and grounded in love.
The Spirit is that unseen yet very real force of God that brings alive today in our hearts the living Christ whose life, death and resurrection we celebrate as we now move on from Christmas towards Holy Week and Easter.
As this Spirit of God, this power, this strength, this energy is at work within us we may know on the one hand the immensity of God,
I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth
On the other hand, we may know the strength, the power and the energy of the presence of the living Christ with us too …
to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge
That love of Christ is not just something from the past we read about and learn at a distance and then follow. It is something let loose into our lives by the unseen power of God’s spirit in such a way that the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge is real within our hearts.
Here we reach the essence of a faith that can really equip us to face a troubled world that is so troubling.
But the important thing is that we then are empowered, strengthened to do what God calls us to do.
The little things are important.
What about a letter to our MP in response to the situation in Gaza? What about doing something, however little, to express that horror.
What about things we might do in response to a world of need closer to home. We came up with some thoughts and reflections at our church meeting – things we are responding to with other churches with regard to chaplaincy in our town, needs of our town, day and night time, the possibilities of Street Pastors. Support for families and children – the possibility of bringing together sources of support rather like the health and well-being event for older people, but for families and children. Interesting links with Gloucestershire College – and most important of all. Sharing our faith, a faith that can make such a difference – an Alpha Course again in the Autumn.
Not in our own strength … but by his power we can do things we didn’t think we could do!
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
A Faith in God for 2009
The start of a New Year has an air of expectation, an air of excitement to it. My new diary has a nice clean feel to it. It is a time for making resolutions, as the children have been exploring in their Sunday Special, it is a time for new beginnings.
But this year there’s something else in the air as well.
Concern, Anxiety, Apprehension.
The scale of the collapse of the global economy is something my generation has not witnessed before. It’s the uncertainty of the future that gives rise to levels of concern, anxiety and apprehension that perversely become part of the problem.
Having visited Palestine and Israel last April, and planning to take a group this April, I somehow find myself feeling for the people of Gaza so much more. Over Christmas we have been thinking of Bethlehem, a city walled in. To bomb a population of 1,500,000 in a small confined area, that’s completely walled in with no means of escape for anyone is beyond belief. Far from countering the terrorism that has to be condemned it fuels it for another generation. Where will it end?
What a way to start a New Year!
I want to suggest two things about God that speak directly to us at the start of this New Year, two things that address all those mixed up feelings that are in the air at the moment.
First, in the words of the song we sing with the children, our God is a great big God.
That’s something I want to come back to over and over again throughout 2009. I want to come back to that conviction about God in the context of two very specific things that are being celebrated this year.
For some of Christian faith, the celebration of the bi-centenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species will be seen as a threat. It will be taken as the opportunity for others to celebrate their a-theism.
I see it differently. It fills me with awe and wonder to witness the different stages of evolution and find brachiopods and oystershells in the quarries of Cleeve Hill, Ammonites on the beaches around Lyme Regis, Trilobites on the West Coast of Wales and those wonderful dinosaur footprints from a quarry in Oxfordshire that have been moved to the wonderful Oxford University Museum of Science. The God I believe in is greater than anything we can ever see in the wonderful world of nature – our God is a great big God is the way the song puts it. Another way of putting it is to use a phrase coined by St Anselm … God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Think of the immensity of geological time and the shifting of the plates of the planet, the origin of species and God is greater than all of this.
How tragic that people of faith have felt threatened by the discoveries of science. This year also sees the 400th anniversary of the occasion when Galileo first used a telescope. At the time there were those who felt their faith threatened. I find it the other way round … I like at Venus in all its glory dominating the western sky in the early evening, and then Orion standing majestically in the late evening sky. And I marvel at the immensity of the universe. UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union has designated 2009 an International Year of Astronomy. I hope to be doing another astronomy evening with the cubs – who knows we may even have clear skies! An I'll be refreshing the Astronomy Page on the Church Web Site.
All over the world the aim will be to “help citizens of the world rediscover their place in the universe through the day and night time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery.”
The awe and wonder of the night sky, of the universe. And the God we believe in is greater.
That’s not just theory. It does you good – to see things from the wider perspective. Get up on to Cleeve Hill sense the immensity of this age old planet of ours, and see how small we are .. and sense the greatness of God.
Look up into the night sky and sense the wonder and awe of God – this is the God we believe in – this is the scale of things to remember.
It puts things into perspective.
I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? 2My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber
Psalm 104:
1Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great.You are clothed with honour and majesty, 2 wrapped in light as with a garment.You stretch out the heavens like a tent, 3 you set the beams of your* chambers on the waters,you make the clouds your* chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, 4you make the winds your* messengers, fire and flame your* ministers.
5You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken. 6You cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7At your rebuke they flee; at the sound of your thunder they take to flight. 8They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys to the place that you appointed for them. 9You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.
10You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, 11giving drink to every wild animal; the wild asses quench their thirst. 12By the streams* the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. 13From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
24O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
But there is another dimension to the God I believe in and that is just as important as 2009 unfolds.
This ‘great big God’ that I believe in came to be alongside us, with us in the messiness of the world, born a babe, he grew to be a man who took time to be with the humblest of people in the messiness of their lives. He had time for the woman who had been caught in adultery. He had time for little Zacchaeus. He had time for the man suffering from leprosy. Where he saw need he met that need and brought healing to people’s lives.
He mapped out a way of love that he saw would transform the lives of individuals, the lives of families and the wider world too. He extended love across the boundaries that divided his world. He humbled himself to serve others without counting the cost. And it cost him his life in the cruellest of deaths.
But death did not have the last word. On the third day he rose again. His risen presence is here as we meet together in his name. His presence is real wherever people hear his words and act on them. He asks us to do the smallest things to 'real-ise' his presence and his love.
That gives us a responsibility. It is important for us to be practical in the help we can give in the things we can do in response to the fears and uncertainties 2009 brings to us.
At our Church Meeting on Thursday we shall hear of some practical initiatives being taken by churches working together in the town – a response to the needs of businesses in the town through some form of co-ordinated chaplaincy, that extends to the night time life of Cheltenham as well – maybe through Street Pastors serving on the streets of the town. But the need for us as churches to own that initiative.
An initiative to provide emergency accommodation for people who are without a home. Again working with the other churches.
Practical things for us to do and to think of – ready to give mutual support as people face difficulties in employment. In health care too.
My Christian faith brings me face to face with a great big God who fills me with awe, humbles me and puts my concerns and anxiety into perspective.
But this great big God has time for the least important, the most insignificant and he wants me to do the little thing that can make a big difference.
Those two dimensions of God are brought together for me in a surprising place – the Lido entrance to the hospital.
There a new sculpture has appeared. It’s called Ammonite Spa. It’s a pity that we are in the wrong place for finding such wonderful ammonites –but it brings to my mind the great big God I believe in from time immemorial.
That sculpture stands over against the Good Samaritan with the story on two tablets and the inscription on the base, Go and do thou likewise.
The Great Big God who asks us to do the littlest of things to bring his love into our world.
And he does not leave us alone – he equips us with a power and a strength from beyond ourselves that can enable us to see things through come what may.
But this year there’s something else in the air as well.
Concern, Anxiety, Apprehension.
The scale of the collapse of the global economy is something my generation has not witnessed before. It’s the uncertainty of the future that gives rise to levels of concern, anxiety and apprehension that perversely become part of the problem.
Having visited Palestine and Israel last April, and planning to take a group this April, I somehow find myself feeling for the people of Gaza so much more. Over Christmas we have been thinking of Bethlehem, a city walled in. To bomb a population of 1,500,000 in a small confined area, that’s completely walled in with no means of escape for anyone is beyond belief. Far from countering the terrorism that has to be condemned it fuels it for another generation. Where will it end?
What a way to start a New Year!
I want to suggest two things about God that speak directly to us at the start of this New Year, two things that address all those mixed up feelings that are in the air at the moment.
First, in the words of the song we sing with the children, our God is a great big God.
That’s something I want to come back to over and over again throughout 2009. I want to come back to that conviction about God in the context of two very specific things that are being celebrated this year.
For some of Christian faith, the celebration of the bi-centenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species will be seen as a threat. It will be taken as the opportunity for others to celebrate their a-theism.
I see it differently. It fills me with awe and wonder to witness the different stages of evolution and find brachiopods and oystershells in the quarries of Cleeve Hill, Ammonites on the beaches around Lyme Regis, Trilobites on the West Coast of Wales and those wonderful dinosaur footprints from a quarry in Oxfordshire that have been moved to the wonderful Oxford University Museum of Science. The God I believe in is greater than anything we can ever see in the wonderful world of nature – our God is a great big God is the way the song puts it. Another way of putting it is to use a phrase coined by St Anselm … God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Think of the immensity of geological time and the shifting of the plates of the planet, the origin of species and God is greater than all of this.
How tragic that people of faith have felt threatened by the discoveries of science. This year also sees the 400th anniversary of the occasion when Galileo first used a telescope. At the time there were those who felt their faith threatened. I find it the other way round … I like at Venus in all its glory dominating the western sky in the early evening, and then Orion standing majestically in the late evening sky. And I marvel at the immensity of the universe. UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union has designated 2009 an International Year of Astronomy. I hope to be doing another astronomy evening with the cubs – who knows we may even have clear skies! An I'll be refreshing the Astronomy Page on the Church Web Site.
All over the world the aim will be to “help citizens of the world rediscover their place in the universe through the day and night time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery.”
The awe and wonder of the night sky, of the universe. And the God we believe in is greater.
That’s not just theory. It does you good – to see things from the wider perspective. Get up on to Cleeve Hill sense the immensity of this age old planet of ours, and see how small we are .. and sense the greatness of God.
Look up into the night sky and sense the wonder and awe of God – this is the God we believe in – this is the scale of things to remember.
It puts things into perspective.
I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? 2My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber
Psalm 104:
1Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great.You are clothed with honour and majesty, 2 wrapped in light as with a garment.You stretch out the heavens like a tent, 3 you set the beams of your* chambers on the waters,you make the clouds your* chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, 4you make the winds your* messengers, fire and flame your* ministers.
5You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken. 6You cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7At your rebuke they flee; at the sound of your thunder they take to flight. 8They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys to the place that you appointed for them. 9You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.
10You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, 11giving drink to every wild animal; the wild asses quench their thirst. 12By the streams* the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. 13From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
24O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
But there is another dimension to the God I believe in and that is just as important as 2009 unfolds.
This ‘great big God’ that I believe in came to be alongside us, with us in the messiness of the world, born a babe, he grew to be a man who took time to be with the humblest of people in the messiness of their lives. He had time for the woman who had been caught in adultery. He had time for little Zacchaeus. He had time for the man suffering from leprosy. Where he saw need he met that need and brought healing to people’s lives.
He mapped out a way of love that he saw would transform the lives of individuals, the lives of families and the wider world too. He extended love across the boundaries that divided his world. He humbled himself to serve others without counting the cost. And it cost him his life in the cruellest of deaths.
But death did not have the last word. On the third day he rose again. His risen presence is here as we meet together in his name. His presence is real wherever people hear his words and act on them. He asks us to do the smallest things to 'real-ise' his presence and his love.
That gives us a responsibility. It is important for us to be practical in the help we can give in the things we can do in response to the fears and uncertainties 2009 brings to us.
At our Church Meeting on Thursday we shall hear of some practical initiatives being taken by churches working together in the town – a response to the needs of businesses in the town through some form of co-ordinated chaplaincy, that extends to the night time life of Cheltenham as well – maybe through Street Pastors serving on the streets of the town. But the need for us as churches to own that initiative.
An initiative to provide emergency accommodation for people who are without a home. Again working with the other churches.
Practical things for us to do and to think of – ready to give mutual support as people face difficulties in employment. In health care too.
My Christian faith brings me face to face with a great big God who fills me with awe, humbles me and puts my concerns and anxiety into perspective.
But this great big God has time for the least important, the most insignificant and he wants me to do the little thing that can make a big difference.
Those two dimensions of God are brought together for me in a surprising place – the Lido entrance to the hospital.
There a new sculpture has appeared. It’s called Ammonite Spa. It’s a pity that we are in the wrong place for finding such wonderful ammonites –but it brings to my mind the great big God I believe in from time immemorial.
That sculpture stands over against the Good Samaritan with the story on two tablets and the inscription on the base, Go and do thou likewise.
The Great Big God who asks us to do the littlest of things to bring his love into our world.
And he does not leave us alone – he equips us with a power and a strength from beyond ourselves that can enable us to see things through come what may.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Be part of the action!
That’s what it takes to tell the Christmas story in 30 seconds!
Or at least that’s what it takes as far as the Churches Advertising Network is concerned!
I guess you like that kind of thing or you loathe it!
One thing I did like was the strap line at the end. It’s what has accompanied the poster that they put into bus shelters too. Be part of the action.
It’s the idea Becky has shared with us in her nativity scene – the invitation is there for us to step into the nativity scene and be there.
Be there with Mary and Joseph as they have nowhere to go for the birth of the Christ child and find refugee temporarily where the animals are kept, before fleeing as refugees to Egypt.
Be there with the wise men as they follow the star and encounter Herod in all his power, determined not to allow a challenge to his reign.
Be there with the shepherds as they heard the song of the angels, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace.
Be there in Bethlehem.
That’s what has been in my mind hauntingly this Christmas.
I have seen the Christmas story differently. I have been there. To Bethlehem. I saw a shepherd with his sheep … but between them and the town of Bethlehem, a wall. I went through the wall and touched the pain of the people of Bethlehem. I touched the tension.
In my mind’s eye I have been there this Christmas.
‘Be there’ … was not the invitation of the advertising campaign.
Be part of the action … at a church near you.
That’s the point of Christmas. It is not just to be there, it is to be part of the action.
The Wise men had gifts to share. Be part of the action! We have gifts to share as well – not just our Christmas presents with each other! But the gifts we share for very practical help in Bethlehem.
We have linked up with the Alex Awad and the Shepherd Society, run by the Bethlehem Bible College. Through our giving we are part of the action bringing care and help, food parcels, medical aid, support in jobs and education renewal of utilities in a very troubled town of Bethlehem.
The shepherds had a message to share. Be part of the action. Have a message to share. Light in a world of darkness. Hope in a world of fear. Love in a world of hatred. Comfort in a world of pain. We met and worshipped at the church of Alex Awad – he has shared a Christmas message with us this year …
“The blessing of Christmas for Christians today is the same as on the very first Christmas: God sent his son in human flesh to become the Saviour of the world.
“With the challenges of the wall isolating the city into an island enclave cut off from Jerusalem and the rest of Israel, Bethlehem’s Christians look to their brothers and sisters in Christ around the world for spiritual and moral support. If we could have two wishes this Christmas, the first is that the Christians of Bethlehem and the Holy Land will be encouraged and strengthened spiritually to stay in the land of their birth. The second is to see a peaceful solution to the decade’s long Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
“With this short message of Christmas cheer, hope and goodwill, we wish you a very joyful Christmas and pray that your hearts overflow with bountiful blessings from above.”
Be part of the action – so what is the action that you can take, - an action to bring the love of Christ, the light of his presence, his comfort, his strengthening into the world?
Or at least that’s what it takes as far as the Churches Advertising Network is concerned!
I guess you like that kind of thing or you loathe it!
One thing I did like was the strap line at the end. It’s what has accompanied the poster that they put into bus shelters too. Be part of the action.
It’s the idea Becky has shared with us in her nativity scene – the invitation is there for us to step into the nativity scene and be there.
Be there with Mary and Joseph as they have nowhere to go for the birth of the Christ child and find refugee temporarily where the animals are kept, before fleeing as refugees to Egypt.
Be there with the wise men as they follow the star and encounter Herod in all his power, determined not to allow a challenge to his reign.
Be there with the shepherds as they heard the song of the angels, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace.
Be there in Bethlehem.
That’s what has been in my mind hauntingly this Christmas.
I have seen the Christmas story differently. I have been there. To Bethlehem. I saw a shepherd with his sheep … but between them and the town of Bethlehem, a wall. I went through the wall and touched the pain of the people of Bethlehem. I touched the tension.
In my mind’s eye I have been there this Christmas.
‘Be there’ … was not the invitation of the advertising campaign.
Be part of the action … at a church near you.
That’s the point of Christmas. It is not just to be there, it is to be part of the action.
The Wise men had gifts to share. Be part of the action! We have gifts to share as well – not just our Christmas presents with each other! But the gifts we share for very practical help in Bethlehem.
We have linked up with the Alex Awad and the Shepherd Society, run by the Bethlehem Bible College. Through our giving we are part of the action bringing care and help, food parcels, medical aid, support in jobs and education renewal of utilities in a very troubled town of Bethlehem.
The shepherds had a message to share. Be part of the action. Have a message to share. Light in a world of darkness. Hope in a world of fear. Love in a world of hatred. Comfort in a world of pain. We met and worshipped at the church of Alex Awad – he has shared a Christmas message with us this year …
“The blessing of Christmas for Christians today is the same as on the very first Christmas: God sent his son in human flesh to become the Saviour of the world.
“With the challenges of the wall isolating the city into an island enclave cut off from Jerusalem and the rest of Israel, Bethlehem’s Christians look to their brothers and sisters in Christ around the world for spiritual and moral support. If we could have two wishes this Christmas, the first is that the Christians of Bethlehem and the Holy Land will be encouraged and strengthened spiritually to stay in the land of their birth. The second is to see a peaceful solution to the decade’s long Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
“With this short message of Christmas cheer, hope and goodwill, we wish you a very joyful Christmas and pray that your hearts overflow with bountiful blessings from above.”
Be part of the action – so what is the action that you can take, - an action to bring the love of Christ, the light of his presence, his comfort, his strengthening into the world?
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Put yourself in the place of the shepherds ...
Put yourself in the place of the shepherds and ask yourself the question … how would you feel?
Terrified!
Why? The angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them.
We sing of that glory so often, we think it’s glorious!
But the glory of the Lord was something tangible, special, felt in the holiest of holy places, felt on the mountain top … it was for the Moseses of this world, for the High Priest … not for the shepherds, not out in the fields.
They were terrified.
And then the voice of the angel speaks.
‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah,* the Lord. 12This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ 13
What could that mean? A messiah – a longed for king. Anointed of God – for all the people.
What would this king be like? The kings of old had let themselves down, they had let their people down, they had let God down … and the prophet Ezekiel had been so outspoken.
Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? 3You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. 4You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. 5So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. 6My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.
The prophet had been so certain … the day was coming when God’s rule would break in upon his people, and the rule of God would be rule of a great and good shepherd,
I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. 15I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 16I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
Could this be what was happening?
There was more to the message of the angels …
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,* praising God and saying, 14‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace good will among people’
*
In a state of fear?
Hear the word of the angels … Do not be afraid.
Hear again the good news of the coming of Christ.
Know that he comes as the Good Shepherd …
‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.
What the shepherds did was to go and find out … they went and saw for themselves and then they had a message to share.
So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19
Put yourself in the place of the shepherds … hear the message of the angels, see for yourself … and spread the news.
But what is the message of the angels?
Think for a few moments … and reflect … what is the message the angels have for our world today?
Write that message on your angel …
1 It came upon the midnight clear,
that glorious song of old,
from angels bending near the earth
to touch their harps of gold:
'Glory to God! On earth be peace,
from heaven's all-gracious King!'
The world in solemn stillness lay
to hear the angels sing.
2 Still through the cloven skies they come,
with peaceful wings unfurled;
and still their heavenly music floats
o'er all the weary world:
above its sad and lowly plains
they bend on hovering wing;
and ever o'er its Babel-sounds
the blessed angels sing.
3 Yet with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long;
beneath the angel-strain have rolled
two thousand years of wrong;
and we, at bitter war, hear not
the love-song which they bring:
O hush the noise and end the strife,
to hear the angels sing.
4 For lo, the days are hastening on,
by prophet-bards foretold,
when, with the ever-circling years,
comes round the age of gold;
when peace shall over all the earth
its ancient splendours fling,
and the whole world give back the song
which now the angels sing.
Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876)
Terrified!
Why? The angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them.
We sing of that glory so often, we think it’s glorious!
But the glory of the Lord was something tangible, special, felt in the holiest of holy places, felt on the mountain top … it was for the Moseses of this world, for the High Priest … not for the shepherds, not out in the fields.
They were terrified.
And then the voice of the angel speaks.
‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah,* the Lord. 12This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ 13
What could that mean? A messiah – a longed for king. Anointed of God – for all the people.
What would this king be like? The kings of old had let themselves down, they had let their people down, they had let God down … and the prophet Ezekiel had been so outspoken.
Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? 3You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. 4You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. 5So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. 6My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.
The prophet had been so certain … the day was coming when God’s rule would break in upon his people, and the rule of God would be rule of a great and good shepherd,
I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. 12As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. 15I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. 16I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
Could this be what was happening?
There was more to the message of the angels …
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,* praising God and saying, 14‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace good will among people’
*
In a state of fear?
Hear the word of the angels … Do not be afraid.
Hear again the good news of the coming of Christ.
Know that he comes as the Good Shepherd …
‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.
What the shepherds did was to go and find out … they went and saw for themselves and then they had a message to share.
So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19
Put yourself in the place of the shepherds … hear the message of the angels, see for yourself … and spread the news.
But what is the message of the angels?
Think for a few moments … and reflect … what is the message the angels have for our world today?
Write that message on your angel …
1 It came upon the midnight clear,
that glorious song of old,
from angels bending near the earth
to touch their harps of gold:
'Glory to God! On earth be peace,
from heaven's all-gracious King!'
The world in solemn stillness lay
to hear the angels sing.
2 Still through the cloven skies they come,
with peaceful wings unfurled;
and still their heavenly music floats
o'er all the weary world:
above its sad and lowly plains
they bend on hovering wing;
and ever o'er its Babel-sounds
the blessed angels sing.
3 Yet with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long;
beneath the angel-strain have rolled
two thousand years of wrong;
and we, at bitter war, hear not
the love-song which they bring:
O hush the noise and end the strife,
to hear the angels sing.
4 For lo, the days are hastening on,
by prophet-bards foretold,
when, with the ever-circling years,
comes round the age of gold;
when peace shall over all the earth
its ancient splendours fling,
and the whole world give back the song
which now the angels sing.
Edmund Hamilton Sears (1810-1876)
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Remember with Humility - a Sermon for Remembrance Sunday
It was another parade of soldiers returning from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. But it was not just another parade. A number of their colleagues were not returning with them. When asked how they felt, one of the officers commented: it’s just a relief to be coming home.
Someone took me on one side after one Remembrance Sunday Service. He had served with the RAF in the second world war. And he said just the same. It was just a relief to come home.
They say of what’s happening in Afghanistan that our forces have not experienced the like since some of the close combat warfare of the first world war. There are only four surviving servicemen from the first world war and the one who was interviewed this week had not got beyond the training camps of Yorkshire having been recruited in the last year of the war.
It is difficult to think that Anne’s mother at 103 was in her teens before that war ended.
Today is a day to remember those who have lost their lives in war … not just long ago, but more recently too.
But it is important to take care how we honour their memory. Those who returned from the trenches of the first world war were all too aware of the dangers in remembering in a wrong kind of way.
C.E.Montague served in middle age as a volunteer in those trenches. By June 1919 he was frustrated at the way some remembered.
“There is a part of the population, shallow, luxurious and vulgar-hearted, which seems to be trying as hard as it can to give to English life that special quality often found in Empires that are over-blown and ripe for degradation.
“… a kind of grandiose insoslence of self-indulgence. That part of our population no doubt would find a record glare and blare of noise and illumination very much to its mind. So, perhaps would a few dealers in bunting, rockets and refreshments but scarcely anyone else.”
As the war finished C.E.Montague had had the experience of hearing from the front lines the bells ring out to announce peace.
“An extraordinarily large number of soldiers had the idea that they might first learn that peace had come by hearing a joyful peal of bells from the nearest unruined church tower in their rear. Many of them did hear this, with an effect they are not likely to forget, within a few seconds of the commencement of the Armistice.
“Such men do not want to hear nay more guns or to see any more signal rockets. Still less do they want any such “portions and parcels of the dreadful past” as formal musters and reviews.
“For them the general ringing of bells, one of the most ancient, beautiful, and moving expressions of a common joy, pretty well exhausts all the possibilities of congenial demonstration. You cannot go one better than perfection.
“There is a time to rejoice and a time to refrain from rejoicing, and also there is a time not to refrain wholly but to be sober and rather humble in one’s joy.”[1]
Maybe it is good not only to rejoice with humility, but also to remember with humility and be humble in one’s remembering.
Remembrance Sunday marks the end of that first great war of the twentieth century. It is not without significance that our remembrance marks an ending of war and therefore the beginning of the peace.
Maybe, the likes of CE Montague were already uneasy about the way the ‘peace’ was being pursued at the end of that war. Maybe how the peace should be pursued should also be the subject of our reflection to honour those who have lost their lives in war.
That’s why that reading from Revelation 22 is so powerful. John the divine, shares with us a vision of a new creation – not just to give us a dream to dream of some far off reality in a distant future of God’s glory. The vision is a vision that shapes what we do in the here and now.
His vision is of a river of the water of life streaming out from God’s presence into the whole of the world. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
What a vision to share.
The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations … healing, that’s what the nations of the world are constantly in need of. And that is the task that those who share John the divine’s allegiance to Jesus Christ share in the world.
How can healing be brought to the nations … maybe another clue can be found in the words of Micah, echoing many another prophet too.
Out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
We need to heed the teaching s of the God who will judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away.
What form does that judgment take? It is one of the tragedies of the 21st century that religion has once again been drawn on to fuel the rage of war. But Micah has such a very different vision. The teachings of God must be drawn on to shape the peace …
They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more …
What a vision.
Can it be real?
As news comes from the Congo once more of the horrors of a world gone mad on the ravages of war, the commitment to work for peace is so desperately important and why we shall be having a retiring collection for Christian Aid’s appeal for the people caught up in that humanitarian disaster.
A year ago Felicity visited Mozambique, another African country that has been torn apart by war. That’s what prompted her to share with the children a picture of the tree of life sculpture that was commissioned by the British Museum and by Christian Aid and now stands in the African galleries of the British museum.
“A half tonne sculpture made out of chopped up guns and other decommissioned weapons from Mozambique was created in three months by Mozambican artists and made entirely out of weapons such as AK-47’s, pistols and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They see it as a way of using their art to promote peace.
“The Transforming Arms into Tools (TAE) project is run by the Christian Council of Mozambique a partner organisation of Christian Aid.
“There are still millions of arms hidden throughout Mozambique – a legacy of the 16 year long civil war that ended in 1992. Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane, who was involved in the peace negotiations between the Frelimo government and the Renamo rebels in 1992, came up with the idea for a weapons amnesty project that would help people give up
their guns.
“In the last nine years the project, which employs some former child soldiers, has collected and dismantled more than 600,000 weapons.
In exchange for their guns, former combatants are offered building materials, tools and equipment such as sewing machines, bicycles, and ploughs.
“One village received a tractor for handing in 500 weapons.
“After being chopped up and dismantled by TAE staff, these tools of war begin their new life in the hands of Mozambican artists who create sculptures out of them. Their unique pieces of art are exhibited all over the world and include birds of peace, saxophones, chairs, monkeys and even jazz bands.
“Hilario Nhatugueja, one of the four sculptors, says: ‘We artists want to turn the situation around, change the story. Changing these instruments of death into hope, life and prosperity.
“’This tree symbolises life, symbolises a future, symbolises hope’[2]
Catch that vision …
Then, in the words of John Greenleaf Whittier,
Then shall all shackles fall: the stormy clangour
Of wild war music o’er the earth shall cease;
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace.[3]
O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother!
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.
For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken:
The holier worship which he deigns to bless
Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,
And feeds the widow and the fatherless.
Follow with reverent steps the great example
Of him whose holy work was doing good;
So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple,
Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.
Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangour
Of wild war-music o'er the earth shall cease;
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
11 10 11 10 Iambic
Copied from HymnQuest 2008: CLUE Version
HymnQuest ID: 58524
[1] This leader is attributed to CE Montague, who heard the bells at Moons as a middle-aged volunteer. The Manchester Guardian, June 27th 1919.
[2] www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutDFID/DFIDwork/ppas/christian-treelife.pdf
[3] John Greenleaf Whittier, ‘O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother’
Someone took me on one side after one Remembrance Sunday Service. He had served with the RAF in the second world war. And he said just the same. It was just a relief to come home.
They say of what’s happening in Afghanistan that our forces have not experienced the like since some of the close combat warfare of the first world war. There are only four surviving servicemen from the first world war and the one who was interviewed this week had not got beyond the training camps of Yorkshire having been recruited in the last year of the war.
It is difficult to think that Anne’s mother at 103 was in her teens before that war ended.
Today is a day to remember those who have lost their lives in war … not just long ago, but more recently too.
But it is important to take care how we honour their memory. Those who returned from the trenches of the first world war were all too aware of the dangers in remembering in a wrong kind of way.
C.E.Montague served in middle age as a volunteer in those trenches. By June 1919 he was frustrated at the way some remembered.
“There is a part of the population, shallow, luxurious and vulgar-hearted, which seems to be trying as hard as it can to give to English life that special quality often found in Empires that are over-blown and ripe for degradation.
“… a kind of grandiose insoslence of self-indulgence. That part of our population no doubt would find a record glare and blare of noise and illumination very much to its mind. So, perhaps would a few dealers in bunting, rockets and refreshments but scarcely anyone else.”
As the war finished C.E.Montague had had the experience of hearing from the front lines the bells ring out to announce peace.
“An extraordinarily large number of soldiers had the idea that they might first learn that peace had come by hearing a joyful peal of bells from the nearest unruined church tower in their rear. Many of them did hear this, with an effect they are not likely to forget, within a few seconds of the commencement of the Armistice.
“Such men do not want to hear nay more guns or to see any more signal rockets. Still less do they want any such “portions and parcels of the dreadful past” as formal musters and reviews.
“For them the general ringing of bells, one of the most ancient, beautiful, and moving expressions of a common joy, pretty well exhausts all the possibilities of congenial demonstration. You cannot go one better than perfection.
“There is a time to rejoice and a time to refrain from rejoicing, and also there is a time not to refrain wholly but to be sober and rather humble in one’s joy.”[1]
Maybe it is good not only to rejoice with humility, but also to remember with humility and be humble in one’s remembering.
Remembrance Sunday marks the end of that first great war of the twentieth century. It is not without significance that our remembrance marks an ending of war and therefore the beginning of the peace.
Maybe, the likes of CE Montague were already uneasy about the way the ‘peace’ was being pursued at the end of that war. Maybe how the peace should be pursued should also be the subject of our reflection to honour those who have lost their lives in war.
That’s why that reading from Revelation 22 is so powerful. John the divine, shares with us a vision of a new creation – not just to give us a dream to dream of some far off reality in a distant future of God’s glory. The vision is a vision that shapes what we do in the here and now.
His vision is of a river of the water of life streaming out from God’s presence into the whole of the world. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
What a vision to share.
The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations … healing, that’s what the nations of the world are constantly in need of. And that is the task that those who share John the divine’s allegiance to Jesus Christ share in the world.
How can healing be brought to the nations … maybe another clue can be found in the words of Micah, echoing many another prophet too.
Out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
We need to heed the teaching s of the God who will judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away.
What form does that judgment take? It is one of the tragedies of the 21st century that religion has once again been drawn on to fuel the rage of war. But Micah has such a very different vision. The teachings of God must be drawn on to shape the peace …
They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more …
What a vision.
Can it be real?
As news comes from the Congo once more of the horrors of a world gone mad on the ravages of war, the commitment to work for peace is so desperately important and why we shall be having a retiring collection for Christian Aid’s appeal for the people caught up in that humanitarian disaster.
A year ago Felicity visited Mozambique, another African country that has been torn apart by war. That’s what prompted her to share with the children a picture of the tree of life sculpture that was commissioned by the British Museum and by Christian Aid and now stands in the African galleries of the British museum.
“A half tonne sculpture made out of chopped up guns and other decommissioned weapons from Mozambique was created in three months by Mozambican artists and made entirely out of weapons such as AK-47’s, pistols and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. They see it as a way of using their art to promote peace.
“The Transforming Arms into Tools (TAE) project is run by the Christian Council of Mozambique a partner organisation of Christian Aid.
“There are still millions of arms hidden throughout Mozambique – a legacy of the 16 year long civil war that ended in 1992. Bishop Dom Dinis Sengulane, who was involved in the peace negotiations between the Frelimo government and the Renamo rebels in 1992, came up with the idea for a weapons amnesty project that would help people give up
their guns.
“In the last nine years the project, which employs some former child soldiers, has collected and dismantled more than 600,000 weapons.
In exchange for their guns, former combatants are offered building materials, tools and equipment such as sewing machines, bicycles, and ploughs.
“One village received a tractor for handing in 500 weapons.
“After being chopped up and dismantled by TAE staff, these tools of war begin their new life in the hands of Mozambican artists who create sculptures out of them. Their unique pieces of art are exhibited all over the world and include birds of peace, saxophones, chairs, monkeys and even jazz bands.
“Hilario Nhatugueja, one of the four sculptors, says: ‘We artists want to turn the situation around, change the story. Changing these instruments of death into hope, life and prosperity.
“’This tree symbolises life, symbolises a future, symbolises hope’[2]
Catch that vision …
Then, in the words of John Greenleaf Whittier,
Then shall all shackles fall: the stormy clangour
Of wild war music o’er the earth shall cease;
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace.[3]
O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother!
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer.
For he whom Jesus loved hath truly spoken:
The holier worship which he deigns to bless
Restores the lost, and binds the spirit broken,
And feeds the widow and the fatherless.
Follow with reverent steps the great example
Of him whose holy work was doing good;
So shall the wide earth seem our Father's temple,
Each loving life a psalm of gratitude.
Then shall all shackles fall; the stormy clangour
Of wild war-music o'er the earth shall cease;
Love shall tread out the baleful fire of anger,
And in its ashes plant the tree of peace.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
11 10 11 10 Iambic
Copied from HymnQuest 2008: CLUE Version
HymnQuest ID: 58524
[1] This leader is attributed to CE Montague, who heard the bells at Moons as a middle-aged volunteer. The Manchester Guardian, June 27th 1919.
[2] www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutDFID/DFIDwork/ppas/christian-treelife.pdf
[3] John Greenleaf Whittier, ‘O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother’
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Lord's Prayer
Maybe it’s because I have grown up with these particular words and they are deep in my psyche. Maybe it is because I learned them from my mother and father when I was tiny. Maybe it’s because in a world of change there’s part of me that holds on to the things that don’t change.
I like what I suppose you would call the ‘traditional’ words of the Lord’s Prayer.
It is the version based on Matthew chapter 6 as translated into English by William Tyndale, polished by the translators of the Authorised Version, adapted into the Book of Common Prayer and tweaked a little since!
It is part of the genius of William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, the translators of the Authorised Version and the compilers of the Book of Common Prayer that they had an ear for the rhythms of the English language, and an eye for the vocabulary of English too. For those who are native English speakers there’s something about these words that is special.
Spoken English has a rhythm that matches the rhythm of the heart beat – the iambic de dum, de dum. These traditional words capture that rhythm …
Our Father,
Who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day
Our daily bread
And forgive us
Our trespasses
As we forgive
Those who
Trespass against us
And lead us not
Into temptation
But deliver us
From evil
For thine is the kingdom,
The power and the glory
Forever and ever
Amen.
The very words themselves invite us, almost compel us to feel this prayer as very much part of us: it’s not just deep down inside our psyche, it’s deep in the very heart-beat and rhythm of our lives.
And that is as it should be. Let this prayer be the heart-beat not just of our prayer life, not just of our spiritual lives, but of the whole living of our lives.
There is a point, however, towards the middle of the prayer when the rhythm is more difficult. The difficulty arrives as you reach trespasses, temptation and evil. It is as if those very things disrupt the rhythm and are immensely unsettling.
The rhythm and the beat returns however and comes to its climax as it returns us to the source of the very life we lead – the modern translation keeps the words, but they lose their power – the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours
Yours is a very weak word to finish on.
Thine has so much power to it, and by putting it first it enables you to know from the very start who the kingdom, the power and the glory belong to … and it enables you to rise to a wonderful climax in such powerful words – thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever Amen.
Those translators and writers of English had an eye to the vocabulary of English, and in particular the weight of words.
One characteristic of English is its love of single syllable words, and its respect for words of more than one syllable. There was a wonderful illustration of that when a couple of weeks ago the Bodleian Library in Oxford exhibited for one day only one of its great treasures – the original manuscript for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Never mind the film … read the book! What was fascinating was that out of about 80,000 words in the novel, 5000 of them had been changed by Mary Shelley’s husband, Percy the poet. Mary Shelley had written words of single syllable that had a directness of speech that was simple and straightforward. Her husband, the poet, had replaced all those words with longer words, usually drawn from Latin or from French in what some would regard as a mistaken attempt to make her writing more literary!
The traditional wording of the Lord’s Prayer is a wonderful illustration of the weighting of words.
Our
Father
Who
Art
In
Heaven
Hallowed
Be
Thy
Name
Thy
Kingdom
Come
Thy
Will
Be
Done
On
Earth
As
It
Is
In
Heaven
Give
Us
This
Day
Our
Daily
Bread
And
Forgive
Us
Our
Trespasses
As
We
Forgive
Those
Who
Trespass
Against
Us
And
Lead
Us
Not
In
To
Temptation
But
Deliver
Us
From
Evil
For
Thine
Is
The
kingdom
The
Power
And
The
Glory
Forever
And
Ever
Amen.
There are 50 words of one syllable
There are 16 words of two syllables
There are 4 words of three syllables.
Think of the two syllable words as words of greater weight
Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us
And lead us not in to temptation
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory
Forever and ever amen.
These are the great powers, that we draw into the very rhythm of our life:
Father, heaven, kingdom, power, glory
That rhythm of life sees to it that daily needs are met …
And fundamental to that rhythm is our willingness to forgive.
Creeping into that rhythm is trespass, evil. And that too carries weight.
The brutal reality of life is that the evil, the nastiness often seems to carry more weight.
That’s what happens when you weigh words by their syllable count.
There are only 4 3-syllable words. What’s the first?
Trespasses.
Replacing that word with the English word ‘sin’ may be theologically accurate, it’s arguable whether it’s necessarily easier to understand. But it is a throwaway, lightweight word.
Whereas trespasses carries weight. Our trespasses, the things we have done that we shouldn’t have done, the words we have said we shouldn’t have said, the thoughts we have had in our minds that should never have been there, not to mention all those things we have left undone, unspoken, that have slipped our minds.
Forgiveness is so important!
The next three syllable word also carries immense weight and can often be such a burden that it weighs us down.
Lead us not into temptation.
How often the world of temptation gets the better of us and we sink under its weight.
These things that are so weighty they matter. And they need something equally weighty to counter them. As we draw on Our Father, in heaven, whose name is hallowed, as we draw on the kingdom, the power, and the glory … the God we believe is up to the task.
The next three letter word is the key …
But deliver us from evil.
Over against the weighty things that weigh us down is the deliverance that frees us.
But we must not get too hung up on the words.
You might have expected the words of the Lord’s Prayer to be standardised from the very beginning. Intriguingly they are not. The wording is very different in Matthew and in Luke – and yet it is recognisably the same prayer.
The most obvious explanation is that Jesus used different words on different occasions.
What is beyond all doubt is that different church communities from the very earliest times used different words – if you examine the different manuscripts you will find different words – most obviously in the finish.
If you go to a Roman Catholic church you will find they finish as it seems in mid air, without getting as far as ‘thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory …’ They are in good company, lots of the oldest manuscripts of Matthew 6 do not include those words either!
What do we make of that?
It is a reminder to us that however much we love these words, maybe they are not to become ‘idle repetition’, recited for their own sake.
More important is the pattern they offer us for our praying.
But as ever it is good to return to the text of the Gospels. For there is another difference you will notice when you go North of the Border to Scotland, or West of Offa’s Dyke to Wales.
Never mind ‘trespasses’ or ‘sins’ … in Scottish churches and in Welsh-speaking churches and in many reformed churches – forgiveness has to do with debts.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
That’s interesting!
Where does that come from?
Well, in fact, that’s the word in Matthew 6.
That’s intriguing – is it a metaphor for sin and trespasses?
Or does it have to do with debt and obligation to others. It puts a different cast on the prayer … and one that is very timely today.
Only yesterday on Radio 4 someone being interviewed about the impact of the global financial crisis on them as an individual spoke of the ‘slavery’ of debt.
The jubilee 2000 campaign to write off the debts of the poorest countries spoke of the slavery of debt and used the broken chains of slavery as the badge of its campaign.
Forgiveness of debts? Forgive us for getting into debt … as we forgive those who have got into debt to us. Maybe it is the mutuality of forgiveness that is to the fore. It was something that Jesus used in one of his wonderful parables – when he spoke of the man who owed a massive amount whose debt was written off who went out free of his own debt only to make a massive demand on someone who owed him only a very little amount.
Jesus was urging a mutuality of commitment that would make all the difference and bring freedom. This is very much in line with the thinking of the Hebrew Scriptures. Society has to be ordered – or in the words that are in vogue at the moment – some kind of ‘regulation’ is needed. A lot of the Books of the Law is to do with ordering society … and intriguingly it is about how to order society in such a way as to support the poorest, not least as they are in danger of sinking under the weight of debt. Hence the notion of ‘the jubilee’ year when the slate is wiped clean and people can begin again.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors – maybe food for thought and reflection – and reminder daily, within the rhythms of our praying of our commitment to those facing financial difficulty
Maybe the Lord’s Prayer goes right to the heart not only of the rhythms of our prayer life, our spiritual life, our personal lives … but also to the heart of the rhythms of society and the way it is structured.
Last week, in the course of a service celebrating Baptism with little Harry, the invitation was for us to pray the Lord’s prayer with an individual in mind – Harry himself, or maybe someone else we are thinking of.
Today comes the invitation to pray the Lord’s prayer with society and its needs in mind.
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come, your rule of justice, peace and integrity of creation
Thy will be done, for good not ill
On earth as it is in heaven – in war torn parts of your world, in people’s lives devastated by financial collapse, in the lives of those facing tragedy, illness, poverty and want
Give us this day our daily bread – give to each part of your world what it needs that there may be an equitable sharing of the world’s resources
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
May that mutuality of respect and forgiveness mark the relations between communities, between societies, between nations as well
And lead us not into temptation
May we build the kind of society where temptations are not put in people’s way all the time – the temptation to consume more than we ought, the temptation to spend more than we can, the temptation to hurt and damage others and ourselves,
But deliver us from evil – where evil has a hold over people’s lives in a world of so much evil – deliver people we prayer.
How easy it is to despair in a world of wrong, a world of temptation a world of evil – help us to hold on to that forgiveness, to be released from that temptation, and delivered from that evil – for the faith we share enables us to be sure in the face of all the world hurls at us that you will prevail:
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever
Amen.
I like what I suppose you would call the ‘traditional’ words of the Lord’s Prayer.
It is the version based on Matthew chapter 6 as translated into English by William Tyndale, polished by the translators of the Authorised Version, adapted into the Book of Common Prayer and tweaked a little since!
It is part of the genius of William Tyndale, Thomas Cranmer, the translators of the Authorised Version and the compilers of the Book of Common Prayer that they had an ear for the rhythms of the English language, and an eye for the vocabulary of English too. For those who are native English speakers there’s something about these words that is special.
Spoken English has a rhythm that matches the rhythm of the heart beat – the iambic de dum, de dum. These traditional words capture that rhythm …
Our Father,
Who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day
Our daily bread
And forgive us
Our trespasses
As we forgive
Those who
Trespass against us
And lead us not
Into temptation
But deliver us
From evil
For thine is the kingdom,
The power and the glory
Forever and ever
Amen.
The very words themselves invite us, almost compel us to feel this prayer as very much part of us: it’s not just deep down inside our psyche, it’s deep in the very heart-beat and rhythm of our lives.
And that is as it should be. Let this prayer be the heart-beat not just of our prayer life, not just of our spiritual lives, but of the whole living of our lives.
There is a point, however, towards the middle of the prayer when the rhythm is more difficult. The difficulty arrives as you reach trespasses, temptation and evil. It is as if those very things disrupt the rhythm and are immensely unsettling.
The rhythm and the beat returns however and comes to its climax as it returns us to the source of the very life we lead – the modern translation keeps the words, but they lose their power – the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours
Yours is a very weak word to finish on.
Thine has so much power to it, and by putting it first it enables you to know from the very start who the kingdom, the power and the glory belong to … and it enables you to rise to a wonderful climax in such powerful words – thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever Amen.
Those translators and writers of English had an eye to the vocabulary of English, and in particular the weight of words.
One characteristic of English is its love of single syllable words, and its respect for words of more than one syllable. There was a wonderful illustration of that when a couple of weeks ago the Bodleian Library in Oxford exhibited for one day only one of its great treasures – the original manuscript for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Never mind the film … read the book! What was fascinating was that out of about 80,000 words in the novel, 5000 of them had been changed by Mary Shelley’s husband, Percy the poet. Mary Shelley had written words of single syllable that had a directness of speech that was simple and straightforward. Her husband, the poet, had replaced all those words with longer words, usually drawn from Latin or from French in what some would regard as a mistaken attempt to make her writing more literary!
The traditional wording of the Lord’s Prayer is a wonderful illustration of the weighting of words.
Our
Father
Who
Art
In
Heaven
Hallowed
Be
Thy
Name
Thy
Kingdom
Come
Thy
Will
Be
Done
On
Earth
As
It
Is
In
Heaven
Give
Us
This
Day
Our
Daily
Bread
And
Forgive
Us
Our
Trespasses
As
We
Forgive
Those
Who
Trespass
Against
Us
And
Lead
Us
Not
In
To
Temptation
But
Deliver
Us
From
Evil
For
Thine
Is
The
kingdom
The
Power
And
The
Glory
Forever
And
Ever
Amen.
There are 50 words of one syllable
There are 16 words of two syllables
There are 4 words of three syllables.
Think of the two syllable words as words of greater weight
Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us
And lead us not in to temptation
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory
Forever and ever amen.
These are the great powers, that we draw into the very rhythm of our life:
Father, heaven, kingdom, power, glory
That rhythm of life sees to it that daily needs are met …
And fundamental to that rhythm is our willingness to forgive.
Creeping into that rhythm is trespass, evil. And that too carries weight.
The brutal reality of life is that the evil, the nastiness often seems to carry more weight.
That’s what happens when you weigh words by their syllable count.
There are only 4 3-syllable words. What’s the first?
Trespasses.
Replacing that word with the English word ‘sin’ may be theologically accurate, it’s arguable whether it’s necessarily easier to understand. But it is a throwaway, lightweight word.
Whereas trespasses carries weight. Our trespasses, the things we have done that we shouldn’t have done, the words we have said we shouldn’t have said, the thoughts we have had in our minds that should never have been there, not to mention all those things we have left undone, unspoken, that have slipped our minds.
Forgiveness is so important!
The next three syllable word also carries immense weight and can often be such a burden that it weighs us down.
Lead us not into temptation.
How often the world of temptation gets the better of us and we sink under its weight.
These things that are so weighty they matter. And they need something equally weighty to counter them. As we draw on Our Father, in heaven, whose name is hallowed, as we draw on the kingdom, the power, and the glory … the God we believe is up to the task.
The next three letter word is the key …
But deliver us from evil.
Over against the weighty things that weigh us down is the deliverance that frees us.
But we must not get too hung up on the words.
You might have expected the words of the Lord’s Prayer to be standardised from the very beginning. Intriguingly they are not. The wording is very different in Matthew and in Luke – and yet it is recognisably the same prayer.
The most obvious explanation is that Jesus used different words on different occasions.
What is beyond all doubt is that different church communities from the very earliest times used different words – if you examine the different manuscripts you will find different words – most obviously in the finish.
If you go to a Roman Catholic church you will find they finish as it seems in mid air, without getting as far as ‘thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory …’ They are in good company, lots of the oldest manuscripts of Matthew 6 do not include those words either!
What do we make of that?
It is a reminder to us that however much we love these words, maybe they are not to become ‘idle repetition’, recited for their own sake.
More important is the pattern they offer us for our praying.
But as ever it is good to return to the text of the Gospels. For there is another difference you will notice when you go North of the Border to Scotland, or West of Offa’s Dyke to Wales.
Never mind ‘trespasses’ or ‘sins’ … in Scottish churches and in Welsh-speaking churches and in many reformed churches – forgiveness has to do with debts.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
That’s interesting!
Where does that come from?
Well, in fact, that’s the word in Matthew 6.
That’s intriguing – is it a metaphor for sin and trespasses?
Or does it have to do with debt and obligation to others. It puts a different cast on the prayer … and one that is very timely today.
Only yesterday on Radio 4 someone being interviewed about the impact of the global financial crisis on them as an individual spoke of the ‘slavery’ of debt.
The jubilee 2000 campaign to write off the debts of the poorest countries spoke of the slavery of debt and used the broken chains of slavery as the badge of its campaign.
Forgiveness of debts? Forgive us for getting into debt … as we forgive those who have got into debt to us. Maybe it is the mutuality of forgiveness that is to the fore. It was something that Jesus used in one of his wonderful parables – when he spoke of the man who owed a massive amount whose debt was written off who went out free of his own debt only to make a massive demand on someone who owed him only a very little amount.
Jesus was urging a mutuality of commitment that would make all the difference and bring freedom. This is very much in line with the thinking of the Hebrew Scriptures. Society has to be ordered – or in the words that are in vogue at the moment – some kind of ‘regulation’ is needed. A lot of the Books of the Law is to do with ordering society … and intriguingly it is about how to order society in such a way as to support the poorest, not least as they are in danger of sinking under the weight of debt. Hence the notion of ‘the jubilee’ year when the slate is wiped clean and people can begin again.
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors – maybe food for thought and reflection – and reminder daily, within the rhythms of our praying of our commitment to those facing financial difficulty
Maybe the Lord’s Prayer goes right to the heart not only of the rhythms of our prayer life, our spiritual life, our personal lives … but also to the heart of the rhythms of society and the way it is structured.
Last week, in the course of a service celebrating Baptism with little Harry, the invitation was for us to pray the Lord’s prayer with an individual in mind – Harry himself, or maybe someone else we are thinking of.
Today comes the invitation to pray the Lord’s prayer with society and its needs in mind.
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come, your rule of justice, peace and integrity of creation
Thy will be done, for good not ill
On earth as it is in heaven – in war torn parts of your world, in people’s lives devastated by financial collapse, in the lives of those facing tragedy, illness, poverty and want
Give us this day our daily bread – give to each part of your world what it needs that there may be an equitable sharing of the world’s resources
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors
May that mutuality of respect and forgiveness mark the relations between communities, between societies, between nations as well
And lead us not into temptation
May we build the kind of society where temptations are not put in people’s way all the time – the temptation to consume more than we ought, the temptation to spend more than we can, the temptation to hurt and damage others and ourselves,
But deliver us from evil – where evil has a hold over people’s lives in a world of so much evil – deliver people we prayer.
How easy it is to despair in a world of wrong, a world of temptation a world of evil – help us to hold on to that forgiveness, to be released from that temptation, and delivered from that evil – for the faith we share enables us to be sure in the face of all the world hurls at us that you will prevail:
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever
Amen.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Baptism - a Celebration of God's Greatest Gifts!
At the heart of our Baptism service is the celebration of the most wonderful of all gifts, the gift of God’s love. It’s an unconditional gift, with no strings attached of his wonderful love – and that love reaches out to each of us by name, before ever we know anything about it, before ever we have learned anything about it – it’s there, simply given to us. The most wonderful gift of God’s free, forgiving love, of God’s grace.
That’s not the only gift we celebrate today. There’s the gift of life – the miracle of new life coming into being. And that new life comes into being as a wonderful gift of God – nowhere is that sense of life as a gift of God, the God who knows us, loves us and gives us life better expressed than in the poetry of Psalm 139 …
O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 2You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;that I know very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. 17How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end*—I am still with you.
It is one of the privileges of my position as Minister that when I hear a baby has been born I can go to visit in the maternity hospital – it was a joy to do that when Eleanor was born. We were excited in the church family when Harry was expected because he was not alone!
News came that Rob and Andrea Lacey’s little baby had arrived – a sister for Bethany. The day after it was lovely to visit just as Andrea and Rob were getting ready to take little Abigail home. Earlier that day Felicity had spotted Tom driving Nicky down Hewlett Rd – and there was only one place they could be going to.
Having had short time with little Abigail I went to the desk to enquire after Tom and Nicky to be told they were still on the delivery suite, but it would be all right to pop in and see them as. It was with some fear and trepidation that I made my way upstairs to the delivery suite for the first time in about 22 years!
Seeing a new born baby always takes the breath away – it is a miracle – the hair all in place, the fingers so carefully manicured – the Psalmist has it right …
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
But I always feel my visit has a very specific purpose. It’s not always the right moment, but for the most part I endeavour to fulfil that purpose. It says close family visits only. But when you belong to a church you have another close family – and I am there from that family – more than that I am there to say a prayer of blessing.
Among the first visits – a visit from the church family. Among the first words heard, words of prayer and of blessing.
The wonderful gift of prayer … is something then that we can give to our children as they grow older.
And there is one prayer in particular that is wonderful to pass on to them. I can remember now the little picture book I had as a tiny child to help me to learn the Lord’s prayer – it was from my parents that I learned it. How precious to pass on the gift of that prayer. It is a prayer that says it all.
Go through those words – of yourself, but go through those words and hold in mind little Harry, the little one you are concerned for, go through those words and hold in mind the elderly person you are concerned for – don’t just say the words for yourself – say those words and hold in mind the one your are so concerned for.
Our Father who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth – in little Harry’s life –
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread – hold Harry in your prayer at this point that God will meet his every need
And Forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us
- sometimes, God forbid, we feel we let people down, none of us is a perfect parent – to surround little Harry in that forgiving kind of love
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil
It is a scary world Harry is born into – how great that prayer we pray for him today …
And in that scary world we can have confidence that God is with us – that he will prevail.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory
Forever and ever amen.
The gift of God’s love, God’s amazing grace
The gift of new life and the wonder of its miracle
The gift of prayer and God’s blessing
The gift of the greatest prayer of all
There’s only one way to respond to the gifts that we receive – it makes you want to give in return. And when children come into play giving can make a world of difference not only to the child but also to the giver.
Helen Roberts is one of our junior church leaders who as often as not is out with the children leading the Splash Group we have. Back in the summer she asked if she could share with us all what it has meant to her to give to a child in one very particular kind of way.
Helen shared with us her experience of sponsoring a child through Compassion, a Christian charity committed to releasing children from poverty, that works in partnership with local churches in some of the poorest parts of the world.
http://www.compassionuk.org/
Thank you Richard, for giving me the opportunity to share the work of Compassion projects for children in poverty across the world.
According to their statistics, in the time it takes you to take a single breath, a child dies somewhere in the world as a result of poverty.
I find statistics like that quite overwhelming and find myself questioning what I can do about it, as I feel so helpless and inadequate.
1999, I knew I wanted to do something, sponsor something, as I had two beautiful children, a lovely home and food on the table – I wanted to share my blessings. I heard of Tearfund, whose sponsorship programme is now operated by Compassion, through whom I could sponsor an individual child. That sort of level of support really appealed to me.
I might not be able to change the world by myself – but maybe I could change the world for one child at a time!
I chose a child the same age as my youngest, who was 6 at the time. Her name is Galuh and she lives in Java in Indonesia with her parents and 4 siblings. The charity sent me a picture of this solemn-looking little girl and she wrote solemnly to me thanking me for paying her school fees and helping her family financially.
She called me ‘Mama’ Roberts then – and she still does now. She has just celebrated her 16th Birthday. My latest photograph of her shows a beautiful, smiling girl and I thank God that I have had some small part in her life over the years.
We write to each other a few times a year – everything has to be translated through Compassion’s translators – and she tells me of her life, her school results, her hopes for her future. She always mentions her church, praising God for her blessings. She has trained as a leader in her church and is still at school, which she says is entirely due to my continued sponsorship.
She goes to the Compassion project several times a week and wrote to me when she made a ‘commitment to obey and be faithful to God’ as she put it, in 2006. Her aim now is to go onto Theological College. The relationship we share has enriched my life in so many ways, much more than the financial gifts have cost me.
I write to her about my family and the church here at Highbury, giving her encouragement and telling her she is always in my prayers. I sent her photos of my daughter’s wedding and she thought everyone looked beautiful!
Two years ago, I decided to sponsor a second child and chose Aple, a little boy living in Bangladesh, who was born the same year I started to sponsor Galuh. Another photo of a solemn-looking child – do they tell the children to look sad so someone will sponsor them? Our relationship is still fledgling, but he chats on about the project and his family and community and I look forward to getting to know him more over the years to come.
Compassion ensures that at least 80% of their expenditure goes to benefit the children. The church-based projects that the children attend means that they get medical check-ups, food to eat, clothes to wear and an education, which all helps to lift them out of poverty. Every child gets to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ and in the same way that He is concerned with our individual needs, Compassion tries to meet the individual needs of the children and encourages them to develop their own skills and talents.
This short film is about Christuraj, a boy from Chennai in India. Christuraj is just one of the 1.1 billion children in the world today who live in a desperately poor community. At the moment more than a million children attend Compassion projects across the world, but there are many more children who are waiting for someone to sponsor them. If you could spare 60p a day to transform the world of a child, come and see me after the service and I can give you more details.
Thank you.
That’s not the only gift we celebrate today. There’s the gift of life – the miracle of new life coming into being. And that new life comes into being as a wonderful gift of God – nowhere is that sense of life as a gift of God, the God who knows us, loves us and gives us life better expressed than in the poetry of Psalm 139 …
O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 2You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;that I know very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. 16Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. 17How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end*—I am still with you.
It is one of the privileges of my position as Minister that when I hear a baby has been born I can go to visit in the maternity hospital – it was a joy to do that when Eleanor was born. We were excited in the church family when Harry was expected because he was not alone!
News came that Rob and Andrea Lacey’s little baby had arrived – a sister for Bethany. The day after it was lovely to visit just as Andrea and Rob were getting ready to take little Abigail home. Earlier that day Felicity had spotted Tom driving Nicky down Hewlett Rd – and there was only one place they could be going to.
Having had short time with little Abigail I went to the desk to enquire after Tom and Nicky to be told they were still on the delivery suite, but it would be all right to pop in and see them as. It was with some fear and trepidation that I made my way upstairs to the delivery suite for the first time in about 22 years!
Seeing a new born baby always takes the breath away – it is a miracle – the hair all in place, the fingers so carefully manicured – the Psalmist has it right …
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
But I always feel my visit has a very specific purpose. It’s not always the right moment, but for the most part I endeavour to fulfil that purpose. It says close family visits only. But when you belong to a church you have another close family – and I am there from that family – more than that I am there to say a prayer of blessing.
Among the first visits – a visit from the church family. Among the first words heard, words of prayer and of blessing.
The wonderful gift of prayer … is something then that we can give to our children as they grow older.
And there is one prayer in particular that is wonderful to pass on to them. I can remember now the little picture book I had as a tiny child to help me to learn the Lord’s prayer – it was from my parents that I learned it. How precious to pass on the gift of that prayer. It is a prayer that says it all.
Go through those words – of yourself, but go through those words and hold in mind little Harry, the little one you are concerned for, go through those words and hold in mind the elderly person you are concerned for – don’t just say the words for yourself – say those words and hold in mind the one your are so concerned for.
Our Father who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done on earth – in little Harry’s life –
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread – hold Harry in your prayer at this point that God will meet his every need
And Forgive us our trespasses
As we forgive those who trespass against us
- sometimes, God forbid, we feel we let people down, none of us is a perfect parent – to surround little Harry in that forgiving kind of love
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil
It is a scary world Harry is born into – how great that prayer we pray for him today …
And in that scary world we can have confidence that God is with us – that he will prevail.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory
Forever and ever amen.
The gift of God’s love, God’s amazing grace
The gift of new life and the wonder of its miracle
The gift of prayer and God’s blessing
The gift of the greatest prayer of all
There’s only one way to respond to the gifts that we receive – it makes you want to give in return. And when children come into play giving can make a world of difference not only to the child but also to the giver.
Helen Roberts is one of our junior church leaders who as often as not is out with the children leading the Splash Group we have. Back in the summer she asked if she could share with us all what it has meant to her to give to a child in one very particular kind of way.
Helen shared with us her experience of sponsoring a child through Compassion, a Christian charity committed to releasing children from poverty, that works in partnership with local churches in some of the poorest parts of the world.
http://www.compassionuk.org/
Thank you Richard, for giving me the opportunity to share the work of Compassion projects for children in poverty across the world.
According to their statistics, in the time it takes you to take a single breath, a child dies somewhere in the world as a result of poverty.
I find statistics like that quite overwhelming and find myself questioning what I can do about it, as I feel so helpless and inadequate.
1999, I knew I wanted to do something, sponsor something, as I had two beautiful children, a lovely home and food on the table – I wanted to share my blessings. I heard of Tearfund, whose sponsorship programme is now operated by Compassion, through whom I could sponsor an individual child. That sort of level of support really appealed to me.
I might not be able to change the world by myself – but maybe I could change the world for one child at a time!
I chose a child the same age as my youngest, who was 6 at the time. Her name is Galuh and she lives in Java in Indonesia with her parents and 4 siblings. The charity sent me a picture of this solemn-looking little girl and she wrote solemnly to me thanking me for paying her school fees and helping her family financially.
She called me ‘Mama’ Roberts then – and she still does now. She has just celebrated her 16th Birthday. My latest photograph of her shows a beautiful, smiling girl and I thank God that I have had some small part in her life over the years.
We write to each other a few times a year – everything has to be translated through Compassion’s translators – and she tells me of her life, her school results, her hopes for her future. She always mentions her church, praising God for her blessings. She has trained as a leader in her church and is still at school, which she says is entirely due to my continued sponsorship.
She goes to the Compassion project several times a week and wrote to me when she made a ‘commitment to obey and be faithful to God’ as she put it, in 2006. Her aim now is to go onto Theological College. The relationship we share has enriched my life in so many ways, much more than the financial gifts have cost me.
I write to her about my family and the church here at Highbury, giving her encouragement and telling her she is always in my prayers. I sent her photos of my daughter’s wedding and she thought everyone looked beautiful!
Two years ago, I decided to sponsor a second child and chose Aple, a little boy living in Bangladesh, who was born the same year I started to sponsor Galuh. Another photo of a solemn-looking child – do they tell the children to look sad so someone will sponsor them? Our relationship is still fledgling, but he chats on about the project and his family and community and I look forward to getting to know him more over the years to come.
Compassion ensures that at least 80% of their expenditure goes to benefit the children. The church-based projects that the children attend means that they get medical check-ups, food to eat, clothes to wear and an education, which all helps to lift them out of poverty. Every child gets to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ and in the same way that He is concerned with our individual needs, Compassion tries to meet the individual needs of the children and encourages them to develop their own skills and talents.
This short film is about Christuraj, a boy from Chennai in India. Christuraj is just one of the 1.1 billion children in the world today who live in a desperately poor community. At the moment more than a million children attend Compassion projects across the world, but there are many more children who are waiting for someone to sponsor them. If you could spare 60p a day to transform the world of a child, come and see me after the service and I can give you more details.
Thank you.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Prayer and Praying
"I am learning the difference between saying prayers, which is an activity, and praying, which is a soul attitude, a ‘lifting up of the mind to God’. Praying in that sense can transform every task, from washing up to defragmenting a computer’s hard disk.
"'Pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances.'
"I used to read such passages in a fog of guilt ... I read them differently now, not as a perpetual guilt-trip but as a call to a Godward orientation. Prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.From Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does it Make any Difference (page 306)"
That rang a bell for me – what a helpful thought!
Prayer as an attitude … but ‘prayers’ can nonetheless be very useful.
Thank you to Becky for leading us through our course on prayer and through our 24 hours of prayer as well. Prayer goes on … as we ‘keep company with God who is already present’ but it is helpful to say prayers, and sometimes to ask someone else to say a prayer for you. There’s going to be the opportunity to do just that after the morning service – if you would like someone to say a prayer with you then simply come and sit at the front of the church and someone will join you to share in prayer. Just as we use the Morton Brown room before the service as our Prayer Parlour, so after the service it will be open as a quiet place to go to as well.
Sometimes it can be helpful to use prayers other people have used down through the centuries.There is a collection of prayers in the Bible that can be most useful.Becky invited us at the end of the course to choose 4 psalms and use them as prayers.I want to share with you the four psalms I have chosen.
My first psalm came to mind in the unlikeliest of places. Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum.70 years ago, as the depression of the thirties was unfolding, fascism was taking its grip on Europe and war was approaching, Gloucestershire was introduced to the weird and wonderful and disturbing world of Surrealism in modern art.
To mark the seventieth anniversary of that exhibition the art gallery are mounting a special exhibition that brings together work by the artists who exhibited in that exhibition a long time ago. Surrealism returns.
I had thought surrealism was something wacky and detached from the real world. Visiting that exhibition it comes as something of a shock to see that these artists were responding to the horrors of their world in ways designed to provoke a response in the one looking at the art that would make a difference in that world.
Most iconic of all the paintings in that exhibition was one by Picasso.I had seen another version of it before – in the Tate gallery in Liverpool, and in the town of Guernica in the Basque country of Northern Spain.
It is a remarkable and disturbing picture called Weeping Woman. It was a response Picasso made to the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War – it was the first time a whole town had been blanket bombed, resulting in a firestorms and devastation for the town’s population on their market day.
As his much bigger picture ‘Guernica’ toured the world, so versions of the Weeping Woman were exhibited all over the world, not least here in Gloucester in that remarkable exhibition 70 years ago.A year earlier another version of the same image had already been exhibited in Cheltenham. It is that pen and ink version that is on display in the Art Gallery now.
To stand in front of it is profoundly moving … not least because Women and for that matter Men are still weeping at a world that goes dreadfully wrong. Iraq. Afghanistan. Darfur. Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel, Gaza. The impact of the economic situation, tragedy closer to home.
The weeping woman is as symbolic of our time and of our lives as it was symbolic of Picasso’s time..
Jesus shares in that weeping.
At the death of his friend Lazarus Jesus wept.
And as he saw Jerusalem he wept, would that you had known the things that make for peace.
And still he weeps.
That anguish, that pain, those tears have to find expression in our praying as we in utter honesty rail at God.
The first Psalm that comes to my mind is Psalm 22. It begins with words of anguish, with words of weeping.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
At his moment of dereliction, of deepest agony, on the cross, it was to this prayer, to this psalm that Jesus turned.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
At moments of deepest agony, it is good too know that it is not only to art that we can turn, we can turn also to prayer.My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
The great thing about an art exhibition is that alongside the pictures of agony and despair, are pictures of hope and promise.
So too as we pray, using the prayers of the Psalms.It’s no coincidence that the psalm that follows Psalm 22 is Psalm 23. The 23rd Psalm.It is not in Cheltenham’s art exhibition. But I would bring to mind another piece of art … it is one of the very first sculptures of Christ – one of the very first images of Christ. It is The Good Shepherd, a 3rd or 4th Century Roman sculpture from the catacombs in Rome: the shepherd carrying the sheep. That’s an image. That’s a prayer to bring to mind next.
From the weeping woman to the Good shepherd …
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures
He leadeth me beside the still waters,
He restoreth my soul
He leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
That’s it. Not that we can escape the valley of deep darkness. Rather, Christ in all his gentleness, in all his love is there walking with us through the valley to restore, and to comfort, to strengthen and renew.
Say the prayer and hold on to the truth …
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
That brings us to Psalm 24.
A wonderful prayer of confidence.
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; 2I love that kind of picture. The earth held in the hands of God. The loving hands. That sense in this prayer that we are held in God’s safe keeping.
How can we hold on to that? Where can we find such hope and such strengthening?
That brings me to my fourth psalm. Psalm 121
Going up to Cleeve Hill – I’ll never forget going up to the top of Cleeve Hill at dawn on the day the Millennium arrived – and on cue the reds of dawn spread across the sky and the sun rose.
I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?
2My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
4He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
5The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
7The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
8The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in
from this time on and for evermore.
That’s the conviction to hold on to.
Say your prayers … and use the psalms.
When that question haunts us. My God, why? We must be honest in our praying and echo the words of Psalm 22.
But then we must go on to Psalm 23 and use those wonderful words, Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
In our praying of Psalm 24 we can then rejoice: The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it!
And then in our mind’s eye as we say the words of Psalm 121 we can go up into the hills and find an answer for our question:I life my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.
How good it is to say our prayers. How much more important to recognise the difference between prayers and prayer and recognise that prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.
"'Pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances.'
"I used to read such passages in a fog of guilt ... I read them differently now, not as a perpetual guilt-trip but as a call to a Godward orientation. Prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.From Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does it Make any Difference (page 306)"
That rang a bell for me – what a helpful thought!
Prayer as an attitude … but ‘prayers’ can nonetheless be very useful.
Thank you to Becky for leading us through our course on prayer and through our 24 hours of prayer as well. Prayer goes on … as we ‘keep company with God who is already present’ but it is helpful to say prayers, and sometimes to ask someone else to say a prayer for you. There’s going to be the opportunity to do just that after the morning service – if you would like someone to say a prayer with you then simply come and sit at the front of the church and someone will join you to share in prayer. Just as we use the Morton Brown room before the service as our Prayer Parlour, so after the service it will be open as a quiet place to go to as well.
Sometimes it can be helpful to use prayers other people have used down through the centuries.There is a collection of prayers in the Bible that can be most useful.Becky invited us at the end of the course to choose 4 psalms and use them as prayers.I want to share with you the four psalms I have chosen.
My first psalm came to mind in the unlikeliest of places. Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum.70 years ago, as the depression of the thirties was unfolding, fascism was taking its grip on Europe and war was approaching, Gloucestershire was introduced to the weird and wonderful and disturbing world of Surrealism in modern art.
To mark the seventieth anniversary of that exhibition the art gallery are mounting a special exhibition that brings together work by the artists who exhibited in that exhibition a long time ago. Surrealism returns.
I had thought surrealism was something wacky and detached from the real world. Visiting that exhibition it comes as something of a shock to see that these artists were responding to the horrors of their world in ways designed to provoke a response in the one looking at the art that would make a difference in that world.
Most iconic of all the paintings in that exhibition was one by Picasso.I had seen another version of it before – in the Tate gallery in Liverpool, and in the town of Guernica in the Basque country of Northern Spain.
It is a remarkable and disturbing picture called Weeping Woman. It was a response Picasso made to the bombing of Guernica in the Spanish Civil War – it was the first time a whole town had been blanket bombed, resulting in a firestorms and devastation for the town’s population on their market day.
As his much bigger picture ‘Guernica’ toured the world, so versions of the Weeping Woman were exhibited all over the world, not least here in Gloucester in that remarkable exhibition 70 years ago.A year earlier another version of the same image had already been exhibited in Cheltenham. It is that pen and ink version that is on display in the Art Gallery now.
To stand in front of it is profoundly moving … not least because Women and for that matter Men are still weeping at a world that goes dreadfully wrong. Iraq. Afghanistan. Darfur. Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel, Gaza. The impact of the economic situation, tragedy closer to home.
The weeping woman is as symbolic of our time and of our lives as it was symbolic of Picasso’s time..
Jesus shares in that weeping.
At the death of his friend Lazarus Jesus wept.
And as he saw Jerusalem he wept, would that you had known the things that make for peace.
And still he weeps.
That anguish, that pain, those tears have to find expression in our praying as we in utter honesty rail at God.
The first Psalm that comes to my mind is Psalm 22. It begins with words of anguish, with words of weeping.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
At his moment of dereliction, of deepest agony, on the cross, it was to this prayer, to this psalm that Jesus turned.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
At moments of deepest agony, it is good too know that it is not only to art that we can turn, we can turn also to prayer.My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
The great thing about an art exhibition is that alongside the pictures of agony and despair, are pictures of hope and promise.
So too as we pray, using the prayers of the Psalms.It’s no coincidence that the psalm that follows Psalm 22 is Psalm 23. The 23rd Psalm.It is not in Cheltenham’s art exhibition. But I would bring to mind another piece of art … it is one of the very first sculptures of Christ – one of the very first images of Christ. It is The Good Shepherd, a 3rd or 4th Century Roman sculpture from the catacombs in Rome: the shepherd carrying the sheep. That’s an image. That’s a prayer to bring to mind next.
From the weeping woman to the Good shepherd …
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures
He leadeth me beside the still waters,
He restoreth my soul
He leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
That’s it. Not that we can escape the valley of deep darkness. Rather, Christ in all his gentleness, in all his love is there walking with us through the valley to restore, and to comfort, to strengthen and renew.
Say the prayer and hold on to the truth …
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
That brings us to Psalm 24.
A wonderful prayer of confidence.
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it; 2I love that kind of picture. The earth held in the hands of God. The loving hands. That sense in this prayer that we are held in God’s safe keeping.
How can we hold on to that? Where can we find such hope and such strengthening?
That brings me to my fourth psalm. Psalm 121
Going up to Cleeve Hill – I’ll never forget going up to the top of Cleeve Hill at dawn on the day the Millennium arrived – and on cue the reds of dawn spread across the sky and the sun rose.
I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?
2My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.
4He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
5The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.
7The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.
8The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in
from this time on and for evermore.
That’s the conviction to hold on to.
Say your prayers … and use the psalms.
When that question haunts us. My God, why? We must be honest in our praying and echo the words of Psalm 22.
But then we must go on to Psalm 23 and use those wonderful words, Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
In our praying of Psalm 24 we can then rejoice: The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it!
And then in our mind’s eye as we say the words of Psalm 121 we can go up into the hills and find an answer for our question:I life my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.
How good it is to say our prayers. How much more important to recognise the difference between prayers and prayer and recognise that prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Prayer: What should we ask?
It is so simple. It comes so naturally. Most people turn to it when everything goes wrong!
God, help me … God help so and so …
I guess that’s the simplest form of prayer.
And most people have found themselves saying that prayer.
What should we ask for in prayer?
At the Holiday Club with the children a month ago we had a simple way of thinking of prayer. A recipe book invites you to put a teaspoon full of something into the cooking pot. And the teaspoon is abbreviated to TSP.
So thank you … sorry … please.
But when we say please what is it we are asking?
Philip Yancey was one of the speakers at Greenbelt this year – he spoke about prayer. Becky and I have been reading his book on prayer. In it he captures the wonderful mystery there is in prayer.
The act of prayer brings together Creator and creature, eternity and time, in all the fathomless mystery implied by that convergence., I can view prayer as a way of asking a timeless God to intervene more directly in our time-bound life on earth.
We hear of people who are sick … our response is to want to pray for them. There’s something so valuable about that. If you want to share a concern for prayer then a phone call to Ruth or an email will set off our prayer chain – people praying.
The value of lists – in Highbury News – we pray for people in need – we pray for all who belong to the church family. It is good to uphold people in prayer.
It becomes part of a network of support … and it in some strange way releases an energy from beyond ourselves, from God.
That’s one way of viewing prayer.
But Philip Yancey has another way of viewing prayer … and that too is helpful.
We touched on it in our discussions on prayer at our evening on Prayer last Tuesday and it was a fascinating moment in our discussion.
This is what Philip Yancey suggests as another view of prayer …
I can also view prayer from the other side, as a way of entering into the rhythms of eternity and aligning myself with God’s ‘view from above’, a way to harmonise my own desires with God’s and then to help effect while on earth what God has willed for all eternity.
This is another way round of viewing prayer.
Prayer involves spending time with and entering into communication with God, the one who is eternal, outside of time. It’s about lining myself up in a certain kind of way – aligning myself with God and the rhythms of eternity.
When I read that a silly picture came into my mind. Did you see that report not so long ago about cattle grazing in fields. Someone has made a study of satellite photographs of cattle grazing in fields in a number of different European countries. Something seemed to emerge. That cattle tend all to face in the same direction – and the researcher noticed that there was a general alignment with the magnetic lines of the earth’s energy.
It’s a bit like that in prayer. We align ourselves with God’s energy – and we do that along with other people too.
That means we have an alignment in our priorities, the things that are important to us.
We seek to live our lives in the way God wants them to be energised – with love for God, love for one another and love for God’s creation – a love that finds expression in care for each other and for God’s world.
To be part of a praying community on the one hand is to seek to bring God’s energy from beyond time into our world and its needs.
But on the other hand it is to align ourselves with the way God’s energy goes in his world – for love and for justice.
Jesus’ disciples wanted to be part of a praying community and they wanted to learn how to pray.
Jesus teaches them the Lord’s Prayer – you could think of it as an alignment prayer. To pray that prayer and to learn it to teach it to our children involves lining ourselves up with the family of Christian people in the family prayer, it also involves lining ourselves up with God and what God wants of us his people
Together we are people who look to God as Father, who honour his name, who seek the carrying out of his will for love and for justice and for people on earth as it is in heaven, we are a people of forgiveness ready to forgive as we are forgiven, a people living in a world that’s far from perfect and yet protected from all that is evil, we are people of power, people of the kingdom, people of glory – what a wonderful way of aligning ourselves.
And as people of prayer we are to ask – but ask for the good – not for any old thing. And again this is all about where we align ourselves.
Ask and it will be given you, search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. Though be prepared: what you are given may not be what you want it may be what you need; what you find may not be the exact thing you are searching for, and you may be surprised what’s behind the door when it’s opened up for you!
What do we ask? The passage builds up to a climax – about a father giving what is good for his children … and so too with God – what he gives is of the Holy Spirit – that unseen energy and power from God that we line ourselves up with as we share in our prayers.
It was Richard’s mother who gave us two prayers – one is from the Psalms – a prayer of thanksgiving. And the other is a simple prayer – maybe that’s the kind of prayer we can make our own as we share together in prayer, and echo that prayer – especially today as we share in this baptism of Maycie.
God, help me … God help so and so …
I guess that’s the simplest form of prayer.
And most people have found themselves saying that prayer.
What should we ask for in prayer?
At the Holiday Club with the children a month ago we had a simple way of thinking of prayer. A recipe book invites you to put a teaspoon full of something into the cooking pot. And the teaspoon is abbreviated to TSP.
So thank you … sorry … please.
But when we say please what is it we are asking?
Philip Yancey was one of the speakers at Greenbelt this year – he spoke about prayer. Becky and I have been reading his book on prayer. In it he captures the wonderful mystery there is in prayer.
The act of prayer brings together Creator and creature, eternity and time, in all the fathomless mystery implied by that convergence., I can view prayer as a way of asking a timeless God to intervene more directly in our time-bound life on earth.
We hear of people who are sick … our response is to want to pray for them. There’s something so valuable about that. If you want to share a concern for prayer then a phone call to Ruth or an email will set off our prayer chain – people praying.
The value of lists – in Highbury News – we pray for people in need – we pray for all who belong to the church family. It is good to uphold people in prayer.
It becomes part of a network of support … and it in some strange way releases an energy from beyond ourselves, from God.
That’s one way of viewing prayer.
But Philip Yancey has another way of viewing prayer … and that too is helpful.
We touched on it in our discussions on prayer at our evening on Prayer last Tuesday and it was a fascinating moment in our discussion.
This is what Philip Yancey suggests as another view of prayer …
I can also view prayer from the other side, as a way of entering into the rhythms of eternity and aligning myself with God’s ‘view from above’, a way to harmonise my own desires with God’s and then to help effect while on earth what God has willed for all eternity.
This is another way round of viewing prayer.
Prayer involves spending time with and entering into communication with God, the one who is eternal, outside of time. It’s about lining myself up in a certain kind of way – aligning myself with God and the rhythms of eternity.
When I read that a silly picture came into my mind. Did you see that report not so long ago about cattle grazing in fields. Someone has made a study of satellite photographs of cattle grazing in fields in a number of different European countries. Something seemed to emerge. That cattle tend all to face in the same direction – and the researcher noticed that there was a general alignment with the magnetic lines of the earth’s energy.
It’s a bit like that in prayer. We align ourselves with God’s energy – and we do that along with other people too.
That means we have an alignment in our priorities, the things that are important to us.
We seek to live our lives in the way God wants them to be energised – with love for God, love for one another and love for God’s creation – a love that finds expression in care for each other and for God’s world.
To be part of a praying community on the one hand is to seek to bring God’s energy from beyond time into our world and its needs.
But on the other hand it is to align ourselves with the way God’s energy goes in his world – for love and for justice.
Jesus’ disciples wanted to be part of a praying community and they wanted to learn how to pray.
Jesus teaches them the Lord’s Prayer – you could think of it as an alignment prayer. To pray that prayer and to learn it to teach it to our children involves lining ourselves up with the family of Christian people in the family prayer, it also involves lining ourselves up with God and what God wants of us his people
Together we are people who look to God as Father, who honour his name, who seek the carrying out of his will for love and for justice and for people on earth as it is in heaven, we are a people of forgiveness ready to forgive as we are forgiven, a people living in a world that’s far from perfect and yet protected from all that is evil, we are people of power, people of the kingdom, people of glory – what a wonderful way of aligning ourselves.
And as people of prayer we are to ask – but ask for the good – not for any old thing. And again this is all about where we align ourselves.
Ask and it will be given you, search and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. Though be prepared: what you are given may not be what you want it may be what you need; what you find may not be the exact thing you are searching for, and you may be surprised what’s behind the door when it’s opened up for you!
What do we ask? The passage builds up to a climax – about a father giving what is good for his children … and so too with God – what he gives is of the Holy Spirit – that unseen energy and power from God that we line ourselves up with as we share in our prayers.
It was Richard’s mother who gave us two prayers – one is from the Psalms – a prayer of thanksgiving. And the other is a simple prayer – maybe that’s the kind of prayer we can make our own as we share together in prayer, and echo that prayer – especially today as we share in this baptism of Maycie.
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