It is sometimes at the moment of deepest darkness that a light shines. It is at the moment of deepest despair, when everything seems to have collapsed, when nothing is right, that a light shines and there is a sense of a presence, the presence of God.
It was what many of those thirty-three Chilean miners experienced when after their rescue they spoke of a 34th member of their group. They had a sense of the presence of God with them. It will be moving when a group of us go to listen to one of them as he shares his story.
So many have stories to tell of the presence of God in the darkest of moments.
And yet, it is the very nature of the darkness that sometimes comes, that God is not present. The feeling is not there. The presence is not felt.
It is at that moment that the Bible comes into its own.
It is written by real people grappling with the problems of the real world who themselves experience periods of deep darkness.
Nowhere is that more true than in the writings of the great Mystics. They were among those with the most profound faith. And yet at the same time they experienced the deep darkness of desolation. It was through their visionary, mystic writings that they sensed the presence of God.
It has been special at the turn of the year to have a number of books published by people linked to Highbury. Graham Adams explored Christ and the Other, Jonathan Rowe explored the moral dilemma facing Michal in 1 Samuel, and Christina Monahar. Christina and her husband David have both studied for a doctorate at the University of Gloucestershire and live in Cheltenham. David works in the University and teaches Old Testament in Sheffield. Christina lives here for part of the year and goes over to India to her seminary in the remainder of the year. She has explored the way thinking of the Spirit of Christ is helpful in conversation and dialogue with Hinduism especially.
She has found herself focusing on the great Christian mystics in part because their experience of mysticism and of God speaks to those with similar experiences in Hinduism and in Islam. It is a delight to be reading her most recent book. The Knowledge of God in Mechthild of Magdeburg. It is moving to read an Indian Christian scholar encountering a German mystic writer of the 13th Century and discovering the light that dawns in such writing in the midst of darkness.
Dedicating the book to her mother, Christina comments
“This study was undertaken when I was going through a very difficult time in life. Each day as I sat in the library of the University of Gloucestershire, reflecting upon the ways of knowing God, Mechthild’s life and teachings reminded me once more that one needs to discover the continuing presence of the light in the midst of darkness.”
It is from those with this ‘mystic sense’ of the presence of God that we can learn most about discovering the light of God’s presence in the midst of darkness.
One of those people we know of as John, I think of him as John the Divine. Everything had collapsed about him. He lived in a very hostile world that had no time for people of faith. And as a person of faith, he was arrested and set into exile on the island of Patmos. There he heard tell of the cruel fate of many of this erstwhile friends. It seemed that God was far away.
It is in the deepest darkness that he has a sense of the presence of God with him that is so great he feels impelled to commit it to writing.
Some there are who see what he wrote as a blueprint for the end of the world. They have an explanation for the minutest details of every verse, every sentence, every phrase, every word of the book. It becomes simply a look into the future. And it is far from simple.
In almost every generation people have come taken a look at what he has written and said that’s the blueprint … you can see the end of the world is coming. And lo and behold in every detail they can see it coming to be now.
Others see it differently. I count myself among them. I think something else is going on in what John the Divine writes. He tells of the end times and of cataclysmic events not so that we have a detailed description of a single set of events that will happen in the far distant, or not so distant future.
Instead he has a sense of the presence of God in the here and now, in the middle of the darkness. He senses that this is a God against whom nothing can prevail. In his visions he sees something of the glory of the God who triumphs over all that is evil and he seeks to put down in words his sense of the presence of this God.
He tells larger than life stories about the end times in a way that speaks into every generation and tells of the wonder and the mystery and the awesome nature of the presence of God with us.
We pick up one of those visions in the words of Revelation 4.
I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open!
It’s what so many long for in the midst of the darkness. A moment when all is clear, when a door flies open and we can actually see into the presence of God.
As we read these words … it may be that we have had such a moment.
But it may be that we have not had such a moment of clarity.
Let’s listen to the experience of this person who grappled with fiath and believing in the face of the utmost horror. And let’s hear him speaking into our situation.
It may be that he is speaking to us who are all too aware of the horrors going on in the world around us. Of religious conflicts that we find difficult to understand and yet spill over threateningly into our world.
It may be that he is speaking to a very much more personal darkness that we have been catapulted into and feel in danger of being overwhelmed by.
Let’s accompany John the Divine through the door. What do we see?
There in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the thorne! And the one seated there looks like jasper, and cornelian and around the throne is … down to verse 6
After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ 2At once I was in the spirit,* and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! 3And the one seated there looks like jasper and cornelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. 4Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads. 5Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; 6and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.
What can you see?
Some there are who want to explain every detail. A throne is the place for a king … the king of kings. Are the 24 elders the 12 sons of Jacob, the tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples of Christ – the old Israel and the New Israel combined into the one people of God spanning the whole world? Seven flaming torches – the sevenfold spirit of God – seven the perfect number of creation – the whole spectrum of the spirit of God. And the sea – no longer the stormy place of chaos but as still as glass, like crystal.
The imagery may suggest different things to you. But should we be looking for one meaning. Or is there mystery here. How do you picture the one sitting on the throne – jasper, cornelian. A rainbow that is emerald green? These are things impossible to picture. They conjure up an awesome mystery of God.
That awesome mystery of God deepens in the presence of four creatures. Do we have to identify each one or are they creatures from the whole of creation, from the four corners of the world.
And there in the presence of God there is nothing else for it but to sing Holy, holy holy.
As we step through the door into heaven … we are there to sense the mystery, the awesome nature of God’s presence.
And all we can do is to worship.
A sense of God.
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy,the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.’ 9And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, 10the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives for ever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, 11 ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power,for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created
Wonder. Awe.
Can we not capture this.
Where does the door open for you. May it be up on the hills. In the quiet of your room. In reading poetry. Listening to music. Deep in prayer.
See through the door into the mystery of God … and simply worship.
Hymn: Holy, holy, holy.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.
Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see;
Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy; merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity
But for John the divine the mystery is not the end of it.
He senses that this God in all his awesome majesty wants to share himself with us. He wants to disclose to us the secret of life, the secret of his own presence.
5Then I saw in the right hand of the one seated on the throne a scroll written on the inside and on the back, sealed* with seven seals; 2and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ 3And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. 4And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’
6 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slain …
What’s the scroll? All sorts of things it can speak of. The secret to life and everything.
But I have come to read this passage at the start of this year of the Bible. I find myself hearing these words in quite a specific way.
What is contained in a scroll – it is the words of Scripture.
Is this a wonderful picture of our God.
In his awesomeness he wants to disclose himself to us, reveal himself to us. And it is in the words of Scripture that we find his message.
But.
And this is the experience of so many.
It is impossible to read the Scroll.
The scriptures are impossible to understand.
We cannot make sense of them.
And we weep. We are so close. It would be wonderful to find their meaning. But we cannot. We weep bitter tears.
Then one of the elders said, Do not weep.
See the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered …
We are on sure ground now. Who is of the root of David. Who has conquered and won a victory? It is Jesus Christ. We look to him. The Great Lion. And what do we see … a lamb?
One of the best ways to read Revelation is to read it as part of your devotions at night and to read the Narnia Chronicles at bedtime! Think Aslan, Lion, a door that opens, and a Lion that becomes a Lamb!
It is the Lamb that can open the scroll.
This is the conviction that I have and I think the key to opening the Scriptures.
Realise that Jesus Christ is at the heart of the Scriptures. It’s what we are doing from next Sunday evening in our evening services as we use Jesus as a guide to open up the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
It’s great if a door opens for us when we are in that deep darkness … but sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s great to hear other people’s stories. But sometimes they don’t help.
Let’s take a leaf out of John’s book and in our mind’s eye see through the door that opened into heaven for him. And let’.s sense the mystery and awesome majesty of God.
But more than that – let’s realise that this God has something to say to us. Let’s turn again to the Bible. And let’s use Jesus to open it up for us so that we can hear it speaking to us.
He is the one that openeth the window, to let in the light,
Jesus is the one
"that openeth the window,
to let in the light,"
Let your light so shine in my heart
as I read the words of Scripture
that I may see your Word
in those words
and discover it to be
a lamp unto my feet and
a light unto my path.
This sermon is the first in a series of sermons for the Year of the Bible drawing on words from Myles Smith in the Preface to the Authorised Version.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Stepping outside the security of a closed system
A sermon preached at St Luke's during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
At the close of our service today we are going to do something very special as we remember someone who has had a very strong involvement both in St Luke’s Church and in Highbury. It was good to join together with friends from St Luke’s on Thursday in a service of thanksgiving celebrating Pauline Bewsher’s life. With a Christian faith that meant the world to her and as we learned on Thursday had seen her through some difficult times, Pauline Bewsher treasured her church family here at St Luke’s and was so looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday with a tea party, which we shared in anyway in the hall on Thursday afternoon. For 28 years from 1945 Pauline Bewsher was the Guide Captain at Highbury. It was moving to hear of the way in which she throughout that period had shown a very real loyalty both to her own church, St Luke’s and to Highbury as well. After the service Robert and I will lead those who want to join us to the Rose Garden where we will scatter Pauline’s ashes. If you would prefer not to share in that part of our service it may be best to stay in the church, or to leave by the side door; that’s something, perhaps, for parents particularly to take note of with their children.
I have to confess that I did not know that St Luke’s had a rose garden. Go down the steps, turn left and it’s on your left, I was told. And indeed it is there … though be it said this is not the best of times to admire a rose garden!!!
I want to make some connections between Pauline, that Rose Garden and what we are doing today as we come together in a united service on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity.
Pauline was staunch in her commitment to her church, the church of England, to her church here at St Luke’s. She knew the kind of church it should be, what you should do at church. And as in their own way each of those giving those wonderful tributes to her on Thursday observed, she didn’t mind letting you know.
I pricked my ears up, however, at one thing that was said in one of those tributes about that long period of time she was the Guide Captain at Highbury. In the whole of that period, it was said, she had a loyalty to Highbury and what it did as a church, while at the same time remaining firmly rooted here in the church at St Luke’s.
That ability Pauline displayed throughout those years of being clear about where she stood in her commitment to church but at the same time honouring, respecting and being loyal to a different way of being church is the thing I want to hold on to.
The readings for our service were taken from the leaflet published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What prompted me to choose the readings from that leaflet was the fact that the reading plan, though not the notes, had been put together by the churches of Jerusalem. I sat up and took notice when I saw that. It’s only eighteen months or so since a good number of us from St Luke’s and from Highbury joined together in our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and we visited some of those churches.
Our readings invite us to go back to the church that came together in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, described in those powerful and moving words of Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Were signs and wonders were done by the apostles, where those who believed were together and had all things in common. It was a people of praise, and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This is but the start of many descriptions the New Testament gives us of what the first followers of Jesus did as the church came into being. It wasn’t long before people began to think of them as people of The Way. It was a little later that opponents insulted them as the Christ-ians, and the name Christian stuck. Read on in the New Testament and you catch glimpses of the church as it takes root in Judea, in Samaria and then as it spreads to Antioch, through Cyprus to Galatia, beyond to Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. At breath taking speed the church is coming into being in so many different places.
Some of those who played a key part as church was being formed have left their thoughts for posterity – Matthew with a Jewish perspective on things, Mark, down to earth, influenced maybe by Peter, Peter himself, Paul, one of his travelling companions, Luke, James the brother of Jesus, another profound thinker behind Hebrews himself steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And John and his followers with a reflective view.
One thing you do not find in the New Testament is one single definition of what church is like. There is no single tradition, established as the one way of being church. No single creedal statement.
That should come as no surprise because the people whose stories are told in those early days of the church are a mixed bunch of people – scholarly thinkers like Paul, thinking fishermen like Peter. They live in a very varied world. The Jewish world of Jerusalem has within it many different ways of being Jewish. The Roman world is a world of very mixed cultures. The Pax Romana is a peace won at the cost of considerable violence and bloodshed as Rome asserts its power.
Two words come to mind to describe the Scriptures, the people whose stories are told there, the Jewish world and the Roman world they live in. Those two words are ‘variety’ and ‘hybrid’. There is a rich variety of ways of thinking reflected in the great range of people whose stories are told in the Scriptures, and as the church begins. More than that, each individual is the person they are because of all the different strands that have shaped and influenced them. Each is a hybrid.
And yet for all that rich variety and rich hybridity as you read through the pages of the New Testament you sense the arrival of something recognisable. You see the church growing. There is something that holds those who are following the way together, there is something that holds together those who bear that nick name Christians.
It is not a fixed and rigid system. It is not the building up of a single tradition. They look to Jesus Christ, they share in some way that they do not define a faith, they sense the presence of the forgiving love of God as Father, made real in Christ and let loose in their lives with an unseen yet ver real strengthening power they think of as in some way the Spirit of God. They seek to put into action the faith they profess by taking seriously the way of life mapped out for them by Jesus.
“the early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system.”
Do we need to go one better than those early followers of Jesus and create a system, to standardise the Christian faith and so achieve a single structure, a single tradition, a single way of thinking. Constantine was one who thought so. As Roman Emperor he wanted a systematic Christianity to cement his empire together – so he summoned the bishops together to create a systematic creedal statement. It wasn’t long before he had built a church over the caves where in all likelihood the animals were kept in the houses of Bethlehem, and where in all likelihood Jesus was born. A monastic community served that church of the nativity. And among there number was Jerome. It wasn’t enough to have a variety of translations and texts of the Scriptures – he wanted to produce a definitive translation in the language of the Empire. And so it was that Jerome produced his translation, eliminating all the errors of previous copyists and translators. Wonderful translation though it was it could become an instrument of power used by the state.
When James 6th of Scotland became James the first of England he wanted to standardise the church – what better way to do it than to get a group of scholars together and produce a single translation to replace the variety of earlier translations of the Bible into English. And so it was that the King James Bible was produced and an Authorised version established.
Again, wonderful language. But indicative of the attempt by a state power to standardise and shoe horn the variety of Christians into a single system.
I wonder whether there is a vision for unity that we can capture that doesn’t hanker after a single system, but instead rejoices in variety and even in hybridity.
“The early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system; there is no reason why we cannot do the same.”[1]
Interestingly those words come from a thinker called Miroslav Volf who in a book called Exclusion and Embrace grappled with the challenge of being a Christian in the Balkans in the wake of the Kosovo war and the Balkan conflicts of the 90’s. I was reminded of the book at the launch of Graham Adams’ book Christ and the Other in Manchester. It challenges us to reflect on the way we respond to ‘the other’.
In place of a closed system, the pursuit of a single tradition, he urges us to join together in affirming our rich variety and then getting stuck into the things we can share in doing.
Pauline was committed to her own faith and a very clear picture she had of what kind of church she was called to belong to. As we heard on Thursday a whole mass of influences, cultures, experiences came together to make Pauline the one-off individual whose life we celebrated on Thursday.
Each of us is the product of an immensely rich blend of influences, cultures. And we will each be different. Something has brought us to this church and to this place.
The important thing is not to get us all doing the same thing, thinking the same way in how we express our faith, do our worship or structure our church.
Let’s join with those who look to Jesus Christ, share a faith in him even when we don’t put it into exactly the same words, and sense the presence of that forgiving love of God in the unseen strength of God’s spirit, and seek to follow this Jesus by putting our faith into action.
We are called seriously to take the pattern of loving mapped out by Christ in Matthew 5, the commitment to justice there in Isaiah 58 and seek to share in the way Acts 2 challenges us to do.
I have a hunch that’s what Pauline was doing. She stood firm in what she believed in the church that meant the world to her, but joined with an equal loyalty with another church in the shared commitment of working for children through Guiding.
Maybe that’s what we need to build on as we seek to build up Transformers together, and so build on the wonderful work we have shared in doing in Holiday Clubs through the year.
It is what the churches of Cheltenham are doing through Street Pastors, through the hospital chaplaincy teams, as the clergy and ministers will come together in a month to see how we can develop our support of and involvement in hospital chaplaincy.
That brings me back to the rose garden.
Roses go back along way to Ancient Crete, to Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, to Ancient Rome. They figure large in Shakespeare and come into their own in Vicrtorian days, and as my Rose Expert book informs me in 1867 comes the moment when the rose so many think of as a rose was grown – and it was a Hybrid Tea rose.
There is a wonderfully rich variety of roses. Maybe even in a single rose garden.
More than that each rose is the product of many strands that have come down through the years, a hybrid.
For all that rich variety, for all that hybridity we all know what a rose is.
There was in the days of these very first followers of Jesus.
There is in our day … a rich variety of Christians and a rich variety of ways of being the church. Within each of us there is a rich hybridity. We are each the product of a remarkable number of strands that go to make us the individual we are.
And yet there is something about all of us that enables us to see in each other the fact that we are followers of Jesus, we are followers of the Way he has mapped out for us, we bear the name Christian.
[1] Volf, 210
At the close of our service today we are going to do something very special as we remember someone who has had a very strong involvement both in St Luke’s Church and in Highbury. It was good to join together with friends from St Luke’s on Thursday in a service of thanksgiving celebrating Pauline Bewsher’s life. With a Christian faith that meant the world to her and as we learned on Thursday had seen her through some difficult times, Pauline Bewsher treasured her church family here at St Luke’s and was so looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday with a tea party, which we shared in anyway in the hall on Thursday afternoon. For 28 years from 1945 Pauline Bewsher was the Guide Captain at Highbury. It was moving to hear of the way in which she throughout that period had shown a very real loyalty both to her own church, St Luke’s and to Highbury as well. After the service Robert and I will lead those who want to join us to the Rose Garden where we will scatter Pauline’s ashes. If you would prefer not to share in that part of our service it may be best to stay in the church, or to leave by the side door; that’s something, perhaps, for parents particularly to take note of with their children.
I have to confess that I did not know that St Luke’s had a rose garden. Go down the steps, turn left and it’s on your left, I was told. And indeed it is there … though be it said this is not the best of times to admire a rose garden!!!
I want to make some connections between Pauline, that Rose Garden and what we are doing today as we come together in a united service on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity.
Pauline was staunch in her commitment to her church, the church of England, to her church here at St Luke’s. She knew the kind of church it should be, what you should do at church. And as in their own way each of those giving those wonderful tributes to her on Thursday observed, she didn’t mind letting you know.
I pricked my ears up, however, at one thing that was said in one of those tributes about that long period of time she was the Guide Captain at Highbury. In the whole of that period, it was said, she had a loyalty to Highbury and what it did as a church, while at the same time remaining firmly rooted here in the church at St Luke’s.
That ability Pauline displayed throughout those years of being clear about where she stood in her commitment to church but at the same time honouring, respecting and being loyal to a different way of being church is the thing I want to hold on to.
The readings for our service were taken from the leaflet published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What prompted me to choose the readings from that leaflet was the fact that the reading plan, though not the notes, had been put together by the churches of Jerusalem. I sat up and took notice when I saw that. It’s only eighteen months or so since a good number of us from St Luke’s and from Highbury joined together in our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and we visited some of those churches.
Our readings invite us to go back to the church that came together in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, described in those powerful and moving words of Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Were signs and wonders were done by the apostles, where those who believed were together and had all things in common. It was a people of praise, and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This is but the start of many descriptions the New Testament gives us of what the first followers of Jesus did as the church came into being. It wasn’t long before people began to think of them as people of The Way. It was a little later that opponents insulted them as the Christ-ians, and the name Christian stuck. Read on in the New Testament and you catch glimpses of the church as it takes root in Judea, in Samaria and then as it spreads to Antioch, through Cyprus to Galatia, beyond to Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. At breath taking speed the church is coming into being in so many different places.
Some of those who played a key part as church was being formed have left their thoughts for posterity – Matthew with a Jewish perspective on things, Mark, down to earth, influenced maybe by Peter, Peter himself, Paul, one of his travelling companions, Luke, James the brother of Jesus, another profound thinker behind Hebrews himself steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And John and his followers with a reflective view.
One thing you do not find in the New Testament is one single definition of what church is like. There is no single tradition, established as the one way of being church. No single creedal statement.
That should come as no surprise because the people whose stories are told in those early days of the church are a mixed bunch of people – scholarly thinkers like Paul, thinking fishermen like Peter. They live in a very varied world. The Jewish world of Jerusalem has within it many different ways of being Jewish. The Roman world is a world of very mixed cultures. The Pax Romana is a peace won at the cost of considerable violence and bloodshed as Rome asserts its power.
Two words come to mind to describe the Scriptures, the people whose stories are told there, the Jewish world and the Roman world they live in. Those two words are ‘variety’ and ‘hybrid’. There is a rich variety of ways of thinking reflected in the great range of people whose stories are told in the Scriptures, and as the church begins. More than that, each individual is the person they are because of all the different strands that have shaped and influenced them. Each is a hybrid.
And yet for all that rich variety and rich hybridity as you read through the pages of the New Testament you sense the arrival of something recognisable. You see the church growing. There is something that holds those who are following the way together, there is something that holds together those who bear that nick name Christians.
It is not a fixed and rigid system. It is not the building up of a single tradition. They look to Jesus Christ, they share in some way that they do not define a faith, they sense the presence of the forgiving love of God as Father, made real in Christ and let loose in their lives with an unseen yet ver real strengthening power they think of as in some way the Spirit of God. They seek to put into action the faith they profess by taking seriously the way of life mapped out for them by Jesus.
“the early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system.”
Do we need to go one better than those early followers of Jesus and create a system, to standardise the Christian faith and so achieve a single structure, a single tradition, a single way of thinking. Constantine was one who thought so. As Roman Emperor he wanted a systematic Christianity to cement his empire together – so he summoned the bishops together to create a systematic creedal statement. It wasn’t long before he had built a church over the caves where in all likelihood the animals were kept in the houses of Bethlehem, and where in all likelihood Jesus was born. A monastic community served that church of the nativity. And among there number was Jerome. It wasn’t enough to have a variety of translations and texts of the Scriptures – he wanted to produce a definitive translation in the language of the Empire. And so it was that Jerome produced his translation, eliminating all the errors of previous copyists and translators. Wonderful translation though it was it could become an instrument of power used by the state.
When James 6th of Scotland became James the first of England he wanted to standardise the church – what better way to do it than to get a group of scholars together and produce a single translation to replace the variety of earlier translations of the Bible into English. And so it was that the King James Bible was produced and an Authorised version established.
Again, wonderful language. But indicative of the attempt by a state power to standardise and shoe horn the variety of Christians into a single system.
I wonder whether there is a vision for unity that we can capture that doesn’t hanker after a single system, but instead rejoices in variety and even in hybridity.
“The early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system; there is no reason why we cannot do the same.”[1]
Interestingly those words come from a thinker called Miroslav Volf who in a book called Exclusion and Embrace grappled with the challenge of being a Christian in the Balkans in the wake of the Kosovo war and the Balkan conflicts of the 90’s. I was reminded of the book at the launch of Graham Adams’ book Christ and the Other in Manchester. It challenges us to reflect on the way we respond to ‘the other’.
In place of a closed system, the pursuit of a single tradition, he urges us to join together in affirming our rich variety and then getting stuck into the things we can share in doing.
Pauline was committed to her own faith and a very clear picture she had of what kind of church she was called to belong to. As we heard on Thursday a whole mass of influences, cultures, experiences came together to make Pauline the one-off individual whose life we celebrated on Thursday.
Each of us is the product of an immensely rich blend of influences, cultures. And we will each be different. Something has brought us to this church and to this place.
The important thing is not to get us all doing the same thing, thinking the same way in how we express our faith, do our worship or structure our church.
Let’s join with those who look to Jesus Christ, share a faith in him even when we don’t put it into exactly the same words, and sense the presence of that forgiving love of God in the unseen strength of God’s spirit, and seek to follow this Jesus by putting our faith into action.
We are called seriously to take the pattern of loving mapped out by Christ in Matthew 5, the commitment to justice there in Isaiah 58 and seek to share in the way Acts 2 challenges us to do.
I have a hunch that’s what Pauline was doing. She stood firm in what she believed in the church that meant the world to her, but joined with an equal loyalty with another church in the shared commitment of working for children through Guiding.
Maybe that’s what we need to build on as we seek to build up Transformers together, and so build on the wonderful work we have shared in doing in Holiday Clubs through the year.
It is what the churches of Cheltenham are doing through Street Pastors, through the hospital chaplaincy teams, as the clergy and ministers will come together in a month to see how we can develop our support of and involvement in hospital chaplaincy.
That brings me back to the rose garden.
Roses go back along way to Ancient Crete, to Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, to Ancient Rome. They figure large in Shakespeare and come into their own in Vicrtorian days, and as my Rose Expert book informs me in 1867 comes the moment when the rose so many think of as a rose was grown – and it was a Hybrid Tea rose.
There is a wonderfully rich variety of roses. Maybe even in a single rose garden.
More than that each rose is the product of many strands that have come down through the years, a hybrid.
For all that rich variety, for all that hybridity we all know what a rose is.
There was in the days of these very first followers of Jesus.
There is in our day … a rich variety of Christians and a rich variety of ways of being the church. Within each of us there is a rich hybridity. We are each the product of a remarkable number of strands that go to make us the individual we are.
And yet there is something about all of us that enables us to see in each other the fact that we are followers of Jesus, we are followers of the Way he has mapped out for us, we bear the name Christian.
[1] Volf, 210
Stepping outside the security of a closed system
A sermon preached at St Luke's during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
At the close of our service today we are going to do something very special as we remember someone who has had a very strong involvement both in St Luke’s Church and in Highbury. It was good to join together with friends from St Luke’s on Thursday in a service of thanksgiving celebrating Pauline Bewsher’s life. With a Christian faith that meant the world to her and as we learned on Thursday had seen her through some difficult times, Pauline Bewsher treasured her church family here at St Luke’s and was so looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday with a tea party, which we shared in anyway in the hall on Thursday afternoon. For 28 years Pauline Bewsher had been the Guide Captain at Highbury. It was moving to hear of the way in which she throughout that period had shown a very real loyalty both to her own church, St Luke’s and to Highbury as well. After the service Robert and I will lead those who want to join us to the Rose Garden where we will scatter Pauline’s ashes. If you would prefer not to share in that part of our service it may be best to stay in the church, or to leave by the side door; that’s something, perhaps, for parents particularly to take note of with their children.
I have to confess that I did not know that St Luke’s had a rose garden. Go down the steps, turn left and it’s on your left, I was told. And indeed it is there … though be it said this is not the best of times to admire a rose garden!!!
I want to make some connections between Pauline, that Rose Garden and what we are doing today as we come together in a united service on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity.
Pauline was staunch in her commitment to her church, the church of England, to her church here at St Luke’s. She knew the kind of church it should be, what you should do at church. And as in their own way each of those giving those wonderful tributes to her on Thursday observed, she didn’t mind letting you know.
I pricked my ears up, however, at one thing that was said in one of those tributes about that long period of time she was the Guide Captain at Highbury. In the whole of that period, it was said, she had a loyalty to Highbury and what it did as a church, while at the same time remaining firmly rooted here in the church at St Luke’s.
That ability Pauline displayed throughout those years of being clear about where she stood in her commitment to church but at the same time honouring, respecting and being loyal to a different way of being church is the thing I want to hold on to.
The readings for our service were taken from the leaflet published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What prompted me to choose the readings from that leaflet was the fact that the reading plan, though not the notes, had been put together by the churches of Jerusalem. I sat up and took notice when I saw that. It’s only eighteen months or so since a good number of us from St Luke’s and from Highbury joined together in our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and we visited some of those churches.
Our readings invite us to go back to the church that came together in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, described in those powerful and moving words of Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Were signs and wonders were done by the apostles, where those who believed were together and had all things in common. It was a people of praise, and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This is but the start of many descriptions the New Testament gives us of what the first followers of Jesus did as the church came into being. It wasn’t long before people began to think of them as people of The Way. It was a little later that opponents insulted them as the Christ-ians, and the name Christian stuck. Read on in the New Testament and you catch glimpses of the church as it takes root in Judea, in Samaria and then as it spreads to Antioch, through Cyprus to Galatia, beyond to Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. At breath taking speed the church is coming into being in so many different places.
Some of those who played a key part as church was being formed have left their thoughts for posterity – Matthew with a Jewish perspective on things, Mark, down to earth, influenced maybe by Peter, Peter himself, Paul, one of his travelling companions, Luke, James the brother of Jesus, another profound thinker behind Hebrews himself steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And John and his followers with a reflective view.
One thing you do not find in the New Testament is one single definition of what church is like. There is no single tradition, established as the one way of being church. No single creedal statement.
That should come as no surprise because the people whose stories are told in those early days of the church are a mixed bunch of people – scholarly thinkers like Paul, thinking fishermen like Peter. They live in a very varied world. The Jewish world of Jerusalem has within it many different ways of being Jewish. The Roman world is a world of very mixed cultures. The Pax Romana is a peace won at the cost of considerable violence and bloodshed as Rome asserts its power.
Two words come to mind to describe the Scriptures, the people whose stories are told there, the Jewish world and the Roman world they live in. Those two words are ‘variety’ and ‘hybrid’. There is a rich variety of ways of thinking reflected in the great range of people whose stories are told in the Scriptures, and as the church begins. More than that, each individual is the person they are because of all the different strands that have shaped and influenced them. Each is a hybrid.
And yet for all that rich variety and rich hybridity as you read through the pages of the New Testament you sense the arrival of something recognisable. You see the church growing. There is something that holds those who are following the way together, there is something that holds together those who bear that nick name Christians.
It is not a fixed and rigid system. It is not the building up of a single tradition. They look to Jesus Christ, they share in some way that they do not define a faith, they sense the presence of the forgiving love of God as Father, made real in Christ and let loose in their lives with an unseen yet ver real strengthening power they think of as in some way the Spirit of God. They seek to put into action the faith they profess by taking seriously the way of life mapped out for them by Jesus.
“the early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system.”
Do we need to go one better than those early followers of Jesus and create a system, to standardise the Christian faith and so achieve a single structure, a single tradition, a single way of thinking. Constantine was one who thought so. As Roman Emperor he wanted a systematic Christianity to cement his empire together – so he summoned the bishops together to create a systematic creedal statement. It wasn’t long before he had built a church over the caves where in all likelihood the animals were kept in the houses of Bethlehem, and where in all likelihood Jesus was born. A monastic community served that church of the nativity. And among there number was Jerome. It wasn’t enough to have a variety of translations and texts of the Scriptures – he wanted to produce a definitive translation in the language of the Empire. And so it was that Jerome produced his translation, eliminating all the errors of previous copyists and translators. Wonderful translation though it was it could become an instrument of power used by the state.
When James 6th of Scotland became James the first of England he wanted to standardise the church – what better way to do it than to get a group of scholars together and produce a single translation to replace the variety of earlier translations of the Bible into English. And so it was that the King James Bible was produced and an Authorised version established.
Again, wonderful language. But indicative of the attempt by a state power to standardise and shoe horn the variety of Christians into a single system.
I wonder whether there is a vision for unity that we can capture that doesn’t hanker after a single system, but instead rejoices in variety and even in hybridity.
“The early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system; there is no reason why we cannot do the same.”[1]
Interestingly those words come from a thinker called Miroslav Volf who in a book called Exclusion and Embrace grappled with the challenge of being a Christian in the Balkans in the wake of the Kosovo war and the Balkan conflicts of the 90’s. I was reminded of the book at the launch of Graham Adams’ book Christ and the Other in Manchester. It challenges us to reflect on the way we respond to ‘the other’.
In place of a closed system, the pursuit of a single tradition, he urges us to join together in affirming our rich variety and then getting stuck into the things we can share in doing.
Pauline was committed to her own faith and a very clear picture she had of what kind of church she was called to belong to. As we heard on Thursday a whole mass of influences, cultures, experiences came together to make Pauline the one-off individual whose life we celebrated on Thursday.
Each of us is the product of an immensely rich blend of influences, cultures. And we will each be different. Something has brought us to this church and to this place.
The important thing is not to get us all doing the same thing, thinking the same way in how we express our faith, do our worship or structure our church.
Let’s join with those who look to Jesus Christ, share a faith in him even when we don’t put it into exactly the same words, and sense the presence of that forgiving love of God in the unseen strength of God’s spirit, and seek to follow this Jesus by putting our faith into action.
We are called seriously to take the pattern of loving mapped out by Christ in Matthew 5, the commitment to justice there in Isaiah 58 and seek to share in the way Acts 2 challenges us to do.
I have a hunch that’s what Pauline was doing. She stood firm in what she believed in the church that meant the world to her, but joined with an equal loyalty with another church in the shared commitment of working for children through Guiding.
Maybe that’s what we need to build on as we seek to build up Transformers together, and so build on the wonderful work we have shared in doing in Holiday Clubs through the year.
It is what the churches of Cheltenham are doing through Street Pastors, through the hospital chaplaincy teams, as the clergy and ministers will come together in a month to see how we can develop our support of and involvement in hospital chaplaincy.
That brings me back to the rose garden.
Roses go back along way to Ancient Crete, to Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, to Ancient Rome. They figure large in Shakespeare and come into their own in Vicrtorian days, and as my Rose Expert book informs me in 1867 comes the moment when the rose so many think of as a rose was grown – and it was a Hybrid Tea rose.
There is a wonderfully rich variety of roses. Maybe even in a single rose garden.
More than that each rose is the product of many strands that have come down through the years, a hybrid.
For all that rich variety, for all that hybridity we all know what a rose is.
There was in the days of these very first followers of Jesus.
There is in our day … a rich variety of Christians and a rich variety of ways of being the church. Within each of us there is a rich hybridity. We are each the product of a remarkable number of strands that go to make us the individual we are.
And yet there is something about all of us that enables us to see in each other the fact that we are followers of Jesus, we are followers of the Way he has mapped out for us, we bear the name Christian.
[1] Volf, 210
At the close of our service today we are going to do something very special as we remember someone who has had a very strong involvement both in St Luke’s Church and in Highbury. It was good to join together with friends from St Luke’s on Thursday in a service of thanksgiving celebrating Pauline Bewsher’s life. With a Christian faith that meant the world to her and as we learned on Thursday had seen her through some difficult times, Pauline Bewsher treasured her church family here at St Luke’s and was so looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday with a tea party, which we shared in anyway in the hall on Thursday afternoon. For 28 years Pauline Bewsher had been the Guide Captain at Highbury. It was moving to hear of the way in which she throughout that period had shown a very real loyalty both to her own church, St Luke’s and to Highbury as well. After the service Robert and I will lead those who want to join us to the Rose Garden where we will scatter Pauline’s ashes. If you would prefer not to share in that part of our service it may be best to stay in the church, or to leave by the side door; that’s something, perhaps, for parents particularly to take note of with their children.
I have to confess that I did not know that St Luke’s had a rose garden. Go down the steps, turn left and it’s on your left, I was told. And indeed it is there … though be it said this is not the best of times to admire a rose garden!!!
I want to make some connections between Pauline, that Rose Garden and what we are doing today as we come together in a united service on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity.
Pauline was staunch in her commitment to her church, the church of England, to her church here at St Luke’s. She knew the kind of church it should be, what you should do at church. And as in their own way each of those giving those wonderful tributes to her on Thursday observed, she didn’t mind letting you know.
I pricked my ears up, however, at one thing that was said in one of those tributes about that long period of time she was the Guide Captain at Highbury. In the whole of that period, it was said, she had a loyalty to Highbury and what it did as a church, while at the same time remaining firmly rooted here in the church at St Luke’s.
That ability Pauline displayed throughout those years of being clear about where she stood in her commitment to church but at the same time honouring, respecting and being loyal to a different way of being church is the thing I want to hold on to.
The readings for our service were taken from the leaflet published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What prompted me to choose the readings from that leaflet was the fact that the reading plan, though not the notes, had been put together by the churches of Jerusalem. I sat up and took notice when I saw that. It’s only eighteen months or so since a good number of us from St Luke’s and from Highbury joined together in our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and we visited some of those churches.
Our readings invite us to go back to the church that came together in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, described in those powerful and moving words of Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Were signs and wonders were done by the apostles, where those who believed were together and had all things in common. It was a people of praise, and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This is but the start of many descriptions the New Testament gives us of what the first followers of Jesus did as the church came into being. It wasn’t long before people began to think of them as people of The Way. It was a little later that opponents insulted them as the Christ-ians, and the name Christian stuck. Read on in the New Testament and you catch glimpses of the church as it takes root in Judea, in Samaria and then as it spreads to Antioch, through Cyprus to Galatia, beyond to Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. At breath taking speed the church is coming into being in so many different places.
Some of those who played a key part as church was being formed have left their thoughts for posterity – Matthew with a Jewish perspective on things, Mark, down to earth, influenced maybe by Peter, Peter himself, Paul, one of his travelling companions, Luke, James the brother of Jesus, another profound thinker behind Hebrews himself steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And John and his followers with a reflective view.
One thing you do not find in the New Testament is one single definition of what church is like. There is no single tradition, established as the one way of being church. No single creedal statement.
That should come as no surprise because the people whose stories are told in those early days of the church are a mixed bunch of people – scholarly thinkers like Paul, thinking fishermen like Peter. They live in a very varied world. The Jewish world of Jerusalem has within it many different ways of being Jewish. The Roman world is a world of very mixed cultures. The Pax Romana is a peace won at the cost of considerable violence and bloodshed as Rome asserts its power.
Two words come to mind to describe the Scriptures, the people whose stories are told there, the Jewish world and the Roman world they live in. Those two words are ‘variety’ and ‘hybrid’. There is a rich variety of ways of thinking reflected in the great range of people whose stories are told in the Scriptures, and as the church begins. More than that, each individual is the person they are because of all the different strands that have shaped and influenced them. Each is a hybrid.
And yet for all that rich variety and rich hybridity as you read through the pages of the New Testament you sense the arrival of something recognisable. You see the church growing. There is something that holds those who are following the way together, there is something that holds together those who bear that nick name Christians.
It is not a fixed and rigid system. It is not the building up of a single tradition. They look to Jesus Christ, they share in some way that they do not define a faith, they sense the presence of the forgiving love of God as Father, made real in Christ and let loose in their lives with an unseen yet ver real strengthening power they think of as in some way the Spirit of God. They seek to put into action the faith they profess by taking seriously the way of life mapped out for them by Jesus.
“the early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system.”
Do we need to go one better than those early followers of Jesus and create a system, to standardise the Christian faith and so achieve a single structure, a single tradition, a single way of thinking. Constantine was one who thought so. As Roman Emperor he wanted a systematic Christianity to cement his empire together – so he summoned the bishops together to create a systematic creedal statement. It wasn’t long before he had built a church over the caves where in all likelihood the animals were kept in the houses of Bethlehem, and where in all likelihood Jesus was born. A monastic community served that church of the nativity. And among there number was Jerome. It wasn’t enough to have a variety of translations and texts of the Scriptures – he wanted to produce a definitive translation in the language of the Empire. And so it was that Jerome produced his translation, eliminating all the errors of previous copyists and translators. Wonderful translation though it was it could become an instrument of power used by the state.
When James 6th of Scotland became James the first of England he wanted to standardise the church – what better way to do it than to get a group of scholars together and produce a single translation to replace the variety of earlier translations of the Bible into English. And so it was that the King James Bible was produced and an Authorised version established.
Again, wonderful language. But indicative of the attempt by a state power to standardise and shoe horn the variety of Christians into a single system.
I wonder whether there is a vision for unity that we can capture that doesn’t hanker after a single system, but instead rejoices in variety and even in hybridity.
“The early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system; there is no reason why we cannot do the same.”[1]
Interestingly those words come from a thinker called Miroslav Volf who in a book called Exclusion and Embrace grappled with the challenge of being a Christian in the Balkans in the wake of the Kosovo war and the Balkan conflicts of the 90’s. I was reminded of the book at the launch of Graham Adams’ book Christ and the Other in Manchester. It challenges us to reflect on the way we respond to ‘the other’.
In place of a closed system, the pursuit of a single tradition, he urges us to join together in affirming our rich variety and then getting stuck into the things we can share in doing.
Pauline was committed to her own faith and a very clear picture she had of what kind of church she was called to belong to. As we heard on Thursday a whole mass of influences, cultures, experiences came together to make Pauline the one-off individual whose life we celebrated on Thursday.
Each of us is the product of an immensely rich blend of influences, cultures. And we will each be different. Something has brought us to this church and to this place.
The important thing is not to get us all doing the same thing, thinking the same way in how we express our faith, do our worship or structure our church.
Let’s join with those who look to Jesus Christ, share a faith in him even when we don’t put it into exactly the same words, and sense the presence of that forgiving love of God in the unseen strength of God’s spirit, and seek to follow this Jesus by putting our faith into action.
We are called seriously to take the pattern of loving mapped out by Christ in Matthew 5, the commitment to justice there in Isaiah 58 and seek to share in the way Acts 2 challenges us to do.
I have a hunch that’s what Pauline was doing. She stood firm in what she believed in the church that meant the world to her, but joined with an equal loyalty with another church in the shared commitment of working for children through Guiding.
Maybe that’s what we need to build on as we seek to build up Transformers together, and so build on the wonderful work we have shared in doing in Holiday Clubs through the year.
It is what the churches of Cheltenham are doing through Street Pastors, through the hospital chaplaincy teams, as the clergy and ministers will come together in a month to see how we can develop our support of and involvement in hospital chaplaincy.
That brings me back to the rose garden.
Roses go back along way to Ancient Crete, to Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, to Ancient Rome. They figure large in Shakespeare and come into their own in Vicrtorian days, and as my Rose Expert book informs me in 1867 comes the moment when the rose so many think of as a rose was grown – and it was a Hybrid Tea rose.
There is a wonderfully rich variety of roses. Maybe even in a single rose garden.
More than that each rose is the product of many strands that have come down through the years, a hybrid.
For all that rich variety, for all that hybridity we all know what a rose is.
There was in the days of these very first followers of Jesus.
There is in our day … a rich variety of Christians and a rich variety of ways of being the church. Within each of us there is a rich hybridity. We are each the product of a remarkable number of strands that go to make us the individual we are.
And yet there is something about all of us that enables us to see in each other the fact that we are followers of Jesus, we are followers of the Way he has mapped out for us, we bear the name Christian.
[1] Volf, 210
Sunday, January 16, 2011
God-breathed!
Who’s done it for you?
Who can you do it for?
What can help?
Three questions for us to reflect on this morning.
There’s something very touching and moving about three very personal letters that come at the very end of the set of letters by Paul in the New Testament. I Timothy and II Timothy and Titus are an invitation to be a fly on the wall in a very intimate relationship between a young Christian starting out on his journey of faith and an older Christian who has over the years shaped and influenced that younger Christian’s life.
Over the years they have met, they have talked, they have shared so much. And now the older man is very much older. And the younger man is having to face more and more responsibilities. The older man senses he won’t be around very much longer maybe. Those conversations become more important, they take on a greater significance, and they are fewer and further between.
And then comes that moment when the older man puts pen to paper. And commits to writing reflections on the life he has led, the vision he has shared and the faith that has meant so much to him. How moved the younger man must have been to receive and to read that letter.
Even as he read he could bring to mind times when that older man had a real gift of being able to explain the deep things of life. What a teacher he had been. More than that he had lived out the faith he professed. Somehow he was the kind of person who had discovered a real purpose in life, he knew where he was going. That’s not to say he had had an easy time of it. The younger man could remember times of great difficulty, the chronic illness the older man had had to put up with, family tensions he had experienced, not to mention the times he had suffered physically because of his faith. And yet through it all something had shone out … the fact that he did not bear a grudge. The fact that love shone out of his every word and every action.
In a strange way it had been his experience of suffering that had left the greatest mark, and his patience in facing it, even at the hands of some who had been very cruel. That really did leave a mark.
Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
13And not just persecuted. The Christian faith doesn’t absolve you from suffering … how true young Timothy knew that to be. How much more he wanted to learn of Paul his mentor.
Those words present me with the first of my questions …
Who’s done it for you?
For me I think of my parents. I can think of Sunday school teachers. One of our older deacons in the church I grew up in who had had a very hard life. I can think of people I have known.
But I can also think of people who touched me only momentarily as I went to hear them speak, or followed their story as it unfolded on the news. I think of someone called Richard Wurmbrand who preached in Leicester and I went to listen. A powerful presentation of the Christian faith and a moving account of his response to the persecution of Chrsitians in Eastern Europe and particularly Romania. I can think of someone called Gladys Aylward who had been rejected because she was a woman for missionary service, but purchased her own trans-continental railway ticket all the way to China and had devoted herself to one set of children in the face of the onset of revolution and war. A remarkable teacher, a remarkable person.
The preaching and ministry of Martin Luther King left its mark on me … the awfulness of his assassination.
I have found it more recently seeing at first hand the likes of Elias Chacour and their account of Christian faith lived out in the face of persecution. I watched avidly the day those Chilean miners emerged from incarceration in the mine and the moving testimonies some had to give of a 34th presence with them in the mine. And we have an opportunity to hear one of them give his testimony as he comes to St Matthew’s. Jose Henriquez was the 24th out fo the 33 miners to be released that day. He will be joined by Alfredo Cooper, the Chaplain to the President of Chile in what promises to an inspiring evening.
For me there are a mixture of great people and ordinary people who have shaped and influenced me. Often they are people who have not got away with lives free from suffering, but people who have endured great suffering and have opened up a way through that very real world to the kind of faith that means so much.
Think and treasure those who have done it for you.
And then ask but who can you do it for?
Is it someone in your family, a younger person setting out on their faith in the church family. Who can you pass something on to.
But I am not good enough. I am not up to that.
The ones most influential for me were those most ordinary and who felt they had least to give.
So who can you do it for?
What can I share? How can I rise to such a task? I guess that’s what all of us begin to ask as we are challenged to think in that way.
This is the point at which Paul has some very useful things to share in the wise words he writes to Timothy.
First, he is quite clear that actually there are negative influences around and he warns of them … we have to be on the look out too!
But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. 14
But then he urges Timothy to something that at first sight focuses on personalities and individuals.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15
That’s one piece of wise counsel we would do well to heed. Bear in mind those who have shaped the person you are. Be the person they helped to shape. Keep at it. Don’t give up. Perseverere.
But don’t just idolise a person. It is so easy to slip into a kind of cult of personality. As far as Paul was concerned there was something else to draw on to.
And that is something we too can draw on.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16
What place do the Scriptures have in shaping us as people? Timothy had been steeped in them since childhood. These were the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people …
Little did he think that this very personal letter would become part of the Sacred Scriptures subsequent generations were going to treasure.
Treasure this book.
In its pages are the stories of so many people whose lives were shaped by Jesus Christ and whose stories can shape our lives too. The Christian faith is focused on Jesus Christ and his story is told in these pages. How important it is for us to immerse ourselves in them.
There’s inspiration to be found here. The people whose stories are told felt the touch of God in their lives and the breath of God coming deep within them. The people who passed on the books that make up the Sacred scriptures felt that inspiration of God, the breath of God coming deep within them.
All scripture is inspired by God
I love the word Paul actually uses – it is one that he has coined. Literally it means – God-breathed. It is as if these words have something special in them that is ‘God-breathed’.
and is* useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Can we be up for that as well? Not just the teaching … but are we prepared to be challenged by what we read, corrected, set right.
Is this for us a training manual in the ways of righteousness and justice?
There are challenges here for us all!
17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
That’s what it boils down to!
We each of us have a task to do – to belong to God makes a world of difference to us all. But to belong to God means getting stuck in with the good work that we are called to do.
So … never let it be said these pages are just interesting, just an inspiration. They are there to make a difference for each one of us and to shape the very people we are and the things we do.
There’s one more question to ask.
What are we going to do?
Who can you do it for?
What can help?
Three questions for us to reflect on this morning.
There’s something very touching and moving about three very personal letters that come at the very end of the set of letters by Paul in the New Testament. I Timothy and II Timothy and Titus are an invitation to be a fly on the wall in a very intimate relationship between a young Christian starting out on his journey of faith and an older Christian who has over the years shaped and influenced that younger Christian’s life.
Over the years they have met, they have talked, they have shared so much. And now the older man is very much older. And the younger man is having to face more and more responsibilities. The older man senses he won’t be around very much longer maybe. Those conversations become more important, they take on a greater significance, and they are fewer and further between.
And then comes that moment when the older man puts pen to paper. And commits to writing reflections on the life he has led, the vision he has shared and the faith that has meant so much to him. How moved the younger man must have been to receive and to read that letter.
Even as he read he could bring to mind times when that older man had a real gift of being able to explain the deep things of life. What a teacher he had been. More than that he had lived out the faith he professed. Somehow he was the kind of person who had discovered a real purpose in life, he knew where he was going. That’s not to say he had had an easy time of it. The younger man could remember times of great difficulty, the chronic illness the older man had had to put up with, family tensions he had experienced, not to mention the times he had suffered physically because of his faith. And yet through it all something had shone out … the fact that he did not bear a grudge. The fact that love shone out of his every word and every action.
In a strange way it had been his experience of suffering that had left the greatest mark, and his patience in facing it, even at the hands of some who had been very cruel. That really did leave a mark.
Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
13And not just persecuted. The Christian faith doesn’t absolve you from suffering … how true young Timothy knew that to be. How much more he wanted to learn of Paul his mentor.
Those words present me with the first of my questions …
Who’s done it for you?
For me I think of my parents. I can think of Sunday school teachers. One of our older deacons in the church I grew up in who had had a very hard life. I can think of people I have known.
But I can also think of people who touched me only momentarily as I went to hear them speak, or followed their story as it unfolded on the news. I think of someone called Richard Wurmbrand who preached in Leicester and I went to listen. A powerful presentation of the Christian faith and a moving account of his response to the persecution of Chrsitians in Eastern Europe and particularly Romania. I can think of someone called Gladys Aylward who had been rejected because she was a woman for missionary service, but purchased her own trans-continental railway ticket all the way to China and had devoted herself to one set of children in the face of the onset of revolution and war. A remarkable teacher, a remarkable person.
The preaching and ministry of Martin Luther King left its mark on me … the awfulness of his assassination.
I have found it more recently seeing at first hand the likes of Elias Chacour and their account of Christian faith lived out in the face of persecution. I watched avidly the day those Chilean miners emerged from incarceration in the mine and the moving testimonies some had to give of a 34th presence with them in the mine. And we have an opportunity to hear one of them give his testimony as he comes to St Matthew’s. Jose Henriquez was the 24th out fo the 33 miners to be released that day. He will be joined by Alfredo Cooper, the Chaplain to the President of Chile in what promises to an inspiring evening.
For me there are a mixture of great people and ordinary people who have shaped and influenced me. Often they are people who have not got away with lives free from suffering, but people who have endured great suffering and have opened up a way through that very real world to the kind of faith that means so much.
Think and treasure those who have done it for you.
And then ask but who can you do it for?
Is it someone in your family, a younger person setting out on their faith in the church family. Who can you pass something on to.
But I am not good enough. I am not up to that.
The ones most influential for me were those most ordinary and who felt they had least to give.
So who can you do it for?
What can I share? How can I rise to such a task? I guess that’s what all of us begin to ask as we are challenged to think in that way.
This is the point at which Paul has some very useful things to share in the wise words he writes to Timothy.
First, he is quite clear that actually there are negative influences around and he warns of them … we have to be on the look out too!
But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. 14
But then he urges Timothy to something that at first sight focuses on personalities and individuals.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15
That’s one piece of wise counsel we would do well to heed. Bear in mind those who have shaped the person you are. Be the person they helped to shape. Keep at it. Don’t give up. Perseverere.
But don’t just idolise a person. It is so easy to slip into a kind of cult of personality. As far as Paul was concerned there was something else to draw on to.
And that is something we too can draw on.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16
What place do the Scriptures have in shaping us as people? Timothy had been steeped in them since childhood. These were the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people …
Little did he think that this very personal letter would become part of the Sacred Scriptures subsequent generations were going to treasure.
Treasure this book.
In its pages are the stories of so many people whose lives were shaped by Jesus Christ and whose stories can shape our lives too. The Christian faith is focused on Jesus Christ and his story is told in these pages. How important it is for us to immerse ourselves in them.
There’s inspiration to be found here. The people whose stories are told felt the touch of God in their lives and the breath of God coming deep within them. The people who passed on the books that make up the Sacred scriptures felt that inspiration of God, the breath of God coming deep within them.
All scripture is inspired by God
I love the word Paul actually uses – it is one that he has coined. Literally it means – God-breathed. It is as if these words have something special in them that is ‘God-breathed’.
and is* useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Can we be up for that as well? Not just the teaching … but are we prepared to be challenged by what we read, corrected, set right.
Is this for us a training manual in the ways of righteousness and justice?
There are challenges here for us all!
17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
That’s what it boils down to!
We each of us have a task to do – to belong to God makes a world of difference to us all. But to belong to God means getting stuck in with the good work that we are called to do.
So … never let it be said these pages are just interesting, just an inspiration. They are there to make a difference for each one of us and to shape the very people we are and the things we do.
There’s one more question to ask.
What are we going to do?
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Surprised by Jesus
This sermon was preached by John Lawrence, a lay minister from Holy Apostles' Church, Cheltenham, at Highbury on Sunday, 9th January.
Have you been to a pantomime this Christmas? We are going next Saturday to Aladdin, at the Bacon Theatre at Dean Close School. What is the appeal of panto. One appeal for me is that particular production will have my daughter in it – in fact she is rehearsing as I speak. But part of the universal appeal of panto is the combination of the familiar and the unexpected. I haven’t seen Aladdin yet, but I know there will be singing, booing, dancing, and shouting out“Oh no it isn’t”. Every year those familiar ingredients are included. And yet, you can’t simply repeat the same production every year. The songs will be different from last year, the script will be different from last year, some of the jokes will be awful – but they will be different awful jokes.
Now hang on to that mix of the familiar and the new, because something similar happens in this story of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew isn’t writing light entertainment, but there are parallels. The baptism account is a little like a joke. It begins with a building sense of tension, tension caused by expectation. And that expectation will be met in a surprising way. Surprise makes a joke funny. But with Jesus the surprise is not funny – it is lifechanging. Jesus makes a surprise beginning to a ministry which will continue to surprise. So we need to understand the source of the tension. Because it isn’t Jesus who is tense – it is John the Baptist
John’s clothes are unusual, his food is unusual, what he says is unusual. He is strange and yet he is familiar. For in word and action John clearly belongs to the great line of the prophets, reaching back into Israel’s past.
Two familiar themes in John’s preaching, each with something new.
The need for repentance. This had been the message of many of the prophets. But John has a new twist. He is John the Baptiser. He uses a ceremony that has been added to Jewish life since the time of the prophets, the ceremony of Baptism. And John offers baptism in a new way. It isn’t just for converts to Judaism – it is for everyone.
Theme two is the coming of God’s chosen one. Mt. 3:11 “I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
Again the coming of God’s chosen one was a familiar theme of the prophets. But the twist is that no longer is the event in the distance, now it is here. Yet John’s expectations of the one who will come after him are very much in the line of the prophets. John speaks of power and fire He seems to be expecting a big entrance, explosive arrival.
When Jesus turns up at the River Jordan, John knows this is the fulfilment of his expectations. Yet he is tense, because this is definitely not what he has been expecting. Jesus arrives on foot, without fanfare, seemingly alone, and asking to be baptised.
This is a puzzling event. John is puzzled. I’ve been to many baptisms. I’ve been baptised myself. As father and godfather, I’ve said the baptismal words for others. And this event puzzles me too. What is baptism all about? John called his baptism a baptism of repentance. Baptism was a symbolic washing, a public sign of turning away from a wrong way of living. At baptisms, what is the answer we have spoken for ourselves, spoken for those we love, heard others say. The answer is “I repent of my sins”
[PAUSE] John knows Jesus has nothing to repent of. Jesus doesn’t need to be washed clean. It doesn’t make sense. John has no choice but to protest:
Mt. 3:14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”
But Jesus words of explanation are less than crystal clear: Mt. 3:15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.”
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, puts Jesus words like this: “This is how it’s got to be right now’ said Jesus. “this is the right way for us to complete God’s whole saving plan”.
I imagine John the Baptist shrugged his shoulders and said “If you insist”.
Now the problem for us is that Matthew’s gospel wasn’t designed to be read entire, not in little chunks, one Sunday at a time. His gospel is extremely carefully structured and the structure is part of the story. And here in the third chapter, Matthew is establishing expectations which won’t fully make sense for another 24 chapters. He is using allusions, making references which probably pass 21st century listeners by. However, they would have been a lot more obvious to 1st century Jewish listeners.
44 years after England won the world cup, if you mention the phrase “They think it’s all over” to an English football fan, they will think of Geoff Hurst’s clinching goal in that final. You don’t have to say any more than those few words—the event is so much talked about and remembered, even today, that people know what you are talking about.
Every nation, every people, every group, has common memories like that. And for Jews, among the most important events they remembered were those of the Exodus, the escape from Egypt through the Red Sea and the Wilderness. So what happens when Jewish listeners hear of Jesus passing through water, then spending time in the Wilderness. Spending how long in the Wilderness? Well not 40 years, but 40 days! They instantly [snap fingers] pick up that God’s plan for Jesus ministry looks very like the Exodus experience of the whole Jewish nation.
You may be thinking –that’s nice. But I’m not a first-century Jew, I’m a 21st century Briton. What does it mean for me?
This is what it means for me, what it means for us. It means that from the very start of his ministry Jesus identifies with his people. It demonstrates that from the outset Jesus fulfils the promise of Emmanuel, God with us. Because Jesus is identified with his people in chapter 3 of Matthew, he continues to be identified with us, his people, in chapter 27 of Matthew. Jesus is identified with his people even in the agony of the cross, and somehow out of that identification comes Jesus ability to take upon himself the terrible consequence of our sin and wrongdoing.
John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. In other words it was a sign that people recognised their need to be forgiven. But John’s baptism had no power to promise forgiveness.
When Jesus identifies himself with his people in baptism, he is laying down the foundation that will make baptism in the name of Jesus Christ a baptism, not just of repentance, but a baptism of forgiveness, forgiveness that was purchased when Jesus identified himself with us upon the cross.
Here is the solution to the riddle which John the Baptist faced. How could this humble, powerless man Jesus, be the same one who would take John’s ministry on to a new level. How could this candidate for a dunk in a dirty river be the one who was coming “with power” to bring in a baptism of “the Holy Spirit and of fire”.
Jesus comes in power—yes, but it is surprising power rooted in weakness, kingship that willingly takes the role of a servant. Jesus comes as a Saviour who himself becomes helpless.
John, greatest of all the prophets, doesn’t live to see the way all this works out. But John was privileged to be in the water with Jesus the day that Jesus set out. John was there when God showed how the riddle could be answered.
Mt. 3:16 As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.
God validates Jesus ministry from the outset. Yes, his baptism will be a baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus. But the form God’s Spirit adopts is that of a dove, a form of gentleness, a form of vulnerability.
Jesus is the one John expected. He is greater than John, and he comes in power. But he comes in a way that John did not expect, he comes not with the power of a conqueror, but the power of a victim ready to be sacrificed.
We read this passage early in a New Year. That is logical place as we remember the journey from Christmas to Easter. But it also a time to think about change, to take a fresh look, to allow the familiar to be transformed by the new. I quoted Bishop Tom Wright’s earlier. I’d like to end with some words Tom Wright wrote about Jesus’ baptism which spoke to me very powerfully as I prepared this talk. I hope they will encourage you, and challenge you in this New Year of 2011. He writes:
Part of the challenge of this passage is to learn afresh to be surprised by Jesus. He comes to fulfil God's plans, not ours, and even his prophets sometimes seem to misunderstand what he's up to. He will not always play the music we expect. But if we learn to listen carefully to what he says, and watch carefully what he does, we will find that our real longings, the hunger beneath the surface excitement, will be richly met.
At the same time, those who in repentance and faith follow Jesus through baptism and along the road he will now lead us will find, if we listen, that the same voice from heaven speaks to us as well. As we learn to put aside our own plans and submit to his, we may be granted moments of vision: glimpses of his greater reality. And at the centre of that sudden sight we will find our loving father, affirming us as his children, equipping us, too, with his spirit so that our lives may be swept clean and made ready for use.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you that you were willing to be identified with us in your life and death. Help us to embrace the surprise you bring, and to be identified with you in your power and your gentleness.
Have you been to a pantomime this Christmas? We are going next Saturday to Aladdin, at the Bacon Theatre at Dean Close School. What is the appeal of panto. One appeal for me is that particular production will have my daughter in it – in fact she is rehearsing as I speak. But part of the universal appeal of panto is the combination of the familiar and the unexpected. I haven’t seen Aladdin yet, but I know there will be singing, booing, dancing, and shouting out“Oh no it isn’t”. Every year those familiar ingredients are included. And yet, you can’t simply repeat the same production every year. The songs will be different from last year, the script will be different from last year, some of the jokes will be awful – but they will be different awful jokes.
Now hang on to that mix of the familiar and the new, because something similar happens in this story of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew isn’t writing light entertainment, but there are parallels. The baptism account is a little like a joke. It begins with a building sense of tension, tension caused by expectation. And that expectation will be met in a surprising way. Surprise makes a joke funny. But with Jesus the surprise is not funny – it is lifechanging. Jesus makes a surprise beginning to a ministry which will continue to surprise. So we need to understand the source of the tension. Because it isn’t Jesus who is tense – it is John the Baptist
John’s clothes are unusual, his food is unusual, what he says is unusual. He is strange and yet he is familiar. For in word and action John clearly belongs to the great line of the prophets, reaching back into Israel’s past.
Two familiar themes in John’s preaching, each with something new.
The need for repentance. This had been the message of many of the prophets. But John has a new twist. He is John the Baptiser. He uses a ceremony that has been added to Jewish life since the time of the prophets, the ceremony of Baptism. And John offers baptism in a new way. It isn’t just for converts to Judaism – it is for everyone.
Theme two is the coming of God’s chosen one. Mt. 3:11 “I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
Again the coming of God’s chosen one was a familiar theme of the prophets. But the twist is that no longer is the event in the distance, now it is here. Yet John’s expectations of the one who will come after him are very much in the line of the prophets. John speaks of power and fire He seems to be expecting a big entrance, explosive arrival.
When Jesus turns up at the River Jordan, John knows this is the fulfilment of his expectations. Yet he is tense, because this is definitely not what he has been expecting. Jesus arrives on foot, without fanfare, seemingly alone, and asking to be baptised.
This is a puzzling event. John is puzzled. I’ve been to many baptisms. I’ve been baptised myself. As father and godfather, I’ve said the baptismal words for others. And this event puzzles me too. What is baptism all about? John called his baptism a baptism of repentance. Baptism was a symbolic washing, a public sign of turning away from a wrong way of living. At baptisms, what is the answer we have spoken for ourselves, spoken for those we love, heard others say. The answer is “I repent of my sins”
[PAUSE] John knows Jesus has nothing to repent of. Jesus doesn’t need to be washed clean. It doesn’t make sense. John has no choice but to protest:
Mt. 3:14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”
But Jesus words of explanation are less than crystal clear: Mt. 3:15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.”
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, puts Jesus words like this: “This is how it’s got to be right now’ said Jesus. “this is the right way for us to complete God’s whole saving plan”.
I imagine John the Baptist shrugged his shoulders and said “If you insist”.
Now the problem for us is that Matthew’s gospel wasn’t designed to be read entire, not in little chunks, one Sunday at a time. His gospel is extremely carefully structured and the structure is part of the story. And here in the third chapter, Matthew is establishing expectations which won’t fully make sense for another 24 chapters. He is using allusions, making references which probably pass 21st century listeners by. However, they would have been a lot more obvious to 1st century Jewish listeners.
44 years after England won the world cup, if you mention the phrase “They think it’s all over” to an English football fan, they will think of Geoff Hurst’s clinching goal in that final. You don’t have to say any more than those few words—the event is so much talked about and remembered, even today, that people know what you are talking about.
Every nation, every people, every group, has common memories like that. And for Jews, among the most important events they remembered were those of the Exodus, the escape from Egypt through the Red Sea and the Wilderness. So what happens when Jewish listeners hear of Jesus passing through water, then spending time in the Wilderness. Spending how long in the Wilderness? Well not 40 years, but 40 days! They instantly [snap fingers] pick up that God’s plan for Jesus ministry looks very like the Exodus experience of the whole Jewish nation.
You may be thinking –that’s nice. But I’m not a first-century Jew, I’m a 21st century Briton. What does it mean for me?
This is what it means for me, what it means for us. It means that from the very start of his ministry Jesus identifies with his people. It demonstrates that from the outset Jesus fulfils the promise of Emmanuel, God with us. Because Jesus is identified with his people in chapter 3 of Matthew, he continues to be identified with us, his people, in chapter 27 of Matthew. Jesus is identified with his people even in the agony of the cross, and somehow out of that identification comes Jesus ability to take upon himself the terrible consequence of our sin and wrongdoing.
John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. In other words it was a sign that people recognised their need to be forgiven. But John’s baptism had no power to promise forgiveness.
When Jesus identifies himself with his people in baptism, he is laying down the foundation that will make baptism in the name of Jesus Christ a baptism, not just of repentance, but a baptism of forgiveness, forgiveness that was purchased when Jesus identified himself with us upon the cross.
Here is the solution to the riddle which John the Baptist faced. How could this humble, powerless man Jesus, be the same one who would take John’s ministry on to a new level. How could this candidate for a dunk in a dirty river be the one who was coming “with power” to bring in a baptism of “the Holy Spirit and of fire”.
Jesus comes in power—yes, but it is surprising power rooted in weakness, kingship that willingly takes the role of a servant. Jesus comes as a Saviour who himself becomes helpless.
John, greatest of all the prophets, doesn’t live to see the way all this works out. But John was privileged to be in the water with Jesus the day that Jesus set out. John was there when God showed how the riddle could be answered.
Mt. 3:16 As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.
God validates Jesus ministry from the outset. Yes, his baptism will be a baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus. But the form God’s Spirit adopts is that of a dove, a form of gentleness, a form of vulnerability.
Jesus is the one John expected. He is greater than John, and he comes in power. But he comes in a way that John did not expect, he comes not with the power of a conqueror, but the power of a victim ready to be sacrificed.
We read this passage early in a New Year. That is logical place as we remember the journey from Christmas to Easter. But it also a time to think about change, to take a fresh look, to allow the familiar to be transformed by the new. I quoted Bishop Tom Wright’s earlier. I’d like to end with some words Tom Wright wrote about Jesus’ baptism which spoke to me very powerfully as I prepared this talk. I hope they will encourage you, and challenge you in this New Year of 2011. He writes:
Part of the challenge of this passage is to learn afresh to be surprised by Jesus. He comes to fulfil God's plans, not ours, and even his prophets sometimes seem to misunderstand what he's up to. He will not always play the music we expect. But if we learn to listen carefully to what he says, and watch carefully what he does, we will find that our real longings, the hunger beneath the surface excitement, will be richly met.
At the same time, those who in repentance and faith follow Jesus through baptism and along the road he will now lead us will find, if we listen, that the same voice from heaven speaks to us as well. As we learn to put aside our own plans and submit to his, we may be granted moments of vision: glimpses of his greater reality. And at the centre of that sudden sight we will find our loving father, affirming us as his children, equipping us, too, with his spirit so that our lives may be swept clean and made ready for use.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you that you were willing to be identified with us in your life and death. Help us to embrace the surprise you bring, and to be identified with you in your power and your gentleness.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Christmas meets New Year as Christ shapes us all
As today we sing carols for the last time and mark the end of our Christmas services, we also mark the beginning of a New Year. That’s not without significance.
Just as a dog is for life and not just for Christmas, so too you might say that Christmas is for life and not just for Christmas.
Christmas is the celebration of Emmanuel, God with us, of the Word become flesh, of God incarnate.
We have been telling the story of people whose lives were changed by the coming of Christ – Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men and the Shepherds, and now today Simeon and Anna.
Have you noticed how time and again through the Christmas story the people whose lives are changed are people who have been outsiders like the shepherds, people who have faced adversity like the young girl expecting a baby, the would-be father challenged to support her, people who find themselves drawn towards danger like the Wise Men encountering the cruelty of Herod. There are people like Simeon and Anna, you might also think of Elizabeth and Zechariah who have been waiting for God to DO something for a lifetime.
With the coming of Christ all has changed.
And their lives are different.
What about us?
Is Christmas just a festive celebration to give us a feel-good factor at what really was for us this year the height of winter?
Or do we too encounter God with us in Jesus, do we see the word made flesh full of grace and truth, do we see in Christ God incarnate? Are we prepared for our lives to be shaped by what we have encountered in Christ Jesus.
To meet with Christ is to meet with someone who will shape our lives. Are we prepared to be shaped by this Jesus? I have read the first of Highbury’s two books for Christmas that I wrote about in the December Highbury News. I am awaiting delivery of Jonathan Rowe’s.
Graham Adams has written a thought provoking study of who Jesus is. He suggests that the wonderful thing about Christ is that he enters into real relationships with other people that shake him, and then shape the person he is. Graham suggests that in meeting with Christ we should be prepared to be shaken and open ourselves to be in real relationships with other people who will then shape who we are.
As the Christmas story meets the New Year, maybe there’s something in that. Are we prepared to be shaken by Christ and open ourselves up to other people in such a way that we will be shaped by them.
The challenge of the Gospel is not so much to shape other people, as to love other people and that involves engaging with them in such a way that we end up being different people too.
What kind of shape will we take as we let Emmanuel, God Incarnate, the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ shake us and shape us in the year ahead?
Nowhere is there a better description of the ‘shape’ we should take than in the opening verses of Philippians 2.
Paul speaks of encouragement, consolation, love, sharing, compassion, sympathy, joy. He speaks of being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. He speaks of the need to put away selfish ambition and conceit, and in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Jesus comes to shake us out of our centredness on self, and shape us around the needs of others. We take Christ’s shape as we look not to our own interests but to the interests of others.
The key to it all is to think the thoughts of Christ, have within us the mind of Christ.
Let’s hear those words of Paul in the opening verses of Philippians 2.
If then there is any encouragement in Christ,
any consolation from love,
any sharing in the Spirit,
any compassion and sympathy,
2make my joy complete:
be of the same mind,
having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
4Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interests of others.
5Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus. 6
That then begs the question – what’s it like when we think ourselves into the mind of Christ, when we seek to allow Christ’s mind to dwell in us?
Here we come to the heart of the Christmas message.
We love in the way he loves.
That is to say we not to imagine our task is to simply change other people. We are to love other people … with the love that Christ shows. We are to open ourselves to others in such a way that they will shape us – we are in Paul’s words to “regard others as better” and look to “the interests of others”.
Paul goes on to point us to Jesus who is one with God, and yet humbles himself to become a slave, a servant of all, he humbles himself to the point of self-sacrifical death upon the cross.
The pattern is for us to humble ourselves as Christ humbled himself.
Humble ourselves to the point at which we are slaves to others.
Humble ourselves to the point at which we deny ourselves and take up the cross of Christ.
But through the cross and that self-sacrifice Christ is exalted to the right hand of God to the point at which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
It is through that process that we will be shaken, we will be shaped differently, but as we come through that process we shall be lifted up into the presence of God, as Christ too was exalted.
These words of Paul are an encouragement to us – that as Christ shares with us at our lowest point so we too can share with him at that high point in oneness with God.
But they are also a challenge to us. They shake us. We are not to exploit equality with God, and seek after supremacy over others. We are challenged to empty ourselves to the point of taking the cross. Then as we share in that exaltation, we are to become part of that task Christ sets out to share the Good News with others so that every tongue can confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Jesus Christ, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The question is … are we up for it? That’s a question I want all of us to reflect on in a few moments time.
Engaging with others involves exposing ourselves to being shaped by them – it is as we enter into those relationships that we shall find together with those others we are shaken by Christ and shaped by him.
This is a task we share together.
Our Christmas collection is for Children’s Homes in Kerala State – if you couldn’t make it to the Christmas service there’s still time to hand in your contribution. Sue Cole will be visiting the CHIKS homes later this month and taking our love and greetings with her. In the Autumn we heard from Wayne Hawkins about the CWM partnership that links us with the church world-wide. We had greetings from Stefan and Birgit as Stefan is involved in the theological seminary in Londrinia, and Birgit is involved in that drug rehabilitation program in Brazil. We heard from Philip in Southam about the One Respe project we are partners with through the Congregational Federation as they build Honour and Respect in the Dominican Republic, not least among Haitian people seeking refuge there. We shall shortly be hearing from Jonathan and Hilary Rowe as they are at work in SEUT, the theological seminary in Madrid and remembering them in their future plans together too.
Over Christmas we had greetings from the wider flung Highbury family – people like Sandra and Petra and Katja and David and others of the volunteers who spent a year with us. We heard from Graham, from James, from mark Evans all of whom are engaged in ministry in churches.
There is a wonderful sense of being part of something that is open to being shaken and in the work of shaking others and shaping them in Christ.
I want to finish with a story of encouragement. We have been hearing of the devastation that has hit the ancient Christian communities of Iraq. Over Christmas we had not heard from Andrew White. And then Rob Lacey it was who spotted his story in the Daily Mail. Having given up a career in medicine to go into the ministry, it was way back in 1998 at the age of 33 that he took up the post of Director of the International Centre for Reconciliaion in Coventry Cathedral. Within three weeks he was diagnosed as having MS, multiple sclerosis. Admitted to hospital, his wife transferred from one hospital to be in the same hospital as Andrew as she was about to give birth. “I was upset for about one hour,” he is quoted in the Mail as saying. “Then I thought I have to get on with life.”
Shaken he was one to shake others up … and he went to the Middle East as Special Envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury. His worsening condition meant he had to return in 2003 and the Archbishop informed him that he was not well enough to take up parish post. He commented. “I wasn’t devastated. I don’t get devastated.” He determined on another course of action.
“I had been to Baghdad several times and though, “Right, I’ll go and live and work there.”
It’s where he has been ever since.
With a remarkable scholarship in Jewish, Islmaic and Christian studies behind him, he was won the respect of people in most communities. But at this time is very much at risk.
This is a story for encouragement. But the story is not one I had expected.
In 1998 he describes how he had supported fundraising for a bone marrow transplant centre in Baghdad’s major teaching hospital.
He now describes how his condition has deteriorated. And how at that very same hospital they are pioneering a treatment for MS that is not yet licensed over here. It involves a blood purification process, and is the fruit of stem cell research.
With 17 monthly treatments behind him has not suffered a single side effect and immense improvement in his condition. How ironic, he says, that Baghdad is ahead of the UK in this modern treatment.
At the end of the article he is quoted as saying something I found very challenging, and also remarkably encouraging.
“The church is not just about worship, it provides food, clothes and health care. We have three doctors and three dentists in our clinic. Most of our patients are Muslim and we are delighted about that.”
And then he says this.
“If I hadn’t had MS I wouldn’t have gone to live in Baghdad, so it has all been for a purpose.”
The first Christmas shook a lot of people up – Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men, the Shepherds, Simeon and Anna, Elizabeth and Zechariah. And it shaped the rest of their lives.
Are we up for being shaken up … and allowing this Christ to shape the rest of our lives.
Sometimes we are shaken in unexpected ways. Always Christ is there with us to shape the future that lies ahead of us.
As something of a New Year resolution, I am going to invite those who have made a commitment as church members to renew that commitment in the simply statement of faith that is made by those who join us. And if you feel you can echo these words then please do so, and have a word with me as we would love to welcome all who feel at home with us in the life of the church to share with us in membership of the church here at Highbury.
Do you believe in God and in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour? We do.
Do you promise as you are able to play your full part in the life and work of the church here at Highbury, in its worship, in church meeting, in giving, in its mission and service of God and the community? We do.
Just as a dog is for life and not just for Christmas, so too you might say that Christmas is for life and not just for Christmas.
Christmas is the celebration of Emmanuel, God with us, of the Word become flesh, of God incarnate.
We have been telling the story of people whose lives were changed by the coming of Christ – Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men and the Shepherds, and now today Simeon and Anna.
Have you noticed how time and again through the Christmas story the people whose lives are changed are people who have been outsiders like the shepherds, people who have faced adversity like the young girl expecting a baby, the would-be father challenged to support her, people who find themselves drawn towards danger like the Wise Men encountering the cruelty of Herod. There are people like Simeon and Anna, you might also think of Elizabeth and Zechariah who have been waiting for God to DO something for a lifetime.
With the coming of Christ all has changed.
And their lives are different.
What about us?
Is Christmas just a festive celebration to give us a feel-good factor at what really was for us this year the height of winter?
Or do we too encounter God with us in Jesus, do we see the word made flesh full of grace and truth, do we see in Christ God incarnate? Are we prepared for our lives to be shaped by what we have encountered in Christ Jesus.
To meet with Christ is to meet with someone who will shape our lives. Are we prepared to be shaped by this Jesus? I have read the first of Highbury’s two books for Christmas that I wrote about in the December Highbury News. I am awaiting delivery of Jonathan Rowe’s.
Graham Adams has written a thought provoking study of who Jesus is. He suggests that the wonderful thing about Christ is that he enters into real relationships with other people that shake him, and then shape the person he is. Graham suggests that in meeting with Christ we should be prepared to be shaken and open ourselves to be in real relationships with other people who will then shape who we are.
As the Christmas story meets the New Year, maybe there’s something in that. Are we prepared to be shaken by Christ and open ourselves up to other people in such a way that we will be shaped by them.
The challenge of the Gospel is not so much to shape other people, as to love other people and that involves engaging with them in such a way that we end up being different people too.
What kind of shape will we take as we let Emmanuel, God Incarnate, the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ shake us and shape us in the year ahead?
Nowhere is there a better description of the ‘shape’ we should take than in the opening verses of Philippians 2.
Paul speaks of encouragement, consolation, love, sharing, compassion, sympathy, joy. He speaks of being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. He speaks of the need to put away selfish ambition and conceit, and in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Jesus comes to shake us out of our centredness on self, and shape us around the needs of others. We take Christ’s shape as we look not to our own interests but to the interests of others.
The key to it all is to think the thoughts of Christ, have within us the mind of Christ.
Let’s hear those words of Paul in the opening verses of Philippians 2.
If then there is any encouragement in Christ,
any consolation from love,
any sharing in the Spirit,
any compassion and sympathy,
2make my joy complete:
be of the same mind,
having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
4Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interests of others.
5Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus. 6
That then begs the question – what’s it like when we think ourselves into the mind of Christ, when we seek to allow Christ’s mind to dwell in us?
Here we come to the heart of the Christmas message.
We love in the way he loves.
That is to say we not to imagine our task is to simply change other people. We are to love other people … with the love that Christ shows. We are to open ourselves to others in such a way that they will shape us – we are in Paul’s words to “regard others as better” and look to “the interests of others”.
Paul goes on to point us to Jesus who is one with God, and yet humbles himself to become a slave, a servant of all, he humbles himself to the point of self-sacrifical death upon the cross.
The pattern is for us to humble ourselves as Christ humbled himself.
Humble ourselves to the point at which we are slaves to others.
Humble ourselves to the point at which we deny ourselves and take up the cross of Christ.
But through the cross and that self-sacrifice Christ is exalted to the right hand of God to the point at which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
It is through that process that we will be shaken, we will be shaped differently, but as we come through that process we shall be lifted up into the presence of God, as Christ too was exalted.
These words of Paul are an encouragement to us – that as Christ shares with us at our lowest point so we too can share with him at that high point in oneness with God.
But they are also a challenge to us. They shake us. We are not to exploit equality with God, and seek after supremacy over others. We are challenged to empty ourselves to the point of taking the cross. Then as we share in that exaltation, we are to become part of that task Christ sets out to share the Good News with others so that every tongue can confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Jesus Christ, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The question is … are we up for it? That’s a question I want all of us to reflect on in a few moments time.
Engaging with others involves exposing ourselves to being shaped by them – it is as we enter into those relationships that we shall find together with those others we are shaken by Christ and shaped by him.
This is a task we share together.
Our Christmas collection is for Children’s Homes in Kerala State – if you couldn’t make it to the Christmas service there’s still time to hand in your contribution. Sue Cole will be visiting the CHIKS homes later this month and taking our love and greetings with her. In the Autumn we heard from Wayne Hawkins about the CWM partnership that links us with the church world-wide. We had greetings from Stefan and Birgit as Stefan is involved in the theological seminary in Londrinia, and Birgit is involved in that drug rehabilitation program in Brazil. We heard from Philip in Southam about the One Respe project we are partners with through the Congregational Federation as they build Honour and Respect in the Dominican Republic, not least among Haitian people seeking refuge there. We shall shortly be hearing from Jonathan and Hilary Rowe as they are at work in SEUT, the theological seminary in Madrid and remembering them in their future plans together too.
Over Christmas we had greetings from the wider flung Highbury family – people like Sandra and Petra and Katja and David and others of the volunteers who spent a year with us. We heard from Graham, from James, from mark Evans all of whom are engaged in ministry in churches.
There is a wonderful sense of being part of something that is open to being shaken and in the work of shaking others and shaping them in Christ.
I want to finish with a story of encouragement. We have been hearing of the devastation that has hit the ancient Christian communities of Iraq. Over Christmas we had not heard from Andrew White. And then Rob Lacey it was who spotted his story in the Daily Mail. Having given up a career in medicine to go into the ministry, it was way back in 1998 at the age of 33 that he took up the post of Director of the International Centre for Reconciliaion in Coventry Cathedral. Within three weeks he was diagnosed as having MS, multiple sclerosis. Admitted to hospital, his wife transferred from one hospital to be in the same hospital as Andrew as she was about to give birth. “I was upset for about one hour,” he is quoted in the Mail as saying. “Then I thought I have to get on with life.”
Shaken he was one to shake others up … and he went to the Middle East as Special Envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury. His worsening condition meant he had to return in 2003 and the Archbishop informed him that he was not well enough to take up parish post. He commented. “I wasn’t devastated. I don’t get devastated.” He determined on another course of action.
“I had been to Baghdad several times and though, “Right, I’ll go and live and work there.”
It’s where he has been ever since.
With a remarkable scholarship in Jewish, Islmaic and Christian studies behind him, he was won the respect of people in most communities. But at this time is very much at risk.
This is a story for encouragement. But the story is not one I had expected.
In 1998 he describes how he had supported fundraising for a bone marrow transplant centre in Baghdad’s major teaching hospital.
He now describes how his condition has deteriorated. And how at that very same hospital they are pioneering a treatment for MS that is not yet licensed over here. It involves a blood purification process, and is the fruit of stem cell research.
With 17 monthly treatments behind him has not suffered a single side effect and immense improvement in his condition. How ironic, he says, that Baghdad is ahead of the UK in this modern treatment.
At the end of the article he is quoted as saying something I found very challenging, and also remarkably encouraging.
“The church is not just about worship, it provides food, clothes and health care. We have three doctors and three dentists in our clinic. Most of our patients are Muslim and we are delighted about that.”
And then he says this.
“If I hadn’t had MS I wouldn’t have gone to live in Baghdad, so it has all been for a purpose.”
The first Christmas shook a lot of people up – Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men, the Shepherds, Simeon and Anna, Elizabeth and Zechariah. And it shaped the rest of their lives.
Are we up for being shaken up … and allowing this Christ to shape the rest of our lives.
Sometimes we are shaken in unexpected ways. Always Christ is there with us to shape the future that lies ahead of us.
As something of a New Year resolution, I am going to invite those who have made a commitment as church members to renew that commitment in the simply statement of faith that is made by those who join us. And if you feel you can echo these words then please do so, and have a word with me as we would love to welcome all who feel at home with us in the life of the church to share with us in membership of the church here at Highbury.
Do you believe in God and in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour? We do.
Do you promise as you are able to play your full part in the life and work of the church here at Highbury, in its worship, in church meeting, in giving, in its mission and service of God and the community? We do.
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