Beyond Death? Revelation 22

The Rev Eric Burton was Minister at Highbury from 1966 to 1977.

Now into his 80's, Eric took the services at Highbury on Sunday, 12th September. During the evening service he told us that this was only the second occasion he had directly addressed the subject of what is beyond death in a preaching ministry spanning nearly 70 years.

He had been prompted to preach in this way following the untimely death of his second wife only three months ago.

It was very moving to hear his reflections and good to share them here ...

Meditation – Beyond Death?
Revelation 22

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. velation 22:1-5

Following Eileen Davison's fatal fall from a horse the media reported on the consequent distribution of parts of her body. Resulting from those transplants, five people are continuing to live with renewed hope of good health. That fact, relatives of the deceased said, "It's the only hope in the chaos.” The only hope?

Since the recent sudden, quite unexpected death of Viv­ienne, my lovely loving wife, I find more hope in the prom­ises of Jesus in pages of the Bible and words such as these:

"His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face; and they shall reign for ever and ever." (Revelation 22. 3,4 & 5).

In sixty seven years of preaching only once have I dared to do so about the nature of life beyond the thin veil we call 'Death'. That surprisingly was way back on the 27th August 1944! The evidence is here (not written in green inkl) Dh, the self assertion of youth!

I am consoled to find that in those same early years I frequently chose Dora Greenwell's lovely hymn for congre­gations to sing.

“I am not skilled to understand
what God has willed, what God has planned;
I only know at his right hand
stands one who is my saviour.”

To attempt to pry would be useless and perhaps irrever­ent. For many, a story John Baillie tells in his masterly book ‘And the Life Everlasting', will suffice.

A patient informed by his devotedly Christian doctor that his end was near, asked if he had any conviction as to what awaited him beyond death. His doctor fumbled for an answer. Just then there was a scratching at the door. “Do you hear that?" the doctor asked his patient. “That is my dog I left downstairs. He has grown impatient and come up and hears my voice. He has no idea that is on this side of that door, but he knows I am here. Is that not the same with you? You do not know what lies beyond, but you know your Master is there."

"I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies."

His Servants shall serve him

While the New Testament is very vague about life beyond death, it does stress most emphatically that it is all religious. "His servants shall serve Him; they shall see His face and His name shall be in their foreheads" … It is all concerned with Him, His glory.

Dr. Leslie Weatherhead used to invite people to imagine two people going to a classical music concert. The first, Adam, trained in music, plays brilliantly, enters into every part of the concert. Zed goes to the concert to please his friend. Bored with music the concert leaves him cold.

At the concert Adam lives in a world of wonder, love and praise. Zed is just alive, that's all. They sit together, between them there is a great gulf. Zed cannot cross it in a moment and be where Adam is. Adam's long training and practice allow him to revel fully in this great musical treat. Poor Zed feels horribly out of it. He cannot re­spond to music, and at the concert music is everything there is to respond to!

I wonder if dying is something like that: passing into a spiritual world where all the enjoyment is spiritual. We all survive, I think. But whether we live to the full and revel in that life will surely depend on the extent to which we discover the spiritual dimension in this life here. I never think of heaven and hell as two places.

Another of Whittier's hymns ends:

"To turn aside from Thee is hell,
To walk with Thee is heaven."

Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am you may be also." (John 14.2 & 3) Those words were spoken to the dis­ciples who had followed Jesus and tried to serve him here on earth.

“Some day or other I shall surely come
Where true hearts wait for me;
Then let me learn the language of that home
While here on earth I be:
Lest my poor lips for want of words be dumb
In that high company.”


They shall see His face

The writer of those words had seen it, loved it, lived in the light of it. He set down these five words as being sufficient for all our needs. What a promise! The best of all promises.

I am very fond of a song called 'The Road is Long' written by a Salvation Army teenager. Its repeated refrain and final line is: "I want to see this man called, this man called Jesus, I want to see the risen Lord.”
In what is for me the most satisfying statue of Jesus, Thorwalden's 'Come unto Me', the head is bowed. "If you want to see his face," the sculptor said, "You must get on your knees."

Richard Baxter wrote:

"Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet
Thy blessed face to see;
For if thy work on earth be sweet,
What will thy glory be!
My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.“

They shall reign for ever and ever

Two little girls were looking at a painting of Queen Victoria seated on an ornate throne, the orb in one hand and the sceptre in the other, a crown on her head and wearing the most royal robes of state. One girl whispered to the other, "What is she doing,?” The other replied, “She is just reigning:"

With that word 'reign' erase from your mind thoughts of thrones and rulers. Think rather in terms of deliverance from, and victory over doubts, fears, sins and suffering that so hinder our vision while here on earth.

Returning one day from the funeral of his dearly loved son, some friends of the great German theologian Dr. Harnack, wondered what he would do. Do? He went into his study and opened his Bible at John 13.7 and underlined that verse in red ink. Therein that great man found his Christian hope.

It reads: ‘Jesus said, "You do not realise now what I am doing, but later, you will understand."

I have in my possession a very precious scrap of paper.
On it the last words my first dear wife Joy ever wrote: It reads:

“Funeral hymns ….. ‘All my hope on God is founded’

Hope to find one with more about the love of God."

That hymn was sung at the service in which we gave thanksgiving for her life upon earth.

"His servants shall serve him. They will see his face, and they shall reign for ever and ever. " Amen



The sermon over, Eric, moved to the platform and invited Maureen Williams, one of our church members to the lecturn. He introduced the reading she was to share with these moving words:

"We move to a very personal note in this service, which I hope you will allow.

When my second lovely, lovable wife died three months ago we received, and are still receiving, letters and prayers not least from this church at Highbury, and we are so grateful as a family for all the help, in prayer in particular that you have given to us.

Some people have sent us letters, and some sent poems, and one of the most helpful came from someone in this church, and she is going to read those words which she sent in writing to me, and she is going to read them to me now - thank you Maureen."


You can shed tears that she is gone,
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all she's left.

Your heart can be empty because you can't see her,
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember her only that she is gone,
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back.

Or you can do what she'd want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

What it takes to be a disciple

Where’s it all been leading up to?

It has been fascinating re-visiting Peter’s story for the Holiday Club this year. If ever there was an example of the Christian faith as a journey then Peter’s story surely has to be it.

What struck me forcibly this time as I was telling the story again was the way in which Peter is grappling with faith, what God means to him in the context of a very troubled, cruel world.

That first encounter with Jesus on the shore of the sea of Galilee comes hard on the heels of the arrest of John the Baptist who had aroused such hopes among so many in the stand he had taken against the powers the be. His imprisonment put paid to those hopes.

Peter was working in an industry, and fishing was very much an industry, on the Sea of Galilee that suffered massive exploitation on the part of the Roman powers that be that had been instrumental in having John the Baptist arrestetd.

Leave your nets was an invitation to follow a different path and discover a different way, God’s way of building society. It was good news that Jesus had to share about the kingdom of God, about God’s rule and the difference it would make.

The teaching of Jesus was electrifying, the healing he brought into people’s lives, not least into Peter’s very own home, was remarkable. There came a point when Peter was sure he was the one, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

He really was Peter, the Rock, and on that faith Jesus would build his church.

But he hadn’t really got it.

Peter had a hang-up.

His hang-up was a hang-up that so many people have.

Since my return from holiday, I found myself put on the spot by someone of a scientific way of thinking, who had exactly the same hang-up.

Peter could not get his mind around suffering. It was a major thing for him. When Jesus said to him that he would have to suffer, to the point of an agonizing death on the cross. That was simply too much for Peter.

That is not possible.

It did not square with peter’s understanding of God.

How is it possible to believe in God in a world of suffering.

That was the question put to me. And it is a massive question. It doesn’t have any easy answers. I found myself as the conversation came to an end – pointing to the reflections I had made in the August issue of Highbury News. In anticipation of Greenbelt I had recalled one of the speakers who had made a big impression on me.

Richard Rohr a Franciscan had reflected on the way Jesus refused to give cut and dried answers to the questions he was posed. As often as not Jesus responded to questions with more questions. But those questions were the kind that made people think. Richard Rohr suggested that we should not be for ever on the look out for answers, but for answering persons. People who are prepared to share.

Jesus was one of those. Richard Rohr did not disappoint at Greenbelt. The two talks I went to of his I found an inspiration.

In one he came to this massive problem that so many, Peter included, have such hang-ups over. This is the world as it is. We may wish the world were different, but this is the world. It is a world where there is untold suffering. Suffering be it in the animal kingdom, in the planet itself, in human experience is part of the warp and weft of life itself.

Richard Rohr pointed back to Jesus – it was the Jesus that Peter encountered.

Peter sensed Jesus was the one. The one who he and his people had been waiting for, the one who would open up God in a new way, the one who would usher in God’s rule, God’s kingdom, the one who through that electrifying teaching, in that healing would make such a difference in people’s lives.

Peter stuck with Jesus. And Peter plumbed the depths of agonising suffering. He tried to stick with Jesus, lied through his teeth, and claimed never to have known him … and he is reduced to bitter tears.

It would have been wonderful – and Peter with his hang-up over suffering, longed for it to be so – if it had been possible for Jesus to avoid that suffering, for him to be able to avoid the tears.

But something happens through the suffering. It is perverse that it is through the suffering, that Peter comes to encounter something beyond in the risen Christ. And the risen Christ three times counters Peter’s three denials – do you love me?

The cruel world remains.

It is not changed.

But Peter now discovers a strength to enable him to live in that world and to bear withness to the new way of life Jesus has opened up – that strength is the unseen, yet very real power of God, the Holy Spirit.

Now Peter seeks to live out Jesus’ way – he echoes the teaching, he brings healing to people whose lives are hurting.

And Peter falls foul of the powers that be. He is arrestetd by the very Herpod who had imprisoned and executed John the Baptist, tried Jesus, and now determined on the very anniversary of Jesus’ trial and execution to have Peter brought out to face the crowd … and meet his death.

Imprisoned, Peter prays, and knows that the followers of Jesus are also praying. And he is delivered.

But still he has not reached the end of his journey.

The base of that Roman power in what we have come to know as the Holy Land was Caesarea – a typical, Roman city on the shores of the Mediterranean. The hub of Rome’s trade with the middle East. The base for the Roman power.

It is one step too far for Peter to welcome, let alone reach out with love and blessing to the Roman occupiers. To heap insult upon insult the creaters in that sheet which in his vision he sees lowered from heaven are the very animals that are the staple of the Roman diet, not least in banquest such as that one at which John the Baptist was executed. The very foods good Jews knew should not be eaten.

And the voice of God said to Peter, rise up , kill and eat.

And when he awoke it was a Centurion of the Italian cohort from Caesarea that Peter found himself sharing the love of God in Christ with.

I now know, he said, that God shows no partiality.

Where’s it all leading?

Where’s it all going?

It’s after this that Peter writes his letter. It’s a round-robin letter to followers of Jesus anywhere and everywhere, especially those scattered throughout the Roman empire.

Where’s it all heading.

There’s a wonderful word he reaches here.
The word ‘finally’.

Gives us a clue.

Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

This has to be one of those treasured moments in Peter’s story. It’s what his life story has been building up to.

This is what it takes if we want to be true to Jesus … and true to living out the kind of life that Peter learned about.

Be of one mind, have unity of spirit. We who follow Jesus need to stick together. I know that’s easier said than done … but this is a touch stone. People are people, and we are no less prone to falling out.

But if a church family becomes fractious, that’s a warning – it shouldn’t be like that. We should have unity of spirit. That goes to the heart of our understanding of church. WE invite all who belong to come along to our Church Meeting. Some think of it as a very democratic exercise – where we vote. But that’s not how we should think of it. The purpose of our meeting together is to seek out what we sense to be the mind of Christ for us. Always, we should seek God’s support that we can he of one mind, and have unity of spirit.

I followed Thursday night’s church meeting with a meeting of Cheltenham’s church leaders at which we welcomed the new Archdeacon of Cheltenham and shared our thoughts about churches of Cheltenham working together. I introduced myself as being the one who had been longer in Cheltenham than any other … to be contradicted by Ally Bates who had arrived with her husband in ministry at what was then the New Life Church – in 1987. We found ourelves reflecting on the need to seek that oneness of spirit, that mind of Christ together as churches. And that was something special to be doing that here at Highbury.

But then comes another insight of Peter’s – have ‘sympathy’; lover for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

Sympathy is a word that trips off the tongue and is so easy to use. But as Peter uses it, it is a strong word. It literally means, suffer with each other.

Have a tender heart – literally means – have compassion to the point at which you feel an ache in your gut, in your stomach for each other.

There is no answer to that question that was such a hang-up for Peter.

But in a suffering world there is a response. And it is the response that Peter learned not from any easy answers that Jesus gave, but through experiencing and sharing in suffering with Jesus.

That response involves coming alongside those who suffer, sharing that suffering with them, carrying it together, in love for another, the kind of love that is gut-wrenching and filled with compassion.

And of all this in humility.

Be very wary of those for whom religion is full of the word ‘no’ and full of anger at those who have not got it. That was another thought form Richard Rohr. And another lesson learned by Peter.

Once he had been so prepared to think of himself as different from.

But now he urges a different response to the evil he saw around.

Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse;
On the contrary repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called – that you might inherit a blessing.

That word blessing is a fascinating one. It literally means – speak well of someone.

What does it mean to bless someone. It means when something awful is done to you by someone – don’t simply dwell on that and give as good as you get. Instead look for something of God in that person, and as you do tat find something good to say of that person. And that will become the blessing you give and the blessing you receive.

Where does it all end?

We don’t know for certain what happened to Peter.

Every indication is that he did in the end face the very same treatment at the hands of the Roman powers that be that Jesus had received.

There is no escaping the suffering of our world. But there is a way of living that Jesus opens up for us, that enables us to live in that world in a different way, and then enter into an inheritance that has been waiting for us that nothing can destroy.

Take heart!

In our Holiday Club with St Luke's we have been having fun in Rocky’s Plaice, a fish restaurant a little bit like Fawlty Towers, and exploring the story of Simon Peter, the fisherman who was given the name ‘Peter’, the rock by Jesus.

Jesus turned to the disciples and asked them, “Who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

And Jesus answered him, “On this rock I will build my church.”


And so our service begins in a spirit of praise and worship as Hy-Spirit lead us in singing …


A time of Praise and Worship with Hy-Spirit

Prayer – led by Robert …
The Lord’s Prayer

Psalm 95 – the congregation – led by Robert

Jesus called Peter ‘the Rock’ – often in the Psalms God is seen as the very rock of our salvation. I am going to read one of those psalms, Psalm 95, when I say the words
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
we all say together the words in capitals ---
LET US MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE TO THE ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!

We begin with that response …

O come, let us sing to the Lord;
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LET US MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE TO THE ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!
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Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving; let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
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O come, let us sing to the Lord;
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LET US MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE TO THE ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!
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For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.---
In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also.
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O come, let us sing to the Lord;
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LET US MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE TO THE ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!
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The sea is his, for he made it, and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
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O come, let us sing to the Lord;
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LET US MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE TO THE ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!
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For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. O that today we would listen to his voice!
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O come, let us sing to the Lord;
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LET US MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE TO THE ROCK OF OUR SALVATION!


At the heart of the faith we share is the conviction that Jesus Christ is none other than the Rock of our salvation … and so let us join in singing our next hymn …


Hymn: In Christ alone, my hope is found, he is my light, my strength, my song

Rocky’s Plaice – the Story – Becky

Grace

Recap the story

Winnie – the sketch

Song: Jesus is the Rock

Peter’s Story

The Memory Verses

Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.

Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid!

I will be with you always to the end of the age

Rocky’s Plaice – the song

Talk – Richard

Jesus is the rock – he calls Peter the rock – then Peter turns to the stones – and suggests we are all living stones, held together by the corner stone – Jesus himself.

Lorraine is going to read some of the words Peter shared in a letter he wrote …

Reading: 1 Peter 2:1-5 and 9-10 - Lorraine

Rid yourselves, then, of all evil; no more lying or hypocrisy or jealousy or insulting language. 2 Be like newborn babies, always thirsty for the pure spiritual milk, so that by drinking it you may grow up and be saved. 3 As the scripture says, “You have found out for yourselves how kind the Lord is.”

4 Come to the Lord, the living stone rejected by people as worthless but chosen by God as valuable. 5 Come as living stones, and let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple, where you will serve as holy priests to offer spiritual and acceptable sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ.

But you are the chosen race, the King's priests, the holy nation, God's own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvellous light.
At one time you were not God's people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know God's mercy, but now you have received his mercy.

How can we be living stones?

Those three verses contain an invitation and then wonderful words of promise.

Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.

We follow Jesus … not for our own reward, but for the sake of other people.

Twice yesterday at Greenbelt African Ubuntu theology was mentioned.

Once, in a powerful and moving talk about dementia by a superb speaker from Aberdeen university, John Swinton – where James Gregory is studying - And the second time from Solomuza Babuza, a Lutheran minister.

We live in an individualistic society that owes so much to the European way of thinking that goes all the way back to Descartes – I think, therefore I am.

All too often that has led us to think of Christianity as all to do with the individual and individual salvation.

Africa thinks rather of people collectively – Ubuntu theology.

I am because you are.

Jesus doesn’t say Follow me and I will give you the best reward you can ever imagine. Jesus says,

Follow me and I will make you fish for people.

Follow me and you will live your life not for your own sake, but for the sake of other people.

How can we do that?

By holding on to two promises.

In the stormy moments, especially when we venture to do something that’s scary or that is on the verge of defeating let’s see Jesus stretching out his hand to us, taking hold of us securely, and saying

Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.

And in those moments when we feel alone, let’s hold on to that promise of Jesus …

I am with you always to the end of the age.

introducing Jonathan

Happy Birthday to Sybil

Prayers – Yvonne

Hymn: Amazing Grace

Through every danger, trial and snare
I have already come;
his grace has brought me safe thus far,
and grace will lead me home.

Closing Prayer and Blessing

Thank you, Lord, for giving us Winnie
Thank you, Lord, for giving us Rocky
For the games we’ve played
For the friends we’ve made
Thank you, Lord, for giving us fun

May God’s joy be in our hearts
May God’s peace be in our world
May God’s love be known between us
And the blessing of God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Be with us now and for ever more.
Amen

Faith, hope and love

What do you make of your mind?

Do you find sometimes that your mind is thinking about so many different things that it’s a bit like the spring in an old pocket watch – you wind it up to the point at which if it gets wound up any more it will reach its breaking point. You come to the point at which you are so wound up you need to unwind. That’s where taking a break, taking time out, a day to unwind. And that’s the value I have found over the years, not least this year of a good holiday. Time to unwind.

Change the analogy to a computer that has reached its capacity, and your mind is overloaded. It can’t take any more. Or maybe a racing analogy … and your mind is going to spin off.

It’s good to take time out, to clear out the cobwebs.

Then there comes a point when you need to gather up your thoughts.

There’s the time to get your mind into gear … and get it thinking straight.

Isn’t English full of vivid pictures?

Getting into gear, clearing out the cobwebs, wound up, unwind.

The mind mattered for Peter.

“Therefore, prepare your minds,” he writes in 1 Peter 1:13.

He was the kind of person who needed to get his mind around things. There was something about the figure of Jesus that had an immediate impact … Peter, or Simon as he was known among the fishermen on the northern shores of the sea of Galilee, left his nets and followed Jesus.

Jesus saw how important it was for Simon Peter and all the others to learn, to be ‘learners’, to be ‘disciples’. His teaching had an authority to it that impressed Simon Peter and the others – the stories he told, the way he explained things, the new way he opened up for them to follow. It made sense. The way you could wrap up all the law and the prophets in the one simple thought – do to others what you would have others do to you.

Peter thought he had got his mind round it when Jesus asked the disciples who people were saying he was, You are the Christ, the Messiah, the one we’ve been waiting for.

But Jesus knew Peter hadn’t got his mind round it enough – there were hard lessons to learn. Peter thought the Messiah would overturn the Roman power … Jesus came to open up a way through suffering for everyone to follow, a way that would take him to the cross, but beyond the cross to resurrection.

That was something Peter could not get his mind round.

Then three times he denied Jesus, and he wept bitterly.

What was going on? Too much for his mind to take.

And then back on the shore the risen Christ asked him three times, Do you love me?

The waiting over, that unseen yet very real power of God in Christ was felt by Peter – and then he got his mind into gear and rushing down the steps and on to the streets of Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost Peter it was who made sense of all that was happening and could see what Jesus meant.

But he still needed his mind stretching even more – he couldn’t take it in that this love of God in Christ was actually for everyone – Roman as much as Jew … and it took a vivid vision he had and a remarkable encounter with a Roman centurion to change the way his mind saw things.

He was very conscious of the way the followers of Jesus had been scattered far and wide and he wanted to share his thoughts, his inspiration with them.

And so it was he took pen to paper and this letter addressed to the exiles of the dispersion. Some have thought it unlikely that Peter could write in Greek. But he was one who was able to use his mind. Galilee was occupied by the Romans, he was in a key industry that was supplying the occupation with the fish they needed for their lavish life-style. Greek was the common language of the Eastern half of the Roman Empire. Peter not only spoke Aramaic, albeit with a north country Galilean accent, he could also read Hebrew as a devout Jew, and speak and indeed write in Greek. In all likelihood he would have got by in Latin as well.

He begins with that sweeping summing up of the faith that means the world to him.

And now he comes to that point at which he wants all who read what he has to say to ‘prepare their minds’.

The Greek he is writing in, no less than English, has its vivid way of speaking. And this is one moment when that vivid language comes into its own.

What he writes is this:

“Gird up the loins of your minds.”

Quite a vivid picture. A very basic, very physical image.

Gird up the loins of your minds.

What’s he getting at?

When you read what Peter has to say he has got his mind round who this Jesus is, what that means for his understanding of the world and of God. It’s taken Peter time … but I sense he wants us to get our minds round that too.

Through the teaching of Jesus, the love Jesus showed throughout his life, the death he shared and his resurrection Peter is convinced he has a window on to the God of creation.

In verse 20 he writes of Jesus Christ, He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for the sake of all Peter is writing to … us included. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God.

I believe it’s important to get your mind round such things. I find myself in awe of the wonder of the world, and I seek to make sense of it. I am drawn to the insights of cosmologists, evolutionists – and though no evidence can prove the existence of God, I am passionate that believing in God makes sense in the world we live in. It is believing. It is faith. But it is worthy of the best of minds and it makes sense.

Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society, comes to the end of his fascinating account of the six equations that make sense of the universe and he concludes there are three positions that can reasonably held, that in his view ‘make sense’ It just happened that way, this universe is one of a multiplicity of universes, a multiverse, or that’s how it was created by God. What is important to me is not that Martin Rees should subscribe to that view, but that he respects it as a view that can be reasonably held and that makes sense of the world we see.

More than that I think it is important to make sense of what it is that Jesus opens up about God – in verses 18 and 19, Peter homes in on something remarkable that came across to him through the death of Jesus. It was somehow because Jesus came alongside humanity at its bleakest, at its most God-forsaken, on the cross – ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ and at that point brought forgiving love to the fore - ‘Father, forgive them …’ – that Jesus has become for Peter the one makes real in the lives of each of us the reality that the God of creation is the God of love who forgives and renews. Peter makes sense of that against the background of the world he knew of the Hebrew Scriptures and speaks of Jesus as that precious lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

This is the God of our faith – the God of immense, forgiving, love.

Then in verse 21 he moves beyond the death, to share the importance of resurrection. Christ comes alongside us and all of humanity, shares our suffering – so that at that point at which we are conscious of that suffering and feeling its pain ourselves, we know that we are not alone – God is there with us in the midst of it.

And the suffering, the pain, the death does not have the last word. Beyond is resurrection. It cannot be proved – but Peter knew its reality, and it is a reality we too can share – and so it is not only faith in God that we can have, but also hope.

Through Christ we can really come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that our faith are hope are set on God.

Gird up the loins of your mind. Get your mind around these things and share that faith, share that hope … and it makes a world of difference. That’s Peter’s conviction and that’s what I too want to share.

But there is one more thing in this phrase that we cannot lose sight of.

It is for Peter the most important thing.

Gird up the loins of your mind … and prepare your minds for action.

With your hope set firmly on that wonderful loving God disclosed by Christ, on the grace of Christ, discipline yourselves.

Haven’t the Robins got off to a good start! [I am writing this on Friday, so it may need amending by Sunday!!] Not only have they brought in some strikers who can score goals, but they have brought back the great Steve Book, Goalie in the Robins’ golden days of Wembley triumphs and promotion to the league. Coaching Steve Brown the current goalie he was quoted in the Echo this week as having full confidence in Scot Brown - but for Scot Brown it’s all in the mind. He needs more self-belief.

The headline says it all …

Steve Book: Scott Brown’s career could be a page-turner if he shows belief.

In sport it’s what’s in your mind that counts.

Prepare your mind for action.

Gird up the loins of your minds – discipline yourselves, obedience is called for – and the task is to model ourselves not on the values of the world around but on the love of God.

It is as if for Peter faith and hope as they point to God and to the truth that is at the very heart of the world from the beginning, have a cleansing, renewing thing that cleans us out from deep within, clears out all the cobwebs, and renews us … so that we can gird up our loins and prepare our minds for action … in what way – through what Peter describes as ‘genuine mutual love’.

What a wonderful turn of phrase.

That’s the action we need to take – inspired by a genuine mutual love, e are called upon to love one another deeply from the heart.

That means seeking out practical things to do – measuring what we do by the worth it gives not to us but to others – a particular person to see, tasks to be done that will make a difference to someone, maybe the Christian Aid appeal for the floods in Pakistan.

Let’s gird up the loins of our minds in faith, hope and above all in ‘genuine mutual love’, loving one another deeply from the heart.

Circles of Prayer in Streams of Living Water

An arid waste.
Dust.
Barren
No soil.
No growth.
No life.
A desert waste.

no plant of the field was yet in the earth
and no herb of the field had yet sprung up
—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth,
and there was no one to till the ground;
but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground—

a life-giving stream
to water the whole face of the ground
life in all its abundance
life in all its glory
a stream to rise from the earth

It was the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens
A stream would rise from the earth,
And water the whole face of the ground
A life-giving stream

7then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,* and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.
And the Lord God planted a garden

Think of a garden.
The most beautiful garden you have ever seen.
And it is as nothing to this garden.
The garden of God’s creation.
The garden of Eden.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east;
And there he put the man whom he had formed.
9Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river flows out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divides and becomes four branches.
1The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Havilah,
13The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one that flows around the whole land of Cush.
14The name of the third river is Tigris, which flows east of Assyria.
And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

A stream of life-giving water
That becomes a river
That branches out
Into all four corners of the world

The paradise of God’s creation … and yet it is spoiled by man’s inhumanity to man.
It ever has been thus.
The garden and that vision of a stream of living water so elusive – out of our reach – spoiled.

How we long to reach that vision once more …

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.When shall I come and behold the face of God?
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.


Hy-Spirit
As the deer pants for the water brook
3
As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
Jesus knew what it was to thirst
I am thirsty, he cried out on the cross.
In the heat of the sun,
At mid day
And tired out by his journey
Jesus was sitting by a well

He was thirsty.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. 8

9The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)*

10Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’

11The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’

13Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’

When my soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

When the soul of each one of us thirsts for God
For the living God

We too can echo the words of that woman long ago.

We can turn to Jesus … and say with confidence,

Lord, 15give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty.’

And the water he will give will become in us a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. 5 God is in the midst of the city;* it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.
10 ‘Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.’ 11 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

how wonderful to sit beside that river … in the quietness, in the stillness, and sense God’s presence.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.


Isn’t this something worth sharing?
In a dry and arid land.
The vision of a river
Streams of life-giving water
Still waters, green pastures
A hope and a presence …

Is there a stream of living water that can pour out from us into the world around us … a world of such need?

There was a moment when Jesus cried out.

It wasn’t his ordinary voice.
There was an urgency about it.
He knew, he knew how thirsty people were
For something more
For that life-giving water.

And so it was he cried out,

‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me,
38and let the one who believes in me drink.
As* the scripture has said,
“Out of the believer’s heart* shall flow
rivers of living water.”

What a remarkable cry it was … living water to flow from us into the world around …
This was no ordinary water,
It was the water of the spirit,
The life-giving spirit, that breathes life into the world,
It is the water that sustains,
That strengthens,
That gives new life …

Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water …

’ 39Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive

That spirit of God, unseen yet so very real that gives strength where there is weakness, life where there is no life.

What a difference that would make.
What a task for us to share.

For those streams of living water to flow from us.

What a difference that will make.

We have a vision, a vision to share.

Then the angel* showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life* with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants* will worship him; 4they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign for ever and ever.

A Meditation by Judi Marsh

Restoring the Sacred Centre

Lord, help me notice
all the still waters
that you lead me beside.
Restore me;
Redeem me;
Remind me
of the sacredness
that glows in silence
on Holy ground.


Hy-Spirit lead us in singing The Lord’s my shepherd

Janet Partington shares John Pritchard's meditation - the Stream

Pass it on!

I met a man who is known to all the children in Cheltenham … and yet none of them has ever seen him. Mums and Dads, and Aunts and Uncles … and even Grandparents too know when he has been about. They know when he is needed. But few if any have seen him.

And I met him on Thursday afternoon.

It was what you might call a Grand Parental afternoon. I was in charge. A pick-up from nursery … and then a visit to the bank – a fascinating experience steering a push chair with fixed wheels through the queuing arrangement for the post office upstairs in WH Smith’s, up the Promenade, bumping into Joyce Jones on the way, through the Open Air art exhibition – at 1 and a quarter, Grandson, Lake really enjoyed that. Through Imperial Gardens and on to Montpellier Gardens … and a great treat. A roundabout, a swing, a climbing frame and best of all – the railings that you could pretend you were a Lion in a cage.

Into the Garden Art Gallery for a taste of modern art – will he be an artist when he grows up, I wonder? Some might say he could have done better .. but I actually wouldn’t say that.

And then back past the back of the old telephone exchange, round by the Playhouse and into Sandford Park, a conversation with the men removing the kind of water cress that has taken over the ponds. One man had looked after those ponds for years, and then he retired last year and no one has taken on his job. But two people were doing it now. Wonderful! Across College Road and round the park … no, not to the playground. But to the back entrance to the Lido café. For a lovely cup of tea … and apple juice.

And there he was standing against the counter.

Weather beaten, his white van parked on the grass of the park. The conversation began with the weather and then quickly moved on … so do you look after the park. There are 53 playgrounds in Cheltenham, he said, and he was the one person to look after all them all and see that the play equipment. One man looking after all that equipment. And he had just returned the new bus – that’s brilliant, I said, it’s Lake’s favourite. And it’s brand new. Only been there since April. It will seat 10 and more youngsters and you can sit at the wheel and drive the bus! Wonderful.

That’s what I made through the winter, he said. So what are the place names on the bus – there are about four of them the children can change. Why aren’t they ones we recognise from the Cotswolds, I asked. That would be too dull, he said. One is where I was born in Cornwall, another is where my son lives outside Leeds, another is a place in France I go to on holiday.

Do you know, I said, one of the people in our church Marion Taylor who helps co-ordinate all the flower arranging lives in a flat overlooking Pittville Park. Her husband was an aero engineer at Staverton, and the country’s leading engineer on the Dove, an amphibious aeroplane. When he died Marion arranged for a replica Dove to be installed in the chidlren’s playground. For children to fly.

I made that, my new friend, informed me, I got all the specifications off the internet and made sure that the word Dove was there – not just painted on but gouged into the wood so it wouldn’t come off. And I have just given it a once over

And now I’m working on a tug boat but I haven’t decided where to put it.

Isn’t that wonderful. One man … no one ever sees him, but everyone knows when he’s been there. And the difference he makes is immense. And the impact he has on children immeasurable.

We owe him a big thank you.

And you don’t do all of that just because it’s your job.

Somewhere around there – is a passionate commitment to children …


I guess that’s one of the things we all celebrate today on this occasion.

A passionate commitment to children.

Friends, family – godparents – all come to this special occasion because the children in our lives matter, and for today, these two, Jamie and Matthew matter the world.

It’s also one of the things that has driven this church from the very start.

Within 25 years of its opening its first building was too small and a bigger church building built – but the first building on Grosvenor Street was then used for the next 80 years for children’s work. Sunday school, Day School, all sorts of youth groups, within 6 months of Scouting beginning nationally, home to Scouts, and then to Guides. And when in 1932 those two buildings were replaced by this building it was built in such a way as to combine on one site a church with rooms that can be used for children’s work. And they are well used through the week- from our new Baby Café on a Thursday morning, through Toddlers, to Beavers, Cubs, Scouts, Guides, and then on Tuesday evenings our own Transformers group and on Sunday evenings Hy-Tec. And we are just putting all the plans together for our summer holiday club in the week leading up to the Bank Holiday.

Big commitment – lots of people make it happen behind the scenes. It is important.

What is it that we want to pass on to these children as a church family?.

Fun and games, a safe place to play, love, care. All of this is important.

There are four things I feel passionately about and I want to share …

The starting point for me comes in something Jesus said when he was put on the spot during the course of a heated argument he was having …

Mark 12:28-31

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’ 29Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 31The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’

Love God – for me that begins with an incredible wonder and awe at this incredible world we live in. I am up for hunting for fossils, looking at the stars, looking through a lens at an incredible world in miniature. A sense of awe leads me to the sense of one greater than anything I can see – the God who is above all, and beyond all and in all. That sense of wonder and awe and a sense of something beyond. That’s something I want to pass on.

Love your neighbour. If this is God’s world we care for it … and we care for one another in it. Everything else follows on from that. Let’s look out for each other. Be there for each other. Help each other all we can. Love one another. And there’s no bounds to who your neighbour is. The most unexpected person, the least likely person, the least likeable of people. That’s something to explore, and develop and tease away at.

The next thing I want to pass on to children through church is the space for some extra dimension in their lives. I feel passionately that our children need a sense of a spiritual dimension. For children growing up the world is full of noise, sometimes that noise can be troubling. It is full of busyness with a busy round of activities to do and things to go to … there are things to learn and to grow. It’s great seeing the things that they do in nursery, and engaging with others. Lake met a little girl from nursery on the bus. She just wanted to kiss him … he wasn’t into that at all. Then to school … and it’s a round of learnig and growing. But great pressures. Testing regimes, exams, schools pressured into giving first priority to the league table. The world children are growing up into is a scary world … not least with everything that’s going on at the moment.

And all those responsible for children recognise in some way or other the need for something deeper. Scouting has recently published a booklet for leaders – Rising to the Challenge – exploring spiritual development in scouting. At the beginning the booklet quotes the purpose of scouting ‘to contribute to the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potentials.”

Under spiritual potential the identify five key principles.

develop an inner discipline and training
be involved in corporate activities with others
understand the world around them
help to create a more tolerant and caring society
discover the need for prayer and worship, both personal and shared.

That last one is the one I feel is valuable – and I want to share. And we share it in all sorts of different ways.

The thought that we can in prayer link in and relate to the God we hold in such awe – that this God is there with us in our praying. I like the activity of all that goes on in children’s work … I like the quiet too.

Transformers finishes by bringing the children into this space. There is something special. It’s the way most Sundays finish for me … as I come in at the end of Hy-Tec – and join in the finish. Worship with the band – and then a circle around the table – in the dark. And the quiet.

And that prayer is important.

Something to pass on to children … the notion that we can chat with God, as Becky put it, that God is close …

And that brings me to that final thought. For me all of this is wrapped up in one person whose story is very precious and can make a real difference. Jesus. What he teaches makes a difference, but also his presence with us, a friend. Can’t see him – but somehow we know he’s around. And he invites us to use words that I was taught as a child, taught at school, and words that are precious. The family prayer – worth passing on

Our Father who art in heaven
Hallowed be thy name - that’s the awe and the wonder
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done
On earth as it is in heaven - that God’s values take hold
Give us this day our daily bread - that daily needs are met
And forgive us our trespasses - the God we believe in is loving, forgiving
As we forgive those who trespass against us – a forgiveness we reflect
And lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil - a God who protects and guides us
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory – awe and wonder
Forever and ever. Amen. - is where we finish





.

Restoring the sacred centre ... peace! be still!

As you walk down the steps from the ruined abbey on the cliff top above Whitby, you come to the parish church. It is unique. Built by shipbuilders from the port at the foot of the cliffs, as you look up at the ceiling you are looking at the underside of the deck of a boat from one of the boatyards.

Felicity introduced me to a link to a cycle of prayer for the countries of the world that over the years I have found helpful. It bears the logo of the World Council of Churches, a boat on the sea.. It is an image taken up by churches together in this country too.

I like that image.

It works in all sorts of ways.

But today I want to explore one particular way.

And it starts with that wonderful account of Jesus asleep in a boat as he crosses the Sea of Galilee.

Mark 4:35-41

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side.’ 36And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. 37A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. 38But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ 39He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 40He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ 41And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’

Leaving the crowd behind.

Jesus came to make a difference to the world. His mission was to reach out wherever there was need. IT was something he could not and did not want to do on his own. He had called the twelve to follow him, to be his disciples. He had just shared lots of stories with a massive crowd of people all of whom were anxious to learn more, to receive his healing ministry, and to discover the wonders of the kingdom of God.

There was a buzz of excitement as Jesus, with the the twelve shared with the massive crowd so much.

But there came a moment when it was necessary to leave the crowd behind.

And leaving the crowd behind they took him with them in the boat, just as he was.

I wonder whether there is an image there of something of what church is about. As followers of Christ our task is to be involved in the world, in the neighbourhood, be it with friends, neighbours, in work. In whatever setting we are in part of our commitment as Christians is to live out our faith, to embody this wonderful love of God. We are involved as it were with the crowd – with all those needs. Think of needs, people you are concerned for, issues that challenge you, the issue we have had shared with us today from the Knole and Langley House trust. It is a mass of needs – a crowd that sometimes feels as if it crowds in on us.

There comes a moment when we need to leave the crowd behind and gather together with those who share our Christian commitment. We need to get into the boat.

Let’s see church, this place, as that boat. And the key thing is that we have Jesus with us. His presence is with us.

But as we gather in here we are not unaware of the troubles around us in our world. Sometimes we can be even more intensely aware of those troubles. If we had not come this morning, we wouldn’t have learned about the Knole, we wouldn’t have been thinking about those in prison and their needs. We are conscious of a world around us in turmoil.

A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.

It seems like that. And when we are aware of the troubles in the world we sometimes wonder, where is Jesus?

It is telling in this story - he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.

The reaction of those disciples is the reaction we can sometimes have.

They woke him up and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing.

Where is Jesus? We want to wake him up. Shake him vigorously.

Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing.

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Peace Be still.

Then the wind ceased and there was a dead calm.

But the real world is not like that.

Or is it?

I believe that there is something that can happen here in this place as we ‘leave the world behind’ are aware of the storms, and summon Jesus to be with us.

That voice of calm can speak into the world we find ourselves in.

Peace! Be still! can be so real.

Drive down the motorway and around the services what you don’t realise is that you drive between two major prisons. To the left is Leyhill, an open prison. John Hunter, now turned 80 and still in ministry at our church in Frampton is part of the chaplaincy team at Leyhill. He started there more than 20 years ago when he had to do a placement on our training course for ministry and he chose to do it at Leyhill. It was moving to see the chapel and the role it plays.

On the opposite side of the motorway is Eastwood Park a major women’s prison. It has a noisiness, a troubled feel to it – a large proportion of those in prison there have mental health issues. But it too has a chapel.

As in Leyhill, though in a different way. It is a haven. A space where people can come. Find a listening ear. A space for thinking, for quiet and prayer. Moving to see the space that is created. In each of our prisons – seeking to give a space. The value of the chapel – in restoring the sacred centre. On both sides of the motorway, that chapel is a place of calm, where those words Peace be still are precious.

This too is such a space. In all sorts of ways. One of the things we do is to host a couple of ‘anonymous groups’ Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous. Playing a key part in helping people cope with their addictions, the people who find those groups such a help are appreciative of somewhere to meet. One of the groups invited me to join them for their time together.

They clearly valued the space they had. For them it was a haven. And the meeting had a deep spirituality to it, as they shared, listened and reflected. Each group follows that twelve step pattern pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous with its emphasis on seeking a power and a strength from beyond ourselves.

They touch something more that we are about.

Those in prison. Those imprisoned to an addiction. The value of a place of peace in the middle of a stormy life.

But not just them. Not just those over there. This is something to make a difference to each of us.

We each need a place where we can leave the crowd behind. Be in the presence of Christ. And hear him say, Peace be still.

The Brewing of Soma is a strangely timely nineteenth century poem about those who seek religious experience through various drugs, not least hashish or cannabis. Into a world that sometimes seeks religious experience in ways that can be harmful … maybe we need to hear again that still small voice of calm.

The fagots blazed, the caldron's smoke
Up through the green wood curled;
"Bring honey from the hollow oak,
Bring milky sap," the brewers spoke,
In the childhood of the world.

And brewed they well or brewed they ill,
The priests thrust in their rods,
First tasted, and then drank their fill,
And shouted, with one voice and will,
"Behold, the drink of gods!"

They drank, and lo! in heart and brain
A new, glad life began; . . .
The naked Santon, haschish-drunk,
The cloister madness of the monk,
The fakir's torture show

It is easy to fall into the trap in church of seeking to replicate the feelings, the sensuousness, that longing for experiences in what we do

And yet the past comes round again,
And new doth old fulfill;
In sensual transports wild as vain
We brew in many a Christian fane
The heathen Soma still!

But actually we have something quite different to receive and to offer.

Let’s join in singing the last part of that poem …

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
Forgive our foolish ways!
Reclothe us in our rightful mind,
In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard
Beside the Syrian sea
The gracious calling of the Lord,
Let us, like them, without a word
Rise up and follow Thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
Where Jesus knelt to share with Thee
The silence of eternity
Interpreted by love!

With that deep hush subduing all
Our words and works that drown
The tender whisper of Thy call,
And noiseless let Thy blessing fall
As fell Thy manna down.

Drop thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
Thy beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
-Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be numb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!

John Greenleaf Whittier

Service Sustained by Spirituality

It has been said that the best of sermons have three points.

Even better, in the estimation of some, is the sermon that has three points beginning with the same letter.

And so for a Sunday Special around the theme of the letter ‘s’ a sermon in three points, each of which begins with the letter ‘s’.

In His Service.

A wonderful theme for a Sunday Special

It goes to the heart of what our Christian faith is about.

Service.

This is what Jesus was about. It was not a matter of being the greatest – how the James and John wanted to get to the top of the tree.

Instead Jesus mapped out a way of service.

He came not to be served but to serve, to give his life as a ransom for many, to set people free.

To follow the way of service for Jesus was to follow a way of selfless sacrifice and suffering.

This was the very essence of what Jesus was about.

It is what he called his followers to.

Nowhere is that put more powerfully than in Philippians 2:1-11

Philippians 2:1-11


What a description of ‘service’ the service that is of the essence of Christ.

Compassion, sympathy,
The same mind, the same love, oin full accord and of one mind.
Nothing from selfish ambition
Humility
Look not to your own interests but to the interests of others.

It is the mandate of the Christian – Christian service and it is modelled on the one who humbled himself to become servant.

Think of the challenge – the service you have done – the service we do as a church – the call we have.

There is a problem.

And that’s where I come to my second ‘s’.

My second word is ‘sustainable’.

How can we make our service sustainable.

There are so many demands, so much that we could do. Let’s see how Jesus made his service sustainable.

He didn’t do it all himself. He shared the task with others. Isn’t it interesting to track through what he did and then what he shared. His service entailed bringing healing to the lives of people who were hurting. He shared that task with the twelve and with the disciples. That’s the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount, it’s the whole point of the mission of the twelve.

As if that wasn’t enough he then shared the task more broadly still, with the 72 … and then more broadly still.

Service is not something we can do alone … it is something we need to share.

Interestingly, Jesus was careful with his time. He did not serve – he actually got into trouble for the meals he enjoyed and the partying he shared in. John the Baptist was the ascetic who rejected the good life and was condemned for it by many; Jesus on the other hand partied with people … and again was condemned. You can’t win was his comment! Though he did say it in more picturesque language.

He sat with Mary while Martha worked.

Maybe we need that kind pattern too.

But there was something more that sustained Jesus in his ministry.

He had a rhythm of prayer and worship. Each week he sustained his life of service with a diet of reading of Scripture, praying with others and sharing in the Synagogue, the place of Gathering Together. And each day he sustained his life of service with prayer.

Prayer and worship.

And that gives rise to a problem.

Neither begins with the letter ‘s’.

So why don’t we try the word spirituality instead?

Jesus had a spirituality that took prayer and worship seriously. He knew his prayer book, the psalms, he knew his Scriptures, and could draw on their resources when facing difficult times. He took time out to spend time in prayer and reflction. Read through Luke’s gospel and you see how before each major event he spent time in prayer.

This is a spirituality that has content, structure and purpose – it is the kind of spirituality that can sustain a life of service.

It works both ways.

Spirituality that is interested only in meditation, peacefulness and getting your inner self right with the world, as an end in itself is worth nothing.

Spirituality that issues in service is the spirituality that is in the mind of Christ. That’s the kind of spirituality to cultivate and develop.

Quiet time in prayer, with a reading of the Bible, and a readiness to allow the mind to wander – in the direction of the needs of others. This is prayer that is important not just in its own right, but as it prompts and then sustains active service.

The needs of someone come to mind in that time of praying, the visit that follows is the outworking of the service.

But it also works the other way round. Service that doesn’t pause that doesn’t give time to prayer, reflectin, to worship, to reading those promises. That’s the kind of service that’s heading for burnout, that is difficult, impossible to sustain.

I have been drawn to those ‘rules’ of Christian life that map out such a way of life to follow. The rule of St Benedict, the teachings of St Francis. All recognise the rhythm of prayer and worship sustaining an offering of service.

Such a rule has been re-devised in the twentieth century into the Iona Community. Active service sustained by a programme of prayer.

Part of me is drawn to sign up.

But then I think again. To me this is what church is about. This is what we are part of as we are part of our church life. We have a rule of life.

It is a life of service, sustained by a spirituality of prayer and worship.

Let’s strengthen each of those three dimensions and build up the life of our church together.

Service without spirituality cannot be sustained.

Spirituality without service is worthless.

Service sustained by spirituality matters.

Restoring the Sacred Centre

It has been a strangely disturbing week. For those of us who visited Bethlehem and the Holy Land last year there was the awfulness of all that happened in the Mediterranean this week.

And then the sheer awfulness and horror of all that happened in Cumbria has touched us all. We particularly remembered our Carlisle church and Brian Grist who has recently become our Congregational Federation President.

Throughout our service we had a focus on prayer and the need to ‘restore the sacred centre’ in our church life, in our own lives and in society at large.

Today’s sermon took followed on from the recent sermon series inspired by John Pritchard’s book, Going to Church. It focused on restoring the sacred centre, but began with a glance forwards towards the World Cup.



They think it’s all over … it is now!

And I am not thinking of Rio Ferdinand and the prospects of a re-run of 1966. There’ll be plenty of time for that in the next four weeks. Let’s just bask in this next week, a week full of exhilaration, anticipation and hope.

I really did think it was all over. After all, a couple of weeks ago I came to the end of my series of ten sermons prompted by John Pritchard’s book, Going to Church – ten things to go to the stake for in any church.

But then, two weeks in from the end, I noticed something I had not noticed before.

What appealed to me about the book was the way John Pritchard’s vision for the church chimed with the vision of the church that’s at the heart of Highbury.

As he explores the Chruch as it should be he asks the question What’s the church for? I described the three chapters that answer that question in a way that coincides exactly with the three ways we think of the church here at Highbury.

What’s the church for? Worship

What’s the church for? Mission

What’s the church for? Community.

That’s how we make sense of the life of the church … we are a worshipping community, committed to Christian mission serving the community. Those three dimensions to our church life are then underpinned by the administrative work that needs to go on behind the scenes to make all the rest of our church life happen.



What I had not noticed in my first reading of the book was that there was a fourth chapter in that section.

I didn’t let on at the time.

But at and around that time I was increasingly aware from lots of different people, and maybe aware within myself as well, that what John Pritchard touched on in that fourth chapter, must also go to the heart of what church is about.

It is what we need, not least in the busyness of our own lives, and in the business of our church life.

This is not by way of an appendix to that set of sermons.

Instead it is going to be something that prompts our thinking through the summer.

What’s the church for? John Pritchard asks.

Restoring the sacred centre.

This is what he has to say at the start of that chapter.

“In the previous three chapters I’ve been asking the question: “What’s the church for?” and I’ve given three answers – worship, mission and community.

“If you imagine those three as interlocking circles, there is an overlap between the circles in the centre.

“That’s where I would place a fourth answer to the question: one of the Church’s chief concerns is to restore the sacred centre – in ourselves and in society at large.”

In the wake of all that has happened in Cumbria, this is maybe a timely thought for us all. It was moving this morning on the Sunday morning to hear people in ministry from Cumbria reflecting on the tragedy of this week. They were being pressed to address the question why. But they resisted. Now is the moment they suggested simply to come together, to be a support to each other and to seek the presence and the strengthening of God.

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Church is a place to do and we are very much do-ers.

We do worship. We do mission. We do community.

But we can do none of that unless we constantly restore the sacred centre at the heart of the church.

How can we do that?

Let’s start our thinking in a passage suggested by the Bishop of Reading.

Colossians 3:1-4

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ who is your* life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

To restore the sacred centre we are to seek the things that are above, where Christ is … we are to set our minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth …

When we are at that moment when we need to ‘restore the sacred centre’ I want to suggest that we can do three things.

First, wherever we are, however momentarily, we can stop, pause, think a while and then look around us. And as we look around us we can see above and beyond, around and within, we can see the ‘other’ that is the ‘God dimension’ that somehow is behind and within and beyond and above.

Here we are in this place. Look at the bricks – see the rich variety of colours, from web’s brick yards – why should there be such a range of colours. From the earth beneath our feet. Touch the age old sands and clay at the foot of the escarpment.


Look at the lead in the leaded lights. It goes back to the early 1930’s where did the lead come from? The Shropshire lead mines that were still just working? Deep in the earth.

Look and see above and beyond and wonder at the God of creation.

Or look at the flowers. Or just select one flower. And look at it. Look at it properly. And see the God of beauty in the wonder of his creation.

How do we seek the things that are above where Christ is?

As it happens here in this place everyone is within reach of a Bible.

That’s the second place I would turn to in that moment when I need to restore the sacred centre.

Here in all these words, God speaks, and we can hear God’s word for us. It’s good to carry a Bible around with you. And I don’t mean a pocket bible that weighs your handbag down or. No, carry, a Bible around with you in your head. It doesn’t matter whether you are word perfect … remember those words of promise that help restore the sacred centre.

One bit of the Bible I carry round with me is the twenty-third Psalm

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures
He restoreth my soul.

And then there is one more … a third place I would turn to. At the heart of the Bible is Jesus.

We have been raised with Christ, and so we can seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. We have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God.



So bring to mind something of Jesus. It may be an image of him reaching out a hand to touch you at that point of your deepest need and bring you wholeness.

It may be a word of promise. I come back to those final words in the Gospel according to St Matthew.

Hear again those words of Jesus … Lo, I am with you always to the end of the age.

When Christ who is our life is revealed, then we also will be revealed with him in glory.

In the prayer time that follwed the sermon people were invited to spend a quiet time walking around the church reflecting and praying in response to these thoughts. We were also directed to the RE Jesus website and its focus on prayer in the work place.

A Church that knows how to party!

We’ve reached the end of the road.

And it’s not such a bad place to reach on Pentecost Sunday.

When Felicity pointed out John Pritchard’s little book, Going to Church, a User’s Guide, she commented that she thought it might contribute to a series of sermons.

The blurb on the back was promising.

The book sets out to be a ‘route-finder through the mess, the mystery and magic of the church, written by someone who fully understands the problems but is confident about the value.”

John Pritchard, the Bishop of Reading, looks at the Church as it is, the Church as it is meant to be and the Church as it might become.

It is in the second part of the book that he asks the question, What’s the Church for?

That’s not a bad question to think about this Pentecost Sunday as we celebrate the birthday of the church.

Without apology he says at the outset that he is going to set the bar quite high in answering that question.

“The primary taks of the Church is to worship. We come to church for all sorts of reaons, some of which hardly bear repeating in respectable company, but the Church itself, the Church as a whole, the Church in its pure, uncut form is there to worship God.”

“If the Church’s first task is to worship God, its second task is to join in God’s mission. The last five words are important. The mission is God’s and it’s something we join in rather than construct for ourselves. God’s very nature is to be missionary because mission is the outpouring of God’s love into the world. We are simply called to join in with What God is doing. It follows that the God of mission has a Church, not the Church of God has a mission!”

What’s the church for?

The third answer John Pritchard gives is ‘Community’

Again, how important it is for us to think of Church as ‘community’ on Pentecost Sunday.

John Pritchard speaks of the growing frustration with our fragmented, individualitic, consumer-oriented ways of living at the start fo the twenty-first century.

“It has been the genius of the Christian faith to emphasise the importance of local congregations, wherever ‘church’ has sprung up. When people become Christians they very rarely do so on their own; they have been known, loved, accompanied and encouraged by a community of faithful people – the local church.

“Community is the Church’s mode of existence. Communities are the human expression of divine love, showing us what God wants for us and valuing us for who we are. It’s in a community that people know our name.”

Worship – Mission – Community: these are the three strands that are woven through the fabric of our church life.

It is in the third part of his book that Bishop John looks to The Church as it might become, and outlines ten things he would go to the stake for in any church.

As I run through the themes we have explored about church over the last few weeks, can you work out what you think the tenth and final thing is that John Pritchard would go to the stake for in any church?

Ten things to go to the stake for in any church …

A church that takes God seriously
A church that takes our humanity seriously
A church that takes the world seriously
A church that prays
A church that sees itself as a learning community
a church with a sense of humour where they laugh a lot – mostly at themselves
A church where love is all around
A church where everybody participates
A church that looks to the future

So what could the tenth thing be?

The first clue is today Pentecost.

The close friends of Jesus had dwindled in number and were literally holed up in an upper room in Jerusalem fearful of what happened in the crucifixion of Christ, in awe at his resurrection, and now fearful of what lay in store. The doors were locked for good cause.

What happened that fiftieth day after resurrection day defies description. There was a sound like the rush of a violent wind, that filled the entire house where they were sitting. There were divided tongues ‘as of fire’ that appeared among them.

All of them were filled with this unseen yet very real strength, power, of God. The helper, the advocate, the counsellor, the strengtener, the comforter promised by Jesus had come upon them. They had a strength from beyond themselves and all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Beginning to speak in other languages, they rushed from that place … and they made quite an impression.

Bewilderment, amazement, astonishment are just three words Luke uses to describe the reaction of the crowdx. Some were perplexed and some simply sneered and poked fun – they are filled with new wine!

But it’s only 9-00 in the morning, said Peter.

What was it about those people who that day saw the birth of the church in its worship, as it joins with God in mission, and supremely as community?

Something special.

And another clue in that passage we read from Luke 15.

We’ve told the story so often to children, it’s so firmly fixed in our minds that it is easy to lose the point of the story as Luke records it in Luke 15.

Jesus was on a journey.

And on his journey he ate.

With lots of unexpected people.

There was a joy in that table fellowship that prompted him to tell stories about the banquet they would share in heaven.

As he journeyed towards Jerusalem he spoke a lot about banquets. He ate a lot in the company of all sorts.

And not everyone approved.

For some of the Pharisees and Scribes this was the last straw. Tax-collectors of all people. And sinners – that’s an all-embracing word for you – wre coming near to him and listening to him.

Shock, horror.

And the grumbling began. This fellw welcomes sinners and – this is the worst horror of all – This fellow welcomes sinners and … eats with them.

So and that little word ‘so’ is important.

It is in response to the sneers at the company Jesus kept not least in those meals and banquets that Jesus told them this parable.

Notice the point of the parable.

‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices.

How many sermons have you heard preached on that wonderful parable.

Isn’t it a glorious picture of the Good Shepherd’s love for his lost sheep.

There’s a wonderful animation of it on the church web site!

But is that the point of Jesus’ parable as Luke records it here?

Or is there something more?

That something more is the clue to the tenth thing John Pritchard would go to the stake for in any church.

6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

It’s the shared joy of that shepherd who cannot keep his joy to himself but wants to share it with all his friends and neighbours.

In at number 10 comes A church that knows how to party.

Bishoip Jack Nicholls is quoted by John Pritichard as having a simple formula for a successful church – prayer and parties. That takes a lot of beating.

Prayer was in at number 4.

John Pritchard confesses that parties are an unlikely tailpiece. And yet, he asks, why should the be?

Jesus often paints his picture –parables of the end of time in terms of a heavenly party, a banquet where the most unlikely people are sitting at top table, but the food is great (and just maybe the speeches are short!!)

Partying together is a subconscious way of echoing this image in the present as we do in communion.

Parties say: it’s good to be alive, life is for celebrating, and this is a group of people I want to be with.

So … it’s good to party just for a few moments after church over coffee maybe.

It was good to party last week at Brunel Manor, not least with our very own version of Highbury’s Got Talent.

We’ve got another party coming up in a month’s time on 4th July when we are going to have a church picnic in Pittville park.

And maybe there are other parties to come to along the way …

As John Pritchard says, Our Local church, believe it or not, is the place where we’re given an appetizer for the Banquet at the End of Time. We might as well get in the party mood!

A Church that looks to the future

We have reached the ninth thing that John Pritchard, the Bishop of Reading, would go to the stake for in seeking a church to join.

A church that looks to the future.

It is a theme that plays for us today in two ways.

The first is the way that John Pritchard envisages and it relates to something that was shared at the Church Meeting on Wednesday evening, and something that was launched at the May Assembly in Leicester yesterday.

The second has to do with the start of Christian Aid Week and speaks very much to us as we set about the task once again of collecting for Christian Aid.

“It’s important,” says John Pritchard, “that the Church walks into the future holding on to the thread of tradition. The problem comes when it walks into the future backwards. We need to be looking expectantly to the new generations, the next leaders, the next steps towards realizing the vision God has given. This means particular attention being given to children and young people, and those who have been drawn in towards the edge of the Church’s life.”

That’s what was introduced to the Congregational Federation Assembly yesterday, something Becky shared with us at the Church Meeting on Wednesday.

Child Friendly church is an initiative that has been greatly valued in a number of churches in the last couple of years, and now it is coming to the Federation. It invites us to reflect on what we are doing with our children and young people, and how we can ensure that their voice is heard in the life of the church.

A small group have worked through a questionnaire and it is greatly encouraging to see how much our activities with children fit in with the good practice advocated in this scheme. A number of things were identified and action has already been taken to address those.

Copies of that questionnaire were passed round at church meeting and if you would like a copy there are copies available to have a look at.

In addition the children have a questionnaire to fill in – and Becky would really like parents to help the children to fill in their responses so they can be drawn into the plans.

In addition to the questionnaire Becky has drafted two short documents that are really designed to get us thinking about the place of children in our church, then to embed the good practice we have developed so that it can be passed on and finally to ensure that we give our children and young people a voice in the life of the church. In particular, the draft document outlines a way of involving the children in the big decisions a church has to make from time to time.

Catch ‘the vision for work with children and families at Highbury’ and let’s adopt the ‘strategy for hearing children’s voices’.

That’s part of the way we shall be a church that looks to the future.

It is for John Pritchard not only children that are part of that future. It is also those drawn into church life. How we draw people in and in particular how we enable those exploring the faith to come closer to that faith is all important.

“Nurturing new disciples isn’t an optional extra,” writes John Pritchard; it’s maintaining an effective maternity ward for the kingdom of God.”

He poses a number of key questions: “where are young people heard in the church’s life? What proportion of the budget goes on children and young people? Is there an adult nurture course running regularly – once or twice a year? How do the church’s plethora of contacts turn into active nurturing of those interested in exploring issues of faith? If we’re playing hardball the message is this: grow or die.

It is a powerful challenge that he shares with us.

But his insight for us today is only part of the story.

The reading we have heard is a reading all about the future. The ultimate future in God’s glory. That selection of verses from Revelation 21 and 22 is a powerful vision of the glory we look to at the heart of our faith.

We need to be a church that looks to the future with that confidence that is contained in these wonderful words.

God himself will be with them;* 4he will wipe every tear from their eyes.Death will be no more;mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

That city of God in that heavenly vision has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25

On either side of the river of life that flows through the city of God is the tree of life* with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3

It is a wonderful vision of the future. Hold on to that vision and we shall be a church that looks to the future.

But we are mistaken to think that it is simply a vision of a future glory ahead of us.

It is the kind of vision of the future that can shape the here and now.

It is exactly in this sense that this vision of the future plays out for us at the beginning of Christian Aid week.

The youngsters have been thinking of toilets. Or at least, they have been thinking of the lack of toilets in some parts of the world. And the difference Christian Aid partners can make in providing sanitation and water where it is badly needed, not least in Nairobi in Kenya.

A Church that thinks of itself as a learning community

For the first twenty-five years of my ministry I was immensely involved in the committee work of the Congregational Federation. For the whole time we lived in Shropshire I would go to and fro to Nottingham to Council meetings, Christian Ministries Committee, Pastoral Care Committee and to meetings of the Training Board.

It has been good over the last six years to have handed the reins over to others.

I miss the car journeys I used to make to Nottingham from Shropshire. As often as not I found myself in the company of one of our senior ministers, Norman Sedgeman. What was good was to sit at the feet of a senior minister and learn from his wisdom.

It would have been fun to have done such a journey around about now in the lead-up to a General Election. In one direction we would discuss theology, and we would not see eye to eye on everything. And in the other direction we would discuss politics a subject on which we saw eye to eye on even less.

On each journey he would ask what I was reading, and I would ask likewise of him. He may have been in his 80’s but he was passionate to learn more about any and every subject under the sun. He would always have some book or other on the go. On the return journey he would ask, so what have you learned today? Friend Norman was always on the lookout for something new to learn. Not a day should pass without learning something new!

It made for stimulating conversation. And a profound impression on me.

If I sense the gift I have in ministry is that of a teacher and a pastor, I have throughout my ministry been very much involved in the business of teaching and learning.

I am passionate about teaching and equally passionate about learning.

It is exciting on Saturday afternoon at the Congregational Federation’s annual assembly we shall be celebrating 30 years of our training course. There will be a cake to cut, a book telling the story to buy, insights into our new Foundation Degree and the launch of our new initiative, Growing Disciples. It promises to be an exciting day … and still time to come along if you would like to join in the celebrations.

It excited me to see John Pritchard, the Bishop of Reading, say in his book Going to Church - A User’s Guide, that one of the ten things he would go to the stake for in any church that was worth joining was this …

A church that sees itself as a learning community.

A learning church, he says, is on the move. It isn’t satisfied; it knows that the kingdom of God has not arrived in its midst, but that, as in nature, growth is the only sign of life.

I once listened, John Prtichard goes on to say, “at the start of a conference to an African who had been a bishop since he was 30. Now over 60 and hugely respected all over Africa and beyond, he said he had come to the conference to learn about being a bishop. Such humility becomes us all.

How can we be ‘a church that sees itself as a learning community’?

I find myself coming back once again to Ephesians, and to a passage that follows on from what we read last week, and leads into what we read two or three weeks ago.

14We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. 15But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

Paul takes the analogy once again of the body. This time, however, he thinks of the way the body grows. He marvels at the way a babe learns and grows into a chid, and the way the child grows up. The body is something that grows. That is the thrill of the analogy. So, when Paul uses the analogy of the body in order to understand the nature of the church. He doesn’t simply use it to speak of the way all the different parts of the body are different and contribute to the whole. He also uses the analogy to challenge us to think that the church is not a static organisation, but a growing organism.

For Paul that growth is a growth that happens in a particular direction. He speaks of growing towards maturity, but the maturity he thinks of is a maturity that is in Christ.

We must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.

For Paul we learn and grow as we see the truth in Christ … but we seek the truth only as we speak the truth in love.

Working together as a body with all its different parts growing into that maturity in Christ is a wonderful, dynamic, growing process that promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

For Paul the learning that is at the heart of church life is shaped by Christ, expressed in love, and involves growth.

So where does that learning take place in our church?

It starts in the hearts of each one of us. We each must ask whether we have the humility of that African bishop and the openness of our friend, Norman Sedgeman. Learning then happens in our own reflections. Praying, reading the Bible, reflecting on it.

You can just squeeze in Songs of Praise with our evening service – or tape it if you want. It is one that our David Waters, who grew up in church here, and spent a year with us as a volunteer was working on around the time of Mark and Denise’s wedding. It’s very much his baby as it marks the 250th anniversary of the Royal Society and explores faith and science.

Are we open to learning in the way we reflect on what we see?

Then we learn in our conversations in the church family. Learning is something that goes on. But then we have a particular focus for our learning. At the heart of our worship is a place for teaching – that goes right back to Acts 2 when from the outset the church met to listen to the Apostles’ teaching. If teaching is at the heart of our worship in the sermon, then learning needs to in the hearts of all of us. Open the Book, our House Groups, Prayer Groups, Hyper-space, Junior Church, Hy-Tec, Transformers, - so many specific places where the focus is on learning. Learning from each other, learning from God.

But we must not imagine that the kind of ‘learning’ Paul had in mind was something simply cerebral. Just head learning – learning of information, ideas, thinking.

The kind of learning Paul had in mind was the kind of learning that actually shapes the way we lead our lives.


17 Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. 18They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. 19They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practise every kind of impurity. That is not the way you learned Christ!

Paul lived in a world of conflicting life-styles. Ephesus was a sea-port and significant centre of Roman culture and life. Hosting one of the seven wonders of the world, the temple to Diana, Artemis, was a focal point of one of the great fertility cults of the Roman empire.

Paul was passionate that the Christian way was not just something to learn about, it was something to live. He was passionate about that set of values that would make a world of difference only if people took those values to heart. That was the way of life that he saw in Christ, and drew from Christ. And it is such a different way of life from the excesses of that Roman world in Ephesus.

He is adamant …

Where is that alternative way of life to be learned?

Paul comes back to Christ, to Jesus.

20That is not the way you learned Christ! 21For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus.

This is where we reach the crux of the matter for me.

We must constantly return to Christ. It is in Jesus, his teaching, his ministry, his healing, his suffering, his death and his resurrection, that we have the measure of the teaching and learning that is at the heart of the life of the church.

Look to Christ and you will see the shape of what church should be, the shape of what our own Christian life should be.

21For surely you have heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. 22You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, 3and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Renewed in the spirit of your minds, clothed with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in Christ Jesus, in true righteousness or justice, and holiness.

John Pritchard concludes by saying, “If a church thinks it has arrived, that’s a sure sign that it’s dying. I long ago realised that one of the great joys of ignorance (of which I have huge expanses) is that there’s always so much to learn.

“So it is in a learning church.

“Its members are committed to deepening their faith, their knowledge, their skills, their spirituality.

“They’re being shaped into the community of God’s growing people.”

I would add, “they’re being shaped into the community of God’s growing people” and into nothing less than the body of Christ.