Some questions you come back to the older you get.
Where is God?
That’s something the littlest of children can ask. I hope we have moved away from describing the old man with a white beard sitting in the clouds. Yet somehow in the response I make I would want to convey something of the mystery of God. “He’s all around us, he’s with us wherever we are and wherever we go.” And I value stories that take children into the beyond into the mystery of God.
Where is God?
That’s a question people often come back to when thinking through life, faith and the big questions. It’s a point for debate, for discussion, for conversation. This is the stuff of the science and religion debate. Do we push God back to the beginning of things and see God as the distant ‘prime mover’. Do we put God into the gaps left by science and speak of Intelligent Design I find that difficult to take! I am much more drawn to the way George Herbert seeks to answer that question …
Teach me, my God and King, in all things thee to see
Where is God?
That’s a question that can pierce the soul of the most faithful of believers when tragedy happens, when their world falls apart. Where is God in the catastrophe of an earthquake, in the protracted pain of a loved one as they are dying and yet won’t die? Where is God? Is a question that sometimes has no easy answer.
One of the great things to me about the Bible is that it contains a record of the way people over many hundreds of years grappled with this very question.
Where is God? Stories tell of the greatness of the God who is beyond the heavens, not to locate God just above the clouds, but to evoke a sense of mystery at the God who is beyond all things. Genesis 1 evokes the mystery of God as the one who brings order out of chaos. Yet in the next breath in Genesis 2 and 3 come stories that tell of the way God is in the garden of this world, walking alongside us. Stories told not to locate God in a location archaeologists may one day discover, but to evoke within us that sense of mystery that God is walking with us through this world.
Where is God?
Poetry communicates the mystery of God’s presence in Psalm 139.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me,
You know when I sit down and when I rise up.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven you are there,
If I make my bed in Sheol you are there,
If I take the wings of the morning
And settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Even there your hand shall lead me,
And your right hand shall hold me fast.
In response to that question it’s all there. God is all around us. He is wherever we are, wherever we go.
But that agonising question ‘Where is God in the face of untold pain and suffering?’ screams out from the pages of the Bible as well.
How long, O Lord? will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul
And have sorrow in my heart all day long?
When I read Psalm 13 and many other passages like it, I realise that that final, agonising question is not one to hide under the carpet. It is not a question that the person of faith must suppress because such questioning is not appropriate for someone who professes faith.
What I find when I read the Bible is that people of the most profound faith have moments in what can often be the tragedy of life in this very painful world, when this question haunts them and torments them.
Where is God?
How long will you hide your face from me?
In a very real sense in the Bible we find people grappling with the very questions people still grapple with. For me the he Bible is indeed a book of timeless truths.
But the Bible offers another way of answering this question. It’s a way we are not so familiar with. But it’s a way of understanding that can release for us a way of answering this question that goes right to the heart of our Christian faith. It’s a way of responding to this question that for me makes all the difference.
Where is God? For a thousand years before Christ people pointed to the Temple. And beyond its outer courtyards, inside its central building, through the curtain into the Holy of Holies, that most holy place where God’s presence touches earth.
Taken by Mary and Joseph to the Temple at 8 days old to receive the sign of the covenant and to be given the name Jesus, he had visited at 12 and stayed on when his parents departed for home – it was his father’s house.
Catching sight of the Temple on his arrival into Jerusalem he wept over it. He castigated those responsible for it. My Father’s house should be a house of prayer and you have made it a den of thieves. Destroy this temple, he said pointing to the building that had been 46 years in the making, and I in three days I will raise it up. Those Judeans who heard him were astounded. This went right to the heart of all they believed – it was not possible. The temple was the place where God’s presence touched earth. “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years and you will raise it up in three days!” But, explains John, Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken..
All that the temple stood for in pointing to the location of God found its fulfilment in Jesus himself.
Where is God? Look to Jesus and find something of the presence of God. But where is the presence of God to be found supremely in Jesus? Not so much in a miraculous birth or resurrection victory, not so much in dramatic miracles of nature or of healing, not so much in the love Jesus has for others.
It is easy to gloss over it … but Matthew observes something very special that happens at the moment of Christ’s death.. At the darkest moment, at the moment of sheer God-forsaken awfulness.
That curtain is torn in two.
Matthew 27 and Hebrews 10
At noon the whole country was covered with darkness,
which lasted for three hours.
At about three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud shout,
“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means,
“My God, my God, why did you abandon me?”
Jesus again gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
Then the curtain hanging in the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
When the army officer and the soldiers with him who were watching Jesus saw the earthquake and everything else that happened, they were terrified
and said, “He really was the Son of God!”
We have, then, my brothers and sisters,
complete freedom to go into the Most Holy Place
by means of the death of Jesus.
He opened for us a new way, a living way, through the curtain —
that is, through his own body.
We have a great priest in charge of the house of God.
So let us come near to God with a sincere heart and a sure faith,
with hearts that have been purified from a guilty conscience
and with bodies washed with clean water.
Let us hold on firmly to the hope we profess,
because we can trust God to keep his promise.
Let us be concerned for one another,
to help one another to show love and to do good.
Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing.
Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer.
It is as if in the agonising, painful death of Christ, the curtain is parted and we can see into the most holy place, the holiest of holies, into the very presence of God. Or put it another way, it is as if at that moment, the presence of God is released, not longer behind the curtain, but let loose into the world.
The curtain that separates off the most holy place, the holy of holies, where God touches earth is torn in two at the point of utter agonising, horrific pain in the crucifixion of Christ.
Where is God? Actually there in the moment of greatest pain and agony. That is the point at which we can see into the most holy place, that is the point at which God’s presence is let loose into the world.
Where is God in catastrophe, in personal pain? God is there in the middle of it. That I find to be a remarkable insight. I want to hold on to that.
But that insight then makes a difference to what we each of us do with our lives.
If all that the temple had meant for a thousand years finds its fulfilment in Jesus then Jesus builds something where God’s presence can be let loose in the world.
Everyone who hears the words of Jesus and acts on them will be like the wise man, Solomon, who built God’s house on that rock in Jerusalem. Peter got it when he looked to Jesus as the foundation stone and all of us as the followers of Christ as the living stones that make up the place on earth where God’s presence is made real. Paul got it when he said of each one of us who follow Jesus that we are a temple for the Holy Spirit. Paul then goes on to speak of us being built on the foundation stone of Christ … and he speaks of us being the ‘body of Christ’. It is in us that the presence of God may be seen, it is in us that the presence of God is let loose into the world.
It is the writer of the letter to the Hebrews who explores this way of thinking most. He goes to great lengths to describe all the thinking around the temple and then finds all the temple is about finds its fulfilment in Jesus.
But then he prompts us to ask another question.
If God is there in the moment of greatest pain that Christ experiences, where does God want us to be?
It is supremely important that we have confidence to go through the curtain on the new and living way opened up for us by Christ especially in the pain of his dying. We must hold fast to our faith, with a confident hope and then bring love into the lives of others.
If God is there in the moment of pain and suffering … he calls us to be there alongside people in their pain and suffering, to bring faith, hope and love into our world as the presence of God is released into those places of pain.
God in Christ it is
that putteth aside the curtain,
that we may look into the most holy place.
Grant each of us the confidence to enter in
as we read the words of Scripture
that we may discover the new and living way
in those words
that tell of Jesus in all his glory and in all his pain.
Let us approach with faith, -
... hold fast to our hope
... and share love with all around us,
especially with those who touch pain at its darkest.
[taken from Myles Smith Preface to the Authorised Version and from Hebrews 10]
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Breaking the shell to get at the nut - the secret of the kingdom
To get from Felicity’s sister’s home to visit Felicity’s mum in hospital last Monday we had to drive through the centre of Leicester along the Welford Road. We paid homage to the home of Leicester Tigers as we drove past their incredible new stand, past the forbidding prison, past the Demontfort University and the magazine, a castle-like building, and then we drove through the Underpass. The road goes through an underground tunnel for the shortest of stretches. And you have to juggle lane changes that take the visitor to Leicester unawares. I remember that being built way back in the 60’s. It involved the demolition of rows and rows of terraced houses.
My parents took me to a short service by one of those houses just before it was demolished. It was William Carey’s cottage. The story of William Carey, the humble bootmaker from Northamptonshire and Leicester who gave up all to travel to India as the father of the modern missionary movement was a thrilling story. How he learned not one but many languages, set up a college and seminary that still stands to this day, translated the Bible into more than 20 languages and waited more than 20 years for his first convert. It was a story that inspired. Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.
It was one of many stories I grew up with that fired me with a vision for the Christian faith. It is something that makes a difference to the world. It is something worth sharing.
I had supposed William Carey to be the first person to take the Christian Gospel to India. I have had to re-visit the story. We have been thinking of Sue Cole and the Children’s Homes in Kerala State that she is visiting in support of CHIKS in the last three weeks following on our Christmas collection for CHIKS. It was not long before Christmas looking forward to that collection and Sue’s visit that I told the story of Thomas. Tradition has it that he journeyed eastwards and took the Gospel of Christ to Kerala and Southern India in the first century. Archaeological evidence of Roman remains on that South West coast of India dating to the first century is circumstantial evidence for the plausibility of the tradition preserved in the Coptic, Syrica, Orthodox churches of that part of India that can trace their history back at least fifteen hundred years.
Little did I know that Dan Moses would be taking his daughter Andrea to celebrate Dan’s mother’s 90th birthday over Christmas. And that the family home is within sight of the cathedral that marks the supposed place of the burial of Thomas! It was wonderful this morning to see the fruits of Andrea’s research over Christmas and hear her tell the story of Thomas.
It too is a story to inspire. The Christian message, the gospel we share is a gospel to thrill. A Gospel to make a difference. It is a faith to inspire.
William Carey felt the call of God to share the Christian message just as Thomas had done centuries before. We may not be called to travel the world, but we each of us are called of God to share our faith, to share the inspiration and the thrill of the difference God can make in all our lives through Jesus Christ our Lord and our Saviour.
Hear the call in the words of Isaiah 6:1-8
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3And one called to another and said:‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory.’ 4The pivots* on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7The seraph* touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’
Can you hear the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, who will go for us? What is the task God is calling you to do now?
Hymn: I the Lord of sea and sky
What I found an inspiration about the call to missionary service as a child was the thought that the task William Carey had begun was one I could help finish in my lifetime if I put enough in my Missionary society collecting box. I think as a child I thought Gladys Aylward the missionary to China had almost made China entirely Christian and with a bit more work the task could be finished in my life time.
I think there is a certain expectation I had then and sometimes find myself yearing for again that my Christian faith will sweep the board. It is something that not only can make a world of difference to people, but is something that will change the whole world instantly.
Faith is something that will bring about instant change. In some ways it’s the world we live in. Have you noticed how if you want an assortment of nuts it’s easier to buy a bag of nuts that have already been shelled than it is to buy a bag of nuts that require the much harder work of cracking each of them open with a nut cracker. I for one am drawn to the ease of a bag of shelled nuts.
It’s easy to have that kind of expectation of faith and of the Gospel.
As the child in me grew up and became a man, I have come to realise that the real world isn’t like that.
After the first flush of enthusiasm for our missionary faith we can move on in our thinking.
Funnily enough, however, I would not say that I have become disillusioned. To the contrary I would say I have not become disillusioned.
I want to tease away at what it is I am called to, and what this Gospel and this faith is like. I have found it fascinating to dig a little more deeply into the missionary story behind William Carey and Gladys Aylward, fascinating to dig away at the traditions around Thomas.
More significant still, however, is to go back to the Bible and the roots of that sense of missionary call.
I come back to Isaiah chapter 6 and as I read on in the story there I discover that all is not as it first appears.
Here am I, send me, says Isaiah in the response to the call of God. And then the voice of God speaks to him and what the word of God says is very strange, very enigmatic. Much more down to earth than the imaginations of my childhood response to the missionary call.
‘Go and say to this people:“Keep listening, but do not comprehend;keep looking, but do not understand.” 10 Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes,so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears,and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.’ 11
The very first thoughts that come to Isaiah are that there’s no instant fix. As you can understand, that takes Isaiah aback. Won’t his message make a difference to people as soon as they hear it! You can almost hear his exasperation …
Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
The response is even gloomier.
Until cities lie waste … and the land is utterly desolate.
The call is to share the message in spite of the fact in the absence of instant results … but there is a hope.
Isaiah is directed to the image of an oak tree, felled in the middle of a wasteland … but a stump remains standing when the tree is felled.
That stump – that’s the hope.
That is ‘the holy seed’.
Keep at it … don’t get disillusioned. Hold on to the word – share the word. The seed will grow in the fullness of God’s time.
When Jesus comes on the scene he has a wonderful message about the rule of God breaking into the world. And people who hear him are amazed at the authority of his teaching. He has a powerful message of love for God, love for neighbour and love for enemy. And he lives it out as he brings healing into the lives of people who hurt. As you read his story you might expect everyone to be swept along. Instant change.
But as the story unfolds in Mark’s gospel especially it isn’t like that. From the very outset he encounters opposition. There is a hardness of heart around. It is not long before he has caused onetime bitter enemies to join forces together in a plot to destroy him. Wherever he turns there’s opposition. What’s more by the time he sends out the twelve he warns them they too will face opposition.
How can you make sense of this?
It’s very early on in Mark’s telling of the Gospel story – to round off the first quarter of his Gospel that he tells of an occasion when Jesus shared teaching with the crowds, and let the disciples in on the secret of his teaching.
He is nothing less than that ‘holy seed’ … as the crowds are by the sea of Galilee he invites them to picture a field – a typical field. It’s tough ground for the kind of farmer Jesus knows well – often hard limestone rock just beneath the surface. The method of farming is different – for the Palestinian farmer
Sowing pecedes ploughing. The sower strides over the unploughed stubble. He sows intentionally on the path which the villagers have trodden over the stubble, since he intends to plough the seed in when he ploughs up the path. He sows intentionally among the thorns standing withered in the fallow because they too will be ploughed up, nor need it surprise us that some grains should fall upon rocky ground; the underlying limestone, thinly covered with soil, barely shows above the surface until the ploughshare jars aginst it[Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus 2nd ed(New York) 11f quoted in Ched Myers Binding the Strong Man (Orbis, 1988), 176
Reading: Mark 4:1-12
Again he began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. 2He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ 9And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’
10 When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret* of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; 12in order that“they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand;so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.” ’
This is the reality – a hard reality to learn and take on board.
The Christian faith does not offer a quick fix.
Such is the power of Satan, the force for evil, the powers that be, that some will stay by the way … and not walk on the way that Jesus maps out.
Tribulation and persection wil come … and some will not be able to stand their ground.
The cares of the world, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things will also come in and choke the word. And it yields nothing.
As with the experience of Isaiah, so with the experience of Jesus, and with the disciples … and down through the ages there is going to be a resistance.
Hold on.
The value of what we do is not measured in terms of the instant fix.
This is the inspiration we need to hold on to.
It’s not just a holy seed. A Palestinian farmer could hope for a 7fold yield, a bumper harvest would be a tenfold yield. That would mean he would have just enough but would still beholden to the landowner. The wonderful good news that Jesus has is that the seed bears a remarkable crop – thirty, sixty, one hundred fold. And that’s enough to set the farmer of the parable free from the landowner he is tied to – and set him up for life.
Let’s hold on to that promise.
This story was important to Thomas as well … in the Gospel of Thomas, discovered only a hundred years ago, the parable is included.
Jesus said, "Now the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered them. Some fell on the road; the birds came and gathered them up. Others fell on the rock, did not take rood in the soil, and did not produce ears. And others fell on thorns; they choked the seed(s) and worms ate them. And others fell on the good soil and produced good fruit: it bore sixty per measure and a hundred and twenty per measure." ( http://www.utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/meta-synt.htm )
It’s worth keeping at it. Hold on to the vision. Look to the seed. Work at it … there isn’t an instant fix. But the good news of Christ with that love of God has the power to transform us and working slowly through people individually to make a world of difference around. That’s the secret. But you have to work at it – there are no ready to eat nuts, you need to break open the shell to eat the kernel and discover the secret of life.
“Translation it is
that breaketh the shell,
that we may eat the kernel.”
Let me in on the secret, the secret of life,
as I read the words of Scripture
that I may be nourished by your Word
in those words
and know it to be true ...
To you has been given
The secret of the kingdom of God.
It’s one to take to heart in the face of all that is around us.
Our faith offers us no easy fix. We have to work at the nut break the shell to get at the kernel.
My parents took me to a short service by one of those houses just before it was demolished. It was William Carey’s cottage. The story of William Carey, the humble bootmaker from Northamptonshire and Leicester who gave up all to travel to India as the father of the modern missionary movement was a thrilling story. How he learned not one but many languages, set up a college and seminary that still stands to this day, translated the Bible into more than 20 languages and waited more than 20 years for his first convert. It was a story that inspired. Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.
It was one of many stories I grew up with that fired me with a vision for the Christian faith. It is something that makes a difference to the world. It is something worth sharing.
I had supposed William Carey to be the first person to take the Christian Gospel to India. I have had to re-visit the story. We have been thinking of Sue Cole and the Children’s Homes in Kerala State that she is visiting in support of CHIKS in the last three weeks following on our Christmas collection for CHIKS. It was not long before Christmas looking forward to that collection and Sue’s visit that I told the story of Thomas. Tradition has it that he journeyed eastwards and took the Gospel of Christ to Kerala and Southern India in the first century. Archaeological evidence of Roman remains on that South West coast of India dating to the first century is circumstantial evidence for the plausibility of the tradition preserved in the Coptic, Syrica, Orthodox churches of that part of India that can trace their history back at least fifteen hundred years.
Little did I know that Dan Moses would be taking his daughter Andrea to celebrate Dan’s mother’s 90th birthday over Christmas. And that the family home is within sight of the cathedral that marks the supposed place of the burial of Thomas! It was wonderful this morning to see the fruits of Andrea’s research over Christmas and hear her tell the story of Thomas.
It too is a story to inspire. The Christian message, the gospel we share is a gospel to thrill. A Gospel to make a difference. It is a faith to inspire.
William Carey felt the call of God to share the Christian message just as Thomas had done centuries before. We may not be called to travel the world, but we each of us are called of God to share our faith, to share the inspiration and the thrill of the difference God can make in all our lives through Jesus Christ our Lord and our Saviour.
Hear the call in the words of Isaiah 6:1-8
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3And one called to another and said:‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;the whole earth is full of his glory.’ 4The pivots* on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7The seraph* touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ 8Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’
Can you hear the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, who will go for us? What is the task God is calling you to do now?
Hymn: I the Lord of sea and sky
What I found an inspiration about the call to missionary service as a child was the thought that the task William Carey had begun was one I could help finish in my lifetime if I put enough in my Missionary society collecting box. I think as a child I thought Gladys Aylward the missionary to China had almost made China entirely Christian and with a bit more work the task could be finished in my life time.
I think there is a certain expectation I had then and sometimes find myself yearing for again that my Christian faith will sweep the board. It is something that not only can make a world of difference to people, but is something that will change the whole world instantly.
Faith is something that will bring about instant change. In some ways it’s the world we live in. Have you noticed how if you want an assortment of nuts it’s easier to buy a bag of nuts that have already been shelled than it is to buy a bag of nuts that require the much harder work of cracking each of them open with a nut cracker. I for one am drawn to the ease of a bag of shelled nuts.
It’s easy to have that kind of expectation of faith and of the Gospel.
As the child in me grew up and became a man, I have come to realise that the real world isn’t like that.
After the first flush of enthusiasm for our missionary faith we can move on in our thinking.
Funnily enough, however, I would not say that I have become disillusioned. To the contrary I would say I have not become disillusioned.
I want to tease away at what it is I am called to, and what this Gospel and this faith is like. I have found it fascinating to dig a little more deeply into the missionary story behind William Carey and Gladys Aylward, fascinating to dig away at the traditions around Thomas.
More significant still, however, is to go back to the Bible and the roots of that sense of missionary call.
I come back to Isaiah chapter 6 and as I read on in the story there I discover that all is not as it first appears.
Here am I, send me, says Isaiah in the response to the call of God. And then the voice of God speaks to him and what the word of God says is very strange, very enigmatic. Much more down to earth than the imaginations of my childhood response to the missionary call.
‘Go and say to this people:“Keep listening, but do not comprehend;keep looking, but do not understand.” 10 Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears, and shut their eyes,so that they may not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears,and comprehend with their minds, and turn and be healed.’ 11
The very first thoughts that come to Isaiah are that there’s no instant fix. As you can understand, that takes Isaiah aback. Won’t his message make a difference to people as soon as they hear it! You can almost hear his exasperation …
Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
The response is even gloomier.
Until cities lie waste … and the land is utterly desolate.
The call is to share the message in spite of the fact in the absence of instant results … but there is a hope.
Isaiah is directed to the image of an oak tree, felled in the middle of a wasteland … but a stump remains standing when the tree is felled.
That stump – that’s the hope.
That is ‘the holy seed’.
Keep at it … don’t get disillusioned. Hold on to the word – share the word. The seed will grow in the fullness of God’s time.
When Jesus comes on the scene he has a wonderful message about the rule of God breaking into the world. And people who hear him are amazed at the authority of his teaching. He has a powerful message of love for God, love for neighbour and love for enemy. And he lives it out as he brings healing into the lives of people who hurt. As you read his story you might expect everyone to be swept along. Instant change.
But as the story unfolds in Mark’s gospel especially it isn’t like that. From the very outset he encounters opposition. There is a hardness of heart around. It is not long before he has caused onetime bitter enemies to join forces together in a plot to destroy him. Wherever he turns there’s opposition. What’s more by the time he sends out the twelve he warns them they too will face opposition.
How can you make sense of this?
It’s very early on in Mark’s telling of the Gospel story – to round off the first quarter of his Gospel that he tells of an occasion when Jesus shared teaching with the crowds, and let the disciples in on the secret of his teaching.
He is nothing less than that ‘holy seed’ … as the crowds are by the sea of Galilee he invites them to picture a field – a typical field. It’s tough ground for the kind of farmer Jesus knows well – often hard limestone rock just beneath the surface. The method of farming is different – for the Palestinian farmer
Sowing pecedes ploughing. The sower strides over the unploughed stubble. He sows intentionally on the path which the villagers have trodden over the stubble, since he intends to plough the seed in when he ploughs up the path. He sows intentionally among the thorns standing withered in the fallow because they too will be ploughed up, nor need it surprise us that some grains should fall upon rocky ground; the underlying limestone, thinly covered with soil, barely shows above the surface until the ploughshare jars aginst it[Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus 2nd ed(New York) 11f quoted in Ched Myers Binding the Strong Man (Orbis, 1988), 176
Reading: Mark 4:1-12
Again he began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. 2He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: 3‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. 6And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. 7Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. 8Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ 9And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’
10 When he was alone, those who were around him along with the twelve asked him about the parables. 11And he said to them, ‘To you has been given the secret* of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; 12in order that“they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand;so that they may not turn again and be forgiven.” ’
This is the reality – a hard reality to learn and take on board.
The Christian faith does not offer a quick fix.
Such is the power of Satan, the force for evil, the powers that be, that some will stay by the way … and not walk on the way that Jesus maps out.
Tribulation and persection wil come … and some will not be able to stand their ground.
The cares of the world, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things will also come in and choke the word. And it yields nothing.
As with the experience of Isaiah, so with the experience of Jesus, and with the disciples … and down through the ages there is going to be a resistance.
Hold on.
The value of what we do is not measured in terms of the instant fix.
This is the inspiration we need to hold on to.
It’s not just a holy seed. A Palestinian farmer could hope for a 7fold yield, a bumper harvest would be a tenfold yield. That would mean he would have just enough but would still beholden to the landowner. The wonderful good news that Jesus has is that the seed bears a remarkable crop – thirty, sixty, one hundred fold. And that’s enough to set the farmer of the parable free from the landowner he is tied to – and set him up for life.
Let’s hold on to that promise.
This story was important to Thomas as well … in the Gospel of Thomas, discovered only a hundred years ago, the parable is included.
Jesus said, "Now the sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered them. Some fell on the road; the birds came and gathered them up. Others fell on the rock, did not take rood in the soil, and did not produce ears. And others fell on thorns; they choked the seed(s) and worms ate them. And others fell on the good soil and produced good fruit: it bore sixty per measure and a hundred and twenty per measure." ( http://www.utoronto.ca/religion/synopsis/meta-synt.htm )
It’s worth keeping at it. Hold on to the vision. Look to the seed. Work at it … there isn’t an instant fix. But the good news of Christ with that love of God has the power to transform us and working slowly through people individually to make a world of difference around. That’s the secret. But you have to work at it – there are no ready to eat nuts, you need to break open the shell to eat the kernel and discover the secret of life.
“Translation it is
that breaketh the shell,
that we may eat the kernel.”
Let me in on the secret, the secret of life,
as I read the words of Scripture
that I may be nourished by your Word
in those words
and know it to be true ...
To you has been given
The secret of the kingdom of God.
It’s one to take to heart in the face of all that is around us.
Our faith offers us no easy fix. We have to work at the nut break the shell to get at the kernel.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The Year of the Bible - a Parade Service
To mark the 400th Anniversary of the Authorised Version we are marking this year as the Year of the Bible. At this morning's service we welcomed Brownies, Guides, Beavers, Cubs and Scouts and gave a special welcome to Ede Hollyhead, Assistant County Commissioner for Guides, as we joined with Rachel Jacques and Diana Adams in celebrating more than 80 years of service to Guiding between them!
Parade Service
Something instrumental from Delirious Deeper
Call to worship
Song of worship – Jesus is Lord
Prayer &Lord’s prayer
Call to worship repeated in NT Greek (or Hebrew, etc)
Talk about how that is how the stories and words of the Bible were originally shared, not written down but spoken. We are going to be thinking about the Bible today and create our own Bible using this piece of string. Sadly all we have at the moment is this piece of string, what do we need to make this into a Bible.
We need some Books
Get different members to find the books hidden on the windowsills, etc and work out where to peg them on the string
So we have all our books but what do you find in books, they’re not usually empty are they? We normally find words in our books. Do we have any English speakers in the congregation who would read something for us?
Get different people to read the same passage from different translations, e.g. The Street, The Message, NIV, King James version, maybe even include a picture of The Manga Bible (explain a bit about the Manga Bible).
Jesus is Lord in different languages
You can even get Bibles on tapes and CD’s, we have a set here at church called “Faith comes by Hearing”
Now that was great, it really showed how the Bible can share different things from just one passage and it can really relate to our lives because it uses words that maybe we will be able to understand, so even if there is a Bible that you struggle to understand, all is not lost, there is a translation out there for you.
But hold on, I understood those ones because I speak English, but what if I went to Berlin and the people I met didn’t speak English so couldn’t read the Bible for themselves, what could we do then. Well, thankfully the Bible has been written in over 2000 languages, with many more partial translations. Lets add the verse that we heard to the string and the pictures from the Manga Bible.
John 3:16
Felicity
Worship song, kids one, Father Abraham
Now one of the translations the Bible is called The DramatisedBible. This Bible provides a way of reading the stories in a different way. It lets the stories come alive in exciting ways.
We are going to have a reading from the dramatized Bible now.
Dramatised reading(from dramatized Bible), from cubs, beavers, etc?
The story tells of the way Ezra shared a reading of 'the Law' from the Bible to all the people when God's people returned to Jerusalem.
By the seventh month the people of Israel were all settled in their towns. On the first day of that month they all assembled in Jerusalem, in the square just inside the Water Gate. They asked Ezra, the priest and scholar of the Law which the Lord had given Israel through Moses, to get the book of the Law.
So Ezra brought it to the place where the people had gathered — men, women, and the children who were old enough to understand. There in the square by the gate he read the Law to them from dawn until noon, and they all listened attentively.
(During this next section wait for everyone in church to do or say what is described)
Ezra was standing on a wooden platform that had been built for the occasion. Six men stood at his right, and seven stood at his left. As Ezra stood there on the platform high above the people, they all kept their eyes fixed on him. As soon as he opened the book, they all stood up. Ezra said,
“Praise the Lord, the great God!”
All the people raised their arms in the air and answered,
“Amen! Amen!”
They knelt in worship, with their faces to the ground.
Then they rose and stood in their places, and the Levites explained the Law to them: They read God's Law and then translated it, explaining it so that the people could understand it.
God’s Law was written in Hebrew, but in Babylonia the Jews had adopted Aramaic as the language for daily life, so they needed a translation from the Hebrew to understand it
When the people heard what the Law required, they were so moved that they began to cry. So Nehemiah, who was the governor; Ezra, the priest and scholar of the Law, and the Levites who were explaining the Law told all the people,
“This day is holy to the Lord your God, so you are not to mourn or cry.”
Now go home and have a feast. Share your food and wine with those who haven't enough. Today is holy to our Lord, so don't be sad. The joy that the Lord gives you will make you strong.”
The Levites went about calming the people and telling them not to be sad on such a holy day. So all the people went home and ate and drank joyfully and shared what they had with others, because they understood what had been read to them.
Becky
Well, let us add that reading to the string.
So we have our books and we have our words. But when you think about your favourite books, Bible or otherwise they all have something in common and that reading talked about some of them. What do you think this might be?
(get the congregation to shout out some things)
Well, it is characters or people and sometimes animals, depending on the book of the Bible. So we need to add some of those to the string. Which people from the Bible can you remember, what about some people from the old testament? And from the new?
So the Bible isn’t just about words and books but it is about real people and the lives they led. The Bible doesn’t just share things we need to remember or learn from but it also shows us others who have followed God, people who might have struggled and people who lived lives that can offer us an example of how to live or even just stories to inspire us and show us how wonderfully God has created people for thousands of years.
Worship – Tell me the stories of Jesus?
Well, our string is getting quite busy here. But that worship song gave us another hint of something that is missing from our string. We’ve focused on the books, the language and the characters. Those are all great things but great books and the Bible is fully on many great books need something extra. Something that stops it being a cookery book or a maths textbook and makes it into something that can and does change lives. Any ideas?
The Bible, whatever language it is in or even when it is in graphic novel form, has stories and themes. Some of the stories are simple and some are more complicated and have lots of meaning . Some themes just last for one book or even sentence of the Bible and some go into lots of books. During the offering (?) you will see that some of the Bibles in the chairs have a square of paper in them, what I would like is for you to draw a picture of your favourite Bible story then I shall ask you to come and peg it up in the right place, and if you want you can tell us the Bible story you have chosen and why. Don’t worry, we’re here to help.
Felicity
Offering and Dedication
The people talk about the stories they have chosen as they are pegged up.
So as you can see we have built up a great picture of the Bible. And as I mentioned before the Bible has themes running through it. There are things that God didn’t just share with one person but kept on sharing with people throughout the Bible, Old and New Testament. One example of this is his Covenant. His promise to his people was shared with Abraham, but he also made promises to Noah, to some of the prophets, and then he fulfilled his covenant with the coming of Jesus. Showing that it had been part of his plan. So we can put the word covenant here, here and here.
(peg to string)
Now can anyone else think of themes from the Bible, maybe the stories gave you an idea of some of the themes?
(peg up some words on themes, e.g. animals, children, suffering, love, prayer, death, miraculous, character, fighting, slavery, God’s message, etc)
Ask anyone else if they know of any themes or if some of the themes mentioned called also go somewhere else?
(finish pegging, etc)
Now, we have only done an hours work on putting the Bible together, it has taken many years more than that to create. In fact there is a youtube video where two people have tried to reduce the Bible into 1 minute but as you are about to see it is impossible.
Bible in one minute video clip
It is impossible because the Bible is so big, not just big and heavy like this one but is full of so much. Stories, themes, people, words. Real lives that have been lived, millions and millions of lives are mentioned in this, some are just given a word or a sentence and some have whole books about them. The Bible is so big it can be hard to think where to start reading or even how to start reading but it is possible to read it because it is in a language we can understand. It has been done in a way we can relate to and many of the situations of the people in the Bible are like situations we may face. I have never been in a lion’s den like Daniel but I have had to face difficult people, places where people don’t like what I do or times when I’m not sure if God is with me. I haven’t seen my best friend be nailed to a cross but I have known times where I have felt scared by things I can’t control, I have felt sadness when someone has died and confusion to what God’s plans are for me. The Bible can be a huge part of our lives, not just something that we use as a safety net or a great book end but something that can help us through our lives and offer us so much wisdom and comfort.
Let us now share in worship together.
Prayers involving the themes
Worship song
So every book has a beginning, a middle and an end, like our service has had. With many books we might read it and it will make a difference to our thoughts for a while or give us a bit of information to share with others. Some books we pick up, enjoy and then forget about straight away. But the Bible isn’t like that, it isn’t just some words and people from thousands of years ago in a book, it is something that can change our lives, affect the way we treat people, the decisions we make, the things we do. In fact the Bible is alive in the lives of the people who read and hear it.
Because of this we are finishing our service in celebration of people who have done things in service of to God, changed by the words that are part of their lives. The Bible is a living book.
(get some uniformed organisation kids to stand around the people we are celebrating with the Bible string in their hands, while prayers are said for those we are awarding – maybe bring in a bit about words, people, stories and themes to do a quick sum up)
So let us take the Bible out in to the world and share all these words, people and stories with those who don’t know how alive it is.
Blessing
(Parade out, those without the flags take a bit of the string and parade out with the Bible on a string with the song All Day by Hillsong United)
Order of service:
Call to worship
Song - Jesus is Lord
Prayer &Lord’s prayer
From the beginning
Song – Father Abraham
Reading – Nehemiah 8:1-12
Who are they?
Song – Tell Me The Stories of Jesus
What’s next?
Offering and dedication
Building it Up
Prayers
Worship – All I Once Held Dear& a rousing worship song
Building Us Up
Blessing
Parade Service
Something instrumental from Delirious Deeper
Call to worship
Song of worship – Jesus is Lord
Prayer &Lord’s prayer
Call to worship repeated in NT Greek (or Hebrew, etc)
Talk about how that is how the stories and words of the Bible were originally shared, not written down but spoken. We are going to be thinking about the Bible today and create our own Bible using this piece of string. Sadly all we have at the moment is this piece of string, what do we need to make this into a Bible.
We need some Books
Get different members to find the books hidden on the windowsills, etc and work out where to peg them on the string
So we have all our books but what do you find in books, they’re not usually empty are they? We normally find words in our books. Do we have any English speakers in the congregation who would read something for us?
Get different people to read the same passage from different translations, e.g. The Street, The Message, NIV, King James version, maybe even include a picture of The Manga Bible (explain a bit about the Manga Bible).
Jesus is Lord in different languages
You can even get Bibles on tapes and CD’s, we have a set here at church called “Faith comes by Hearing”
Now that was great, it really showed how the Bible can share different things from just one passage and it can really relate to our lives because it uses words that maybe we will be able to understand, so even if there is a Bible that you struggle to understand, all is not lost, there is a translation out there for you.
But hold on, I understood those ones because I speak English, but what if I went to Berlin and the people I met didn’t speak English so couldn’t read the Bible for themselves, what could we do then. Well, thankfully the Bible has been written in over 2000 languages, with many more partial translations. Lets add the verse that we heard to the string and the pictures from the Manga Bible.
John 3:16
Felicity
Worship song, kids one, Father Abraham
Now one of the translations the Bible is called The DramatisedBible. This Bible provides a way of reading the stories in a different way. It lets the stories come alive in exciting ways.
We are going to have a reading from the dramatized Bible now.
Dramatised reading(from dramatized Bible), from cubs, beavers, etc?
The story tells of the way Ezra shared a reading of 'the Law' from the Bible to all the people when God's people returned to Jerusalem.
By the seventh month the people of Israel were all settled in their towns. On the first day of that month they all assembled in Jerusalem, in the square just inside the Water Gate. They asked Ezra, the priest and scholar of the Law which the Lord had given Israel through Moses, to get the book of the Law.
So Ezra brought it to the place where the people had gathered — men, women, and the children who were old enough to understand. There in the square by the gate he read the Law to them from dawn until noon, and they all listened attentively.
(During this next section wait for everyone in church to do or say what is described)
Ezra was standing on a wooden platform that had been built for the occasion. Six men stood at his right, and seven stood at his left. As Ezra stood there on the platform high above the people, they all kept their eyes fixed on him. As soon as he opened the book, they all stood up. Ezra said,
“Praise the Lord, the great God!”
All the people raised their arms in the air and answered,
“Amen! Amen!”
They knelt in worship, with their faces to the ground.
Then they rose and stood in their places, and the Levites explained the Law to them: They read God's Law and then translated it, explaining it so that the people could understand it.
God’s Law was written in Hebrew, but in Babylonia the Jews had adopted Aramaic as the language for daily life, so they needed a translation from the Hebrew to understand it
When the people heard what the Law required, they were so moved that they began to cry. So Nehemiah, who was the governor; Ezra, the priest and scholar of the Law, and the Levites who were explaining the Law told all the people,
“This day is holy to the Lord your God, so you are not to mourn or cry.”
Now go home and have a feast. Share your food and wine with those who haven't enough. Today is holy to our Lord, so don't be sad. The joy that the Lord gives you will make you strong.”
The Levites went about calming the people and telling them not to be sad on such a holy day. So all the people went home and ate and drank joyfully and shared what they had with others, because they understood what had been read to them.
Becky
Well, let us add that reading to the string.
So we have our books and we have our words. But when you think about your favourite books, Bible or otherwise they all have something in common and that reading talked about some of them. What do you think this might be?
(get the congregation to shout out some things)
Well, it is characters or people and sometimes animals, depending on the book of the Bible. So we need to add some of those to the string. Which people from the Bible can you remember, what about some people from the old testament? And from the new?
So the Bible isn’t just about words and books but it is about real people and the lives they led. The Bible doesn’t just share things we need to remember or learn from but it also shows us others who have followed God, people who might have struggled and people who lived lives that can offer us an example of how to live or even just stories to inspire us and show us how wonderfully God has created people for thousands of years.
Worship – Tell me the stories of Jesus?
Well, our string is getting quite busy here. But that worship song gave us another hint of something that is missing from our string. We’ve focused on the books, the language and the characters. Those are all great things but great books and the Bible is fully on many great books need something extra. Something that stops it being a cookery book or a maths textbook and makes it into something that can and does change lives. Any ideas?
The Bible, whatever language it is in or even when it is in graphic novel form, has stories and themes. Some of the stories are simple and some are more complicated and have lots of meaning . Some themes just last for one book or even sentence of the Bible and some go into lots of books. During the offering (?) you will see that some of the Bibles in the chairs have a square of paper in them, what I would like is for you to draw a picture of your favourite Bible story then I shall ask you to come and peg it up in the right place, and if you want you can tell us the Bible story you have chosen and why. Don’t worry, we’re here to help.
Felicity
Offering and Dedication
The people talk about the stories they have chosen as they are pegged up.
So as you can see we have built up a great picture of the Bible. And as I mentioned before the Bible has themes running through it. There are things that God didn’t just share with one person but kept on sharing with people throughout the Bible, Old and New Testament. One example of this is his Covenant. His promise to his people was shared with Abraham, but he also made promises to Noah, to some of the prophets, and then he fulfilled his covenant with the coming of Jesus. Showing that it had been part of his plan. So we can put the word covenant here, here and here.
(peg to string)
Now can anyone else think of themes from the Bible, maybe the stories gave you an idea of some of the themes?
(peg up some words on themes, e.g. animals, children, suffering, love, prayer, death, miraculous, character, fighting, slavery, God’s message, etc)
Ask anyone else if they know of any themes or if some of the themes mentioned called also go somewhere else?
(finish pegging, etc)
Now, we have only done an hours work on putting the Bible together, it has taken many years more than that to create. In fact there is a youtube video where two people have tried to reduce the Bible into 1 minute but as you are about to see it is impossible.
Bible in one minute video clip
It is impossible because the Bible is so big, not just big and heavy like this one but is full of so much. Stories, themes, people, words. Real lives that have been lived, millions and millions of lives are mentioned in this, some are just given a word or a sentence and some have whole books about them. The Bible is so big it can be hard to think where to start reading or even how to start reading but it is possible to read it because it is in a language we can understand. It has been done in a way we can relate to and many of the situations of the people in the Bible are like situations we may face. I have never been in a lion’s den like Daniel but I have had to face difficult people, places where people don’t like what I do or times when I’m not sure if God is with me. I haven’t seen my best friend be nailed to a cross but I have known times where I have felt scared by things I can’t control, I have felt sadness when someone has died and confusion to what God’s plans are for me. The Bible can be a huge part of our lives, not just something that we use as a safety net or a great book end but something that can help us through our lives and offer us so much wisdom and comfort.
Let us now share in worship together.
Prayers involving the themes
Worship song
So every book has a beginning, a middle and an end, like our service has had. With many books we might read it and it will make a difference to our thoughts for a while or give us a bit of information to share with others. Some books we pick up, enjoy and then forget about straight away. But the Bible isn’t like that, it isn’t just some words and people from thousands of years ago in a book, it is something that can change our lives, affect the way we treat people, the decisions we make, the things we do. In fact the Bible is alive in the lives of the people who read and hear it.
Because of this we are finishing our service in celebration of people who have done things in service of to God, changed by the words that are part of their lives. The Bible is a living book.
(get some uniformed organisation kids to stand around the people we are celebrating with the Bible string in their hands, while prayers are said for those we are awarding – maybe bring in a bit about words, people, stories and themes to do a quick sum up)
So let us take the Bible out in to the world and share all these words, people and stories with those who don’t know how alive it is.
Blessing
(Parade out, those without the flags take a bit of the string and parade out with the Bible on a string with the song All Day by Hillsong United)
Order of service:
Call to worship
Song - Jesus is Lord
Prayer &Lord’s prayer
From the beginning
Song – Father Abraham
Reading – Nehemiah 8:1-12
Who are they?
Song – Tell Me The Stories of Jesus
What’s next?
Offering and dedication
Building it Up
Prayers
Worship – All I Once Held Dear& a rousing worship song
Building Us Up
Blessing
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Open the Window and Let in the Light
It is sometimes at the moment of deepest darkness that a light shines. It is at the moment of deepest despair, when everything seems to have collapsed, when nothing is right, that a light shines and there is a sense of a presence, the presence of God.
It was what many of those thirty-three Chilean miners experienced when after their rescue they spoke of a 34th member of their group. They had a sense of the presence of God with them. It will be moving when a group of us go to listen to one of them as he shares his story.
So many have stories to tell of the presence of God in the darkest of moments.
And yet, it is the very nature of the darkness that sometimes comes, that God is not present. The feeling is not there. The presence is not felt.
It is at that moment that the Bible comes into its own.
It is written by real people grappling with the problems of the real world who themselves experience periods of deep darkness.
Nowhere is that more true than in the writings of the great Mystics. They were among those with the most profound faith. And yet at the same time they experienced the deep darkness of desolation. It was through their visionary, mystic writings that they sensed the presence of God.
It has been special at the turn of the year to have a number of books published by people linked to Highbury. Graham Adams explored Christ and the Other, Jonathan Rowe explored the moral dilemma facing Michal in 1 Samuel, and Christina Monahar. Christina and her husband David have both studied for a doctorate at the University of Gloucestershire and live in Cheltenham. David works in the University and teaches Old Testament in Sheffield. Christina lives here for part of the year and goes over to India to her seminary in the remainder of the year. She has explored the way thinking of the Spirit of Christ is helpful in conversation and dialogue with Hinduism especially.
She has found herself focusing on the great Christian mystics in part because their experience of mysticism and of God speaks to those with similar experiences in Hinduism and in Islam. It is a delight to be reading her most recent book. The Knowledge of God in Mechthild of Magdeburg. It is moving to read an Indian Christian scholar encountering a German mystic writer of the 13th Century and discovering the light that dawns in such writing in the midst of darkness.
Dedicating the book to her mother, Christina comments
“This study was undertaken when I was going through a very difficult time in life. Each day as I sat in the library of the University of Gloucestershire, reflecting upon the ways of knowing God, Mechthild’s life and teachings reminded me once more that one needs to discover the continuing presence of the light in the midst of darkness.”
It is from those with this ‘mystic sense’ of the presence of God that we can learn most about discovering the light of God’s presence in the midst of darkness.
One of those people we know of as John, I think of him as John the Divine. Everything had collapsed about him. He lived in a very hostile world that had no time for people of faith. And as a person of faith, he was arrested and set into exile on the island of Patmos. There he heard tell of the cruel fate of many of this erstwhile friends. It seemed that God was far away.
It is in the deepest darkness that he has a sense of the presence of God with him that is so great he feels impelled to commit it to writing.
Some there are who see what he wrote as a blueprint for the end of the world. They have an explanation for the minutest details of every verse, every sentence, every phrase, every word of the book. It becomes simply a look into the future. And it is far from simple.
In almost every generation people have come taken a look at what he has written and said that’s the blueprint … you can see the end of the world is coming. And lo and behold in every detail they can see it coming to be now.
Others see it differently. I count myself among them. I think something else is going on in what John the Divine writes. He tells of the end times and of cataclysmic events not so that we have a detailed description of a single set of events that will happen in the far distant, or not so distant future.
Instead he has a sense of the presence of God in the here and now, in the middle of the darkness. He senses that this is a God against whom nothing can prevail. In his visions he sees something of the glory of the God who triumphs over all that is evil and he seeks to put down in words his sense of the presence of this God.
He tells larger than life stories about the end times in a way that speaks into every generation and tells of the wonder and the mystery and the awesome nature of the presence of God with us.
We pick up one of those visions in the words of Revelation 4.
I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open!
It’s what so many long for in the midst of the darkness. A moment when all is clear, when a door flies open and we can actually see into the presence of God.
As we read these words … it may be that we have had such a moment.
But it may be that we have not had such a moment of clarity.
Let’s listen to the experience of this person who grappled with fiath and believing in the face of the utmost horror. And let’s hear him speaking into our situation.
It may be that he is speaking to us who are all too aware of the horrors going on in the world around us. Of religious conflicts that we find difficult to understand and yet spill over threateningly into our world.
It may be that he is speaking to a very much more personal darkness that we have been catapulted into and feel in danger of being overwhelmed by.
Let’s accompany John the Divine through the door. What do we see?
There in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the thorne! And the one seated there looks like jasper, and cornelian and around the throne is … down to verse 6
After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ 2At once I was in the spirit,* and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! 3And the one seated there looks like jasper and cornelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. 4Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads. 5Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; 6and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.
What can you see?
Some there are who want to explain every detail. A throne is the place for a king … the king of kings. Are the 24 elders the 12 sons of Jacob, the tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples of Christ – the old Israel and the New Israel combined into the one people of God spanning the whole world? Seven flaming torches – the sevenfold spirit of God – seven the perfect number of creation – the whole spectrum of the spirit of God. And the sea – no longer the stormy place of chaos but as still as glass, like crystal.
The imagery may suggest different things to you. But should we be looking for one meaning. Or is there mystery here. How do you picture the one sitting on the throne – jasper, cornelian. A rainbow that is emerald green? These are things impossible to picture. They conjure up an awesome mystery of God.
That awesome mystery of God deepens in the presence of four creatures. Do we have to identify each one or are they creatures from the whole of creation, from the four corners of the world.
And there in the presence of God there is nothing else for it but to sing Holy, holy holy.
As we step through the door into heaven … we are there to sense the mystery, the awesome nature of God’s presence.
And all we can do is to worship.
A sense of God.
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy,the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.’ 9And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, 10the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives for ever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, 11 ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power,for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created
Wonder. Awe.
Can we not capture this.
Where does the door open for you. May it be up on the hills. In the quiet of your room. In reading poetry. Listening to music. Deep in prayer.
See through the door into the mystery of God … and simply worship.
Hymn: Holy, holy, holy.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.
Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see;
Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy; merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity
But for John the divine the mystery is not the end of it.
He senses that this God in all his awesome majesty wants to share himself with us. He wants to disclose to us the secret of life, the secret of his own presence.
5Then I saw in the right hand of the one seated on the throne a scroll written on the inside and on the back, sealed* with seven seals; 2and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ 3And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. 4And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’
6 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slain …
What’s the scroll? All sorts of things it can speak of. The secret to life and everything.
But I have come to read this passage at the start of this year of the Bible. I find myself hearing these words in quite a specific way.
What is contained in a scroll – it is the words of Scripture.
Is this a wonderful picture of our God.
In his awesomeness he wants to disclose himself to us, reveal himself to us. And it is in the words of Scripture that we find his message.
But.
And this is the experience of so many.
It is impossible to read the Scroll.
The scriptures are impossible to understand.
We cannot make sense of them.
And we weep. We are so close. It would be wonderful to find their meaning. But we cannot. We weep bitter tears.
Then one of the elders said, Do not weep.
See the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered …
We are on sure ground now. Who is of the root of David. Who has conquered and won a victory? It is Jesus Christ. We look to him. The Great Lion. And what do we see … a lamb?
One of the best ways to read Revelation is to read it as part of your devotions at night and to read the Narnia Chronicles at bedtime! Think Aslan, Lion, a door that opens, and a Lion that becomes a Lamb!
It is the Lamb that can open the scroll.
This is the conviction that I have and I think the key to opening the Scriptures.
Realise that Jesus Christ is at the heart of the Scriptures. It’s what we are doing from next Sunday evening in our evening services as we use Jesus as a guide to open up the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
It’s great if a door opens for us when we are in that deep darkness … but sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s great to hear other people’s stories. But sometimes they don’t help.
Let’s take a leaf out of John’s book and in our mind’s eye see through the door that opened into heaven for him. And let’.s sense the mystery and awesome majesty of God.
But more than that – let’s realise that this God has something to say to us. Let’s turn again to the Bible. And let’s use Jesus to open it up for us so that we can hear it speaking to us.
He is the one that openeth the window, to let in the light,
Jesus is the one
"that openeth the window,
to let in the light,"
Let your light so shine in my heart
as I read the words of Scripture
that I may see your Word
in those words
and discover it to be
a lamp unto my feet and
a light unto my path.
This sermon is the first in a series of sermons for the Year of the Bible drawing on words from Myles Smith in the Preface to the Authorised Version.
It was what many of those thirty-three Chilean miners experienced when after their rescue they spoke of a 34th member of their group. They had a sense of the presence of God with them. It will be moving when a group of us go to listen to one of them as he shares his story.
So many have stories to tell of the presence of God in the darkest of moments.
And yet, it is the very nature of the darkness that sometimes comes, that God is not present. The feeling is not there. The presence is not felt.
It is at that moment that the Bible comes into its own.
It is written by real people grappling with the problems of the real world who themselves experience periods of deep darkness.
Nowhere is that more true than in the writings of the great Mystics. They were among those with the most profound faith. And yet at the same time they experienced the deep darkness of desolation. It was through their visionary, mystic writings that they sensed the presence of God.
It has been special at the turn of the year to have a number of books published by people linked to Highbury. Graham Adams explored Christ and the Other, Jonathan Rowe explored the moral dilemma facing Michal in 1 Samuel, and Christina Monahar. Christina and her husband David have both studied for a doctorate at the University of Gloucestershire and live in Cheltenham. David works in the University and teaches Old Testament in Sheffield. Christina lives here for part of the year and goes over to India to her seminary in the remainder of the year. She has explored the way thinking of the Spirit of Christ is helpful in conversation and dialogue with Hinduism especially.
She has found herself focusing on the great Christian mystics in part because their experience of mysticism and of God speaks to those with similar experiences in Hinduism and in Islam. It is a delight to be reading her most recent book. The Knowledge of God in Mechthild of Magdeburg. It is moving to read an Indian Christian scholar encountering a German mystic writer of the 13th Century and discovering the light that dawns in such writing in the midst of darkness.
Dedicating the book to her mother, Christina comments
“This study was undertaken when I was going through a very difficult time in life. Each day as I sat in the library of the University of Gloucestershire, reflecting upon the ways of knowing God, Mechthild’s life and teachings reminded me once more that one needs to discover the continuing presence of the light in the midst of darkness.”
It is from those with this ‘mystic sense’ of the presence of God that we can learn most about discovering the light of God’s presence in the midst of darkness.
One of those people we know of as John, I think of him as John the Divine. Everything had collapsed about him. He lived in a very hostile world that had no time for people of faith. And as a person of faith, he was arrested and set into exile on the island of Patmos. There he heard tell of the cruel fate of many of this erstwhile friends. It seemed that God was far away.
It is in the deepest darkness that he has a sense of the presence of God with him that is so great he feels impelled to commit it to writing.
Some there are who see what he wrote as a blueprint for the end of the world. They have an explanation for the minutest details of every verse, every sentence, every phrase, every word of the book. It becomes simply a look into the future. And it is far from simple.
In almost every generation people have come taken a look at what he has written and said that’s the blueprint … you can see the end of the world is coming. And lo and behold in every detail they can see it coming to be now.
Others see it differently. I count myself among them. I think something else is going on in what John the Divine writes. He tells of the end times and of cataclysmic events not so that we have a detailed description of a single set of events that will happen in the far distant, or not so distant future.
Instead he has a sense of the presence of God in the here and now, in the middle of the darkness. He senses that this is a God against whom nothing can prevail. In his visions he sees something of the glory of the God who triumphs over all that is evil and he seeks to put down in words his sense of the presence of this God.
He tells larger than life stories about the end times in a way that speaks into every generation and tells of the wonder and the mystery and the awesome nature of the presence of God with us.
We pick up one of those visions in the words of Revelation 4.
I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open!
It’s what so many long for in the midst of the darkness. A moment when all is clear, when a door flies open and we can actually see into the presence of God.
As we read these words … it may be that we have had such a moment.
But it may be that we have not had such a moment of clarity.
Let’s listen to the experience of this person who grappled with fiath and believing in the face of the utmost horror. And let’s hear him speaking into our situation.
It may be that he is speaking to us who are all too aware of the horrors going on in the world around us. Of religious conflicts that we find difficult to understand and yet spill over threateningly into our world.
It may be that he is speaking to a very much more personal darkness that we have been catapulted into and feel in danger of being overwhelmed by.
Let’s accompany John the Divine through the door. What do we see?
There in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the thorne! And the one seated there looks like jasper, and cornelian and around the throne is … down to verse 6
After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ 2At once I was in the spirit,* and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! 3And the one seated there looks like jasper and cornelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. 4Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads. 5Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; 6and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.
What can you see?
Some there are who want to explain every detail. A throne is the place for a king … the king of kings. Are the 24 elders the 12 sons of Jacob, the tribes of Israel and the 12 disciples of Christ – the old Israel and the New Israel combined into the one people of God spanning the whole world? Seven flaming torches – the sevenfold spirit of God – seven the perfect number of creation – the whole spectrum of the spirit of God. And the sea – no longer the stormy place of chaos but as still as glass, like crystal.
The imagery may suggest different things to you. But should we be looking for one meaning. Or is there mystery here. How do you picture the one sitting on the throne – jasper, cornelian. A rainbow that is emerald green? These are things impossible to picture. They conjure up an awesome mystery of God.
That awesome mystery of God deepens in the presence of four creatures. Do we have to identify each one or are they creatures from the whole of creation, from the four corners of the world.
And there in the presence of God there is nothing else for it but to sing Holy, holy holy.
As we step through the door into heaven … we are there to sense the mystery, the awesome nature of God’s presence.
And all we can do is to worship.
A sense of God.
Holy, holy, holy
Holy, holy, holy,the Lord God the Almighty, who was and is and is to come.’ 9And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, 10the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives for ever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing, 11 ‘You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power,for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created
Wonder. Awe.
Can we not capture this.
Where does the door open for you. May it be up on the hills. In the quiet of your room. In reading poetry. Listening to music. Deep in prayer.
See through the door into the mystery of God … and simply worship.
Hymn: Holy, holy, holy.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;
Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!
Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore Thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee,
Who was, and is, and evermore shall be.
Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide Thee,
Though the eye of sinful man Thy glory may not see;
Only Thou art holy; there is none beside Thee,
Perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All Thy works shall praise Thy Name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy; merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity
But for John the divine the mystery is not the end of it.
He senses that this God in all his awesome majesty wants to share himself with us. He wants to disclose to us the secret of life, the secret of his own presence.
5Then I saw in the right hand of the one seated on the throne a scroll written on the inside and on the back, sealed* with seven seals; 2and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ 3And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. 4And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’
6 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slain …
What’s the scroll? All sorts of things it can speak of. The secret to life and everything.
But I have come to read this passage at the start of this year of the Bible. I find myself hearing these words in quite a specific way.
What is contained in a scroll – it is the words of Scripture.
Is this a wonderful picture of our God.
In his awesomeness he wants to disclose himself to us, reveal himself to us. And it is in the words of Scripture that we find his message.
But.
And this is the experience of so many.
It is impossible to read the Scroll.
The scriptures are impossible to understand.
We cannot make sense of them.
And we weep. We are so close. It would be wonderful to find their meaning. But we cannot. We weep bitter tears.
Then one of the elders said, Do not weep.
See the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David has conquered …
We are on sure ground now. Who is of the root of David. Who has conquered and won a victory? It is Jesus Christ. We look to him. The Great Lion. And what do we see … a lamb?
One of the best ways to read Revelation is to read it as part of your devotions at night and to read the Narnia Chronicles at bedtime! Think Aslan, Lion, a door that opens, and a Lion that becomes a Lamb!
It is the Lamb that can open the scroll.
This is the conviction that I have and I think the key to opening the Scriptures.
Realise that Jesus Christ is at the heart of the Scriptures. It’s what we are doing from next Sunday evening in our evening services as we use Jesus as a guide to open up the Scriptures of the Old Testament.
It’s great if a door opens for us when we are in that deep darkness … but sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s great to hear other people’s stories. But sometimes they don’t help.
Let’s take a leaf out of John’s book and in our mind’s eye see through the door that opened into heaven for him. And let’.s sense the mystery and awesome majesty of God.
But more than that – let’s realise that this God has something to say to us. Let’s turn again to the Bible. And let’s use Jesus to open it up for us so that we can hear it speaking to us.
He is the one that openeth the window, to let in the light,
Jesus is the one
"that openeth the window,
to let in the light,"
Let your light so shine in my heart
as I read the words of Scripture
that I may see your Word
in those words
and discover it to be
a lamp unto my feet and
a light unto my path.
This sermon is the first in a series of sermons for the Year of the Bible drawing on words from Myles Smith in the Preface to the Authorised Version.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Stepping outside the security of a closed system
A sermon preached at St Luke's during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
At the close of our service today we are going to do something very special as we remember someone who has had a very strong involvement both in St Luke’s Church and in Highbury. It was good to join together with friends from St Luke’s on Thursday in a service of thanksgiving celebrating Pauline Bewsher’s life. With a Christian faith that meant the world to her and as we learned on Thursday had seen her through some difficult times, Pauline Bewsher treasured her church family here at St Luke’s and was so looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday with a tea party, which we shared in anyway in the hall on Thursday afternoon. For 28 years from 1945 Pauline Bewsher was the Guide Captain at Highbury. It was moving to hear of the way in which she throughout that period had shown a very real loyalty both to her own church, St Luke’s and to Highbury as well. After the service Robert and I will lead those who want to join us to the Rose Garden where we will scatter Pauline’s ashes. If you would prefer not to share in that part of our service it may be best to stay in the church, or to leave by the side door; that’s something, perhaps, for parents particularly to take note of with their children.
I have to confess that I did not know that St Luke’s had a rose garden. Go down the steps, turn left and it’s on your left, I was told. And indeed it is there … though be it said this is not the best of times to admire a rose garden!!!
I want to make some connections between Pauline, that Rose Garden and what we are doing today as we come together in a united service on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity.
Pauline was staunch in her commitment to her church, the church of England, to her church here at St Luke’s. She knew the kind of church it should be, what you should do at church. And as in their own way each of those giving those wonderful tributes to her on Thursday observed, she didn’t mind letting you know.
I pricked my ears up, however, at one thing that was said in one of those tributes about that long period of time she was the Guide Captain at Highbury. In the whole of that period, it was said, she had a loyalty to Highbury and what it did as a church, while at the same time remaining firmly rooted here in the church at St Luke’s.
That ability Pauline displayed throughout those years of being clear about where she stood in her commitment to church but at the same time honouring, respecting and being loyal to a different way of being church is the thing I want to hold on to.
The readings for our service were taken from the leaflet published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What prompted me to choose the readings from that leaflet was the fact that the reading plan, though not the notes, had been put together by the churches of Jerusalem. I sat up and took notice when I saw that. It’s only eighteen months or so since a good number of us from St Luke’s and from Highbury joined together in our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and we visited some of those churches.
Our readings invite us to go back to the church that came together in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, described in those powerful and moving words of Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Were signs and wonders were done by the apostles, where those who believed were together and had all things in common. It was a people of praise, and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This is but the start of many descriptions the New Testament gives us of what the first followers of Jesus did as the church came into being. It wasn’t long before people began to think of them as people of The Way. It was a little later that opponents insulted them as the Christ-ians, and the name Christian stuck. Read on in the New Testament and you catch glimpses of the church as it takes root in Judea, in Samaria and then as it spreads to Antioch, through Cyprus to Galatia, beyond to Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. At breath taking speed the church is coming into being in so many different places.
Some of those who played a key part as church was being formed have left their thoughts for posterity – Matthew with a Jewish perspective on things, Mark, down to earth, influenced maybe by Peter, Peter himself, Paul, one of his travelling companions, Luke, James the brother of Jesus, another profound thinker behind Hebrews himself steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And John and his followers with a reflective view.
One thing you do not find in the New Testament is one single definition of what church is like. There is no single tradition, established as the one way of being church. No single creedal statement.
That should come as no surprise because the people whose stories are told in those early days of the church are a mixed bunch of people – scholarly thinkers like Paul, thinking fishermen like Peter. They live in a very varied world. The Jewish world of Jerusalem has within it many different ways of being Jewish. The Roman world is a world of very mixed cultures. The Pax Romana is a peace won at the cost of considerable violence and bloodshed as Rome asserts its power.
Two words come to mind to describe the Scriptures, the people whose stories are told there, the Jewish world and the Roman world they live in. Those two words are ‘variety’ and ‘hybrid’. There is a rich variety of ways of thinking reflected in the great range of people whose stories are told in the Scriptures, and as the church begins. More than that, each individual is the person they are because of all the different strands that have shaped and influenced them. Each is a hybrid.
And yet for all that rich variety and rich hybridity as you read through the pages of the New Testament you sense the arrival of something recognisable. You see the church growing. There is something that holds those who are following the way together, there is something that holds together those who bear that nick name Christians.
It is not a fixed and rigid system. It is not the building up of a single tradition. They look to Jesus Christ, they share in some way that they do not define a faith, they sense the presence of the forgiving love of God as Father, made real in Christ and let loose in their lives with an unseen yet ver real strengthening power they think of as in some way the Spirit of God. They seek to put into action the faith they profess by taking seriously the way of life mapped out for them by Jesus.
“the early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system.”
Do we need to go one better than those early followers of Jesus and create a system, to standardise the Christian faith and so achieve a single structure, a single tradition, a single way of thinking. Constantine was one who thought so. As Roman Emperor he wanted a systematic Christianity to cement his empire together – so he summoned the bishops together to create a systematic creedal statement. It wasn’t long before he had built a church over the caves where in all likelihood the animals were kept in the houses of Bethlehem, and where in all likelihood Jesus was born. A monastic community served that church of the nativity. And among there number was Jerome. It wasn’t enough to have a variety of translations and texts of the Scriptures – he wanted to produce a definitive translation in the language of the Empire. And so it was that Jerome produced his translation, eliminating all the errors of previous copyists and translators. Wonderful translation though it was it could become an instrument of power used by the state.
When James 6th of Scotland became James the first of England he wanted to standardise the church – what better way to do it than to get a group of scholars together and produce a single translation to replace the variety of earlier translations of the Bible into English. And so it was that the King James Bible was produced and an Authorised version established.
Again, wonderful language. But indicative of the attempt by a state power to standardise and shoe horn the variety of Christians into a single system.
I wonder whether there is a vision for unity that we can capture that doesn’t hanker after a single system, but instead rejoices in variety and even in hybridity.
“The early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system; there is no reason why we cannot do the same.”[1]
Interestingly those words come from a thinker called Miroslav Volf who in a book called Exclusion and Embrace grappled with the challenge of being a Christian in the Balkans in the wake of the Kosovo war and the Balkan conflicts of the 90’s. I was reminded of the book at the launch of Graham Adams’ book Christ and the Other in Manchester. It challenges us to reflect on the way we respond to ‘the other’.
In place of a closed system, the pursuit of a single tradition, he urges us to join together in affirming our rich variety and then getting stuck into the things we can share in doing.
Pauline was committed to her own faith and a very clear picture she had of what kind of church she was called to belong to. As we heard on Thursday a whole mass of influences, cultures, experiences came together to make Pauline the one-off individual whose life we celebrated on Thursday.
Each of us is the product of an immensely rich blend of influences, cultures. And we will each be different. Something has brought us to this church and to this place.
The important thing is not to get us all doing the same thing, thinking the same way in how we express our faith, do our worship or structure our church.
Let’s join with those who look to Jesus Christ, share a faith in him even when we don’t put it into exactly the same words, and sense the presence of that forgiving love of God in the unseen strength of God’s spirit, and seek to follow this Jesus by putting our faith into action.
We are called seriously to take the pattern of loving mapped out by Christ in Matthew 5, the commitment to justice there in Isaiah 58 and seek to share in the way Acts 2 challenges us to do.
I have a hunch that’s what Pauline was doing. She stood firm in what she believed in the church that meant the world to her, but joined with an equal loyalty with another church in the shared commitment of working for children through Guiding.
Maybe that’s what we need to build on as we seek to build up Transformers together, and so build on the wonderful work we have shared in doing in Holiday Clubs through the year.
It is what the churches of Cheltenham are doing through Street Pastors, through the hospital chaplaincy teams, as the clergy and ministers will come together in a month to see how we can develop our support of and involvement in hospital chaplaincy.
That brings me back to the rose garden.
Roses go back along way to Ancient Crete, to Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, to Ancient Rome. They figure large in Shakespeare and come into their own in Vicrtorian days, and as my Rose Expert book informs me in 1867 comes the moment when the rose so many think of as a rose was grown – and it was a Hybrid Tea rose.
There is a wonderfully rich variety of roses. Maybe even in a single rose garden.
More than that each rose is the product of many strands that have come down through the years, a hybrid.
For all that rich variety, for all that hybridity we all know what a rose is.
There was in the days of these very first followers of Jesus.
There is in our day … a rich variety of Christians and a rich variety of ways of being the church. Within each of us there is a rich hybridity. We are each the product of a remarkable number of strands that go to make us the individual we are.
And yet there is something about all of us that enables us to see in each other the fact that we are followers of Jesus, we are followers of the Way he has mapped out for us, we bear the name Christian.
[1] Volf, 210
At the close of our service today we are going to do something very special as we remember someone who has had a very strong involvement both in St Luke’s Church and in Highbury. It was good to join together with friends from St Luke’s on Thursday in a service of thanksgiving celebrating Pauline Bewsher’s life. With a Christian faith that meant the world to her and as we learned on Thursday had seen her through some difficult times, Pauline Bewsher treasured her church family here at St Luke’s and was so looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday with a tea party, which we shared in anyway in the hall on Thursday afternoon. For 28 years from 1945 Pauline Bewsher was the Guide Captain at Highbury. It was moving to hear of the way in which she throughout that period had shown a very real loyalty both to her own church, St Luke’s and to Highbury as well. After the service Robert and I will lead those who want to join us to the Rose Garden where we will scatter Pauline’s ashes. If you would prefer not to share in that part of our service it may be best to stay in the church, or to leave by the side door; that’s something, perhaps, for parents particularly to take note of with their children.
I have to confess that I did not know that St Luke’s had a rose garden. Go down the steps, turn left and it’s on your left, I was told. And indeed it is there … though be it said this is not the best of times to admire a rose garden!!!
I want to make some connections between Pauline, that Rose Garden and what we are doing today as we come together in a united service on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity.
Pauline was staunch in her commitment to her church, the church of England, to her church here at St Luke’s. She knew the kind of church it should be, what you should do at church. And as in their own way each of those giving those wonderful tributes to her on Thursday observed, she didn’t mind letting you know.
I pricked my ears up, however, at one thing that was said in one of those tributes about that long period of time she was the Guide Captain at Highbury. In the whole of that period, it was said, she had a loyalty to Highbury and what it did as a church, while at the same time remaining firmly rooted here in the church at St Luke’s.
That ability Pauline displayed throughout those years of being clear about where she stood in her commitment to church but at the same time honouring, respecting and being loyal to a different way of being church is the thing I want to hold on to.
The readings for our service were taken from the leaflet published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What prompted me to choose the readings from that leaflet was the fact that the reading plan, though not the notes, had been put together by the churches of Jerusalem. I sat up and took notice when I saw that. It’s only eighteen months or so since a good number of us from St Luke’s and from Highbury joined together in our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and we visited some of those churches.
Our readings invite us to go back to the church that came together in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, described in those powerful and moving words of Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Were signs and wonders were done by the apostles, where those who believed were together and had all things in common. It was a people of praise, and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This is but the start of many descriptions the New Testament gives us of what the first followers of Jesus did as the church came into being. It wasn’t long before people began to think of them as people of The Way. It was a little later that opponents insulted them as the Christ-ians, and the name Christian stuck. Read on in the New Testament and you catch glimpses of the church as it takes root in Judea, in Samaria and then as it spreads to Antioch, through Cyprus to Galatia, beyond to Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. At breath taking speed the church is coming into being in so many different places.
Some of those who played a key part as church was being formed have left their thoughts for posterity – Matthew with a Jewish perspective on things, Mark, down to earth, influenced maybe by Peter, Peter himself, Paul, one of his travelling companions, Luke, James the brother of Jesus, another profound thinker behind Hebrews himself steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And John and his followers with a reflective view.
One thing you do not find in the New Testament is one single definition of what church is like. There is no single tradition, established as the one way of being church. No single creedal statement.
That should come as no surprise because the people whose stories are told in those early days of the church are a mixed bunch of people – scholarly thinkers like Paul, thinking fishermen like Peter. They live in a very varied world. The Jewish world of Jerusalem has within it many different ways of being Jewish. The Roman world is a world of very mixed cultures. The Pax Romana is a peace won at the cost of considerable violence and bloodshed as Rome asserts its power.
Two words come to mind to describe the Scriptures, the people whose stories are told there, the Jewish world and the Roman world they live in. Those two words are ‘variety’ and ‘hybrid’. There is a rich variety of ways of thinking reflected in the great range of people whose stories are told in the Scriptures, and as the church begins. More than that, each individual is the person they are because of all the different strands that have shaped and influenced them. Each is a hybrid.
And yet for all that rich variety and rich hybridity as you read through the pages of the New Testament you sense the arrival of something recognisable. You see the church growing. There is something that holds those who are following the way together, there is something that holds together those who bear that nick name Christians.
It is not a fixed and rigid system. It is not the building up of a single tradition. They look to Jesus Christ, they share in some way that they do not define a faith, they sense the presence of the forgiving love of God as Father, made real in Christ and let loose in their lives with an unseen yet ver real strengthening power they think of as in some way the Spirit of God. They seek to put into action the faith they profess by taking seriously the way of life mapped out for them by Jesus.
“the early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system.”
Do we need to go one better than those early followers of Jesus and create a system, to standardise the Christian faith and so achieve a single structure, a single tradition, a single way of thinking. Constantine was one who thought so. As Roman Emperor he wanted a systematic Christianity to cement his empire together – so he summoned the bishops together to create a systematic creedal statement. It wasn’t long before he had built a church over the caves where in all likelihood the animals were kept in the houses of Bethlehem, and where in all likelihood Jesus was born. A monastic community served that church of the nativity. And among there number was Jerome. It wasn’t enough to have a variety of translations and texts of the Scriptures – he wanted to produce a definitive translation in the language of the Empire. And so it was that Jerome produced his translation, eliminating all the errors of previous copyists and translators. Wonderful translation though it was it could become an instrument of power used by the state.
When James 6th of Scotland became James the first of England he wanted to standardise the church – what better way to do it than to get a group of scholars together and produce a single translation to replace the variety of earlier translations of the Bible into English. And so it was that the King James Bible was produced and an Authorised version established.
Again, wonderful language. But indicative of the attempt by a state power to standardise and shoe horn the variety of Christians into a single system.
I wonder whether there is a vision for unity that we can capture that doesn’t hanker after a single system, but instead rejoices in variety and even in hybridity.
“The early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system; there is no reason why we cannot do the same.”[1]
Interestingly those words come from a thinker called Miroslav Volf who in a book called Exclusion and Embrace grappled with the challenge of being a Christian in the Balkans in the wake of the Kosovo war and the Balkan conflicts of the 90’s. I was reminded of the book at the launch of Graham Adams’ book Christ and the Other in Manchester. It challenges us to reflect on the way we respond to ‘the other’.
In place of a closed system, the pursuit of a single tradition, he urges us to join together in affirming our rich variety and then getting stuck into the things we can share in doing.
Pauline was committed to her own faith and a very clear picture she had of what kind of church she was called to belong to. As we heard on Thursday a whole mass of influences, cultures, experiences came together to make Pauline the one-off individual whose life we celebrated on Thursday.
Each of us is the product of an immensely rich blend of influences, cultures. And we will each be different. Something has brought us to this church and to this place.
The important thing is not to get us all doing the same thing, thinking the same way in how we express our faith, do our worship or structure our church.
Let’s join with those who look to Jesus Christ, share a faith in him even when we don’t put it into exactly the same words, and sense the presence of that forgiving love of God in the unseen strength of God’s spirit, and seek to follow this Jesus by putting our faith into action.
We are called seriously to take the pattern of loving mapped out by Christ in Matthew 5, the commitment to justice there in Isaiah 58 and seek to share in the way Acts 2 challenges us to do.
I have a hunch that’s what Pauline was doing. She stood firm in what she believed in the church that meant the world to her, but joined with an equal loyalty with another church in the shared commitment of working for children through Guiding.
Maybe that’s what we need to build on as we seek to build up Transformers together, and so build on the wonderful work we have shared in doing in Holiday Clubs through the year.
It is what the churches of Cheltenham are doing through Street Pastors, through the hospital chaplaincy teams, as the clergy and ministers will come together in a month to see how we can develop our support of and involvement in hospital chaplaincy.
That brings me back to the rose garden.
Roses go back along way to Ancient Crete, to Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, to Ancient Rome. They figure large in Shakespeare and come into their own in Vicrtorian days, and as my Rose Expert book informs me in 1867 comes the moment when the rose so many think of as a rose was grown – and it was a Hybrid Tea rose.
There is a wonderfully rich variety of roses. Maybe even in a single rose garden.
More than that each rose is the product of many strands that have come down through the years, a hybrid.
For all that rich variety, for all that hybridity we all know what a rose is.
There was in the days of these very first followers of Jesus.
There is in our day … a rich variety of Christians and a rich variety of ways of being the church. Within each of us there is a rich hybridity. We are each the product of a remarkable number of strands that go to make us the individual we are.
And yet there is something about all of us that enables us to see in each other the fact that we are followers of Jesus, we are followers of the Way he has mapped out for us, we bear the name Christian.
[1] Volf, 210
Stepping outside the security of a closed system
A sermon preached at St Luke's during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
At the close of our service today we are going to do something very special as we remember someone who has had a very strong involvement both in St Luke’s Church and in Highbury. It was good to join together with friends from St Luke’s on Thursday in a service of thanksgiving celebrating Pauline Bewsher’s life. With a Christian faith that meant the world to her and as we learned on Thursday had seen her through some difficult times, Pauline Bewsher treasured her church family here at St Luke’s and was so looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday with a tea party, which we shared in anyway in the hall on Thursday afternoon. For 28 years Pauline Bewsher had been the Guide Captain at Highbury. It was moving to hear of the way in which she throughout that period had shown a very real loyalty both to her own church, St Luke’s and to Highbury as well. After the service Robert and I will lead those who want to join us to the Rose Garden where we will scatter Pauline’s ashes. If you would prefer not to share in that part of our service it may be best to stay in the church, or to leave by the side door; that’s something, perhaps, for parents particularly to take note of with their children.
I have to confess that I did not know that St Luke’s had a rose garden. Go down the steps, turn left and it’s on your left, I was told. And indeed it is there … though be it said this is not the best of times to admire a rose garden!!!
I want to make some connections between Pauline, that Rose Garden and what we are doing today as we come together in a united service on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity.
Pauline was staunch in her commitment to her church, the church of England, to her church here at St Luke’s. She knew the kind of church it should be, what you should do at church. And as in their own way each of those giving those wonderful tributes to her on Thursday observed, she didn’t mind letting you know.
I pricked my ears up, however, at one thing that was said in one of those tributes about that long period of time she was the Guide Captain at Highbury. In the whole of that period, it was said, she had a loyalty to Highbury and what it did as a church, while at the same time remaining firmly rooted here in the church at St Luke’s.
That ability Pauline displayed throughout those years of being clear about where she stood in her commitment to church but at the same time honouring, respecting and being loyal to a different way of being church is the thing I want to hold on to.
The readings for our service were taken from the leaflet published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What prompted me to choose the readings from that leaflet was the fact that the reading plan, though not the notes, had been put together by the churches of Jerusalem. I sat up and took notice when I saw that. It’s only eighteen months or so since a good number of us from St Luke’s and from Highbury joined together in our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and we visited some of those churches.
Our readings invite us to go back to the church that came together in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, described in those powerful and moving words of Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Were signs and wonders were done by the apostles, where those who believed were together and had all things in common. It was a people of praise, and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This is but the start of many descriptions the New Testament gives us of what the first followers of Jesus did as the church came into being. It wasn’t long before people began to think of them as people of The Way. It was a little later that opponents insulted them as the Christ-ians, and the name Christian stuck. Read on in the New Testament and you catch glimpses of the church as it takes root in Judea, in Samaria and then as it spreads to Antioch, through Cyprus to Galatia, beyond to Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. At breath taking speed the church is coming into being in so many different places.
Some of those who played a key part as church was being formed have left their thoughts for posterity – Matthew with a Jewish perspective on things, Mark, down to earth, influenced maybe by Peter, Peter himself, Paul, one of his travelling companions, Luke, James the brother of Jesus, another profound thinker behind Hebrews himself steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And John and his followers with a reflective view.
One thing you do not find in the New Testament is one single definition of what church is like. There is no single tradition, established as the one way of being church. No single creedal statement.
That should come as no surprise because the people whose stories are told in those early days of the church are a mixed bunch of people – scholarly thinkers like Paul, thinking fishermen like Peter. They live in a very varied world. The Jewish world of Jerusalem has within it many different ways of being Jewish. The Roman world is a world of very mixed cultures. The Pax Romana is a peace won at the cost of considerable violence and bloodshed as Rome asserts its power.
Two words come to mind to describe the Scriptures, the people whose stories are told there, the Jewish world and the Roman world they live in. Those two words are ‘variety’ and ‘hybrid’. There is a rich variety of ways of thinking reflected in the great range of people whose stories are told in the Scriptures, and as the church begins. More than that, each individual is the person they are because of all the different strands that have shaped and influenced them. Each is a hybrid.
And yet for all that rich variety and rich hybridity as you read through the pages of the New Testament you sense the arrival of something recognisable. You see the church growing. There is something that holds those who are following the way together, there is something that holds together those who bear that nick name Christians.
It is not a fixed and rigid system. It is not the building up of a single tradition. They look to Jesus Christ, they share in some way that they do not define a faith, they sense the presence of the forgiving love of God as Father, made real in Christ and let loose in their lives with an unseen yet ver real strengthening power they think of as in some way the Spirit of God. They seek to put into action the faith they profess by taking seriously the way of life mapped out for them by Jesus.
“the early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system.”
Do we need to go one better than those early followers of Jesus and create a system, to standardise the Christian faith and so achieve a single structure, a single tradition, a single way of thinking. Constantine was one who thought so. As Roman Emperor he wanted a systematic Christianity to cement his empire together – so he summoned the bishops together to create a systematic creedal statement. It wasn’t long before he had built a church over the caves where in all likelihood the animals were kept in the houses of Bethlehem, and where in all likelihood Jesus was born. A monastic community served that church of the nativity. And among there number was Jerome. It wasn’t enough to have a variety of translations and texts of the Scriptures – he wanted to produce a definitive translation in the language of the Empire. And so it was that Jerome produced his translation, eliminating all the errors of previous copyists and translators. Wonderful translation though it was it could become an instrument of power used by the state.
When James 6th of Scotland became James the first of England he wanted to standardise the church – what better way to do it than to get a group of scholars together and produce a single translation to replace the variety of earlier translations of the Bible into English. And so it was that the King James Bible was produced and an Authorised version established.
Again, wonderful language. But indicative of the attempt by a state power to standardise and shoe horn the variety of Christians into a single system.
I wonder whether there is a vision for unity that we can capture that doesn’t hanker after a single system, but instead rejoices in variety and even in hybridity.
“The early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system; there is no reason why we cannot do the same.”[1]
Interestingly those words come from a thinker called Miroslav Volf who in a book called Exclusion and Embrace grappled with the challenge of being a Christian in the Balkans in the wake of the Kosovo war and the Balkan conflicts of the 90’s. I was reminded of the book at the launch of Graham Adams’ book Christ and the Other in Manchester. It challenges us to reflect on the way we respond to ‘the other’.
In place of a closed system, the pursuit of a single tradition, he urges us to join together in affirming our rich variety and then getting stuck into the things we can share in doing.
Pauline was committed to her own faith and a very clear picture she had of what kind of church she was called to belong to. As we heard on Thursday a whole mass of influences, cultures, experiences came together to make Pauline the one-off individual whose life we celebrated on Thursday.
Each of us is the product of an immensely rich blend of influences, cultures. And we will each be different. Something has brought us to this church and to this place.
The important thing is not to get us all doing the same thing, thinking the same way in how we express our faith, do our worship or structure our church.
Let’s join with those who look to Jesus Christ, share a faith in him even when we don’t put it into exactly the same words, and sense the presence of that forgiving love of God in the unseen strength of God’s spirit, and seek to follow this Jesus by putting our faith into action.
We are called seriously to take the pattern of loving mapped out by Christ in Matthew 5, the commitment to justice there in Isaiah 58 and seek to share in the way Acts 2 challenges us to do.
I have a hunch that’s what Pauline was doing. She stood firm in what she believed in the church that meant the world to her, but joined with an equal loyalty with another church in the shared commitment of working for children through Guiding.
Maybe that’s what we need to build on as we seek to build up Transformers together, and so build on the wonderful work we have shared in doing in Holiday Clubs through the year.
It is what the churches of Cheltenham are doing through Street Pastors, through the hospital chaplaincy teams, as the clergy and ministers will come together in a month to see how we can develop our support of and involvement in hospital chaplaincy.
That brings me back to the rose garden.
Roses go back along way to Ancient Crete, to Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, to Ancient Rome. They figure large in Shakespeare and come into their own in Vicrtorian days, and as my Rose Expert book informs me in 1867 comes the moment when the rose so many think of as a rose was grown – and it was a Hybrid Tea rose.
There is a wonderfully rich variety of roses. Maybe even in a single rose garden.
More than that each rose is the product of many strands that have come down through the years, a hybrid.
For all that rich variety, for all that hybridity we all know what a rose is.
There was in the days of these very first followers of Jesus.
There is in our day … a rich variety of Christians and a rich variety of ways of being the church. Within each of us there is a rich hybridity. We are each the product of a remarkable number of strands that go to make us the individual we are.
And yet there is something about all of us that enables us to see in each other the fact that we are followers of Jesus, we are followers of the Way he has mapped out for us, we bear the name Christian.
[1] Volf, 210
At the close of our service today we are going to do something very special as we remember someone who has had a very strong involvement both in St Luke’s Church and in Highbury. It was good to join together with friends from St Luke’s on Thursday in a service of thanksgiving celebrating Pauline Bewsher’s life. With a Christian faith that meant the world to her and as we learned on Thursday had seen her through some difficult times, Pauline Bewsher treasured her church family here at St Luke’s and was so looking forward to celebrating her 90th birthday with a tea party, which we shared in anyway in the hall on Thursday afternoon. For 28 years Pauline Bewsher had been the Guide Captain at Highbury. It was moving to hear of the way in which she throughout that period had shown a very real loyalty both to her own church, St Luke’s and to Highbury as well. After the service Robert and I will lead those who want to join us to the Rose Garden where we will scatter Pauline’s ashes. If you would prefer not to share in that part of our service it may be best to stay in the church, or to leave by the side door; that’s something, perhaps, for parents particularly to take note of with their children.
I have to confess that I did not know that St Luke’s had a rose garden. Go down the steps, turn left and it’s on your left, I was told. And indeed it is there … though be it said this is not the best of times to admire a rose garden!!!
I want to make some connections between Pauline, that Rose Garden and what we are doing today as we come together in a united service on the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian unity.
Pauline was staunch in her commitment to her church, the church of England, to her church here at St Luke’s. She knew the kind of church it should be, what you should do at church. And as in their own way each of those giving those wonderful tributes to her on Thursday observed, she didn’t mind letting you know.
I pricked my ears up, however, at one thing that was said in one of those tributes about that long period of time she was the Guide Captain at Highbury. In the whole of that period, it was said, she had a loyalty to Highbury and what it did as a church, while at the same time remaining firmly rooted here in the church at St Luke’s.
That ability Pauline displayed throughout those years of being clear about where she stood in her commitment to church but at the same time honouring, respecting and being loyal to a different way of being church is the thing I want to hold on to.
The readings for our service were taken from the leaflet published for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What prompted me to choose the readings from that leaflet was the fact that the reading plan, though not the notes, had been put together by the churches of Jerusalem. I sat up and took notice when I saw that. It’s only eighteen months or so since a good number of us from St Luke’s and from Highbury joined together in our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and we visited some of those churches.
Our readings invite us to go back to the church that came together in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, described in those powerful and moving words of Acts 2:42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Were signs and wonders were done by the apostles, where those who believed were together and had all things in common. It was a people of praise, and day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
This is but the start of many descriptions the New Testament gives us of what the first followers of Jesus did as the church came into being. It wasn’t long before people began to think of them as people of The Way. It was a little later that opponents insulted them as the Christ-ians, and the name Christian stuck. Read on in the New Testament and you catch glimpses of the church as it takes root in Judea, in Samaria and then as it spreads to Antioch, through Cyprus to Galatia, beyond to Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. At breath taking speed the church is coming into being in so many different places.
Some of those who played a key part as church was being formed have left their thoughts for posterity – Matthew with a Jewish perspective on things, Mark, down to earth, influenced maybe by Peter, Peter himself, Paul, one of his travelling companions, Luke, James the brother of Jesus, another profound thinker behind Hebrews himself steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. And John and his followers with a reflective view.
One thing you do not find in the New Testament is one single definition of what church is like. There is no single tradition, established as the one way of being church. No single creedal statement.
That should come as no surprise because the people whose stories are told in those early days of the church are a mixed bunch of people – scholarly thinkers like Paul, thinking fishermen like Peter. They live in a very varied world. The Jewish world of Jerusalem has within it many different ways of being Jewish. The Roman world is a world of very mixed cultures. The Pax Romana is a peace won at the cost of considerable violence and bloodshed as Rome asserts its power.
Two words come to mind to describe the Scriptures, the people whose stories are told there, the Jewish world and the Roman world they live in. Those two words are ‘variety’ and ‘hybrid’. There is a rich variety of ways of thinking reflected in the great range of people whose stories are told in the Scriptures, and as the church begins. More than that, each individual is the person they are because of all the different strands that have shaped and influenced them. Each is a hybrid.
And yet for all that rich variety and rich hybridity as you read through the pages of the New Testament you sense the arrival of something recognisable. You see the church growing. There is something that holds those who are following the way together, there is something that holds together those who bear that nick name Christians.
It is not a fixed and rigid system. It is not the building up of a single tradition. They look to Jesus Christ, they share in some way that they do not define a faith, they sense the presence of the forgiving love of God as Father, made real in Christ and let loose in their lives with an unseen yet ver real strengthening power they think of as in some way the Spirit of God. They seek to put into action the faith they profess by taking seriously the way of life mapped out for them by Jesus.
“the early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system.”
Do we need to go one better than those early followers of Jesus and create a system, to standardise the Christian faith and so achieve a single structure, a single tradition, a single way of thinking. Constantine was one who thought so. As Roman Emperor he wanted a systematic Christianity to cement his empire together – so he summoned the bishops together to create a systematic creedal statement. It wasn’t long before he had built a church over the caves where in all likelihood the animals were kept in the houses of Bethlehem, and where in all likelihood Jesus was born. A monastic community served that church of the nativity. And among there number was Jerome. It wasn’t enough to have a variety of translations and texts of the Scriptures – he wanted to produce a definitive translation in the language of the Empire. And so it was that Jerome produced his translation, eliminating all the errors of previous copyists and translators. Wonderful translation though it was it could become an instrument of power used by the state.
When James 6th of Scotland became James the first of England he wanted to standardise the church – what better way to do it than to get a group of scholars together and produce a single translation to replace the variety of earlier translations of the Bible into English. And so it was that the King James Bible was produced and an Authorised version established.
Again, wonderful language. But indicative of the attempt by a state power to standardise and shoe horn the variety of Christians into a single system.
I wonder whether there is a vision for unity that we can capture that doesn’t hanker after a single system, but instead rejoices in variety and even in hybridity.
“The early Christians lived and thrived without the secure closure of a system; there is no reason why we cannot do the same.”[1]
Interestingly those words come from a thinker called Miroslav Volf who in a book called Exclusion and Embrace grappled with the challenge of being a Christian in the Balkans in the wake of the Kosovo war and the Balkan conflicts of the 90’s. I was reminded of the book at the launch of Graham Adams’ book Christ and the Other in Manchester. It challenges us to reflect on the way we respond to ‘the other’.
In place of a closed system, the pursuit of a single tradition, he urges us to join together in affirming our rich variety and then getting stuck into the things we can share in doing.
Pauline was committed to her own faith and a very clear picture she had of what kind of church she was called to belong to. As we heard on Thursday a whole mass of influences, cultures, experiences came together to make Pauline the one-off individual whose life we celebrated on Thursday.
Each of us is the product of an immensely rich blend of influences, cultures. And we will each be different. Something has brought us to this church and to this place.
The important thing is not to get us all doing the same thing, thinking the same way in how we express our faith, do our worship or structure our church.
Let’s join with those who look to Jesus Christ, share a faith in him even when we don’t put it into exactly the same words, and sense the presence of that forgiving love of God in the unseen strength of God’s spirit, and seek to follow this Jesus by putting our faith into action.
We are called seriously to take the pattern of loving mapped out by Christ in Matthew 5, the commitment to justice there in Isaiah 58 and seek to share in the way Acts 2 challenges us to do.
I have a hunch that’s what Pauline was doing. She stood firm in what she believed in the church that meant the world to her, but joined with an equal loyalty with another church in the shared commitment of working for children through Guiding.
Maybe that’s what we need to build on as we seek to build up Transformers together, and so build on the wonderful work we have shared in doing in Holiday Clubs through the year.
It is what the churches of Cheltenham are doing through Street Pastors, through the hospital chaplaincy teams, as the clergy and ministers will come together in a month to see how we can develop our support of and involvement in hospital chaplaincy.
That brings me back to the rose garden.
Roses go back along way to Ancient Crete, to Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, to Ancient Rome. They figure large in Shakespeare and come into their own in Vicrtorian days, and as my Rose Expert book informs me in 1867 comes the moment when the rose so many think of as a rose was grown – and it was a Hybrid Tea rose.
There is a wonderfully rich variety of roses. Maybe even in a single rose garden.
More than that each rose is the product of many strands that have come down through the years, a hybrid.
For all that rich variety, for all that hybridity we all know what a rose is.
There was in the days of these very first followers of Jesus.
There is in our day … a rich variety of Christians and a rich variety of ways of being the church. Within each of us there is a rich hybridity. We are each the product of a remarkable number of strands that go to make us the individual we are.
And yet there is something about all of us that enables us to see in each other the fact that we are followers of Jesus, we are followers of the Way he has mapped out for us, we bear the name Christian.
[1] Volf, 210
Sunday, January 16, 2011
God-breathed!
Who’s done it for you?
Who can you do it for?
What can help?
Three questions for us to reflect on this morning.
There’s something very touching and moving about three very personal letters that come at the very end of the set of letters by Paul in the New Testament. I Timothy and II Timothy and Titus are an invitation to be a fly on the wall in a very intimate relationship between a young Christian starting out on his journey of faith and an older Christian who has over the years shaped and influenced that younger Christian’s life.
Over the years they have met, they have talked, they have shared so much. And now the older man is very much older. And the younger man is having to face more and more responsibilities. The older man senses he won’t be around very much longer maybe. Those conversations become more important, they take on a greater significance, and they are fewer and further between.
And then comes that moment when the older man puts pen to paper. And commits to writing reflections on the life he has led, the vision he has shared and the faith that has meant so much to him. How moved the younger man must have been to receive and to read that letter.
Even as he read he could bring to mind times when that older man had a real gift of being able to explain the deep things of life. What a teacher he had been. More than that he had lived out the faith he professed. Somehow he was the kind of person who had discovered a real purpose in life, he knew where he was going. That’s not to say he had had an easy time of it. The younger man could remember times of great difficulty, the chronic illness the older man had had to put up with, family tensions he had experienced, not to mention the times he had suffered physically because of his faith. And yet through it all something had shone out … the fact that he did not bear a grudge. The fact that love shone out of his every word and every action.
In a strange way it had been his experience of suffering that had left the greatest mark, and his patience in facing it, even at the hands of some who had been very cruel. That really did leave a mark.
Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
13And not just persecuted. The Christian faith doesn’t absolve you from suffering … how true young Timothy knew that to be. How much more he wanted to learn of Paul his mentor.
Those words present me with the first of my questions …
Who’s done it for you?
For me I think of my parents. I can think of Sunday school teachers. One of our older deacons in the church I grew up in who had had a very hard life. I can think of people I have known.
But I can also think of people who touched me only momentarily as I went to hear them speak, or followed their story as it unfolded on the news. I think of someone called Richard Wurmbrand who preached in Leicester and I went to listen. A powerful presentation of the Christian faith and a moving account of his response to the persecution of Chrsitians in Eastern Europe and particularly Romania. I can think of someone called Gladys Aylward who had been rejected because she was a woman for missionary service, but purchased her own trans-continental railway ticket all the way to China and had devoted herself to one set of children in the face of the onset of revolution and war. A remarkable teacher, a remarkable person.
The preaching and ministry of Martin Luther King left its mark on me … the awfulness of his assassination.
I have found it more recently seeing at first hand the likes of Elias Chacour and their account of Christian faith lived out in the face of persecution. I watched avidly the day those Chilean miners emerged from incarceration in the mine and the moving testimonies some had to give of a 34th presence with them in the mine. And we have an opportunity to hear one of them give his testimony as he comes to St Matthew’s. Jose Henriquez was the 24th out fo the 33 miners to be released that day. He will be joined by Alfredo Cooper, the Chaplain to the President of Chile in what promises to an inspiring evening.
For me there are a mixture of great people and ordinary people who have shaped and influenced me. Often they are people who have not got away with lives free from suffering, but people who have endured great suffering and have opened up a way through that very real world to the kind of faith that means so much.
Think and treasure those who have done it for you.
And then ask but who can you do it for?
Is it someone in your family, a younger person setting out on their faith in the church family. Who can you pass something on to.
But I am not good enough. I am not up to that.
The ones most influential for me were those most ordinary and who felt they had least to give.
So who can you do it for?
What can I share? How can I rise to such a task? I guess that’s what all of us begin to ask as we are challenged to think in that way.
This is the point at which Paul has some very useful things to share in the wise words he writes to Timothy.
First, he is quite clear that actually there are negative influences around and he warns of them … we have to be on the look out too!
But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. 14
But then he urges Timothy to something that at first sight focuses on personalities and individuals.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15
That’s one piece of wise counsel we would do well to heed. Bear in mind those who have shaped the person you are. Be the person they helped to shape. Keep at it. Don’t give up. Perseverere.
But don’t just idolise a person. It is so easy to slip into a kind of cult of personality. As far as Paul was concerned there was something else to draw on to.
And that is something we too can draw on.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16
What place do the Scriptures have in shaping us as people? Timothy had been steeped in them since childhood. These were the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people …
Little did he think that this very personal letter would become part of the Sacred Scriptures subsequent generations were going to treasure.
Treasure this book.
In its pages are the stories of so many people whose lives were shaped by Jesus Christ and whose stories can shape our lives too. The Christian faith is focused on Jesus Christ and his story is told in these pages. How important it is for us to immerse ourselves in them.
There’s inspiration to be found here. The people whose stories are told felt the touch of God in their lives and the breath of God coming deep within them. The people who passed on the books that make up the Sacred scriptures felt that inspiration of God, the breath of God coming deep within them.
All scripture is inspired by God
I love the word Paul actually uses – it is one that he has coined. Literally it means – God-breathed. It is as if these words have something special in them that is ‘God-breathed’.
and is* useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Can we be up for that as well? Not just the teaching … but are we prepared to be challenged by what we read, corrected, set right.
Is this for us a training manual in the ways of righteousness and justice?
There are challenges here for us all!
17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
That’s what it boils down to!
We each of us have a task to do – to belong to God makes a world of difference to us all. But to belong to God means getting stuck in with the good work that we are called to do.
So … never let it be said these pages are just interesting, just an inspiration. They are there to make a difference for each one of us and to shape the very people we are and the things we do.
There’s one more question to ask.
What are we going to do?
Who can you do it for?
What can help?
Three questions for us to reflect on this morning.
There’s something very touching and moving about three very personal letters that come at the very end of the set of letters by Paul in the New Testament. I Timothy and II Timothy and Titus are an invitation to be a fly on the wall in a very intimate relationship between a young Christian starting out on his journey of faith and an older Christian who has over the years shaped and influenced that younger Christian’s life.
Over the years they have met, they have talked, they have shared so much. And now the older man is very much older. And the younger man is having to face more and more responsibilities. The older man senses he won’t be around very much longer maybe. Those conversations become more important, they take on a greater significance, and they are fewer and further between.
And then comes that moment when the older man puts pen to paper. And commits to writing reflections on the life he has led, the vision he has shared and the faith that has meant so much to him. How moved the younger man must have been to receive and to read that letter.
Even as he read he could bring to mind times when that older man had a real gift of being able to explain the deep things of life. What a teacher he had been. More than that he had lived out the faith he professed. Somehow he was the kind of person who had discovered a real purpose in life, he knew where he was going. That’s not to say he had had an easy time of it. The younger man could remember times of great difficulty, the chronic illness the older man had had to put up with, family tensions he had experienced, not to mention the times he had suffered physically because of his faith. And yet through it all something had shone out … the fact that he did not bear a grudge. The fact that love shone out of his every word and every action.
In a strange way it had been his experience of suffering that had left the greatest mark, and his patience in facing it, even at the hands of some who had been very cruel. That really did leave a mark.
Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, 11my persecutions, and my suffering the things that happened to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. 12Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
13And not just persecuted. The Christian faith doesn’t absolve you from suffering … how true young Timothy knew that to be. How much more he wanted to learn of Paul his mentor.
Those words present me with the first of my questions …
Who’s done it for you?
For me I think of my parents. I can think of Sunday school teachers. One of our older deacons in the church I grew up in who had had a very hard life. I can think of people I have known.
But I can also think of people who touched me only momentarily as I went to hear them speak, or followed their story as it unfolded on the news. I think of someone called Richard Wurmbrand who preached in Leicester and I went to listen. A powerful presentation of the Christian faith and a moving account of his response to the persecution of Chrsitians in Eastern Europe and particularly Romania. I can think of someone called Gladys Aylward who had been rejected because she was a woman for missionary service, but purchased her own trans-continental railway ticket all the way to China and had devoted herself to one set of children in the face of the onset of revolution and war. A remarkable teacher, a remarkable person.
The preaching and ministry of Martin Luther King left its mark on me … the awfulness of his assassination.
I have found it more recently seeing at first hand the likes of Elias Chacour and their account of Christian faith lived out in the face of persecution. I watched avidly the day those Chilean miners emerged from incarceration in the mine and the moving testimonies some had to give of a 34th presence with them in the mine. And we have an opportunity to hear one of them give his testimony as he comes to St Matthew’s. Jose Henriquez was the 24th out fo the 33 miners to be released that day. He will be joined by Alfredo Cooper, the Chaplain to the President of Chile in what promises to an inspiring evening.
For me there are a mixture of great people and ordinary people who have shaped and influenced me. Often they are people who have not got away with lives free from suffering, but people who have endured great suffering and have opened up a way through that very real world to the kind of faith that means so much.
Think and treasure those who have done it for you.
And then ask but who can you do it for?
Is it someone in your family, a younger person setting out on their faith in the church family. Who can you pass something on to.
But I am not good enough. I am not up to that.
The ones most influential for me were those most ordinary and who felt they had least to give.
So who can you do it for?
What can I share? How can I rise to such a task? I guess that’s what all of us begin to ask as we are challenged to think in that way.
This is the point at which Paul has some very useful things to share in the wise words he writes to Timothy.
First, he is quite clear that actually there are negative influences around and he warns of them … we have to be on the look out too!
But wicked people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving others and being deceived. 14
But then he urges Timothy to something that at first sight focuses on personalities and individuals.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15
That’s one piece of wise counsel we would do well to heed. Bear in mind those who have shaped the person you are. Be the person they helped to shape. Keep at it. Don’t give up. Perseverere.
But don’t just idolise a person. It is so easy to slip into a kind of cult of personality. As far as Paul was concerned there was something else to draw on to.
And that is something we too can draw on.
But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, 15and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16
What place do the Scriptures have in shaping us as people? Timothy had been steeped in them since childhood. These were the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people …
Little did he think that this very personal letter would become part of the Sacred Scriptures subsequent generations were going to treasure.
Treasure this book.
In its pages are the stories of so many people whose lives were shaped by Jesus Christ and whose stories can shape our lives too. The Christian faith is focused on Jesus Christ and his story is told in these pages. How important it is for us to immerse ourselves in them.
There’s inspiration to be found here. The people whose stories are told felt the touch of God in their lives and the breath of God coming deep within them. The people who passed on the books that make up the Sacred scriptures felt that inspiration of God, the breath of God coming deep within them.
All scripture is inspired by God
I love the word Paul actually uses – it is one that he has coined. Literally it means – God-breathed. It is as if these words have something special in them that is ‘God-breathed’.
and is* useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Can we be up for that as well? Not just the teaching … but are we prepared to be challenged by what we read, corrected, set right.
Is this for us a training manual in the ways of righteousness and justice?
There are challenges here for us all!
17so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
That’s what it boils down to!
We each of us have a task to do – to belong to God makes a world of difference to us all. But to belong to God means getting stuck in with the good work that we are called to do.
So … never let it be said these pages are just interesting, just an inspiration. They are there to make a difference for each one of us and to shape the very people we are and the things we do.
There’s one more question to ask.
What are we going to do?
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Surprised by Jesus
This sermon was preached by John Lawrence, a lay minister from Holy Apostles' Church, Cheltenham, at Highbury on Sunday, 9th January.
Have you been to a pantomime this Christmas? We are going next Saturday to Aladdin, at the Bacon Theatre at Dean Close School. What is the appeal of panto. One appeal for me is that particular production will have my daughter in it – in fact she is rehearsing as I speak. But part of the universal appeal of panto is the combination of the familiar and the unexpected. I haven’t seen Aladdin yet, but I know there will be singing, booing, dancing, and shouting out“Oh no it isn’t”. Every year those familiar ingredients are included. And yet, you can’t simply repeat the same production every year. The songs will be different from last year, the script will be different from last year, some of the jokes will be awful – but they will be different awful jokes.
Now hang on to that mix of the familiar and the new, because something similar happens in this story of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew isn’t writing light entertainment, but there are parallels. The baptism account is a little like a joke. It begins with a building sense of tension, tension caused by expectation. And that expectation will be met in a surprising way. Surprise makes a joke funny. But with Jesus the surprise is not funny – it is lifechanging. Jesus makes a surprise beginning to a ministry which will continue to surprise. So we need to understand the source of the tension. Because it isn’t Jesus who is tense – it is John the Baptist
John’s clothes are unusual, his food is unusual, what he says is unusual. He is strange and yet he is familiar. For in word and action John clearly belongs to the great line of the prophets, reaching back into Israel’s past.
Two familiar themes in John’s preaching, each with something new.
The need for repentance. This had been the message of many of the prophets. But John has a new twist. He is John the Baptiser. He uses a ceremony that has been added to Jewish life since the time of the prophets, the ceremony of Baptism. And John offers baptism in a new way. It isn’t just for converts to Judaism – it is for everyone.
Theme two is the coming of God’s chosen one. Mt. 3:11 “I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
Again the coming of God’s chosen one was a familiar theme of the prophets. But the twist is that no longer is the event in the distance, now it is here. Yet John’s expectations of the one who will come after him are very much in the line of the prophets. John speaks of power and fire He seems to be expecting a big entrance, explosive arrival.
When Jesus turns up at the River Jordan, John knows this is the fulfilment of his expectations. Yet he is tense, because this is definitely not what he has been expecting. Jesus arrives on foot, without fanfare, seemingly alone, and asking to be baptised.
This is a puzzling event. John is puzzled. I’ve been to many baptisms. I’ve been baptised myself. As father and godfather, I’ve said the baptismal words for others. And this event puzzles me too. What is baptism all about? John called his baptism a baptism of repentance. Baptism was a symbolic washing, a public sign of turning away from a wrong way of living. At baptisms, what is the answer we have spoken for ourselves, spoken for those we love, heard others say. The answer is “I repent of my sins”
[PAUSE] John knows Jesus has nothing to repent of. Jesus doesn’t need to be washed clean. It doesn’t make sense. John has no choice but to protest:
Mt. 3:14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”
But Jesus words of explanation are less than crystal clear: Mt. 3:15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.”
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, puts Jesus words like this: “This is how it’s got to be right now’ said Jesus. “this is the right way for us to complete God’s whole saving plan”.
I imagine John the Baptist shrugged his shoulders and said “If you insist”.
Now the problem for us is that Matthew’s gospel wasn’t designed to be read entire, not in little chunks, one Sunday at a time. His gospel is extremely carefully structured and the structure is part of the story. And here in the third chapter, Matthew is establishing expectations which won’t fully make sense for another 24 chapters. He is using allusions, making references which probably pass 21st century listeners by. However, they would have been a lot more obvious to 1st century Jewish listeners.
44 years after England won the world cup, if you mention the phrase “They think it’s all over” to an English football fan, they will think of Geoff Hurst’s clinching goal in that final. You don’t have to say any more than those few words—the event is so much talked about and remembered, even today, that people know what you are talking about.
Every nation, every people, every group, has common memories like that. And for Jews, among the most important events they remembered were those of the Exodus, the escape from Egypt through the Red Sea and the Wilderness. So what happens when Jewish listeners hear of Jesus passing through water, then spending time in the Wilderness. Spending how long in the Wilderness? Well not 40 years, but 40 days! They instantly [snap fingers] pick up that God’s plan for Jesus ministry looks very like the Exodus experience of the whole Jewish nation.
You may be thinking –that’s nice. But I’m not a first-century Jew, I’m a 21st century Briton. What does it mean for me?
This is what it means for me, what it means for us. It means that from the very start of his ministry Jesus identifies with his people. It demonstrates that from the outset Jesus fulfils the promise of Emmanuel, God with us. Because Jesus is identified with his people in chapter 3 of Matthew, he continues to be identified with us, his people, in chapter 27 of Matthew. Jesus is identified with his people even in the agony of the cross, and somehow out of that identification comes Jesus ability to take upon himself the terrible consequence of our sin and wrongdoing.
John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. In other words it was a sign that people recognised their need to be forgiven. But John’s baptism had no power to promise forgiveness.
When Jesus identifies himself with his people in baptism, he is laying down the foundation that will make baptism in the name of Jesus Christ a baptism, not just of repentance, but a baptism of forgiveness, forgiveness that was purchased when Jesus identified himself with us upon the cross.
Here is the solution to the riddle which John the Baptist faced. How could this humble, powerless man Jesus, be the same one who would take John’s ministry on to a new level. How could this candidate for a dunk in a dirty river be the one who was coming “with power” to bring in a baptism of “the Holy Spirit and of fire”.
Jesus comes in power—yes, but it is surprising power rooted in weakness, kingship that willingly takes the role of a servant. Jesus comes as a Saviour who himself becomes helpless.
John, greatest of all the prophets, doesn’t live to see the way all this works out. But John was privileged to be in the water with Jesus the day that Jesus set out. John was there when God showed how the riddle could be answered.
Mt. 3:16 As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.
God validates Jesus ministry from the outset. Yes, his baptism will be a baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus. But the form God’s Spirit adopts is that of a dove, a form of gentleness, a form of vulnerability.
Jesus is the one John expected. He is greater than John, and he comes in power. But he comes in a way that John did not expect, he comes not with the power of a conqueror, but the power of a victim ready to be sacrificed.
We read this passage early in a New Year. That is logical place as we remember the journey from Christmas to Easter. But it also a time to think about change, to take a fresh look, to allow the familiar to be transformed by the new. I quoted Bishop Tom Wright’s earlier. I’d like to end with some words Tom Wright wrote about Jesus’ baptism which spoke to me very powerfully as I prepared this talk. I hope they will encourage you, and challenge you in this New Year of 2011. He writes:
Part of the challenge of this passage is to learn afresh to be surprised by Jesus. He comes to fulfil God's plans, not ours, and even his prophets sometimes seem to misunderstand what he's up to. He will not always play the music we expect. But if we learn to listen carefully to what he says, and watch carefully what he does, we will find that our real longings, the hunger beneath the surface excitement, will be richly met.
At the same time, those who in repentance and faith follow Jesus through baptism and along the road he will now lead us will find, if we listen, that the same voice from heaven speaks to us as well. As we learn to put aside our own plans and submit to his, we may be granted moments of vision: glimpses of his greater reality. And at the centre of that sudden sight we will find our loving father, affirming us as his children, equipping us, too, with his spirit so that our lives may be swept clean and made ready for use.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you that you were willing to be identified with us in your life and death. Help us to embrace the surprise you bring, and to be identified with you in your power and your gentleness.
Have you been to a pantomime this Christmas? We are going next Saturday to Aladdin, at the Bacon Theatre at Dean Close School. What is the appeal of panto. One appeal for me is that particular production will have my daughter in it – in fact she is rehearsing as I speak. But part of the universal appeal of panto is the combination of the familiar and the unexpected. I haven’t seen Aladdin yet, but I know there will be singing, booing, dancing, and shouting out“Oh no it isn’t”. Every year those familiar ingredients are included. And yet, you can’t simply repeat the same production every year. The songs will be different from last year, the script will be different from last year, some of the jokes will be awful – but they will be different awful jokes.
Now hang on to that mix of the familiar and the new, because something similar happens in this story of Matthew’s gospel. Matthew isn’t writing light entertainment, but there are parallels. The baptism account is a little like a joke. It begins with a building sense of tension, tension caused by expectation. And that expectation will be met in a surprising way. Surprise makes a joke funny. But with Jesus the surprise is not funny – it is lifechanging. Jesus makes a surprise beginning to a ministry which will continue to surprise. So we need to understand the source of the tension. Because it isn’t Jesus who is tense – it is John the Baptist
John’s clothes are unusual, his food is unusual, what he says is unusual. He is strange and yet he is familiar. For in word and action John clearly belongs to the great line of the prophets, reaching back into Israel’s past.
Two familiar themes in John’s preaching, each with something new.
The need for repentance. This had been the message of many of the prophets. But John has a new twist. He is John the Baptiser. He uses a ceremony that has been added to Jewish life since the time of the prophets, the ceremony of Baptism. And John offers baptism in a new way. It isn’t just for converts to Judaism – it is for everyone.
Theme two is the coming of God’s chosen one. Mt. 3:11 “I baptise you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.
Again the coming of God’s chosen one was a familiar theme of the prophets. But the twist is that no longer is the event in the distance, now it is here. Yet John’s expectations of the one who will come after him are very much in the line of the prophets. John speaks of power and fire He seems to be expecting a big entrance, explosive arrival.
When Jesus turns up at the River Jordan, John knows this is the fulfilment of his expectations. Yet he is tense, because this is definitely not what he has been expecting. Jesus arrives on foot, without fanfare, seemingly alone, and asking to be baptised.
This is a puzzling event. John is puzzled. I’ve been to many baptisms. I’ve been baptised myself. As father and godfather, I’ve said the baptismal words for others. And this event puzzles me too. What is baptism all about? John called his baptism a baptism of repentance. Baptism was a symbolic washing, a public sign of turning away from a wrong way of living. At baptisms, what is the answer we have spoken for ourselves, spoken for those we love, heard others say. The answer is “I repent of my sins”
[PAUSE] John knows Jesus has nothing to repent of. Jesus doesn’t need to be washed clean. It doesn’t make sense. John has no choice but to protest:
Mt. 3:14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”
But Jesus words of explanation are less than crystal clear: Mt. 3:15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.”
Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, puts Jesus words like this: “This is how it’s got to be right now’ said Jesus. “this is the right way for us to complete God’s whole saving plan”.
I imagine John the Baptist shrugged his shoulders and said “If you insist”.
Now the problem for us is that Matthew’s gospel wasn’t designed to be read entire, not in little chunks, one Sunday at a time. His gospel is extremely carefully structured and the structure is part of the story. And here in the third chapter, Matthew is establishing expectations which won’t fully make sense for another 24 chapters. He is using allusions, making references which probably pass 21st century listeners by. However, they would have been a lot more obvious to 1st century Jewish listeners.
44 years after England won the world cup, if you mention the phrase “They think it’s all over” to an English football fan, they will think of Geoff Hurst’s clinching goal in that final. You don’t have to say any more than those few words—the event is so much talked about and remembered, even today, that people know what you are talking about.
Every nation, every people, every group, has common memories like that. And for Jews, among the most important events they remembered were those of the Exodus, the escape from Egypt through the Red Sea and the Wilderness. So what happens when Jewish listeners hear of Jesus passing through water, then spending time in the Wilderness. Spending how long in the Wilderness? Well not 40 years, but 40 days! They instantly [snap fingers] pick up that God’s plan for Jesus ministry looks very like the Exodus experience of the whole Jewish nation.
You may be thinking –that’s nice. But I’m not a first-century Jew, I’m a 21st century Briton. What does it mean for me?
This is what it means for me, what it means for us. It means that from the very start of his ministry Jesus identifies with his people. It demonstrates that from the outset Jesus fulfils the promise of Emmanuel, God with us. Because Jesus is identified with his people in chapter 3 of Matthew, he continues to be identified with us, his people, in chapter 27 of Matthew. Jesus is identified with his people even in the agony of the cross, and somehow out of that identification comes Jesus ability to take upon himself the terrible consequence of our sin and wrongdoing.
John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. In other words it was a sign that people recognised their need to be forgiven. But John’s baptism had no power to promise forgiveness.
When Jesus identifies himself with his people in baptism, he is laying down the foundation that will make baptism in the name of Jesus Christ a baptism, not just of repentance, but a baptism of forgiveness, forgiveness that was purchased when Jesus identified himself with us upon the cross.
Here is the solution to the riddle which John the Baptist faced. How could this humble, powerless man Jesus, be the same one who would take John’s ministry on to a new level. How could this candidate for a dunk in a dirty river be the one who was coming “with power” to bring in a baptism of “the Holy Spirit and of fire”.
Jesus comes in power—yes, but it is surprising power rooted in weakness, kingship that willingly takes the role of a servant. Jesus comes as a Saviour who himself becomes helpless.
John, greatest of all the prophets, doesn’t live to see the way all this works out. But John was privileged to be in the water with Jesus the day that Jesus set out. John was there when God showed how the riddle could be answered.
Mt. 3:16 As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.
God validates Jesus ministry from the outset. Yes, his baptism will be a baptism of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descends on Jesus. But the form God’s Spirit adopts is that of a dove, a form of gentleness, a form of vulnerability.
Jesus is the one John expected. He is greater than John, and he comes in power. But he comes in a way that John did not expect, he comes not with the power of a conqueror, but the power of a victim ready to be sacrificed.
We read this passage early in a New Year. That is logical place as we remember the journey from Christmas to Easter. But it also a time to think about change, to take a fresh look, to allow the familiar to be transformed by the new. I quoted Bishop Tom Wright’s earlier. I’d like to end with some words Tom Wright wrote about Jesus’ baptism which spoke to me very powerfully as I prepared this talk. I hope they will encourage you, and challenge you in this New Year of 2011. He writes:
Part of the challenge of this passage is to learn afresh to be surprised by Jesus. He comes to fulfil God's plans, not ours, and even his prophets sometimes seem to misunderstand what he's up to. He will not always play the music we expect. But if we learn to listen carefully to what he says, and watch carefully what he does, we will find that our real longings, the hunger beneath the surface excitement, will be richly met.
At the same time, those who in repentance and faith follow Jesus through baptism and along the road he will now lead us will find, if we listen, that the same voice from heaven speaks to us as well. As we learn to put aside our own plans and submit to his, we may be granted moments of vision: glimpses of his greater reality. And at the centre of that sudden sight we will find our loving father, affirming us as his children, equipping us, too, with his spirit so that our lives may be swept clean and made ready for use.
Prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank you that you were willing to be identified with us in your life and death. Help us to embrace the surprise you bring, and to be identified with you in your power and your gentleness.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Christmas meets New Year as Christ shapes us all
As today we sing carols for the last time and mark the end of our Christmas services, we also mark the beginning of a New Year. That’s not without significance.
Just as a dog is for life and not just for Christmas, so too you might say that Christmas is for life and not just for Christmas.
Christmas is the celebration of Emmanuel, God with us, of the Word become flesh, of God incarnate.
We have been telling the story of people whose lives were changed by the coming of Christ – Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men and the Shepherds, and now today Simeon and Anna.
Have you noticed how time and again through the Christmas story the people whose lives are changed are people who have been outsiders like the shepherds, people who have faced adversity like the young girl expecting a baby, the would-be father challenged to support her, people who find themselves drawn towards danger like the Wise Men encountering the cruelty of Herod. There are people like Simeon and Anna, you might also think of Elizabeth and Zechariah who have been waiting for God to DO something for a lifetime.
With the coming of Christ all has changed.
And their lives are different.
What about us?
Is Christmas just a festive celebration to give us a feel-good factor at what really was for us this year the height of winter?
Or do we too encounter God with us in Jesus, do we see the word made flesh full of grace and truth, do we see in Christ God incarnate? Are we prepared for our lives to be shaped by what we have encountered in Christ Jesus.
To meet with Christ is to meet with someone who will shape our lives. Are we prepared to be shaped by this Jesus? I have read the first of Highbury’s two books for Christmas that I wrote about in the December Highbury News. I am awaiting delivery of Jonathan Rowe’s.
Graham Adams has written a thought provoking study of who Jesus is. He suggests that the wonderful thing about Christ is that he enters into real relationships with other people that shake him, and then shape the person he is. Graham suggests that in meeting with Christ we should be prepared to be shaken and open ourselves to be in real relationships with other people who will then shape who we are.
As the Christmas story meets the New Year, maybe there’s something in that. Are we prepared to be shaken by Christ and open ourselves up to other people in such a way that we will be shaped by them.
The challenge of the Gospel is not so much to shape other people, as to love other people and that involves engaging with them in such a way that we end up being different people too.
What kind of shape will we take as we let Emmanuel, God Incarnate, the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ shake us and shape us in the year ahead?
Nowhere is there a better description of the ‘shape’ we should take than in the opening verses of Philippians 2.
Paul speaks of encouragement, consolation, love, sharing, compassion, sympathy, joy. He speaks of being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. He speaks of the need to put away selfish ambition and conceit, and in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Jesus comes to shake us out of our centredness on self, and shape us around the needs of others. We take Christ’s shape as we look not to our own interests but to the interests of others.
The key to it all is to think the thoughts of Christ, have within us the mind of Christ.
Let’s hear those words of Paul in the opening verses of Philippians 2.
If then there is any encouragement in Christ,
any consolation from love,
any sharing in the Spirit,
any compassion and sympathy,
2make my joy complete:
be of the same mind,
having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
4Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interests of others.
5Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus. 6
That then begs the question – what’s it like when we think ourselves into the mind of Christ, when we seek to allow Christ’s mind to dwell in us?
Here we come to the heart of the Christmas message.
We love in the way he loves.
That is to say we not to imagine our task is to simply change other people. We are to love other people … with the love that Christ shows. We are to open ourselves to others in such a way that they will shape us – we are in Paul’s words to “regard others as better” and look to “the interests of others”.
Paul goes on to point us to Jesus who is one with God, and yet humbles himself to become a slave, a servant of all, he humbles himself to the point of self-sacrifical death upon the cross.
The pattern is for us to humble ourselves as Christ humbled himself.
Humble ourselves to the point at which we are slaves to others.
Humble ourselves to the point at which we deny ourselves and take up the cross of Christ.
But through the cross and that self-sacrifice Christ is exalted to the right hand of God to the point at which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
It is through that process that we will be shaken, we will be shaped differently, but as we come through that process we shall be lifted up into the presence of God, as Christ too was exalted.
These words of Paul are an encouragement to us – that as Christ shares with us at our lowest point so we too can share with him at that high point in oneness with God.
But they are also a challenge to us. They shake us. We are not to exploit equality with God, and seek after supremacy over others. We are challenged to empty ourselves to the point of taking the cross. Then as we share in that exaltation, we are to become part of that task Christ sets out to share the Good News with others so that every tongue can confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Jesus Christ, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The question is … are we up for it? That’s a question I want all of us to reflect on in a few moments time.
Engaging with others involves exposing ourselves to being shaped by them – it is as we enter into those relationships that we shall find together with those others we are shaken by Christ and shaped by him.
This is a task we share together.
Our Christmas collection is for Children’s Homes in Kerala State – if you couldn’t make it to the Christmas service there’s still time to hand in your contribution. Sue Cole will be visiting the CHIKS homes later this month and taking our love and greetings with her. In the Autumn we heard from Wayne Hawkins about the CWM partnership that links us with the church world-wide. We had greetings from Stefan and Birgit as Stefan is involved in the theological seminary in Londrinia, and Birgit is involved in that drug rehabilitation program in Brazil. We heard from Philip in Southam about the One Respe project we are partners with through the Congregational Federation as they build Honour and Respect in the Dominican Republic, not least among Haitian people seeking refuge there. We shall shortly be hearing from Jonathan and Hilary Rowe as they are at work in SEUT, the theological seminary in Madrid and remembering them in their future plans together too.
Over Christmas we had greetings from the wider flung Highbury family – people like Sandra and Petra and Katja and David and others of the volunteers who spent a year with us. We heard from Graham, from James, from mark Evans all of whom are engaged in ministry in churches.
There is a wonderful sense of being part of something that is open to being shaken and in the work of shaking others and shaping them in Christ.
I want to finish with a story of encouragement. We have been hearing of the devastation that has hit the ancient Christian communities of Iraq. Over Christmas we had not heard from Andrew White. And then Rob Lacey it was who spotted his story in the Daily Mail. Having given up a career in medicine to go into the ministry, it was way back in 1998 at the age of 33 that he took up the post of Director of the International Centre for Reconciliaion in Coventry Cathedral. Within three weeks he was diagnosed as having MS, multiple sclerosis. Admitted to hospital, his wife transferred from one hospital to be in the same hospital as Andrew as she was about to give birth. “I was upset for about one hour,” he is quoted in the Mail as saying. “Then I thought I have to get on with life.”
Shaken he was one to shake others up … and he went to the Middle East as Special Envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury. His worsening condition meant he had to return in 2003 and the Archbishop informed him that he was not well enough to take up parish post. He commented. “I wasn’t devastated. I don’t get devastated.” He determined on another course of action.
“I had been to Baghdad several times and though, “Right, I’ll go and live and work there.”
It’s where he has been ever since.
With a remarkable scholarship in Jewish, Islmaic and Christian studies behind him, he was won the respect of people in most communities. But at this time is very much at risk.
This is a story for encouragement. But the story is not one I had expected.
In 1998 he describes how he had supported fundraising for a bone marrow transplant centre in Baghdad’s major teaching hospital.
He now describes how his condition has deteriorated. And how at that very same hospital they are pioneering a treatment for MS that is not yet licensed over here. It involves a blood purification process, and is the fruit of stem cell research.
With 17 monthly treatments behind him has not suffered a single side effect and immense improvement in his condition. How ironic, he says, that Baghdad is ahead of the UK in this modern treatment.
At the end of the article he is quoted as saying something I found very challenging, and also remarkably encouraging.
“The church is not just about worship, it provides food, clothes and health care. We have three doctors and three dentists in our clinic. Most of our patients are Muslim and we are delighted about that.”
And then he says this.
“If I hadn’t had MS I wouldn’t have gone to live in Baghdad, so it has all been for a purpose.”
The first Christmas shook a lot of people up – Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men, the Shepherds, Simeon and Anna, Elizabeth and Zechariah. And it shaped the rest of their lives.
Are we up for being shaken up … and allowing this Christ to shape the rest of our lives.
Sometimes we are shaken in unexpected ways. Always Christ is there with us to shape the future that lies ahead of us.
As something of a New Year resolution, I am going to invite those who have made a commitment as church members to renew that commitment in the simply statement of faith that is made by those who join us. And if you feel you can echo these words then please do so, and have a word with me as we would love to welcome all who feel at home with us in the life of the church to share with us in membership of the church here at Highbury.
Do you believe in God and in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour? We do.
Do you promise as you are able to play your full part in the life and work of the church here at Highbury, in its worship, in church meeting, in giving, in its mission and service of God and the community? We do.
Just as a dog is for life and not just for Christmas, so too you might say that Christmas is for life and not just for Christmas.
Christmas is the celebration of Emmanuel, God with us, of the Word become flesh, of God incarnate.
We have been telling the story of people whose lives were changed by the coming of Christ – Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men and the Shepherds, and now today Simeon and Anna.
Have you noticed how time and again through the Christmas story the people whose lives are changed are people who have been outsiders like the shepherds, people who have faced adversity like the young girl expecting a baby, the would-be father challenged to support her, people who find themselves drawn towards danger like the Wise Men encountering the cruelty of Herod. There are people like Simeon and Anna, you might also think of Elizabeth and Zechariah who have been waiting for God to DO something for a lifetime.
With the coming of Christ all has changed.
And their lives are different.
What about us?
Is Christmas just a festive celebration to give us a feel-good factor at what really was for us this year the height of winter?
Or do we too encounter God with us in Jesus, do we see the word made flesh full of grace and truth, do we see in Christ God incarnate? Are we prepared for our lives to be shaped by what we have encountered in Christ Jesus.
To meet with Christ is to meet with someone who will shape our lives. Are we prepared to be shaped by this Jesus? I have read the first of Highbury’s two books for Christmas that I wrote about in the December Highbury News. I am awaiting delivery of Jonathan Rowe’s.
Graham Adams has written a thought provoking study of who Jesus is. He suggests that the wonderful thing about Christ is that he enters into real relationships with other people that shake him, and then shape the person he is. Graham suggests that in meeting with Christ we should be prepared to be shaken and open ourselves to be in real relationships with other people who will then shape who we are.
As the Christmas story meets the New Year, maybe there’s something in that. Are we prepared to be shaken by Christ and open ourselves up to other people in such a way that we will be shaped by them.
The challenge of the Gospel is not so much to shape other people, as to love other people and that involves engaging with them in such a way that we end up being different people too.
What kind of shape will we take as we let Emmanuel, God Incarnate, the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ shake us and shape us in the year ahead?
Nowhere is there a better description of the ‘shape’ we should take than in the opening verses of Philippians 2.
Paul speaks of encouragement, consolation, love, sharing, compassion, sympathy, joy. He speaks of being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. He speaks of the need to put away selfish ambition and conceit, and in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
Jesus comes to shake us out of our centredness on self, and shape us around the needs of others. We take Christ’s shape as we look not to our own interests but to the interests of others.
The key to it all is to think the thoughts of Christ, have within us the mind of Christ.
Let’s hear those words of Paul in the opening verses of Philippians 2.
If then there is any encouragement in Christ,
any consolation from love,
any sharing in the Spirit,
any compassion and sympathy,
2make my joy complete:
be of the same mind,
having the same love,
being in full accord and of one mind.
3Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit,
but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.
4Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interests of others.
5Let the same mind be in you that was* in Christ Jesus. 6
That then begs the question – what’s it like when we think ourselves into the mind of Christ, when we seek to allow Christ’s mind to dwell in us?
Here we come to the heart of the Christmas message.
We love in the way he loves.
That is to say we not to imagine our task is to simply change other people. We are to love other people … with the love that Christ shows. We are to open ourselves to others in such a way that they will shape us – we are in Paul’s words to “regard others as better” and look to “the interests of others”.
Paul goes on to point us to Jesus who is one with God, and yet humbles himself to become a slave, a servant of all, he humbles himself to the point of self-sacrifical death upon the cross.
The pattern is for us to humble ourselves as Christ humbled himself.
Humble ourselves to the point at which we are slaves to others.
Humble ourselves to the point at which we deny ourselves and take up the cross of Christ.
But through the cross and that self-sacrifice Christ is exalted to the right hand of God to the point at which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
It is through that process that we will be shaken, we will be shaped differently, but as we come through that process we shall be lifted up into the presence of God, as Christ too was exalted.
These words of Paul are an encouragement to us – that as Christ shares with us at our lowest point so we too can share with him at that high point in oneness with God.
But they are also a challenge to us. They shake us. We are not to exploit equality with God, and seek after supremacy over others. We are challenged to empty ourselves to the point of taking the cross. Then as we share in that exaltation, we are to become part of that task Christ sets out to share the Good News with others so that every tongue can confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Jesus Christ, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.And being found in human form, 8 he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The question is … are we up for it? That’s a question I want all of us to reflect on in a few moments time.
Engaging with others involves exposing ourselves to being shaped by them – it is as we enter into those relationships that we shall find together with those others we are shaken by Christ and shaped by him.
This is a task we share together.
Our Christmas collection is for Children’s Homes in Kerala State – if you couldn’t make it to the Christmas service there’s still time to hand in your contribution. Sue Cole will be visiting the CHIKS homes later this month and taking our love and greetings with her. In the Autumn we heard from Wayne Hawkins about the CWM partnership that links us with the church world-wide. We had greetings from Stefan and Birgit as Stefan is involved in the theological seminary in Londrinia, and Birgit is involved in that drug rehabilitation program in Brazil. We heard from Philip in Southam about the One Respe project we are partners with through the Congregational Federation as they build Honour and Respect in the Dominican Republic, not least among Haitian people seeking refuge there. We shall shortly be hearing from Jonathan and Hilary Rowe as they are at work in SEUT, the theological seminary in Madrid and remembering them in their future plans together too.
Over Christmas we had greetings from the wider flung Highbury family – people like Sandra and Petra and Katja and David and others of the volunteers who spent a year with us. We heard from Graham, from James, from mark Evans all of whom are engaged in ministry in churches.
There is a wonderful sense of being part of something that is open to being shaken and in the work of shaking others and shaping them in Christ.
I want to finish with a story of encouragement. We have been hearing of the devastation that has hit the ancient Christian communities of Iraq. Over Christmas we had not heard from Andrew White. And then Rob Lacey it was who spotted his story in the Daily Mail. Having given up a career in medicine to go into the ministry, it was way back in 1998 at the age of 33 that he took up the post of Director of the International Centre for Reconciliaion in Coventry Cathedral. Within three weeks he was diagnosed as having MS, multiple sclerosis. Admitted to hospital, his wife transferred from one hospital to be in the same hospital as Andrew as she was about to give birth. “I was upset for about one hour,” he is quoted in the Mail as saying. “Then I thought I have to get on with life.”
Shaken he was one to shake others up … and he went to the Middle East as Special Envoy for the Archbishop of Canterbury. His worsening condition meant he had to return in 2003 and the Archbishop informed him that he was not well enough to take up parish post. He commented. “I wasn’t devastated. I don’t get devastated.” He determined on another course of action.
“I had been to Baghdad several times and though, “Right, I’ll go and live and work there.”
It’s where he has been ever since.
With a remarkable scholarship in Jewish, Islmaic and Christian studies behind him, he was won the respect of people in most communities. But at this time is very much at risk.
This is a story for encouragement. But the story is not one I had expected.
In 1998 he describes how he had supported fundraising for a bone marrow transplant centre in Baghdad’s major teaching hospital.
He now describes how his condition has deteriorated. And how at that very same hospital they are pioneering a treatment for MS that is not yet licensed over here. It involves a blood purification process, and is the fruit of stem cell research.
With 17 monthly treatments behind him has not suffered a single side effect and immense improvement in his condition. How ironic, he says, that Baghdad is ahead of the UK in this modern treatment.
At the end of the article he is quoted as saying something I found very challenging, and also remarkably encouraging.
“The church is not just about worship, it provides food, clothes and health care. We have three doctors and three dentists in our clinic. Most of our patients are Muslim and we are delighted about that.”
And then he says this.
“If I hadn’t had MS I wouldn’t have gone to live in Baghdad, so it has all been for a purpose.”
The first Christmas shook a lot of people up – Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men, the Shepherds, Simeon and Anna, Elizabeth and Zechariah. And it shaped the rest of their lives.
Are we up for being shaken up … and allowing this Christ to shape the rest of our lives.
Sometimes we are shaken in unexpected ways. Always Christ is there with us to shape the future that lies ahead of us.
As something of a New Year resolution, I am going to invite those who have made a commitment as church members to renew that commitment in the simply statement of faith that is made by those who join us. And if you feel you can echo these words then please do so, and have a word with me as we would love to welcome all who feel at home with us in the life of the church to share with us in membership of the church here at Highbury.
Do you believe in God and in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour? We do.
Do you promise as you are able to play your full part in the life and work of the church here at Highbury, in its worship, in church meeting, in giving, in its mission and service of God and the community? We do.
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