In all things ... God

I like having company when I do the washing up after Sunday lunch.  And Geoffrey Smith has been good company.  A stalwart on that favourite after-Sunday-lunch programme on Radio 4, Gardeners’ Question Time and many a TV gardenin

g show – I have enjoyed his gentle sense of humour.   As tributes were paid to him over the weekend following his death at the end of this week, one comment caught my attention.  He had a love of the garden and of things that grow – so much so that he would talk to them and lovingly nurture them.  He had a recipe for those times when things get on top of you.  When things were weighing him down he would simply look at a flower.

 

Geoffrey Smith is in good company.  The book of Job tells the story of someone weighed down by the ills of the world.  It is the book in the Bible that grapples with unwarranted suffering and poses the question how can you cope when everything goes wrong.

 

The Book of Job recognises the truth Geoffrey Smith held so dear.  It is in the book of Job that some of the finest passages celebrating the wonder of God’s creation appear.

 

Time and again Job senses the awesome nature of God and as he looks at the beauty of God’s creation he holds it in wonder and in awe.  As the book unfolds it is that sense of wonder and awe he has with the God who is beyond all his understanding that he is able to look at his own situation and get it somehow into perspective.

 

Here in Job 9 he has a sense of the awesome power of the God of creation as he looks at the mountains and their grandeur, at the beauty of God’s world, and as night falls he looks up into the night sky and senses the wonder of God.

 

It was from Job 9 that our Call to Worship came.

God is so wise and powerful

No one can stand up against him.

 

We cannot understand the great things he does

And to  his miracles there is no end.

As we gather together in our worship, how good it is simply to wonder at the greatness of God.  Let’s do that as we read one of those passages, let’s couple with it one of the wonders of God’s world here on our doorstep – the River Severn with the second highest tides in the world, as Jenny and Ted saw it the other week, the snowdrops at Colesbourne and the night sky in all its splendour!  After our reading we will sing our praises to God.

 

Job 9:1-10

 

A time of praise and worship with Hy-Spirit

 

I am so frustrated when science and religion are seen only to clash with each other.  The more I learn about science the more in awe I am at the wonder of the world of God’s creation.

 

Some people, not least those scientists who reject any belief in God, with an eighteenth century, philosophical idea of God that is not a very helpful way of understanding the nature of God.

 

It received its classic formulation by someone called William Paley.  He suggested that if you discovered a watch with all its intricate mechanism lying abandoned in a field you would be quite right to deduce from a study of the watch that it had been made by a skilful watchmaker.

 

Look at anything in the garden, not least one of those wonderful flowers that meant the world to Geoffery Smith and you can conclude they must have been made by a skilled flower-maker – and that’s God.

 

It’s all right as far as it goes.  But it’s not the only way of seeing God.

 

I think it’s helpful to go back beyond William Paley to earlier ways of seeing God.

 

It was not so much that God is like a watchmaker who has made his watch and there it is.  Rather God is in all things.

 

Take the 17^th century poet, George Herbert and one of the hymns that I have chosen for a marathon hymn sing in aid of the Anthony Nolan Trust: its opening words catch something for more helpful for me …

 

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see.

 

Now that opens up a different set of possibilities.  Look at the wonder of anything in the natural world and in the universe and beyond … don’t look for a mechanistic deity like the watchmaker.  Instead, learn to see God in all things.

 

He is there at the beginning, he is there in creation, he is in that life force that energy that brings things into being.  He is there at each stage of evolution.  Whichever way evolution goes, whichever branch of the tree survives – God is there.

 

Teach me, my God and King

In all things thee to see.

 

For there is nothing in the present or the future, in height or in depths, nothing in the all of creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

 

George Herbert was living at a time of great scientific advance.  Having been born in Montgomery, he had spent a short while in Oxford University, before becoming Public Orator of the University of Cambridge.  Thomas Harriott, the Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University was one of those on the cutting edge of scientific discovery.  An astronomer he had accompanied Walter Raleigh as navigator on his voyages of discovery.  He had been implicated in the Gunpowder plot, and he ended up teaching mathematics and astronomy in the University of Oxford.

 

It was 400 years ago this year that Thomas Harriot made a remarkable instrument using lenses and tubes.  He was one of many all over Europe racing to develop a way of looking at the stars and at the moon that would take the world by storm.  It was not Thomas Harriot who got the accolade for being the first to use this new scientific device.  It was Galileo Galilei.

 

As Galileo’s story is told at his 400^th Anniversary in this International Year of Astronomy it is sad that people will dwell on the clash between church and science once again.

 

The reaction of those in the church who rejected Galileo and hounded him out, was not typical of everyone.

 

George Herbert was one of those not troubled by the advances of science.  He simply found it even more awesome as those advances opened up for him the wonder of God’s world.

 

It was between 1613 and 1615 that the word ‘glass’ was first used of a telescope.  It wasn’t long after that that the deeply devout George Herbert wrote this poem as part of a collection only published after his death that explored the depths of the Christian faith in the most wonderful of ways.

 

You can just imagine the scene – he has seen his first telescope.  His first glass.  It is beautifully crafted from brass – a precision made instrument.  It’s enough just to look at it in wonder at its beauty.  Indeed you can picture George Herbert walking around it and letting his eye rest on it.

 

A man that looks on glass

On it may stay his eye.

 

How true.  Simply look at this remarkable piece of engineering and marvel.  But wait a moment there’s more that you can do.

 

Take it out into the dark of a clear night sky.  And then don’t simply allow your eye to rest on it, but put your eye to the eye piece and look through it.

 

Imagine, you have never seen a telescope before. You have never looked through a telescope at the moon, at Jupiter, at Venus or at the stars!

 

It’s wonderful.

 

 

A man that looks on glass,

On it may stay his eye;

Or if hepleaseth, through it pass,

And then the heaven espy.

 

Wonderful.  Here in this poem, we encounter the awe and wonder that science evokes in the  heart of a deeply devout believer in God.

 

That’s the awe and the wonder I shared with the  Brownies at their sleepover last weekend as we went into the garden and spotted the very things Job had seen – the bear, the hunter, the Pleiades.  There they were.  And we could all see them.

 

Teach me, my God and King

In all things thee to see.

 

But this awe and wonder in George Herbert’s heart did not only make him see things differently, it made him do things differently too.

 

See God in all things, and all things become important in the eyes of God and in the presence of God.  Even the littlest of things in what we do in our lives  become all important.  On this St David’s Day it is not only St David who celebrated the little things, it is the little things that George Herbert of Montgomery wants us to see to be all important.

 

Teach me my God and King

In all things thee to see

And what I do in anything

To do it as for thee.

 

This is exactly what Paul is getting at.  As we come to the realisation that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, so we need to realise that in living our Christian lives we must heed his words in Colossians 3:17.  Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

 

Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.

 

That if you like is the measure of everything we do.  Is this something I can do in the name of the Lord Jesus?  It is also the spur to all we do.  Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.

 

If mathematicians and astronomers were making discoveries about the universe, chemistry was still in its infancy.  Alchemy was the quest to find a substance that would turn base metal to gold, the dullest to the shiniest and most splendid of metals.  Such a substance had a technical name:  tincture.  Others were looking for an elusive stone that would turn all tings to gold.  To find that most famous stone that turns all things to gold was the quest many set out on.

 

George Herbert was sceptical of such a quest: in due course alchemy proved very much a dead end.

 

But do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus and the dullest things can be transformed.  Maybe this is the tincture that can turn the dross of our daily humdrum living to the gold of God’s presence.

 

The thing is that this is open to everyone.

 

All may of thee partake:

Nothing can be so mean,

Which, with this tincture, “For thy sake”

Will not grow bright and clean.

 

Do things for Christ’s sake.  Whatever you do, do it “for thy sake’ and see the difference it makes.  All things grow bright and clean.

 

The tincture is this ‘clause’  “For thy sake”

 

This applies across the board to the very meanest of tasks.  Maybe even washing up after Sunday lunch!

 

A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine;

Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,

Makes that and the action fine.

 

This is the famous stone

That turneth all to gold:

For that which God doth touch and own

Cannot for less be told.

 

That’s the whole point.  God’s touch is on everything.  Everything is God’s.

 

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things thee to see

And what I do in anything

To do it as for Thee.

 

 

Serving God

a sermon preached by Becky Hartwell on Sunday, 15th February

 Now last week Richard talked about serving God, it was moving on from the 18+ event that never happened.  In the morning he talked about serving God, by serving others.  Because the fruit of the love of God is at work within us and through this it becomes a joy.

 

And this evening while talking about serving God I want to focus on the idea that serving God doesn’t always have to be something we work up to, something we plan for years, something that can only be done under certain circumstances.  We don’t have to be missionaries, church ministers, doctors in shanty towns.  Instead, serving God can be the day to day things, bringing up your children, helping out a stranger, taking care of someone who needs it.

 

Encouraged by Richard’s services I decided to also look at serving God, looking at those who have served God in unusual ways, or in subtle ways.  While trawling through the mass of information on the internet I found something quite interesting, something called “Sunday School Teacher Appreciation Day”.  Now, I myself have never heard of such a thing, as it turns out it is an American thing.  And yet for all of us who went to church as children we understand the affect that a Sunday School teacher or Junior Church leader has.

 

But I would encourage us all to think of those who have affected our spiritual journey.  It may be that there have been so many people, those we’re not even sure the names of but people who through their words, their actions and their kindness. 

 

Personally for me, there have been children’s leaders, youth workers from our Federation events, family, friends and some lovely ladies from churches when I was growing up.  But there were those who unknowingly had an affect as well.  My friends from university who weren’t Christians but were aware of my behaviour, they knew I was a Christian and were interested on how that affected my behaviour.  No matter what happens we have an affect on those around us, it just depends what sort of affect it is.

 

There is a theory called Locard’s exchange process – now I don’t use intelligent theories in talks often so let’s just hope I can explain it.  In television shows like CSI – Crime Scene Investigators, they can pick up dna or clues because when a person has been at the scene something of the location will be left on the person and vice versa.  It is explained as this “with contact between two items, there will be an exchange”.

 

So what does that mean for us?  Well, it is true for us as well, with contact between two people there will be an exchange. 

 

We remember, even for a short time a rude shop assistant, a helpful person with directions – when I was travelling I remember the towns that had the polite people and those that didn’t.  We can remember those that have challenged us as Junior Church leaders have, those that have left us happy, sad, angry or confused but we do remember people. 

 

In that Locard’s exchange process rings true for us as people, and if we remember others do they remember us?

 

Undoubtedly there are people who have been so grateful for the flowers they have received, an activity that runs well at the end of services but has an affect.  There are those who remember having someone at church chat to them the first time they came, and one of the children even said to me a couple of weeks ago, “Come on Becky, do one of your little prayers” – people remember the contact we have with them.

 

So with contact with two people there will be an exchange.

 

If we look to the story of Jesus washing the feet we can see that exchange.

 

We can see how Jesus affected his disciples, the man they saw as Lord and teacher was kneeling down to wash their feet.  Imagine our teachers doing that for us.  The one we see as the most powerful, important, humbling themselves completely in love and service.  The love that Richard talks about.

 

Jesus wasn’t doing this act because it was all about a lesson, he could have done the same lesson in a different way, without getting his hands dirty.  He knew he was going to die soon, he was going to suffer, be tortured, be in complete pain and in fact be rejected by the men he was bending down to wash the feet of.

 

But he chose that moment to bend down and wash their feet.  These weren’t beautifully manicured feet that had been washed that morning and then kept in socks and shoes.  These were sweaty feet, dirty from walking round the streets probably with marks, grazes and other things on them.  He wasn’t humbling himself in a picture perfect postcard way, he was humbling himself in a complete act of service.  In an act of love.

 

The exchange process was there for the disciples as well.  We can always see the affect Jesus has on others, whether it be aiding them to feel loved, welcoming children to him, confusing and angering the Pharisees.  But the disciples also had an affect on Jesus.

 

Later on in John we hear of Jesus being troubled in spirit, and we hear of his annoyance that the disciples were sleeping while he was praying in Gethsemene.  Jesus came as a person with emotions and taking on experiences in life, people affected him as well as him affecting them.

 

When asked questions by the disciples in this passage Jesus answered with honest, real answers.  He didn’t fob his disciples off with things that would just shut them up.  Jesus spent time with them, he spent time as a human on earth.

 

 

Jesus is a man who served with his heart, an incredible example and a man who has had the biggest effect on our lives.  Jesus did huge acts of service, things that seem to be watered down by calling them service.  We know he died for all of our sins and yet in comparison the washing of the feet is minuscule.  This small act still stands out though as an important act of service.

 

But what about other people in the bible who showed acts of service.  There are the stories that involve a lot of action, planning and time, for example Noah and King David.  Then there were the smaller things, where people served God then and there, taking the gifts that God had given them and then giving them back to him in service.  There was Esther, a beautiful lady who became a Queen and with the help of others saved the Jewish people.

 

Or the story of Paul and Silas, serving God while in jail.  And there was Mary, the mother of Jesus, a lady who when so young gave birth to the Saviour of the world.

 

Instead we heard the story of the birth of Samuel.  Samuel became a very important man in the story of God’s people, a judge, a prophet and the man who anointed King David.

 

However, when we meet him here he is just a baby.  A baby that is truly longed for by his mother.

 

But what makes this a story about someone serving God.

 

In her prayers to God, Hannah says that she is his servant.  Often we forget how we can be serving God in our daily lives, we may consider it is something we can do in years to come, when we are “better” Christians, when we are praying over thirty minutes a day, when we have not done anything wrong in a twenty-four hour period.  And yet, in this moment Hannah is saying she IS God’s servant, even though she hasn’t had her child. 

 

Hannah established in her prayer that she was God’s servant.  But that if he gave her what she desperately wanted, she would in fact give it back to him. 

 

Hannah didn’t pray a selfish prayer, she wanted to serve God even in her pain.  She was willing to be humble and stated she was a servant of God.

 

In some ways, Hannah’s prayer seems like the type we might say when we are desperate, or the ones we frequently hear on tv “God if you do this for me… I will be a really good person…I won’t ever been mean to someone again…I will go to church every Sunday”.  But Hannah’s prayer was more powerful than that.  She would have known God wouldn’t have ignored words like that, Hannah was praying honestly and humbly.

 

 

And so it came that when Samuel was born, Hannah gave him back to God.  She kept her promise and took him to the Tabernacle.  She was giving him to God.

 

Hannah was a person of the bible, not hugely featured, just in two chapters but in the situation she was in she served God – she wasn’t a judge, she wasn’t a prophet, she wasn’t the wife of a King but she served God through prayer and having a child.

 

This story of Hannah and Samuel enables us to think about the gifts God has given us.  In the same way when Hannah had a choice to make with Samuel, these are gifts that we can choose to give back to God, given back to him through serving him and his people.

 

There is a story in a book I have read about a person who is given a special tea set, very posh and beautiful.  But this tea set is kept in the attic, wrapped up in paper for a special occasion.  But an occasion special enough never happens and eventually the tea set just sits, hidden and never used.  Then one day the owner dies, their children find the tea set and use it.

 

Our gifts from God can end up like this tea set, he gives them to us so we can serve him and his people but if we keep saving them til the right time we might never use them.

 

So service is something that we have lots of examples in the bible.  But as Richard has talked about it needs to be grounded in God.  The joy comes from loving God. 

 

When I talked about Locard’s exchange process before I talked of how when we meet someone we make a choice, have a good effect or a bad effect.  But as we have an affect they also have an affect on us.  If we spend all our time serving God but never time with God we will be affected by all the things we see, we receive.  There is a lot of suffering, pain and sadness in the world.  This can and does have an affect on us.  So we need to stay grounded in the love of God, we need to still immerse ourselves in his word and stay in prayer with him.

 

We can come to Jesus in everything, and ask for him to renew us, we can develop our learning and understanding of him, we can embrace all that he has to offer us.  Serving isn’t a lonely thing, it comes with the love of Jesus.

 

So we see that small acts can make a large difference, as I said at the beginning serving God isn’t always about the big acts but the small things also have a significance, the prayer and being a parent, the washing of feet and the being a Junior Church leader.

 

 

So as Richard said last week, what difference is hearing this going to make? 

 

• Maybe we can think what is our tea set?  What are we holding on to for a special occasion?

 

• Maybe we need to be remembering those who have served God by being there for us.  Those who have had patience and love for us, even when we weren’t hugely likeable people.  Or maybe those who have served us and gone unnoticed, those who have been involved in the small things that might not transform lives immediately but might have such a gradual effect we didn’t realise it.  And thank God for their service.

 

• Or just maybe we can say to God, “use me”.  A scary thing to say to God because he doesn’t ignore those words.  Maybe as we go home from here or get up tomorrow morning we can ask God to use us for that day, for the walk we might be taking or the people we will meet.  We can ask God to help us serve him better.
• Little random acts of kindness, story of people who pay for toll booths but then get ignored
• Trying to leave earlier so to be a better driver

 

Finally I am going to leave you with some words that were made by a man called Robert Fulghum, a man who understood that things can stop us.  A man who also saw that it was possible to do small things in serving God if we are willing to use what we have in the moment.

She strode to the rostrum and changed the agenda of the conference from intellectual inquiry to moral activism. She said, in a firm voice to the awed assembly: "We can do no great things; only small things with great love. "

The contradictions of her life and faith are nothing compared to my own. And while I wrestle with frustration about the impotence of the individual, she goes right on changing the world. While I wish for more power and resources, she uses her power and resources to do what she can do at the moment.

 

 

Sustaining Service of Others and of God

Had it not been for the snow we would have welcomed the CF Youth 18+ event this week. A fun time together they were going to explore the invitation at the heart of the Christian faith to service. They would have been sharing stories together and hearing from people from church as well.

John Lewis is one of those who would have shared his story now. Our honorary deacon, John has shared in a lifetime of service, not least through teaching, Samaritans, work for Dowty House, a residential care home in Cheltenham, and here at Highbury. For him as for all of us, Service is at the heart of what it takes to be a Christian.

But that kind of service can be difficult to sustain.

Is there anything in our Christian faith that can help us to sustain a life-time of service to one another and for that matter for God.

We share with many of other faiths and of no faith a commitment to service. There is nothing distinctive about that. Our call to service comes from the imperative to love that is at the heart of our Christian faith.

“This is my commandment,” says Jesus in those words we read from John 15 earlier, “that you love one another.”

“A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you. By this shall everyone know that you are my disciples if you have love one for another.”

At every turn ‘love’ is the order of the day for the Christian.

Couple that with the commitment to the poor, the quest for justice that is implicit within that command to love and the imperative could not be clearer. And anyone who takes it seriously will find it an obligation impossible to fulfil.

We often think of religion as laying demands on us. We should do this. We should do that. We should not do the other. And this is the greatest command of them all – to love.

Some even speak of religion as ‘an obligation’. There are, so they would have us believe, religious obligations that we need to meet.

Ought, ought, ought.

Such demands lead to burnout and have the potential to give rise to depression. You can never do enough.

Something is needed to sustain that kind of service and love.

Those words from John 15 are interesting.

They come not at the beginning but at the end of a famous passage.

Let’s hear the passage in full and notice the sequence of thought.

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. 2He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes* to make it bear more fruit. 3You have already been cleansed* by the word that I have spoken to you. 4Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become* my disciples. 9As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12 ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.


It is the sequence of thought that is significant.

The key to sustaining service lies in those words Jesus says to his disciples.

“I am the vine you are the branches.”

We are all linked together – our life of service is sustained by being part of a group of people supporting each other – prayer, pastoral visiting network. It is of the essence of Christian commitment and the call to love that we do not seek to go it alone. We are in this together. And together we support each other.

A church family is a support network.

Chris with Diana’s help is working on the next issue of Highbury News. Diana has been putting together the Church’s annual report. It is good to see the supportive network there is in the church. And to see the activities there are in the church.

Maybe we need to ask ourselves as a church. Do they simply grow, or is there a key to their growth in the insights Jesus offers here. He begins by speaking of the need to prune …

“I am the true vine and my Father is the vinegrower…. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

I do hope people can come to our annual meeting on the 1st March. It really is an important day in our church calendar. It is interesting to reflect on the life of the church to ask the question about pruning. Are there things in our church life that need pruning?

Food for thought … and for prayer.

There is something more that sustains us in our service.

I am the vine you are the branches,” says Jesus. “Abide in me as I abide in you.”

Our meeting of the Cotswold Magical Society was just getting under way in the Hucclecote Community Centre to the sounds of the build up to the big match being shown on the big screen the other side of the partition wall in the club room. It was of course Liverpool versus Everton. Was it the first time they had met in the cup since Hillsborough. I don’t know. I did prick my ears up a little while before kick off when I heard them singing the FA Cup anthem, Abide with me.

I recalled sitting in the Kop at Anfield to support Leicester City against Liverpool. When a Leicester player scored I jumped out of my seat. Fortunately, everyone else did as well as Leicester born Emile Heskey by that time was playing for Liverpool. It was moving to see the eternal flame at the Hillsborough memorial and to see the way so many fans were moved as they paid tribute there.

To keep us going in the face of tragedy, to sustain us in our service we need a strength from beyond ourselves, we need a spiritual rootedness in the love of God in Jesus Christ.

That is the strength implicit in those opening words of that FA anthem. Abide with me.

Abide in me as I abide in you.

But what applies to our activities together, applies also to us. Is there anything in our own lives that needs pruning?

Sometimes the pruning is taken out of our hands.

Circumstances mean we have to ‘cut back’.

How tragic, how awful.

Or is there another way of looking at it?

Can we see it as pruning that’s been taken out of our hands? May God have something else in store? After all,

“Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.”

This for me is the key to Christian service. It is not simply that Jesus gives us a command to follow. He offers us a strength within, a presence, he comes inside us as it were and that is what sustains us.

It is at that point that we come to one of the most exciting concepts when it comes to sustaining service as a Christian.

I am the vine you are the branches.

Abide in me as I abide in you.

Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.

“My Father is glorified by this,” says Jesus in verse 8 “that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

Love in our Christian faith is not an obligation placed upon us.

It is the fruit that is borne of our togetherness in Christ, it is the fruit that is borne of the love of God in Christ taking root in our hearts, working its way through us and issuing in the fruit of love and justice and peace in a life of Christian service.

This is what sustains us in our Christian service. God forbid our faith be reduced to a set of religious obligations, a repeated ought, ought, ought.

See service as the fruit of the love of God at work within you and it becomes a joy.

“I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

So what is the Church doing in response to the recession?

Lorraine is forever sending me emails. No, I do not mean our Lorraine. I mean someone called Lorraine Kapp. Lorraine Kapp is the Administrator for the Gloucestershire Assembly Team that brings together everyone in Gloucestershire that works in the Voluntary and Community Sector.
What a mouthful!

And there are so many emails!

Actually it is a very important network of people. There are an immense number of voluntary and community groups working away for the good of so many people in our community.

The email was about the response that should be made to the Recession.

Your input please.

At yesterday’s community strategy executive board meeting there was a constructive debate on the recession. It was agreed that:

Gloucestershire First is best placed to lead on support to businesses.

It’s worth pausing there. Because this month sees the retirement of Stan Jones, a member of Salem and there this morning, but also a regular member of our evening congregation. He has for the last few years built up Glos First as a major group supporting business in this county. In recognition of his contribution he was given an honorary degree by the University of Gloucestershire.

I pause there … because that is where I want to begin … what response are we as churches making to the recession. Well, as we each of us are making a response in the sphere we are involved in that is significant. People from our churches are very much involved in the response at many different levels – and we need to be giving them support, and supporting people in the area they are involved in.

But the next part of the email recognises that in the difficult period we are entering into, people need support.

The email says this, The Voluntary and community Sector, public sector and other organisations are best placed to continue to provide direct support to people;

There are potential gaps in support given to people, in resources available … and there is a need to target thngs to fill those gaps.

And that is where the questionnaire comes in.

Lorraine Kapp writes … “It is very important that I can give accurate information on the activities that VCS organisations are doing to support people and local communities through a recession in order to influence the subsequent planning and allocation of resources.

Then comes the request.

The Assembly Team would therefore like to hear:
what you are doing already to support people and communities in the recession
any ideas for other ways for supporting people and communities in the recession

I have an emailing of all the churches in Cheltenham. And from time to time I circiulate Lorraine Kapp’s emails around that mailing. I fear I don’t do all of them. There are so many.

But my attention was drawn to this one. It seemed particularly important.

What is our response as a church?

I have circulated the email around the Deacons and on our emailing list. I share it today. I will include it in our next News Letter.

How do you begin to respond?

Actually, I want to say that is precisely what Church is about.

Since the New Year I have on Sunday mornings been trying to flesh out what it is about our Christian faith that is significant at a difficult time such as we are in. Faith in a Great Big God helps us to put things in perspective, help in a God who through Jesus gets involved in the ordinary everyday life is equally important as it prompts me to realise that the tiniest of things I can do is in reality very, very important.

I went on to reflect on the way we can draw on a strength from beyond ourselves in that unseen, but real presence of the Spirit to keep us going, and to enable us to do what in our own strength we could not do.

Curiously some of those themes are explored in the Christian novel of the moment, the Shack, which as I was saying last week is well worth a read.

In a sense that is the first part of my answer to the question Lorraine Kapp poses.

The first thing we are offering people in a time when lots of things we have taken so for granted are toppling, tumbling and being called into question is a framework of beliefs that have been tested through the centuries and are capable of seeing us through difficult times.

There is more, much more that we have to offer in response to Lorraine Kapp’s question.

I believe in the Church.

This is where I begin to take issue a little with the writer of the Shack.

I believe passionately in the Church. I would not be where I am doing the job I do if I did not have that conviction. I do not accept that Christianity is a personal, individualistic thing between an individual and God. At the heart of Chrsitian faith is a very personal faith, rooted in the heart and shaped by the conscience of each us individually. But the Christian faith then invites us to share our faith in God with each other.

Jesus gathered people together so that they would learn from one another and learn from him. Indeed he said that it would be as people gather together, even if it’s only two or three, that he would be present with them.

Wherever you turn in the New Testament you see the followers of Jesus coming together in that upper room in Jerusalem for prayer. In the homes of believers as they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)

Wherever Paul went he formed churches, and he wrote to them to keep them going.

We, who are many, he wrote to the Church in Rome in Romans 12:5, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another.

What a wonderfully rich image. We are the body of Christ, as Mother Tereas said, he has no other hands but our hands, he has no other feet but our feet. We embody Christ’s presence in our world, the Jesus who brings a way of love into people’s lives, the Jesus who heals hurting people. We embody this Jesus, and individually we are members one of another.

That’s a very thought provoking way of putting it. That we are actually bound to one another. That idea is developed further by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.

He writes at length of the church as the body of Christ.

Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

He explores his theme by speaking of the way each part of the body needs the other parts – and so it is in the church we need each other. All parts of the body are equally important, and so each member of a church is equally important.

God has so arranged the body, that there may be no dissension within the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

This is the church I believe in. A church where everyone counts. A church were everyone looks out for everyone else. A church where everyone cares for one another.

Then comes one of the most magnificent statements about the church. “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.”

That’s the crux of the matter.

What are we doing to support people and communities in the recession.

A large part of the answer simply points to the church. This is precisely what the church is about. We offer a support network from the cradle to the grave. With support for little ones and families – and at the same time on-going care and support right the way through life to old age too.

We must not under-estimate the importance of our visiting scheme – it is a network of support which enables us to be on the lookout for each other.

We must not under-estimate our prayer networks – it is good to know we can support each other in prayer.

We must not under-estimate the way our premises are used offering a home to community groups that become more and more important at this kind of time.

This is all a very real contribution.

Since our last Church Meeting and into our Annual Meeting we are looking at a number of things in particular:

Becky is convening a group to look at the next steps we need to take to develop our support for families and children.

We are in touch with a niece of Margaret Pote to develop a link with the College

This week Phil Arnold and I joined a large number of people in Gloucester taking forward the idea of introducing Street Pastors on to the streets of Cheltenham and Gloucester. I went on to a meeting with church leaders in Cheltenham working out ways in which we might ensure that such a venture is rooted in the life of Cheltenham’s churches.

That meeting had an enthusiasm for extending that kind of support from the night time to the daytime economy of Cheltenham too.

An initiatve of churches in Cheltenham to open overnight accommodation for those who are homeless.

A meeting jointly with St Luke’s and St Michael’s to develop further how we may work together.

Things have been in the doldrums with regard to churches working together in Cheltenham. I sense that the kind of questions Lorraine Kapp has posed to us will galvanise us into action. May that be our prayer.

The Faith we Share Together - from Paul's Letter to the Romans

We have a Gospel to share, Good News for all

The Good News was promised long ago by God through his prophets, as written in the Holy Scriptures.

The Good News is about his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ:
as to his humanity, he was born a descendant of David;
as to his divine holiness, he was shown with great power
to be the Son of God by being raised from death. [Romans 1:2-4]

The Good News is God's power to save all who believe, [Romans 1:16]

The Good News reveals how God puts people right with himself:
it is through faith from beginning to end [Romans 1:17]

Everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence.
But by the free gift of God's grace
all are put right with him through Christ Jesus,
who sets them free.
And by his sacrificial death
Is the means by which people's sins are forgiven [Romans 3:23-25]

Now that we have been put right with God through faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

He has brought us by faith into this experience of God's grace,
in which we now live.

And so we boast of the hope we have of sharing God's glory!
We also boast of our troubles,
because we know that trouble produces endurance,
endurance brings God's approval,
and his approval creates hope
This hope does not disappoint us,
for God has poured out his love into our hearts
by means of the Holy Spirit, who is God's gift to us [Romans 5:1-5]

The Spirit comes to help us, weak as we are. [Romans 8:26]

If God is for us, who can be against us?

Who, then, can separate us from the love of Christ?
Can trouble do it, or hardship
or persecution or hunger or poverty or danger or death? [Romans 8:35]

No, in all these things we have complete victory
through him who loved us! [Romans 8:35]

For I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love:
neither death nor life,
neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers,
neither the present nor the future,
neither the world above nor the world below
there is nothing in all creation
that will ever be able to separate us
from the love of God which is ours
through Christ Jesus our Lord. [Romans 8:37-38]

Amen

Transformation

A Sermon preached at St Luke's on the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, 25th January 2008, during a united service to mark the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

I have not had a Damascus Road experience. I have not seen a blinding light. I have not heard the voice of Jesus. I have not had a sudden ‘conversion experience’.

I grew up in a Christian home. I cannot remember a time when I did not believe. There have been moments when my faith has become more real, moments when my faith has become really mine. There have been moments when my understanding of God has changed. I continue to sense I am on the way.

But I have not had a Damascus Road experience.

So the account of what happened to Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus is of interest historically, but it doesn’t have much to do with me.

Or does it?

One book I have just finished and one historic event this week prompted me to think differently.

Look more closely at Acts 9. It is not the story of a conversion of an unbelieving atheist to one who believes in God. Before his experience on the Damascus Road Saul believed in the LORD God. After that experience he still believed in the same LORD God.

It is not the story of a conversion from one religion to another. Jesus and indeed at this time practically all his followers were fully Jewish.

At this time there were very different ways of being Jewish. Judea and Galilee were on the Eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. The Herodians were quite happy to collaborate with the Roman power – Herod the Great and the dynasty that followed him thought nothing of playing Rome off against Judaism. The High Priests in Jerusalem had to work in collaboration with the Roman power. Drawn from the elite, ruling classes their power base was supported by the Sadducees who had not time for the radical writings of the prophets and considered only the first five books of the Bible as truly the Bible.

The Pharisees considered strict adherence to the Law and to the Prophets and all the Hebrew Scriptures was key – but even among those there were different schools of thought. The school of Hillel was inclined towards a generous open hearted reading of the Law, while the school of Shammei was very much more exclusive, hard line and extreme.

There were then the militant tendency who wanted to take the sword against Rome – revolutionaries who wanted to rise up against the might of Rome.
There were those who said a plague on all your houses we will retreat into a monastic life in the Judaean wilderness and down to the Dead Sea – the Qumran community whose ancient scrolls were discovered just sixty years ago.

And then into this mix came John the Baptist, an Elijah lookalike who seemed like one of the prophets of old holding the powers that be, not least Herod the Great’s son, Herod Antipas to account. It was Herod who had him beheaded. He had come to prepare a way for the Lord through the wilderness. And then Jesus had come with a powerful prophetic message of love for God, love for neighbour and love for enemy too. He was the way. Perceiving him to be a threat to the power base they had built up it was the High Priests in collaboration with the Romans who had him arrested and executed. But his followers were convinced. He had risen from the dead. And they followed him. John had prepared the Way. Jesus was the Way. And his followers came to be know as the Way.

Saul tells us later in his letters that he was a strict Pharisee. He studied under Gamaliel a generous hearted Pharisee but had strict tendencies himself as well. When he first comes on the scene he is supportive of the Sanhedrin, the Council in Jerusalem and here he is working under the High Priest and therefore with those who are ready to work in collaboration with Rome. It is within his understanding of God that those who pose a threat to the power base of the Council, the High Priests and the Romans in Jerusalem should be hunted down, threatened and if needs be executed. Those who had studied under John and even more so under Jesus posed such a threat.

So it was that Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

Two things then happen. On the road to Damascus he encounters the risen Christ. And,
he is on the receiving end of the, albeit reluctant, healing ministry of Ananias one of those very disciples in Damascus.

The change that results in Saul keeps him in the synagogues of Damascus, but now he has moved to Jesus’s way of seeing God and so he proclaims Jesus in the synagogues, saying “He is the Son of God”. The text tells us that he proceeded to argue a very strong case that Jesus was indeed Son of God, the anointed one of God, the Messiah and that God’s rule had broken into the world through him.

It is telling that from that point on … Paul as he came to be known no longer has any room for vengeance, threatening language for less for execution within his understanding of God. He echoes the teaching of Jesus in the sermon on the mount and follows the Way opened up by Jesus

Let love be genuine; bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Do not be overcome by evil. But overcome evil with good.

What happened to Saul on that Road to Damascus and in Damascus was NOT a conversion from atheism to faith.

What happened to Saul on the Road to Damascus and in Damascus was NOT a conversion from one religion to another.

What happened to Saul on the Road to Damascus and in Damascus was more a TRANSFORMATION not only of his whole knowledge and understanding of God but in the Way that one God would have him live his life. And that transformation came about in an encounter with Jesus and through the healing ministry of one of Jesus’ followers on The Way.

What of us? This story is not just for those who have had or who hanker after a conversion experience. It is for all of us. We all need our whole understanding and knowledge of God, our whole relationship with God, to be transformed by the Jesus who taught the love of God, the love of neighbour, the love of enemy too. We need our picture of God to be transformed by the Jesus who brought healing into a hurting world, the Jesus who died and is risen and is alive.

At the same time we need to be open to the ministry of an Ananias who seeks to open our eyes to the realities of the God we believe in.

And that brings me to the novel and to the historic event of this week and two ‘Ananiases’ who have opened my eyes this last week.

‘Have you read The Shack?’ Howard Bartlett asked me on our New Year’s Day Walk. ‘No, I hadn’t.’ I have now. And it is a wonderful, thought-provoking read. Mack’s life has fallen apart in unimaginable tragedy. He has a clear enough picture of God. And the God he believes in has totally let him down. And then something happens. And he finds himself in the Shack in the company of a wonderfully loving threesome who turn out to be in a way I won’t spoil for you God. As the story unfolds you are drawn in a way I won’t spoil for you if you get hold of the book to the sheer love of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of love, a lot of joy, a lot of fun, and wonderful depths of feeling in Jesus and the other two Mack meets in The Shack.

But that love is too much for Mack. When ‘Papa’ – maybe not quite as you instinctively may imagine, says “I love the ones I am angry with just as much as those I’m not.” It is too much for Mack.

“What about your wrath? It seems to me that if you’re going to pretend to be God Almighty, you need to be a lot angrier.

“… if you are God, aren’t you the one spilling out great bowls of wrath and throwing people into a burning lake of fire?”

At that, Papa stopped preparations for the meal and turned toward Mack. Mack could see a deep sadness in those eyes.

“I am not who you think I am, Mackenzie. I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.”

[See Wm Paul Young, The Shack – where tragedy confronts eternity (Hodder & Stoughton, 2008) 119f See http://www.theshackbook.com/

Speaking as it were for all three Papa says ‘with an intensity that caused [Mack] to listen very carefully, “we want to share with you the love and joy and freedom and light that we already know within ourself. We created you, the human, to be in face-to-face relationship, with us, to join our circle of love.”

[The Shack 124]

If there is any vestige of a sense of a God who would have space the kind of vengeance that includes threats and murder, a wrathful God, consider the Jesus Paul met with on this occasion, hear his voice, sense his light in the darkness of the world, discover the love of that community he brought into being, and discover a God who is very different, and a Way of life that can transform even the deepest darkness.

We need to have our eyes opened by a latter day Ananias in the form of William Paul Young. Try getting hold of the Shack and be surprised by the sheer love of God.

And another Ananias opened my eyes this last week. Her name was Sharon. And that takes me to the historic events of this last week.

The Inauguration Ceremony began with prayer. It ended with prayer. The ensuing lunch began with prayer. And as if that was not enough on his first day in office, President Obama, sat in church at The National Prayer Service and listened to the Rev Dr Sharon E.Watkins preach on a text from Isaiah 58:6-12

[Rev Dr Sharon E.Watkins, Harmonies of Liberty a sermon preached in the presence of President Obama at the National Prayer Service on 21st January 2009, with readings from Isaiah 58:6-12 and Matthew 22:6-40. Read the full text of the sermon at http://oikoumene.org/fileadmin/wcc-usa/files/2009/Obama_NPS_sermon_Watkins.pdf ]

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? 7Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house;

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.

This is what she shared with the new President on Wednesday morning.

In times, such as these, we the people need you, the leaders of this nation, to be guided by the counsel that Isaiah gave so long ago, to work for the common good, for the public happiness, the wellbeing of the nation and the world, knowing that our individual wellbeing depends upon a world in which liberty and justice prevail.

This is the biblical way

This is the Way Paul discovered in that Damascus experience.

It was a transformation in his understanding and knowledge of the very nature of God. It was a transformation in his relationship with God. Where once there was space to breathe threats and execution, vengeance and wrath, now love is The Way. It is the Way that demands that evil be not overcome by evil but overcome only by good.

Whether or not we ever have a Damascus Road experience, our understanding of God needs the transformation Paul experienced. It will come about as we meet with this Jesus and those who have discovered the wonderful Way he has opened up for us to follow.

Sharon Watkins told a story attributed to Cherokee wisdom.

One evening a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.

"There are two wolves struggling inside each of us," the old man said.

"One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self‐pity, fear . . .

"The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love . . ."

The grandson sat, thinking, then asked: "Which wolf wins, Grandfather?"

His grandfather replied, "The one you feed."

She looked at the new President of the USA and said this …

There are crises banging on the door right now, pawing at us, trying to draw us off our ethical center – crises that tempt us to feed the wolf of vengefulness and fear.

We need you, Mr. President, to hold your ground. We need you, leaders of this nation, to stay centered on the values that have guided us in the past; values that empowered to move us through the perils of earlier times and can guide us now into a future of renewed promise.

We need you to feed the good wolf within you, to listen to the better angels of your nature, and by your example encourage us to do the same.

Do that and we shall be well on the Way to that transformation Paul experienced not only on the Road to Damascus in his encounter with Jesus but in Damascus as he received from Ananaias.


For further reading ...

Wm Paul Young, The Shack – where tragedy confronts eternity(Hodder & Stoughton, 2008) 119f See http://www.theshackbook.com/

Rev Dr Sharon E.Watkins, Harmonies of Liberty a sermon preached in the presence of President Obama at the National Prayer Service on 21st January 2009, with readings from Isaiah 58:6-12 and Matthew 22:6-40. Read the full text of the sermon at http://oikoumene.org/fileadmin/wcc-usa/files/2009/Obama_NPS_sermon_Watkins.pdf

Drawing on the Power of God

What is it about our Christian faith that is of great practical help to us as face such a troubled and deeply troubling world? That’s the question I am prompted to ask as 2009 begins with such devastating tragedy unfolding in Gaza, in Israel and in Palestine, and with the immensity of the financial situation beginning to take a hold.

Last week I suggested there are two things about God that seem to me to be so crucial for us to hold on to.

First, our God is a great big God: that than which nothing greater can be conceived. As 2009 begins we mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of species; and we mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first use of a telescope with the International Year of Astronomy. Such scientific discoveries and insight do not phase me. Far from it, as I reflect on the immensity of the time scales of life on earth, and the infinitely greater immensity of the time scales of astronomy and the universe it prompts me to think that the God I believe in is greater still. It somehow keeps things in a proper perspective.

While the God I believe in is a great big God, this God is also a God who comes alongside us in the ordinary everyday mess of this world. Born a babe, he grew to be a man who brought healing into the lives of hurting people and mapped out a way of life for all to follow. He went to the cross and died the cruellest of deaths. But on the third day he rose again and as we meet in his name his presence is with us. He shows us that the smallest of things we do matter the world – this Great big God who comes in the smallest way as one of us asks us to do the smallest of things to real-ise the love of God.

Two sculptures come together in the Lido car park entrance to the hospital – Spa Ammonites is a reminder of the immensity of the God I believe in, and the Good Samaritan is a reminder that the smallest of deeds can make a world of difference as they make real, real-ise the love of God in this world.

The life on earth we are in awe of as Darwin’s story is told is closely related to the life forces of the planet we live on. Stand on Cleeve Hill not only can in the quarries the wonderful shell fish that once swam in a tropical sea, but look Westwards and you see in the Malvern Hills what is left of volcanoes that 600 million years ago let loose the energies within the planet in an awesome scale. Go 80 miles north and you reach a fault line that ran through the village we lived in in Shropshire – and it is still active as we found when we experienced one of the country’s biggest earthquakes as the children were evacuated from their school and chimneys came tumbling down in Shrewsbury. Tiny in scale to the much more active planet on the other side of the world. Such energy within.

I caught one of the programmes to mark the International Year of Astronomy on BBC 4 this week – all about the discoveries made by the Hubble Telescope time and again it came to the sheer energy there is in our sun, in every sun in the universe in the galaxies in the universe itself. Remarkable, awesome energy.

With the children not so long ago we took a look at Orion.

And then we traced the outline of the hunter. Just before Christmas we looked at the right hand star of his belt and one of my Astronomy books suggested it was 2,000 light years away. What a remarkable thought to think that we are witnessing energy generated in that light at the time Christ was born!

This time look at the sword that hangs from Orion's belt: with the naked eye on one of these crystal clear nights it's a fuzzy patch of light. Through binoculars it begins to look quite a spectacular haze.

Come indoors and access the public domain Hubble Telescope images and you can actually see stars in the making. The hymn, the Servant King speaks of 'hands that flung stars into space'. Here are stars being created. What a wonderful sight!

At the heart of the universe, is energy - the energy that raises the sea bed to the mountain top, the energy unleashed in volcanic ranges, as the tectonic plates move along their fault lines, the energy that brings stars into being.

Energy, power, strength is of the essence of the God I believe in. The faith that is important to me is not simply a faith in a great big God that gives me a better understanding of things; it is not simply a faith in a God who comes alongside us and asks to us to the tiny little things that real-ise God’s love in our world; the faith that is important to me is faith in a God of energy, a God of power, a God of strength who comes within me to give me the strength, the energy the power to do things that on my own I am not capable of doing.

Jesus had come to the end of his ministry. It was the night before he would be taken out to the place of the skull, to be crucified. He had gathered all his friends together. One by one he washed their feet. They had shared so much, it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. After all, that’s what he he had taught so much about – serving one another, serving others. And he had lived out that life of service making such a difference to so many people. And here they were on the night that unknown to them at that moment was to lead to their arrest.

He had talked about more and more as they had approached Jerusalem. The imminence of his death. He spoke of it once more. More graphically than ever. He broke bread, he shared a cup – he spoke of his body broken for them, his blood shed for them.

It was un-nerving. Somehow they felt he would always be with them. And now it seemed he wouldn’t. He kept on coming back to something that would mean more and more to them.

I will not leave you all on your own, he said. I will not leave you orphaned.

I will ask the Father, and he wil give you another Advoc ate, another Helper, another source of strength alongside you, another Comforter to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth.

The Spirit. A power, a strength, an energy that would be around them, within them. A power, a strength an energy that would keep them going.

On the eve of his final departure the promise was even more explicit:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses.

And on the fiftieth day after his resurrection, the Day of Pentecost all of them were filled with this power, this strength, this energy of God, as the Holy Spirit came upon them.

There is an energy within God that is let loose into our lives as we share this faith together.

How often do people say, I was given strength I didn’t think I would ever have. This is the energy of God within and around us.

We are not alone there is a strength and a power of God around us and within.

Lord, help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today that you and I together can’t handle.

And the presence of God in his energy and his strength is present with us day by day.

Believing in a great big God does not just give us a better perspective. That Great Big God we believe in is the God whose energy is let loose into our lives. This Great Big God offers us a strength for the living of our lives.

That’s the first part of the prayer that Paul shares in Ephesians 3.

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,* 15from whom every family* in heaven and on earth takes its name. 16I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit

The immensity of God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and earth takes its name, the riches of his glory are immense and only glimpsed in the wonderful world of God’s creation.

It is this God to whom Paul prays, and it is this God who strengthens us in our inner being with power through his Spirit.

Paul puts his finger on a very real need we each have. It is in our inner being that we need strength. Our intellect may be drawn to this great big God, our instinct may be to follow the teaching of Jesus and to do likewise, doing little things to real-ise God’s love.

But what’s going on in our inner being. The bits that other people don’t see. That’s where the doubts can gnaw away. That’s when the sense of inadequacy can get the better of you. That’s where the will to go on is lost. The inner being is all important. That’s precisely the prayer Paul prays – that from the riches of his glory this Father God who is immense will strengthen each one of us in that inner being with power through his Spirit.

But it is not only the power and strength from the immensity of God that we can draw on. We can also draw on a power and a strength from the God who is one with us, the God who in Christ lived out that life of service, experienced suffering and death at its worst, the Christ who rose again from the dead.

Paul’s prayer is that we may have the strength of the immensity of God in our innermost being

17and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love

The Great God becomes one of us and asks us to follow him … but this risen Christ can then dwell in our hearts through faith, as we are rooted and grounded in love.

The Spirit is that unseen yet very real force of God that brings alive today in our hearts the living Christ whose life, death and resurrection we celebrate as we now move on from Christmas towards Holy Week and Easter.

As this Spirit of God, this power, this strength, this energy is at work within us we may know on the one hand the immensity of God,

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth

On the other hand, we may know the strength, the power and the energy of the presence of the living Christ with us too …

to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge

That love of Christ is not just something from the past we read about and learn at a distance and then follow. It is something let loose into our lives by the unseen power of God’s spirit in such a way that the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge is real within our hearts.

Here we reach the essence of a faith that can really equip us to face a troubled world that is so troubling.

But the important thing is that we then are empowered, strengthened to do what God calls us to do.

The little things are important.

What about a letter to our MP in response to the situation in Gaza? What about doing something, however little, to express that horror.

What about things we might do in response to a world of need closer to home. We came up with some thoughts and reflections at our church meeting – things we are responding to with other churches with regard to chaplaincy in our town, needs of our town, day and night time, the possibilities of Street Pastors. Support for families and children – the possibility of bringing together sources of support rather like the health and well-being event for older people, but for families and children. Interesting links with Gloucestershire College – and most important of all. Sharing our faith, a faith that can make such a difference – an Alpha Course again in the Autumn.

Not in our own strength … but by his power we can do things we didn’t think we could do!

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Faith in God for 2009

The start of a New Year has an air of expectation, an air of excitement to it. My new diary has a nice clean feel to it. It is a time for making resolutions, as the children have been exploring in their Sunday Special, it is a time for new beginnings.

But this year there’s something else in the air as well.

Concern, Anxiety, Apprehension.

The scale of the collapse of the global economy is something my generation has not witnessed before. It’s the uncertainty of the future that gives rise to levels of concern, anxiety and apprehension that perversely become part of the problem.

Having visited Palestine and Israel last April, and planning to take a group this April, I somehow find myself feeling for the people of Gaza so much more. Over Christmas we have been thinking of Bethlehem, a city walled in. To bomb a population of 1,500,000 in a small confined area, that’s completely walled in with no means of escape for anyone is beyond belief. Far from countering the terrorism that has to be condemned it fuels it for another generation. Where will it end?

What a way to start a New Year!

I want to suggest two things about God that speak directly to us at the start of this New Year, two things that address all those mixed up feelings that are in the air at the moment.

First, in the words of the song we sing with the children, our God is a great big God.

That’s something I want to come back to over and over again throughout 2009. I want to come back to that conviction about God in the context of two very specific things that are being celebrated this year.


For some of Christian faith, the celebration of the bi-centenary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species will be seen as a threat. It will be taken as the opportunity for others to celebrate their a-theism.

I see it differently. It fills me with awe and wonder to witness the different stages of evolution and find brachiopods and oystershells in the quarries of Cleeve Hill, Ammonites on the beaches around Lyme Regis, Trilobites on the West Coast of Wales and those wonderful dinosaur footprints from a quarry in Oxfordshire that have been moved to the wonderful Oxford University Museum of Science. The God I believe in is greater than anything we can ever see in the wonderful world of nature – our God is a great big God is the way the song puts it. Another way of putting it is to use a phrase coined by St Anselm … God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. Think of the immensity of geological time and the shifting of the plates of the planet, the origin of species and God is greater than all of this.

How tragic that people of faith have felt threatened by the discoveries of science. This year also sees the 400th anniversary of the occasion when Galileo first used a telescope. At the time there were those who felt their faith threatened. I find it the other way round … I like at Venus in all its glory dominating the western sky in the early evening, and then Orion standing majestically in the late evening sky. And I marvel at the immensity of the universe. UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union has designated 2009 an International Year of Astronomy. I hope to be doing another astronomy evening with the cubs – who knows we may even have clear skies! An I'll be refreshing the Astronomy Page on the Church Web Site.

All over the world the aim will be to “help citizens of the world rediscover their place in the universe through the day and night time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery.”

The awe and wonder of the night sky, of the universe. And the God we believe in is greater.

That’s not just theory. It does you good – to see things from the wider perspective. Get up on to Cleeve Hill sense the immensity of this age old planet of ours, and see how small we are .. and sense the greatness of God.

Look up into the night sky and sense the wonder and awe of God – this is the God we believe in – this is the scale of things to remember.

It puts things into perspective.
I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come? 2My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber
Psalm 104:
1Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great.You are clothed with honour and majesty, 2 wrapped in light as with a garment.You stretch out the heavens like a tent, 3 you set the beams of your* chambers on the waters,you make the clouds your* chariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, 4you make the winds your* messengers, fire and flame your* ministers.
5You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken. 6You cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7At your rebuke they flee; at the sound of your thunder they take to flight. 8They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys to the place that you appointed for them. 9You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.
10You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, 11giving drink to every wild animal; the wild asses quench their thirst. 12By the streams* the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. 13From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.
24O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.


But there is another dimension to the God I believe in and that is just as important as 2009 unfolds.

This ‘great big God’ that I believe in came to be alongside us, with us in the messiness of the world, born a babe, he grew to be a man who took time to be with the humblest of people in the messiness of their lives. He had time for the woman who had been caught in adultery. He had time for little Zacchaeus. He had time for the man suffering from leprosy. Where he saw need he met that need and brought healing to people’s lives.

He mapped out a way of love that he saw would transform the lives of individuals, the lives of families and the wider world too. He extended love across the boundaries that divided his world. He humbled himself to serve others without counting the cost. And it cost him his life in the cruellest of deaths.

But death did not have the last word. On the third day he rose again. His risen presence is here as we meet together in his name. His presence is real wherever people hear his words and act on them. He asks us to do the smallest things to 'real-ise' his presence and his love.

That gives us a responsibility. It is important for us to be practical in the help we can give in the things we can do in response to the fears and uncertainties 2009 brings to us.

At our Church Meeting on Thursday we shall hear of some practical initiatives being taken by churches working together in the town – a response to the needs of businesses in the town through some form of co-ordinated chaplaincy, that extends to the night time life of Cheltenham as well – maybe through Street Pastors serving on the streets of the town. But the need for us as churches to own that initiative.

An initiative to provide emergency accommodation for people who are without a home. Again working with the other churches.

Practical things for us to do and to think of – ready to give mutual support as people face difficulties in employment. In health care too.

My Christian faith brings me face to face with a great big God who fills me with awe, humbles me and puts my concerns and anxiety into perspective.

But this great big God has time for the least important, the most insignificant and he wants me to do the little thing that can make a big difference.

Those two dimensions of God are brought together for me in a surprising place – the Lido entrance to the hospital.

There a new sculpture has appeared. It’s called Ammonite Spa. It’s a pity that we are in the wrong place for finding such wonderful ammonites –but it brings to my mind the great big God I believe in from time immemorial.
That sculpture stands over against the Good Samaritan with the story on two tablets and the inscription on the base, Go and do thou likewise.

The Great Big God who asks us to do the littlest of things to bring his love into our world.

And he does not leave us alone – he equips us with a power and a strength from beyond ourselves that can enable us to see things through come what may.