The Really Big Question - Where do I belong?

It was  Shrove Tuesday so, there was no question, as one of the helpers at  Transformers I was going to have tea with the youngsters.  The pancakes were delicious!  At the end of the evening we came into church and sat in a circle at the front in the semi darkness of the up-lighters.  It makes a great finish to the evening.

At the first session of the term Carolyn asked the youngsters to come up with words that describe what God is like.  As you can imagine they came up with a long list.  We’ve dipped into that list as the term has unfolded for the God-slot at the end of the evening.  I homed in on the word ‘saviour’.

They knew all about Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, Lent and the story of the temptations.  With one or two prompts from me they told me the story of the temptations.  I made a lot of the way we all know what we should do … but sometimes there’s something telling us to do the opposite.

“Go on, it won’t make much difference.”  “It’s all right it will only be this once.”  And then the little twist in my telling of the tale, and the thing I wanted to get over was that Jesus knows exactly what that’s like.  He’s been through it.  And it’s great to know that he’s with us to give us that strength we need to do what’s right, and what’s even more wonderful, he’s there to help us and with his forgiveness help us to start all over again.

That, at least was the plan.

But with little ones things don’t always go to plan.

One youngster had his hand in the air as soon as I started asking questions.  I was just getting going when I noticed he had his hand in the air again.  I turned to him and asked him what he wanted to say … ‘the burning bush’.  Was his answer.

Yes, fine, I thought.  But not a lot to do with the story of the temptations.  I made an attempt at linking us back into my story – that was in the wilderness and a place where God’s presence was so very real – and Jesus felt God’s presence to be very real.  It just about worked.

Then I went on with my story.  And came to the end when I was getting them to share their responses to my story, when I noticed the same hand in the air once again.  I turned to the keenest of all my listeners expecting him by now to have been wrapped up in the story of Jesus and the temptations.  But no, he was still caught up in the story of the burning bush and determined to say what happened.  The whole point of the story of the burning bush was that we must listen to God.

That’s exactly it, I turned to the rest of the group.  Listen to God … not to the voice of temptation.   That’s the whole point of the temptation story too!

Isn’t it wonderful, how the message comes over.  Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!

I was already planning to stick with the temptation story today.

Reflecting on that time with Transformers and the way the story emerged as together we reflected on it, I have been thinking more and more of the connections there are with the story of the burning bush.  That’s the start of the Moses story, the temptations are the start of the Jesus story.  That takes place in a wilderness time for Moses, this takes place in the wilderness with Jesus.  That takes place at a time of questioning in Moses’ heart, this at a time of questioning thrust upon Jesus.   It is in that most unexpected of places that Moses has this profound sense of the presence of God that shaped the rest of his life’s work, so too this wilderness experience for Jesus shapes the rest of his life’s work.

The story of the temptations works at so many different levels.

It’s well worth coming back to.

Reading that story in Matthew 4 once again, I have a feeling much more is at stake here for Jesus than simply the temptation to do the wrong thing.

Notice the things that Jesus is tempted with.  At first sight they are in many ways good things.  Look again, and they are not just good things, but they are the good things that so many people looked for in the coming Messiah.

In the wilderness turn stones to bread.  That’s just the kind of thing that happened in the wilderness with Moses and the manna.  People were waiting for a new Moses, the prophet proclaimed by Moses,  who would do equally dramatic things delivering people from the modern-day slavery they experienced at the hands of the Romans.  The Messiah who would be Prophet.

The next temptation takes Jesus to the highest point on the temple.  Don’t think steeples and church towers.  It’s more interesting than that.  Further along the Temple Mount from the Western wall where Jewish people pray, excavations have revealed the incredible destruction wrought on the temple by the Romans in AD 70.  They tore apart the temple buildings on the temple mount and hurled them over the walls 30 feet and more to the ground.  The rubble is still there to be seen.  The massive cracks in the Roman roadway that ran alongside the temple mount are still there.  And one massive, beautifully carved stone has been thrust from the highest point, the pinnacle of the temple.  It is inscribed.  And it makes it clear it is the point where the watchman stood to catch first sight of the rising sun and blow a blast on the trumpet to announce the start of the Sabbath.

The dramatic action Jesus is tempted to do links him with the high-up people of the temple – such an action would give him a claim to be the High Priest so many looked to and displace the High Priests who had been appointed by the Roman conquerors.  This was a massive temptation – to conform to the expectations of the people, scripturally based, The Messiah who would be Priest.

And finally, in Matthew’s telling of the story, up to a very high mountain and shown all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour.  This was the power that the people looked for in their coming Messiah King.  A Power that would be instantly seen, that would change the world for ever.

Prophet, Priest, King – this was what Jesus was being tempted with.  But Prophet, Priest, King in the way the people expected.

By the age of 12 Jesus was already listening and asking questions of the greatest teachers in the temple.  For very nearly 20 more years he had been steeped in the Scriptures going as his custom was to the synagogue.  He knew his Scriptures inside out.  He knew the kind of all-powerful, all-conquering, Prophet, Priest and King so many of the  people were looking for.

And he was convinced that he had something totally different to offer.   He wasn’t with those who craved such power.  He was with John the Baptist who spoke truth to power.  And he had gone down to the Jordan, lined himself up with John’s movement in baptism.  And that had been such a wonderful moment in his life.  The heavens had opened, he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, This my Son, the Beloved with whom I am well pleased.

This was it.  The time had come.  His life’s work about to begin.  Jesus knew his Scriptures.  What kind of Son would he make.  What kind of Messiah would it be.

In the wilderness Jesus is not being faced just with temptations to do the wrong thing.

He is confronting the biggest question of all.  The thing that would completely shape all that he did.  The nature of his life’s work.

This is what the temptation is about.  This is where the humanity of Jesus is right to the fore.  Jesus experiences what everyone experiences.  That moment of deep, dark questioning.  What course of action should he take? 

Yes, we can read the temptation story as a story about temptation.  But it is much more than that.  I have a feeling it reminds us that we have to face at some point or other the really big question.  What are we going to do with our life.  Not just what is life about.  What is my life about?  Where do we belong?  Who do we belong to?

The challenge of a choice.  The choice for Jesus.

But there is an insight here that we need to face up to.

Choose Jesus – belong to Jesus and we are likely to face a time of testing just as he did.  The promise Paul holds on to is that we will  never be tested beyond a point at which we can endure.  But there can be no escaping the bleakness of a time of testing.  And those times can come back to.

As we face that prospect we need to be aware of what we are facing.   We too have the kind of choice that Jesus was confronted with.  And we face the same kind of circumstances too.

Who is it doing the tempting?

Put aside all pictures you have of a devilish creature dressed in red and black with pointed ears and a trident.

Put aside that dualistic idea of some philosophical thinking of God and all good, and an equal and opposite force for evil – the Devil and all bad.

The whole of this story is set within the sphere of God.  God is always seen as greater.

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

That’s interesting.  A wilderness experience is inside God’s greater love.  A time of testing and temptation is inside God’s greater love.

So who is the devil?  Try to avoid the pictures.  Try to avoid the philosophising.  That sense of darkness, that sense of foreboding.  That sense of things spiralling out of control.  That sense of powers beyond our ability to influence and shape that cut across the goodness of God.  The sheer brute awfulness of so much that happens in the world is that there is a reality of evil out there, and sometimes very close to hand too.  It’s there.

The story of the Devil in the Bible is a fascinating one.  Because God is always greater.  God always has the last word.  The world of God’s creation is a world where awful things happen – that’s the reality we cannot escape.

God in some way can use even the most awful of things to bring something greater out.  What defuses the power of the devil, is holding on to the greater good of God.  That’s what Jesus does.  He draws on the Word of God that he is so steeped in.  He holds his ground, drawing on the deep source of strengthening his life-time of living the word of God has brought him –

It is written, it is written, it is written …

One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.

That’s the key.

• Immerse yourself in God’s word,
• however much you feel tempted tested, torn apart don’t put God to the test,
• worship him, serve him.

Hold on to these key things.

And face off the time of tempting.  See it instead, as the word can be translated, as a time of testing.

You go all through Matthew’s account and come to the end.   And at the very end it is as if Jesus sees the Devil for who he is.  Not the all-powerful force of evil standing over against God.  But the Satan – who in the story of Job is the one who tests Job’s faith.

Later in his ministry Jesus was to encounter such testing again – You are the Messiah, the son of the living God – and when Jesus starts to speak of being a suffering servant messiah, Peter says we will never allow you to suffer at all.  And Jesus says, Get behind me Satan.

On the cross three times if you are the son of God save yourself.  But he holds firm.  Goes through the suffering and into the resurrection victory.

When Jesus is facing arrest, he warns Peter that he will have to face big questions about his allegiance to Jesus – Satan will sift him.  And Peter succumbs and denies Jesus.

But Jesus sticks with Peter.

And Peter comes to the point of realising that the faith that really counts that makes a life of difference is the faith that has been tried and tested and has stood the test of the refiner’s fire.

So what is the big question for us?

First, there is a choice.  Jesus challenges us to make a choice to follow him.  That’s a big turn-around.  And it calls for our allegiance.

To sign up for Jesus, however, then means that we will each of us face a time, and maybe like Jesus, times of testing.  They can be times of very real darkness.  Times when it seems as if the power of the darkness of the world takes away our faith.

Don’t ever think the devil has the last word.  Remember the Satan who sifts.  It’s  a testing, a time of trial.  Hold on to the word of God.  Don’t put God to the test.  Worship God.  Serve God.

And then just as Jesus did you too will emerge from that time of testing.

For the final part of the temptation story is a wonderful thing to hold on to.

Jesus stands his ground.  And suddenly angels came and waited on him.

From the darkness of that awful experience to the tangible presence of the glory of God, what a transformation.  But don’t believe that that is then when all your troubles cease.  That’s only the beginning – for now with the arrest of John, Jesus’ life-time work is just beginning!  So too with us!

We belong to each other

Since the beginning of the year we have been looking at what it means to belong.

It’s one of those special things about church.

That sense of belonging.

We started with the biggest belonging of all.  We belong to God.  That God dimension in our lives is important as it roots us to something beyond our imagining and relates us to the God who is concerned for us in the tiniest detail.

Then we looked at what it means to belong to the Church.

We celebrated baptism with little Jessica – and continue to remember them in our prayers and thought that belonging to one church here at Highbury means belonging to the one church world-wide wherever it is.  On that occasion it was great to hear from Stefan and Birgit in Brazil.

We have joined with friends from the Anglicans and from the URC and so explored what it means to belong along with other churches locally.

Joining with friends from St Luke’s we thought of that wider belonging we share.  They and our friends from St Michael’s are very much in our prayers at the moment.   It is a couple of years since we shared a day together as Deacons with the PCC’s of St Michael’s and St Luke’s to reflect on the way forward for our shared sense of mission.  Just as we were preparing that day, St Luke’s and St Michael’s went into a long period of consultation about their relationship.  That has now come to a resolution.  Possibly as early as this summer, St Luke’s will be joining up in a partnership with  St Matthew’s and St Mary’s in the Town Centre and St Michael’s for the foreseeable future anyway will simply continue as an ecumenical partnership with the Methodists, with Robert as the Vicar and John  Wren.  They are all very much in our prayers at the moment and we think of special prayers for John Wren who has been off work for over six months undergoing treatment for cancer.

Other things are afoot with churches in Cheltenham – as the clergy of the town got together on Thursday thinking about evangelism and as the Church Leaders in Cheltenham group prepare to get together with the Chief Constable, Tony Melville, at his initiative to share insights into the needs of the town and ways in which churches can be supportive of the community in partnership with among others the police.

The next Street Pastors commissioning service will be at C3 Church over in the Reddings on Saturday evening and for the first time we will have a couple of people from Highbury being commissioned as Street Pastors – Sue and Paul very much in our prayers.

Belonging to God, belonging to the church here is to belong to the church world-wide.  Belonging to the church locally binds us together with people in our community seeking to share the wonderful Good News of God’s love for all.

We belong to Highbury.  It was great to explore the things that make Highbury special.  Following the service when we explored that theme we met as Deacons and processed all the responses people had made at our January Church meeting when invited to come up with words and phrases that describe what makes Highbury special.  It was fascinating to see how a picture quickly emerged as Deacons stood and sat around a table arranging slips of paper with those words on into a pattern.

As a picture emerges of the church we are it will give us challenging things to think about over the next half year as we shape our services around those pictures and the challenges they give to us.  But as you look at those you cannot help but notice things that are missing, things we could strengthen, things we could develop.

Belonging is so important.

And through all this process we have been conscious of difficulties people face.  In our own church family, bereavements and frailty in older years, illness in hospital.  Family issues, work-related issues.  All sorts of things.

And we touch disturbing things on the world scale in the news.

Today we come to another thought.

That we belong together.

There are so many places to turn to think of what it means to belong together.   Over the last year or so we have been following a Congregational Federation course, Growing Disciples, at our Church Meeting.  One of those sessions takes us to a story of Moses in Numbers 11 which is all about the need to belong together and then to share in God’s work together.

AT first sight it seems to be a story about the need for shared team leadership.  But read on to the very end and something else emerges.  It’s not only about shared team leadership, it is also about all of us as God’s people together having that sense of sharing that means we really do belong to each other.

¹⁴I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. ¹⁵If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once—if I have found favour in your sight—and do not let me see my misery.’

The Seventy Elders

16 So the Lord said to Moses, ‘Gather for me seventy of the elders of Israel, whom you know to be the elders of the people and officers over them; bring them to the tent of meeting, and have them take their place there with you. ¹⁷I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself. 

 24 So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord; and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them all around the tent. ²⁵Then the Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.

26 Two men remained in the camp, one named Eldad, and the other named Medad, and the spirit rested on them; they were among those registered, but they had not gone out to the tent, and so they prophesied in the camp. ²⁷And a young man ran and told Moses, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.’ ²⁸And Joshua son of Nun, the assistant of Moses, one of his chosen men, said, ‘My lord Moses, stop them!’ ²⁹But Moses said to him, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!’ ³⁰And Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp.

First it is an issue of leadership and of the vital importance of shared leadership.  The Lord speaks to Moses …

¹⁷I will come down and talk with you there; and I will take some of the spirit that is on you and put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people along with you so that you will not bear it all by yourself. 

But as the story comes to a climax it is not simply shared leadership that is the concern of Moses here.

He has a vision for something greater.

Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!’ ³

That’s the insight we need to take to heart.

It’s one that Paul took to heart.

Paul sensed that in Christ all this talk of the Spirit’s outpouring had somehow been fulfilled.

Towards the end of Galatians 5 he speaks of the way all we do, all those traits that we think of as what we need to work at as Christians are the fruit of that inner strength and power that the unseen, yet very real, Spirit of God gives us.

the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

As that becomes something that grows within us that has an impact on what we do with our lives.  It challenges us

Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another.

Paul is challenging us to be like those geese.  The youngsters in our M'Ocean group had acted out a sketch to accompany the following video exploring the lessons we learn from Geese.  The video is called Pulling Together

• Are there lessons about team work that we can learn from geese?
• Decide for yourself
• As geese flap their wings, they create an uplift for the bird following
• By flying in a V formation the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if any bird were to fly alone
• If we share a common direction and a sense of community, we can get where we are going more quickly and easily because we are travelling on the thrust of one another
• Whenever a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to fly alone
• And quickly returns back to formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front
• If we have as much sense as geese, we will stay in formation with those who are headed where we want to go…
• And we will accept their help as well as give our own
• When the lead goose gets tired, it rotates back into formation and another goose flies at the point position
• If we take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership, as with the geese…
• We become interdependent with each other
• The geese in formation honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed
• If we ‘honk’ we need to make sure it is positive and encouraging
• When a goose gets sick or shot down, 2 geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it
• They stay with it until it is able to fly again or dies
• They then launch out on their own, with another formation or catch up with the flock
• We too should stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong
• Let us all try to fly in formation and remember to drop back to help those who might need it
• apparently, the geese at the front and back of the formation have the hardest jobs, the middle ones are most sheltered and have the easier journey.
• the V formation means everyone can see everyone else so, everyone keeps an eye on everyone and can communicate well.

What we are doing as we do that is allowing the Spirit to bear fruit not only in the living of our lives individually but in all we do as we truly belong to each other.

It’s what Paul goes on to see in Galatians 6.

Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.

To belong to one another is to carry one another’s burdens?

That’s what we do  when someone needs our help and our support.

But what of the time when someone is shamed, someone is disgraced … is that the point at which we too abandon them.  Or is there something special about the Good News of Jesus Christ that we seek to stand by one another come what may … and maybe that’s the most important point of all.

We belong to each other – and that is something special that binds us together as the family of God’s people here.

I wondered if I could find a hymn that would catch some of those thoughts.  Maybe a new hymn.  I looked up HymnQuest, a wonderful database I have, and I discovererd an age-old hymn that for people of a certain age will quite possibly be an old favourite.

I was taken aback how pointed the words were.

Blest be the tie that binds

       our hearts in Christian love;

       the fellowship of kindred minds

       is like to that above.

2     Before our Father's throne

       we pour our ardent prayers:

       our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,

       our comforts and our cares.

3     We share our mutual woes,

       our mutual burdens bear,

       and often for each other flows

       the sympathizing tear.

4     When for a while we part,

       this thought shall soothe our pain,

       that we shall still be joined in heart,

       and hope to meet again.

5     This glorious hope revives

       our courage by the way:

       while each in expectation lives

       and longs to see the day,

6     From sorrow, toil and pain,

       and sin we shall be free,

       and perfect love and friendship reign

       through all eternity.

John Fawcett (1740-1817)

Belonging to Highbury - something special that has to do with glue!

A large part of this sermon was a conversation between Richard and Sharon, one of Highbury's deacons, who has recently started a course in Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Gloucestershire.  These are in part notes prepared before hand, and in part notes of the conversation.  As ever with preaching, what was shared did not stick rigidly to the prepared script.  This is shared in the hope that it gives a flavour of the word that was shared this morning.


About a third of the congregation stayed on for a bring and share lunch at our Word Cafe.  On each table was a two sided table mat with a summary of some of what was said in that conversation and the preaching, and questions to prompt discussion.

At the first Church Meeting of the year we asked people to come up with five words that sum up what makes  Highbury special.  These are the words we came up with.

I guess you could say that’s what it means for us to belong to Highbury.  With the help of our Deacons on Thursday we are going to home in on six of those words and then we are going to dig a bit more deeply in Sunday services in Highbury News on the web site on face book in as we ask ourselves how we can build up that aspect of our church life here at Highbury.  We have something special, something we feel is really worth sharing – we want to go from strength to strength.

But today I want to push us forward a bit.  What are our dreams and visions for Highbury for the future?  Are there words that come to mind that capture the vision we have for the church here at Highbury in the future that lies ahead of us.

That’s a subtly different question – and it makes you think.

It’s a question I put to Sharon at the end of a fascinating day at Horfield Baptist Church in Bristol last Saturday.  The response I got was not what I was expecting.  It was good to share with Sharon in conversation.

When you told us you were going to go to the University to do a degree in Philosophy and Religious studies, I remember  you saying one of the things you wanted to work at was giving presentations, not least in church.  So … first, how’s the course going?

Sharon told us how much she was enjoying the course and how well it was going.

One of your lecturers set up the day last Saturday.  Tell us a little about the day.

Sharon described the way Lloyd Pieterson took us through his recently published book Reading the Bible After Christendom (Paternoster, 2011)

Observing that Christianity in the west no longer has that position of power it once had and has become marginalised, he went on to suggest that that is no bad thing. 

With his roots in the Anabaptist tradition Lloyd Pieterson is very close to the tradition I come from.  How you read the Bible will be shaped by the community of faith you are part of – and his reading of the Bible acknowledges that.  It is a community of faith that has common roots with our own Congregational heritage in the radical reformation of the sixteenth century.  I was excited as I found myself sharing common ground with Lloyd Pieterson in the way I have been teaching the Bible in the last 30 years in the context of our Congregational churches.

In particular, Lloyd Pieterson was concerned to explore the way much of the way the Bible has been read has been shaped by the aftermath of Constantine making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.  The result of that was to tame the radical nature of much of Jesus’ teaching.  The Christianity of Christendom that had power and influence was a Christianity that had been harnessed, or hijacked, by those in power to buttress that power.  Now, in the west we are in a post Christendom period we need to go back to the way the Bible was read pre-Christendom,  in the first couple of hundred years of Christianity and indeed seek to go back to the Jesus of history.  Then we shall have a very different way of reading a Bible that challenges us to take seriously the teachings of Jesus as we follow in his way ….

That then will shape the way we are church.

I recalled how as we got back into the car after an excellent day ‘reading the Bible after Christendom’ it struck me that we needed to follow up the day and share with everyone else what we had shared.

Today we are going to be looking at belonging to Highbury and we will be looking at the hopes and dreams we have for the church.  And then there will be an opportunity to gather ‘around the word’ we have shared during our service at our Word Café when we shall have an opportunity to share our thoughts together.

So how could we explore our hopes and dreams for the church?  I asked Sharon  for her response wondering how best we might ‘shape’ the church for the future.

How Sharon responded set me thinking along different lines.  And I found what she shared really challenging and really helpful.

I was fishing I guess for ideas about what shape the church should take, what kind of things we as a church should be doing..  What hopes and dreams for the church here?  What’s your vision?  What kind of things would you like to see going on in the life of our church?  What shape do you think our church should take.

Sharon was not happy with the way I asked the question.

The question implies that the church should take a certain kind of shape, she said.

But that is to misunderstand what ‘church’ is about.

We should not seek to make the church a certain kind of shape.

That is to think of the church as ‘an institution’.

And the church is very different from that.

It’s better to think of church as ‘glue’.

We live in an age when there are around us all kinds of different people.  We live in a society that is multi-faceted and immensely diverse.  We should think of church as ‘the glue’ that helps to hold that diverse range of people and ‘societies’ together.

Our conversation went on … and built on that analogy of the church as ‘glue’.

It feels very much as if things are falling apart at the moment – that can be in people’s personal lives, it can be in a community in our locality.  That’s how it feels in the wider world,  in the work place, in the state of the world’s economy, the financial crisis in our country, in Europe.  So many things are falling apart.

Church should be the glue that helps puts things together again, that mends what is broken.

If the church is to be glue, however, we must focus on Jesus.  That’s what makes us church and not some other organisation.  Lloyd Pieterson had been passionate about modelling what we do and the people we are on Jesus, the Jesus we can access through the Bible.

So I asked Sharon to reflect on passages from the Bible that pointed us in that kind of direction.

Then something special happened.  Sharon came up with passages from Paul, starting in Ephesians 2:19-22.  I found myself going to similar passages, and drawing particularly on Colossians 3.  We were in the same part of the Bible, in the same range of thinking.  And it hadn’t been planned. One of those special moments.

Sharon shared with us those words from Ephesians.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God.

There is something in those words about being ‘joined together’ and ‘growing into a holy temple in the Lord’ that has about it the feel of ‘glue’.  I found myself reflecting on the way Jesus was enraged at what the powers that be had done to the temple – it should have been a house of prayer, but it had been made into a den of thieves.  Destroy this temple, he had said, and I will re-build it in three days.

Temple, where God’s presence is most real, happens not in a particular place in a particular location – but it happens in Christ.  And Paul takes up that theme suggesting each Christian is a temple for the Holy Spirit.  And here Paul says collectively church is ‘temple’ that place where  God’s presence touches earth and is real.

As I have been thinking about those thoughts Sharon shared in the last few days, I have felt more and more that Sharon has put her finger on something that goes to the very heart of what it means to be church.  It goes to the very heart of the Good News at the heart of the Christian faith.

What’s the big picture that we work to?

For lots of people church and all it stands for is a framework – a set of do’s and don’ts – a way of life to follow.

For others church and all it stands for is about getting people into heaven – a personal salvation.

What’s the big picture we work to – that individuals need to get into heaven and that’s what we have to offer?  That people need values to live by and that’s what we offer?

Or is there a bigger picture.

Can we think of this as a picture.  We can often be conscious that things seem broken – in our personal lives, in family life, in the nation.  The big picture is that that is the case.  There is a brokenness in our world.  From the largest scale to the smallest most personal, it can feel as if we are in thrall to powers beyond our control that damage.  It may be greed that is so endemic in humanity that no one can get the better of it, as someone suggested to me at the Community Café this week.  It may be the breakdown of things we have come to take for granted.

What is the big picture that our faith holds out for us?

The very first followers of Jesus sensed that Jesus not only put things back together for the leprosy sufferers, for people whose families had fallen apart, for people who simply felt as if the world was falling apart, he also was about putting the world back together again.  He came saying the kingdom of God was near.  God’s rule breaking in.  Paul sensed that in Christ there was a new creation – it was possible to look to a new heaven and a new earth.  Nothing less than a new order.

When Paul writes to a church in Colossae about the kind of church they should be, he does exactly the kind of exercise we did at the church meeting – he came up with key words that summed up the life of the church.

But before he got to that nitty gritty kind of detail, he painted the big picture.

In Jesus Christ he saw one was the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, notice what he says in Colossians 1:15ff

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in Christ all things hold together. 

This is the big picture – that sets the frame for us.  It is that in Christ all things hold together.

We are conscious of a broken world.

Our Christian faith holds out for us the vision of a restored world.

in Christ all things hold together. 

That’s the big picture.

No sooner has he spoken those words, than Paul goes on to speak of Christ then as head of the church.

We are not far off the analogy of glue.

Christ – the light, the love, the care that he embodies, the victory over darkness, the victory over death he invites us to share – this is the glue that holds all things together.

What of us in the church?

We are called to em-body Christ.  Be the body of Christ.  And in being the body of Christ we look to Christ as Head of the Body and we seek to live out all he wills for us.

So Paul goes on in Colossians 3 to come up with his core words …

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

That has to be one of my favourite passages when it comes to thinking about the church.  Those words are so powerful.

Chosen, holy, beloved

Compassion, kindness, humility, patience

Bear with one another

Forgive each other

Then comes something I had not noticed before.

Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

I had always linked those words with what the church should be like as an institution.  We should be bound together in love.

Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together.

Isn’t this the key to being part of the big picture?

If in that big picture we se in Christ all things hold together, we see Christ as the glue that holds things together, then it is for us to live out that love so that in our little bit of that big picture, the people we are, the things we say, the things we do can bind everything together – in other words church can be the glue our broken world so needs.

Now then, if that is our vision for the future of Highbury, we need to be asking ourselves – in all we do are we being the glue that holds things together in the world around us?

How can we work that out in practice?

There’s one thing more to add.  I shared today’s theme with one of our older members, Jocelyn Bell one afternoon this week.  She came back with a thought-provoking response – the glue must be the kind that’s flexible.  It mustn’t be too rigid!  How wise, I thought!

Love binds everything together in perfect harmony in Christ all things hold together

This was the double-sided placemat that served as an aide memoire and a discussion starter when a third of the congregation stayed on for lunch at our Word Café

  

Changed through Peace-making

For the Sunday of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity we shared with our local anglican church, St Luke's in a united service.  Richard preached on the theme for the day from the Week of Prayer for Christian unity leaflet.

It’s what you do.

Maybe I shouldn’t speak for other people.

It’s what I do.

And I guess it’s what a lot of us do.

When things have gone wrong, when things are going wrong, it’s good to come back to somewhere safe, somewhere warm, somewhere you can be with friends, with family.  Somewhere secure.  Somewhere safe.

Maybe there’s stuff going on now that makes you feel that way.

It’s how that small group of people who had given their all to follow Jesus felt in the hours after his execution.

If you stop and think this is a rock-bottom moment for them all.  Hopes shattered.  Not just one life ended, but their lives destroyed.  What they do is what we all do.  They found somewhere safe.  Somewhere warm.  Somewhere secure.  Family were far away.  But they had each other.  They could lock the doors and keep the fears outside.

It was into that place, into that moment that Jesus came and stood among them and said “Peace be with you.”

I want to hold on to that picture for a moment.  I want to hold on to that presence of the risen Christ.  I want to hold on to those words.

We can tell stories, we can think through ideas, we can discuss and we can argue, but at the end of the day, this is what it’s all about.

At the moment when all is at its worst.  When nothing makes sense.  When everything has fallen apart.  At that moment when there is nothing else but a place to retreat to for your own security.  It is at that moment, that Christ comes into our presence, into the very place where we seek some kind of security.  And he says those words to us.  Peace be with you.

This is that peace that is beyond anything we can begin to understand, it transcends the intellect.  It is something we cannot begin to explain.

You can almost see the disciples blinking.  They cannot believe their eyes.  There is that moment of taking stock.  Checking.  Is it really true.  After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.  Then comes the rejoicing.

Sense that place you are in … hear those words of Jesus, Peace be with you.  Take a reality check.  And then as they did rejoice.  Take courage, take heart.  Christ is with us.

The disciples in that upper room needed to hear those words again.  And so Jesus sasid to them again, Peace be with you.

This is that inner peace, that calm, that we year for, that we need, that Christ offers.

But there is something about the peace that Christ gives.  It becomes a true peace in our hearts as we receive it and then as we pro-actively do something with this peace.

It is not simply a comfort blanket for us to keep to ourselves, to give us a warm glow in that safe place where we feel secure.

Peace be with you, Jesus said.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

Almost as soon as that sense of peace has come upon the disciples they are told by Jesus they cannot stay in the place of safety.  They cannot stay where they are secure.  They cannot stay in the warmth.

Just as Jesus was sent into the messiness of an incredibly troubled and disturbed world, so his followers are to be sent into that world as well.  They have to unbolt those locked doors and go out into the very hostile world they have sought refuge from.

This is where the very Christian faith that is such a warmth and a peace takes on a different dimension.  Never let it be said that religion is simply a comforter, a way of easing over problems.

The Peace that Jesus offers is a peace that becomes real only as it becomes something actively to share.

So, in the troubles of the world, wherever we are and whatever we are doing, as we sense the presence of Christ with us and hear those wonderful words addressed individually to us … Peace be with you, we then need to be alert to where it is that Jesus is sending us.

Is it that we are to go into the very situation from which we have sought refuge … now to bring Christ’s peace?  Is it that we are to go into an entirely different setting to bring that peace into Christ’s world?

Just as I invited you to think of the troubles from which you seek refuge, I now invite you to think of where it might be Jesus is sending you to take his peace.

What will it involve to take that peace of Christ out into that situation?  Is there a possibility that actually it will involve being changed? 

Our theme this morning comes from the prayers for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  Those prayers have been put together by churches in Poland.  The overall theme for the week is ‘We will all be changed’.  Are we prepared to be changed?  Are we open to that to happen?

Those followers of Jesus went out into the very troubled world from which they had sought refuge with the peace of Christ.  Just as God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, so God has given us in Christ a ministry of reconciliation.

Where can we bring peace?

Think of that in your own personal situation, in the situation of your home.

Think of that in the context of the church family too.  Where can we bring peace?

A particular task we can do … in the immediate church setting.  We are at the point in our church calendar where we are asking people to be prepared to be part of our leadership team, serving as a Deacon.  Think seriously abouyt it.  No doubt there are things here in St Luke’s needing to be done.

We are thinking about what it means to belong to church at Highbury next Sunday with an invitiation to stay on to lunch and think things through in a conversation over the lunch table.

Practical things to do – this Thursday an invitation to share in a service with Jewish friends at the Municipal Offices at 6-00 for Holocaust memorial day.

A team going out through Latin Link to serve in South America.

With our Polish links we think of Gosia who spent a year with us from Poland not so long ago.  She writes a greeting to us for today.

Dear Richard,

Thank you for e-mail.

I am sorry that I haven’t write for such a long time.

I am fine. Just packing for mountain trip and some skiing!

Half a year ago I started a new job. I’m working for Engineering Company and part of our responsibilities is to coordinate different constructions. 

Me and my team coordinate building a power station in Bielsko-Biala (which is in southern Poland in Beskidy mountain). 

I’m office assistant and I’m responsible for all the documentation. I wouldn’t have this job if it weren’t for my experience during gap year in Cheltenham. 

I learn so much from an amazing people involved in Highbury Congregation. I’m very grateful. I improved my social skills and I improved my English. 

I really need that now. I like my job :) The only problem is that Bielsko-Biala is about 50 miles from the place I live. So week days I spend in Bielsko, weekends in my flat in Bedzin. 

This is the only disadvantage. Maybe there is one more.. I start work at 6am every day and as You may remember – I love sleeping. 

Huge step in being grown up for me.

On the beginning of February I’m going to Warsaw for a ball organized by my company ILF. I’m terrified. 

There will be about 300 people that I don’t really know. In the same time I’m thinking that if I manage to survive a year in foreign country this ball is piece of cake :) I’m still in touch with some members of Highbury. I’m very pleased. I also received Highbury News each month. Thank You.

I’m also quite happy to say, that I started meeting someone. I hope it’s quite serious.

Now I really have to rush in with packing. I would like to ski a little bit today and I prefer doing that during the day light. 

(I’m also meeting my friend Ewa today – you should remember her).

Greetings for all Highbury Members and Friends.

Gosia

There are all sorts of opportunities to take the peace of Christ into the wider world.

In them all we are in the business of bringing peace into the world around us.

And it’s something we cannot do.

The whole point of coming aside is that we are being overwhelmed by what’s going on in the world around us.  There’s one thing more in this wonderful moment in the story of jesus we need to hold on to.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

But I cannot do that.  I cannot face what’s in store.  I cannot go out.

Then we need to remember what Jesus did next.

When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

We cannot do I t in our own strength.  But we are not on our own.  WE are not dependent on our own strength.  We have a strength from beyond ousevlves in the unseen, yet very real power of God, the power and strengthening of othe |Holy Spirit.

Let’s sense the breath of God coming deep within us to strengthen us for wherever it is we have to go, for whatever it is we have to do.

And as we do it – we are to take with us in the strength of God a spirit of forgveness.

Sending – peace-making – breaking barriers down – week of prayer – Polish churches – Latin Link – holocaust memorial on Thursday evening at 6-00.  Pro-active peace making.

Readings

Psalm 133  How good unity is!

Ephesians 2:14-20   Peace to the far off and to the near

John 20:19-23 “Peace be with you!”

Reflection

Peace is not the absence of guns

but the presence of restraint.

Peace is not the absence of bombs

but the presence of compassion.

Peace is not the absence of vengeance

but the presence of mercy.

Peace is not the absence of retribution

but the presence of reconciliation.

Peace is not the absence of division

but the presence of grace.

Peace is not the absence of greed

but the presence of justice.

Peace is not the absence of difference

but the presence of unity.

THE WORLD

Pray

Loving and merciful God,

speak peace to our hearts and minds

that we may make peace in the world:

breaching divisions to bring reconciliation,

bringing justice to bear where prejudice prevails,

bearing your grace by the power of the Holy Spirit

in and through our lives.