Seeing things differently: the parable of the Mustard Seed or the parable of the Bird's Nests?

I have a confession to make.

Last Sunday was not the first time I had preached the same sermon three times. I think it may have been the first time when someone other than my wife was in the Congregation on each occasion. So sorry to Richard for putting you through that – and thank you for your company through the day!

At the end of the day over coffee and leek and potato soup on the terrace of a new restaurant overlooking one of the wonderful lakes around South Cerney we reflected on the experience.

What was fascinating was the way the same sermon actually came out quite differently in each church. The message depended not just on what was written in the sermon, but also on the setting it was delivered in.

Three Churches ... One Sermon ... Three Meanings

The day started very much as part of our Scouting Centenary Celebration. It was great to have Rosemary and Alec here who had married in the church 63 years ago, Rosemary having been a member of the Good Companions, Highbury’s then Youth Group, under the leadership of Alfonso Tosio from Switzerland. He had shortly afterwards returned to Switzerland where he had set up a scout troop and one of this first members, Andrea together with Giovanni were with us last week. What a wonderful greeting Andrea gave, as he reflected on what it meant to be church in that setting in Porschavo that had played a little known yet signifanct part in the Reformation in the Italian part of Switzerland.

Religion is like a ladder that goes up to God. Faith is like a ladder that comes down from God into the heart. But as our heart is changed, Andrea said, we cannot sit back, arms folded. We must then put our heart changing faith into action as we share the task of being peacemakers and engage in mission.

All came together in our service and the sermon seemed to have a focus in mission.

That afternoon Richard and I found ourselves in the tiny Draycott mission chapel with only two others. Our thoughts turned to Kim and especially to her daughter and many like her who are in the throes of doing A Levels, important examinations. It’s a stressful time. Being church is about sharing vision, and also being supportive of one another. The message of the sermon took on a different kind of shape.

And in the evening another emphasis too. It was Congregational Sunday and we found ourselves in the United Church in South Cerney, an ecumenical partnership between Congregationalists and Methodists. Two years before on Congregational Sunday I had enjoyed some banter with Rita Mae and Paul who pastor the church and have built it up as very much a centre for the village community.

On the wall there was a picture of John Wesley celebrating the church’s Methodist roots … but no picture to identify the church’s Congregational roots. When we had been in Plymouth I had spotted just the picture. Not the picture of an individual but of a ship, the Mayflower. For me it suggests the freedom to worship as the spirit leads, the separation of church and state, that faith is a pilgrimage, a journey, that we will get nowhere in the boat unless the wind fills the sails – and nowhere in the church unless empowered by the Spirit of God. Lots of thoughts. The sermon sought to make sense of our Congregational roots in the context of an ecumenical partnership.

Same sermon. Three settings. And it came across in three quite different ways.

That’s nothing new!

One gets the feeling that the stories Jesus told, he told more than once. In different settings on different occasions. They were often passed on as stories, wonderful to tell. But in different settings those stories took on different meanings.

You can see that happening in the way the Gospel writers include those stories and record them in subtly different ways. Same story, but a different setting brings out quite a different meaning.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed

Take the parable of the mustard seed.

We all know its meaning. It’s a wonderful tale of small beginnings and massive end products. A tale of hope, especially if you are only too aware of how tiny your input seems.

Mark collects most of the stories of Jesus, the parables, into one chapter and the run from one to the next to the next. They are for the most part stories about seeds and sowing, or ordinary household life. And they are parables of the Kingdom.

Jesus’ teaching ministry is just getting under way. He has come with a powerful message: “The Time is fulfilled; and the Kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news.”

Based in Capernaum he has travelled the communities of Galilee with that powerful message, teaching with a remarkable authority, bringing healing into hurting people’s lives. And now he has gathered together a group of 12 to be his disciples.

And so it is we are introduced to this set of parables of the kingdom. They are parables of growth, often in a hazardous world, growth from tiny beginnings to something great in store.

You can just sense how much of an encouragement and a challenge it would be for those 12, conscious how small their movement is up against the powers that be of Rome which is really beginning to assert its powerbase in and around the Sea of Galilee and over against the Jewish powers that be that are in collaboration with Rome.

What difference will this Jesus make? What will this kingdom be like? How can it make its mark when you think how powerful the world’s powers that be really are?

‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’

The key words in the telling of that story leap out at you.

The smallest of all the seeds on earth.

The greatest of all shrubs.

What encouragement for that small band of followers of Jesus.

And it has to be an encouragement for us too. What difference are we going to make in a world where it is so difficult to make a difference?

That’s the whole point … small things do make a difference.

After the service last Sunday morning Andrea and Giovanni caught the 12-45 coach to Heathrow and on to Luton where they stayed overnight. Early Monday they caught their flight back to Italy and across the border home to Porschavio. Both were leading members of the Protestant church in their village. They had a truck already loaded with furniture. The two of them later that day, I think, were going to drive the truck over the border into Croatia and deliver furniture to an orphanage they had been supporting as a church ever since the ending of the Bosnian war.

Small things that make a difference.

What a powerful story this parable is!

But that’s not the only way this story plays.

The Parable of the Bird's Nest

In Luke’s gospel it is not just part of a collection of parables of the kingdom … it seems to come at quite a specific moment, as Jesus’s actions and his teaching address the question … who is this kingdom for?

He’s teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath when he is confronted with a woman who has had a sprit that has crippled her for eighteen yeas. Jesus doesn’t hesitate. God’s rule is precisely for the likes of this woman. He reaches out and touches her, frees her from that spirit of infirmity, and empowers her to stand tall once again.

The powers that be in the synagogue, the synagogue ruler is perturbed. It’s not the kind of thing you should do on the Sabbath.

Yes, says Jesus it is precisely what you do on the Sabbath – the kingdom is for those weighed down with afflictions impossible to bear.

When he said this all his opponents were put to shame, and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

Then comes the story.

And it is quite explicitly linked with what has gone before …

Let’s here it again in Luke 13.19-20

He said, therefore, ‘

What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? 19It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’

Same story? Yes, but it works differently. We need a different picture.

The mustard seed is no longer the tiniest of seeds. The tree is no longer the greatest of shrubs.

The story seems to drive on to its conclusion as if that’s the punchline of the story.

it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’

It is as if the point of the story is now in the space there is in the kingdom for people to make a home there. The kingdom of God is not for the ones you might expect.

As he moves non through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem someone asks a question that seems to follow on in the way Luke tells the story from that parable about the birds nesting in the branches.

Lord, will only a few be saved?

What Jesus goes on to say is uncomfortable.

Strive to enter through the narrow door, he says, for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able.

The point he goes on to make is a pointed one. And it is directed at those who think they are safe and sound, those who say, Lord … .those who feel they are well k known and part of the in-crowd, those who are used to eating and drinking at table together.

Jesus’ words are directed at those for whom religion is a ladder to God. As they find themselves at the top of the ladder – they feel secure and they have power. And they wield power.

And they are in for a surprise, they will weep and gnash their teeth for with Abraham and Jacob they will see the prophets, the ones who speak for justice and for righteousness.

And those who are in power – who have got to the ladder will be brought low.

And then what will happen.

Seeing things differently

Remember the story of the mustard seed- think of it as the story of the birds nesting in the branches. The kingdom of God is for those who have been considered outsider. It is for those who are vulnerable. It is for those the powers that be reject …

Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. 30Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’

This is powerful stuff – it’s a striking, disturbing message – and it’s the message of the parable here in Luke.

Andrea was quite remarkable – a saddler by trade. For a number of years he has opened his home to someone for two years, first from Kenya, then from Uganda, most recently from Burkina Faso. He has taught them the trade of leather making, and then equipped them with tools, set them up in a workshop back home.

We mustn’t sit back, arms folded. We must be peace makers. We must work with and for those most vulnerable – for that’s who this wonderful kingdom of God is for!

With such a familiar story, how important it is that we take time to see the same thing differently!

We need then to ask ourselves two questions:

What one little thing will I do this week that will make all the difference in the fullness of God's Kingdom?

Who will I make space for this week?

Unity in Diversity

Matthew belongs to a Charismatic church – there are lots of them in Cheltenham. Trinity, Glenfall Fellowship, three c’s church – New Life, Elim – It’s their firm conviction that their worship, their way of being church has its roots in the Bible. Look at the way the church of Corinth used the gifts in their very free worship.

Fr Ian is an Orthodox priest – the Orthodox church meets in Cheltenham over in Bentham, there are Roman Catholic churches in the town – great to be in conversation with Fr Alan of Sacred Hearts this week and to be going to Prinknash later in the month. It’s their firm conviction that their worship, their way of being church has its roots in the Bible – look at the way Jesus valued the Temple and its worship and so did the first Christian community in Jerusalem.

And I am a Congregationalist, preaching on Congregational Sunday in a Congregational church. Not so many of them around. But we share a similar kind of tradition of worship and of being church with the Presbyterians who meet at Holy Apostles’ School with the Baptists, with the URC, and this evening I will be preaching in a united Congregational and Methodist Church in South Cerney. It is our conviction that our worship, our way of being church has its roots in the Bible. Where do we look to our roots.

Is it inevitable that we each go our separate ways, maintaining we are right and everyone else is wrong?

Is it necessary that we should long for the day when we can all have the same way of worshipping, the same way of ordering the church?

Or is it possible that each of us has some measure of the Truth and that we can hold on to our convictions while at the same time respecting, affirming and working with those others? It will come as no surprise to find that I am drawn to that third alternative.

Teaching and Learning in the Synagogue

That picture is one of the very special pictures I took in the Holy Land.

We were in Capernaum, the town on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee that Jesus used as the base for his ministry and mission in Galilee.

We were sitting in a Synagogue built maybe on the site of the Synagogue that Jesus would have been so well acquainted with.

And we had just had a wonderfully stimulating hour and a half discussing, debating and sharing in a marvellous experience of ‘teaching and learning’ with Henry Carse, a teacher based in St George’s College in Jerusalem.

A bench runs round the synagogue. In the centre would have been the place where the Law, the prophets and the writings would have been read. A smaller room off would have been a teaching and learning centre.

The synagogue was not simply for ‘worship’ – it was a place to read and study and enquire of the Scriptures. The rabbinic way of teaching and learning was to enter into question and answer, to explore, to dig away at the meaning of the Scripture.

It was not enough simply to read the Scripture. It was necessary to explore its meaning, to uncover its message. The one teaching would engage in asking questions, seeking out the truth.

Some of the fruits of that kind of teaching and enquiry was written down in comments on the Hebrew Scriptures – collections of rabbinic teaching on the text formed the Midrash on the Scriptures, collected again into the Mishnah and then into the Talmud.

In those writings you catch a glimpse of the teaching and learning process that goes on in a Synagogue.

It is all based around asking questions.

Jesus was steeped in that whole process. And so often we fail to see it!

Take the passage we have just read. I’ve always read it with impatience – the whole point of the passage is in the story, the most wonderful story of the Good Samaritan.

Teaching and Learning around the Parable of the Good Samaritan

I am impatient with the lawyer who wants to test Jesus and to justify himself. I speed over the first bit holding the lawyer a little in derision. What an idiot to be trying to catch Jesus out in this way with such catch questions.

Teaching and learning in the Synagogue is based around asking questions, it expects people to dig away at the Scriptures to seek out their meaning, and it involves enquiry into the Scripture. What caught my eye this week was the five questions that are asked in this passage. Maybe they are part of a genuine process of Synagogue style teaching and learning.

Let’s read the passage in the light of that. And lets have some respect for the lawyer. Let’s see him not with derision, but with respect. He is steeped in the Law, the Torah, his task is to apply it to daily life. He has given his life to the study of the law – he is one of those very much involved in the Synagogue process of teaching and learning. He would not simply take the words of the Torah, he would ask questions of it, he would identify the heart of the Torah.

Is he out to catch Jesus out?

Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus.

Is he simply trying to catch Jesus out. That’s one meaning of that word ‘test’. Or is it possible that another meaning could be found here …

to try to learn the nature or character of someone or something by submitting such to thorough and extensive testing - 'to test, to examine, to put to the test, examination, testing.'

Question 1

"Teacher," he said, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

To my eye that’s not a catch question. It is a very genuine question. In fact it is one of the big questions of every age and every generation. Do you think it’s a question about life after death?

Look carefully at the question: what must I do to inherit eternal life?

An inheritance is not something you get after you die. It is something you receive while you are still alive from someone else who has gone before you.

What must I do to receive the inheritance that is due to me from all those who have gone before in the Law, the Prophets and the writings, that fullness of life that comes from God’s eternity, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

What an interesting question. And Jesus finds it so. If the question is about an inheritance to receive from those who have gone before, in the Synagogue you know that the focus will be on the Torah, on the law.

So Jesus asks two questions – and they are not exactly the same.

Question 2

What is written in the law?

That question focuses the mind on the law, the Torah, the first five books of our Bible. That’s a massive body of literature that includes stories, history, laws to do with ritual, laws to do with individual behaviour, laws to do with community life.

As soon as the question is asked you are focused in on the five books of The Law.

But then Jesus asks the next question. Not what is written there – that includes the whole lot, but a sharper, more focused question,

Question 3
What do you read there?

What counts in Scripture is not just what is written there but what you read in it. What do you read there? You haven’t got time in your answer to recite the whole of the Torah – you have to sum it up. What do you read as the nub of the matter – all that the Torah stands for.

The Lawyer has an answer. It is not a foolish answer. Indeed it is a wonderful answer. It is an answer that Jesus gives on another occasion to someone else’s question.

It is a reminder that this coupling of love for God and love for neighbour is not new to Jesus. It is a way of reading the Torah that people like this Lawyer could see for themselves.

We need to respect him … he knows what he is talking about.

27 He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself." 28 And he said to him,

Look carefully at Jesus’ response. Jesus commends him.

"You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live."

You will live – or in other words you will receive your inheritance and your ordinary everyday life will be injected with that something extra that is real living, real life – bubbling over and full of God.

When we were in the Synagogue in Caperaum, one of our number was very argumentative. He put Henry on the spot – and the discussion went on … some were getting restless. Some were simply enjoying the experience of the question and answer technique of Synagogue teaching and learning.

We are quite disparaging of the lawyer for wanting to justify himself. But this is precisely what you would expect in the discussion. It’s precisely what Jesus would expect. It is the give and take of question and answer.

And of course the Lawyer’s question is the key question.

29 But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus,

Question 4

"And who is my neighbour?"

This time Jesus does something that again is typical of the Torah – the books of the Law don’t simply contain rules and regulations, they contain wonderful stories too.

The greatest truths often come as you enter into a story.

That’s what the lawyer found as he listened. That’s what countless generations of Christians have found as they have listened through the ages.

What a remarkable story – about thieves and robbers, a Samaritan, a Priest and a Levite. And listening to it you are drawn into it and you have to make a response.

Gathered in the Presence ... around the Word

Henry showed us the lintel of the synagogue – a picture of the synagogue itself – complete with its roof. But intriguingly, it is on wheels.

Why? The Ark of the Covenant was transported on a cart with wheels while the people travelled through the wilderness years, and first settled in the Holy Land. Only once the Temple had been built was it fixed in the Holy of Holies. And that was where God’s presence touched earth and could be felt in a special way.

But this is a massive claim for the Synagogue – it is here that God’s presence is felt. This is where God’s presence is to be found. How? As we gather together around God’s word and explore its meaning God’s presence is felt.

Remember that text we use as Congregationalists so often. Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

The word ‘gathered’ is the Greek word ‘synago’. Where two or three synagogue together in my name, I am there among them.

God’s presence made real as we ‘synagogue’ together, as we gather together around God’s word and explore its meaning.

The gathered church that departed Plymouth in the Mayflower for what was to become the USA – had started in Lincolnshire and moved over to Leiden in Holland under the leadership of Pastor John Robinson, someone who had himself studied the scripture and wanted to model church and worship on the spirit led church of the new testament.

Each Sunday morning they would meet for worship centred around the reading and then preaching from Scripture. But then in the afternoon they would gather again – and this time, each of the people of the church would share their insights into Scripture under the moderation of John Robinson.

Teaching and Learning Around Scripture

- the heart of our Congregational way of being Church

Teaching and learning centred around Scripture – is the heart of our tradition. It is how this church at Highbury was born. Another picture – Richard found in the Car Boot Sale – of Highbury Congregational College in the 1820’s – the recognition that at the heart of church life is the need to study and teach and learn out of the Scriptures.

Charismatic friends do find their roots in the Bible in the church of Corinth with its speaking in tongues and other gifts, let’s respect their insights into church and learn from them. Orthodox and Catholic friends find their roots in the bible in the Temple worship Jesus valued and his followers did at the first. Let’s respect that.

But our roots are in the question and answer of exploration of God’s word.

But that question and answer is not enough.

There is one more question and answer in this passage.

The story over, Jesus asks the lawyer one more question.

Question 5

Which of these three, do you think was a neighbour

to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?

Was there a pause before the answer came. Was it a life-changing exchange for that lawyer?

“the one who showed him mercy.”

Teaching and learning is no good unless we put what we learn into action.

Jesus says to us as the time for our synagogueing together draws to its close precisely what

Jesus said to him,

Go and do likewise.

A Faith that Moves Mountains - Mark 11:22-26

It’s the time of year for our church directory to be published.

What’s your favourite page? With the celebration of our Scout Group’s Centenary at Cranham on Saturday you might turn the page for Scouts and Guides.

I quite like the page that comes next, identifying some of the groups that regularly use our church premises. Among those are a couple of new groups who have started using the rooms recently.

Narcotics Anonymous and
Alcoholics Anonymous

Two groups that belong to two quite independent organisations, that have related goals and methods in responding to two of the most critical problems our society faces.

The value of a self-help group where anonymity is respected and where the support of developing friendships can be so important.

AA is marked out by their Twelve Step programme. It is fascinating to see the part a ‘Power greater than ourselves’, ‘God as we understand him’ has to play in the programme that has made such a difference to so many people. You can pick out some of the most prominent of those references:

• We admitted we were powerless
• Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us …
• Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
• Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

In one of his most powerful quotations Jesus said, “Have faith in God.”

Have Faith in God

In the Twelve Steps of AA and in those few words of Jesus is the recognition of a need we share for a strength, a power, a presence beyond ourselves. That strength, that power, that presence is the God Jesus invites us to have faith in.

Such faith can make all the difference.

A prayer that has meant a great deal to members of AA and to many others is the prayer of Pastor Niemoller …

God, grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and
the wisdom to know the difference.

How often have people found the footprints poem a source of comfort and strengthening …

Two sets of footprints in the sand … and then at the most troubled of times only one set of footprints. Where, O where, is God’s presence in those most troubled times. Then comes the voice of God,

“During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”

Have faith in God … He only is my rock and my salvation!

Have faith in God … how important that invitation of Jesus is!

It is not insignificant that those words are shared by Jesus with his friends as his final hour approaches. It’s the last week of his life – his time of trial and suffering. It is the Tuesday of Holy Week. On the Sunday he made his triumphal entry on a colt, the foal of an ass and wept over Jerusalem, Would that you had known the things that make for peace, he lamented, but you did not.

On the Monday he passed a fig tree with no fruit and cursed it … a curious thing to do, though one has the feeling his actions were symbolic of all that was going on that week, passing on from that fig tree he went down the steep road from Bethany, across the Kedron Valley and up on to the magnificent Temple Mount. An architectural tour de force symbolic of the fearful might of Herod the Great and the Herodian family in their power play with Rome, in many ways a denial of the very heart of all that the Hebrew Scriptures Jesus knew so well stood for … he berated those who had corrupted the Temple so much … My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.

It was on the Tuesday, as they were making their way along the same route that the disciples noticed the fig tree had withered and died. Remarkable, disturbing … was this symbolic of something that was going on?

“Have faith in God, says Jesus.

“Truly, I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea”, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.”

Facing a personal time of suffering and trial that would lead to the God-forsakenness of the cross, facing a city that did not know the things that make for peace, facing a house of prayer that had become a den of thieves,
Jesus knew the importance of faith.

What kind of faith moves mountains?

The kind of faith that would move mountains.

But what kind of faith is that? What kind of faith moves mountains?

There are two words of significance in what Jesus goes on to say.

So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.


In prayer visualize things as they might be, see the vision. For it is as you dream the things that might be and see the vision of what seems impossible that your prayer begins to find its answer.

What’s in your heart as you pray is important too.

‘Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you.

Two words to underpin our prayer.

Believe and

Forgive.

This is one of those sayings of Jesus that made all the difference to Paul. It is in his wonderful poem, celebrating the power of love in I Corinthians 13 that he takes up this word picture of Jesus … and fills out what needs to be in our heart as we have this kind of faith …

If I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love I am nothing.

What kind of faith moves mountains?

A believing faith

A forgiving faith

A loving faith

A Twist in the Tale

The Parable of the Mountain that Moves packs an unexpected punch. For that’s not the only question posed by this parable.

One question I asked of a guide I met on my recent visit to the Holy Land was … are there any passages of the Bible that you would read quite differently in the light of your understanding of the local geography?

Without a moment’s hesitation came the reply pointing me to the mountain that faith could move.

What mountain do you think that might be?


What kind of mountains does faith move?

After all, Jerusalem is built on the top of a whole range of mountains that goes from North to South of Palestine / Israel.

The temple is built on a mount. How Herod the Great had transformed that Temple – to create his remarkable Temple Mount he had literally had to re-build the top of the Mountain – an incredible feat of engineering that amounted to virtually moving a mountain – a massive statement of power, power in collaboration with Rome. Over against that mount is the Mount of Olives.

And beyond Betlehem, well within sight of the Theological Institute where we were staying, was another mountain full of menace in the days of Jesus.

It was the site of the magnificent palace Herod the Great had built. Another statement of sheer, unadulterated power in collaboration with Rome.

To build his palace he had literally had to move another mountain. It would be the place of his burial. And the tomb was discovered only six months ago!!

In the light of those mountains and the power-statements they make, Jesus’ comments about the faith that moves mountains prompts a question – what kind of mountains does faith move?

In our stay in the Holy Land it was disturbing to see and witness at first hand the power play that is wreaking such havoc among ordinary people. The sewing rooms we visted in an orphanage in Hebron which have since been completely ransacked and destroyed by Israeli soldiers.

The political situation with its massive power statements was indeed a mountain. The lack of hope in the eyes of so many suggests it is a massive mountain.

Is there hope?

And yet, in amongst the devastation we witnessed people of remarkable faith, remarkable courage and remarkable hope.

Not least, that Christian Peacemaker Team, simply being ‘a presence’ in the midst of the hostilities of Hebron, seeking to be peace-makers.

This is the kind of believing faith, forgiving faith, loving faith that can move mountains.

It is the kind of faith that has a resounding answer to give another question:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ?
Will hardship, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
3637No, in all these things
we are more than conquerors
through him who loved us.
38For I am convinced that
neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us
from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

No more sea!

You might have thought that it would be held up as a thing of beauty, as something good, wholesome, productive, full of energy, refreshing, life-giving, beautiful and wonderful.

After all the sea is part of the wonder of God’s creation …

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

In the story of Jesus the sea is the place where fishermen ply their trade, and at the climax to the story it is the place of a miraculous catch of 153 fish, causing nets to bulge as the fishermen disciples meet with the risen Lord Jesus Christ on their home territory, at sea in the place you would have thought they loved so much.

But all is not as it might seem.

The sea is not only a place of beauty, it is also a place of menace, a place of fear, a place of destructive force that in spite of all human technological advances remains a fearsome place.

That more than its beauty figures large in the thinking of the biblical writers.

It is over the chaos of the deep that the Spirit of God hovers as creation brings order into what is frighteningly chaotic and dis-ordered.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind, a spirit, from God, swept over the face of the waters.

The sea comes to represent all that cuts across the goodness of God. It stands for chaos, for terror, for destruction, and for fear.

Over against all that is destructive in the sea, lies God. The God who has the last word even over the raging sea and its sea-monsters.

Psalm 89:1-14

It’s so easy to romanticise the sea, especially if you live inland as we do! I’ve always thought of those fishermen disciples as engaged in a very pleasant kind of occupation.

What if the fishing industry at that time were different? What if it is a fishing industry on an industrial scale that is being ruthlessly exploited to feed the insatiable appetite of a Roman conquering power that’s seeking to take a hold by a process of urbanization and commercialisation.

That’s what’s suggested by a remarkable discovery of a boat in a particularly dry year in the Sea of Galilee in 1985, coupled with the development of a major Roman urban centre on the shore of the lake in Tiberias and a liking for fish sauce that can only be produced by over-intensive fish farming.

Even the process of fishing is not quite so benign any more.

When they are out all night and don’t catch a thing – is it just a disappointment? Or is it back to those bad old days of knowing the consequences of not taking any fish … fearing the possible consequences of over-fishing?

There’s a dark side to the lives these fishermen lead.

It becomes even darker as you build into the story the picture created in Psalm 89. That’s a picture of a raging sea, of sea monsters who threaten life in the extreme.

Where is God in all this? Where is God in the raging of the storm? Where is God in the exploitation of people and resources? And what about us? How do we feel? What should we be doing?

Hiding in the stories of the Sea are some answers to those questions.

The meteorology of the area around the Sea of Galilee is fascinating: in a steep sided valley at 600 feet below sea level, you can see how the weather can change, the storms get whipped up out of all proportion to the tiny size of what is little more than a big lake.

Interesting though it may be it’s important to go beyond the meteorology as we read the story of Jesus stilling the storm.

Notice carefully what happens. How the disciples react. What Jesus does.

That gives rise to two questions: who has the last word? And what happens next?

First, notice carefully what happens.

A great wind storm arose. The wind rages to an unbearable extent. And that results in the waves threatening to swamp the boat.

the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.

Secondly, notice how the disciples react

‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’

Their reaction begs Jesus’ question: ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’

The feeling that all is lost, they are perishing gives rise to a fear that is all too real. And that fear is accompanied by loss of faith.

What does Jesus do?

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’

Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm.

That gives rise to the first question.

Who has the last word? The answer is in the final comment of the disciples.

And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?’

Against the chaos, the awfulness, the sheer dread of all that is chaotic in the world, Jesus has the last word … the word of Jesus, the word of Peace, prevails.

The story was treasured by those disciples, not out of any interesting in things meteorological, but because it resonated with the experiences they were to continue to have in lives that were all too conscious of chaos and storm.

Those disciples, not least out on the sea, were just like the rest of us. They wanted to be in control. That desire to control and be in charge is simply a natural human instinct. When things spin out of control and it is clear no one is in charge two things happen. Fear It’s frightening. Very frightening. And the second thing is ‘loss of faith’.

The raging wind, the terrifying sea is symbolic of all that is chaotic in the world.

It is something that can rage around us and sometimes be whipped up at a moment’s notice.

Personal circumstances in a life that is sailing along beautifully only for something to happen that seems to blow everything sky high out of the water. Where once there was order now there is chaos.

We are brought face to face with our own mortality. And that is frightening. It is so easy to lose faith.

The intractability of a problem. Zimbabwe. What is going to happen? How can things be resolved? Gaza and all that is going on … as statesmen meet in London … what is going to happen. We arrive again at Christian Aid week with our concern for the greatest needs of the world.

Chaos takes a hold. We are so perishable. It is frightening. It leads to loss of faith.

Those disciples ever afterwards knew what they had to hold on to.

We too can hold on to the same thing.

The conviction that Jesus has the last word. And the conviction that the last word is ‘Peace, be still’.

In a personal way, that word ‘Peace, be still’ can have a quietening effect. A stilling. As a prayer it releases a sense of the presence of God … the God we believe in through Jesus Christ is ultimately greater than the storm. Difficult to describe, but very real when you experience it.

On a larger scale we have the invitation to hold on to the conviction that God will prevail, that Jesus has the last word … and that the last word is the word, Peace, be still. Our task then is to bring this peace into that world. We do support those congregational churches in Zimbabwe Felicity visited and told us about last week, in our prayers and in our fellowship. We are with those people working for peace in Gaza, in Palestine, in Israel. We are committed to Christian Aid and bringing help where it is needed most. That’s the task we have to do.

There’s one more dimension to this story that’s easy to miss.

The boat Jesus was in was not alone. There were ‘other boats with him’. It’s not a solitary fisherman’s boat. It is one of those boats that are part of the Roman conquest of this part of the world. They are part of that fishing industry exploiting those waters.

The fishermen disciples of Jesus in that boat have a new relationship with that whole process. They had once been caught up in it. They had been part of the commericalisation and urbanisation processs that had a stranglehold on their community. Maybe a reluctant part.

Jesus had called them to a different way. The way of discipleship in which exploitation of that kind was rejected in favour of hungering and thirsting for righteousness, in favour of being merciful, of pursuing the path of peace making.

They have to go over the waters, they still have to use the boats to get to the other side. They are not averse later to returning to their fishing. But no longer in thrall to the powers that be. Now as followers of Jesus Christ in the pursuit of the rule of God in the world.

That’s the key for us too. We are invited to share the conviction that Jesus has the last word. We are invited to work for peace and align ourselves with his kingdom;. That means we are to stand out against the powers that be that exploit and contribute to the chaos and stand for the way that Christ would have us follow.

But the sea is still there. There’s still the rest of the journey to make. We have yet to ‘come to the other side’.

We still live in a world where chaos at times seems to prevail, where exploitation and injustice seems to prevail.

But we have a vision to draw on. It’s a wonderful vision. The vision we have of God’s future, then defines for us what we do here and now. Listen carefully to the words of the vision John the divine shares in Revelation 21.

If the vision is that ‘ he will wipe away every tear from their eyes’ then our task is to wipe the tears of those who weep and bring comfort to a hurting world.

If the vision is that mourning and crying and pain will be no more then our task is to comfort those who mourn, to weep with those weep and to alleviate pain in whatever way we can.

In this vision of a new heaven and a new earth, something remarkable happens. The sea is no more.

All that is chaotic, destructive, soul-destorying is simply no more. If that is the vision, then our task is not to be part of the forces of chaos, but to be part of the peace Christ brings to his world

A Sure and Certain Hope! Acts 17:22-31

We're not in the Holy Land this week ... we have travelled to Athens for a change! Though there may still be some surprises in store!

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said,

I took it with me on the Orient Express … and I made sure I had it with me on my visit to the Holy Land this time too. My Bible.

And in situ it was exciting to read then. Just as it was exciting to read now.

"Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.

It is not just the Jewish people who are extremely religious, but the Greeks, the Gentiles too … the Roman Empire as well.

Something of that religion we shall see on our visit to the British Museum. The Elgin marbles in all their splendour once adorned the Parthenon, that Temple on the hill top holy place in Athens.
Standing on the Areopagus and wandering through any great city of the Roman Empire one couldn’t help but sense how religious they were.

You sense it here too.

The shrine in Chedworth. The shrine where the water comes in at Witcombe. From Chedworth take the path back to the road, down the lane, and then through the private estate on a public right of way and the path follows the little stream to your left and to your right after a while – an impressive mound on which was a Temple.

Over to Lydney. A remarkable Temple. On a hill top marvellous architecture, staggering views of the Severn and the Cotswolds beyond. And most fascinating of all as again over the other side of the River Severn Uley. See it at its best in the British Museum! Wonderful artefacts.

23For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.'

We’ll also be seeing some of the wonderful Vindalanda letters, constructed in just the same way as the epistles in the New Testament – and dating from only thirty or forty years later. Every settlement and fort has its temple shrines, sometimes in profusion. A wonderful temple to Mithras towards the Newcastle end of the wall. And at Vindalanda … just as you go into the site a temple shrine.

And an innocent enough sign. To an unknown God.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth,

Athens is a city surrounded by hills … and now covered with smog.

But then as clear as could be – high mountains in one direction – the harbour and the Mediterranean in the other.

And on that site it is breathtaking.

No less breathtaking in Lydney … or for that matter at Uley.

Make no mistake about it these temple shrines were impressive. In Athens more impressive than anywhere.

Stunning.

The pinnacle of human achievement.

And as nothing compared to the wonder of God’s creation!

24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,

What a remarkable truth.

The wonder of God of creation.

No matter human ingenuity, the wonder of God is greater.

24The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.

I love that expression. Since he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.
Life, breath and all things. Ta panta – the universe. A guide to science. Should science phase you? Not a bit of it. It captures the remarkable wonder of God in all his greatness.

26From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,

There’s a solidarity here for all of humanity. And also a particularness that values different cultures.

I should have gone to Hy-Way last Wednesday, after all I went to the Friendship Group on St David’s Day. Sue did her bit for England and celebrated St George.

I did my bit this afternoon too and celebrated St George at the Scouts Parade. We brought out the century old flag once more. I recalled the international nature of the Jamboree. And a remarkable quote from Baden Powell in which he suggests that true patriotism takes pride in one's own country while at the same time respecting and treasuring other countries too.

This year has seen the re-discovery of St George's day and the flag of St George.

Maybe it's a flag worth re-claiming. It's a flag that can become a symbol of something very special for all of us who live in England whether we are English or not.

Legend has it that he was born in Turkey of a Turkish father and a Palestinian mother and grew up around Bethlehem in Palestine. And I was a there in Bethlehem a fortnight ago! I visited the Church of the Nativity where the Peace Light is lit each Christmas and brought by the Scouts of Palestine and then Israel to Austria and all over the world – and here to Cheltenham as well.

As I was leaving I passed a wonderful sculpture to St George.

The Palestinian Christians made him their won centuries before he was adopted by England. He became a soldier in the Roman Empire. A soldier who had the courage to say ‘no’.

One day a stranger passed his way – he went out of his way to help him. And he discovered the teachings of Jesus – welcome a stranger and you welcome me … Jesus said. The teaching caught St George and his life was turned inside out. Love for your neighbour. Love for your enemy. What a difference that made.

And then came the order. It was a new Emperor. The order came to capture these Christians, to torture them and to execute them. And St George said ‘no’. He put down his arms. And he decided he would travel many hundreds of miles to confront the Emperor. He did just that.

He was put on trial. Tortured. And executed in the most awful way. On the 23rd April. But the ideas he had lived on. Care for others. Meet their needs.

In the next town to Bethlehem in Bet Jela there is a shrine to St George. And there is something special about that shrine. Christians go to it; Muslims regard it as a holy place too; and Jewish people do as well.

The Shrine of St George is a place where religions too often now in conflict meet together. Scouting is a place where that happens too. For it is only by becoming friends with people who are different from you that there is a hope for peace. And that hope for peace is what world-wide Scouting is all about.

If we make friends with our neighbours around the world … we shan’t want to fight … and that is by far the best way of making sure of lasting peace. Baden Powell

But we must come back to Athens. Forgive me, I couldn’t but include one reference to the Holy Land!

Paul suggests that humanity has something in common. And that something in common is God-given. Part of God’s creation of humanity and part of God’s purpose for humanity.

26From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 7so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.

I love that phrase. A seeking for God. A groping for him. And a finding of him.
Science and the quest for life and an understanding. The Queen of Sciences – the quest for God and an understanding.

Father Prem, the Roman Catholic Priest from Warwick … a PhD in Mathematics from Downing College Cambridge.

Interesting.

The coach may have been driving through fascinating countryside. But I couldn’t resist the opportunity to turn the conversation to mathematics.

We turned to John Polkinghorne’s account of his belief in God.

The language of mathematics is a construct or a discovery of the human mind.

The language of mathematics is capable of describing life, the universe and everything

The human mind is capable of describing life, the universe and everything.

That accords with the Christian view that the God who created life, the universe and everything created human beings in his own image and so the human mind bears the imprint of the creator God and is capable of understanding life, the universe and everything.

Not a proof of the existence of God. But a description of the existence of God that accords with the evidence of science.

The language of poetry that Paul chooses to use is far more powerful.

As human beings we are made to search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us, and this is where the wonderful poetry locks in …
For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we too are his offspring.'

All of that impacts on how we understand God and then on what we do.

First, it impacts on how we understand God. Again, remember the scene. Magnificent architecture, the greatest achievement of humanit’s mathematical minds, together with sculpture the like of which the world has never seen – magnificent. But as nothing to the magnificence of God’s creation. Not simply the world out there and its beauty. But the wonderful beauty of each one of us as ‘in him we live and move and have our being’.

29Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.

God is far beyond anything we can picture, anything we can begin to imagine or understand.
That is humbling.

It pricks the bubble of our human arrogance that imagines we can solve all the problems of the world. As much as we think we know, we still are remarkably ignorant.

But God knows us as we are. He knows us in our humility. And he looks on us with love and kindness.

30While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness

We will face the consequences of the things we have done in this world and with this world and to this world.

And when measured by that righteousness, that justice that is God’s.

But the sting of Paul’s message is in the tail.

This God in all his wonder, whose imprint is within our mind, has disclosed himself, revealed himself through someone just like us … his teaching of selfless love is the measure by which we are to measure ourselves and the measure by which we are to be measured.

The life he lived is measure enough; the death he died has disclosed the depths to which God will go in order to bring forgiveness to people’s hearts. Not even death itself could contain him.

The measure of that righteousness comes to us ...

by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."

What a note to finish on!

A sure and certain of the resurrection to eternal life!

The resurrection authenticates all that God has done through this man – and gives us the assurance that this is the way of God for us. The resurrection provides us with a vision, a wonderful vision of the world that is to be. Hold on to the vision of the world that is to be and that will shape the life we live here and now.

Ask ... seek ... knock - the way to 'do' discipleship - Matthew 7

I knew it was big. But not that big!

When Herod the Great did a building project he thought big. Very big!

The Temple in Jerusalem is a case in point. The finishing touches were still being added by the time Jesus was taken to the temple when he was twelve years old. But it was as good as finished and it really was impressive.

The Temple had originally been built on the rocky hill top at the head of the city of Jerusalem by Solomon, King David’s successor who when given the opportunity to ask God for anything, asked for wisdom not riches and ever since has been regarded as the Great Wise King, being associated with the Book of Proverbs.

It was the place where more than any other God’s presence touched earth in the Holiest of Holy Places.

That temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians four hundred years later and then rebuilt in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.

But Herod the Great felt it was not grand enough. And so he set about virtually rebuilding it. By now the city had spread considerably: but the hill top the temple stood on was still as prominent as could be.

The Temple building would remain where it always had been. But, and this was Herod’s brilliant idea, he would flatten the hill top by building a massive stone box effectively extending the hill top and creating an enormous plaza. An open air courtyard the size of several football pitches. In the middle of this, now flat area the temple stood in all its splendour.

When the Romans forty years after the time of Christ destroyed the Temple, what they destroyed was the temple in the middle of the Plaza. They left the plaza intact. In due course it was the Roman Emperor Hadrian who built a temple to Jupiter on that spot.

When Constantine adopted Christianity and Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, the temple to Jupiter fell into disrepair and was demolished, but the plaza remained. It had not significance in itself and became the city’s rubbish dump.

Constantine’s mother, Helen, identified another stony hill top that had been just outside the city, with tomb caves just underneath, and identified that as the place of Christ’s crucifixion and burial. So it was that Constantine had an enormous church with a big dome built over the hill of calvary and the site of the tomb. The temple site had no significance for Christians. More significant now was the place of crucifixion and resurrection.

Three hundred years later the Dome of the Rock was erected in the first generation after the death of Mohammed. It marked the spot where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac and shortly after became associated with the place from which Mohammed ascended to heaven before returning to earth. That was the rocky outcrop that had been the site of the Jewish temple in the middle of that plaza on what had been the Temple Mount.

Out of respect for the prophet Jesus, second only to Mohammed in Islam, the Christian church marking the place of the Holy Sepulchre was left untouched. The dome of the Rock was made just a metre bigger … and constructed from gold.

For Muslims the Dome of the Rock is the second only to Meccas as a place of pilgrimage and as a holy shrine. Jewish people want to get as close to the holy of holies, at the western end of the Temple as possible and so they pray at what they used to call the wailing wall, but since taking over control in Jerusalem they now call the Western wall – that’s the wall of the box that holds the plaza as close to where the temple used to be as possible.

This is the nearest Jewish people can get to the location where God’s presence has been located and felt more than any other.


I came to see the significance in Constantine choosing to mark the hill outside the city wall where Jesus was crucified and buried … but it perturbed me to see that Christians have made that place into a ‘holy place’.

It seems to me to miss the point. For Christians it is a different story. The place, the location does not have the same kind of significance.

At the southern end of the Temple Mount excavations have revealed the steps that originally led up to the only tunnel-like gateways that were the only access point up on to Herod’s phenomenally big plaza and so to the Temple itself.

To walk up those steps is to walk up the very steps Jesus would have walked whenever he visited the Temple, not least on that first occasion he would be able to remember when he was just twelve years old. Maybe he was just like the family we saw marking their son’s Bar Mitzvah, his coming of age.

What did Jesus do on that occasion? When our group was asked that question, we had to rack our brains … Jesus was lost by his parents who eventually found him up on that Temple Mount, on that plaza, maybe under one of the colonnaded areas that provided shade … and our memory suggested he was discussing with some of the teachers who would regularly gather there.

That’s not quite what the text says.

Luke tells us in 2:46 that After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.

That’s what caught my eye.

Listening and asking questions.

That’s something Jesus was to do for the rest of his life. The Gospels are full of questions Jesus asked. So often when asked a question, Jesus would ask another question in return. Later on our journey as we sat in the synagogue on the site of the earlier synagogue where Jesus spent so much time in the city of Capernaum which he used as a base for most of his teaching ministry, we shared what would happen in that synagogue. It was a place of listening. But also a place of asking questions.

This was the way of learning for Jewish rabbis. It is through listening and asking questions that you learn, not just about God and his word … you learn of God, you learn of God’s presence in the world, in your life and in all that you do.

When Matthew tells us in 4:23 that Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every sickness and disease, the kind of teaching Jesus engaged in there in the synagogue would have involved listening and asking questions.

Our time in the synagogue over, we went up the mountain, just as Jesus had done. And there as we walked down towards the sea of Galilee we stopped in the shade of olive trees and heard the opening words of Jesus’s sermon on the mount.

This was his proclamation of the good news of the kingdom.

As he comes to the end of his sermon, he begins to wrap things up in chapter 7. The first six verses seem to be all about what you do with what you learn, and about how you learn of God. Don’t judge others. Don’t pick faults in others, attend to your own faults first, don’t throw your teaching away.

Then it is that he comes to words I have always tended to see in quite a different light. I have always thought they were to do with prayer and asking for things from God.

But having walked up the very steps Jesus walked up to the Temple where he ‘listened and asked questions’, having sat on the site of the synagogue where his teaching would have followed that pattern of listening and asking questions, I saw these verses in quite a different light.

Ask …

This is the key not just to learning about God, but it is the key to discovering the presence of God. Ask, seek, knock: For then you will receive, you will find, the door will be opened for you.

This is how to do discipleship.

But asking, seeking, learning is not enough.

The learning, the sense of the presence of God, must be matched by action.

In everything ‘do’.

For Jesus, listening and asking questions, important though that is, is never enough. That must lead on to action.

On the way into our seminar room, was a poster with the golden rule in many different faiths, not least Christianity.

Do to others …

This is the heart of the matter.

That involves putting yourself in other people’s shoes. Seeing as other people see. Doing to others as you would have others do to you.

Then we come to the climax of all this teaching.

For many in Jesus day the presence of God had a very specific location. It was in the holy of holies in the temple on the temple mount. Jewish people still regard it as the holiest of holy places. Muslims have come to regard it as a shrine second only to Mecca.

But for Christians … location is not all important.

Jesus comes to the end of his magnificent sermon and he has a story to tell. How we trivialise it! It’s the story of a wise man and a foolish man. Anyone who knows their Hebrew Scriptures as all those folk would have done would instantly have thought of the first nine chapters of the Book of Proverbs – that book of Solomon’s wisdom. They contrast the wise and the foolish.

Anyone who hears these words of mine, says Jesus, and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

The presence of God itself, is located, not on that rocky outcrop on the Temple Mount where once stood the Temple, and in the holiest of holy places. The presence of God itself is located wherever anyone, us included hears the words of Christ and acts on them.

Listen and ask questions – that’s for all of us to do, not least Becky as you join us in your work as pastoral assistant.

Do to others as you would have others do to you – that’s for all of us to heed, not least Becky as you join us in your work as pastoral assistant.

Hear these words of Christ and act on them … for in doing that you will be the place where God’s presence is located on earth

Seeing through the eyes of others ... seeing through the eyes of Jesus

A sermon preached at Highbury immediately following a fortnight in the Holy Land on 'A Journey of Reconciliation' at the Tantur Institute in Jerusalem and in Galilee

To sit in silence together is very moving.

To sit in silence together in a boat with the sound of the water lapping at its sides links you to nature in a very special way.

To sit in silence together in a boat on the Sea of Galilee as I did only three days ago moved me in a way I did not expect.

Everyone who has visited the Holy Land and sat maybe in that boat as the engines were turned off has told me how moving it is.

I don’t think I quite believed them.

I do now.

It was intensely moving in a way before experiencing it I couldn’t begin to believe possible.

The silence was preceded with a reading from Matthew 14. That chapter contains three stories. Those three stories captured for me something at the heart of all that we have shared in this last couple of weeks.

The first was the story of the beheading of John the Baptist. It wasn’t the story so much, or its location far from anywhere we visited. It was its brutality that registered with me.

The bulk of our time in the Holy Land was spent at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute. Tantur simply means ‘Hill Top’ and its location on a hill top overlooking the check point through which you have to pass to get from one side of the wall that separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem … unless of course you are an Israeli Citizen or a Palestinian who lives and works in Bethlehem and the West Bank in which case you are not permitted to pass through the check point.

That was the most frightening and brutalising thing of all. To meet Palestinians who are not allowed to meet and talk with Israelis, and with Israelis who are not allowed to meet and talk with Palestinians living in the West Bank.

I saw through Israeli eyes as our Israeli Jewish guides took us on wonderfully informative tours of the old city of Jerusalem with its historic sites, the bustle of the Arab quarter and the quiet of the Jewish quarter. The pride they took, albeit critically, of the Knesset, the Supreme Court and the institutions of state.

I saw through Palestinian eyes as I stood on the roof-top of a house built on the site of the tents his parents had been moved to when their land was taken from them in 1948 and looked to nearby Jerusalem to be told he was not permitted to go there. After service in their basement church I sat with a family in the room where the 70 year old parents had been kept for 7 hours by Israeli soldiers with no access to a toilet as they smashed all the windows on the top floor to fire at nearby houses: I saw all that remains of that room now with no windows.

I saw through Jewish eyes as we heard powerful talks about the situation from a leading Jewish rabbi and another Jewish theologian. We heard of the majority of Israelis and Jews who want to share the land with their Palestinian neighbours. I heard secular Jewish people passionately denounce the settlements that are still being built now two months after the Annapolis agreement said they should cease deep within the Palestinian territories.

I saw through Christian eyes joining a good friend of Eric Burton, my predecessor here in Highbury, with the Christain Peace Maker teams in Hebron. Were they right to be accompanying the children we met in an orphanage that is in danger of being closed by the Israeli militia? Our group were divided. Were they right in insisting we walk through the road block, past the Jewish settlers in that ancient Palestinian town deep inside the Palestinian territories. It was scary. The soldiers with their machine guns were so young. How vital the role those Christian Peacemaker teams play we were told in simply being a presence for peace in one of the most volatile parts of the Holy Land.

I saw through Jewish eyes as slowly I made my way through Yad Vashen, the museum and memorial to the people who died in the Holocaust and forced myself to look at images of people I found so difficult to look at, and forced myself to hear the stories of people I would rather not have heard.

Those haunting words at the entrance to the final breathtakingly enormous gallery where rows of ring binders are carefully arranged hoping eventually to contain the stories of all those 6,000,000 people. …

Remember only that I was innocent

and, just like you, mortal

On that day I too had a face

marked by rage, pity and joy,

quite simply a human face.

I saw through Jesus’ eyes as we rounded that bend on the road down from the Mount of Olives and saw the ancient city of Jerusalem with the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock. As he came near, Luke tells us, and saw the city he wept over it, saying, If you , even you had only recognised on the this day the things that make for peace!

I could understand those tears.

That brutality. And worst of all the lack of hope on the faces of so many people.

A confusion of thoughts tumbling around in the shared silence of that boat on the sea of Galilee. It was good to be there. Thinking. In the quiet.

The question that Matthew 14 addresses is not What would Jesus do? It is rather, the much more interesting, and much more powerful, What did Jesus do?

The brutality of John the Baptist’s death shook those who heard of it, not least Jesus.

“Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself.”

After the turmoil of thinking, talking, visiting, listening, seeing that we had done in the melting pot of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it was so good to come into the quiet place of Galilee.

It was so beautiful, the sea so calm, the hills and mountains so golden and green. We had just walked through beautiful cornfields, recently harvested.

And yet all is not as it seemed.

Galilee was a bustling place in the tame of Jesus, unlike Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it was on a major international thoroughfare. The crowds were there as well. And they sought Jesus out. They wanted to share in what Jesus had to say and in what Jesus had to do.

Jesus taught. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom. And Jesus healed.

They tracked him down. When he landed, they came in great numbers. We read, he had compassion for them and cured their sick. The second story of Matthew 14 is the feeding of the 5000.

We were well fed wherever we went. Delightful salads, wonderful meat dishes, tasty deserts. The calendar of Jewish festivals informed us that now is the time of the Citrus harvest. We had broken bread in a communion service in the East Jerusalem Baptist church last Sunday morning and then had refreshments in the shade of heavy-laden orange trees. The oranges were so juicy.

We were such a mixed group – Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, Baptist, Salvation Army, URC, Congregational, House Church, Charismatic. There’s something special about eating together. I found it special to share in each other’s times of communion, Eucharist or mass, as we were able.

An Orthodox priest explained the significance of the wonderful icons we were seeing, and the symbolic splendour of an Orthodox church.

At the ruined synagogue in Capernaum, the town Jesus used as his base in Galilee, I had shared my excitement that while the splendour of Orthodox and Catholic liturgy, vestments and ornamentation finds its roots in the Temple we had been learning so much about, and charismatic churches find their roots in the charismatic church of Corinth, we in our tradition find our roots in the Synagogues of Jesus’ day. How wonderful for us each to affirm the other and celebrate that ‘diversity’ that is ours.

I couldn't resist the temptation to get one friend, Lisa to take a photograph of two friends and myself sitting on the bench in the Synagogue at Capernaum. Closest to us is Fr Ian, Orthodox Priest in Oxford, I am in the centre, Congregational Minister in Cheltenham, Matthew is furthest from us, member of a community church in South Wales.

It rained a little in Galilee and the winds began to blow. We could see how sudden storms could indeed rage on that lake with tragic consequences. The third of those stories then followed – the sharing done, Jesus withdrew to pray. The disciples got back in the boat when a storm arose and the waves battered the side of the boat. In the silence even the gentle swell resulted in a battering sound on the boat we were in. They were fearful and felt very much alone.

Then it was that Jesus came to them, walking on the water. They were terrified at what they saw. Jesus spoke to them, Take heart; it is I; do not be afraid.

My thoughts went back to the point in our week when we had touched the brutality most. Hebron. In the company of the Christian Peace Makers. What a difference simply the presence of those Christian Peace Makers meant in such a volatile situation.

“It is I; do not be afraid.”

Those are the words I want to take with me from the Holy Land.
The reality of the fear so many people expressed and we could not help but share.

But over against that the reality of the presence of Jesus.

That came home to me so powerfully.

Here, in this location then. But also, here in this location now.

Wherever we are, whatever we may be doing, whatever the anxieties we face, these are the words to hear from the risen Christ.

“It is I; do not be afraid.”

The time of silence in that boat came to an end. We made our way back across to the shore. And one of the crew of the boat played his drum in a song that was a prayer for peace. Maybe it was the moment, but I found the tears in my eyes as I had done two or three times before.

Shalom, salem, Peace. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God. Called to be ambassadors of Christ, in Paul’s words our call is to be ambassadors for reconciliation.

A Prayer for our Church ... and for each of us

“A well-presented letter will show the outside world that you and your company are professional, capable and on the ball. On the other hand, a badly laid-out letter that is full of grammatical and spelling errors, and takes an age to get to the oint is irritating and time-consuming to deal with and, above all, bad public relations.”

So runs the advice in Louise Bostock’s Office Handbook.

“It is desirable,” she goes on to say, “that your layout and punctuation are consistent …”

Reference
Date
Addressee Name
And Address
Salutation
Subject Heading
Body of letter
Second Paragraph
Third paragraph
Subscription
Signatory
Position or Company name
Enclosures

Conventions in letter-writing are nothing new.

In a remarkable discovery at Vindalanda, one of the major forts on Hadrian’s Wall literally hundreds and thousands of letters have been discovered written from as far away as North Africa and Syria from family to relations posted to the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire. There are personal letters. There are formal letters. They follow the conventions of the ancient world – and we shall be taking a look at them in our visit to the British Museum in May. They were written only thirty or forty years after Paul was writing his letters.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, to discover that Paul follows the conventions of his day in writing his wonderful letters. There is a consistency through all his letters and they make for remarkable reading.

They are written to churches and to individuals, like the church in Colossae and the individual, Philemon, in whose house the church met.

And they make you think!

His letter to Colossians starts quite formally with an identification of the writer

From Paul, who by God's will is an apostle of Christ Jesus, and from our brother Timothy

Then comes the identification of who the letter is addressed to … there’s a warmth in Paul’s words …

To God's people in Colossae, who are our faithful brothers and sisters in union with Christ:

Then comes a greeting, a blessing, a moment’s prayer …

May God our Father give you grace and peace.

Stand in the courtyard at Witcombe Roman Villa and imagine what it must have been like to gather together in Philemon’s house in Colossae with all the members of that church, young and old, to hear the letter read out. These were words for you!

Just imagine, for a moment … what if … Paul were writing to our church on the eve of our annual meeting on Thursday. What would Paul say to us? Maybe we can draw some thoughts from Colossians that speak very much to our church as we gather together to mark the passing of another year in the church’s life.

Paul’s letters invariably start with prayer.

We miss Adrian. Our thoughts and prayers are very much with Katherine, with Rosamunde and Mark. Over the years Adrian has shared with us his passionate commitment as a Christian to Christian Aid, to the care of Prisoners, to people in need. It is in the last couple of years that he has shared with us a passion we need very much to continue to take to heart and develop. It was at a Deacons meeting that he posed the question, “Are we a praying church?” When we shared responsibilities among the deacons, he took the responsibility of prayer. Two meetings ago, he knew that he would be standing down as he had served his six years as a deacon. He told us that he would not be standing again. He handed round a paper for all of us, reflecting on the importance of one of the deacons taking responsibility for prayer in the life of the church, so that we could grow as a praying church.

Imagine a letter to Highbury that’s precious to us … and it will begin with prayer. But notice the prayer Paul begins with. He invariably begins with prayer of thanksgiving. For in each church he writes to, there is much to give thanks for.

As we gather together in our church meeting on Thursday there is much to give thanks for. All the work that has been done by so many over the last year … this year we say a big thank you to Jean and Roger for all the work they have done as Church Secretary. So many things to give thanks for.

Paul’s thanks go deeper than that. His prayer prompts us to think more deeply about what it is we give thanks for in our church here at Highbury.

We always give thanks to God,
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
when we pray for you.
For we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus
and of your love for all God's people.
When the true message, the Good News, first came to you,
you heard about the hope it offers
So your faith and love are based on what you hope for,
which is kept safe for you in heaven.

If Paul were to look at our church family, would he be able to make that prayer of thanksgiving. I would stick my neck out and say ‘yes’ to that. That is what’s special. Our faith could be deeper, our love more extensive, our hope more secure … but with all God’s people down through the ages, with those folk at Colossae we share a faith in Christ Jesus and a love for all God’s people. That faith and that love are based on what we hope for, something that is kept safe for us in heaven.

What a wonderful thought.

Much to give thanks for in our church. But much to pray for as well. We are all too conscious that we need to strengthen our faith, develop our love and hold fast to that hope even especially when times are difficult.

It is good not only to pray as a church and to be a praying church. It is good also to know that people are praying for us. Paul’s prayer for that church in Colossae is his prayer for our church as well. For us, here at Highbury. It’s wonderful to think people are praying these words for us.

For this reason we have always prayed for you,
ever since we heard about you.
We ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will,
with all the wisdom and understanding that his Spirit gives.
Then you will be able to live as the Lord wants
and will always do what pleases him.
Your lives will produce all kinds of good deeds,
and you will grow in your knowledge of God.
May you be made strong
with all the strength which comes from his glorious power,
so that you may be able to endure everything with patience.
And with joy give thanks to the Father,
who has made you fit to have your share
of what God has reserved for his people
in the kingdom of light.

This is the prayer for us to take into our Annual Meeting on Thursday. Of course we want to pray for God’s blessing on our new Church Secretary and on those who will join our Diaconate; of course we want to seek God’s blessing on Becky Hartwell as she joins us as our Pastoral Assistant. We want to seek God’s blessing on the work we do as a church …

The prayer is that we be filled with the knowledge of God’s will, with the wisdom and understanding that only God’s Spirit can give.

The prayer is that we be doers of God’s word and will … living as God wants us to live, doing what pleases him. It becomes a circle. As our lives bear the fruit of the Spirit’s working within us and produce good deeds we will grow in the knowledge of God … and the circle begins all over again.

Tough times come upon us, often unexpectedly. The prayer is we have strength to endure everything with patience, that strength that comes not from within ourselves but from God’s glorious power.

The prayer for us is that in all of this we have joy, the joy that comes from being part of God’s people, and belonging in a world of darkness to God’s glorious kingdom of light.

What a wonderful prayer.

From prayer Paul turns in each of his letters to the substance of his message. Often it is developed at some length. Always it finds its focus in Jesus Christ.

Here the substance of that message can be summed up quite simply:

He rescued us from the power of darkness
and brought us safe into the kingdom of his dear Son,
by whom we are set free,
that is,
our sins are forgiven.

Salvation, freedom, forgiveness – that’s what our Christian faith is all about …

As we are forgiven, as we are set free, the salvation given us by God brings us safe into the kingdom of his dear Son. That’s not just a hope for the hereafter. It’s a reality in the here and now. Here and now we belong to the kingdom, we are kingdom people, living under God’s rule in our lives.

In her Office Handbook, Louise Bostock finishes the section on letter writing with some letter writing tips.

Keep your letters short and to the point!
Make sure that your letter starts with a statement of intent and ends with a request or promise of action.

Brevity may not have been one of Paul’s strong points.

But his letters are always rounded off with a request, with a call to action.

If we are forgiven, set free, safe under God’s rule, part of God’s kingdom that means we have to live our lives in a certain kind of way. There’s a call to action from Paul that speaks directly into our church life here in Highbury at our Annual Meeting.

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, tolerance, forgiveness – these make up the set of clothes we are to wear as Christian people loved and chosen by God.

Paul was writing this letter from his imprisonment in Rome. He had no time for the passing fashions of the day he was all too aware of in what was in many ways a decadent city. He wanted Christian people to put on a different set of clothes. And he wanted those clothes to be tied together with a belt of love – which ‘binds all things together in perfect unity.

This is a call to action for our church as we embark on a new year in the church’s life.

You are the people of God;
he loved you and chose you for his own.

So then,
you must clothe yourselves with
compassion,
kindness,
humility,
gentleness,
and patience.

Be tolerant with one another
and forgive one another
whenever any of you has a complaint against someone else.
You must forgive one another just as the Lord has forgiven you.

And to all these qualities
add love,
which binds all things together in perfect unity.

The peace that Christ gives
is to guide you in the decisions you make;
for it is to this peace
that God has called you together in the one body.

And be thankful.

Christ's message in all its richness must live in your hearts.
Teach and instruct each other with all wisdom.
Sing psalms, hymns, and sacred songs;
sing to God with thanksgiving in your hearts.

Everything you do or say, then,
should be done in the name of the Lord Jesus,
as you give thanks through him to God the Father.

That’s the measure of what we are called to do. Faced with any decision, any uncertainty let’s make sure that everything we do or say be done in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Francis Bacon, in his essay ‘Of Cunning’ reserves ‘cunning’ in a letter to the postscript. He says this,

“When he wrote a letter, he would put that which was most material in the postscript, as if it had been a by-matter.” ~Francis Bacon, "Of Cunning," Essays

The Quote Garden Website on letter writing came up with an even more pointed comment about postscripts from Richard Steele, writing in the Spectator.

A woman seldom writes her Mind, but in her Postscript. ~Richard Steele, Spectator

Paul’s letters usually end with something of a Postscript, final very personal greetings. The sting is in the tale of the letter to the Colossians. I am going to suggest that there is a sting in the tale of the letter to Highbury Church for our Annual Meeting as well.

Paul’s greetings towards the end of Colossians seem innocuous enough at first sight.

Our dear brother Tychicus,
who is a faithful worker and fellow-servant in the Lord's work,
will give you all the news about me.
That is why I am sending him to you,
in order to cheer you up by telling you how all of us are getting on.
With him goes Onesimus, that dear and faithful brother, who belongs to your group.
They will tell you everything that is happening here.

“Onesimus, part of your group!” Up to that point Philemon, in whose house the church of Colossae had gathered to listen to the reading of Paul’s letter, had nodded in gentle agreement.

Love, forgiveness, tolerance He could go along with all of that. He had no difficulty with any of it.

But Onesimus. He was the runaway slave who had let him down and let his whole family down. Forgiveness for Onesimus – that was impossible.

Then it was that Tychicus came over to Philemon – he had a personal letter to him. Philemon opened it … it was a very personal letter. It was all about Philemon and Onesimus.

Paul knew that Philemon had something very personal inside him that he needed to sort out – and Paul challenged him. Sort it. Welcome Onesimus back, no longer as a slave, but as a brother in Christ.

Philemon knew there was nothing else for it. His heart was warmed. His specific need was addressed.

It’s all very well imagining what a letter to Highbury Church would say. What is the personal thing that each of us needs to hear. Only one person knows that – it’s you and it’s me. We each need to do something about it. What’s Paul’s personal Philemon letter to you? What is that letter to me? What is the specific thing we must address? Like Philemon let’s be big enough to address it.

One convention you see in those Vindalanda letters is that people often used a scribe to write their letters – but then they would add a personal greeting in their own handwriting.

As Paul winds up his letter he does just that. He takes pen in hand and inscribes his own signature.

With my own hand I write this: Greetings from Paul. Do not forget my chains!

And then comes one final prayer. Blink and you’ve missed it. But it contains that one word Paul wants to leave that church in Colossae with. It’s the one word that counts more than anything else for us here in Highbury. It is the word ‘grace’ How much we are strengthened by it as it is given us by God. How much we need it in our love for one another.

I have been reading The Testing of Hearts, a Journal written by Donald Nicholl in the short time from his diagnosis with a serious cancer to his death. It makes moving reading. As he comes to the end he says …

Everything, everything depends on God.

All is Grace.

… you might add that one word, Grace, says it all. So it is that Paul’s prayer for all of us and for each of us at Highbury is simply this …

May God's grace be with you.