It’s great to share in a baptism service with Carly and Ian and Mackenzie as little Jayden is baptised. It doesn’t seem like five years ago that we spent time together planning for a wedding and preparing for marriage, and then the special day. And then getting ready for Mackenzie’s baptism – and it was special sharing in that on Easter Sunday. And now it’s great to share in Jayden’s baptism on another special day for us, on Advent Sunday as we start the build up to Christmas.
We have got a theme for our services leading up to Christmas … The Christmas Journey. And we have an invitation to share – Journey with us at Highbury Church this Christmas. Christmas is all about journeys and travelling. There are those journeys people make to share in Christmas celebrations. But there were lots of journeys in the Christmas story.
Today we start with the journeys Mary and Joseph made, next Sunday we will journey with the Wise Men from the East – and we are going to have a focus on the Christmas charity we have chosen this year – CHIKS Children’s Homes in Kerala State, as Robin Radley the inspiration behind all that work joins us. And then Sue will be making the journey to Kerala in the New Year to spend time at some of those homes and take our love and greetings with her.
Then the following Sunday we will be journeying with the shepherds. And then we are going to put all those three stories together on 19th December in a chidlren’s nativity play.
Then we are going to do something different this Christmas. In the actual week leading up to Christmas we are going to lay out those three journeys for people to follow and reflect on in the quiet of this place. The church will be open from 10-00 to 11-00 and again from 6-00 to 7-00 and you will be invited to journey with Mary and Joseph, to journey with the Wise Men, to journey with the Shepherds. Then comes our Christmas day celebration – everyone coming together to celebrate with presents and toys to show, and fun to share.
The Christmas Journey begins today with Mary and Joseph, and their travels.
Mary’s travels begin as she makes the journey over to her cousin’s Elizabeth’s home where both of them compare notes because they are both expecting. Then it’s Mary and Joseph’s turn as they travel from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem. Those aren’t long distances – a bit like from here to Warwick, or from here to Birmingham.
But then comes a darker journey as the powers that be seek to eliminate Jesus and destroy the newly born baby. They flee as refugees travelling much further to Egypt. And then when it’s safe to return the make the jouney back to Nazareth.
Not that their travels finish there. We pick them up on another journey when Jesus is 12 and he and his parents make the journey to Jerusalem from Nazareth when Jesus comes of age. Sometime between that point and the start of Jesus’ ministry, Joseph disappears from the scene. It looks very much as if he died. He was there with them at the beginning of it all – but not through to the end. We glimpse Mary travelling with Jesus. And sometimes Jesus does things that disturbs her. She doesn’t understand what he is about. And then she makes the journey with other women when he has to walk carrying a cross. Her travels take her to the cross – it is as if someone has driven a sword into her own side and pierced her – the pain, the grief is overwhelming. But that pain and that grief do not have the last word – she journeys through it and beyond it … to resurrection.
In a sense all of life’s journey is there in the travels Mary makes.
In her travels she journeys with Jesus. A special baby. A young boy growing up. But then someone who teaches a remarkable way of life for people to follow, a way that involves putting other people first and going out of your way to help one another. It involves love for God, love for your neighbour. It’s a remarkably caring life that he shares – always a look of forgiveness. It is a tragic life, and Mary shares that sadness. But it is a remarkable victory over death that he wins – and Mary as we see her at the finish of her travels senses something remarkable in the resurrection victory she too can share. And more than that it is through this Jesus that she senses there is a strength she can draw on that will be with her, the unseen yet real presence of the strength of God.
There is a real sense of journeying on. In those five or six years since starting to think of getting married – you have journeyed on. The prayer in that marriage, the prayer at Mackenzie’s baptism, the prayer today is that as you journey on and wherever life leads you you may sense you are not alone, but God is with you, Christ is there to guide you and there is a strength to draw on from outside yourselves.
And that’s something that goes for us all.
That leads me to the next thought.
Mary, and Joseph too, treasured everything about Jesus.
There’s a wonderful verse that tells us how she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart. And you can see Joseph sharing in that as well.
Little ones are there to treasure. It’s great treasuring moments. It was good looking at that wedding album. Photos of the little ones when they were tiny. As they grow up. Little things you treasure. Grandparents treasuring those pictures.
Moments to treasure.
What did Mary treasure? The sense that God was with her. The sense that Jesus was to make such a difference to so many people. Were there moments of his teaching that she treasured? Were there moments of healing to treasure? Did she treasure that moment at the foot of the cross when in spite of all the pain he made sure his mother would be looked after by one of his close friends? Did she treasure the moment when she knew he was risen from the dead? Did she treasure that sense of a strength from beyond herself?
I hope there are things for us to treasure – not just in the album, not just in the little ones as they grow older. I hope that we can treasure that sense of something with us from beyond ourselves in God – and in Jesus Christ.
On the journey as they travelled in the bad times and the good times Mary and Joseph sensed God was with them in this Jesus who was so special.
They treasured so much about Jesus.
There’s one more thing that strikes me about Mary and Joseph. And it too begins with t r
They had something that made all the difference. I think it makes all the difference in all sorts of different ways, and in all sorts of different bits of their lives.
They had something called ‘trust’.
When you think of it, given the circumstances of the story it was a big ask. But Joseph and Mary had trust in each other.
That was something we explored in our conversations about marriage. It goes right to the heart of relationship building. Trust makes a relationship.
When a little one comes along they have that trust. There’s that wonderful moment when the little one with the tiniest of hands, puts that little hand into the great big hand of mum or dad. That moment of trust is so special.
Trust can be betrayed – in a relationship, by a parent. How important it is to build up that trust.
But there is another dimension to that trust that makes it so special.
Mary and Joseph had a trust in God.
There were moments when it felt as if everything was going wrong. Nothing went right. They had sadness in their family. It seemed everything was faling apart, going wrong.
But continually, they had trust in God.
Trust in God, that God will be with us, come what may. Difficult sometimes, but trust – keep on trusting, that nothing in life or death, in the present or the future, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Travel – with God,
Treasure – the love of Christ
Trust – inside your relationship, inside your family, and above all trust in God. Hold on to that trust.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Cheltenham Street Pastors First Anniversary
A service commisioning twelve new Street Pastors and celebrating one year of Street Pators in Cheltenham at Cambray Baptist Church. A message shared by Richard Cleaves of Highbury.
Perfect Love Casts out Fear
It was 4-10 on a Saturday morning a month or so ago that I found myself in the company of four of our Street Pastors as we made our way back to the Salvation Army at the end of what I was told had been a quiet evening, but not an uneventful one.
It was one of our older Street Pastors who said something to me that has stayed with me ever since.
“I think quite differently about going out into Cheltenham in the evening now! I used to be fearful of all the young people. Now I realise they are with very few exceptions lovely people who are looking out for each other. I no longer feel such a fear about going into Cheltenham in the evening”
I used to be fearful … I no longer feel such a feel.
What she said registered with me because over the years I have sensed that people over a certain age, and I count myself among those who are over a certain age, find Cheltenham at night a scary place. Indeed I have sensed a very real ‘fear’ of the town centre after dark among many of an older generation. It is the kind of fear that has almost made the town centre after dark a no-go area for many.
It is a fear I have shared.
In catching the vision for Street Pastors the churches have Cheltenham have made it clear that that is a fear that we must not run away from and allow simply to take a hold of our town centre. It is rather a fear that needs to be faced, a fear that needs to be addressed.
Street Pastors addresses that fear in a number of ways.
First, groundless fears can be allayed.
What my friend was sharing with me I too had observed. Actually the great majority of young people who are out on a Friday night and Saturday night are looking out for each other, are simply there to have a good time, in just the way every generation has done. It’s no bad thing that our increasing number of Street Pastors can feed that kind of observation back into the thinking of people who have exaggerated fears of Cheltenham after dark.
But … and it is an important ‘but’. It is quite apparent from the police and from Accident and Emergency that things do happen that are pretty scary, fuelled as they are by our society’s current inability to respond appropriately to the alcohol crisis.
In that context fear is no bad thing, giving rise to a proper caution.
This is where the Street Pastor initiative really comes into its own. It seeks to add into the mix of the night time economy simply a presence that is there to help where help is needed. But in doing that it takes seriously the kind of fear that it is proper to have.
The Street Pastors organisation recognises that
Justifiable fears must be respected.
In doing that it takes a leaf out of Jesus’ book. When sending out his friends into what in its own way was an equally scary world, Jesus urged them to be
Wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
Yes, be gentle as a dove, but also as wise as a serpent.
It is simply the ‘presence’ of the Street Pastors in that ‘gentle way’ that can make all the difference. But that presence is also underpinned with the wisdom of a serpent. As those who are being commissioned tonight know only too well, however enthusiastic and keen, Street Pastors only go out once they have completed a rigorous training programme, that addresses issues around alcohol, drugs, violence and so much more.
Street Pastors only go out in pairs, and always with two lots of pairs keeping within sight of each other. One of the pair is in constant touch through an ear piece and microphone with the night-safe radio network that links all those involved in the clubs and in security with the police control room, while the other of the pair has a mobile phone linking them directly with the remaining pair of the team of six who are back at the base in the Salvation Army.
After an hour and a half with two pairs, I then stayed back for an hour and a half at the base.
We were listening into the radio channel. It wasn’t long before we heard one of our Street Pastors calling in to the Police control room. It looked as if a fight was about to start on the Strand. They requested the control room to turn the cameras in that direction. Within a couple of minutes a police officer had arrived. But only one. His presence was enough to stop the fight breaking out, but it was still ugly. Only a couple of minutes later we heard the Police Control room calling our Street Pastors. A young girl had all but passed out and police were in attendance at Boots Corner. Our Street Pastors walked over to Boots Corner and took over from the police. They talked gently with the young girl, shared water with her, got her back to her feet and at her request walked her home. Meanwhile the police were able to reinforce their colleague on the Strand.
The next day the Echo did not report a fight on the Strand, A & E did not have to cope with any injuries from what could have become an ugly incident and no ambulance was called out to the young girl. And none of those things got into any statistics because you cannot report what did not happen!
The presence of those Street Pastors made all the difference as they were as wise as serpents and as gentle as is a dove.
I sat in on the very start of the training of those who have been commissioned tonight. It was great to see the enthusiasm and the commitment of everyone there as people from their 20’s to their 70’s introduced themselves. Right at the outset one thing was made absolutely clear by the trainer.
Street Pastors is not about ‘evangelising’ or ‘proselytising’. It had hardly happened, the trainer said, but when it had arisen Street Pastors is absolutely clear – anyone using Street Pastors as a platform to evangelise will be asked to leave the organisation.
What motivates us all in Street Pastors, those in the management group, those behind the scenes, as much as those who go on the streets is our shared Christian commitment to the God who is described in that passage from 1 John 4. This is what motivates us.
Let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God.
For us who are Street Pastors what counts is not so much the strength of our love for God, but rather the wonder of God’s love for us.
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to the atoning sacrifice for our sins, the means by which our sins are forgiven.
God is love.
That’s what drives us. But what the Street Pastor does is not to evangelise with some kind of tract.
It is simply to be there to help, embodying that kind of love by sweeping up broken glass with a dustpan and brush, by handing out a pair of flip flops to a girl whose high heeled shoes have let her down and who is trying to get home in bare feet over pavements sometimes strewn with broken glass, it is handing out a simple bottle of water.
It is the gentleness of the loving presence that is all important and that makes all the difference.
It was in the third shift of that night that I found myself walking with those four street pastors past the Everyman Theatre up Regent’s Street towards Marks and Spencer.
Just ahead of us as the road narrows was a group of three or four thirty-something men. They were hurling abuse, nasty abuse, at a larger group who were facing down from the other end of what is quite a narrow stretch of road. It was ugly. The four street pastors knew what they were going to do; I wasn’t quite so sure. They had had the training. I hadn’t. What’s more they were wearing the Street Pstors uniform – I too was in uniform, but I felt as if I stuck out like a sore thumb in my white anorak with a yellow flurescent jacket over it. I felt that fear coming on.
I joined the other four in simply walking past the first group and towards the top of the head. We were walking in that slow pace I always associated with the opening credits of the Bill. The abuse was now going over our heads. But it was apparent that the ones behind us were now walking away towards the theatre. All but one of the gang ahead of us drifted away up the High Street.
But one remained. One of our team recognised him from his clothing. He had been thrown out of a couple of pubs and had been causing trouble through the evening.
He accosted us and asked us who we were and what we were doing. I guess from a distance the uniforms had clearly shown we were something ‘official’. As soon as he learned we were street pastors, he turned all his invective, abuse and wrath on God. By now a young couple of freshers had joined us, she with bare feet. One of our Street pastors turned to them. The boy wanted to join in the conversation. We were willing him just to take the girl away. Then very gently, one of the Street Pastors simply listened and shared his view of God and God’s love. Ten or fifteen minutes later, we had learned of a pretty horrible situation that young man was in. We had shared something with him at his instigation of that love of God that motivated us. And by that time the anger we had encountered twenty minutes before had gone. He went his way, no longer part of ‘a gang’.
Again, there were no broken windows or limbs for the Echo to report the next night
It was one of those many moments when we were simply living out that kind of love that John speaks of that goes to the heart of our Christian faith.
And with that kind of love something else happens. Something happens to that fear which we are so wanting to address.
God is love, John tells us. And those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world.
Then comes the insight that is so vital.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear …
Groundless fears can be allayed … but that is not enough!
Justifiable fears must be respected … but that is not enough!
Street Pastors offers something more … the conviction that
Perfect love casts out fear.
We are in the business of casting out fear.
We do that simply by embodying in simple acts of kindness and timely gestures of help, the love that is the very nature of God.
That’s what was so significant in what friend Kathleen had to say that evening
“I used to be fearful … I no longer feel such a fear”
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
What is that holds us to that conviction?
What is it that makes us want to be in the business of driving out fear?
We love because he first loved us.
Perfect Love Casts out Fear
It was 4-10 on a Saturday morning a month or so ago that I found myself in the company of four of our Street Pastors as we made our way back to the Salvation Army at the end of what I was told had been a quiet evening, but not an uneventful one.
It was one of our older Street Pastors who said something to me that has stayed with me ever since.
“I think quite differently about going out into Cheltenham in the evening now! I used to be fearful of all the young people. Now I realise they are with very few exceptions lovely people who are looking out for each other. I no longer feel such a fear about going into Cheltenham in the evening”
I used to be fearful … I no longer feel such a feel.
What she said registered with me because over the years I have sensed that people over a certain age, and I count myself among those who are over a certain age, find Cheltenham at night a scary place. Indeed I have sensed a very real ‘fear’ of the town centre after dark among many of an older generation. It is the kind of fear that has almost made the town centre after dark a no-go area for many.
It is a fear I have shared.
In catching the vision for Street Pastors the churches have Cheltenham have made it clear that that is a fear that we must not run away from and allow simply to take a hold of our town centre. It is rather a fear that needs to be faced, a fear that needs to be addressed.
Street Pastors addresses that fear in a number of ways.
First, groundless fears can be allayed.
What my friend was sharing with me I too had observed. Actually the great majority of young people who are out on a Friday night and Saturday night are looking out for each other, are simply there to have a good time, in just the way every generation has done. It’s no bad thing that our increasing number of Street Pastors can feed that kind of observation back into the thinking of people who have exaggerated fears of Cheltenham after dark.
But … and it is an important ‘but’. It is quite apparent from the police and from Accident and Emergency that things do happen that are pretty scary, fuelled as they are by our society’s current inability to respond appropriately to the alcohol crisis.
In that context fear is no bad thing, giving rise to a proper caution.
This is where the Street Pastor initiative really comes into its own. It seeks to add into the mix of the night time economy simply a presence that is there to help where help is needed. But in doing that it takes seriously the kind of fear that it is proper to have.
The Street Pastors organisation recognises that
Justifiable fears must be respected.
In doing that it takes a leaf out of Jesus’ book. When sending out his friends into what in its own way was an equally scary world, Jesus urged them to be
Wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
Yes, be gentle as a dove, but also as wise as a serpent.
It is simply the ‘presence’ of the Street Pastors in that ‘gentle way’ that can make all the difference. But that presence is also underpinned with the wisdom of a serpent. As those who are being commissioned tonight know only too well, however enthusiastic and keen, Street Pastors only go out once they have completed a rigorous training programme, that addresses issues around alcohol, drugs, violence and so much more.
Street Pastors only go out in pairs, and always with two lots of pairs keeping within sight of each other. One of the pair is in constant touch through an ear piece and microphone with the night-safe radio network that links all those involved in the clubs and in security with the police control room, while the other of the pair has a mobile phone linking them directly with the remaining pair of the team of six who are back at the base in the Salvation Army.
After an hour and a half with two pairs, I then stayed back for an hour and a half at the base.
We were listening into the radio channel. It wasn’t long before we heard one of our Street Pastors calling in to the Police control room. It looked as if a fight was about to start on the Strand. They requested the control room to turn the cameras in that direction. Within a couple of minutes a police officer had arrived. But only one. His presence was enough to stop the fight breaking out, but it was still ugly. Only a couple of minutes later we heard the Police Control room calling our Street Pastors. A young girl had all but passed out and police were in attendance at Boots Corner. Our Street Pastors walked over to Boots Corner and took over from the police. They talked gently with the young girl, shared water with her, got her back to her feet and at her request walked her home. Meanwhile the police were able to reinforce their colleague on the Strand.
The next day the Echo did not report a fight on the Strand, A & E did not have to cope with any injuries from what could have become an ugly incident and no ambulance was called out to the young girl. And none of those things got into any statistics because you cannot report what did not happen!
The presence of those Street Pastors made all the difference as they were as wise as serpents and as gentle as is a dove.
I sat in on the very start of the training of those who have been commissioned tonight. It was great to see the enthusiasm and the commitment of everyone there as people from their 20’s to their 70’s introduced themselves. Right at the outset one thing was made absolutely clear by the trainer.
Street Pastors is not about ‘evangelising’ or ‘proselytising’. It had hardly happened, the trainer said, but when it had arisen Street Pastors is absolutely clear – anyone using Street Pastors as a platform to evangelise will be asked to leave the organisation.
What motivates us all in Street Pastors, those in the management group, those behind the scenes, as much as those who go on the streets is our shared Christian commitment to the God who is described in that passage from 1 John 4. This is what motivates us.
Let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God.
For us who are Street Pastors what counts is not so much the strength of our love for God, but rather the wonder of God’s love for us.
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to the atoning sacrifice for our sins, the means by which our sins are forgiven.
God is love.
That’s what drives us. But what the Street Pastor does is not to evangelise with some kind of tract.
It is simply to be there to help, embodying that kind of love by sweeping up broken glass with a dustpan and brush, by handing out a pair of flip flops to a girl whose high heeled shoes have let her down and who is trying to get home in bare feet over pavements sometimes strewn with broken glass, it is handing out a simple bottle of water.
It is the gentleness of the loving presence that is all important and that makes all the difference.
It was in the third shift of that night that I found myself walking with those four street pastors past the Everyman Theatre up Regent’s Street towards Marks and Spencer.
Just ahead of us as the road narrows was a group of three or four thirty-something men. They were hurling abuse, nasty abuse, at a larger group who were facing down from the other end of what is quite a narrow stretch of road. It was ugly. The four street pastors knew what they were going to do; I wasn’t quite so sure. They had had the training. I hadn’t. What’s more they were wearing the Street Pstors uniform – I too was in uniform, but I felt as if I stuck out like a sore thumb in my white anorak with a yellow flurescent jacket over it. I felt that fear coming on.
I joined the other four in simply walking past the first group and towards the top of the head. We were walking in that slow pace I always associated with the opening credits of the Bill. The abuse was now going over our heads. But it was apparent that the ones behind us were now walking away towards the theatre. All but one of the gang ahead of us drifted away up the High Street.
But one remained. One of our team recognised him from his clothing. He had been thrown out of a couple of pubs and had been causing trouble through the evening.
He accosted us and asked us who we were and what we were doing. I guess from a distance the uniforms had clearly shown we were something ‘official’. As soon as he learned we were street pastors, he turned all his invective, abuse and wrath on God. By now a young couple of freshers had joined us, she with bare feet. One of our Street pastors turned to them. The boy wanted to join in the conversation. We were willing him just to take the girl away. Then very gently, one of the Street Pastors simply listened and shared his view of God and God’s love. Ten or fifteen minutes later, we had learned of a pretty horrible situation that young man was in. We had shared something with him at his instigation of that love of God that motivated us. And by that time the anger we had encountered twenty minutes before had gone. He went his way, no longer part of ‘a gang’.
Again, there were no broken windows or limbs for the Echo to report the next night
It was one of those many moments when we were simply living out that kind of love that John speaks of that goes to the heart of our Christian faith.
And with that kind of love something else happens. Something happens to that fear which we are so wanting to address.
God is love, John tells us. And those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world.
Then comes the insight that is so vital.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear …
Groundless fears can be allayed … but that is not enough!
Justifiable fears must be respected … but that is not enough!
Street Pastors offers something more … the conviction that
Perfect love casts out fear.
We are in the business of casting out fear.
We do that simply by embodying in simple acts of kindness and timely gestures of help, the love that is the very nature of God.
That’s what was so significant in what friend Kathleen had to say that evening
“I used to be fearful … I no longer feel such a fear”
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.
What is that holds us to that conviction?
What is it that makes us want to be in the business of driving out fear?
We love because he first loved us.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
What it takes to be disciples
It’s great to catch a glimpse of what our Open the Book team are doing as they take Bible stories into the assemblies at Oadwood School. And to think there are other such teams taking Bible Stories into many, many school assemblies throughout Gloucestershire and up and down the country.
I loved the way the story of Jesus’ Special Friends came to an end.
Jesus shook his head and smiled. “Don’t be scared,” he said. “God has given me a lot of work to do. And I need helpers Helpers like you and your friends. Once you weree fishermen. But from now on, you’ll be fishing for people. And helping me bring them to God.
Then Jesus stepped out of the boat and wawlked away, across the shore. “Come with me,” he called.
Peter and his friends watched him go. They looked at the fish. They looked at each other. Then they dropped their nets, left their boats behind, and raced off to follow Jesus.” [The Lion Storyteller Bible retold by Bob Holman (Lion, 1995)]
It’s one thing telling Bible stories for children and catching the fun and excitement as those special friends ‘raced off to follow Jesus’.
It’s worth re-visiting those stories, however, in an adult context. The stories we tell to children as children’s stories, are in fact about adults in an adult world. And the world they lived in was a world where it was not actually straightforward to ‘race off and follow Jesus’. It was in fact fraught with difficulties.
The task Jesus had come to do and the task he expected of those who would follow him is spelled out in quite some detail from chapter 9:35 through to chapter 10 in Matthew’s gospel.
As Jesus travels from village to village, from city to city he has a message to share that’s focused on the way God’s rule is all important in the home, the family and in the world at large.
On the one hand, his teaching in some strange way made sense and helped them make sense of their lives. It was always about God’s kingdom and it gave them that sense of purpose they longed for.
And on the other hand, with Jesus it wasn’t just words. What he did made a world of difference to people as he brought healing into hurting people’s lives.
Then as Matthew 10 opens, twelve of those special friends of Jesus are named and Jesus then commissions them. He passes on to them something of that sense of authority that he has.
And then he gives them two things to do. First they are to share the very same teaching – it’s the very thing that people need to make sense of their lives … and it’s something really worth passing on.
And then they too are to bring healing into hurting people’s lives and make a difference to other people.
That’s the task in a nutshell.
Stefan and Birgit were with us for three years about ten years ago as Stefan was studying for a doctorate at the University and undertaking a pastoral placement here.
We have supported them since as they have moved to Brazil to undertake Christian work. As a family they are among those we have a special partnership with in mission.
It was great to chat with Stefan and see the three children over Skype earlier this week. What they are doing over there in Londrinia in Brazil is exactly what is envisaged here in Matthew 9 and 10.
They share a teaching ministry. That’s primarily what Stefan is engaged in. He teaches in a large theological seminary which is one of the main protestant theological seminaries in Brazil. He teaches Old Testament and biblical studies. It is quite some accomplishment for a German who did his doctorate in English now to be teaching theology in Portuguese! He encapsulates that ‘teaching’ side of the work of mission. He is helping students to make sense of the Scriptures who will then go on in pastoral and teaching ministry to help people make sense of their lives through the Scriptures.
But while we were chatting Birgit was out. A physiotherapist, Birgit has become very involved in a drug rehabilitation project run in their locality. That’s the other side of that mission coin – the practical, helping service that brings healing to hurting people.
Such work has its difficulties and in our prayers and in our practical support we seek to be a support to Stefan and Birgit, and to Marit, Simeon and Jacob in their family life together.
Jesus too recognised the difficulties. A lot of what he shares with those ‘special friends’ in chapter 10 is about addressing the difficulties that are all too real. He recognises not all will be impressed. People will mock and taunt – there will be real persecution. Jesus shares words of wisdom about how to cope in that kind of situation, and emphasises the importance of actions rather than words.
Matthew 10:16-20 and 40-42
Following in the footsteps of Jesus can lead you into scary situations – be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And even if it is just a cup of water … what a difference that can make!
It is a year since Street Pastors was launched in Cheltenham.
On Saturday night at Cambray at 7-30 that anniversary will be marked and the latest set of volunteers to join the scheme will be commissioned, bring the total number of Street Pastors in Cheltenham to 50. Though more are very much needed.
I’ve been asked to give the address on Saturday night and felt I couldn’t do that without getting a taste of the training they do and experiencing a night out on the streets.
It was an inspiration.
So it was I found myself just after 4-00 one Saturday morning walking back to the Salvation Army church which is used as a base with one of the older members of St Luke’s who I think will be in their seventies. What she had to say was an interesting.
“I think quite differently about going out into Cheltenham in the evening now! I used to be fearful of all the young people. Now I realise they are with very few exceptions lovely people who are looking out for each other. I no longer feel a fear about going into Cheltenham in the evening.”
Cheltenham at night on a Friday and a Saturday can be a scary place. In that context Jesus’ words of wisdom are to be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove.
That sums up the approach of Street Pastors. The training is extensive. They are now an integral part of the town’s response to the Night Time economy. Dressed in a distinctive uniform they go out in pairs, always two pairs together. One person in each pair has an ear piece and microphone which links them into the Police Control room and enables them to hear conversations among all the security staff in all the clubs around the town.
In the middle part of the 6 hour shift I did that night I was back at base where we were chatting, and listening in to that radio chatter. I pricked my ears up as one of our Street Pastors radioed into the police control room to report a fight that was starting on the Strand. Within a couple of minutes a single police man arrived. Enough of a presence to calm the situation a little but not enough to stop it entirely. Within a couple of minutes the police control room were asking for some street pastors to attend a girl by Boots corner who was on her own and needing help. They moved over there where they found a police van with police officers helping that girl. They took over and the four of them were able to chat with her, share some water, some of those flip-fops which for girls with no shoes on make all the difference and walk her home. That freed up the police to join their colleague and nothing came of the fight.
The Street Pastors carry a dustpan and brush and it was surprising how much broken glass they swept up. And a dozen girls had flip flops.
A fight that didn’t happen doesn’t count on the statistics. Girls who don’t go to A and E with badly injured feet having walked over broken glass don’t count on the statistics.
Two things struck me about that night. First the whole approach takes those words of Jesus seriously. Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. There was a wisdom in the rigorous training and strict approach to patrolling they took, linked with a gentle presence that made all the difference.
And the other thing was taking seriously what Jesus said about the cup of water. What a difference that makes too.
Practical help. But absolutely clear. It is not bound up with teaching. There’s no ‘evangelising’. Each of those involved in Street Pastors will no doubt have other settings in which they can share a faith that is definitely important to them. But Street Pastors is not the setting for that.
Mind you, it was fascinating to see how many conversations there were initiated by people asking questions, sometimes very big questions, as they faced real difficulties and major problems. Who knows how many of those conversations may have been a real help too.
I for one am with those ‘special friends of Jesus’ not just in the adult world as much as in the world of children’s bible story telling. That involves something in Christ’s teaching, and in the whole of his life, death and resurrection that for me helps make sense of a sometimes very troubling world. And at the same time it also involves bringing practical help real healing to people who are hurting in that very troubling world.
I loved the way the story of Jesus’ Special Friends came to an end.
Jesus shook his head and smiled. “Don’t be scared,” he said. “God has given me a lot of work to do. And I need helpers Helpers like you and your friends. Once you weree fishermen. But from now on, you’ll be fishing for people. And helping me bring them to God.
Then Jesus stepped out of the boat and wawlked away, across the shore. “Come with me,” he called.
Peter and his friends watched him go. They looked at the fish. They looked at each other. Then they dropped their nets, left their boats behind, and raced off to follow Jesus.” [The Lion Storyteller Bible retold by Bob Holman (Lion, 1995)]
It’s one thing telling Bible stories for children and catching the fun and excitement as those special friends ‘raced off to follow Jesus’.
It’s worth re-visiting those stories, however, in an adult context. The stories we tell to children as children’s stories, are in fact about adults in an adult world. And the world they lived in was a world where it was not actually straightforward to ‘race off and follow Jesus’. It was in fact fraught with difficulties.
The task Jesus had come to do and the task he expected of those who would follow him is spelled out in quite some detail from chapter 9:35 through to chapter 10 in Matthew’s gospel.
As Jesus travels from village to village, from city to city he has a message to share that’s focused on the way God’s rule is all important in the home, the family and in the world at large.
On the one hand, his teaching in some strange way made sense and helped them make sense of their lives. It was always about God’s kingdom and it gave them that sense of purpose they longed for.
And on the other hand, with Jesus it wasn’t just words. What he did made a world of difference to people as he brought healing into hurting people’s lives.
Then as Matthew 10 opens, twelve of those special friends of Jesus are named and Jesus then commissions them. He passes on to them something of that sense of authority that he has.
And then he gives them two things to do. First they are to share the very same teaching – it’s the very thing that people need to make sense of their lives … and it’s something really worth passing on.
And then they too are to bring healing into hurting people’s lives and make a difference to other people.
That’s the task in a nutshell.
Stefan and Birgit were with us for three years about ten years ago as Stefan was studying for a doctorate at the University and undertaking a pastoral placement here.
We have supported them since as they have moved to Brazil to undertake Christian work. As a family they are among those we have a special partnership with in mission.
It was great to chat with Stefan and see the three children over Skype earlier this week. What they are doing over there in Londrinia in Brazil is exactly what is envisaged here in Matthew 9 and 10.
They share a teaching ministry. That’s primarily what Stefan is engaged in. He teaches in a large theological seminary which is one of the main protestant theological seminaries in Brazil. He teaches Old Testament and biblical studies. It is quite some accomplishment for a German who did his doctorate in English now to be teaching theology in Portuguese! He encapsulates that ‘teaching’ side of the work of mission. He is helping students to make sense of the Scriptures who will then go on in pastoral and teaching ministry to help people make sense of their lives through the Scriptures.
But while we were chatting Birgit was out. A physiotherapist, Birgit has become very involved in a drug rehabilitation project run in their locality. That’s the other side of that mission coin – the practical, helping service that brings healing to hurting people.
Such work has its difficulties and in our prayers and in our practical support we seek to be a support to Stefan and Birgit, and to Marit, Simeon and Jacob in their family life together.
Jesus too recognised the difficulties. A lot of what he shares with those ‘special friends’ in chapter 10 is about addressing the difficulties that are all too real. He recognises not all will be impressed. People will mock and taunt – there will be real persecution. Jesus shares words of wisdom about how to cope in that kind of situation, and emphasises the importance of actions rather than words.
Matthew 10:16-20 and 40-42
Following in the footsteps of Jesus can lead you into scary situations – be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. And even if it is just a cup of water … what a difference that can make!
It is a year since Street Pastors was launched in Cheltenham.
On Saturday night at Cambray at 7-30 that anniversary will be marked and the latest set of volunteers to join the scheme will be commissioned, bring the total number of Street Pastors in Cheltenham to 50. Though more are very much needed.
I’ve been asked to give the address on Saturday night and felt I couldn’t do that without getting a taste of the training they do and experiencing a night out on the streets.
It was an inspiration.
So it was I found myself just after 4-00 one Saturday morning walking back to the Salvation Army church which is used as a base with one of the older members of St Luke’s who I think will be in their seventies. What she had to say was an interesting.
“I think quite differently about going out into Cheltenham in the evening now! I used to be fearful of all the young people. Now I realise they are with very few exceptions lovely people who are looking out for each other. I no longer feel a fear about going into Cheltenham in the evening.”
Cheltenham at night on a Friday and a Saturday can be a scary place. In that context Jesus’ words of wisdom are to be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove.
That sums up the approach of Street Pastors. The training is extensive. They are now an integral part of the town’s response to the Night Time economy. Dressed in a distinctive uniform they go out in pairs, always two pairs together. One person in each pair has an ear piece and microphone which links them into the Police Control room and enables them to hear conversations among all the security staff in all the clubs around the town.
In the middle part of the 6 hour shift I did that night I was back at base where we were chatting, and listening in to that radio chatter. I pricked my ears up as one of our Street Pastors radioed into the police control room to report a fight that was starting on the Strand. Within a couple of minutes a single police man arrived. Enough of a presence to calm the situation a little but not enough to stop it entirely. Within a couple of minutes the police control room were asking for some street pastors to attend a girl by Boots corner who was on her own and needing help. They moved over there where they found a police van with police officers helping that girl. They took over and the four of them were able to chat with her, share some water, some of those flip-fops which for girls with no shoes on make all the difference and walk her home. That freed up the police to join their colleague and nothing came of the fight.
The Street Pastors carry a dustpan and brush and it was surprising how much broken glass they swept up. And a dozen girls had flip flops.
A fight that didn’t happen doesn’t count on the statistics. Girls who don’t go to A and E with badly injured feet having walked over broken glass don’t count on the statistics.
Two things struck me about that night. First the whole approach takes those words of Jesus seriously. Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. There was a wisdom in the rigorous training and strict approach to patrolling they took, linked with a gentle presence that made all the difference.
And the other thing was taking seriously what Jesus said about the cup of water. What a difference that makes too.
Practical help. But absolutely clear. It is not bound up with teaching. There’s no ‘evangelising’. Each of those involved in Street Pastors will no doubt have other settings in which they can share a faith that is definitely important to them. But Street Pastors is not the setting for that.
Mind you, it was fascinating to see how many conversations there were initiated by people asking questions, sometimes very big questions, as they faced real difficulties and major problems. Who knows how many of those conversations may have been a real help too.
I for one am with those ‘special friends of Jesus’ not just in the adult world as much as in the world of children’s bible story telling. That involves something in Christ’s teaching, and in the whole of his life, death and resurrection that for me helps make sense of a sometimes very troubling world. And at the same time it also involves bringing practical help real healing to people who are hurting in that very troubling world.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Remembrance - the Hard Questions
This Remembrance Sunday I want to ask three questions.
How do we remember?
What do we do with the difficult memories?
Why do we remember?
First, How do we remember?
In responding to those questions I want to draw on some of the words, thoughts and ideas that are in Hebrews 13.
Memory is a funny thing. I for one remember things in all sorts of different ways. I can sometimes remember things that have happened to me in such a real way it is as if I am re-living those events. I can see the sights, I can hear the sounds, I can smell and feel once more as if I was there. My memory can play back like a tape recorder, like a video recorder in my mind. I can see events unfolding before my eyes, I can hear once again words spoken to me.
I feel for those who have among their memories disturbing memories that play again in ways that are all too real. On Remembrance Sunday I feel for those who have had experiences in war that this day are real once again in memories that come flooding back.
But on this day I do not have such memories. My memory does not go back to the second world war, let alone the first world war.
How do I remember on this day?
Hebrews 13 verse 3 I find very helpful.
Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured as if you yourselves were being tortured.
Remember … as though.
Listen to the memories of those who were there. Listen through the words they have shared with us and passed on to us.
Picture yourself in the scene. See the sights they saw. Hear the voices they saw. And then remember as though you were there.
Someone from church has prompted me to do just that once again this Remembrance Sunday. In anticipation of today I have been re-visiting a family story of my own … and discovering a poem for which Judi Marsh won a runners’ up award at the Literature Festival.
The family story enables me to remember … as though I were there.
Ghost Voices, Judi’s remarkable poem is an exercise in ‘remembering … as though’. On the one hand she feels for those who do remember. AT the same time she thinks herself into the mind of one caught up in the horror of war. Judi invites us in the first part of the poem to see with the eyes of one who was there. And in the second part of the poem she invites us to hear with the ears of one who was there. She invites us to remember … as though we are there.
Ghost Voices by Judi Marsh
Sometimes, even now,
I see them – my comrades.
In my dreams they live again.
And always it is night.
Always it is that night.
And I see again,
Silhouetted against a smoky sky,
The ragged shapes of wooden posts
And barbed wire,
Broken and reaching out,
As strange and nameless trees
In the nightmare world of a wartime night.
Sometimes, even now,
I hear them – my comrades.
In my dreams they sing again.
And always it is night.
Always it is that night.
And I hear again,
Ghost voices singing ghost songs
In the grey night. Anthems from men
Who will not grow old, who will not come home.
They sing to me down the years
Living again in my memories, and
Dying again in my dreams.
They sing – this choir of lost souls –
And again I am haunted
By the nightmare world of a wartime night.
To remember as though is to risk the pain of the memory that troubles.
It is real people who live again in my memories,
They are real people dying again in my dreams
In the nightmare world of a wartime night.
What do we do with painful memories?
I want to draw on another insight from this passage in Hebrews 13.
These words contain a wonderful promise. It is the promise of the presence of God with us at moments of desperate need.
He has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
So we can say with confidence,
The Lord is my helper,
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?
This is the promise to draw on in the face of the troubling memories.
I have seen John Simpson reporting for the BBC from many of the conflicts and wars that have been in the news in recent years. I had no inkling of his Christian commitment. It was moving to see him on Channel 4’s new version of Thought for Today, 4Thought, speaking of the difference his faith has made to him.
He spoke movingly of a tragic incident he had been involved in when some of the camera crew he was with were injured and a cameraman killed. The memory of that occasion disturbs deeply. John Simpson describes the strength his faith has been and then speaks of an occasion when he met with a vicar. He describes the way the vicar encouraged him to think that his friend was as much in the hands of God now as ever he had been.
A simple thought, yet a very profound one that had made a difference to John Simpson.
What do we do with disturbing memories? Hold on to the promise in these words: The God we believe in is the God who is with us in the middle of disturbing times, the God who promises,
I will never leaver you or forsake you.
So owe can say with confidence,
The Lord is my helper,
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?
One question remains.
3) Why do we remember?
When we moved to Cheltenham first we visited the Famous and had a conversation with Ross Cole. But not since.
And that is more years than I care to remember!
When telling the story on one occasion to Caroline and Chris Gregory Caroline took me to task. She had grown up with Ross Cole and she and Chris knew the family well. You must give him a ring, she said, insisting I make a note of the phone number. I noted the phone number back in the summer and made the call this week.
He described visiting with his wife Ploegsteert in search of the cemeteries. There were 14 of them. They had no way of finding the actual cemetery. Then he remembered his father, Reg Cole’s brother, describing a visit he and I think his father had made in search of the grave in the 1920’s or 1930’s. His father had found it and given a description of finding a particular shop, taking the second on the left and going up a lane.
Ross Cole and his wife shared those half remembered directions with a local who immediately pointed them up a country lane out into a wood, where the cemetery was. And threw was Private Reg Cole’s grave.
But most moving of all, as Ross Cole recalled, was the realisation that the cemetery was one of those cemeteries to contain British and German soldiers side by side.
How vital it is that we have come to the point through all the horrors of the twentieth century when we can be in friendship with Germany and the people of Germany.
Midlands Today told the story this week of an older man who had been caught in the air raids on Coventry that happened 70 years ago today. Ever since he had harboured a fear, if not a hatred for German people. Until this year. This year he had been on a visit to Dresden where he met German people the same age who had been in the air raids on Dresden. He found them to be people just like him. And he found it possible to consider them friends. How wonderful to hear of the way his experiences had changed and hatred given way to friendship even after 70 years.
What do we remember for? It is not to keep the hatred going. We remember to keep alive the memory of the commitment that was made by the peoples who had been at war not just to be buried side by side in a graveyard, but to live side by side in mutual respect and honour.
So I finish with the opening words of Hebrews 13 in response to this most pressing of questions … what do we remember for?
Let mutual love continue.
Then the writer suggests the importance of putting that love into practice, into action.
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
How do we remember?
What do we do with the difficult memories?
Why do we remember?
First, How do we remember?
In responding to those questions I want to draw on some of the words, thoughts and ideas that are in Hebrews 13.
Memory is a funny thing. I for one remember things in all sorts of different ways. I can sometimes remember things that have happened to me in such a real way it is as if I am re-living those events. I can see the sights, I can hear the sounds, I can smell and feel once more as if I was there. My memory can play back like a tape recorder, like a video recorder in my mind. I can see events unfolding before my eyes, I can hear once again words spoken to me.
I feel for those who have among their memories disturbing memories that play again in ways that are all too real. On Remembrance Sunday I feel for those who have had experiences in war that this day are real once again in memories that come flooding back.
But on this day I do not have such memories. My memory does not go back to the second world war, let alone the first world war.
How do I remember on this day?
Hebrews 13 verse 3 I find very helpful.
Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured as if you yourselves were being tortured.
Remember … as though.
Listen to the memories of those who were there. Listen through the words they have shared with us and passed on to us.
Picture yourself in the scene. See the sights they saw. Hear the voices they saw. And then remember as though you were there.
Someone from church has prompted me to do just that once again this Remembrance Sunday. In anticipation of today I have been re-visiting a family story of my own … and discovering a poem for which Judi Marsh won a runners’ up award at the Literature Festival.
The family story enables me to remember … as though I were there.
Ghost Voices, Judi’s remarkable poem is an exercise in ‘remembering … as though’. On the one hand she feels for those who do remember. AT the same time she thinks herself into the mind of one caught up in the horror of war. Judi invites us in the first part of the poem to see with the eyes of one who was there. And in the second part of the poem she invites us to hear with the ears of one who was there. She invites us to remember … as though we are there.
Ghost Voices by Judi Marsh
Sometimes, even now,
I see them – my comrades.
In my dreams they live again.
And always it is night.
Always it is that night.
And I see again,
Silhouetted against a smoky sky,
The ragged shapes of wooden posts
And barbed wire,
Broken and reaching out,
As strange and nameless trees
In the nightmare world of a wartime night.
Sometimes, even now,
I hear them – my comrades.
In my dreams they sing again.
And always it is night.
Always it is that night.
And I hear again,
Ghost voices singing ghost songs
In the grey night. Anthems from men
Who will not grow old, who will not come home.
They sing to me down the years
Living again in my memories, and
Dying again in my dreams.
They sing – this choir of lost souls –
And again I am haunted
By the nightmare world of a wartime night.
To remember as though is to risk the pain of the memory that troubles.
It is real people who live again in my memories,
They are real people dying again in my dreams
In the nightmare world of a wartime night.
What do we do with painful memories?
I want to draw on another insight from this passage in Hebrews 13.
These words contain a wonderful promise. It is the promise of the presence of God with us at moments of desperate need.
He has said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.”
So we can say with confidence,
The Lord is my helper,
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?
This is the promise to draw on in the face of the troubling memories.
I have seen John Simpson reporting for the BBC from many of the conflicts and wars that have been in the news in recent years. I had no inkling of his Christian commitment. It was moving to see him on Channel 4’s new version of Thought for Today, 4Thought, speaking of the difference his faith has made to him.
He spoke movingly of a tragic incident he had been involved in when some of the camera crew he was with were injured and a cameraman killed. The memory of that occasion disturbs deeply. John Simpson describes the strength his faith has been and then speaks of an occasion when he met with a vicar. He describes the way the vicar encouraged him to think that his friend was as much in the hands of God now as ever he had been.
A simple thought, yet a very profound one that had made a difference to John Simpson.
What do we do with disturbing memories? Hold on to the promise in these words: The God we believe in is the God who is with us in the middle of disturbing times, the God who promises,
I will never leaver you or forsake you.
So owe can say with confidence,
The Lord is my helper,
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?
One question remains.
3) Why do we remember?
When we moved to Cheltenham first we visited the Famous and had a conversation with Ross Cole. But not since.
And that is more years than I care to remember!
When telling the story on one occasion to Caroline and Chris Gregory Caroline took me to task. She had grown up with Ross Cole and she and Chris knew the family well. You must give him a ring, she said, insisting I make a note of the phone number. I noted the phone number back in the summer and made the call this week.
He described visiting with his wife Ploegsteert in search of the cemeteries. There were 14 of them. They had no way of finding the actual cemetery. Then he remembered his father, Reg Cole’s brother, describing a visit he and I think his father had made in search of the grave in the 1920’s or 1930’s. His father had found it and given a description of finding a particular shop, taking the second on the left and going up a lane.
Ross Cole and his wife shared those half remembered directions with a local who immediately pointed them up a country lane out into a wood, where the cemetery was. And threw was Private Reg Cole’s grave.
But most moving of all, as Ross Cole recalled, was the realisation that the cemetery was one of those cemeteries to contain British and German soldiers side by side.
How vital it is that we have come to the point through all the horrors of the twentieth century when we can be in friendship with Germany and the people of Germany.
Midlands Today told the story this week of an older man who had been caught in the air raids on Coventry that happened 70 years ago today. Ever since he had harboured a fear, if not a hatred for German people. Until this year. This year he had been on a visit to Dresden where he met German people the same age who had been in the air raids on Dresden. He found them to be people just like him. And he found it possible to consider them friends. How wonderful to hear of the way his experiences had changed and hatred given way to friendship even after 70 years.
What do we remember for? It is not to keep the hatred going. We remember to keep alive the memory of the commitment that was made by the peoples who had been at war not just to be buried side by side in a graveyard, but to live side by side in mutual respect and honour.
So I finish with the opening words of Hebrews 13 in response to this most pressing of questions … what do we remember for?
Let mutual love continue.
Then the writer suggests the importance of putting that love into practice, into action.
Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Matthew's Manual of Discipleship - the beatitudes
Go into B & Q and you may well bump into Alan Titchmarsh.
Not in person, over here for the Literature Festival, but a life-size cardboard cut-out.
I think it’s a bit of a pity.
Back in May B&Q decided to take off the shelves the books of someone else who has never sought any personal publicity, has little time for garden make-over programmes, and said of B&Q’s decision, “It’s sad for the public. And it’s sad for me. There are celebrities and there are experts.”
Much as I like Alan Titchmarsh, I for one am with Dr D.G.Hessayon. When I purchased my battered copy of the New Vegetable and Herb Expert, ‘an enlarged and updated edition of the world’s best-sellling book on vegetables and herbs’, thirteen years ago, it and its predecessor had already sold 4,870,000 copies. The Garden Expert was first published 51 years ago and by the time I bought my copy ten years ago had sold 5,340,000 copies.
I like ‘how-to’ books. And when it comes to the garden, I don’t think you can find a better ‘how-to’ book.
Of all the Gospels Matthew comes closest to being a ‘how-to’ book. It may not have pictures, charts and diagrams, but it is laid out with a pretty clear structure. And it even has a bit of a blurb on the back cover that tells you what it sets out to do … if you have eyes to see!
It’s intriguing that each of the Gospels tells you at the very beginning or at the very end what it is about and what it’s setting out to do. And each of the Gospels is subtly different.
The clue to Matthew comes in the very last words Matthew records Jesus as saying to the disciples.
It was on the third day after the execution of Jesus on the cross that Mary Magdalene and the other mary went to see the tomb. An angel, a messenger of God, had a message for them to take to the disciples …
“Go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.
They left the tomb with fear and great joy when suddenly Jesus met them, and said, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
So it is that the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.
There it was that Jesus came and said to them,
‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’*
A wonderful promise – I am with you always to the end of the age.
And a powerful challenge …make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
How can they rise to the challenge and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything Jesus had commanded?
Matthew has provided them the wherewithal. He has built his Gospel around five sets of teaching that Jesus gave. In that teaching you can see what Jesus has commanded. It is what you need to know if you are going to obey everything Jesus commanded, and if you are going to be a disciple.
Matthew’s gospel is the manual for disciples.
It opens with the birth stories of Jesus, then moves on to the proclaimation of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus in chapter 3. Then Jesus faces a time of temptation in the wilderness in chapter 4 and then begins his ministry in Galilee where he calls the first disciples. Then he goes throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom and bringing healing to so many people, that crowds flock to him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordan.
In chapter 5. When Jesus sees the crowds he goes up the mountain, sat down and his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak and he taught them …
This is the first great bit of teaching Matthew records. And in some ways it is the greatest. Want to be a disciple? You will need to know the teaching of Jesus … and here it is.
The sermon on the mount.
What an opening.
The opening says it all.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven …
As ever with the Literature Festival all the celebrity speakers passed me by. But I feel as if I did have a good Literature Festival nonetheless, but I learned on Thursday that I had chosen the wrong event to go to after all!
On Monday I did a play on communication, a wonderful workshop with a young and very dynamic theatre director on Shakespeare’s sonnets, and went to a poetry reading for the launch of an anthology of poetry by black writers. And I missed a poetry presentation evening at the Playhouse on Monday evening when Judi Marsh was a runner up and read her own poem. So congratulations to Judi and sorry I missed it!
A large part of the Bible is written in poetry. Christ Church visitors and house group leaders had invited me to share a quiet day on prayer with them last Saturday. I shared some of the poetry of George Herbert and used it as a way into reading the psalms as the powerful poetry of prayer.
In his preaching Jesus uses poetry.
There’s something about poetry that makes it memorable. We were asked to memorise a sonnet for the workshop on Shakespeare’s sonnets. I was relieved that we only got through two sonnets so I didn’t need to own up to not having learned them by heart.
It’s doable.
And this is one of those great passages to memorise.
Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
The repetition of the word blessed. So much stronger than the Good News Bible rendering of the word ‘happy’. It is as if it is drumming the message home.
The Hebrew Poetry Jesus had grown up is a poetry where it is not so much rhymes and a beat that counts, but instead it is a poetry of ideas.
The rhythm is not so much in the words, definitely not in any rhyme, but it is there in the rhythm of the line.
Blessed are … for theirs is
Blessed are … for they will be
And there is great comfort in these lines.
Feeling poverty-stricken in your faith, as if the springs have run dry – blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Felling alone in bereavement, know that you are never alone,
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Feeling browbeaten, taken advantage of, bottom of the pile, take comfort in the words of Jesus …
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
But make no mistake about it Jesus is not offering his would-be disciples, us included, sugar or saccharin to sweeten our task.
There’s more to these words than meet the eye!
The word translated Blessed is not the easiest of words to translate. That’s why the Good News Bible opts for the word ‘Happy’. But it doesn’t really work. Especially as you move on through the beatitudes.
You might just about get away with Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, for you will be filled. Is it ‘happiness’ that the peacemaker looks to. And what about those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, or better for the sake of justice, theirs may be the kingdom of heaven … but can you really say such people are ‘happy’?
A long time ago I came across a reference to someone who spoke the Aramaic language that Jesus would have spoken and who had a very interesting take on the translation of this word. Whenever I have preached on or taught on our course about the beatitudes I have quoted that ‘someone’.
You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when earlier in the year, I heard that someone speak and give that very explanation that I had quoted time and again in marking umpteen pieces of written work as students on our course write their own paraphrase of these words.
Elias Chacour describes himself as a Christian that goes back 2000 years, an Arab, a citizen of the state of Israel, and he grew up in a village in Galilee. He and his family were expelled in 1948 by soldiers accompanying Jewish people settling in that area with the establishment of the state of Israel. His story is a wonderful one as it tells of his return to the villages of the Galilee, how he became priest and then Bishop of one of the ancient churches of the Holy Land, and how he has run schools, camps for Jew, Muslim and Christian in a life-time’s work for justice and reconciliation. His great book is called Blood Brothers.
And he was over here to speak a special lecture of the Bible Lands Society in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.
It wasn’t long in his address before he turned to the Sermon on the Mount, and to the Beatitudes.
I pricked my ears up.
I was converted to Christianity not long ago. Not long ago, for us Palestinian Christians, we count time differently from you. We never forget the Swiss for putting this age in our arms, for us we still feel it in our body that time, oh my goodness, one thousand years are like one day before the Lord, so what are two thousand years?
It’s the day before yesterday that the younger boy from Nazareth was hanging around with our boys and girls, with our elderly, with our shepherds, sharing our weddings and our funerals.
Watching everything – our clouds, our water, our flowers – and he took all of that and made of them the parables of the Kingdom of Heaven.
He spoke with such authority.
He did not say to those who followed him ‘Ah! Happy you are because you are persecuted; because you are hungry and searching for justice.’ That man would never have said that.
We have two texts of the Sermon on the Mount – the one says ashray and if there is any Jew who understands Hebrew he would vibrate to ashray that’s taken from yashar and from osher v’osher and the second text says to varwhom (? phon.) and both of them mean literally straight, straighten up, straighten up yourself you hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Get up – go ahead, move, do something if you want to be a peacemaker.
Peace never requires contemplators, peace requires proactive people who get their hands dirty, to build peace and justice for every human being.
That was the teachings of that young boy from Nazareth. Some of my ancestors – my forefathers – listened to him, followed him up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the bloody Jerusalem where all the prophets died – were killed – because they protested against the injustices of the then authority in Jerusalem.
These words take on the feel of a really challenging – how to obey the commands of Jesus. This becomes a very real manual for discipleship.
Are you poor in spirit, in mourning, meek … straighten up!
Straighten up yourselves, stand up and be counted as you hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness and you will be filled.
Straighten up, get up – go ahead, move, do something as peacemakers and you will be called children of God.
No longer the saccharine of reassurance, it’s electrifying as it challenges us to the task of discipleship.
Eight times the phrase is repeated. Each time Jesus ups the ante. At the eighth call to straighten up he thinks of those facing persecution for the sake of righteousness, for justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
There are wonderful balances as the second half of this line now echoes the first of the beatitudes.
Then one more is added in.
Up until now each of the beatitudes is impersonal …
Blessed are the poor in spirit
Blessed are those who mourn
Then neatness of the eight so memorable for their repeated form, is broken with a ninth.
No longer impersonal. Jesus suddenly is direct. He looks those would-be disciples in the eye …
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
To be a disciple we need to straighten ourselves up get up, go ahead, move, do something …
It’s the same with any manual –
After all, it’s no good just reading Dr Hessayon’s books to make a difference in the garden you need to straighten up, get up and do something!
Not in person, over here for the Literature Festival, but a life-size cardboard cut-out.
I think it’s a bit of a pity.
Back in May B&Q decided to take off the shelves the books of someone else who has never sought any personal publicity, has little time for garden make-over programmes, and said of B&Q’s decision, “It’s sad for the public. And it’s sad for me. There are celebrities and there are experts.”
Much as I like Alan Titchmarsh, I for one am with Dr D.G.Hessayon. When I purchased my battered copy of the New Vegetable and Herb Expert, ‘an enlarged and updated edition of the world’s best-sellling book on vegetables and herbs’, thirteen years ago, it and its predecessor had already sold 4,870,000 copies. The Garden Expert was first published 51 years ago and by the time I bought my copy ten years ago had sold 5,340,000 copies.
I like ‘how-to’ books. And when it comes to the garden, I don’t think you can find a better ‘how-to’ book.
Of all the Gospels Matthew comes closest to being a ‘how-to’ book. It may not have pictures, charts and diagrams, but it is laid out with a pretty clear structure. And it even has a bit of a blurb on the back cover that tells you what it sets out to do … if you have eyes to see!
It’s intriguing that each of the Gospels tells you at the very beginning or at the very end what it is about and what it’s setting out to do. And each of the Gospels is subtly different.
The clue to Matthew comes in the very last words Matthew records Jesus as saying to the disciples.
It was on the third day after the execution of Jesus on the cross that Mary Magdalene and the other mary went to see the tomb. An angel, a messenger of God, had a message for them to take to the disciples …
“Go quickly and tell his disciples, “He has been raised from the dead and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.
They left the tomb with fear and great joy when suddenly Jesus met them, and said, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”
So it is that the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.
There it was that Jesus came and said to them,
‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’*
A wonderful promise – I am with you always to the end of the age.
And a powerful challenge …make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
How can they rise to the challenge and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything Jesus had commanded?
Matthew has provided them the wherewithal. He has built his Gospel around five sets of teaching that Jesus gave. In that teaching you can see what Jesus has commanded. It is what you need to know if you are going to obey everything Jesus commanded, and if you are going to be a disciple.
Matthew’s gospel is the manual for disciples.
It opens with the birth stories of Jesus, then moves on to the proclaimation of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus in chapter 3. Then Jesus faces a time of temptation in the wilderness in chapter 4 and then begins his ministry in Galilee where he calls the first disciples. Then he goes throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom and bringing healing to so many people, that crowds flock to him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and from beyond the Jordan.
In chapter 5. When Jesus sees the crowds he goes up the mountain, sat down and his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak and he taught them …
This is the first great bit of teaching Matthew records. And in some ways it is the greatest. Want to be a disciple? You will need to know the teaching of Jesus … and here it is.
The sermon on the mount.
What an opening.
The opening says it all.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven …
As ever with the Literature Festival all the celebrity speakers passed me by. But I feel as if I did have a good Literature Festival nonetheless, but I learned on Thursday that I had chosen the wrong event to go to after all!
On Monday I did a play on communication, a wonderful workshop with a young and very dynamic theatre director on Shakespeare’s sonnets, and went to a poetry reading for the launch of an anthology of poetry by black writers. And I missed a poetry presentation evening at the Playhouse on Monday evening when Judi Marsh was a runner up and read her own poem. So congratulations to Judi and sorry I missed it!
A large part of the Bible is written in poetry. Christ Church visitors and house group leaders had invited me to share a quiet day on prayer with them last Saturday. I shared some of the poetry of George Herbert and used it as a way into reading the psalms as the powerful poetry of prayer.
In his preaching Jesus uses poetry.
There’s something about poetry that makes it memorable. We were asked to memorise a sonnet for the workshop on Shakespeare’s sonnets. I was relieved that we only got through two sonnets so I didn’t need to own up to not having learned them by heart.
It’s doable.
And this is one of those great passages to memorise.
Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
The repetition of the word blessed. So much stronger than the Good News Bible rendering of the word ‘happy’. It is as if it is drumming the message home.
The Hebrew Poetry Jesus had grown up is a poetry where it is not so much rhymes and a beat that counts, but instead it is a poetry of ideas.
The rhythm is not so much in the words, definitely not in any rhyme, but it is there in the rhythm of the line.
Blessed are … for theirs is
Blessed are … for they will be
And there is great comfort in these lines.
Feeling poverty-stricken in your faith, as if the springs have run dry – blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Felling alone in bereavement, know that you are never alone,
Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Feeling browbeaten, taken advantage of, bottom of the pile, take comfort in the words of Jesus …
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
But make no mistake about it Jesus is not offering his would-be disciples, us included, sugar or saccharin to sweeten our task.
There’s more to these words than meet the eye!
The word translated Blessed is not the easiest of words to translate. That’s why the Good News Bible opts for the word ‘Happy’. But it doesn’t really work. Especially as you move on through the beatitudes.
You might just about get away with Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice, for you will be filled. Is it ‘happiness’ that the peacemaker looks to. And what about those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, or better for the sake of justice, theirs may be the kingdom of heaven … but can you really say such people are ‘happy’?
A long time ago I came across a reference to someone who spoke the Aramaic language that Jesus would have spoken and who had a very interesting take on the translation of this word. Whenever I have preached on or taught on our course about the beatitudes I have quoted that ‘someone’.
You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when earlier in the year, I heard that someone speak and give that very explanation that I had quoted time and again in marking umpteen pieces of written work as students on our course write their own paraphrase of these words.
Elias Chacour describes himself as a Christian that goes back 2000 years, an Arab, a citizen of the state of Israel, and he grew up in a village in Galilee. He and his family were expelled in 1948 by soldiers accompanying Jewish people settling in that area with the establishment of the state of Israel. His story is a wonderful one as it tells of his return to the villages of the Galilee, how he became priest and then Bishop of one of the ancient churches of the Holy Land, and how he has run schools, camps for Jew, Muslim and Christian in a life-time’s work for justice and reconciliation. His great book is called Blood Brothers.
And he was over here to speak a special lecture of the Bible Lands Society in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.
It wasn’t long in his address before he turned to the Sermon on the Mount, and to the Beatitudes.
I pricked my ears up.
I was converted to Christianity not long ago. Not long ago, for us Palestinian Christians, we count time differently from you. We never forget the Swiss for putting this age in our arms, for us we still feel it in our body that time, oh my goodness, one thousand years are like one day before the Lord, so what are two thousand years?
It’s the day before yesterday that the younger boy from Nazareth was hanging around with our boys and girls, with our elderly, with our shepherds, sharing our weddings and our funerals.
Watching everything – our clouds, our water, our flowers – and he took all of that and made of them the parables of the Kingdom of Heaven.
He spoke with such authority.
He did not say to those who followed him ‘Ah! Happy you are because you are persecuted; because you are hungry and searching for justice.’ That man would never have said that.
We have two texts of the Sermon on the Mount – the one says ashray and if there is any Jew who understands Hebrew he would vibrate to ashray that’s taken from yashar and from osher v’osher and the second text says to varwhom (? phon.) and both of them mean literally straight, straighten up, straighten up yourself you hungry and thirsty for righteousness. Get up – go ahead, move, do something if you want to be a peacemaker.
Peace never requires contemplators, peace requires proactive people who get their hands dirty, to build peace and justice for every human being.
That was the teachings of that young boy from Nazareth. Some of my ancestors – my forefathers – listened to him, followed him up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the bloody Jerusalem where all the prophets died – were killed – because they protested against the injustices of the then authority in Jerusalem.
These words take on the feel of a really challenging – how to obey the commands of Jesus. This becomes a very real manual for discipleship.
Are you poor in spirit, in mourning, meek … straighten up!
Straighten up yourselves, stand up and be counted as you hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness and you will be filled.
Straighten up, get up – go ahead, move, do something as peacemakers and you will be called children of God.
No longer the saccharine of reassurance, it’s electrifying as it challenges us to the task of discipleship.
Eight times the phrase is repeated. Each time Jesus ups the ante. At the eighth call to straighten up he thinks of those facing persecution for the sake of righteousness, for justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
There are wonderful balances as the second half of this line now echoes the first of the beatitudes.
Then one more is added in.
Up until now each of the beatitudes is impersonal …
Blessed are the poor in spirit
Blessed are those who mourn
Then neatness of the eight so memorable for their repeated form, is broken with a ninth.
No longer impersonal. Jesus suddenly is direct. He looks those would-be disciples in the eye …
Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
To be a disciple we need to straighten ourselves up get up, go ahead, move, do something …
It’s the same with any manual –
After all, it’s no good just reading Dr Hessayon’s books to make a difference in the garden you need to straighten up, get up and do something!
What it takes to be a Christian - Romans
Since the beginning of the year Richard Cleaves, our Minister, has preached a series of sermons on Paul's Letter to the Romans during our Sunday evening services.
The sermon followed a reading from Acts 28:11-31. In that final chapter of Acts Luke tells of Paul's arrival in Rome and leaves Paul "proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance."
Although Paul wrote his letter to the Romans a number of years before, in all likelihood during a three month period when he was staying at Coring that is referred to in Acts 20:3, it makes sense for Romans to follow straight on from Acts. It is as if Romans contains the summing up of Paul's preaching of teh Kingdom of God and of this teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Richard suggested that the whole of Romans can be summarised in two words that Paul uses in Romans 1:7 and again in Romans 16:20 "grace" and "peace".
Paul's account of the Christian faith in chapters 1-11 can be summed up in the one word "grace"
Paul's challenge to living the Christian life in chapters 12-16 can be summed up in the one word "peace".
For this final sermon Richard took as his text Romans 1-16 in its entirety.
It is not insignificant that the sermon was preached on Sunday, 17th October 2010 only days after 33 miners had been rescued from a mine in Chile, in a historic mine rescue. The miners had returned to the mine that Sunday to share in a service of thanksgiving.
Grace and Peace
What it takes to be a Christian
Paul's Letter to the Romans
“The word Christian today is more of a soporific than a slogan. So much – too much – is Christian: Churches, schools, political parties, cultural associations, and of course Europe, the West, the Middle Ages.
I read those words more than thirty years ago and they still ring true today.
They were written by Hans Kung in what was then a best seller, On being a Christian.
It was a book as he said at the very outset written for all those who, for any reason at all, honestly and sincerely want to know what Christianity, what being a Christian really means.
It is written also for those
Who do not believe, but nevertheless seriously inquire;
Who did believe, but are not satisfied with their unbelief;
Who do believe, but feel insecure in their faith,
Who are at a loss, between belief and unbelief;
Who are sceptical both about their convictions and about their doubts.
It is written then for Christians and atheists, Gnostics and agnostics, pietists and positivists, lukewarm and zealous Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox.
And somewhere in that long list was me more than 30 years ago.
What Hans Kung had to say captivated me … and I feel it even more so now.
What is special about Christianity? He asks early on in the book.
Many seek to answer that question by looking for abstract axioms, concepts, principles, ideas.
But Hans Kung was convinced – and he persuaded me.
It is not possible to find the answer there since Christianity, as its name alone suggests, cannot in the last resort be reduced to any kind of eternal ideas, abstract principles, human attitudes. The whole of Christianity is left hanging in mid-air if it is detached from the foundation on which it is built.
The foundation upon which Christianity is built is Jesus Christ.
With the eye of the historian we can uncover the Jesus of history. With the eye of the believer we can see through Jesus to the God who is love.
Jesus Christ invites faith and demands obedience of those who would follow him.
He offers us the free gift of love reaching out from God into our innermost being – that’s to say ‘grace’.
And he challenges us to live in the peace God gives and become peace-makers in a world too often divided. Romans 1:1-7
I want to say a big thank you to the likes of Hans Kung who have been an inspiration to me down through the years, and many others starting from my parents, through my Sunday school teachers, to my school teachers, lecturers, the many people in the churches I have belonged to through the years, not least this church and those I have shared with in the fellowship of our Congregational Federation, especially on our training course. Romans 1:8-15
Some criticised the BBC for sending so many to cover the Chile mine rescue. I wanted to say thank you! Wasn’t it wonderful to have so much of the news bulletins filled with Good News! What a remarkable rescue!
If that’s Good News how much more does our Christian faith rooted in Jesus Christ deserve to be called ‘Good News’. It is good news that we have received, and Good News that we are called on to share.
This Good News is nothing less than the power of God for salvation for all who believe, whatever background they come from. Romans 1:16-17
Mind you, it is not possible to get away from the bad news. It is our responsibility as Christians to turn the spotlight on the world we live in.
Where we see injustice, where we see immorality, where we see what is wrong we must speak out. Romans 1:18-32
We stand by the ten commandments, narrowed down to two Love God, Love your neighbour, summed up by Jesus in the Golden Rule do to others what you would have others do to you.
That sense of justice, the essence of that morality, that golden rule is not ours alone. On the wall in the Tantur Institute seminar room in that conference on reconciliation I attended a couple of years ago in Bethlehem was a poster with that Golden rule quoted from all the religions of the world.
There is something that is common to humanity, call it conscience if you will, that at rock bottom can tell the difference between right and wrong. Romans 2:1 – 3:20
How tragic that there is within us all, each one of us, the capacity to get it wrong. And it is the sad tale of the whole of humanity that we get it wrong.
But that is not the end of the story.
Jesus Christ presents us with a way out.
In that Chilean mine they called that pod that brought about that remarkable rescue ‘the phoenix’ – so-called after the bird that is destroyed but then arises again out of the ashes of the very fire that destroyed it.
For us as Christians Jesus Christ is nothing less than the phoenix – he is the one who offers a way out, a way to break the impasse.
The reality is that all of us, all of humanity, each one of us, without exception falls short of the ideal. We do not live up to it.
It can feel as if we are trapped in a world that is so destructive. Jesus shared with our humanity to the point of the cross and utter devastation. Through his resurrection we can share in his victory and see that destruction does not have the last word. That is liberating.
It can feel as if God has to be against us because we have so let him down. We can look to the cross, hear again Christ’s words of forgiveness and know that he has restored the closest possible relationship we could ever hope for with God.
It can feel as if we have to carry the weight of the world’s evil on our shoulders. We can look to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and see that he has shouldered that burden. As we see in him the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, we know that he has taken away the sin of each one of us and God accepts us as we are.
Look to Jesus. Believe in Jesus. And there is a transformation. Romans 3:21 – 4:25
It must have taken some doing to step into that pod, into that Phoenix. Stepping from it was the most wonderful step of freedom anyone of those men had taken. The second to step out, Mario Sepulveda, leapt and sang and handed out stones and later explained the spiritual crisis he had experienced underground: “I was with God and I was with the devil, he said. They were fighting over me and God won. I grabbed on to the best hand. I held onto it and never thought for one minute that God wouldn’t get me out of there.”
The 17th miner to be set free Omar Reygadas, knelt on the ground, clutching a Bible as family and friends, and President of Chile looked on in silence.
What a difference their faith made to those miners in that ordeal.
What a difference our faith can make to us in any ordeal we face.
Jesus draws us into the embrace of a loving God who takes us by the hand and enables us to stand in that grace, knowing that we are forgiven. There is no escaping the world with its sufferings: as we journey through that world God holds us by the hand and enables us to face that world with endurance, with patience, and with a hope that will not disappoint us.
How can we be so sure? Because through Jesus Christ it is nothing less than the love of God that is poured into our hearts by that unseen yet very real strength and power of God that is his Holy Spirit. Romans 5:1-21
For those miners buried for 17 days before they were discovered and for another 49 days before they were set free it was nothing less than a burial and a resurrection.
Jesus comes with us, alongside us, and shares our humanity at its abject lowest … and then he lifts us into the presence of God in all his glory. A wonderful love that will not let us go. For us that experience is nothing less than a death and resurrection.
It is as if we can go right back to the beginning and begin all over again.
Romans 6:1-23
It is tough, however.
And the doubts and the questions remain.
And faced with some of the awfulness of our world, those questions get tougher.
It’s all very well the preacher latching on to the faith of those miners – but in so many other places the rescue doesn’t come. The suffering prevails.
And even in our own lives evil seems to have the last word.
The good that I would I do not, the evil that I would not that I do. Romans 7:1-25
The reality is that we cannot do it on our own.
I have often felt that if Christianity were nothing more than a way of life to follow it would be a recipe for breakdown and disaster for none of us can live up to the challenge Jesus Christ asks of us.
But Christianity is Good News.
That Good News is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.
And that power of God is let loose in our lives.
Sometimes people say prayer is the key. And it is. How vitally important prayer is. But what about those times when prayer doesn’t come, when prayer doesn’t work.
My words go up, my thoughts remain below
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
It is precisely at those times when we find ourselves groaning in despair that God is actually with us. Remember the footprints. At that moment when there is only one set of prints and we feel as if God has abandoned us and we wail and groan inside … that’s the moment when God is carrying us. Those very groans and wails are nothing less than God within us in that unseen and yet very real presence of his groaning and wailing with us. The strength of that Spirit bears us through.
We are not alone. There is a strength beside us and within in the unseen, yet very real power of God, the Holy Spirit. Don’t be put off by the excesses of the Toronto Blessing, of speaking in tongues. The Holy Spirit is fundamental to our Christian faith, we cannot do without it – for that’s the strength we need to see us through.
For well over twenty years I have had a plaque on the wall of my study that says, Lord help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today that you and I together can’t handle.
In the conviction that God is present with me from day to day in his unseen yet very real power of the Holy Spirit, I can say that I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor 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. Romans 8:1-39
That’s a conviction that is for me at least a very personal one. But for some in the church today it is a conviction to hold on to in the face of very great hardship and even persecution. One of those places where that is very apparent is in the Middle East. And it is focused in the Holy Land.
Jesus offers us the grace of God’s free forgiving love.
Jesus draws us into the peace of the presence of God and asks us to be peace-makers. How important for us to support in our praying and in every way we can those Christian churches who are seeking to live that out in the midst of the conflicts that come especially when the extremes of Judaism and Christianity clash with the extremes of Islam. Romans 9-11
The whole point of faith, the whole point of grace, the whole point of being in this relationship with Christ is that it shapes the way we lead our lives.
That’s what it all builds up to.
In response to the wonderful gift of God’s free forgiving love, let’s offer the whole of our lives in service to God by being of service to one another.
Let’s not go it alone.
Let’s play our part as part of the body of Christ, working together with those who share the faith in the life and work of the church.
Let us above all love one another, with a love that is sincere and genuine, with a love that does not draw boundaries but embraces all, with a love that shows honour and respect, and with a love that reaches out even to those who are our enemies. Romans 12
Alice Brown belonged first to Highbury when it was in Winchcombe Street, and returned to the church at the death of her sister about ten years ago. In her room in Lilian Faithful House she has a book case of 200 books most of which are books of poetry and classics of English literature. I found myself on Friday afternoon reading some of the poetry of Shakespeare and of John Donne.
I passionately take my stand on the insight of John Donne …
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never sent to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee ….
As Christians we have to be part of society and more than that we have to play our full part in that society. Romans 13
As Christians we have to be part of a community of Christian people that we get to know by name. How vital to the well-being of our church is our visiting scheme and the visitors meeting on Thursday – how important the lists we have of those who belong, diligently kept up to date for our visitors meeting. How important that we know each other by name. Of each other and of others outside we must never be judgemental and we must always recognise that the most important members of our church family are those who are the most vulnerable. Romans 14:1 – 16:24
The God of peace will overcome all evil
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ will be with us. Romans 16:20
And so to God who is able to strengthen us according to this wonderful good news that is nothing less than the power of God for salvation to all who believe,
To God who is able to strengthen us according to the message of Jesus Christ, a message that contains the key to the very meaning of life.
To God who is able to strengthen us according to those commandments that shape a life of faith
To the only wise God be glory for ever. Romans 16:25-27
May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing,
So that we may abound in hope
By the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13
The sermon followed a reading from Acts 28:11-31. In that final chapter of Acts Luke tells of Paul's arrival in Rome and leaves Paul "proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance."
Although Paul wrote his letter to the Romans a number of years before, in all likelihood during a three month period when he was staying at Coring that is referred to in Acts 20:3, it makes sense for Romans to follow straight on from Acts. It is as if Romans contains the summing up of Paul's preaching of teh Kingdom of God and of this teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Richard suggested that the whole of Romans can be summarised in two words that Paul uses in Romans 1:7 and again in Romans 16:20 "grace" and "peace".
Paul's account of the Christian faith in chapters 1-11 can be summed up in the one word "grace"
Paul's challenge to living the Christian life in chapters 12-16 can be summed up in the one word "peace".
For this final sermon Richard took as his text Romans 1-16 in its entirety.
It is not insignificant that the sermon was preached on Sunday, 17th October 2010 only days after 33 miners had been rescued from a mine in Chile, in a historic mine rescue. The miners had returned to the mine that Sunday to share in a service of thanksgiving.
Grace and Peace
What it takes to be a Christian
Paul's Letter to the Romans
“The word Christian today is more of a soporific than a slogan. So much – too much – is Christian: Churches, schools, political parties, cultural associations, and of course Europe, the West, the Middle Ages.
I read those words more than thirty years ago and they still ring true today.
They were written by Hans Kung in what was then a best seller, On being a Christian.
It was a book as he said at the very outset written for all those who, for any reason at all, honestly and sincerely want to know what Christianity, what being a Christian really means.
It is written also for those
Who do not believe, but nevertheless seriously inquire;
Who did believe, but are not satisfied with their unbelief;
Who do believe, but feel insecure in their faith,
Who are at a loss, between belief and unbelief;
Who are sceptical both about their convictions and about their doubts.
It is written then for Christians and atheists, Gnostics and agnostics, pietists and positivists, lukewarm and zealous Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox.
And somewhere in that long list was me more than 30 years ago.
What Hans Kung had to say captivated me … and I feel it even more so now.
What is special about Christianity? He asks early on in the book.
Many seek to answer that question by looking for abstract axioms, concepts, principles, ideas.
But Hans Kung was convinced – and he persuaded me.
It is not possible to find the answer there since Christianity, as its name alone suggests, cannot in the last resort be reduced to any kind of eternal ideas, abstract principles, human attitudes. The whole of Christianity is left hanging in mid-air if it is detached from the foundation on which it is built.
The foundation upon which Christianity is built is Jesus Christ.
With the eye of the historian we can uncover the Jesus of history. With the eye of the believer we can see through Jesus to the God who is love.
Jesus Christ invites faith and demands obedience of those who would follow him.
He offers us the free gift of love reaching out from God into our innermost being – that’s to say ‘grace’.
And he challenges us to live in the peace God gives and become peace-makers in a world too often divided. Romans 1:1-7
I want to say a big thank you to the likes of Hans Kung who have been an inspiration to me down through the years, and many others starting from my parents, through my Sunday school teachers, to my school teachers, lecturers, the many people in the churches I have belonged to through the years, not least this church and those I have shared with in the fellowship of our Congregational Federation, especially on our training course. Romans 1:8-15
Some criticised the BBC for sending so many to cover the Chile mine rescue. I wanted to say thank you! Wasn’t it wonderful to have so much of the news bulletins filled with Good News! What a remarkable rescue!
If that’s Good News how much more does our Christian faith rooted in Jesus Christ deserve to be called ‘Good News’. It is good news that we have received, and Good News that we are called on to share.
This Good News is nothing less than the power of God for salvation for all who believe, whatever background they come from. Romans 1:16-17
Mind you, it is not possible to get away from the bad news. It is our responsibility as Christians to turn the spotlight on the world we live in.
Where we see injustice, where we see immorality, where we see what is wrong we must speak out. Romans 1:18-32
We stand by the ten commandments, narrowed down to two Love God, Love your neighbour, summed up by Jesus in the Golden Rule do to others what you would have others do to you.
That sense of justice, the essence of that morality, that golden rule is not ours alone. On the wall in the Tantur Institute seminar room in that conference on reconciliation I attended a couple of years ago in Bethlehem was a poster with that Golden rule quoted from all the religions of the world.
There is something that is common to humanity, call it conscience if you will, that at rock bottom can tell the difference between right and wrong. Romans 2:1 – 3:20
How tragic that there is within us all, each one of us, the capacity to get it wrong. And it is the sad tale of the whole of humanity that we get it wrong.
But that is not the end of the story.
Jesus Christ presents us with a way out.
In that Chilean mine they called that pod that brought about that remarkable rescue ‘the phoenix’ – so-called after the bird that is destroyed but then arises again out of the ashes of the very fire that destroyed it.
For us as Christians Jesus Christ is nothing less than the phoenix – he is the one who offers a way out, a way to break the impasse.
The reality is that all of us, all of humanity, each one of us, without exception falls short of the ideal. We do not live up to it.
It can feel as if we are trapped in a world that is so destructive. Jesus shared with our humanity to the point of the cross and utter devastation. Through his resurrection we can share in his victory and see that destruction does not have the last word. That is liberating.
It can feel as if God has to be against us because we have so let him down. We can look to the cross, hear again Christ’s words of forgiveness and know that he has restored the closest possible relationship we could ever hope for with God.
It can feel as if we have to carry the weight of the world’s evil on our shoulders. We can look to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and see that he has shouldered that burden. As we see in him the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, we know that he has taken away the sin of each one of us and God accepts us as we are.
Look to Jesus. Believe in Jesus. And there is a transformation. Romans 3:21 – 4:25
It must have taken some doing to step into that pod, into that Phoenix. Stepping from it was the most wonderful step of freedom anyone of those men had taken. The second to step out, Mario Sepulveda, leapt and sang and handed out stones and later explained the spiritual crisis he had experienced underground: “I was with God and I was with the devil, he said. They were fighting over me and God won. I grabbed on to the best hand. I held onto it and never thought for one minute that God wouldn’t get me out of there.”
The 17th miner to be set free Omar Reygadas, knelt on the ground, clutching a Bible as family and friends, and President of Chile looked on in silence.
What a difference their faith made to those miners in that ordeal.
What a difference our faith can make to us in any ordeal we face.
Jesus draws us into the embrace of a loving God who takes us by the hand and enables us to stand in that grace, knowing that we are forgiven. There is no escaping the world with its sufferings: as we journey through that world God holds us by the hand and enables us to face that world with endurance, with patience, and with a hope that will not disappoint us.
How can we be so sure? Because through Jesus Christ it is nothing less than the love of God that is poured into our hearts by that unseen yet very real strength and power of God that is his Holy Spirit. Romans 5:1-21
For those miners buried for 17 days before they were discovered and for another 49 days before they were set free it was nothing less than a burial and a resurrection.
Jesus comes with us, alongside us, and shares our humanity at its abject lowest … and then he lifts us into the presence of God in all his glory. A wonderful love that will not let us go. For us that experience is nothing less than a death and resurrection.
It is as if we can go right back to the beginning and begin all over again.
Romans 6:1-23
It is tough, however.
And the doubts and the questions remain.
And faced with some of the awfulness of our world, those questions get tougher.
It’s all very well the preacher latching on to the faith of those miners – but in so many other places the rescue doesn’t come. The suffering prevails.
And even in our own lives evil seems to have the last word.
The good that I would I do not, the evil that I would not that I do. Romans 7:1-25
The reality is that we cannot do it on our own.
I have often felt that if Christianity were nothing more than a way of life to follow it would be a recipe for breakdown and disaster for none of us can live up to the challenge Jesus Christ asks of us.
But Christianity is Good News.
That Good News is the power of God for salvation to all who believe.
And that power of God is let loose in our lives.
Sometimes people say prayer is the key. And it is. How vitally important prayer is. But what about those times when prayer doesn’t come, when prayer doesn’t work.
My words go up, my thoughts remain below
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
It is precisely at those times when we find ourselves groaning in despair that God is actually with us. Remember the footprints. At that moment when there is only one set of prints and we feel as if God has abandoned us and we wail and groan inside … that’s the moment when God is carrying us. Those very groans and wails are nothing less than God within us in that unseen and yet very real presence of his groaning and wailing with us. The strength of that Spirit bears us through.
We are not alone. There is a strength beside us and within in the unseen, yet very real power of God, the Holy Spirit. Don’t be put off by the excesses of the Toronto Blessing, of speaking in tongues. The Holy Spirit is fundamental to our Christian faith, we cannot do without it – for that’s the strength we need to see us through.
For well over twenty years I have had a plaque on the wall of my study that says, Lord help me to remember that nothing is going to happen to me today that you and I together can’t handle.
In the conviction that God is present with me from day to day in his unseen yet very real power of the Holy Spirit, I can say that I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor 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. Romans 8:1-39
That’s a conviction that is for me at least a very personal one. But for some in the church today it is a conviction to hold on to in the face of very great hardship and even persecution. One of those places where that is very apparent is in the Middle East. And it is focused in the Holy Land.
Jesus offers us the grace of God’s free forgiving love.
Jesus draws us into the peace of the presence of God and asks us to be peace-makers. How important for us to support in our praying and in every way we can those Christian churches who are seeking to live that out in the midst of the conflicts that come especially when the extremes of Judaism and Christianity clash with the extremes of Islam. Romans 9-11
The whole point of faith, the whole point of grace, the whole point of being in this relationship with Christ is that it shapes the way we lead our lives.
That’s what it all builds up to.
In response to the wonderful gift of God’s free forgiving love, let’s offer the whole of our lives in service to God by being of service to one another.
Let’s not go it alone.
Let’s play our part as part of the body of Christ, working together with those who share the faith in the life and work of the church.
Let us above all love one another, with a love that is sincere and genuine, with a love that does not draw boundaries but embraces all, with a love that shows honour and respect, and with a love that reaches out even to those who are our enemies. Romans 12
Alice Brown belonged first to Highbury when it was in Winchcombe Street, and returned to the church at the death of her sister about ten years ago. In her room in Lilian Faithful House she has a book case of 200 books most of which are books of poetry and classics of English literature. I found myself on Friday afternoon reading some of the poetry of Shakespeare and of John Donne.
I passionately take my stand on the insight of John Donne …
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never sent to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee ….
As Christians we have to be part of society and more than that we have to play our full part in that society. Romans 13
As Christians we have to be part of a community of Christian people that we get to know by name. How vital to the well-being of our church is our visiting scheme and the visitors meeting on Thursday – how important the lists we have of those who belong, diligently kept up to date for our visitors meeting. How important that we know each other by name. Of each other and of others outside we must never be judgemental and we must always recognise that the most important members of our church family are those who are the most vulnerable. Romans 14:1 – 16:24
The God of peace will overcome all evil
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ will be with us. Romans 16:20
And so to God who is able to strengthen us according to this wonderful good news that is nothing less than the power of God for salvation to all who believe,
To God who is able to strengthen us according to the message of Jesus Christ, a message that contains the key to the very meaning of life.
To God who is able to strengthen us according to those commandments that shape a life of faith
To the only wise God be glory for ever. Romans 16:25-27
May the God of hope fill us with all joy and peace in believing,
So that we may abound in hope
By the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Friendship and Trust
Our X-Stream group for older children, with Judi Marsh, led our Sunday morning service on 3rd October. Becky Hartwell, our Pastoral Assistant, preached on the theme of Friendship and Trust. Leading into the sermon Becky played a wonderful YouTube video clip showing not only the trust two guitar players had for each other but the joy of their friendship too!
Friendship is a huge part of our world, whether it is on television shows about finding your best friend forever or in soaps where friendships can be trouble, fun, involve all sorts of betrayals. Friendship can be a significant part of our work and social situations, affecting the decisions we make in our lives. We can also have the friends we have kept for life, friends we may not see often but have great conversations with when we get together. There are the friendships in the bible, between Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Moses and Aaron, and more.
Friendships can sustain us, they can keep us going in the bad times and mean we have someone to share the fun times with.
There are some amazing friendships at Highbury. From Ceitidh Macleod and Eleanor Archer, they’re 4 years old and they love running around together. There is the White family and Schonbeck family - parents and children who are great friends. Then we have Lorraine Gasside and Janet Brown, and we also have John Lewis and Lillian Watkins, not running around together as much as Ceitidh and Eleanor but I’m sure there is still similar joys. Friendship knows no boundaries.
We can see from our current friendships and those of people around us that friendships are significant things in our lives, whether they are part of a marriage or the bond we share with a neighbour.
This is something important that the X-stream children recognised and wanted to share with you today, which is why they chose this topic. I’m just going to share some words this morning which have come from various areas including the children. Thoughts on this passage, on friendship, on trust and how we can build it in our friendships with others and our friendship with God.
We have the dramatised reading the children shared with us earlier. Jesus and Peter walking on water. We can see a lot of the things we have in our friendships with others are reflected in the friendship between Jesus and Peter.
The friendship between Peter and Jesus took time. It had ups and downs. We may have this in our own friendships with people and in our friendship with God. We see in the two readings just two glimpses in the friendship between Jesus and Peter and we can see things did not always go smoothly. Peter wanted to trust Jesus but it wasn’t always there. Peter did not want to disappoint Jesus but it still happened. Jesus knew Peter cared about him and Jesus cared about Peter, but sometimes things went wrong.
Our friendships with Jesus can have that as well. Sometimes we get angry or upset with God, wondering why things have happened. Sometimes we can feel distant from God, struggling to fit everything in our lives and sometimes we can feel we have disappointed him, wondering how things went so wrong, why we did what we did or not sure what has happened.
In the story of Peter we can see that even in those things Jesus still loved Peter, Jesus was still there for Peter, Jesus still trusted him. Trusted him to go into the world when Jesus was back in heaven and share the good news. Trusted him with an important message, to lead people and to help them in their struggles.
Jesus is still that person for us. No matter what happens Jesus still loves us, he is still there for us, he still trusts us. It’s an amazing thing. When Peter started to fall in the water Jesus could have asked him to leave the disciples, telling him he’d had enough but he didn’t. Jesus picked him up and continued to teach him, not giving up on him.
But then sometimes it is hard to trust God. Maybe we can think of a time where we struggled to do the things we felt God was asking us to do, struggled in how he wanted us to serve him or struggled with a passage of the bible and what it meant for our lives.
Peter let his fear affect his trust of Jesus and this affected his actions, he started sinking into the water, he couldn’t believe that Jesus would sustain him in doing the miraculous.
What Peter was struggling with was trust. But when I talked with the children they had some great ways that we could build trust. We know that trusting someone isn’t always easy, we see this in the struggles that Peter had in his moments with Jesus but the children suggested some helpful ways in learning to trust other people.
You can get to know the person better.
This might involve talking with friends, finding out what they love, hate, something about their past, learning all about them. This can also be part of our relationship with God. We can learn about him through reading the bible, talking with others and through prayer. We can share our hopes and fears with God in our prayers and also take time to meditate on his words and being in the silence with him.
One of the things Tabby and Grace do that builds up their friendship is that they play together.
I don’t think Peter and Jesus went on a trampoline together but I think there was some socialising time between them, they ate together, they walked together. But how can we play with God? God is always with us, whether we are watching a film or going on a walk. It is hard to think of this as playing with God but it is spending time with him. We can pray through an activity, telling God about the fun we are having on a crossword or when listening to a particular song, thinking about how it relates to our lives with God.
We talked about testing people to find out if we could trust them. We saw in the bunny story earlier that friends may test each other and in doing so it can lead to great trust or no trust at all. So how do we test God? And should we test God? Well, we can ask questions. Richard reminded us a couple of weeks ago week how important it is to ask questions. Not to test God in going sky diving without a parachute and expecting him to save us but to question who God is, to speak to others, to learn what God is about and what that means to us in our lives.
The children mentioned one other thing when it comes to trusting. Trusting someone isn’t always about them it is about you as well. Trusting someone takes something out of yourself. We have to decide, are we going to trust someone or not? Are we going to trust what God wants for us, that he loves us, that he is with us, that we can have a close friendship with him or not? It takes a leap of faith. We have to make that decision for ourselves.
We also talked about how it is good to have more than one friendship. Jesus is always there for us and he is not a jealous friend, he encourages us to talk to others, to be with other people and one of the many places we can do that is church. I shared some of the church friendships earlier, but these aren’t the only friendships here and there are many more still to grow, with all the ages. But Jesus is our BFF, our best friend forever. Whoever comes in and goes out of our lives Jesus is there no matter what, he doesn’t move to a different area, he doesn’t fall out with us and stop speaking to us, he doesn’t find someone he likes even better than us, he doesn’t get too busy to have us in his life. Jesus is there for us even after we have rejected him.
Jesus saw Peter sinking and “immediately he reached out his hand and caught him.” He didn’t try and decide if the friendship was worth it, was he getting enough out of it, was Peter really good enough to be his friend. Instead he reached out his hand immediately.
When Peter was aware he had rejected Jesus, Jesus didn’t respond by going into a sulk, letting him get some of “his own medicine”, say cruel things or ignore him. Instead, knowing that Peter was still suffering over his actions, he reminded Peter that he still had worth, that he could still serve him, that their friendship was still there – that he knew Peter loved him.
Jesus’ love and forgiveness is never ending and neither is his friendship.
The differences between having a sort of acquaintance friendship to a close bond friendship where you trust the other person are numerous. But one of the differences is that we can have more fun. You may remember from the video earlier that there wasn’t just laughter from the audience but there was laughter from the musicians as well. They weren’t just trying to get through it, hoping they wouldn’t make mistakes, worrying what the other person was doing, they were enjoying themselves. I think the same can be said in our relationship with God.
The times when you see something that makes you smile and you want to share it with God, or when you lead or help at a group that you were nervous about and something great happens and you want to share your joys with God. That is part of a deeper friendship. A deeper friendship with God means lots of things, knowledge, comfort, companionship, hope and joy.
As we go home I’d encourage us all to build our friendships, with other people, with those we haven’t spoken to in a while and with God. To look at the friendships we have and that those around us have and see what we can learn from them.
I hope that our friendship with God this week enables us to helped where our need is deepest, whether it is in needing comfort, needing to be loved, needing to know we’re not alone or needing to see joy in something.
Real friendships aren’t easy, they take time, effort, they take work and they take trust. But we can have a true, deep and everlasting friendship with Jesus.
Friendship is a huge part of our world, whether it is on television shows about finding your best friend forever or in soaps where friendships can be trouble, fun, involve all sorts of betrayals. Friendship can be a significant part of our work and social situations, affecting the decisions we make in our lives. We can also have the friends we have kept for life, friends we may not see often but have great conversations with when we get together. There are the friendships in the bible, between Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, Moses and Aaron, and more.
Friendships can sustain us, they can keep us going in the bad times and mean we have someone to share the fun times with.
There are some amazing friendships at Highbury. From Ceitidh Macleod and Eleanor Archer, they’re 4 years old and they love running around together. There is the White family and Schonbeck family - parents and children who are great friends. Then we have Lorraine Gasside and Janet Brown, and we also have John Lewis and Lillian Watkins, not running around together as much as Ceitidh and Eleanor but I’m sure there is still similar joys. Friendship knows no boundaries.
We can see from our current friendships and those of people around us that friendships are significant things in our lives, whether they are part of a marriage or the bond we share with a neighbour.
This is something important that the X-stream children recognised and wanted to share with you today, which is why they chose this topic. I’m just going to share some words this morning which have come from various areas including the children. Thoughts on this passage, on friendship, on trust and how we can build it in our friendships with others and our friendship with God.
We have the dramatised reading the children shared with us earlier. Jesus and Peter walking on water. We can see a lot of the things we have in our friendships with others are reflected in the friendship between Jesus and Peter.
The friendship between Peter and Jesus took time. It had ups and downs. We may have this in our own friendships with people and in our friendship with God. We see in the two readings just two glimpses in the friendship between Jesus and Peter and we can see things did not always go smoothly. Peter wanted to trust Jesus but it wasn’t always there. Peter did not want to disappoint Jesus but it still happened. Jesus knew Peter cared about him and Jesus cared about Peter, but sometimes things went wrong.
Our friendships with Jesus can have that as well. Sometimes we get angry or upset with God, wondering why things have happened. Sometimes we can feel distant from God, struggling to fit everything in our lives and sometimes we can feel we have disappointed him, wondering how things went so wrong, why we did what we did or not sure what has happened.
In the story of Peter we can see that even in those things Jesus still loved Peter, Jesus was still there for Peter, Jesus still trusted him. Trusted him to go into the world when Jesus was back in heaven and share the good news. Trusted him with an important message, to lead people and to help them in their struggles.
Jesus is still that person for us. No matter what happens Jesus still loves us, he is still there for us, he still trusts us. It’s an amazing thing. When Peter started to fall in the water Jesus could have asked him to leave the disciples, telling him he’d had enough but he didn’t. Jesus picked him up and continued to teach him, not giving up on him.
But then sometimes it is hard to trust God. Maybe we can think of a time where we struggled to do the things we felt God was asking us to do, struggled in how he wanted us to serve him or struggled with a passage of the bible and what it meant for our lives.
Peter let his fear affect his trust of Jesus and this affected his actions, he started sinking into the water, he couldn’t believe that Jesus would sustain him in doing the miraculous.
What Peter was struggling with was trust. But when I talked with the children they had some great ways that we could build trust. We know that trusting someone isn’t always easy, we see this in the struggles that Peter had in his moments with Jesus but the children suggested some helpful ways in learning to trust other people.
You can get to know the person better.
This might involve talking with friends, finding out what they love, hate, something about their past, learning all about them. This can also be part of our relationship with God. We can learn about him through reading the bible, talking with others and through prayer. We can share our hopes and fears with God in our prayers and also take time to meditate on his words and being in the silence with him.
One of the things Tabby and Grace do that builds up their friendship is that they play together.
I don’t think Peter and Jesus went on a trampoline together but I think there was some socialising time between them, they ate together, they walked together. But how can we play with God? God is always with us, whether we are watching a film or going on a walk. It is hard to think of this as playing with God but it is spending time with him. We can pray through an activity, telling God about the fun we are having on a crossword or when listening to a particular song, thinking about how it relates to our lives with God.
We talked about testing people to find out if we could trust them. We saw in the bunny story earlier that friends may test each other and in doing so it can lead to great trust or no trust at all. So how do we test God? And should we test God? Well, we can ask questions. Richard reminded us a couple of weeks ago week how important it is to ask questions. Not to test God in going sky diving without a parachute and expecting him to save us but to question who God is, to speak to others, to learn what God is about and what that means to us in our lives.
The children mentioned one other thing when it comes to trusting. Trusting someone isn’t always about them it is about you as well. Trusting someone takes something out of yourself. We have to decide, are we going to trust someone or not? Are we going to trust what God wants for us, that he loves us, that he is with us, that we can have a close friendship with him or not? It takes a leap of faith. We have to make that decision for ourselves.
We also talked about how it is good to have more than one friendship. Jesus is always there for us and he is not a jealous friend, he encourages us to talk to others, to be with other people and one of the many places we can do that is church. I shared some of the church friendships earlier, but these aren’t the only friendships here and there are many more still to grow, with all the ages. But Jesus is our BFF, our best friend forever. Whoever comes in and goes out of our lives Jesus is there no matter what, he doesn’t move to a different area, he doesn’t fall out with us and stop speaking to us, he doesn’t find someone he likes even better than us, he doesn’t get too busy to have us in his life. Jesus is there for us even after we have rejected him.
Jesus saw Peter sinking and “immediately he reached out his hand and caught him.” He didn’t try and decide if the friendship was worth it, was he getting enough out of it, was Peter really good enough to be his friend. Instead he reached out his hand immediately.
When Peter was aware he had rejected Jesus, Jesus didn’t respond by going into a sulk, letting him get some of “his own medicine”, say cruel things or ignore him. Instead, knowing that Peter was still suffering over his actions, he reminded Peter that he still had worth, that he could still serve him, that their friendship was still there – that he knew Peter loved him.
Jesus’ love and forgiveness is never ending and neither is his friendship.
The differences between having a sort of acquaintance friendship to a close bond friendship where you trust the other person are numerous. But one of the differences is that we can have more fun. You may remember from the video earlier that there wasn’t just laughter from the audience but there was laughter from the musicians as well. They weren’t just trying to get through it, hoping they wouldn’t make mistakes, worrying what the other person was doing, they were enjoying themselves. I think the same can be said in our relationship with God.
The times when you see something that makes you smile and you want to share it with God, or when you lead or help at a group that you were nervous about and something great happens and you want to share your joys with God. That is part of a deeper friendship. A deeper friendship with God means lots of things, knowledge, comfort, companionship, hope and joy.
As we go home I’d encourage us all to build our friendships, with other people, with those we haven’t spoken to in a while and with God. To look at the friendships we have and that those around us have and see what we can learn from them.
I hope that our friendship with God this week enables us to helped where our need is deepest, whether it is in needing comfort, needing to be loved, needing to know we’re not alone or needing to see joy in something.
Real friendships aren’t easy, they take time, effort, they take work and they take trust. But we can have a true, deep and everlasting friendship with Jesus.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Honour and Respect - a light that shines
Philip Clarke shared these thoughts with us during our Harvest Service on Sunday, 26th September. The Congregational Federation has entered into a partnership through Christian Aid with Oné Respé, a project working in the Dominican Republic. Philip Clarke, from Southam Congregational Church, joine a small group of people from CF churches who visited the Dominican Republic and the Oné Resé project last November.
Picture the scene:-
· Sitting in a service on a November evening – dark outside
· Service taking place in a large room beside the school – about 50 people there
· Service being led by members of the local community, all of whom live close to the school
· Worship involves hymns, Bible reading (Zaccheus), prayers (including Lords Prayer and open prayers from the congregation giving thanks to God for their many blessings), an address
· Music group accompanying the singing
· Refreshments (tea and cake) afterwards
So far so normal. Probably been to service similar to that – maybe many times.
But let me fill in a little more of the colour:-
· Maybe dark on this November evening – but still over 30˚c
· Room has wooden strips on walls with gaps to let some welcome cool air come through building – also, no glass in windows. Tin roof.
· 50 people seeing by light of one (energy efficient!) light bulb and three small candles floating in a bowl
· Music group were a Caribbean rhythm section – no guitars or keyboards!
· All in Spanish
· Me and my small group of friends are the only white people in the room
· Refreshments afterwards are delicious – but unlike any tea and cake I have ever had at home
I am, of course, along way from home - in Dominican Republic as part of group from the CF and Christian Aid visiting the project that we in the CF have been supporting over the last 2½ years.
At the heart of the service was a paradox, and the paradox was this. There were elements of the service that we found quite alien to our experience (heat, language, lack of light, the music). These would have been totally normal and everyday to our hosts. Paradoxically, however, those things which we found familiar (the fact they were holding a service at all, the leadership from local people) were the most unusual and striking and exciting to the local people.
The story behind the service, and the reason we could all gather on that hot November evening, is really the story of One Respe. Service gives us a snapshot, a microcosm, of what OR has been doing in the Dominican Republic and why we are now supporting it.
The story of OR is the story of a divided country.
· Country of great beauty and natural diversity (holiday destination) but also squalor and ugliness
· Some live in wealth but 44% live below the poverty line – 2nd poorest country in the Caribbean.
· Some benefit from access to education, housing and health facilities, but many do not
· IMPORTANTLY, a country whose people are rightly understood as happy and welcoming, but through whom runs a deep vein of racism.
As you know, the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with a smaller and much poorer country – Haiti. Events of last few months following earthquake on 12/1/10 are well known. What is less well understood over here is that tensions between the relatively poor DR and desperately poor Haiti go back centuries.
Relationships difficult between two countries ever since colonial era – 200 years ago, but they have become even stronger over last century as the DR has tried to lift itself out of poverty through agriculture and tourism, whilst Haiti has continued to wallow as one of the poorest countries in the world.
Economic migration into the DR is well established. Initially welcomed by Gov’t – Haitians doing agricultural hobs that Dominicans didn’t want to do. Many lived on plantations in bateyes.
Urban migration more recent. Bought two nations face to face. Competing for work. Has led to major hostility between the two peoples; mistrust & prejudice. Seen in institutional racism: difficult for Haitians and those of mixed descent to access health, education and other services.
Result = communities marginalised – socially, politically, economically and physically.
· Often the most poor
· Often live at the margins of society – squatter settlements on land nobody else wants – for good reason.
· Can’t access health facilities or basic education
· Nobody to bring them together as a community / represent them / give them a community voice.
We tend to think of poverty in absolute terms – basics of life: food, water, shelter. But poverty, real poverty, is about more than this. Imagine what it would be like for us to be at the margins of society like this. Who would give us the tools and the confidence to lift ourselves out of poverty? Who would speak up for us?
Introduce Catuxo Badillo. Late 60’s. Born in Santiago. Travelled in Europe. Saw ideals of student movements in 1960s. What could he do in his own community? His response was One Respe. Over years, OR has worked alongside these marginalised Haitian and Dominico-Haitian communities to:-
· Bring communities together. Give them a place to meet and a voice
· Educate the children - have set up “little schools” – basic education up to age 13.
· Train and encourage local people to become community leaders.
· Train “health promoters” to work alongside local people to help people access medical care (often provided by other charities), and to provide support to people with long term illnesses
· Educate people in basic healthcare issues, such as HIV/Aids.
· Social skills training – “new masculinity” project.
Christian Aid has partnered OR since 1990, and the CF is partnering Christian Aid between 2008 and 2011 to support the work of OR in both Santiago and in Haina near Santo Domingo.
Today is Harvest Sunday when we give thanks for all the good things we enjoy (and maybe take for granted) and we remember those who can’t share the rich abundance that we enjoy. Also, a chance to think about our harvest. What would we offer to each other and to God as our harvest offering?
Just as we do when we think of poverty, we tend to focus on material things when we think of our harvest. We think of food, water, warmth and shelter. But surely, our harvest offering can and should be viewed as our total offering to God. What we do with our talents, resources and time to see God’s kingdom in our world.
In the work of OR, we saw the fruits of an abundant harvest:-
· People coming together as a community and having the confidence to grow
· People supporting each other in times of need.
· People filling the gaps where wider society has let them down – educating children
· Financial, emotional and prayer support from CA and directly from us within the CF supporting and enabling this work.
Why did I choose the story of Zacchaeus? Used at OR but also for another reason. Story of Zacchaeus is story of someone who, in this case through his own actions, became marginalised from his own community. We aren’t told why he went up that tree to see Jesus but we know he wanted to, and we know something of the immediate impact that meeting Jesus had on his life. I would love to know what happened to Zacchaeus after this story, but I would like to imagine that his life changed permanently and for the better. I would hope that his meeting with Jesus really was a turning point in his life and the catalyst to him re-engaging with his community and ceasing to be marginalised from it. Jesus helped him to re-connect with people round him, and in so doing change his life for good.
We should be careful before trying to draw too many parallels between Zacchaeus and the marginalised communities in the DR. Zacchaeus was rich, and he (we assume) brought his problems on himself. Neither is the case for marginalised communities within the DR. But maybe OR is fulfilling the role that Jesus filled in Zacchaeus’s life – showing him the way, and giving him the confidence, to find his place in his community and in wider society.
In closing, I would like to return to that hot schoolroom in Santiago and to the service. Haven’t yet mentioned the most surprising aspect of the service.
· OR suggested that the people should hold a service
· Supported – but could you provide a priest to lead the worship?
· No said OR – lead it yourselves.
Most remarkable feature of the service was that it was led by the people themselves, and particularly by the women. What a wonderful mark of their growing maturity and confidence as a community that they can do this, and praise God in their own way and very much in their own voices. This has been possible directly because of the support from OR. Can I just ask that today, for the rest of this partnership with Christian Aid, and into the future, we all continue to uphold these people, and the work they do, in out thoughts and prayers.
Can I leave you with a quotation from somebody we met in Santiago. Her name is Milagros Frias, and she is a teacher at the One Respe school in Los Perez in Santiago that we visited. She said:-
“Onè Respé is like a light. To imagine these communities without Onè Respé would be like they have lost a guiding light.”
Amen.
Picture the scene:-
· Sitting in a service on a November evening – dark outside
· Service taking place in a large room beside the school – about 50 people there
· Service being led by members of the local community, all of whom live close to the school
· Worship involves hymns, Bible reading (Zaccheus), prayers (including Lords Prayer and open prayers from the congregation giving thanks to God for their many blessings), an address
· Music group accompanying the singing
· Refreshments (tea and cake) afterwards
So far so normal. Probably been to service similar to that – maybe many times.
But let me fill in a little more of the colour:-
· Maybe dark on this November evening – but still over 30˚c
· Room has wooden strips on walls with gaps to let some welcome cool air come through building – also, no glass in windows. Tin roof.
· 50 people seeing by light of one (energy efficient!) light bulb and three small candles floating in a bowl
· Music group were a Caribbean rhythm section – no guitars or keyboards!
· All in Spanish
· Me and my small group of friends are the only white people in the room
· Refreshments afterwards are delicious – but unlike any tea and cake I have ever had at home
I am, of course, along way from home - in Dominican Republic as part of group from the CF and Christian Aid visiting the project that we in the CF have been supporting over the last 2½ years.
At the heart of the service was a paradox, and the paradox was this. There were elements of the service that we found quite alien to our experience (heat, language, lack of light, the music). These would have been totally normal and everyday to our hosts. Paradoxically, however, those things which we found familiar (the fact they were holding a service at all, the leadership from local people) were the most unusual and striking and exciting to the local people.
The story behind the service, and the reason we could all gather on that hot November evening, is really the story of One Respe. Service gives us a snapshot, a microcosm, of what OR has been doing in the Dominican Republic and why we are now supporting it.
The story of OR is the story of a divided country.
· Country of great beauty and natural diversity (holiday destination) but also squalor and ugliness
· Some live in wealth but 44% live below the poverty line – 2nd poorest country in the Caribbean.
· Some benefit from access to education, housing and health facilities, but many do not
· IMPORTANTLY, a country whose people are rightly understood as happy and welcoming, but through whom runs a deep vein of racism.
As you know, the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with a smaller and much poorer country – Haiti. Events of last few months following earthquake on 12/1/10 are well known. What is less well understood over here is that tensions between the relatively poor DR and desperately poor Haiti go back centuries.
Relationships difficult between two countries ever since colonial era – 200 years ago, but they have become even stronger over last century as the DR has tried to lift itself out of poverty through agriculture and tourism, whilst Haiti has continued to wallow as one of the poorest countries in the world.
Economic migration into the DR is well established. Initially welcomed by Gov’t – Haitians doing agricultural hobs that Dominicans didn’t want to do. Many lived on plantations in bateyes.
Urban migration more recent. Bought two nations face to face. Competing for work. Has led to major hostility between the two peoples; mistrust & prejudice. Seen in institutional racism: difficult for Haitians and those of mixed descent to access health, education and other services.
Result = communities marginalised – socially, politically, economically and physically.
· Often the most poor
· Often live at the margins of society – squatter settlements on land nobody else wants – for good reason.
· Can’t access health facilities or basic education
· Nobody to bring them together as a community / represent them / give them a community voice.
We tend to think of poverty in absolute terms – basics of life: food, water, shelter. But poverty, real poverty, is about more than this. Imagine what it would be like for us to be at the margins of society like this. Who would give us the tools and the confidence to lift ourselves out of poverty? Who would speak up for us?
Introduce Catuxo Badillo. Late 60’s. Born in Santiago. Travelled in Europe. Saw ideals of student movements in 1960s. What could he do in his own community? His response was One Respe. Over years, OR has worked alongside these marginalised Haitian and Dominico-Haitian communities to:-
· Bring communities together. Give them a place to meet and a voice
· Educate the children - have set up “little schools” – basic education up to age 13.
· Train and encourage local people to become community leaders.
· Train “health promoters” to work alongside local people to help people access medical care (often provided by other charities), and to provide support to people with long term illnesses
· Educate people in basic healthcare issues, such as HIV/Aids.
· Social skills training – “new masculinity” project.
Christian Aid has partnered OR since 1990, and the CF is partnering Christian Aid between 2008 and 2011 to support the work of OR in both Santiago and in Haina near Santo Domingo.
Today is Harvest Sunday when we give thanks for all the good things we enjoy (and maybe take for granted) and we remember those who can’t share the rich abundance that we enjoy. Also, a chance to think about our harvest. What would we offer to each other and to God as our harvest offering?
Just as we do when we think of poverty, we tend to focus on material things when we think of our harvest. We think of food, water, warmth and shelter. But surely, our harvest offering can and should be viewed as our total offering to God. What we do with our talents, resources and time to see God’s kingdom in our world.
In the work of OR, we saw the fruits of an abundant harvest:-
· People coming together as a community and having the confidence to grow
· People supporting each other in times of need.
· People filling the gaps where wider society has let them down – educating children
· Financial, emotional and prayer support from CA and directly from us within the CF supporting and enabling this work.
Why did I choose the story of Zacchaeus? Used at OR but also for another reason. Story of Zacchaeus is story of someone who, in this case through his own actions, became marginalised from his own community. We aren’t told why he went up that tree to see Jesus but we know he wanted to, and we know something of the immediate impact that meeting Jesus had on his life. I would love to know what happened to Zacchaeus after this story, but I would like to imagine that his life changed permanently and for the better. I would hope that his meeting with Jesus really was a turning point in his life and the catalyst to him re-engaging with his community and ceasing to be marginalised from it. Jesus helped him to re-connect with people round him, and in so doing change his life for good.
We should be careful before trying to draw too many parallels between Zacchaeus and the marginalised communities in the DR. Zacchaeus was rich, and he (we assume) brought his problems on himself. Neither is the case for marginalised communities within the DR. But maybe OR is fulfilling the role that Jesus filled in Zacchaeus’s life – showing him the way, and giving him the confidence, to find his place in his community and in wider society.
In closing, I would like to return to that hot schoolroom in Santiago and to the service. Haven’t yet mentioned the most surprising aspect of the service.
· OR suggested that the people should hold a service
· Supported – but could you provide a priest to lead the worship?
· No said OR – lead it yourselves.
Most remarkable feature of the service was that it was led by the people themselves, and particularly by the women. What a wonderful mark of their growing maturity and confidence as a community that they can do this, and praise God in their own way and very much in their own voices. This has been possible directly because of the support from OR. Can I just ask that today, for the rest of this partnership with Christian Aid, and into the future, we all continue to uphold these people, and the work they do, in out thoughts and prayers.
Can I leave you with a quotation from somebody we met in Santiago. Her name is Milagros Frias, and she is a teacher at the One Respe school in Los Perez in Santiago that we visited. She said:-
“Onè Respé is like a light. To imagine these communities without Onè Respé would be like they have lost a guiding light.”
Amen.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Children in Church
It was Becky’s doing!
I say that neither by way of blame, nor by way of praise.
I say it by way of explanation.
It was Becky who said that we should have a commissioning of all those who help with children’s work. It needs to come towards the beginning of a new session … and when we are all going to be around. And today’s service seemed a good moment to do that.
So, over to you. I then thought of readings we could draw on, a story to tell the children. What better story to tell than of the childhood of Jesus – the value he attached to learning, the place of ‘synagogue’ and ‘temple’ in his upbringing. The importance of church in the upbringing of our children.
And then a reflection, for the part of the service when the children have gone to their groups, on the place of children in the church family. We are thinking broadly at the moment of growing disciples. And what better place to start than with youngsters.
I turned once again to Matthew 18. Matthew’s Gospel is the Gospel that brings together the teaching of Jesus in blocks. They have a certain symmetry to them. Matthew 5,6,7 the Sermon on the Mount are balanced b y Matthew 23,24,25 – those are all chapters about living life in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’s way of living for all who follow him to take to heart. The middle block of teaching is in Matthew 13 and is a whole series of parables and stories about what that kingdom is like – how it grows from the tiniest of seeds. And then on either side are two blocks of teaching on what it takes to be disciples of Jesus – in Matthew 10 Jesus commissions the twelve.
And here in Matthew 18 Jesus talks about what it takes to be church. This is the chapter in the Gospels where Jesus uses the word ‘church’ and where he speaks most about the nature of ‘the church’. Here in this chapter, we get that wonderful verse that is so important to us in our understanding of ‘church’ ‘where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
So what is ‘church’?
What is at the heart of ‘church’?
Church is very much a grown-up institution for grown-ups. We want to teach children so that they can grow up into the church. And become part of this grown-up institution that we so value. The children’s bit is great. Good fun. But now we can get down to the real business of being church. We are grown-ups together. And this is a grown-up institution for grown-ups.
The whole idea of ‘church’ was something new for those disciples who came to Jesus on this particular occasion.
They knew what the grown-up world was like. There were people you looked up to. And as grown ups you knew who those people were.
So their question was quite a natural one.
At that time The disciples came to Jesus and asked, “who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
Natural though there question may have been, the response Jesus gave was not all that they expected. In fact it was not what they expected at all.
And to people who live in the grown up world it comes as rather a shock.
He called a child, whom he put among them, 3and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
This turns on its head the grown-up world’s thinking about children.
It really does come as a bit of a shock!
In this church that Jesus is forming, that is later to be thought of as nothing less than the Body of Christ, children are central. In Jesus eyes they are not the church of the future. Our task is not to help them grow up into the grown up world and adopt its values.
It’s the opposite way round. Children are important. They belong. They are part of us. Because they are the most important part of us. They are around constantly as a reminder to us grown ups of what we must be like.
We have to learn from them.
Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Last Sunday night those of us who were at the evening service were privileged to hear one of the most personal sermons that I have ever heard, preached from the heart, in the raw only three months after losing his wife. What’s after death? Was the question Eric Burton addressed. And it was most moving to hear. He gave Diana a transcript of the sermon … it is up on the web site and it will be in the next issue of Highbury News. It is well worth reading. During his sermon he played a song by a young Salvation Army member – it’s on the website – The road is long but I want to reach my destination – I want to see this man called Jesus.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to catch a glimpse of this Jesus before reaching that destination?
And that is exactly what Jesus offers. And it is here in church.
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
That goes right to the heart of the thinking that Eric Burton brought with him from the Youth and Chidlren’s department of the then Congregational Union in England and Wales in 1966 when he moved here to Highbury. It is what he encapsulated in his manifesto for a family church of all ages where there are ‘No Walls Within’. It is the ethos of the church we now belong to here.
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
And the opposite holds as well.
Where were you 28 years ago this weekend? I remember it well.
It was the Sunday of the very first visit of a Pope to these islands. There was in 1982 an excited spirit of ecumenism about the church. His visit was greeted with excitement, not least because it was part of a moving of the spirit that was beginning to take a hold in Eastern Europe and here was a Polish Pope. And as he was taking mass, I found myself preaching at a mass in the Roman Catholic Church in the neighbouring village to ours in Yorkshire.
How times have changed!
As one set of walls came down, others took their place – and too many of the new walls have to do with religion. The spirit of ecumenism is harder to find. Animosity has been far more evident. Indifference too. But most awfully of all … the child abuse scandals, not least in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a shame that has tarnished us all … and not just in the church! Other scandals that have emerged in our society as well are to our shame.
Suddenly these words of Jesus take on an ominous significance.
If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7Woe to the world because of stumbling-blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling-block comes!
We have to take to heart these words, and couple them with the words earlier. And re-commit ourselves to our children. Not as the church of the future but as the very ones who make the church – the ones in whom we can see the face of Jesus.
So what have we done?
We have a set of guidelines we have followed – every room has windows in the doors – nothing can be done out of sight of others happening past. Each children’s group has a leader – but also a helper. An adult not on their own with a child. Safe from harm guidelines we are reminded of in our Annual Meeting each year. We have an inspection. Procedures to follow in the event of anyone being unhappy with something that they have seen an adult do with a child. All working with children properly checked and prepared. Mary Michael as our named person who is the person to share any concern with. Good practice we seek to follow. All of it common sense. But common sense we commit to putting into practice. A poster that has to be renewed every three years. And on top of that as we shall be hearing in due course ‘the child friendly church’ award we have just passed to show we are ‘child-friendly’.
But it’s not just for the leaders out there.
It is for all of us. We all of us must be on the lookout for our children. We all of us have to be careful, and caring in how we relate to our children.
For us to be welcoming to children is at the heart of what it means to be church.
Out of sight and out of mind? Or in the midst?
One other change in recent years. On the night when he was betrayed Jesus met with his disciples to share in the Passover. One thing that has happened in recent years is that people have made links with Christian things like communion and their Jewish roots. The Jewish Passover is a family gathering – when all the family comes together. The youngest has a key part to play asking a question that prompts the head of the household to recount the story of Passover.
And what of us in communion.
Our of sight and out of mind? Or in the midst?
There are different ways of looking at it. And we have decided not to do it every time, but every other month instead.
But this is a month when the children will come back and be with us in communion. Part of the family. Doing what we as the whole family of Christ’s body, the church in this place do together as a family – taking bread, taking of the cup and remembering this Jesus Christ.
‘Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.
* 12What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?
13And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14So it is not the will of your* Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
I say that neither by way of blame, nor by way of praise.
I say it by way of explanation.
It was Becky who said that we should have a commissioning of all those who help with children’s work. It needs to come towards the beginning of a new session … and when we are all going to be around. And today’s service seemed a good moment to do that.
So, over to you. I then thought of readings we could draw on, a story to tell the children. What better story to tell than of the childhood of Jesus – the value he attached to learning, the place of ‘synagogue’ and ‘temple’ in his upbringing. The importance of church in the upbringing of our children.
And then a reflection, for the part of the service when the children have gone to their groups, on the place of children in the church family. We are thinking broadly at the moment of growing disciples. And what better place to start than with youngsters.
I turned once again to Matthew 18. Matthew’s Gospel is the Gospel that brings together the teaching of Jesus in blocks. They have a certain symmetry to them. Matthew 5,6,7 the Sermon on the Mount are balanced b y Matthew 23,24,25 – those are all chapters about living life in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus’s way of living for all who follow him to take to heart. The middle block of teaching is in Matthew 13 and is a whole series of parables and stories about what that kingdom is like – how it grows from the tiniest of seeds. And then on either side are two blocks of teaching on what it takes to be disciples of Jesus – in Matthew 10 Jesus commissions the twelve.
And here in Matthew 18 Jesus talks about what it takes to be church. This is the chapter in the Gospels where Jesus uses the word ‘church’ and where he speaks most about the nature of ‘the church’. Here in this chapter, we get that wonderful verse that is so important to us in our understanding of ‘church’ ‘where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
So what is ‘church’?
What is at the heart of ‘church’?
Church is very much a grown-up institution for grown-ups. We want to teach children so that they can grow up into the church. And become part of this grown-up institution that we so value. The children’s bit is great. Good fun. But now we can get down to the real business of being church. We are grown-ups together. And this is a grown-up institution for grown-ups.
The whole idea of ‘church’ was something new for those disciples who came to Jesus on this particular occasion.
They knew what the grown-up world was like. There were people you looked up to. And as grown ups you knew who those people were.
So their question was quite a natural one.
At that time The disciples came to Jesus and asked, “who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
Natural though there question may have been, the response Jesus gave was not all that they expected. In fact it was not what they expected at all.
And to people who live in the grown up world it comes as rather a shock.
He called a child, whom he put among them, 3and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
This turns on its head the grown-up world’s thinking about children.
It really does come as a bit of a shock!
In this church that Jesus is forming, that is later to be thought of as nothing less than the Body of Christ, children are central. In Jesus eyes they are not the church of the future. Our task is not to help them grow up into the grown up world and adopt its values.
It’s the opposite way round. Children are important. They belong. They are part of us. Because they are the most important part of us. They are around constantly as a reminder to us grown ups of what we must be like.
We have to learn from them.
Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Last Sunday night those of us who were at the evening service were privileged to hear one of the most personal sermons that I have ever heard, preached from the heart, in the raw only three months after losing his wife. What’s after death? Was the question Eric Burton addressed. And it was most moving to hear. He gave Diana a transcript of the sermon … it is up on the web site and it will be in the next issue of Highbury News. It is well worth reading. During his sermon he played a song by a young Salvation Army member – it’s on the website – The road is long but I want to reach my destination – I want to see this man called Jesus.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to catch a glimpse of this Jesus before reaching that destination?
And that is exactly what Jesus offers. And it is here in church.
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
That goes right to the heart of the thinking that Eric Burton brought with him from the Youth and Chidlren’s department of the then Congregational Union in England and Wales in 1966 when he moved here to Highbury. It is what he encapsulated in his manifesto for a family church of all ages where there are ‘No Walls Within’. It is the ethos of the church we now belong to here.
Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
And the opposite holds as well.
Where were you 28 years ago this weekend? I remember it well.
It was the Sunday of the very first visit of a Pope to these islands. There was in 1982 an excited spirit of ecumenism about the church. His visit was greeted with excitement, not least because it was part of a moving of the spirit that was beginning to take a hold in Eastern Europe and here was a Polish Pope. And as he was taking mass, I found myself preaching at a mass in the Roman Catholic Church in the neighbouring village to ours in Yorkshire.
How times have changed!
As one set of walls came down, others took their place – and too many of the new walls have to do with religion. The spirit of ecumenism is harder to find. Animosity has been far more evident. Indifference too. But most awfully of all … the child abuse scandals, not least in the Roman Catholic Church. It is a shame that has tarnished us all … and not just in the church! Other scandals that have emerged in our society as well are to our shame.
Suddenly these words of Jesus take on an ominous significance.
If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7Woe to the world because of stumbling-blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling-block comes!
We have to take to heart these words, and couple them with the words earlier. And re-commit ourselves to our children. Not as the church of the future but as the very ones who make the church – the ones in whom we can see the face of Jesus.
So what have we done?
We have a set of guidelines we have followed – every room has windows in the doors – nothing can be done out of sight of others happening past. Each children’s group has a leader – but also a helper. An adult not on their own with a child. Safe from harm guidelines we are reminded of in our Annual Meeting each year. We have an inspection. Procedures to follow in the event of anyone being unhappy with something that they have seen an adult do with a child. All working with children properly checked and prepared. Mary Michael as our named person who is the person to share any concern with. Good practice we seek to follow. All of it common sense. But common sense we commit to putting into practice. A poster that has to be renewed every three years. And on top of that as we shall be hearing in due course ‘the child friendly church’ award we have just passed to show we are ‘child-friendly’.
But it’s not just for the leaders out there.
It is for all of us. We all of us must be on the lookout for our children. We all of us have to be careful, and caring in how we relate to our children.
For us to be welcoming to children is at the heart of what it means to be church.
Out of sight and out of mind? Or in the midst?
One other change in recent years. On the night when he was betrayed Jesus met with his disciples to share in the Passover. One thing that has happened in recent years is that people have made links with Christian things like communion and their Jewish roots. The Jewish Passover is a family gathering – when all the family comes together. The youngest has a key part to play asking a question that prompts the head of the household to recount the story of Passover.
And what of us in communion.
Our of sight and out of mind? Or in the midst?
There are different ways of looking at it. And we have decided not to do it every time, but every other month instead.
But this is a month when the children will come back and be with us in communion. Part of the family. Doing what we as the whole family of Christ’s body, the church in this place do together as a family – taking bread, taking of the cup and remembering this Jesus Christ.
‘Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.
* 12What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?
13And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. 14So it is not the will of your* Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Beyond Death? Revelation 22
The Rev Eric Burton was Minister at Highbury from 1966 to 1977.
Now into his 80's, Eric took the services at Highbury on Sunday, 12th September. During the evening service he told us that this was only the second occasion he had directly addressed the subject of what is beyond death in a preaching ministry spanning nearly 70 years.
He had been prompted to preach in this way following the untimely death of his second wife only three months ago.
It was very moving to hear his reflections and good to share them here ...
Meditation – Beyond Death?
Revelation 22
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. velation 22:1-5
Following Eileen Davison's fatal fall from a horse the media reported on the consequent distribution of parts of her body. Resulting from those transplants, five people are continuing to live with renewed hope of good health. That fact, relatives of the deceased said, "It's the only hope in the chaos.” The only hope?
Since the recent sudden, quite unexpected death of Vivienne, my lovely loving wife, I find more hope in the promises of Jesus in pages of the Bible and words such as these:
"His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face; and they shall reign for ever and ever." (Revelation 22. 3,4 & 5).
In sixty seven years of preaching only once have I dared to do so about the nature of life beyond the thin veil we call 'Death'. That surprisingly was way back on the 27th August 1944! The evidence is here (not written in green inkl) Dh, the self assertion of youth!
I am consoled to find that in those same early years I frequently chose Dora Greenwell's lovely hymn for congregations to sing.
“I am not skilled to understand
what God has willed, what God has planned;
I only know at his right hand
stands one who is my saviour.”
To attempt to pry would be useless and perhaps irreverent. For many, a story John Baillie tells in his masterly book ‘And the Life Everlasting', will suffice.
A patient informed by his devotedly Christian doctor that his end was near, asked if he had any conviction as to what awaited him beyond death. His doctor fumbled for an answer. Just then there was a scratching at the door. “Do you hear that?" the doctor asked his patient. “That is my dog I left downstairs. He has grown impatient and come up and hears my voice. He has no idea that is on this side of that door, but he knows I am here. Is that not the same with you? You do not know what lies beyond, but you know your Master is there."
"I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies."
His Servants shall serve him
While the New Testament is very vague about life beyond death, it does stress most emphatically that it is all religious. "His servants shall serve Him; they shall see His face and His name shall be in their foreheads" … It is all concerned with Him, His glory.
Dr. Leslie Weatherhead used to invite people to imagine two people going to a classical music concert. The first, Adam, trained in music, plays brilliantly, enters into every part of the concert. Zed goes to the concert to please his friend. Bored with music the concert leaves him cold.
At the concert Adam lives in a world of wonder, love and praise. Zed is just alive, that's all. They sit together, between them there is a great gulf. Zed cannot cross it in a moment and be where Adam is. Adam's long training and practice allow him to revel fully in this great musical treat. Poor Zed feels horribly out of it. He cannot respond to music, and at the concert music is everything there is to respond to!
I wonder if dying is something like that: passing into a spiritual world where all the enjoyment is spiritual. We all survive, I think. But whether we live to the full and revel in that life will surely depend on the extent to which we discover the spiritual dimension in this life here. I never think of heaven and hell as two places.
Another of Whittier's hymns ends:
"To turn aside from Thee is hell,
To walk with Thee is heaven."
Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am you may be also." (John 14.2 & 3) Those words were spoken to the disciples who had followed Jesus and tried to serve him here on earth.
“Some day or other I shall surely come
Where true hearts wait for me;
Then let me learn the language of that home
While here on earth I be:
Lest my poor lips for want of words be dumb
In that high company.”
They shall see His face
The writer of those words had seen it, loved it, lived in the light of it. He set down these five words as being sufficient for all our needs. What a promise! The best of all promises.
I am very fond of a song called 'The Road is Long' written by a Salvation Army teenager. Its repeated refrain and final line is: "I want to see this man called, this man called Jesus, I want to see the risen Lord.”
In what is for me the most satisfying statue of Jesus, Thorwalden's 'Come unto Me', the head is bowed. "If you want to see his face," the sculptor said, "You must get on your knees."
Richard Baxter wrote:
"Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet
Thy blessed face to see;
For if thy work on earth be sweet,
What will thy glory be!
My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.“
They shall reign for ever and ever
Two little girls were looking at a painting of Queen Victoria seated on an ornate throne, the orb in one hand and the sceptre in the other, a crown on her head and wearing the most royal robes of state. One girl whispered to the other, "What is she doing,?” The other replied, “She is just reigning:"
With that word 'reign' erase from your mind thoughts of thrones and rulers. Think rather in terms of deliverance from, and victory over doubts, fears, sins and suffering that so hinder our vision while here on earth.
Returning one day from the funeral of his dearly loved son, some friends of the great German theologian Dr. Harnack, wondered what he would do. Do? He went into his study and opened his Bible at John 13.7 and underlined that verse in red ink. Therein that great man found his Christian hope.
It reads: ‘Jesus said, "You do not realise now what I am doing, but later, you will understand."
I have in my possession a very precious scrap of paper.
On it the last words my first dear wife Joy ever wrote: It reads:
“Funeral hymns ….. ‘All my hope on God is founded’
Hope to find one with more about the love of God."
That hymn was sung at the service in which we gave thanksgiving for her life upon earth.
"His servants shall serve him. They will see his face, and they shall reign for ever and ever. " Amen
The sermon over, Eric, moved to the platform and invited Maureen Williams, one of our church members to the lecturn. He introduced the reading she was to share with these moving words:
"We move to a very personal note in this service, which I hope you will allow.
When my second lovely, lovable wife died three months ago we received, and are still receiving, letters and prayers not least from this church at Highbury, and we are so grateful as a family for all the help, in prayer in particular that you have given to us.
Some people have sent us letters, and some sent poems, and one of the most helpful came from someone in this church, and she is going to read those words which she sent in writing to me, and she is going to read them to me now - thank you Maureen."
You can shed tears that she is gone,
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all she's left.
Your heart can be empty because you can't see her,
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her only that she is gone,
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back.
Or you can do what she'd want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.
Now into his 80's, Eric took the services at Highbury on Sunday, 12th September. During the evening service he told us that this was only the second occasion he had directly addressed the subject of what is beyond death in a preaching ministry spanning nearly 70 years.
He had been prompted to preach in this way following the untimely death of his second wife only three months ago.
It was very moving to hear his reflections and good to share them here ...
Meditation – Beyond Death?
Revelation 22
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever. velation 22:1-5
Following Eileen Davison's fatal fall from a horse the media reported on the consequent distribution of parts of her body. Resulting from those transplants, five people are continuing to live with renewed hope of good health. That fact, relatives of the deceased said, "It's the only hope in the chaos.” The only hope?
Since the recent sudden, quite unexpected death of Vivienne, my lovely loving wife, I find more hope in the promises of Jesus in pages of the Bible and words such as these:
"His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face; and they shall reign for ever and ever." (Revelation 22. 3,4 & 5).
In sixty seven years of preaching only once have I dared to do so about the nature of life beyond the thin veil we call 'Death'. That surprisingly was way back on the 27th August 1944! The evidence is here (not written in green inkl) Dh, the self assertion of youth!
I am consoled to find that in those same early years I frequently chose Dora Greenwell's lovely hymn for congregations to sing.
“I am not skilled to understand
what God has willed, what God has planned;
I only know at his right hand
stands one who is my saviour.”
To attempt to pry would be useless and perhaps irreverent. For many, a story John Baillie tells in his masterly book ‘And the Life Everlasting', will suffice.
A patient informed by his devotedly Christian doctor that his end was near, asked if he had any conviction as to what awaited him beyond death. His doctor fumbled for an answer. Just then there was a scratching at the door. “Do you hear that?" the doctor asked his patient. “That is my dog I left downstairs. He has grown impatient and come up and hears my voice. He has no idea that is on this side of that door, but he knows I am here. Is that not the same with you? You do not know what lies beyond, but you know your Master is there."
"I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies."
His Servants shall serve him
While the New Testament is very vague about life beyond death, it does stress most emphatically that it is all religious. "His servants shall serve Him; they shall see His face and His name shall be in their foreheads" … It is all concerned with Him, His glory.
Dr. Leslie Weatherhead used to invite people to imagine two people going to a classical music concert. The first, Adam, trained in music, plays brilliantly, enters into every part of the concert. Zed goes to the concert to please his friend. Bored with music the concert leaves him cold.
At the concert Adam lives in a world of wonder, love and praise. Zed is just alive, that's all. They sit together, between them there is a great gulf. Zed cannot cross it in a moment and be where Adam is. Adam's long training and practice allow him to revel fully in this great musical treat. Poor Zed feels horribly out of it. He cannot respond to music, and at the concert music is everything there is to respond to!
I wonder if dying is something like that: passing into a spiritual world where all the enjoyment is spiritual. We all survive, I think. But whether we live to the full and revel in that life will surely depend on the extent to which we discover the spiritual dimension in this life here. I never think of heaven and hell as two places.
Another of Whittier's hymns ends:
"To turn aside from Thee is hell,
To walk with Thee is heaven."
Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am you may be also." (John 14.2 & 3) Those words were spoken to the disciples who had followed Jesus and tried to serve him here on earth.
“Some day or other I shall surely come
Where true hearts wait for me;
Then let me learn the language of that home
While here on earth I be:
Lest my poor lips for want of words be dumb
In that high company.”
They shall see His face
The writer of those words had seen it, loved it, lived in the light of it. He set down these five words as being sufficient for all our needs. What a promise! The best of all promises.
I am very fond of a song called 'The Road is Long' written by a Salvation Army teenager. Its repeated refrain and final line is: "I want to see this man called, this man called Jesus, I want to see the risen Lord.”
In what is for me the most satisfying statue of Jesus, Thorwalden's 'Come unto Me', the head is bowed. "If you want to see his face," the sculptor said, "You must get on your knees."
Richard Baxter wrote:
"Come, Lord, when grace has made me meet
Thy blessed face to see;
For if thy work on earth be sweet,
What will thy glory be!
My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all,
And I shall be with him.“
They shall reign for ever and ever
Two little girls were looking at a painting of Queen Victoria seated on an ornate throne, the orb in one hand and the sceptre in the other, a crown on her head and wearing the most royal robes of state. One girl whispered to the other, "What is she doing,?” The other replied, “She is just reigning:"
With that word 'reign' erase from your mind thoughts of thrones and rulers. Think rather in terms of deliverance from, and victory over doubts, fears, sins and suffering that so hinder our vision while here on earth.
Returning one day from the funeral of his dearly loved son, some friends of the great German theologian Dr. Harnack, wondered what he would do. Do? He went into his study and opened his Bible at John 13.7 and underlined that verse in red ink. Therein that great man found his Christian hope.
It reads: ‘Jesus said, "You do not realise now what I am doing, but later, you will understand."
I have in my possession a very precious scrap of paper.
On it the last words my first dear wife Joy ever wrote: It reads:
“Funeral hymns ….. ‘All my hope on God is founded’
Hope to find one with more about the love of God."
That hymn was sung at the service in which we gave thanksgiving for her life upon earth.
"His servants shall serve him. They will see his face, and they shall reign for ever and ever. " Amen
The sermon over, Eric, moved to the platform and invited Maureen Williams, one of our church members to the lecturn. He introduced the reading she was to share with these moving words:
"We move to a very personal note in this service, which I hope you will allow.
When my second lovely, lovable wife died three months ago we received, and are still receiving, letters and prayers not least from this church at Highbury, and we are so grateful as a family for all the help, in prayer in particular that you have given to us.
Some people have sent us letters, and some sent poems, and one of the most helpful came from someone in this church, and she is going to read those words which she sent in writing to me, and she is going to read them to me now - thank you Maureen."
You can shed tears that she is gone,
or you can smile because she has lived.
You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back,
or you can open your eyes and see all she's left.
Your heart can be empty because you can't see her,
or you can be full of the love you shared.
You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.
You can remember her only that she is gone,
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.
You can cry and close your mind,
be empty and turn your back.
Or you can do what she'd want:
smile, open your eyes, love and go on.
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