Hollinsend Methodist Church

We have a new website

2009-10-09T21:26:00.002+01:00

Please note that the Hollinsend Methodist Church website has been moved to http://www.hollinsendmethodist.org.uk/

The Moment of Decision

2008-08-24T18:33:00.000+01:00

Exodus 1.8 - 2.10
Romans 12.1-8
Matthew 16.13-20

Today's Old Testament reading from Exodus seems to be a mixture of history and legend. On the one hand it says that the Israelite people were more numerous, or in danger of becoming more numerous, than their Egyptian hosts. On the other hand it says that there were only two Israelite midwives. Even if we take them to be the chief midwives of a nationwide team these two statements simply cannot be reconciled! Two people could not possibly have headed up the vast army of midwives which such a large population would have required, especially in the days before a modern health service.

Against this slightly muddled background, the charming story of Moses being rescued from the bulrushes helps to explain both his name and his origins, as an Egyptian prince of Hebrew descent. The story also explains how God is able to work through human history because human beings work alongside him to ensure that the right thing can happen. If Moses' mother and sister had not used their initiative, even God could not have helped him to survive.

Besides being an example of faithfulness in action, the story is also an example of racial and religious cohesion and tolerance. Pharaoh's reaction to the hard working migrant workers is to see them as a threat, not least because their birth rate is higher than that of the indigenous population, but his daughter refuses to share her father's prejudices. She doesn't see Moses as yet another frightening statistic to be combatted but only as a vulnerable child in need of care.

Sadly, later in his life, Moses would indeed become a threat to her compatriots, first when he killed an overseer for abusing a Hebrew slave and then when he brought the waters of the Red Sea crashing down on the Egyptian army as they pursued the escaping nation of Israel. But, nothwithstanding the way things ultimately turned out, the princess's instinctive reaction was still the right one. We should treat our fellow human beings as our brothers and sisters and offer them protection and help when they are in trouble. If her father had taken the same attitude, Moses and his God would never have caused the Egyptians any trouble at all.

When he grew up and fled into exile, Moses underwent a complete makeover. First he tried to change himself, from a prince turned rebel and murderer into a peaceful and obscure shepherd. But then, when he encountered God at the burning bush, he found that what was really necessary was for God to transform him and empower him to undertake his true calling, which was to use his knowledge of the Pharaoh's court to help God liberate the people of Israel from oppression. He had to make himself a living sacrifice, giving up the quiet life which he had craved with his wife and her family in the desert in order to become a prophet and community leader.

Peter's "burning bush" moment came at Caesarea Philippi, when Jesus took his disciples away from the frenzied activity of his ministry in Galilee so that he could challenge them to think about all that they had seen and heard. Who did they suppose that he was? Ducking the question by telling him what other people were saying was not what Jesus wanted from them. So it is that Peter was forced to confront the truth, not just about Jesus but also about himself. For if Jesus is the Messiah, God's anointed leader of the human race, Peter must be the first shepherd of his flock - the rock around which the new Christian community could establish itself. Like Moses he was challenged to become a community leader.

Each one of us is called, in a similar way, to put our lives, our experience and our gifts at God's disposal. This is the essence of real worship. "To work is to pray."

Breaking out of the prison of the past

2008-08-18T09:14:00.002+01:00

Genesis 45.1-15
Romans 11.1-2a & 29-32
Matthew 15.21-28

The writers of this passage wanted it to be clearly understood that God works in human lives and human history, and that events which seem tragic and troubling to us in the present moment are sometimes part of - or can be woven into - the longterm out-working of God's purposes for us. There is a danger here, of course. People of faith will always try their hardest to look back on what has happened and impose a pattern on random events so that they seem to make sense and prove that God was with us all of the time, shaping the way things turned out. But I think that is to misunderstand how God works through history. We cannot absolve ourselves of all responsibility when things go wrong simply by imagining that they are part of some grand scheme of which we are totally unaware - although they may be, and how else are we to make sense of the Cross? However, the truth is more complicated than that. God is like a master weaver, patiently mending the broken threads and putting right the mistakes which the apprentices make as they contribute their share to the big picture. And we are the apprentices, of courses. Our task, like that of Joseph, is to remain faithful to the work of bringing order and harmony to creation, and to continue looking for ways of serving God by helping to bring all things together for good.

We must not assume, however, that there is only one God-given shape which events can take if they are to be made perfect. God's future is constantly shifting, like a kaleidoscope, as current events make their impact on the pattern. It is neither possible, nor even desirable, for God to unpick the mistakes we make. He can only put them right by incorporating them into the pattern in such a way as to minimise the damage we have caused and bring as much good out of them as possible. This is why what seemed like a God-given opportunity, for the children of Israel to move to the land of plenty in Egypt and prosper there in spite of the famine, would later turn into a nightmare of oppression from which they had - in turn - to be rescued again.

Paul describes the process whereby we are given access to the pattern-making, and therefore the freedom to make mistakes and change the big picture, as being imprisoned by God. At first sight this is a shocking idea and we might be tempted to dismiss it as contrary to God's loving nature. But we should bear with the idea, for it merits further examination.

Paul's point is that, although the freedom to do what is right seems like a wonderful gift, human nature makes it absolutely certain that we will in fact go wrong. However, Paul is not blaming God for giving us too much freedom, and therefore causing us to become imprisoned - like naughty children who are given to much leeway by their parents - in a nightmare of our own making. He is merely noting that the unique freedom - to change the course of events - which is enjoyed by human beings inevitably brings its own down side. As we choose to make bad decisions, that freedom to choose rapidly turns human life into a prison where we are repeatedly hemmed in and punished by the consequences of all our earlier mistakes until the freedom that we seemed to have at the beginning turns out to be an illusion.

It is this kind of reasoning which infuriates atheists. Why do bad things happen if there is a good God? they ask. 'Because we all have freewill,' the believer replies. And this draws the retort, 'So why does a good God allow freewill if it is so corrosive and harmful?'

One possible response to the atheist is that life is unavoidably complicated, and believing in God does not remove the complications. But that is not Paul's answer. His answer is that God has himself provided a solution to the problem in the person of Jesus, who gives us the power we need to break free from the prison created by our mistakes.

In the passage from Matthew's Gospel we see a snapshot from life's rich tapestry in which a gentile woman is caught in the act of changing the big picture, but not this time by her mistakes but by her insistent pleading for help. Challenged by her great faith, Jesus changes his original plan - to work only with the people of the lost house of Israel - and heals her daughter. Does this mean that Jesus, too, had been a prisoner of the moment - trapped by narrow prejudices which made it seem as though the people of Israel must be rescued before he could reach out to others? Does he, at this moment, break free from these confines and grasp a wider vision? Or, as seems more likely, is he simply pointing out that - in order to undo the mistakes of the past - it is necessary for him to begin remaking the picture at the most logical place, rather like someone sitting down to do a jigsaw puzzle and working outwards from the corners instead of starting with the sky.

The Sound of Silence

2008-08-11T22:50:00.001+01:00

1 Kings 19.9-13
Romans 10.5-11
Matthew 14.22-33

A few weeks ago the administration of a town somewhere in England changed from Labour to Liberal Democrat, and with the change of administration came a change for the voluntary and community sector, too. The new Council decided that, while community work is valuable it isn't an immediate priority. It was suggested that there was almost a surplus of community work going on in the town, made possible by the good times when the City benefited from a lot of grant funding. Now that the grants are being targeted elsewhere, it was suggested that the time might have come to let things return to normal and allow some of that community work to wither on the vine.

Coupled with endless delays and complications in releasing what little grant funding remains, and continued debate about what it can - or cannot - be spent on, this suggested that lean times might lie ahead. The only way that most community work can continue in these circumstances is if organisations can win contracts to deliver services to the community or attract small grants from charities and foundations.

Many of the staff and trustees of one local organisation are people of faith, Christian and Muslim. Some of them fell to hard prayer, hoping that God would show them a way forward. They submitted various tenders for pieces of work that they might do. Letters and emails were sent to councillors, MPs and the other powers that be, imploring their help and arguing the case for their community work to continue. And, against this backdrop, they waited for God's will to be made known.

I'm not quite sure what they were hoping for - a change of earthquake proportions in the Council's policy, perhaps? The wind of new contracts filling their sails and helping them to continue on their way? Fire burning up all the sloppy thinking which suggests that much of what passes for community work might be unnecessary and expendable, that getting rid of it won't bring hidden costs which the Council eventually has to pick up anyway, and that many community organisations aren't serving a real need but are really just self-perpetuating?

This isn't to suggest, by the way, that even sloppy thinking cannot contain a grain of truth. Doubtless there are some community organisations, and some pieces of work, which need reviewing to see if they have served their purpose. The sloppiness creeps in when it is suggested that any organisation which cannot mostly fund itself, or sell its services to someone or other, is probably past its sell-by-date. But that is a digression.

The point of this story is that God was not in the earthquake, wind or fire. The Council hasn't changed its mind. So far the organisation I mentioned has only won one or two contracts which, by themselves, are not enough to fill its sails and keep it moving forward. And there has been no refining fire. Although the Council is reviewing the community work that happens at the moment, by the time they have completed their review much of the work may well have ceased for want of funds.

So where is God in all of this? Perhaps God doesn't believe that community work is a priority, either. Perhaps he has more pressing prayers to answer. Or perhaps we just have to accept that God's answer isn't always in the earthquake, wind or fire - big events that turn things around in a spectacular fashion. Perhaps God is in the still, small voice.

The hymn talks about 'a still small voice of calm' as if God's silence were actually a cause for peaceful, calm repose and serenity. But that's not a very accurate translation, and it certainly isn't how people feel in that vulnerable community organisation. A more accurate translation is 'the sound of sheer silence'. That's what the answer to the prayers of those community workers and volunteers actually sounds like - the sheer silence of rebuke, or emptiness, or aloneness.

Of course, in the great scheme of things community work really is of relatively low significance. What about all the people waiting for answers to their most urgent prayers about the war in Georgia, or about illness, personal loneliness and the difficulties of coping with rampant food and energy inflation, or who are simply praying that they might survive the impact of real earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires and other emergencies? How many times do they, too, hear - or seem to hear - the sound of sheer silence?

It seems to me that we do a disservice to faith and religion if we pretend that the answer to prayer is always loud and clear. Sometimes we find ourselves, like the disciples, in the boat - being tossed about by the wind and the waves, by the storms and tempests of life - and either God seems to be asleep, or else far away and unable to help us.

Elijah the Prophet had derided the prophets of the false god Baal because their prayers and incantations were not answered, whereas his prayer was answered - and in the most spectacular fashion. A storm blew up out of nowhere, seeming to begin in a tiny, distant cloud. And an enormous bolt of lightning brought a thunderbolt from heaven to light the fire for his sacrifice. Yet, if Elijah felt any pride or sense of achievement, this is the moment when it was dispelled. On Mount Horeb he discovered that sometimes God answers our prayers with the sound of sheer silence!

In the moment of victory Elijah had triumphantly ordered the crowd to murder the unfortunate prophets of Baal. Doubtless he felt at the time that they had sealed their own fate by praying to a god who does not answer prayer. Now he discovers that humility and graciousness would have been a more appropriate response, for even the one true God sometimes answers our prayers with the sound of sheer silence.

But then, in apparent contrast with Elijah's sense of desolation, we have the witness of St Paul. When we're in trouble of any kind, Paul says that we should not say in our hearts, 'Who will ascend into heaven...to bring Christ down [to help us].' Nor should we say, 'Who will descend into the abyss...to bring Christ up from the dead [to save us].' This is because we don't have to go in search of him. Even in the sound of sheer silence the Word - that is the wisdom of God, and the proclamation of God's love revealed in Jesus - is always very close to us, part of us in fact, not only on our breath but also in our hearts.

Paul is very sure that we should have no anxieties. In any situation, so long as we continue to say - and to believe - that Jesus was raised from the dead, we shall be saved. And we won't be put to shame - like the Prophets of Baal - by appearing to have our prayers unanswered. How does this bold claim match Elijah's experience, and ours sometimes, when prayers seem to be answered by the sound of sheer silence?

I would suggest that these two, apparently contradictory, experiences are reconciled by the story of Jesus' death on the Cross. Jesus' death seemed to be the moment of defeat for all that he represented. His cry of dereliction, 'My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?' was met with the sound of sheer silence. No doubt the onlookers concluded either that Jesus had been deluded all along about his intimate relationship with God, or that the God he was calling to didn't exist or wasn't interested in him. In that moment, his situation was not unlike that faced by the Prophets of Baal, and like them he met an untimely death - taunted and despised by his opponents because his prayer was not answered.

Of course, there the similarity ends. The Prophets of Baal died there and then, and their cause in Israel died with them. Despite immediate and continued setbacks, the battle to overcome the false worship of fertility gods took a decisive turn that day. Whereas, in an unforeseen event that must have seemed about as possible as a thunder storm on a clear day on Mount Carmel, Jesus was raised from the dead. His desperate cry from the Cross was answered with the sound of sheer silence. He died and was buried. His disciples fled. Apparently his cause had been defeated. But not so! For on the third day he was raised from the dead, as the promise that - even when our prayers are met by the sound of sheer silence - we are never alone, for the Jesus who felt abandoned on the Cross is always with us, in our hearts and on our lips.

Matthew's story about Jesus walking on the water reads a bit like a resurrection story. Alone in the boat, battered by waves and with the wind against them, the disciples think that God is not going to answer their prayers. When they see Jesus coming to join them, walking on the water, they're not reassured. Instead, they think they are seeing a ghost and they cry out in fear. That might be because they don't recognise him through the mist and spray, but it might be because they think he is already dead.

Be that as it may, when Jesus comes to join us on our storm-tossed journey through life he does so as the risen Jesus, bidding us to take heart and not to be afraid. And the message of the risen Jesus is not that we can expect a calm crossing, easy sailing with clear blue skies, but that we must be faithful. Even when our problems and difficulties are met with the sound of sheer silence we must not doubt, for he is with us.

This story is evoked in the film 'The Truman Show', where the hero Truman - played by Jim Carrey - is an actor in a film within a film. At one point he tries to ride out a storm in a yacht and the god-like director of the film tries equally hard to make him turn back. But Truman won't do it. He lashes himself to the boat and says that he would rather die than give up.

In a sense, that is what Jesus is calling us to do - to lash ourselves to the boat and keep on going, come what may, except that - in the Gospel story - it isn't God who is trying to overturn the boat. Instead, God is with us - in Jesus - holding out his hand to catch us when our fear overwhelms us and we think we are about to drown.

Because he has endured the Cross for our sakes, because he has overcome that sense of abandonment and desolation which we all sometimes feel, we need not fear the storm. Like a swimming instructor waiting to catch us as we take our first faltering strokes through the water, Jesus is always there for us - even in the sound of sheer silence.

Who knows what the Simon and Garfunkel song 'Sound of Silence' means. But these words from the song could echo the sentiments of Paul, and the words of Jesus to Peter on the Lake.

"Silence like a cancer grows.
[So] hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you."

Discerning Good and Evil

2008-07-27T00:29:00.000+01:00

1 Kings 3.5-12
Romans 8.26-39
Matthew 13.31-3, 44-52

The wisdom of Solomon is proverbial. But he did not ask God for wisdom. He asked only for "an understanding mind able to discern between good and evil." God was so impressed by Solomon's selflessness and maturity that he gave him the gift of wisdom too.

It would be nice to be guided by wise leaders, wouldn't it? One of Gordon Brown's difficulties is that on television he appears less wise than he apparently is in person. Someone commented that, at an award ceremony this week for former members of the Women's Land Army, he was dignified, relaxed and good humoured. He gave a short speech, without any notes, in which he said just the right things to impress everyone there and he captured precisely the mood of the occasion.

But, unlike Tony Blair, he cannot do this in front of the cameras. Tony Blair always looked assured and at ease on television. Love him or hate him, he often found just the right thing to say, whereas Gordon Brown looks wooden and uncomfortable, both on television and at Prime Minister's Question Time in Parliament.

Yet, who is the wiser of the two? The man whose hubris convinced him that he could pull off the invasion of Iraq, or the iron chancellor who presided over so many years of economic prosperity and - at the same time - managed to ease the burden of debt for poor people in Africa? It is Gordon Brown who often seemed better able to discern the difference between good and evil, which is why - in the end - he was able to ease his rival out of the way. How odd then that he now seems unable to govern people in the assured way that Solomon did.

I mustn't be partisan, so it's only fair to say that David Cameron and George Osbourne have their own approach to wise leadership. Barak Obama is interested in it, too. It's called 'libertarian paternalism', but that's just a complicated way of saying that they hope to nudge or influence people into making wiser choices. For instance, one way of nudging us towards better behaviour would be to give us a discount off our council tax if we agree to have our bins emptied less often. Another idea is to give us a cooling off period before we are allowed to borrow money. They also want our electric and gas bills to tell us how much the average customer pays, and to go back to the old system of giving tax incentives to couples who get married. All of these ideas do seem sensible, especially from a Christian point of view, but they're not exactly earth shattering. They won't deal with anti-social behaviour, knife crime or binge drinking. They don't really compare with the wisdom of Solomon.

But then perhaps we expect to much from our politicians. Some people have had to put up with leaders who were not only unwise but who could not discern the difference between good and evil at all, and who plunged their countries into turmoil as a result. Examples which come to mind are President Mugabe in Zimbabwe and President al-Bashir of the Sudan. And then there is Radovan Karadzic, a man so obsessed with ancient myths - about the little Serbian nation being threatened by the peril of Islam - that he was prepared to sanction mass murder, rape and ethnic cleansing in order to create a pure Serbian state. Shamefully, Western diplomats parleyed with him - trying to work out a peaceful way of meeting his absurd demands. They included top-ranking politicians like Lord Carrington, Lord Owen, Lord Hurd and Sir Malcolm Rifkind. And equally shamefully, Christian monks have been some of the people who helped him to evade capture, which just goes to prove that it isn't only leaders who need to pray for wisdom and discernment.

One of the hallmarks of democracy is that we all have a part to play in making decisions, so we all need to able to discern between good and evil. And, in the life of the Christian community, we also need to be able to make wise choices that will help to build up the church, sustain its mission and proclaim the gospel. The problem, as always, is knowing the right thing to do. The Bible points us to the need to rely on prayer - in other words, to immerse ourselves in a relationship with God so intimate and strong that God's discernment of right and wrong will soak into our perception too.

Romans 8.26-39 is a beautiful summary of the unbreakable power of God's love, from which nothing can ever separate us. But this protection does not seem to be available to everyone. The passage begins by narrowing its focus down to those who have been called by God and who have received the gift of his Spirit, which overcomes our own weakness and gives us the discernment to know what God wants us to do. However, Paul seems to be saying that only the elect - chosen by God before the beginning of time - can enjoy this gift and experience this indestructible love.

At first sight, this would seem to be completely contrary to the teaching of the Methodist Church but, in his Notes on the New Testament, John Wesley argues that Paul is only describing here the step by step process by which God calls all human beings to follow him, because he has always intended the whole human race to be in the same kind of perfect relationship with him as Jesus, so that Jesus might be the firstborn Son of a very large family. Therefore, says Wesley in his commentary on this passage, all human beings have been justified by Jesus' death and the possibility of completely discerning God's mind, or being glorified, is also open to absolutely everyone.

When Paul talks about people being 'elect', Wesley says that the 'elect' doesn't mean an exclusive club of pre-determined lucky winners. It means everyone who has identified themselves with his chosen people - that is to say, everyone who has freely chosen to put their faith in Jesus. And Wesley justifies this claim by pointing out that, just as in the old covenant with Israel the Chosen People included everyone - good and bad alike, so God clearly chooses to include everyone in the new covenant, just so long as they are prepared to put their trust in Jesus.

You may think that Wesley is forcing Paul's words to fit his argument here, and that Paul actually did believe God has chosen some people to receive the Spirit, through faith in Jesus, and so to be able to discern the difference between good and evil and enter into a loving relationship with him, while others will never have that gift or enjoy that love and were never even intended to be part of God's People. Paul was certainly disappointed that so few Jewish people had adopted the Christian faith, and his talk of people needing to be chosen or elected by God in order to be put right with him, might be part of his explanation for why Jesus was so unpopular with his own countrymen and women.

But perhaps the difference between Paul and Wesley is not so great as it seems. Predestination - the idea that some people are destined before their birth to be in relationship with God while others are already destined to reject him - is not really about our freedom to choose. It's about God's ability to know, before they happen, what choices we will make.

The famous theologian Jurgen Moltmann has said that God is the Future, the destination to which everything in the universe is travelling, and he has argued that God has not yet made up his mind about that future. It's still wide open to change and development, and God still wills all things to opt into it and share the future with him. That's pretty much what John Wesley was arguing nearly three hundred years ago. But perhaps that's not incompatible with arguing that some people will still decide not to be part of the future and sometimes even we can glimpse who they might be.

Last week I heard a detective talking about cold cases on the radio. Cold cases are unresolved ones where the trail for evidence seems to have gone cold but, of course, new DNA evidence is allowing some of those cases to be reopened. He talked about the people who committed these crimes and he said that, broadly speaking, they fall into two groups. There are the people who feel guilty and troubled about what they have done, and who are always looking over their shoulder expecting to be caught. They are, perhaps, the sort of people who - no matter what they might have done in the past - are capable of changing and seeking redemption. But then, he said, there is another group who feel no remorse at all, because they convince themselves either that they never even committed the crime in the first place or that it wasn't their fault. 'If you really believe that you never did anything wrong, then you never have to worry about it,' he said. Perhaps that's how one murderer managed to be so surprised when he was finally arrested. 'You must be joking!' he told the arresting officers, even though the DNA evidence was stacked against him.

One suspects that Radovan Karadzic had convinced himself that he was innocent too, even while he was authorising his generals to shell civilians or carry out massacres. Despite all the reports to the contrary, he denied that he was doing anything wrong and portrayed himself as a man of culture, a poet and a healer who cared about the well being of other people.

Is that the kind of person who might be predestined to remain outside God's wonderful love? According to Wesley and Moltmann, even when people have convinced themselves that they are innocent of terrible crimes we can't say for certain what the future holds for them. Having to face a war crimes tribunal in the Hague is unlikely to bring Karadzic to his senses, but who can say what encountering the love of God might do?

The Kingdom parables in today's passage from Matthew's gospel do give us a hint as to what to expect from an encounter with God's way of doing things. The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast have the same message as the parable of the sower. They remind us how much can be achieved, even by a very small nucleus of people, if they are inspired and guided by God's Spirit and act in God's power. We don't need the majesty of Solomon, or even the influence and status of a councillor or MP in order to influence the community in which we live. We can all subtlely act for good in the choices that we make and the causes we support and, in so doing, we can make a difference out of all proportion to our size as a Christian community - like a tiny lump of yeast mixed into three measures of flour or a tiny mustard seed growing into a huge bush where birds can hide and build their nests.

But then the next set of parables makes a different point. Is the person who finds the buried treasure, or the merchant who finds the pearl, meant to represent the ideal disciple, someone who hears the message of God's amazing love and devotes their whole life to following him? Or are the treasure and the pearl meant to represent you and I, diamonds in the rough whose true worth will only be recognised when we are discovered by someone who has as much discernment and love in their heart as God? Like the merchant or the treasure seeker, is God prepared to give up everything he has in order to save us from getting lost, because - being a true expert in human nature - he recognises our ultimate value? Or are the pearl and the treasure meant to represent things like the ability to discern good and evil? It's something that might not be immediately obvious to everyone, but it really is one of the most precious gifts we could ask for or hope to possess.

And, then, there's the story of the net full of fish - a story that is acted out in some of the traditions about Jesus. Is this another reminder of the openness of God's future. The fisherman in the story hasn't gone out looking for just one special kind of catch. He isn't using a pot or a line, with a particular kind of lure or bait to attract a particular species. Instead he's trawling for fish or reeling in an enormously long drift net, and as a result he scoops everything out of the water indiscriminately. We would now say, perhaps, that it's not a very environmentally friendly way of fishing. In fact, there is no attempt here to discern good from bad, edible from inedible, valuable from worthless. The fisherman simply winches in the lot, sails back to shore, and then gets his staff to sort the catch on the beach. The good fish are kept and the useless ones are thrown away.

This story is not unlike the story of the wheat and the tares. It could be seen as a warning that if we are worthless God's love will be withheld from us, but I think it's a story which bears out Wesley and Moltmann's understanding of God's grace. God has limitless ambition. He has chosen to save everything, if he possibly can. So he has set out to catch us all in his net, in the hope that - as the future unfolds - we will all discern where truth, goodness and value lie and commit ourselves to live for him. Then, all being well, none of us will need to be thrown away.

God is like an antique's dealer who has gradually amassed treasures old and new - things which other people might have felt were past their best, or out-of-date, or unlikely to catch-on, but which the dealer saw would be of lasting value. Like the fisherman, the antique dealer's motto is to hang onto things to see how they turn out over time.

But, of course there are bound to be some failures - some fish that simply never grow to the right size or some antique things that never become marketable. So we are reminded to make sure that we have understood all this, and that we really can discern the mind of God, and the difference between good and evil.

When a Little Produces a Lot

2008-07-24T13:16:00.002+01:00

Isaiah 55.10-13
Romans 8.1-11
Matthew 13.1-9, 18-23

We haven't seen much snow for a long time but we do get plenty of rain, don't we? It might not be as much fun as the sunshine, but it does help the plants to grow. Most vegetables, for instance, need plenty of water in order to grow big and strong. God's word has the same effect. It stimulates spiritual growth making us more rounded people, closer to the image of God.

Of course, the rain which stimulates the growth of vegetables and garden flowers also helps the weeds to grow, which is not a good thing. Fortunately, the word of God is not like this. It doesn't cause the indiscriminate growth of good and bad things. Instead, it tends to suppress what is bad and promote what is good.

The Prophet Isaiah gives too examples of bad plants and two examples of good ones. The cypress tree was valued because its timber was highly valued in the ancient world. It was used, for instance, to make the coffins of the pharaohs. The myrtle was sometimes waved by worshippers during Jewish festivals. It was prized because it made a sweet smelling oil used in medicine and in perfumes, and also a drink. What, though, was so wrong with thorns? The Bible gives them a very bad press and yet their wood was often burnt during sacrifices because of its sweet smell, and honey money from the nectar collected by bees feeding on the blossom of thorn or acacia trees is highly prized for its flavour. Perhaps the problem with thorns is simply that they are prickly. Or, more likely, Isaiah is using the word thorn as a synonym for briers or brambles - which also have sharp prickles or thorns, and which grow like weeds, choking out other plants. Wild brambles often have very small fruit, unlike cultivated blackberries. Either way, what God wants is to encourage in us those things which will bring a rich and fruitful harvest, making us better and more user-friendly people.

Romans 8.1-11 uses the image of dying to our old life, and rising to a new and fuller life in Christ, to express the same idea. With God's help we can root out those parts of our nature which would otherwise choke out the more selfless, gentle and loving side of our personality and help us to flourish and become more rounded and complete.

Jesus' parable of the sower, in Matthew 13, is a story which vividly illustrates the tremendous effectiveness of God's message. No matter how much of the work is wasted - because the message falls on deaf ears or on barren hearts and minds - there will always be a good harvest because, when it does take root, it has a tremendous impact on the life of the responsive hearer. It leads them to do different things from what they might otherwise have done, and to influence countless other people by their words and actions.

On the face of it, today, religion - and Christianity in particular - doesn't have much influence on the life of our nation and our city. But, actually, that's not the case., because religious people make up the majority of those who volunteer for charitable or community work, and who join in any efforts to make the world - and their neighbourhood - a better place. That means our influence is out of all proportion to our numbers, and the harvest of goodness that results is still something to be amazed at and to celebrate.

For Matthew this message is simply too obvious. He looks, like Mark, for a hidden meaning. Each element of the story takes on a special significance for him, because it represents one of several different responses to God's message - ranging from indifference, through an initial enthusiasm that doesn't last, to a response that is deep-rooted and enduring.

We all know that Matthew is right when he identifies these different ways that people respond to the message. But it isn't quite so obvious that the number of people in whom the message takes root is necessarily always going to be so large. Matthew was living in a situation where the Church was rapidly expanding. While that is still true in many places around the world it doesn't reflect our experience.

It's easy to get dispirited when our efforts seem to reap so small a harvest. That's why Jesus' original point - about the huge impact that a few dedicated people can have - is so important for us today. Like us, he was living in circumstances where the number of faithful followers of God's word was quite small. Unlike us, he knew that - nevertheless - they could change the world.

True Religion

2008-07-06T22:07:00.001+01:00

Zechariah 9.9-12
This passage is part of the answer to those critics who claim that religion causes hostility and aggression. While it is true that religion is often used as an excuse for aggressive behaviour, the Prophet Zechariah makes clear that the true mark of religious leadership is a resolute determination to see peace prevail. Not only does the true leader choose to ride on a humble beast of burden, but he also cuts off the chariot and the bow, and positively commands peace. He may choose humble symbols like the donkey, but his aim is a worldwide dominion of peace. In other words, true religion is - by definition - almost aggressively peaceful.

Romans 7.15-25a
The great difference between Christianity and its sister religions, Judaism and Islam, is that while Christianity recognises that holy laws are good in principle, it also recognises that human beings cannot rise to the challenge of being holy - at least not without divine help. There is something about human nature which makes us incapable of doing good even when we know what is right and we want to do it. And, of course, sometimes we don't know what is right anyway, or we believe we are doing right when we are actually doing wrong. It's also possible to have the best of motives and the worst of outcomes.

It is Jesus who rescues us from this predicament. His death shows us that God loves us and is ready to forgive us despite our weakness. But Jesus' death is more significant even than that. Paul explains in his letter to the Church at Rome how we can identify ourselves completely with Jesus' death by crucifying our self-centered self with him and making ourselves his slaves, instead of slaves of human nature, rising to new life in him.

Matthew 11.16-19, 25-30
Religious people may not be responsible for all the hostility in the world, but they can be contrary and hard to please. One vicar, or minister, is criticised for preaching badly even though he's a tireless visitor, with an exemplary pastoral ministry. The next vicar or minister is criticised for spending too little time visiting even though she spends many hours crafting wonderful sermons. Even Jesus encountered exactly the same problem.

If only religious people would relax into the sort of childlike attitude that Jesus describes in his prayer. If we adopted his gentleness and humility we could find rest in him and let go of our constant striving to outdo other people and our critical and fault finding attitudes.

Good News for Pessimists?

2008-07-04T23:04:00.000+01:00

Jeremiah 28.5-9
It's easy to see how Jeremiah's name became a byword for pessimism. The Prophet Hananiah had prophesied that everything would turn out for the best; the exiles and the booty taken away to Babylon would be returned. It was the message that everyone wanted to hear, but Jeremiah would have none of it.

In his opinion a true prophet is like Private Fraser from the old TV sitcom "Dad's Army". He - or she - only speaks words of doom about war, famine, and pestilence. If a prophet speaks words of peace we should be on our guard and believe them only then those words come true.

We might feel that Jeremiah is exaggerating a bit. He leaves no room for prophets who speak words of inspiration and encouragement, who dream of a better world or of new possibilities. Martin Luther King was this kind of prophet, and there were prophets like this in the Isaiah tradition.

As someone said recently on Radio 4's "Start The Week" programme, pessimists like Jeremiah are never disappointed. If things turn out as badly as they expected, then they get to say, 'We told you so!' If things turn out better than expected, they are pleasantly surprised!

But I'm sure this wasn't the motivation for Jeremiah's harsh view of prophecy. To his mind prophecy is really about judgement, about warning people when they are taking unnecessary and foolish risks or behaving in an immoral way. To this way of thinking, you don't need a prophet to announce good news.

This is why it's always dangerous when Christian commentators tells us not to worry too much about global warming or injustice. It's true that the Christian message is supposed to be good news for humankind, but that doesn't mean Christians can safely become carefree optimists. We have a duty of care for the earth and our neighbours which means that we are always under judgement when things start to go wrong. Those who too quickly tell us that we need not worry after all, and everything is putting itself to rights, are just as dangerous as the little boy who cried "Wolf!" They can lull us into a sense of false security.

Romans 6.12-23
Paul reminds us here that we can never plead human frailty as an excuse for doing things which we know are actually wrong and contrary to God's will. Because we have the free gift of God's grace working in us, we do receive pardon for the wrong things we do, but we are also expected to strive to meet God's standards of behaviour. The more time we spend thinking about God's goodness, identifying ourselves with God's will and seeking to be in relationship with God's Spirit, the harder it will become to do wrong. In fact, we should allow ourselves to become just as much enslaved to God's nature as we were once enslaved to human nature. It may never happen, but that should always be our aim!

Matthew 10.40-42
Are these gnomic sayings telling disciples that practical deeds of goodness, and a readiness to identify ourselves with the truth - wherever it comes from - is more important than party allegiances or the labels we attach to one another?

Islam, Judaism, Christianity and Ishmael

2008-06-23T07:36:00.000+01:00

Genesis 21.8-21
Something about this story doesn't quite add up. According to an earlier episode in the saga of Abraham and Sarah, Ishmael - Abraham's son by the slave woman Hagar - is already more than thirteen years-old and is therefore, in Jewish tradition, already a man when he and his mother are sent away. However, in this passage the story reads as though Ishmael were still only a little child, not old enough to understand what is happening. His mother is described as casting him under a bush when she sits down in the desert to die, and then - a little later - she lifts him up and holds him fast in her hand. It would seem, therefore, that he is really little more than a toddler in this particular version of the Abrahamic tradition.

The Hadith, a traditional collection of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, preserves a similar version of the story, in which Ishmael is not yet weaned. In both the Hadith and today's passage from the Bible account of Ishmael's life, the infant Ishmael and his mother are saved from death in the desert through God's gracious intervention.

From this point on, however, the two faiths diverge. The Qur'an tells how Ishmael, presumably now reconciled with his father, goes on to help Abraham found its greatest shrine in Mekkah, whereas in the Bible Ishmael drops out of the story. But the discrepancy in the Bible between the earlier account of Ishmael and Hagar living as part of Abraham's family when he was a teenager, and the alternative description of their estrangement when he was still a small child, led in turn to one of the biggest controversies between Jews and Muslims. Whereas the Bible sees Ishmael as the illegitimate son, cast off by his father and sent out into the desert to carve out a new life for himself apart from the chosen people, some Muslim scholars used this story to argue that he was in fact one of the rightful heirs of Abraham, especially when it comes to Abraham's spiritual legacy.

The Bible does acknowledge that Ishmael was blessed by God and that God heard his cry, and the Hadith says much the same thing, but some Muslim scholars go further and claim that - after an early reconcilation with his father - it was really the thirteen year-old Ishmael, and not Isaac, whom Abraham was asked to offer as a sacrifice, and therefore that it was Ishmael whom God saved from death a second time when he provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice instead. According to these scholars, then, the greatest test of Abraham's trust was not the call to sacrifice his wife's son, but the son of his slave. And so, in this version of the story, it is Ishmael who is more special than Isaac, both in God's eyes and in the eyes of Abraham. And because, in the Bible at least, the two stories about Ishmael do not quite add up, this allows Muslims to argue that - long ago - Jewish people deliberately obscured the truth in order to show their own spiritual inheritance in a better light than it deserved.

The difference between the two versions of Ishmael's story also allows Muslims to claim the moral high ground. Sarah, the ancestor of the whole nation of Israel, is depicted in the Bible, as capricious, callous and cruel. She doesn't know, and doesn't even care, that God is going to bless Ishmael. She only wants him sent away, so that he will not share - or take away - the precious family inheritance from her own son. And this is despite the fact that it was, in the first place, her own idea for Abraham to have an adoptive son with her slave woman, Hagar, because Sarah thought at the time that she couldn't have any children.

Not only does the Bible cast Sarah in the stereotypical role of the wicked stepmother, but Abraham too - in agreeing to expel his own son from the family - is also depicted as weak and vacillating, prepared to do something very wrong simply in order to appease his jealous wife, whereas, in the Qur'anic account of the story Abraham treats Ishmael throughout as his true heir, and the separation comes about purely as a test of his faith.

And then the Bible version of the story definitely identifies Ishmael as inferior to his brother simply because his mother was only a slave, and not his father's wife, whereas the Muslim version makes clear that every believer is equal before God no matter who their parents are. Unfortunately, no such moral can be drawn from the Biblical account.

Finally, in the Bible story, Hagar sits down in the desert and despairs whereas, in the Hadith, she sets a wonderful example of perseverance as she desperately searches for water to save Ishmael's life.

Of course, the most striking thing about the story is that it shows just how ancient is the antagonism between the Arab and Jewish nations. In Biblical times the Arab people were not that important. Occasionally they raided the land of Israel, but otherwise the two nations went separate ways. However, after the rise of Islam and until the Twentieth Century, the Arab nation had the upperhand over Israel. And then, since the re-establishment of the Jewish state in 1948, the tables have been turned. The bombings of July 7 and th airliner hijackings of 9/11 have both been blamed on the continuing oppression of Muslim and Arab people in Palestine today, making the conflict acutely relevant - even to us in the United Kingdom - and perhaps it's no coincidence therefore, that the Bible version of the story is about the oppression of Ishmael and Hagar by Sarah and Abraham, and about God's concern to rescue the oppressed. It's never right for one nation or faith to act unjustly towards another, even if the oppressors sincerely believe that God is on their side, for God never condones injustice and cruelty.

The story reminds us, then, of the need for compassion towards people who are different from ourselves, especially when they are in need. This could apply to any refugee or asylum seeker, but also to any minority group which finds itself under pressure from the majority. Today, as we read this story, we need to acknowledge that Muslims in our country sometimes find themselves in an uncomfortable place, vilified because they are considered guilty by association of terrorist outrages and hate-filled preaching. The story reminds us of the need not to over-react but to go on patiently loving our neighbours, whatever their creed.

Romans 6.1b-11
Paul had never been to Rome but his reputation had preceded him. Detractors were saying that he encouraged Christians to feel it was all right to go on sinning because it is God's grace which saves us from condemnation, not any actions of our own.

They had a point, of course. Some Muslim community workers were asked to design a poster for a cultural festival. The organiser wanted his country's national flag printed as the background to the poster itself. But the community workers identified a snag with this. The flag of his country includes the name of God, printed in bold Arabic letters. What if one of the posters dropped off a noticeboard onto the floor and someone accidentally trod on it? They would then be dishonouring the name of God, which is a mortal sin. My immediate reaction on hearing this story was that I was sure God can't be all that concerned about people treading on a poster, and that is essentially a Pauline response to the problem. That is to say, I chose to emphasise God's graciousness over and against the idea of his inflexible holiness and justice. According to Paul, God's default position is to show forgiveness and mercy, to be compassionate and gracious in the face of our weakness and disobedience. All God seeks from us in return is an honest acknowledgement of our sinfulness and of our need for grace.

Of course, it's possible to use this starting point to argue that, if God is always willing to forgive us, it doesn't really matter how we live or what we do. Some of the early Christians interpreted Paul's teaching in exactly this way and thought that he was giving them a licence to behave disreputably without losing favour with God. The Emperor Constantine certainly thought this was what Paul meant. He spent his years as emperor committing crimes which would make modern day politicians seem as white as snow by comparison. But then, on his death bed, he confessed his sins and received Christian baptism. From now on he resolved that he would be a good Christian. Too bad that he was about to die!

But this isn't what Paul means at all. In this passage from his letter to the church at Rome he painstakingly argues that, if we believe in Jesus and in the power of his death to put right our relationship with God, then that belief has to shape - and become the pattern for - the whole of our life. If we believe in the goodness of Jesus, we have to strive to live like him, and if we believe in the power of God's gracious love to free us from sin and disobedience, then we have to begin living in that freedom at once. Anything else would be totally hypocritical.

Because of our trust in God's graciousness, mercy and love we don't have to worry about accidentally dishonouring his name if we step on a poster that's fallen onto the floor. But we do have to respond to his love by treating others with the same graciousness, compassion and forgiveness that we ourselves would like to receive from him.

This is where Abraham and Sarah went wrong in their relationship with Hagar and Ishmael. They thought that they could love and honour God and yet still continue to act unjustly. And, in Sarah's case, she forgot that, if God cared about her and Isaac, he also cared just as much about Hagar and Ishmael. In other words, God has no favourites!

Matthew 10.24-39
This collection of disparate sayings reinforces some of the issues which we have already explored. The disciple has to behave like her master. We can't adopt a radically different lifestyle from Jesus and still claim to be part of his team, nor can we pretend that we are not his followers and expect him to acknowledge before God that we are his friends. But if we are loyal to Jesus we can be sure that, when the going gets tough, he and God will be on our side. Like Ishmael and Hagar in the desert we are never alone. God is with us and cares about us. In fact, as Abraham discovered, God cares about everyone. No one is ever insignificant or unimportant in God's eyes, not even tiny sparrows. And also, like Ishmael and Hagar, we shall find that or relationship with God goes deeper and is more enduring even than our relationship with our own parents or children. Finally, just as Hagar feared that she and her son were about to lose their lives, but then discovered that in God life is never lost, so we shall find that our relationship with God endures even beyond suffering and death.

The Forgotten Part of Jesus' Mission

2008-06-19T22:00:00.002+01:00

Matthew 9.35-10.8

During his earthy life there were three aspects to the ministry of Jesus. He went around teaching, proclaiming good news and healing the sick. His teaching was not written down until long after his death, but much of it survives because it was treasured and carefully remembered by his followers until - eventually - it was committed to paper. The good news which he proclaimed was not just spoken, it was enacted. Jesus was not a First Century spin doctor dreaming up headline grabbing stories about God, or trying to put a positive spin on events. He lived the good news, proclaiming it in action as well as in words. Indeed, he would not have imagined that it was good news at all if people had not been able to see it unfolding before their very eyes.

Ultimately, of course, his proclamation of good news was to culminate in the tragic events of Good Friday, when he was put to death as a sign of God's self-giving love, and in the mysterious but powerful resurrection life which he continues to enjoy, for death could not hold hm in its power. But, before that, his proclamation of God's mercy and love was also declared in the healings which he performed and in his compassion for all who were harassed or helpless. It's remarkable how, while the teaching and proclamation of Jesus still receive much attention, even the Church - at least in secular countries like Britain - is strangely silent about this healing ministry.

Why are we so reticent about it? No doubt it's partly because Jesus not only healed others but also called upon his followers to do the same. He asked God to send out labourers into the fields to bring in the harvest and, in case we might think this is just a reference to persuading people to believe in him, Jesus is very explicit about what else is involved. He tells us that it includes casting out unclean spirits and curing every type of disease and sickness, cleansing people from leprosy and raising the dead. That's all right, then!

And, needless to say perhaps, there is no mention of taking pills and potions or medical textbooks along with us on the journey. His followers are commanded by Jesus to travel light, with no cash or bag for the journey, no change of clothes and no stick to fend of wild animals or thieves. They must expect the people they meet to feed and shelter them, and do their laundry. Jesus' instructions about participating in his ministry of healing are so uncompromising that it's no wonder we sometimes hesitate to follow in his footsteps.

But, of course, there are some other reasons, too. Until quite recently people in Europe had turned their backs on the value of spiritual healing, preferring to rely exclusively on medical science. However, as doctors get better and better at treating people for some of the more common causes of disease, so it becomes steadily clearer that there are still huge limitations to their knowledge. Doctors are not so easily baffled as they were in Jesus' time, but they are still baffled, nonetheless, by many of their modern patients. In addition, it has become clear that some therapies once scorned by modern medicine are actually strangely effective. In particular, people who believe in something - in the power of prayer, for example - get more out of life, and live for longer, on average, than those who don't. And that's just one of the reasons why the NHS continues to invest in hospital chaplains. They save money by helping people feel more well, more quickly.

We mustn't forget, mind you that I am talking about averages. Just because, on average, people feel better thanks to the power of prayer, that doesn't mean everyone who receives prayers for healing is going to make a miraculous recovery.

We are told that everyone who came to Jesus got well again, but he was someone very special. And he lived in a society - as some still do - where, in any case, no one ever got critically ill. If they got ill, and then got a bit worse, they simply died. He would have been amazed that we can keep people going, when they are very sick, by feeding them through tubes, taking over their heart and lung functions for them, giving them cocktails of drugs and operating on almost every part of their bodies.

Even when Jesus and his followers raised the dead, these were usually people who hadn't been dead - or didn't appear to have been dead - for very long, because in Palestinian culture it is normal to bury the dead within twenty-four hours. It is probable, therefore, that some of the people who were raised were deeply comatose rather than properly dead. Incidents where people are pronounced dead by mistake do still occur from time to time.

And finally, there is the issue of possession. There is little doubt that people are sometimes taken over by evil forces which impel them to act in wicked and wholly negative ways, harming themselves and others. But much so-called possession by evil has often been a misdiagnosis of mental illnesses like schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder, or of purely physical illnesses like epilepsy.

I guess these are the reasons why Christians have sometimes been hesitant about taking up the commission from Jesus to get involved in his healing ministry. The task has seemed too big and has overwhelmed us, as it sometimes threatened to overwhelm him. His achievements seem so much more emphatic even than the wonderful work done by hospital chaplains. And we wonder just how far the Bible's understanding of illness and death differs from our own, anyway.

But the challenge remains. It will not go away. Proclaiming the Gospel is not just about telling people nice things. It is about healing the sick. And we must begin - as Jesus' first followers did - with prayer, with the laying on of hands and by anointing people with oil. Then we must trust in God to work his healing in people's lives - perhaps not in the ways that we anticipate but in ways that continue to proclaim the good news of a God who has compassion on all who are sick and suffering, and who goes with us - hand-in-hand - even through the valley of the shadow of death.

What's In a Name?

2008-06-08T00:08:00.008+01:00

Long time residents of Hollinsend will know that the name of the village comes from the old English word 'holin', which means 'a holly tree'. This old meaning is preserved in the name of one of the local pubs, but now the members of Hollinsend Methodist Church are planning a living commemoration of the name. As part of their celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the church they are planting a row of holly bushes in their grounds.

To get involved, to donate a holly bush, or to find our more about their other anniversary celebrations - including the visit of a local puppet theatre to the church and the congregation's prayer ministry for those who need healing, please contact hollinsend @ gmail.com.

The pictures show members of the church planting some of the new holly bushes.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM VERNON MARSH'S KEY NOTE ADDRESS TO THE DISTRICT AT THE CLIFF COLLEGE WEEKEND

2008-06-08T00:07:00.000+01:00

We need ways of being church where everyone can be themselves and those who usually do not have a voice can be heard.
We need to remember that some of the best things which happen to us are God's surprises.
We need to question whether mission is really about staying alive until something turns up, (The Travolta/Micawber Strategy).
We need to ask whether we are rationalising our church and circuit life to release new energy.
We need to appreciate that a circuit's strength does not depend on how many churches and members it has, but on its relationship to the area it covers and the people who live there, and its involvement in the issues which they face.
We have an opportunity to discover new ways of being church. Let's not use it to move the furniture around (again?) on the deck of the Titanic.

God's Righteous Anger

2008-06-07T23:31:00.000+01:00

Hosea 5.15-6.6
Romans 4.13-25
Matt 9.9-13, 18-26

This passage is just one of a series of quite disturbing oracles in which we learn that Israel has incurred the wrath of God and he is going to tear and devour her much as a young lion might or, if she were already prostrate or dead, a swarm of maggots.

There is an uncomfortable ambiguity here, for the Prophet acknowledges that although God smites Israel he also loves and cares for. The oracle is not unlike the protestations of a partner who perpetrates cruel acts of domestic violence, only to shower the victim afterwards with love and attention. We are told that God will tear Israel, and then heal her; strike her down, and then bind up her wounds.

Of course, there are clearly differences here from genuine domestic violence. First, this is metaphorical language. God is not going to inflict actual bodily harm on Israel. Instead, she will be attacked by some of her human enemies. The Prophet's message is that God is so angry he will not protect her from harm, which begs the question just how far God intervenes in history to do his will through human events such as invasions and wars.

Second, Israel is not an innocent victim. The nation has been faithless - although isn't that the justification that's often used for domestic violence, too?

Third, the tone of the oracle changes completely if God himself is being wounded and torn by the suffering of his people, despite their guilt. There is nothing in the original oracle to suggest this, except the interesting parallels with the death and resurrection of Jesus. Hosea says that on the third day God will raise up his people, just as Jesus will one day be raised up from death on the third day after suffering for the sake of other people's guilt.

'On the third day' is a turn of phrase in Hebrew meaning 'very soon'. So God's rescue mission to Israel after she has been punished is as predictable, and as close by, as the new dawn or the next shower of rain. What a pity, then, that Israel's repeated faithlessness is also as predictable as the evaporation of dew or early morning mist when the sun rises.

Paul makes the point, in today's passage from his letter to the Romans, that trying to be obedient to rules and laws is not the way to avoid the wrath of God, because the task is impossible. Being put right with God, and avoiding his righteous indignation, is a matter of faith and relationship. It is about trusting God to save us from ourselves. It is about loving God, and relying on God's love for us. It is about depending on God to give us the capacity we need to be more truly human, and then relying on that God-given power to enable us to act as if God also depends upon us to be his servants and co-workers.

Abraham is the exemplar of this kind of relationship with God because he was trying to get close to God before the religious laws of Israel even began to be codified. That meant he had no alternative but to embark on a pilgrimage of faith.

The two short passages from Matthew's Gospel also give priority to faith over law and offer the antidote to Hosea's vision of an angry God, striking out at his people in spite of his love for them. In Jesus' understanding God is no less intolerant of sin, but he desires mercy rather than sacrifice and only wants to end suffering, not to cause it, and to give fresh heart and new life to those who are in despair.

Coping with Floods

2008-06-03T11:38:00.003+01:00

Genesis 6.9-22, 7.24, 8.14-19
Romans 1.16-17, 3.22b-28
Matthew 7.21-29

One year on from the serious flooding in Yorkshire and the Humber, this week's readings are all about floods! The original 'Flood' was probably caused by the retreat of the ice sheet at the end of the last ice age, so to blame it on human sinfulness seems a bit unfair. But the next flood could indeed be the fault of humankind and some experts think significant climate change is now unavoidable. If so, what sort of ark are we going to build to protect the threatened flora and fauna of the world, not to mention the many millions of people living in low lying lands? There can be no doubt that God is calling us to radical action. Are we listening? One suspects that the current clamour for lower petrol and diesel prices tells us the answer.

Noah is a proverbial example of faithfulness, battling to save his family and, one presumes from the tiny dimensions of his frail three-decker craft, as many breeds of domesticated birds and animals as he could find, but acting on the strength of nothing more than personal conviction. It was Jesus who observed that his neighbours must have scoffed at Noah's endeavour right up until the moment when the storm broke.

But, of course, Jesus himself is the supreme example of faithfulness. The good news of his life, death and resurrection reveals God's righteousness 'through faith for faith'. This is because the Gospel shows us what 'righteousness' means by focusing on the life and witness of Jesus, a man who obeyed God's call to radical obedience even when it took him to a shameful and agonising death on a cross. So great was his faith that he believed God could transform failure into success and defeat into victory. So great was his faith that he believed he would be vindicated even if it only happened through his death. And so great was his faith that he was prepared to battle fearlessly against hatred, prejudice and privilege, armed only with the weapons of truth and love. And because he did this, his story can inspire the faith we need if we are to be put right with God ourselves.

Paul repeatedly emphasises that, without faith in the story of Jesus, our efforts to do what is right and live as God requires are doomed to fail. But Jesus' own message is slightly more subtle than that. He recognises that some people will declare allegiance to him without really listening to his true message of love and compassion. They will claim to be his followers, and even appear to have an effective ministry doing many deeds of power, but if their faith is not truly centred on his teaching and example it will be empty and they will prove - ultimately - to be false prophets and leaders. So faith by itself is not enough. It has to be the right kind of faith; a faith built on the kind of radical obedience to God's love which Jesus himself exemplifies; a faith which has the strength and quality to withstand whatever shocks life might throw at us.

We started by thinking about the very real threat of large scale flooding as a result of global warming. Jesus' teaching brings us back to the image of storms and floods, but this time as a a metaphor for everything which life might throw at us when things start to go wrong. He promises that, through faith in him, we can overcome.

Do we need to worry?

2008-05-30T20:11:00.000+01:00

Isaiah 49.8-16a
1 Corinthians 4.1-5
Matthew 6.24-34
Today's Old Testament reading from Isaiah includes two striking images. The first is a feminine image - comparing God's faithfulness and care to that of a nursing mother. What mother, asks the prophet, would abandon her tiny baby? But, of course, it does happen occasionally - whereas God's love for us is so profound and tender that he - or she, perhaps - will never abandon us.

The passage concludes with the second striking image, which is a word from the Lord to the Prophet, "See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands."

Sometimes when I find myself with nothing to write on I write names or phone numbers on my hands. This is a technique which only works if I remember to transfer this vital information to a more permanent place before I next wash my hands! Often, as I dry my hands, and remove the last vestige of the data, I remember the funny moment in the first episode of Cold Feet when one of the characters has written the phone number of a girl he has met in the dust on his car windscreen, which is fine until it starts to rain!

When the Prophet says that God has inscribed our names - and indeed all the vital information about us - on the palms of his hands, I guess he is thinking of something more permanent than a biro. He must mean that the details are safely tattooed there. And, of course, tattooing would have been a much more painful and painstaking process than simply whipping out a pen. Not only that, but like the person who today gets the name of their lover tattooed on their body, it would have been a sign of real and lasting commitment.

The oracle means that God holds us close and cherishes everything about us. What a wonderful thought, especially given that Paul tells us - in the passage from his first letter to Corinth - that it is this same caring and compassionate God "who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart." How fortunate that this is a God who is clearly much more willing to commend us than to judge us!

When Jesus says that God's concern for human beings is greater than his care for the birds and wildflowers, which are in any case more than adequately provided for, he is not suggesting an anthropocentric view of creation in which we are superior to the other living creatures. He is simply asserting that we can, unlike the rest of the created order, enjoy a conscious and personal relationship with God.

This privileged intimacy and knowledge not only assures us that we really are loved by God, giving us the confidence not to worry unduly about tomorrow and its problems, but also brings with it the responsibility to share with God in the task of caring for the rest of creation. And herein lies the rub. What happens if we have not been caring properly for our planet and its other inhabitants but instead have behaved selfishly and destructively? What if we now risk upsetting the balance of nature through untimely global warming? Then our partnership with God will have broken down and it will no longer be true to say that the birds of the air are certain to be fed, or that the lilies of the field will always be clothed more gloriously than Solomon. In that situation it will become necessary, after all, to worry about the worries of our children and grandchildren as well as today's troubles. And, unfortunately, that situation has come to pass!

Our relationship with God

2008-05-19T16:22:00.001+01:00

Exodus 34.4-6,8-9
2 Corinthians 13.11-13
Matthew 28.16-20

These passages, specially selected for reflection on Trinity Sunday, illustrate that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much an attempt to discern the essential nature of God as to describe God's relationship with creation, including ourselves, and with Jesus - whom Christians believe to be a human being in perfect relationship with God.

The passage from Exodus contains the unpleasant verse about God's wrath visiting the iniquity of parents on their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren, and the editors of the lectionary have chosen to miss it out. However, there is a truth here. We cannot hope that our mistakes will not have implications for future generations. The slate is not wiped clean after things go wrong and we recognise the error of our ways. If we wanted proof of this uncompromising truth we need only think about global warming.

However, people suffering for the iniquity of their ancestors is not the key note in this passage. What Moses discovers in his encounter with God is that God keeps steadfast love with the human race for thousands of generations, despite our mistakes and wrongdoing.

Paul doesn't talk about doctrine when he prays to God as Father, Son and Spirit and this should not surprise us, because the doctrine of the Trinity did not exist when he was writing. He talks instead about grace, love and communion - all ways of expressing God's relationship with us. Because Jesus perfectly understood God's love for us, and was truly 'in love' with God himself, he was prepared to die for us so that we might receive the gracious gift of having our own relationship with God restored, and that loving relationship with God which we now enjoy through the grace of Jesus finds its expression in our inner communion with God's Spirit.

This conviction that we can know God in three ways - as our creator, as the suffering servant who shows the depth of his love for us by dying on the cross, and as the Spirit living deep within each one of us - is such a distinctive part of the Christian message that proclaiming its truth has become the essential rite of passage to membership of the Church. But it is one and the same God whom we are meeting. God encounters us in the universe around us, in the person and work of Jesus and as the source of inner peace and inspiration, but in saying this we are simply acknowledging that the one God is in relationship with us in three distinctive ways that express his steadfast love.

Mobilising for Mission

2008-05-18T23:01:00.000+01:00

Numbers 11.24-30
1 Corinthians 12.1b-13
John 7.37-39

The point of the strange story about Moses surely lies in its punchline. We don't need to worry too much why the Lord should have commanded Moses to gather a symbolic group of seventy elders around the tent of his presence, in order to bestow on them a share of the prophetic spirit which he had already given to Moses himself, although a quick look back at the earlier part of the story shows that it was part of God's response to Moses' complaints about the intolerable burden of leadership which he felt that he had to bear on his own two shoulders.

So part of the story's purpose is to remind us that God's people can never rely on one or two charismatic leaders to carry out God's mission for them. Mission is a shared enterprise which requires team leadership at the very least.

This much might seem obvious. But the punchline then takes the lesson of the story to a new and unexpected level which is much more challenging. Moses tells his sidekick Joshua, "Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!"

"Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!" For 'prophets' we must read 'people prepared to take on leadership roles and play an active part in God's mission.' This is a message which speaks to Methodist circuits struggling to cope with fewer ministers and new ways of being church. How far are congregations willing to mobilise in support of the mission of the local church to their neighbourhood and in support of other congregations which might need additional support?

Of course, no one pretends that it's easy to engage in mission or to lead other people, which is why we need the Lord's spirit to help us. Only the Lord's spirit can give us the courage and the resolve that we shall need to play our part effectively.

Paul develops these ideas in his own teaching to the church at Corinth. He believed that no one ever receives all of the gifts which God has to offer. Instead each Christian receives just a part of the kaleidoscope of gifts and graces which the Church needs in order to function effectively and to become an expression of Jesus' power and presence.

Some of us are enabled to give a lead when wise and astute counsel is needed. Some are enabled to study and comprehend difficult ideas. Some receive the gift of faith, enabling them to encourage and inspire those around them when the going gets tough. Others find that they are empowered to heal and work miracles, and so on.

Without doubt, Paul saw all of these gifts as essentially miraculous rather than as natural abilities or acquired skills. This is why his list includes gifts like discerning spirits and speaking in tongues, which might seem to have no obvious leadership potential today. But the key point is that for him, as for Moses, mission and leadership are a shared enterprise, a team exercise. They are never things which can be done for us, or which belong exclusively to ordained ministers, or even to elected or self-nominated lay leaders. To be truly the body of Christ, the Church has to be mobilising all of its resources and all of its people.

The most striking thing about today's passage from John's Gospel is John's very clear identification of the Holy Spirit with Jesus. It is the Spirit of the crucified and risen Jesus which transforms believers into agents of God's mission.

Jesus himself offered the living giving water of God's sustaining presence and love to his hearers in First Century Palestine. If they believed in his message, that God loves us so much that he has come alongside us both in life and even in death, then they need never be spiritually thirsty again - no matter what times of drought, uncertainly, pain and fear they might face in the future. However, John says that Jesus' mission to bring hope and salvation to the world continues in all those who truly believe in him and are filled with his spirit.

Does that include us? Do 'rivers of life-giving water' flow out of our hearts? Are we a source of comfort, strength and sustenance to everyone we meet - our family, friends, neighbours and colleagues? And if not, why not?

For John, it is this power to proclaim God's message, in word and by example, that is the true mark of the Spirit's presence, and it is much more important to him than the other gifts mentioned by Paul. However, the common theme which emerges from all three passages is that if we are filled with the life-giving Spirit of Jesus then the role of ministers and leaders becomes merely to support, encourage and enable our own share in Jesus' mission. They become, if you like, the back-office team rather than the people on the front line who spear-head the Church's mission. That is because the front-line belongs to people like you and me, out there in the world and in the community, witnessing to the Spirit of Jesus within us day by day.

Standing firm in the faith

2008-04-27T17:18:00.002+01:00

Acts 1.6-14
1 Peter 4.12-14, 5.6-11
John 17.1-11

Luke's rather sterile account of the ascension of Jesus, which creates an artificial divide between Jesus' earthly ministry and the new age of the Holy Spirit, is given a different kind of treatment in today's passage from 1 Peter. The writer doesn't think in terms of Jesus ascending to heaven, to leave the field clear for the Holy Spirit to manifest itself through the words and actions of Jesus' followers. Instead he thinks in terms of Jesus being vindicated or glorified.

He has already said that Christians shouldn't be made to suffer for their faith, so long as we are doing what is right. Now he acknowledges that, for whatever reason, believers are going through a fiery ordeal. However, if we are suffering for the sake of Jesus then - just as Jesus was vindicated by God through his resurrection, after he had suffered and died on the Cross - so we can expect to be vindicated if we remain steadfast in the faith.

The language that 1 Peter uses is 'ascension' language. The writer talks about being exalted or lifted up. But he isn't thinking about being lifted up like a rocket lifting off from a launch pad, or even like Jesus ascending through the clouds in the Acts of the Apostles. Nor is he just thinking about something that is going to happen in another time or dimension, such as heaven or eternity, although that is certainly part of what he means by being exalted or glorified. However, he also expects God to vindicate or exalt us right here and right now, by restoring, strengthening supporting and encouraging us in our mission.

Sometimes that sort of affirmation seems in short supply. In our post-modern Western society the Church is being assailed on all sides and over-arching narratives which seek to explain our existence, the universe and everything in it are out of fashion, but if we take 1 Peter at face value we shall continue to believe that - in God - we can overcome our trials and anxieties.

I work in the voluntary sector and these are lean times for voluntary, community and faith organisations which rely on external funding from grants and contracts in order to survive. The law of the jungle applies. Only the fittest will make it into the next funding round. But fitness for the future is not just about strength and good fortune. It is also a question of resilience to misfortune, of hope that is able to triumph over anxiety and of faith in your own organisation's vision and mission. If the staff or trustees of an organisation falter on any of these levels then there are plenty of other, stronger, meaner or fiercer organisations prowling around looking for someone to devour in order to strengthen their own chances of survival.

This is a very close parallel to the situation which faced the churches to whom 1 Peter is addressed. And the remedy is the same. If we believe that God cares for us, and for what we are doing, we must be humble enough to put all of our trust in him, keeping alert for danger, resisting the pressures to give in and remaining steadfast.

John's position on the ascension or glorification of Jesus falls somewhere between that of Luke and 1 Peter. With Luke he shares the view that Jesus is no longer in the world except in Spirit, but for John this Spirit is not just a gift which God bestows on Jesus' followers, it is very much Jesus' own gift to them. And for John, the glorification or vindication which God gives to Jesus and his followers is very much a here and now phenomenon, beginning with the vindication of Jesus himself in true kingly glory on the Cross.

In part, the vindication or glorification of Jesus has an eternal quality. He has been vindicated in God's presence because he has identified himself completely with God's will. But another part of his vindication lies in the fact that he has been vindicated in the wholehearted response of those who believe in his mission and know - through faith - that it is true. Finally, Jesus and his mission are vindicated when his followers demonstrate their unity - not only with him but with one another. In so far as we let him down by our disunity or lack of wholeheartedness, his vindication is still incomplete.

Giving an account of the hope that is in us

2008-04-25T20:53:00.002+01:00

Acts 17.22-31
Without doubt Paul is trying to find a point of connection with his audience in the busy market place at Athens. But is there a hint of irony in his comment that the Athenians are clearly extremely religious? Setting up an altar to an unknown god could suggest a commendable fastidiousness on the part of the citizens, a desire to dot every "i" and cross every "t", leaving nothing to chance. On the other hand, it could just as easily suggest insouciance or carelessness. If an unknown god really does exist, shouldn't human beings be straining every sinew to discover more about him or her? It would surely be a matter of the utmost importance. To treat the existence of gods as a more or less haphazard thing indicates that the Athenians had not got the right attitude to religion at all. To them it was just another facet of the marketplace, a matter of personal choice and perhaps a relatively unimportant one at that.

So, although two thousands years separate us from the time of Paul, it maybe that modern society is very similar to ancient Athens. Here, too, religion has been relegated to a matter of indifference.

Paul's message is that God cannot be compartmentalised or privatised in this way. We cannot create God in our own image, or file him away under 'u' for 'unknown' because, in fact, everything depends on God. In him we live and move and have our being, which makes God's nature and existence a matter of the most supreme importance. Furthermore, it is we who have been created in the image of another being - not God. We are his offspring and we shall be held to account for our failure to treat God, and the question of religious faith, with the significance it deserves.

1 Peter 3.13-22
With a level of sheer ingenuity that would have amazed even a Blue Peter presenter, the writer of 1 Peter manages to link a number of disparate themes. No one should malign Christians or make them suffer for their faith, but the writer concedes that it might happen and, if it does, we must be gentle in the way we respond, always ready to give an account of the hope that is in us but never aggressive, irreverent or unlawful in the way we respond. If we want to imitate the way of Jesus we must also be ready to suffer for doing good rather than contemplate doing anything evil. This is because Jesus chose to suffer for the sake of the unrighteous, in order to bring human beings into a right relationship with God.

So far, so good. But then the writer leaps to a description of what happened before Jesus' resurrection was manifested to his disciples. Even from the moment of his death, Jesus was alive in the spirit and set about the 'harrowing' of Hell, preaching to the spirits imprisoned in the world of the dead, so that they too should know the Good News and find release. Some of the imprisoned souls in Hell belong to people drowned in the Great Flood, when God rejected the almost universal wickedness of human beings at the time of Noah. This thought then leads to another dramatic leap of the imagination, as the writer begins to compare the waters of the Flood with the waters of baptism. Just as the water's of Noah's Flood cleansed the world of wickedness and made it possible for human beings to make a fresh start, so baptism is a new beginning for each individual believer, not because it literally washes us clean but because it marks a life-changing decision to put our trust in Jesus Christ and in the new life which he alone can offer as God's representative or right-hand man.

John 14.15-21
There is another, even more intimate way of knowing that we are following in the way of Jesus. That is to experience the presence of Jesus' own Spirit within us, helping us to keep his commandments, and to love him and be loved by him.

All of this is made possible by Jesus' victory over suffering and death.

God's House

2008-04-12T10:13:00.001+01:00

Acts 7.55-60
1 Peter 2.2-10
John 14.1-14
Jesus had warned that his followers would have to carry their own crosses in order to follow him. And now this is confirmed by the first Christian martyrdom. Stephen is stoned by a lynch mob of people enraged first by his preaching about the Temple, that God does not make his special home in a place built by human hands, and then by his uncompromising assertion that the people of Israel took wrong turns throughout their history before killing the prophets and then, finally, the Messiah. The fact that Stephen claims to have seen Jesus standing at God's righthand, affirming that his version of history is right, is the final straw for the furious crowd.

Stephen not only imitates his Lord in the manner of his death but also in his forgiving attitude and in his apparent readiness to let go of life to be with God. This is the kind of thing which, with hindsight, Jesus' friends saw that he must have been warning them about when he talked about thieves coming to attack the sheepfold. And Stephen was to be the first martyr of many. Even Christians who were not killed often went through other ordeals, as Paul so vividly describes in his second letter to the church at Corinth. Like the early Methodist preachers they were routinely imprisoned, beaten, ridiculed and mobbed. We might think that Stephen's message was a bit provocative, but his death serves as an encouragement to be faithful and an example of endurance to the end.

The Jewish people believed that God is everywhere, but they saw heaven as his throne and the Temple as his footstool, a place where people could especially meet God and discover his will. Stephen alludes to this in his sermon, and the theme is picked up by the writer of 1 Peter. Although the first Christians had spent much of their time in the Temple, Jesus had described his own body as the Temple of God and Christians quickly developed this teaching into the idea that the Church, as the continuing body of Christ on earth, is the place where all nations can come to meet God and discover his will for them. They also developed the parallel idea that each Christian's body is God's dwelling place or Temple, because of Jesus' promise that his Spirit would be within them.

The writer of 1 Peter develops these ideas. Jesus is the cornerstone of the new Temple that is being realised in the Church. He is a cornerstone that many people, like the persecutors of Stephen, have rejected. But those who recognise the true significance of Jesus are allowing themselves to become part of God's living interface with human beings. The Church is not just a community where individual Christians can come to develop their own personal spirituality, it is supposed to be a place where all people can be enabled to have a special encounter with God. And that is an extraordinary responsibility for Christians to carry. We are a royal priesthood - God's representatives in the places where we live and worship, and to the people we meet.

John's Gospel takes the idea of the Temple as God's dwelling place and plays with it in even more creative ways. During his earthly ministry Jesus had described the Jerusalem Temple itself as his Father's house, and John's Gospel faithfully reports this, but in today's Gospel reading his Father's house is definitely not one that is built of human hands. In the first instance Jesus appears to be talking about Heaven, but the many dwelling places which he goes on to refer to need not necessarily conjure up a vision of a stately mansion or a crowded city. It could just as easily be a reference to God's many dwelling places on earth - within the heart of each believer.

Jesus promises that he is going to his death so that he can prepare a place for his disciples to be with him, and with the firm intention of coming back again and taking them to be with him in that place. But, if as John also says, the Spirit of the risen Jesus is going to dwell within believers after his resurrection, the place to which he is going to take them could be a place within themselves. It could be that Jesus is challenging them to embark on a journey of spiritual discovery that will end with the realisation that they are already dwelling with God here and now. This is because no one is able to come to the place where they can truly meet and dwell with God except by allowing the Spirit of Jesus to live within them. Another way of putting it is to say that when we accept Jesus into our lives we will meet God in a new and far more complete way than would ever be possible otherwise.

The phrase, 'No one comes to the Father except through me' has caused huge controversy because it can be taken to imply that other religions and spiritual paths do not reveal anything about God at all. But this is surely to overstate the case because such a radical interpretation is only possible if we ignore the context of these words. Jesus is talking about the kind of pure and complete meeting with God which contemporary Jewish people thought was only possible in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. In so far as other faiths believe they can offer such a pure encounter with God - for instance, in the pages of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam - Christians believe that such claims are wrong. Jesus is unique in his ability to bring us directly into the presence of God, or to reveal the mind of God to us. But that is not the same thing as saying that other religions are entirely false and cannot help us to understand God better. It is not an exclusive claim to all truth, just a claim that the final truth can only be known if we follow the way of Jesus.

Interestingly, the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sachs, chose to use Jesus' image of a house with many rooms or dwelling places to describe his own vision of God and the relationship between the different world faiths. His view is that each faith has its own room or dwelling place within the whole, but we can meet one another in the shared spaces in God's house - the corridors, dining rooms and so on. In other words, each faith has its own distinctive insights and understanding of God, but we also have much that we share in common.

If this is a valid way of interpreting Jesus' words then, intriguingly, Christians would probably want to go a little further and argue, from this passage in John's Gospel, that the followers of other faiths are actually meeting God in Jesus, even when they do not realise it. This could either be because the Spirit of Jesus is the inspiration behind all true reflection on the nature and will of God, or because Jesus himself is the shared space - the corridors, or the glue even - which brings and holds the different faiths together. Could this be what Jesus meant when he called himself The Way, the Truth and the Life?

Togetherness and Conflict in the Christian Way

2008-04-06T23:30:00.003+01:00

Acts 2.42-47
The first Christians were a community, learning, sharing, praying and breaking bread together. Modern Christians talk about being a community or a family, but the first Christians actually lived the talk, even sitting light to their own possessions, which they held in common. And the first Christians made a serious difference to the world around them, causing awe and wonder by their signs and wonders. They enjoyed the goodwill of all the people, but - of course - this could not last. Daily the Lord was adding to their numbers and success breeds jealousy and opposition.

When the Church is marginalised and is concentrating on marginal things no one takes much notice of us. When the Church is making a serious difference ad being true to the teaching of Jesus it will inevitably provoke wonder and opposition in equal measures.

1 Peter 2.19-25
This is what the writer of 1 Peter explains in his letter. Christians must expect to suffer for doing what is right because that is what happened to Jesus. Indeed, the more we do what is right the more we will bring down suffering on our heads because, by implication, we will be challenging what is wrong and threatening its hold on the world. In the final analysis, that is what the Cross did. By his death on the Cross Jesus challenged the power of sin because he opened the possibility of ordinary people being set free from its hold. We need no longer be helpless victims of the genetic inheritance which makes us shallow, self-centred beings. We can, instead, discover the latent image of God within us. This is a cause for awe and wonder, but it also provokes stubborn opposition from those who do not welcome such radical change and are more comfortable with the way things were.

John 10.1-10
Jesus' simile of the sheepfold reinforces the same point. The sheep in the fold are the followers of Jesus. He himself is the Good Shepherd, who leads the flock by day and lies down across the gate to the sheepfold to protect it from harm at night - always placing himself between the flock and the danger which it faces. And we have already seen that the danger is very real. The flock is constantly threatened by rustlers who seek only to steal, kill and destroy.

These three passages make sombre reading. They warn that following Jesus is difficult and can be dangerous. However, it is worthwhile because of the potential which Jesus can unlock in us if we take his way seriously - when we put our trust in him he can transform both our individual lives and our life together in community.

Meeting Jesus on the way

2008-03-30T22:50:00.001+01:00

Acts 2.14a, 36-41
The interesting thing about the early history of the Christian Church is the speed with which it grew, and the influence which it exerted even in the most unlikely places. We are now used to the idea that the mission to the Jewish nation, begun by Jesus himself and continued with great passion and enthusiasm by his first disciples, was a failure. The Jewish faith continued unaltered and most Jewish people rejected the Christian message that Jesus was the expected Lord and Messiah.

However, if the mission was a failure, it was a glorious failure. When they first heard the Gospel, Peter's Jewish hearers were cut to the heart and - as a result - three thousand were converted to the Christian faith on the Day of Pentecost alone.

Perhaps we expect failure too readily and perhaps we put too little confidence in the story of Jesus. If we allowed the Gospel story to speak for itself, perhaps more people would be as moved as were the visitors to Jerusalem who listened to Peter's first sermon. But then again, we must ask ourselves what it actually means to be added to the number of Jesus' followers. Does it mean becoming a member of the Church, or does it mean finding truth and meaning in Jesus' life and death?

The language of baptism and repentance suggests a radical change in the way that Peter's hearers chose to live, and this is borne out by Luke's account of how they shared their possessions, but these were very early days before formal institutions such as congregations and church services had been developed. It is not exactly clear how far people had to join in with what the circle around the apostles was doing in order to be counted as followers of Jesus. Did the Church, then and since, too easily and too hastily become an institution which lays down inflexible guidelines about how to follow Jesus instead of allowing people to be guided by the Spirit within?

1 Peter 1.17-23
This passage gathers together many different ideas from the New Testament understanding of Jesus, especially but not exclusively those found in John's Gospel. First, there is the idea of Jesus' death as a ransom - but not one paid in precious metal, which has no lasting value as Jesus himself made clear, but a ransom paid instead by Jesus' own death upon the cross. Here the writer goes on to adopt the way that John's Gospel interprets the crucified Jesus, as the Passover lamb sacrificed to save the people of God from slavery - not to Pharaoh but to the futile ways which we inherit as part of our human nature.

The writer then draws on several other ideas found in John. There is the idea that the mission of Jesus was destined to happen even before the fabric of the universe was laid down. There is the idea - derived from Jesus' own commandments - that to follow him means to love one another as he has first loved us. And finally there is the idea of a new birth, or new beginning, made possible by God's Spirit at work within us.

And our belief in all of these things depends on the resurrection of Jesus which, as both Paul and John also argue in their writings, is the essential basis of our faith and trust in God.

Luke 24.13-35
What is it that keeps the two disciples, perhaps Cleopas and his wife, from recognising who the stranger is? It has traditionally been assumed that God himself keeps them from recognising the truth, so that future generations may have the benefit of hearing this beautiful and engaging story. But isn't it more likely that doubt and fear, ignorance and lack of faith, were the true cause of their lack of recognition?

Then again, who is it that the two disciples actually meet? Is it a Jesus whose resurrection body is so different from his former appearance that it is difficult to recognise him without the eyes of faith? Or is it a Jesus who is shrouded in a huge and mysterious cloak like some First Century hoody? Or is it simply a true believer, someone who has seen and understood the real significance of the Easter story because of his deeper understanding of the Jewish scriptures and his greater willingness to have faith?

And when the eyes of the two disciples are finally opened, and they recognise him, is it because - as in BBC1's "The Passion" - the stranger suddenly changes into the familiar Jesus whom they knew before? Or is it because they suddenly understand the true significance of breaking and sharing bread - that, whenever his followers do this together in obedience to him - Jesus is in their midst? And does the stranger vanish as if in a puff of smoke, or does vanish from the story because he continues on his way once the disciples no longer need his reassuring presence and have decided to return to Jerusalem?

The beauty of the story is that, in a sense, it does not matter which of these interpretations is the right one. It works equally well on all of these levels. One thing is certain, whatever happened on that original journey, we can encounter the risen Jesus in the strangers we meet on our journey through life, just as he said that we would.

More About Resurrection

2008-03-23T18:28:00.002Z

Acts 2.14, 22-32
This passage from Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost is the closest that the first Christians come to mentioning the empty tomb, and then Peter does so only by implication. Assuming that David is the writer of Psalm 16, Peter reflects on David's celebration of God's power to rescue him from death. Clearly, David himself was not rescued because - says Peter - his tomb is with us to this day, so the psalm must be prophetic. David must have been looking forward to a time when his royal House would be able to triumph over death through his descendant Jesus. Setting aside the fact that modern scholars think the psalmist is not talking about actual resurrection from death, but about being rescued from the brink of death, the obvious implication of Peter's words is that - in contrast to the tomb of King David - Jesus' tomb is empty. Then Peter concludes, however, not by emphasising the fact of the empty tomb but by stressing once again that the first disciples are witnesses to Jesus' resurrection. It is personal testimony to the resurrection of Jesus which really counts. The empty tomb seems to be mere icing on the cake.

1 Peter 3.3-9
Peter's theology is taken up and developed by the author of the Letters of Peter. He begins this passage by talking, in similar terms to last week's passage from Paul's letter to the Church in Colossae, about our personal experience of Jesus' resurrection. Paul described becoming a Christian as a spiritual experience in which we are drawn into the dynamic of Jesus' resurrection. We die to our old life and are raised to a new one by believing that Jesus died for us and is alive again. The author of 1 Peter draws on a different metaphor to describe the same experience'. Like the author of John's Gospel he prefers to compare becoming a Christian to rebirth rather than resurrection, but he links the two ideas. Our new birth into the Christian faith comes as a result of a living hope which Jesus' resurrection makes possible.

However, like Paul, the writer draws parallels between the actual historical experiences of Jesus and our own personal faith journey. Jesus had to suffer and die in order to enter into his risen power. In the same way, Christians must expect to endure hardship and suffering in order to share in Christ's glory. This is a logical extension of Jesus' own teaching about carrying our own cross if we wish to follow him.

The difference between us and Peter is that we must believe in the resurrection even though we have not seen the risen Jesus. But, once we believe, we can begin to enter into the same indescribable joy which the first disciples felt at Easter.

John 20.19-31
There are echoes here of another theme in John's Gospel, the story of doubting Thomas and John's teaching about it. Like the author of 1 Peter, the author of the Gospel is keen to emphasise not only the importance of believing the testimony of the first disciples, but also the necessity of suffering and death as a prelude to sharing in Jesus' resurrection life. The enduring wounds in Christ's body are a reminder that there is no easy way to glory.

Resurrection

2008-03-22T15:41:00.001Z

Acts 10.34-43
The key thing about this passage from Peter's sermon to Cornelius and his companions is his assertion that Jesus' first disciples were witnesses to all that he did. It is their testimony which is the bedrock of the Christian faith and especially of the Easter story and Peter senses immediately that the message of Jesus' resurrection and vindication by God is so extraordinary that people will struggle to believe it unless they can be convinced of the utter integrity and honesty of the testimony they are hearing.

The first part of his proclamation, that Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed before being put to death by hanging, is a matter of public record. Everyone listening to the sermon knows it is true. But the second part of Peter's message, that God chose this happy band of followers to witness Jesus' resurrection appearances and to eat and drink with the risen Jesus, is something which has to be taken on trust. The only alternative is to assume that the evidence is either misconceived, and the disciples have been deluded by some sort of mass hysteria into believing that they have seen the risen Jesus, or else Peter's sermon is a reckless and dishonest attempt to gain influence and turn the tables on Jesus' opponents by inventing a bold and incredible lie.

For a time, of course, the jury was out. No one knew whether the disciples had simply made up or imagined their accounts of Jesus' resurrection, or whether they were true. And still, of course, there are those who would argue that the Easter story is either a delusion or a fairytale made up to raise the spirits of Jesus' followers. However, even opponents of mainstream Christianity, such as the Jewish scholar Professor Geza Vermes, are impressed by the spiritual energy and determination of the early Christians. He has no doubt that they were motivated by a genuine experience of Jesus' presence and power. In his view, nothing else can explain the dynamism and success of the early Christian mission. The disciples believed that it was the risen Jesus himself who had commanded them to preach and testify about him.

Colossians 3.1-4
Paul takes the concept of resurrection a stage further. For him the Easter story is not just about what happened to Jesus after his death, it is also about personal transformation. The same spiritual power that gave Jesus victory over death enables all Christians to be remade in his image. This change can be described in one of two ways, either as a rebirth experience or as a new kind of life. Paul speaks of dying to our previous existence and rising to new life with Jesus.

When we recall Paul's own conversion experience, it's easy to understand how he was able to make this connection between our personal experience and the Easter story. His life changed so dramatically after he met the risen Jesus that it could only be described as a complete transformation. Before that encounter he had been one of the leading persecutors of Jewish Christians, but afterwards he became one of the leading proponents of the new faith. Before his Damascus Road experience he had been a thoroughly orthodox Pharisee. Afterwards he was to become a radical thinker even by Christian standards, passionately arguing that salvation was now available to Gentiles on equal terms with Jewish people. He lost all his former friends and networks, and had to make new ones. All his reference points in life where utterly changed. No doubt it must have seemed to those who had known him in his former life that he was indeed dead to them, and they must have grieved his loss. And as far as his new friends were concerned, his life had indeed only just begun and he had to learn a whole new way of being.

Of course, Paul's experience is one that we, too, are invited to share. the Easter story can become real for us in exactly the same way.

Matthew 28.1-10
But, although it is valid to spiritualise the resurrection story in the way that Paul and Geza Vermes do, in the end it rests on an historical claim that someone who was put to death has also been brought to life again in a startling, new and dramatically powerful way. And that's why the Gospel writers find it necessary to talk about the empty tomb.

Matthew tells the story of the guards posted at the tomb to make sure that Jesus' body was not stolen either by his sympathisers or by opponents determined to prevent it from becoming a place of pilgrimage. He has already recounted that an earthquake shook Jerusalem at the moment when Jesus died; now its after shocks continue and signal Jesus' resurrection. Both the guards and the women who had come to anoint Jesus' body see an angelic vision and then, as the women flee from the empty tomb filled with a mixture of fear and great joy, Jesus meets them and they worship him.

This is resurrection recounted as history, just as demonstrably true as the death of Jesus because - like his death - it is witnessed by many different people. Has Matthew made up the details of the story, because he wants it to be true and because he feels the need to ground the resurrection in some verifiable facts? Or has he encountered genuine witnesses of the facts which he tells us about and, if so, why don't Peter and Paul mention them in their earlier accounts?

For some reason the first Christians - Peter, Paul and their contemporaries - did not see the empty tomb as important. To them it proved nothing. What counted for them was knowing for sure that Jesus is alive and that is a personal, spiritual experience, not a piece of history. But later Christians needed to know that the resurrection is also a verifiable fact of history and they not only told the story of the empty tomb but found what they believed was its site and made it a shrine that is still a place of worship to this day.

It is clear that Matthew and the other Gospel writers believed passionately that the resurrection of Jesus had involved an empty tomb. What they do not deny, however, is that - even though the tomb was empty - some of Jesus' closest friends continued to doubt that he was really alive again. Every Gospel writers mention this. In the end I think this is their way of acknowledging that all of us have to discover for ourselves that Jesus is alive and what his resurrection means for our own lives. So may we each discover in our hearts that the Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Self-Emptying

2008-03-16T17:17:00.001Z

Isaiah 50.4-9a, Philippians 2.1-11
This is a passage about God's Suffering Servant. But the Servant is portrayed not as a victim, but as a decisive figure who offers encouragement to the weary, listens attentively to God's will and who suffers only because he steadfastly confronts God's opponents instead of turning back. He knows that he will not be disgraced or put to shame because the Lord will help him, and therefore he sets his face like flint to those who are abusing him. He urges like-minded people to stand alongside him and defies his adversaries to 'bring on' the moment of confrontation because he is confident that he will soon be vindicated. No one will be able to pronounce him guilty when the cavalry arrives to rescue him.

Is this the Suffering Servant whom Christians would identify with Jesus? Not quite. For Jesus did suffer disgrace and shame when he was betrayed and killed upon the cross. God did still vindicate him, but not before his death.

When the King of the Goths first heard the story of Jesus' crucifixion he said, 'If only I and my warriors had been there, the Lord Jesus need not have died.' It was a noble sentiment, but the King had entirely missed the point of the story. Jesus had to die in order to give us an eduring victory over suffering and death. In that sense his destiny diverges from that of the Suffering Servant in this song.

It would be nice to think that whenever we stand up to tyranny, bullying or oppression we will always be vindicated. But sometimes we not only have to suffer to overcome injustice, we also have to risk defeat and even death.

The famous hymn about the self-emptying love revealed in Jesus' life and death is the traditional focus of today's passage from Paul's letter to the Christians in Philippi, but the preceding verses are equally interesting. They describe the character of Jesus. He did not look to his own interests, but to the interests of others. His humility led him to regard the well-being of other people as more important than his own safety or status. He had no selfish ambition or conceit. Instead he was motivated solely by compassion and sympathy. This is what self-emptying means. It means being prepared to give up control over one's own destiny and submitting to the will of God like a slave.

In Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, the heroine Elizabeth Bennet says of Mr Darcy, 'Indeed, he has no improper pride.' But, if Jesus is the model for our behaviour, pride is always improper.

New Life

2008-03-05T22:33:00.002Z

Ezekiel 37.1-14
This passage is probably about spiritual renewal and the rediscovery of hope in the face of overwhelming despair, rather than about the promise of resurrection from the dead. But, of course, what Ezekiel describes is a kind of resurrection. He was addressing the nation of Israel. Can we reapply this famous passage to the New Israel of the Church? Often the Church despairs of the possibility of resurrection and new growth, but with the Spirit there is always hope. Similarly, there is still hope for our nation, despite its secularisation and the spread of cynicism and doubt. Slaves in the American South took comfort in this story and composed the famous spiritual about 'Dem Bones' because of its promise that God can snatch victory even after defeat. The Easter story renews the same theme.

Romans 8.6-11
Paul develops the same theme as Ezekiel. Human nature by itself cannot submit to God's will and is, he claims, actively hostile to what God wants. The kind of radical selflessness which God demands is simply impossible for us to adopt - unless we are renewed by God's Spirit. If we allow God's Spirit to take control of us we can belong to God and find the life and peace which otherwise elude us despite all our strivings. This is a kind of mini-resurrection, paralleling what happened to Jesus on the cross and the more dramatic picture in Ezekiel's vision of a whole nation being raised to new life.

John 11.1-45
The story of Lazarus is an acted parable of the sort of resurrection experience which Paul and Ezekiel describe. Jesus knows this and reluctantly takes the decision to wait until Lazarus has died so that God can be glorified when he is raised back to life again. John makes clear that he story is not really about our final resurrection from death but about the new quality of life which God can give us right now - and which endures despite physical death.

Yummy Mummy?

2008-02-28T01:08:00.003Z

1 Samuel 16.1-13
An advertising campaign for a famous perfume is urging us to buy perfume for a Mothers' Day gift with the slogan - “A Yummier Mummy”. I found myself wondering if this is entirely appropriate. Should we be encouraged to think of Mummies as 'yummy'? And who, exactly, is supposed to think that Mummy is 'yummy' anyway?

This week's Old Testament lesson doesn't seem entirely appropriate either. First, there is Samuel's disloyalty in anointing a new king while the old one is still on the throne. Generally the Bible is opposed to this kind of thing, urging us to obey the properly constituted authorities whenever we can. But, of course, there are limits.

German Christians traditionally believed very firmly in the idea of loyalty to their government, but this tradition was severely tested in the Twentieth Century. Their example proves that sometimes it can indeed be right to break the law as Samuel did. Eventually, in the 1940s, a handful of German Christians actually conspired to overthrow their government by force. Less controversially, it was Christian-inspired civil disobedience which later brought communist East Germany to an end.

Second, there is the issue of whether God judges by appearances. At first 1 Samuel seems clear that God does not. When Samuel sees Jesse's eldest son, a strong and mature warrior, Samuel naturally assumes that he is the one whom God has chosen to be anointed as the new king. But not so. It is the shepherd boy, whom his father had judged to be so insignificant that he didn't even send for him to meet the great prophet, who is the new king whom Samuel has been sent to find. However, the Bible wants to have it both ways. David may be puny compared to his brothers, but he is still ruddy and handsome, with beautiful eyes – a yummy kind of king after all!

Ephesians 5.8—14
Is this passage a none too subtle dig at values and mores of which the writer strongly disapproves and which he thinks are shameful, even though most people seem to live by them? Or is it really a plea for integrity?

So often our politicians are caught out doing things in private or in secret which they should be ashamed about if the stern searchlight of publicity were turned upon them. This seems to be particularly the case when it comes to the way they handle their expenses. What is called for here is the kind of integrity which Ephesians describes.

But none of us is without fault. How often do we allow ourselves to indulge in behaviour which doesn't fit with what we publicly profess to believe as Christians?

John 9.1—41
This passage raises some fundamental questions about Jesus and his opponents. Who is really living in darkness, whether they know it or not? And who can cast light on the situation and bring glory to God? Sometimes, as with the choice of David as the new king of Israel, things are not as obvious as they might first seem.

What we need, as we thread our way carefully through life's many challenges and pitfalls, is the discernment to recognise what is right and the integrity to do it.

Going Through the Wilderness

2008-02-17T16:54:00.000Z

Exodus 17.1-7
The People of Israel are depicted by the writers of Exodus as a pretty ungrateful bunch. Rescued from abject slavery, they are soon complaining that they were better off in Egypt than wandering free in the wilderness. And, of course, they do have a point. The Pharaoh was engaged in a campaign of mass extermination - killing the baby boys and working the adults to death - so life in Egypt was no bed of roses. But, on the other hand, life in the wilderness certainly isn't a picnic, either. The escaped slaves are now at risk of dying from thirst, until God rescues them again with a stream of life-giving water which flows from a new spring on the holy mountain of Horeb.

Mind you, we might well ask ourselves what the people of Israel were doing in the wilderness, wandering constantly around the inhospitable fringes of this mysterious holy mountain. The journey from Egypt to the Promised Land should have taken only a matter of days or weeks, even for people travelling on foot and driving their livestock with them. Another of the traditions about this period, the Book of Deuteronomy, makes clear that the reason the nomadic life in the wilderness lasted for forty years was entirely because of the faithlessness and disobedience of the people themselves. They refused to trust God's promises, preferring to scratch a living in the desert rather than enter the land flowing with milk and honey that lay just over the horizon.

Do we inflict wilderness experiences on ourselves because of a lack of trust in God's promises? Are there countless possibilities waiting for us just beyond a horizon which we refuse to cross, preferring instead to sulk in our tents or stay in the relative safety of what is already familiar to us?

Christians are also reminded by this passage that, when we find ourselves in a wilderness of our own or other people's making, Jesus is the rock from which the life-giving water flows which can sustain us through hard times. This week's reading from John's Gospel consciously draws this parallel - making the point that the Spirit of Jesus can give us a life-giving spring of spiritual resources welling up constantly within us.

Romans 5.1-11
Paul makes the case that having wilderness times in our lives is not always such a bad thing. People who have been born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and who have therefore never wanted for anything, often lack the stamina and strength of character that are needed to make the best out of life. I guess that's why Nigella Lawson reportedly plans to cut her children out of her will, or at least to make them think that they might be cut out. She wants them to stand on their own two feet.

Paul lists a number of advantages of going through a wilderness experience. First, he points out that if we have never encountered any trouble we shall never need to rely on faith. Perhaps that's one of the problems with modern life in the West. It can be so trouble-free, for much of the time anyway, that we never learn to develop the spiritual resources that will see us through the hard times.

Of course, atheists would argue that faith is only for wimps and cry babies. They would say that truly mature people don't need a crutch to lean on when life turns sour. Instead, they would urge us to turn inwards and find within ourselves the inner strength to cope with our troubles. But the truth is that very few people are atheists at heart. If they don't think about God it isn't, generally, because they don't want to believe in anything. It's because they have never needed to ask themselves the difficult questions about the meaning of life and the suffering it brings.

Finding faith can be a great source of strength and peace when those difficult questions are brought bubbling to the surface by tragedy or disappointment. And not only that, says Paul, but also suffering - in and of itself - can build our character by giving us qualities like determination and endurance. This, after all, is why people climb mountains and cross seas in small boats. They don't just confront these challenges because they are there to be conquered. They do it because they want to prove themselves and become better, stronger people, whose characters have been forged in the furnace of affliction. Without hardship there can be no exhilaration. Without sorrow we can never know true joy.

Above all, of course, experiencing difficulty encourages a sense of hope and hope is uplifting. In 1996 Tony Blair surged to victory on the slogan, 'Things can only get better!', and people hoped it was true. As far as the economy is concerned, New Labour probably lived up to that promise, although only time will tell. But I think voters were expecting something more than a strong dose of Gordon Brown's economic prudence. They also hoped to see a different kind of politics, with less sleaze and graft. The fact that turnout at elections has fallen steadily since then probably reflects a loss of hope that things really can change. And that's sad, because - without hope - our society is condemned to flat-line on a wave of disillusionment and despair. If the wilderness doesn't create a sense of hope for something better then there can be no escape.

Thank goodness, then, that it is when we are at our weakest, and the wilderness seems to stretch on and on for ever, that Jesus comes to our rescue. And if he can rescue us from the wilderness - and from our own despair that things can ever improve - how much more can he empower us when we are working with him for change.

Sitting Light to Tradition

2008-02-09T18:35:00.001Z

Genesis 12.1-4a
One of the problems often faced by congregations in traditional churches is that the church members cling to the ways of their ancestors. They stick rigidly to patterns of worship and organisation which suited their parents and grandparents, who were often members of the same churches, even when these aren't suitable tools for reaching out to their contemporaries and making new Christians. These churches are in maintenance rather than mission mode. Like King Canute, they want to hold back the tide of change washing through the world around them and keep things as they used to be.

Holding back the tide makes a fun game on the beach, but it's no way to run a church and it isn't what God wants us to do. Like Abraham, God wants us to go where he tells us to go, even if it means leaving cherished traditions behind in order to connect with the people around us in new ways. That's the only way our churches are going to be blessed.

Romans 4.1-5, 13-17
In a series of complicated arguments, Paul makes the case that what counts is not sticking to tradition or doing the right thing - in this case keeping the Jewish Law - but being faithful to God. If the Jewish Law were crucial to being put right with God, what hope would there be for people who have never lived under that Law? Yet, Paul notes, Abraham was promised that he would become the father of many nations, not just of one nation. This is because keeping things the way they used to be is not part of the believer's mission. Trusting God, and putting our whole lives in God's hands, as Abraham did, is all that matters.

John 3.1-17
Here John is even more specific than Paul, although elsewhere Paul says exactly the same thing. Believing in Jesus and being filled with his Spirit is what trusting God really means. Of course, traditionalists would argue that they too have put their faith in Jesus and in the unchanging Gospel values which are enshrined in their traditions. But 'the wind blows where it chooses, and [we] hear the sound of it, but [we] do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.' We can't pin God or Jesus down to some fixed set of traditions which we happen to like. While it is true that the essential truths of the Gospel, such as John 3.16, remain unchanged for all time, we have to be ready to follow where the Spirit leads us and the Spirit may take us in new directions in order to communicate the eternal message that God 'gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish'.

Paradise and Human History

2008-02-02T17:06:00.000Z

Genesis 2.15-17, 3.1-7
Romans 5.12-19
Matthew 4.1-11

This ancient story from Genesis is about the anatomy of temptation. The very definition of paradise is at stake. If we are living in paradise then, by definition, we have everything we need. Once we begin to think that there might be something more, we are no longer in paradise. That is why God forbids the man to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. It is for his own protection.

Why the serpent chooses to tempt the woman is unclear. However, there are three reasons why the serpent is able to tempt her. The first is that she is open to persuasion. She can see the limitations of living in paradise. It would be nice to want for nothing and to be content with our lot, but what if we thought there was something more to life - that we were missing out somehow? And isn't paradise likely to grow dull? Change and uncertainty make life interesting. If the man and the woman leave paradise they will expose themselves to risk, but they will also open themselves to new possibilities, and that's exciting.

The concept of falling in and out of paradise is not unlike the idea of falling in and out of love with someone. To be in love, and to be completely happy when we are with a particular person, is like being in paradise. The temptation to stray beyond that relationship, and to seek something new and different, is like the temptation faced by the man and the woman in the garden.

The second reason why the temptation works is that the prohibition on eating the fruit is based on a lie, albeit a white lie designed to protect the man and the woman from themselves. The serpent is able to point out that the fruit is not really poisonous. It is dangerous, but only because it will open their eyes. And this appeals to the woman because, of course, one of the defining things about human beings is our curiosity. Animals are not curious but we are, and so the woman falls for the temptation.

The third reason why the temptation succeeds is that the serpent also lies, but its lie is a dangerous one designed to cause mischief. The serpent tells the woman that knowledge is the route to wisdom and that it will make her like God. Unfortunately, this is very far from the case. By itself, the knowledge of good and evil does not make us wise or God-like. Knowing that something is right does not necessarily persuade us to do it and, regrettably, knowing that something is wrong does not always stop us from wanting to do it, either. God cannot do what is wrong, but we can.

This is partly because of human nature. We are weak and fallible. We give in to temptations, just as the man and the woman did in paradise. But it is also because knowledge and wisdom are two different things. Wisdom grows out of a mixture of experience and insight. Religious people would also argue that it depends to some extent on faith. Knowledge, on the other hand, is fed by curiosity. It can be combined with wisdom but it need not be - which is why their new found knowledge destroyed the man and the woman's sense of being in paradise and launched the course of human history with all its false starts, dead ends and tragic mistakes.

People sometimes ask, 'Is this story true?' In the sense that it charts the moment when human beings became different from the rest of the animal kingdom, and at once both superior and inferior to the other animals around them, it is true. The first truly curious person started us on the path of scientific and material progress, but they also destroyed the paradise from which we first emerged.

It's difficult to accept at face value Paul's assertion that, unless the first man and woman had left paradise, no one would ever have died. If, however, he means that - without their natural curiosity and its tragic consequences - human beings would not have been separated from God and death would not have been final, it is possible to agree with him. Sin, in its Biblical sense, means that same separation from God which the first man and woman experienced, although in his letters Paul uses the term both in this technical sense and in the more popular sense of 'bad things which sinful people do'.

The heart of this passage from Romans is verses 18-19. The beginning of our separation from God was the awakening of that sense of curiosity which has now become the defining characteristic of our race - homo sapiens. Once we realised that we could shape our environment, and that we could also change things both for better and for worse, we became different from other animals, even from our closest cousins, and this realisation marked the dawn of human history. But there has been another epoch changing event in human history - the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Just as the first revolution caused our separation from God, so the new revolution - ushered in by Jesus - makes it possible for us to be put right with God again.

Paul is at pains to explain to his readers that Jesus had to be a human being, albeit a very special one, in order to rescue us from our human predicament. For this same reason, Matthew also believes that we need to know Jesus was tempted in all points as we are.

He was tempted by the need to get back to a kind of paradise - to the feeling that his wants were being satisfied - though the Devil is very subtle here, tempting him not with the promise of luxuries but simply with his hunger for bread. To be truly faithful it seems we must trust God to provide for us, even when we are hungry. But if we followed that idea to its logical conclusion we would never plan for our retirement or buy any insurance, so perhaps this temptation is a matter of degree. We shall not live by bread alone but, of course, bread is still necessary for life so it could be that Matthew is simply asking us to consider where our priorities lie.

Then Jesus was tempted, like the first man and woman, to take unnecessary risks, trusting in God to save him from the consequences of his own folly. In this respect he was not unlike the directors and executives of Northern Rock, who took stupid risks and trusted in the Bank of England to bale them out when things went wrong. Bankers may live like this, but Christians should not. This is why we cannot join our voices to those who say, 'But global warming may not be our fault, or may not be as bad as some scientists are predicting.' Even if these things had a slim chance of being true, we are not supposed to gamble with human destiny by continuing to pollute the earth.

Finally, Jesus was tempted by the promise of power. He knew, however, that power for its own sake is not worth having, and that power won by political scheming or brute force is always fragile and can be lost just as quickly as it was gained.

The Truth About God is Clearly Visible and Counter Cultural

2008-01-26T18:59:00.000Z

Exodus 24.12-18
Exodus gives us the impression here that encountering God is no ordinary thing. It doesn't happen in the midst of everyday experiences and meetings. Instead, it's something special, a mountain-top thing, that comes to us only when we separate ourselves from what is ordinary and everyday. To reach the mountaintop takes dedication, extraordinary effort and courage. It calls for special reserves of faith and strength. Among the entire nation of Israel, only Moses and Joshua were capable of undertaking that journey. And, when they got there, still they did not encounter God. They had to camp on the mountaintop for six days, shrouded in cloud, waiting for God to call to them.

Exodus also evokes a sense of mystery about the encounter with God. Moses did get to meet God but not out in the open. They could only meet within the cloud and the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire so that their meeting was dangerously different from any other kind of encounter. Even Joshua could not share in that meeting, but had to remain behind.

2 Peter 1.16-21
The writer of 2 Peter takes up the images evoked by Moses' encounter with God and develops them in the light of Jesus' own mountaintop experience, which Peter himself had witnessed. The writer deliberately distances himself from the sense of mystery evoked by Exodus. At the time when Christianity was emerging there were a number of 'mystery religions' in which the adherents had to go through special spiritual experiences and rituals in order to discover hidden truths about God's nature. These ideas soon started to infect early Christian thinking, eventually developing into a rival religious faith called 'Gnosticism' in which Jesus is understood as the revealer of secret knowledge. But the writer of 2 Peter wants to make clear to his readers that true Christianity is not a mystery religion. The Gospel is not a series of cleverly devised myths, instead it's about the coming of Jesus - how he lived and died, and was raised from death. And unlike Joshua, Peter and his companions were not left behind when Jesus encountered God. God doesn't have to be encountered only by extraordinary people in extraordinary places or experiences, in the story of Jesus we find him revealed in ordinary events which ordinary people could share, though even the ordinary becomes extraordinary when we're in the presence of Jesus.

The writer is at pains to emphasise the transparency and availability of the truth which is revealed in Jesus. Far from being hidden, mysterious or secret, it is like a lamp shining in a dark place, like the coming of dawn, or like the bright morning star - clearly visible. God is still majestically glorious, as in the Exodus story about Moses' encounter with God, but in the Christian message that glory is not so much a devouring and dangerous fire as a bright and piercing light, illuminating all the shadows and dark places in our lives and our world.

Matthew 17.1-9
Matthew's description of Jesus' own mountaintop experiences has many common features with the account in 2 Peter. Again, the cloud which envelopes Jesus and his friends is not dark and mysterious or threatening. It is a bright cloud, shedding light on who Jesus is rather than obscuring his identity. And although - like Moses - they have to wait six days for the experience to unfold, they don't wait huddled at the base of dangerous storm clouds high on the mountain. Instead, they prepare for their visionary encounter by immersing themselves in everyday life and by meditating on Jesus' impending journey to the cross.

ALTERNATIVE READINGS
Micah 6.1-8
1 Corinthians 1.18-31
Matthew 5.1-12

The people of Israel are criticised by Micah because of their faithlessness despite God's repeated goodness to them. When Balak - king of Israel's enemy Moab - hired the Prophet Balaam to curse the new nation of Israel, he found that he could not do it. God wanted him to bless Israel instead. But Israel seems intent on bringing Balak's curse down upon the nation anyway by ignoring God's will. Similarly, if the nation only remembered their roots, in the easy conquest of the territory between Shittim and Gligal, they would be less inclined now to risk throwing away all that they have been given.

Micah here summarises what true faith in God is all about - doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God. Nothing else matters. St Augustine summed up the Gospel even more succinctly when he said, 'Love - and do what you will.' And Jesus famously said something along the same lines: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Christians put their faith in the love of God revealed in Jesus' death on the cross. Being prepared to put our trust in someone who sacrificed his own life for the sake of others, who was shown to be weak and vulnerable and who was despised by his contemporaries as a criminal rabble rouser getting his just desserts, might seem like foolishness to most people but God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. That's why the poor in spirit and the meek are so blessed, for in Jesus God has become weak and vulnerable, just like them, in order to overcome those who think they are wise and strong. This means that the Gospel is 'revolutionary' in the true sense of that word. It turns the accepted wisdom, culture and ideas of our society upside down.

Blue Monday and The Mission of The Church

2008-01-21T23:34:00.000Z

Isaiah 9.1-4
Faith in God is about real liberation, not just from spiritual darkness but from oppression. The reference to Galilee, the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, relates to its conquest by the army of Assyria but Christians would later relate it to the story of Jesus. Galilee and its people were the first ones to hear the Good News he brought.

Is the same good news a source of joy and rejoicing for us? And what do we make of the rather inappropriate comparison with sharing out the spoils of war? Isn't the sort of exultation experienced by plunderers more akin to greed and vengefulness than to spiritual growth? The comparison with harvest time seems much more appropriate.

This week includes Blue Monday, supposedly the gloomiest day of the year when Christmas credit card bills, broken new year resolutions, bad weather and dark winter evenings combine to make the nation feel more miserable and flat than at any other time. Perhaps we should just be glad that we have nothing more serious happening each day to make us feel gloomy. But even in a land of deep darkness Christians can rejoice that we have seen the light.

1 Corinthians 1.10-18
Paul's leadership of the Church at Corinth was not distinguished by the number of people he brought into the church. He can only remember two families whom he baptised. Nor does he expect to be remembered for his eloquent preaching or cleverness, at least not in comparison to Apollos who was, apparently, a brilliant preacher. The only thing which was special about Paul's leadership was his single-minded focus on the crucifixion of Jesus and what that means for the human race. What else, says Paul, can matter in the life of a church when compared to the good news of Jesus crucified for our sakes? And if we believe in Christ crucified, and his power to help us, what can be so important that it causes Christians to squabble among themselves and become divided? Unfortunately, these questions are just as pressing today as they were when Paul and Sosthenes wrote to the church in Corinth.

Matthew 4.12-23
We have already seen that Christians believe Jesus' ministry was foretold by the Prophet Isaiah. This belief dates back to a time before the Gospel of Matthew was written, but Matthew quotes the prophecy as one of his 'proof texts' about the uniqueness and universal significance of Jesus.

Jesus' message is simple. To escape from darkness into light people have to repent, or change direction in their lives. And this is graphically illustrated by the fisherpeople who give up their family business to become people fishers. Yet, although they will grow the Church by winning new disciples for Jesus' message, spreading the Gospel is not a numbers game. Some churches grow for entirely the wrong reasons. And some churches struggle and decline because of the opposition they face, and not through any fault of their members or leaders. Jesus' first apostles were called to do no more, and no less, than imitate his example, which was not to baptise huge numbers of converts but simply to proclaim the good news and offer healing and reconciliation. This is what Paul did also at Corinth.

The Tension in the Church

2008-01-13T23:34:00.001Z

1 Corinthians 1.1-9
The words of thanksgiving with which Paul, and his administrative assistant Sosthenes, open their letter present an idealised picture of how the church in Corinth might be if it were truly faithful to its Lord. As the letter unfolds, however, we shall learn that Paul's description of sanctified people filled with the grace of God, not lacking in any spiritual gift, and enriched in faith and knowledge of every kind as they give strong witness to the good news about Jesus, is sadly far from the truth. If the Christians at Corinth are indeed to be blameless on the day of judgement, they will need a great deal of strengthening first.

But isn't the same tension, between what ought to be and could be, and how things actually are in reality, found in every church? And isn't that sorry state of affairs almost inevitable? Because the Church is, after all, meant to be a haven for people who are still on a spiritual journey, who are seeking sanctification, or holiness; it's not a final resting place for people who have already arrived. What we need, therefore, is a proper humility about ourselves and our churches. We are not perfect - yet. We are being made perfect, but some of us still have a long way to go.

We may be saints, (Paul's term for anyone who has put their trust in Jesus), but we are not yet saintly. Even John Wesley, who believed in the possibilty - on rare occasions - of Christians being made perfect on this side of eternity, also acknowledged that anyone can slide back into the old ways of faction fighting, feuding, backbiting and misbehaving which seem to have dogged the life of the church in Corinth.

The New Israel

2008-01-13T23:11:00.001Z

Isaiah 49.1-7
The Prophet foretells the words of God's chosen representative, Israel, which could be the name of a righteous minority of faithful followers of God, whose task is to purify and renew their nation, or could be the name of a groundbreaking new leader cast in the same mould as Jacob, the father of the nation. The new Israel's arrival signifies a radical new beginning, the emergence of a reborn nation better able to live up to its calling as God's chosen people.

And yet there is a jarring note in the prophecy. The new leader's mission will appear to have come to nothing because the rest of the nation will reject it and the leader will be treated everywhere like a deeply-despised and worthless slave, but God has a greater purpose than simply saving the old nation of Israel. The renewed holy nation is going to be an international project, which will gather in all the world's peoples, and there is a further surprise in store. Although the new Israel will at first appear to have failed in his mission, eventually even kings, princes and rulers will come to recognise his authority and dominion over them.

The parallels with the crucified Jesus, who was raised by God from death and defeat to become Lord of a new Israel - the Church - with followers all over the world, is - of course - so striking that Christians have always seen this passage as a reference to his coming.

A New Kind of Leader

2008-01-05T22:50:00.001Z

Isaiah 42:1-9

Here the Prophet talks about a new kind of leadership. It's not exactly clear whether he has an individual leader in mind, or whether he envisages a reinvigorated nation of Israel offering that leadership to the peoples of the world. What is interesting, however, is the kind of leadership he talks about, which will be characterised by a gentle but persistent quest for justice.

How different this is from the vainglorious leadership which characterises many of our leading politicians. The mock documentary 'The Thick Of It' depicts shallow politicians and their advisers who are motivated solely by tomorrow's news headlines. They don't shape opinion; instead they slavishly follow it. 'The Thick Of It' was supposed to be a spoof of real political life but, to the horror of its creator - Armando Iannucchi - many politicians and political commentators wanted to know who had told him what was going on!

In contrast to these false leaders, the Prophet describes the new, gentle but just leader as a living embodiment of God's covenant, or promise, to the people of the Earth. The leader's mission is to give the world a new vision - to show its people how things could be different and open their eyes and minds to new and challenging possibilities, thereby releasing the downtrodden from the dungeons of despair.

Again, the new leader could be a single individual - and Jesus comes to mind. But it could be an entire nation which is being called to create a template for real justice here and now. Or the new leader could be a community, like the Church, which is - after all - the Body of Christ on Earth, with its own mission to carry on his kind of leadership and be yeast in the leaven, or salt, or light for a needy world.

Acts 10:34-43

This sermon preached by Peter, one of the first leaders of the Christian community, describes how Jesus can be understood as the new kind of leader expected by the Prophet. Like the second Prophet Isaiah, Peter talks about a leader who is characterised by justice. However, he introduces two new elements into Isaiah's vision of godly leadership.

First, Jesus is clearly a more spiritual leader. His kingdom is not of this world. He can't be followed around by journalists making "a day in the life of" documentaries and he doesn't go on national campaigns to get himself elected. He is more likely to 'appear' to people now when they share bread and wine with him in Holy Communion.

Second, he is a leader who has been made powerful through suffering and death - which is a more dramatic form of gentleness even than Isaiah had dared to picture. But this means that he can also be lord and judge of the dead, as well as of the living.

Jesus' message of peace was directed first to the nation of Israel but God shows no partiality and so it was always intended to be made available, through the inspiration of his Spirit and the preaching of his followers, to all people who believe in him and accept his offer of forgiveness.

Matthew 3:13-17

Matthew describes how God's new leader was anointed not by holy oil in a splendid coronation service, but by the Holy Spirit at his baptism in the muddy waters of the River Jordan. Kings of England once imagined that they had been anointed by God's Spirit too, with a divine commission to rule over the English nation on God's behalf, but their actions often defied that belief. By contrast, Peter is able to explain in his sermon how the validity of Jesus' anointing was demonstrated by the good that he did and by his ministry of healing and reconciliation. This proves that he really is the Beloved, chosen leader whose every word and action was pleasing to God.

Argument raged for a long time as to whether Jesus was part of what it means to be God before his baptism, and even before his birth and conception . The prologue to John's Gospel goes so far as to say that Jesus must have been part of God even before the creation of the Universe, whereas some early Christians were content to say that Jesus became God by adoption at his baptism.

It might seem a rather abstruse and pointless argument, but actually a great deal hinges on it. The Christian understanding of God is that, in the person of Jesus, he closed the gulf which separated himself from humankind and the rest of the created order. But is that really possible if Jesus only became divine by adoption? In the end, most Christians agreed that true incarnation requires a complete identification of God with human existence and creation. And for that identification to be absolutely complete, God has to be inseparable from the person of Jesus even before Jesus existed as a distinct individual and, in fact, for all time. In other words, God must always have known what it means to live and perish as a human being.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

2007-12-23T00:16:00.000Z

Isaiah 63:7-9
This passage is truly prophetic. It doesn't predict the birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem. It doesn't say that his mother would be a virgin when he was born, nor that he would eventually be rejected, crucified and raised from death. But it's prophetic in the true sense of that word. All true prophecy contains profound insights into the nature of God and into our relationship with God. And this passage is truly prophetic for, without recognising exactly how it might happen, the writer - the third prophet in the Isaiah tradition - understands that God will chose, out of a mixture of love and pity, to save the human race from its distress, and that he will do this not by sending a messenger or an angel to tell us how to change things for the better but by his own personal presence among us. Was the prophet thinking of incarnation, of God becoming a human baby lying in a manger? Probably not. That would have been beyond his wildest imagining. But he had sensed that God cannot save us from a distance, by remote control, but only by getting involved, by being in the midst of us.

Hebrews 2.10-18
Here the writer of the letter to the Hebrews explains the concept of incarnation in a few clear and concise phrases, crystallising - in a way that the third prophet in the Isaiah tradition could only grope towards - the full profundity of what it means for God to be present to save his people.

It means that God becomes our brother and shares the human condition with us, which also means suffering and dying, and being tested by all manner of trials and troubles, but continuing nonetheless to trust that all will be well in spite of these things. Just as the prophet had understood that God could only save us by being present with us, so the writer of Hebrews recognises that God had 'to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect so that he might' come to our help.

It's like the age old question, 'What would you do if you saw someone drowning?' From a purely selfish perspective, the safest thing to do would be to pretend that we hadn't seen the drowning person in the water. However, if that wasn't an option, the sensible thing might be to shout instructions to them from the bank, or to throw them a lifeline. And if that didn't work, the only options left would be either to stand helplessly and watch them die or to get into the water with them - like the fire fighter who begged for permission to be lowered into the freezing RiverHumber to save a drowning woman. The rope securing him to the shore nearly broke during the rescue, justifying his senior officer's doubts that it was a safe thing to do, but the fireman managed to bring the woman to the shore.

That is the kind of thing which Jesus did for us - except that, from a Health and Safety perspective, his mission was a tragic disaster. He actually had to go through death in order to pioneer the way to salvation. He saved us from slavery to the power and fear of death by dying himself and being raised by God, so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest who accompanies us through suffering and death, to ensure that we need not be afraid any more.

Matthew 2.13-23
This story helps Matthew to explain how Jesus could be born in Bethlehem and yet raised in Nazareth, fulfilling two prophecies at the same time. It also means that, althoughJesus was disparagingly called 'the Galilean' by his enemies, Matthew can argue that his Galilean accent and provincial manners disguise a royal lineage that even the dastardly King Herod had recognised and tried to cut short.

Like Moses, who serves as an archetype for Jesus in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus and his family are exiled in Egypt. But, unlike Moses,Jesus is eventually able to return to the Promised Land, with fateful consequences both for himself and for the whole human race.

Finally, the story is anchored in real life, with all its tragedy and senseless wrongdoing. Sometimes people think that the Christmas story has fairytale elements to it. If that's true, then it's a Brothers Grimm fairytale, with moments of darkness and danger, not a sugary and saccharine tale for tiny tots.

The Real Glory of Christmas

2007-12-16T23:44:00.000Z

Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1.18-25

Isaiah's prophecy seems harsh. Ahaz loyally refuses to ask God for a sign. He says that he doesn't want to put the Lord to the test - a sentiment later echoed by none other than Jesus himself! But it would appear that, on this occasion at least, it's the wrong answer to give! The Prophet tells him that he should have asked for a sign, after all, and now he will be given one whether he likes it or not.

What's going on here? Perhaps Isaiah realizes that the real reason why Ahaz didn't ask for a sign is that he already suspects it will be inauspicious. Is this the royal equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and singing 'La, la, la!' to drown out the sound of bad news?

If so, the King is showing remarkable faithlessness because, in fact, the sign is not going to be the bad news he dreads. Instead, the sign is going to be full of hope. And what could be more hopeful than new life? Within two years - in other words, in the time that it takes for a woman to carry a child through pregnancy, wean him and begin to teach him the difference between right and wrong - the two enemy nations which are currently threatening Judah will have been turned into a desert. This is a true sign that God is taking care of the nation of Judah, and that is why the child shall be named 'Immanuel'.

There is, however, a scorpion's sting in the tail. The conclusion of the prophecy, which is not part of our reading this week, warns that Assyria - the great power which will soon destroy Judah's enemies - will bring upon Judah an even greater day of reckoning. It seems that Ahaz may not have been so stupid after all in choosing not to ask for a sign. He had actually asked Assyria to come to his rescue. In the short term that will seem like a smart move. But in the longer term Ahaz will learn that it would have been wiser if he had shown real trust in the Lord.

And what about the way that Matthew recycles the prophecy to explain the story of the virgin birth of Jesus? One problem with this borrowing of Isaiah's prophecy about Immanuel is that the mother who was expecting a baby was not actually a virgin, but just an ordinary young woman - possibly the wife of Isaiah or of Ahaz himself. The other problem is that Isaiah was not looking far into the future. He was simply explaining how something was going to happen very soon that would change the local situation out of all recognition.

Matthew, by comparison, is using the prophecy to show how the birth of a baby can have a far greater impact even than Isaiah imagined. God with us in Jesus will transform the entire course of human history. Now that really is a miracle! And that's why Matthew feels able to link the story of Jesus with the prophecy in another way. It's clear that there was already a tradition circulating that Mary had a virgin birth. What could be more fitting, thinks Matthew, for a baby who is destined to become God with us for all time?

Paul agrees with Matthew that the Good News of Jesus was promised beforehand by the Old Testament prophets, but there they diverge because Paul does not know the tradition of the virgin birth. Instead, he tells us that Jesus was a physical descendant of David whereas Matthew describes how Jesus became a descendant of David by adoption, when Joseph married the already pregnant Mary. For Paul, this means that Jesus is Son of God only in a spiritual sense, because the spirit of holiness dwelt within him, and not because he was conceived through the Holy Spirit's intervention.

It is one of the great conundrums of the New Testament that these two conflicting traditions co-exist side by side. Both traditions remind us of important aspects of the Jesus story. Jesus' descent from David is a reminder that he is the Christ, or Messiah, God's anointed or chosen leader - an aspect of the Gospel which is missing from the Isaiah prophecy. But the story of God With Us in a tiny baby adds another dimension to the messiahship of Jesus. He is not only someone sent by God to save us, he is also God come amongst us to share our human experience. And although they may have started from different historical traditions about Jesus, Matthew and Paul are agreed that both these aspects of the story are vital to the Good News they have to proclaim.

Bishop David Jenkins, the former theology professor who loved to shock journalists with his unexpected statements about the Christian faith, said this about the Christmas story: "Christmas confronts us with a baby as the glory of God. The real wonder did not, and does not, lie with angels and shepherds or a guiding star from the East. All these are derived wonders. They only point to the true wonder. They symbolise the faith and reflect the glory.

"The real glory, the lasting glory and the undeniable glory is the baby, who grew up as Jesus of Nazareth to be 'crucified, dead and buried'. But this was the beginning rather than the end: for the God, who he named with particular passion, raised Jesus up. So Jesus was known to be Christ the Lord, the power of God's kingdom, the means of judgement and the promise of God's future. Thus when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ we are confronted with a baby as the glory of God."

A New Kind of Judgement

2007-12-08T14:50:00.001Z

Matthew 11:2-11
James 5.7—10
The newspapers have been full in the last week of the amazing story of John Darwin, the canoeist who returned from the dead after going missing in the North Sea more than five years ago. At first it seemed like a miracle, but now his wife has admitted that – at least for most of the time – his disappearance had become a scam. People are still speculating about his motives but newspaper reports suggest that it had to do with escaping debts.

From his prison cell, John the Baptist began to hear similar stories about amazing events – blind people receiving their sight, lame people walking, the deaf hearing, even the dead being raised to life. Only this was no scam. John's disciples were able to report what they had actually seen and heard. Isaiah's prophecy seemed to be coming true before their very eyes.

But were people pleased about it? Jesus clearly implies that they were not! 'Blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me,' he says, as if anyone ought to take offence at such wonderful things. But, of course, human nature being what it is, people always look for the flaw in the story, the thing that doesn't add up, the discrepancies and dubious details.

People wanted to find something wrong with the ministry of Jesus, some reason to doubt him. The same instinct was the undoing of John and Anne Darwin. Cynical newspaper reporters soon tracked down a photograph of the two of them taken together a year ago, when Mr Darwin was still supposed to be dead or missing.

And people had the same cynicism about John the Baptist before he was imprisoned, when he first appeared in the wilderness calling for repentance. The crowds who flocked to see him were motivated by curiosity as much as by faith and expectancy. Indeed, Jesus wonders what some of them were expecting to find.

Did they expect to find a reed shaken by the wind? If so, that could mean they were expecting a prophet who would proclaim the latest fashionable ideas, bending with the prevailing wind, or it could be a reference to the way that the wind whistles through reed beds creating an eerie and arresting sound, but a sound which nonetheless has no real substance.

Did some go expecting to find a celebrity dressed in soft robes? If so, they were surely looking in the wrong place. For the implication of Jesus' questions is that the only kind of person you are likely to find living and preaching in the wilderness is a genuine prophet – someone with a lot of strong convictions, an uncompromising message and a pretty Spartan dress code. And Jesus confirms that he believes John is a very special person.

So why are the least of those who live under God's new dispensation greater than John? Because John was still looking for the wrong thing, a new era of fiery judgement and harsh separation between the good and the bad, whereas Jesus knows that God is offering a different kind of judgement, a judgement tempered with mercy, patience and unfailing love.

The writer of the Letter of James has the same concept in mind when he pictures the patience of the farmer who treats the whole crop as precious and hopes that the early and late rains will help it to mature.

The Desert That Becomes a Garden

2007-12-08T00:45:00.000Z

Isaiah 35:1-10
This passage mixes beautiful images of peace and regeneration with more disturbing themes about the nature of God's justice.

Years ago our family was toiling through an Alpine meadow in the hot sunshine when one of our children turned to us and asked, rather crossly, 'Why are you making us go through this barren wilderness?' It was an incredible thing to say because only someone walking with their head down could have failed to notice that, on both sides of the path – as far as the eye could see – there were literally millions of flowers of every colour and shade. If this was a wilderness, it was a wilderness which was rejoicing and blossoming like the one pictured by the Prophet.

In the prophet's vision, not only shall the wilderness blossom abundantly but the burning sand shall become like a pool, and the thirsty ground shall gush with springs of water. And this will be no empty mirage. The sparse desert grass will mutate into water-loving beds of reeds and rushes.

And there will be a special road through this flowering desert, a busy highway where no lions, jackals or ravenous beasts dare lie in wait for the lonely traveller. Joy and gladness will replace sorrow and sighing.

So far so good. But there is a jarring note in the prophecy. For the God who will come to strengthen the feeble and make the lame leap like a deer will also come with vengeance and terrible recompense. Some people will be saved, but others will be cut down. And the broad highway which leads to safety through the desert will be a holy way. Although it will be so straight and easy to follow that no one will need a map or satellite navigation to negotiate it, the unclean will not be allowed to travel on it at all. Only the redeemed shall walk there.

If this were a description of heaven, or of the Kingdom of God, there would be nothing wrong with this picture. But it isn't. It's meant to be a picture of our world, but it's a picture in which some people find peace and prosperity while others are excluded. It's the sort of picture of righteousness and justice which inspired the people who built a huge fence between Israel and Palestine, so that they could keep the suicide bombers, but also many ordinary Palestinians, on the outside.

And, of course, it's not a Christian image, for Jesus made it very clear that – at least for the time being – God is determined not to choose between the good and the bad. One day there will indeed come a time for judgement but, until then, the struggle goes on to persuade everyone to choose the right way. Being holy doesn't mean shutting some people out because they are considered unclean, it means welcoming everybody in and trying to convince them to be made holy too.

The Wicked Wolf and The Lamb

2007-12-03T01:42:00.001Z

Matthew 3.1—12
John the Baptist, too, has been reading the prophecy of Isaiah and – like the Prophet – he expects the Messiah to wreak powerful vengeance on wrong doers. He pictures God's special agent and new ruler arriving on Earth with his winnowing fork in his hand, ready – in the days before combine harvesters or threshing machines – to begin the laborious task of separating the nourishing wheat from the inedible chaff. The chaff, he observes ominously, will be burned with unquenchable fire.

Hundreds of years before, Isaiah had warned that God would be compelled to chop down the decaying nation of Israel so that righteous new growth could spring from its roots. Once again, warns John, the axe is at the root of the tree. And this time the Jewish nation may not be so fortunate, for God may cause those new shoots of righteousness and spiritual vigour to grow up among Gentile peoples instead of giving Israel another chance.

Once again, too, snakes feature in the story. This time they are not friends or foes as such, just inevitable bit-part players in this End Time drama – vipers fleeing the wrath to come, eager to learn new tricks and give up their poisonous ways to save themselves. John is taken aback. He had obviously intended his message to appeal only to the common people, not to Pharisees and Sadducees. But who is he to judge?

Recently, Archbishop Desmond Tutu reminded Radio 4 listeners that God, as we see Him in Jesus, is remarkably unfussy and inclusive. Far from flaying about him with a winnowing fork, in a desperate bid to cleanse the Earth with fire, he welcomes sinners and eats with them, gladly calling himself their friend. The wolf shall indeed live with the lamb, but that is because the Lamb of God is willing even to welcome the wicked wolf – if the wolf will mend its ways.

Living Together in Harmony

2007-12-03T01:17:00.001Z

Romans 15:4-13
Paul here seizes on just one verse from Isaiah's memorable prophecy in order to prove that Jesus was given a special mission to take God's saving message to Gentile people as well as to members of the Jewish race. He was having a hard task in convincing some Jewish Christians that he was right about this, and Isaiah's words, 'The root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples', seemed to lend powerful support to his argument.

Of course, then as now, some Christians probably said that Isaiah had been talking about the people, or the kings, of Israel and Judah, not about Jesus. Paul will have none of it. He asserts that whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, to give us hope and encouragement on our own faith pilgrimage. This doesn't mean that the prophecies of Isaiah and others didn't have a different meaning at the time, only that they have a special meaning for Christians too, and that meaning is just as valid.

The special meaning of the passage for Paul is that people of different races are meant to live in harmony, just as the wild and domestic animals are supposed to dwell in peace together.

Looking Backwards and Forwards

2007-12-03T01:01:00.000Z

Isaiah 11:1-10
Once, years ago, a neighbour and his son helped me cut down a large sycamore tree which was too close to the manse. Actually, they did all the cutting and I just shouted, 'Timber'. The neighbour, who had been a forestry worker in his youth, painted the stump with tar to try and kill it. But his efforts were in vain. In no time at all vigorous new shoots grew from the stump and it took me all of my time to keep them in check. In a year they could easily grow six or seven feet tall and almost too thick to prune without lopping tools.

Of course, this method of harvesting quick growing wood has been known by human beings for thousands of years. The technical terms for cutting down an old tree in order to encourage new and vigorous growth which can be easily harvested is 'coppicing'.

In their attempts to explain why God had allowed his chosen nation to be enslaved, the Bible writers seized on this image of coppicing. Israel, they believed, had become morally and spiritually bankrupt, a spent force. By cutting the nation back to its roots God had allowed new and vigorous energy to spring forth.

It's not clear whether the Prophet had a single individual in mind when he wrote about the new shoot springing from the stump of King David's father Jesse. He may have been thinking of a new line of kings, or of a reinvigorated nation which, collectively, would judge the poor with righteousness and the meek with equity. But Christians have seen this prophecy as an uncannily accurate description of the manner in which Jesus will rule the nations.

Nonetheless, some Christians may wonder whether parts of the description don't quite fit when we apply them to Jesus. What would it mean for Jesus to strike the earth with the rod of his mouth? Will he really kill the wicked with the breath of his lips? This would hark back to an image of the kind of God who rides on the storm, wreaking hurricane-force vengeance on wrong doers. Old Testament writers sometimes described God like this, and the Prophet is certainly suggesting in this passage that the rod of Jesse will act on God's behalf and with God's power, but can we still describe God in the same way when we know that he was crucified for sinners?

Finally, what are we to make of the very different and very striking images of the over-turning of the natural order so that peace and harmony break out even between ferocious wild animals and domestic cattle, goats and little children? The reference to a little child leading lions, leopards, kids and calves like a good shepherd guiding his flock is another startling example of the way this passage often seems to look forward to Jesus? Isn't he the little child, lying in the manger in Bethlehem, who was at the same time Lord of all creation?

However, the Prophet is just as likely to have been looking back to the very beginning of the created order when the misinformation peddled by a talking snake was responsible for unleashing human-focused knowledge into the world, with sometimes disastrous results. The Prophet is not against the spread of knowledge, but what is needed if the world is to be transformed into a peaceful place is not more human learning but more knowledge of God, otherwise our technology – no matter how promising it might seem – will only help us to destroy ourselves and our planet. In the kind of God-centred world which the Prophet imagines, the snake will no longer be cursed because of its tempting advice to go our own way. Instead, it will become a symbol of al things new, a friend even to toddlers.

The Best of All Possible Worlds?

2007-11-24T20:26:00.000Z

Genesis 1.1-5
Revelation 22.1-5

These two passages deal with the twin themes of creation and light. They are both about creation because the first passage, from Genesis, describes the origin of the universe and the second passage, from Revelation, describes its recreation. They are both about light because the writers of Genesis envisage the nothingness before the universe began as infinite darkness, and the writer of Revelation imagines the new creation as infinite light.

Whether this is a description of the physical reality in the time before creation and in the the new creation surely doesn't matter. It is a poetic description, which sums up our most basic hopes and fears.

Perhaps, like me, you hated the darkness when you were a child. When I was asleep in bed I always had to have the bedroom door ajar and a light shining on the landing. It symbolised order and security. If the light was on, and even if the narrow strip of light shining through the gap between the door and its frame was too dim to see by, I had no need to be anxious. But if the light went out, chaos descended – at least in my own mind.

One night the bedroom door blew shut. I don't know why. Suddenly I was engulfed in thick darkness. To say that I was afraid is an under-statement, but I was even more afraid of my mother. So it never occurred to me to get out of bed, tip-toe to the door, and open it ajar again. Instead, I lay in bed – moaning softly – for what seemed like hours, until my mother realised what had happened and opened the door ajar again.

If darkness represents chaos, nothingness, ignorance, doubt and fear, the opposite is – of course – perpetual light. Actually light doesn't seem so wonderful in our civilisation as it would have done to the writer of Revelation. If anything, we have a surfeit of light. There is so much light in our night-time cities that it causes serious light pollution, which upsets nocturnal and diurnal animals alike and prevents astronomers from studying the night sky.

It has been decided to build a new bridge over the dual carriageway which leads to Sheffield city centre from the south. Although it's only going to be a humble footbridge, the planners have decided to make it an iconic bridge – a gateway feature to the City. There are five designs under consideration, and two of them use solar-generated light to create a stunning night-time display. Why? Won't it just be distracting to drivers, and add to the existing pollution of the darkness?

Well, of course, the answer to 'why' is that we can't help feeling light is good. Not only does it symbolise the opposite of darkness, chaos, ignorance and fear, it is also the opposite of godlessness. In the heavenly city, the new creation, God will be the light that never goes out. And that light symbolises hope, trust, faithfulness, love and perfection.

In the original creation story the writers emphasise repeatedly that the universe is good, but are they just whistling in the dark? The universe we have got may be the best of all possible universes, but it's not without it's problems, is it?

First there is the whole nature 'red in tooth and claw' thing. As William Blake put it, 'Tyger, tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry...? Did he who made the lamb make thee?' And the ferocious but beautiful tiger is perhaps the least of our difficulties. What about tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes and pestilence?

And then there is the whole question of suffering, pain, ageing and decay! And the question I saw on the front of a book the other day, 'Does anything eat wasps?' Are these issues built into the fabric of creation because they are simply part of what it means to live in the best of all possible worlds?

As long ago as the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755, which killed 15,000 people, the philosopher Voltaire attacked the notion that we do live in a basically good world. But this wasn't such a new and radical idea as he imagined. The writer of Revelation had got there before him. Acknowledging that the universe as we know it is not good enough, he writes about a perfect universe that is to come – a universe in which not only nature is made perfect, with its crystal clear, life-giving waters – but human creativity, with its streets and cities, is made perfect too.

Whereas in the Garden of Eden, as it is described later in Genesis, fruit trees are not only a source of goodness but also the means by which doubt and disobedience enter the equation, in the new creation the fruit trees bear fruit every month – a bit like the cigarette trees in the Big Rock Candy mountains except that, instead of dealing out cancer, their leaves have special healing properties. They never bring harm to humankind. They only bring wholeness. What I think the writer is driving at here is that, whereas in the universe as we know it things can go wrong, in the new creation things will never go wrong.

And what is the link between life as we know it now, with all of its imperfections, and life as we are promised it is going to be one day when we live in God and he is our light? The answer is that the link between these two states of being is the Cross of Jesus, the place in history where God shared our suffering and pain, our fear and loneliness, and overcame them for our sake. The crucified Jesus is here called the Lamb of God because he sacrificed his own life – like a sacrificial lamb – to bring hope to a broken world by sharing its brokenness. It is because of him that the light shines and the darkness cannot put it out.

Christians in The World of Work

2007-11-24T18:46:00.000Z

Christians are called to work with God to build his kingdom community in the world. God is already out there, involved in building this community. Our task is to collaborate in that project. There are four aspects to building the kingdom community:

Aliveness
Liberation - from what prevents us being fully human
Love
Learning - whatever enables people to grow and discover more about the truth

We need to become aware of when these things are happening, and how we can affirm them and get the resources to do it. Sometimes the resources are given to us by those who work alongside us, and so we have to be ready to receive from others as well as to give out. We have to be open to recognise opportunities and resources, even when we are feeling down. But it isn't our job, in our frailty as human beings, to sort out the world's problems. We are only here to share with God in this great project.

Reflections by Deacon David Clark

True Leadership

2007-11-17T20:47:00.000Z

Luke 23.33-43
This passage is filled with irony. Jesus behaves with the graciousness and greatness of a true leader, thinking of others even at the moment when he himself is being put to death and is enduring terrible pain. But no one recognises his qualities They are too busy casting lots for his clothes or scoffing at him. If he is the good shepherd, the true king who is capable of rescuing and safeguarding the nation from harm, why can't he also save himself?

Even one of the criminals joins in the mockery, but the other springs to Jesus' defence. Perhaps he is just clutching at straws. After all, what has he got to lose? As well as being executed, he is about to come under the judgement of God for his misdeeds. By throwing himself upon Jesus' mercy he just might escape eternal punishment for his crimes. Or is there more to it than this? Does he recognise that the ironic thing about true leadership is the willingness of the leader to endure suffering and make self-sacrifices for the sake of the people he is leading? Only empty and worthless leaders stand aloof from the suffering and experiences of the people they are in charge of; genuine leaders stand alongside their colleagues and lead by example.

Someone has said that true leaders don't inflict pain, they bear pain. Someone else has said that true leadership has nothing to do with your job title, or the position you happen to hold, but everything to do with how you act. And the Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu observed that in order to lead people, you have to walk beside them. All of these characteristics of true leadership are borne out by the example of Jesus on the cross.

The Meaning of The Light

2007-11-17T19:58:00.000Z

Colossians 1:11-20
As we approach Christmas Christians have much to be joyful about, for - like hostages rescued from captivity and emerging blinking into the daylight - we are people who have been transferred from the power of darkness into the inheritance of the saints who dwell in the light. And what is this light of which Paul speaks so eloquently in this beautiful poem? It is the light shed upon the world by the arrival in human history of someone who is the image of the invisible God, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. The astounding claim made by Paul is that Jesus, the child born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, is the person in, through and for whom all things were created. In other words, he is the being in whom all things hold together, none other than God himself. But this incredible and wonderful news is tinged with pathos, for God only became human in order to reconcile all things to himself by dying on a cross. The good news of Christmas is also an Easter story.

No More Spin!

2007-11-17T19:41:00.001Z

Jeremiah 23:1-6
The shepherds of the nation in Jeremiah's time were the kings of Judah, who were both the spiritual and political leaders of their people. They had not only failed to protect their flock through negligence or weakness. They had done active harm by destroying and scattering it, which implies that their policies were wicked and reckless. Their conduct brought God's judgement down upon their heads.

Why does Jeremiah go on to say that God drove the people into exile? Was this for their own protection, to save them from further harm? Or was God angry with the people for putting up with such poor leadership? Who are the leaders of the nation today? In a democratic country, and a democratic church, is it we - the people - who have failed to show proper vision and obedience, or can we still blame other people, politicians and church leaders, for our problems?

One of the concerns which people had when democracy was first introduced was that people would make ill-informed and misguided decisions, egged on by leaders who were happy to sell them lies and half-truths. The only way to avert that danger in a democracy is for people to have good, solid values and allegiances, not shifting and deceitful ones.

The Advent promise is that God will raise up new, more capable leaders who really do care for the nation, and who know the difference between right and wrong because they are guide by a king who rules with wisdom, righteousness and justice. We could call it an era of 'no more spin'!

The Whole of Human History in One-and-a-Half Chapters

2007-11-11T21:38:00.000Z

Luke 21:5-19
Many people, beginning with the first disciples, have interpreted this passage as a prophecy about the end of the world and what it will be like. But maybe that is to misunderstand what Jesus is saying. Perhaps it is better to see these words as a prophecy about the whole of human history from the time of Jesus until the present.

Times will always be hard for believers. Each generation will face new risks and challenges. In every age many will be led astray by false ideas and false teachers. There will always be wars, insurrections, earthquakes, famines and plagues. And people will also see dreadful portents of future disaster. When Christians stick fearlessly to the proclamation of the Gospel, they will always face persecution and betrayal, and they will need the guidance of Jesus' Spirit to know how to deal with these challenges. Endurance and faithfulness have been the name of the game for true Christians throughout history.

But maybe there is also something especially portentous about the times we now live in. While it is true that Jesus' followers have always thought this, never before have human beings had the capacity to destroy their own environment and jeopardise their own history. Perhaps the day of judgement really is approaching this time! Will human beings turn out to have the humility and openness to work together and save themselves, or will we finally perish from the earth?

Believers are offered the consolation that, so long as they speak the truth in love and wisdom, they will gain their souls. I don't think this means that we can expect to escape whatever conflagration might finally engulf the human race. But at least we can expect to be safe in God's eternal keeping.

The Protestant Work Ethic

2007-11-11T21:13:00.000Z

2 Thessalonians 3:6-13
This passage is the foundation of what academics now call 'The Protestant Work Ethic' – the idea that idleness is ungodly and wicked, that Christians are called to work quietly and earn their own living, and that anyone who is unwilling to work doesn't really deserve to eat. What's more, Paul says that we should never be weary in doing what is right. I don't think he means that it's right to work 24/7 but, if working diligently to earn our own living is godly and Christ-like, it's easy to take the further step of arguing that earning as much as we can, for as long as we can, is also the right thing to do.

Of course, the work ethic was around in Christianity before Protestantism came along. Perhaps we should call it 'The Pauline Work Ethic', but later observers have noticed that Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian teachers never seemed to push the work ethic as far as some Protestant teachers were prepared to do. In fact, until the industrial revolution it was widely accepted that no one really needed to do more work than was absolutely necessary to support themselves and their dependents. Large parts of the year were given over to holy days and saints' days of various kinds, when no work was done at all.

Protestant Christians prepared the way for the industrial revolution by abolishing many of these holidays, by encouraging people to study the Bible for themselves – and so rediscover Paul's teaching, and by inventing the idea of hard work. However, Protestant teachers like John Calvin and John Wesley still stressed that once you had earned all that you could, the profit of your labour belonged to God and should be given away.

Paradoxically, something else had to happen before 'The Protestant Work Ethic' could really begin to drive the industrial revolution and the modern economy. That extra something was the Enlightenment, a new wave of scientific and humanist thinking when many industrialists and investors lost their faith in God. Set free from the need to do what is right, these new thinkers still clung onto the idea that idleness was wrong and persuaded politicians and opinion formers that it was morally justified to force people to work for long hours in large, soulless offices and factories.

Despite many subsequent reforms and refinements of 'The Protestant Work Ethic' it still shapes the kind of society we live in today. Britain is a hard work society whereas France, by comparison, is still more Catholic in its attitude to work.

Do we have Paul to blame for this? Why can't we be more like the lilies of the field, which are content simply to be? If all of us did just enough to get by, wouldn't that conserve a great deal more of the world's scarce resources? And yet, on the other hand, in a world where there are now so many hungry mouths to feed, perhaps hard work is more essential than ever.

The New Creation

2007-11-10T23:05:00.001Z

Isaiah 65:17-25

This passage describes the world as God intends it to be – a new creation where suffering, tragedy, sadness and disappointment will be banished and where there will only be peace, plenty, joy and delight. This is a vision towards which all believers are called to commit themselves, in prayer and action.

But the passage raises some interesting questions. First, it talks about the imminence of this new creation, where as we know that it has yet to be established. Is this because – from God's perspective – a thousand years is but the blinking of an eye? Or is God's plan for a new and better world constantly frustrated by human disobedience?

Second, isn't the passage denying the created order, which Genesis tells us is already good? It's one thing for God to banish to sort of injustice and misuse of the world's resources which leads some children to die, needlessly, when they are only a few days old and some workers to toil for rewards which someone else receives. It's another thing entirely for lions to eat straw and serpents to eat dust. Does that mean the way in which the universe has evolved is not as God would like it to be? Is it just the best of all possible worlds rather than a perfect reflection of God's will?

And, finally, while the new order clearly has implications for the whole world, it is striking that the passage concentrates so much on life in the city. We tend to see cities as irredeemably bad – a human construct which we have imposed on nature and which inevitably make life worse than it might be, for all living things and not just for their human citizens. We talk about concrete jungles or concrete wastelands. But the Prophet is clear that cities, too, can be redeemed and are part of what it means to be truly human. Cities, like nature, can be made holy.

Reflecting on Next Week's Bible Passages

2007-11-04T12:32:00.000Z

Haggai 1.15b—2.9
This is one of the Bible's great 'Advent' passages. The outlook may seem bleak, says the Prophet, but it's time to start singing a happy song for 'Things can only get better!' And, indeed, they are going to get better.

Sometimes people talk about wanting to take a silent collection at a meeting or service. They mean, of course, that they don't want the congregation, or the members of the meeting, to put coins into the offertory plate – even one and two pound coins. Instead of the chink of loose change, they want to hear only silence as people put five, ten and twenty pound notes into the collection.

Well, in this prophecy, God goes one better! The collection is going to be a noisy one, but not the careless noise of loose change being discarded. This is going to be the very deliberate noise of treasure clattering into the Temple vaults as God shakes the heavens, and the earth, and all the nations, to empty out their gold and silver.

It would be nice to think that the Prophet believes this will be a freewill offering, as the nations recognise the debt which they owe to God. But I suspect the Prophet sees it as a forced levy, as God wrings the resources which belong to him from ungrateful hands and wallets. The message seems to be that there is no such thing as a free lunch!

I run a charity, working in the most disadvantaged community in Sheffield. It faces closure next summer if we do not receive an injection of new funds. As I fundraise for its future, I would love to believe that God will give prosperity to such a good cause. And yet, although I believe that God does want his silver and gold to be redistributed to those who need it most, I also believe that God helps those who help themselves – even when they are the most deserving of help. I think we have to be prepared to work creatively and imaginatively to bring about change instead of waiting for money to fall into our laps.

Should this passage influence our thinking as we consider the future of our churches and their mission, and how we are going to fund them?

2 Thessalonians 2:1-17
Paul seems to be warning his readers here that they mustn't be preoccupied with the 'Advent' theme of God's promised new dawn for creation. It will come one day, but no one knows the time nor the hour and so it is foolish to speculate about it.

However, he is only human, and immediately Paul begins to indulge in some speculation of his own. The End Time will be clearly flagged, he says, because before that time there will be rebellion and lawlessness and the Anti-Christ will take over God's Temple.

This is almost certainly a reference to earlier prophecies that the reign of King Antioches Epiphanes – who installed a statue of himself in the Temple and declared himself to be God – would mark the end of the world. The prophecy turned out to be untrue, but that didn't stop later readers – including Paul – from reinterpreting it and applying it to their own situation. As recently as the 1970s I heard a lecture in which someone reinterpreted other Biblical passages about the End Time to mean that the expansion of the European Union marked the beginning of the end. So the practice of trying to read the signs of the times goes on!

Paul is surely on sounder territory when he goes on to urge his readers to concentrate on the present rather than straining to see the future. 'Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us,' he urges. And those traditions are that Jesus will comfort and strengthen us 'in every good word and work', not in idle speculation.

Luke 20:27-38
This is one of a number of 'controversy' stories in which Jesus' opponents appear to be trying to trap him. The Sadducees were a group of Jewish leaders who did not believe in the idea of life beyond death. They saw this, quite rightly, as a new idea imported into the Jewish religion from other world faiths. But, of course, that doesn't make it a wrong idea.

It rather depends what we mean by 'resurrection'. If we think it means rising to a new life just like the old one, in which we all live in little thatched cottages with roses round the door and get to be married to beautiful people, then we are in for a big disappointment. Such will be the fate of the ignorant men and women who become suicide bombers in the hope of a life of this-worldly bliss in Paradise. Jesus scotches this idea with his abrupt reply to the Sadduccees: 'The dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.'

But just because we can't take the idea of resurrection as literally as this, that doesn't mean it isn't true. Jesus points out that the Lord God cannot be God of the dead if they no longer exist, because to be 'God' implies that you have supreme power to make yourself known and you cannot reveal yourself to someone who isn't there any more. It follows that the Lord can only be God of what is, of what still exists. And God told Moses that he was the God of Moses' ancestors – so clearly they were still alive in him. That doesn't mean they were alive in the way that we experience life. But it does mean that no one who has ever existed is lost to God and forgotten simply because they have died. In some sense we live on, in God, and that means the Sadducees are wrong.

Today is Remembrance Sunday and later on we are going to spend more time reflecting on what it means to remember the fallen. For many people the idea of remembrance on Armistice Day means that, so long as we continue to honour their memory and remember what they did for us, the sacrifice of so many young people's lives in two world wars – and in other conflicts since – has not been for nothing. Of course, remembering their names by itself is not enough, we also have to honour their memory by honouring the principles they died to defend, such as freedom and democracy.

I think Jesus' understanding of resurrection has something in common with this idea of remembering, except that the spiritual understanding of remembrance is stronger still. It doesn't just mean keeping people's memories alive. It means making them – and what they stood for – real in the present moment. That's what Christians mean by remembering the death of Jesus in Holy Communion. As we break the bread and share the wine we not only recall what happened when Jesus died, we also make its meaning and power real for us now.

When Jesus talks about people continuing in live in God, he isn't just talking about God remembering them and honouring their memory. He is describing how God can make them real in the present by an eternal act of remembering.

Reflecting on next Week's Bible Readings

2007-11-01T15:34:00.000Z

Habbakuk1.1-4, 2.1-4
The Prophet reflects that his readers, or hearers, are living in dangerous and violent times. The righteous feel surrounded by wickedness. Justice doesn't seem to be done. He could be describing our world - the war on terrorism, global warming, violent crime, a legal system that many people cannot afford to resort to when things go wrong.

But, lest we're attempted to abandon hope, the Prophet says that God still has a vision for a better world which we are called to share and hold on to. It will be realised at the appointed time and if it seems a long while coming that is no reason to despair. We must be patient. For, whereas people who have no problems - and seem to be enjoying life - are often living just for the moment, the righteous - that is those who are right with God - live by faith. They share a vision which keeps them faithful and trusting, even when things get really tough They are always on the lookout for something better.

Are we obviously 'faithful' people? Is our outlook characterised by faith? Do we have a clear vision of better times to come? Are we working for a new kind of world?

2 Thessalonians 1.1-4, 11-12
Paul takes up the same theme in his second letter to the church at Thessalonica. The congregation there was also suffering from persecution and affliction and, like the Prophet Habbakuk, Paul urges his readers to be steadfast, faithful and full of good resolve. Again, God's grace will give them the strength they need.

Do we ask God for the strength to persevere and keep the faith in difficult times?

Luke 19.1-10
As is so often the case, the Gospel reading in the lectionary has little connection with the other passages. It is yet another of Luke's stories about someone whose actions go against type. Sometimes Luke relays parables and stories about people who appear to be good but are actually very bad. Here he narrates the story of someone with a deservedly bad reputation who undergoes a surprising change of heart and turns out not to be so bad after all. It is an example of the transforming power of an encounter with Jesus. If we meet him in the right frame of mind, with enough self-understanding to recognise our need to change and be changed, and if we respond to Jesus' offer of friendship in faith and with true conviction, even the worst of us can turn over a new leaf and be transformed.

Not long ago I found myself, as part of a team-building day, dangling thirty feet from the ground in the canopy of some of the large pine trees in part of the Forestry Commission's plantation at Sherwood Forest. Scaling those dizzy heights, and just for fun, takes some resolution but I was quite happy to do it because I was attached to a safety line. Imagine the resolution which Zacchaeus needed, not just to climb a tree but to do so in front of a crowd of people. It was the sort of resolution which he also needed to accept the challenge to turn his whole life around and dismantle his considerable fortune.

Are we that ready to be transformed?

How Not to Be Very Bad

2007-10-26T22:34:00.000+01:00

Luke 18:9-14
As followers of Jesus it's okay to feel good about ourselves. In fact, that's an essential part of being true to Jesus' teaching. We're not called to beat ourselves up all the time, like the Christians and Muslims who - in various times and places - have gone around striking themselves with whips to punish themselves for their sinfulness. Jesus wants us to be repentant, but repentance is not about wallowing in guilt. It's about learning to love ourselves and about receiving the strength to change.

However, it's definitely not okay to feel good about ourselves if that leads us to look down on other people. Being a follower of Jesus isn't about being better than anyone else.

It's doubtful that Jesus saw anything wrong with being a Pharisee as such. His teaching has a lot in common with the teaching of the Pharisees. Like Jesus' own followers, the Pharisees were happy to draw on the best ideas about God and goodness, wherever they come from. Like Jesus' followers, they were a popular movement supported by many ordinary people. Like Jesus and his followers they didn't have much regard for the Temple and its elaborate system of sacrifices, believing that personal prayer and piety was much more important. Like Jesus and his followers, they also thought that merit has nothing to do with who you are, but is entirely dependent on the kind of person you become. When the Temple was destroyed one of the leaders of the Pharisees told his followers not to mourn, for there was another way of being close to God, and that was to practise loving kindness. The Pharisees also had a favourite saying, 'A learned outsider is better than an ignorant High Priest.' That isn't very different, is it, from what Jesus teaches in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, where an outsider from Samaria has compassion on the victim of highway robbery while the priest callously passes by on the other side of the road? The Pharisees were very conscious, too, that some of their number were insincere and they tried to weed out hypocrisy. Like Jesus and his followers, they believed that everyone was called to lead a holy life, not just the priests and leaders of the nation.

So where do Jesus and the Pharisees part company? There are two things which separate them. First, Jesus and his followers teach that the only way to be holy is by relying on the grace of God, whereas the Pharisees teach that we can be holy by carefully obeying the Jewish Law - not just the part written down in the first five books of the Bible but also an equally large collection of oral teaching passed down, they believed, through the generations.

This first difference between Jesus and the Pharisees leads naturally to the second one. If we happen to think, as the Pharisees do, that we can become holy or righteous by obeying the Law of God, then there's a danger that we will feel very pleased with ourselves if we keep the Law and - worse still - there's a danger that we'll begin to treat other people, lawbreakers, with contempt. If, however, we happen to think - as Jesus and his followers do - that we can't do anything to deserve God's favour, but must rely entirely on God's grace, that should make us more humble, not only about ourselves but also in our attitude to other people. Even if they seem much less holy than us, and much less obedient to God, even if they're not good and kind but are selfish and greedy or unkind, is there really so very much difference between them and us? There - but for the grace of God - go we! And, anyway, today or tomorrow we might fall from grace. Or we might deceive ourselves that we are much nicer people than we really are.

This is where the Pharisee goes wrong in Jesus' story. He assumes that he's a better person than the tax collector because he thinks he's a nicer person than he really is, when everyone who listens to the story can see immediately that the Pharisee is a thoroughly unpleasant man, puffed up with pride and full of contempt for other people who are different from him.

Of course, it's easy to laugh at the Pharisee in the story and then to fall into exactly the same trap. We begin to compare ourselves to thieves - the kind of people who steal the lead from church rooves, or laptops from cars, or mobile phones from children. We compare ourselves to drug addicts who become so desperate for a fix that they will steal from their own families and friends. And we say, 'Thank goodness I'm not like them.'

And then, if we're not careful, we compare ourselves to people we think are just a bit roguish - scroungers, idlers, people who seem either to have no values or else very different values from ours, perhaps people who swear a lot, or drink a lot, or gamble recklessly, or whatever. And we say, 'Thank goodness I'm not like them.'

And, if we're not very careful, we compare ourselves to adulterers, and to people who live with a series of different partners, or who get divorced for what we consider are not very good reasons, or who have casual affairs, or whatever, and we say, 'Thank goodness I'm not like them.'

And finally, if we're not very, very careful, we can find ourselves looking down on someone, and treating them with contempt, just because of the job they do. 'He's never had a steady job, of course,' we might say of someone. Or, 'She doesn't have any skills.' Or, 'He's a plumber, but he's a Polish plumber.' And before we know where we are, we've become just like the bad man in the parable, the person who went down to his home feeling justified when, in fact, he was not justified at all.

Jesus told the story not to attack Pharisees, but to remind us all to be humble. If a Pharisee can get it wrong, he seems to be saying, anyone can get it wrong. Because here are a group of people trying so hard to be holy and yet missing the mark completely just by forgetting to be humble. If we are to avoid the same trap we have to repeat into the mirror each day, as we comb or hair or shave, that all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but everyone who humbles themselves will be exalted.

Fighting the Good Fight

2007-10-24T23:05:00.000+01:00

2 Timothy 4.6-8, 16-18
This passage purports to be Paul's farewell message to his protégé and successor Timothy. Like the three hundred brave soldiers from Sparta who defended Greece against a huge invading Persian army at Thermopylae, Paul senses that he is going to have to sacrifice his life for the cause. Whereas the Spartan soldiers died in the cause of Greek nationhood, to buy more time for the City of Athens to get ready to take up the fight, Paul is going to die in God's service, and for the sake of the Gospel. And just as the death of the Spartans and their king Leonidas was not really a defeat, but the beginning of the end for the Persian invaders, so Paul knows too that his death will not be the end of the struggle to bring Christianity to a disbelieving world. Generations of people since have been inspired by the Spartans' last stand, and similarly Timothy will be inspired by Paul's example. For, like the Spartan royal guard he has fought the good fight. Like an athlete, he has finished the marathon. And, like a true and steadfast believer, he has kept the faith. But he's not a special case. The writer recognises that countless other Christians will do the same and will share with Paul the crown of righteousness when they appear before the Son of Man on the Day of Judgement.

And yet Paul's final days have been tinged with loneliness and sorrow. At first, when he needed help, no one came to his support. Only the Lord Jesus stood beside him, to give him strength. He feels like Daniel, apparently all alone in the lion's den but actually not alone – for he Lord is with him to rescue him from the lion's mouth. But, when Paul thinks of being rescued – like Daniel – from every evil attack, he's not expecting to come through his final ordeal unscathed. He doesn't speak of being pardoned by the Emperor and sent on his way to Spain, where he had intended to go on proclaiming the Gospel after his visit to Rome. He speaks instead of being saved for God's heavenly kingdom.

What does this passage have to say to us? On a very practical level, as we approach Remembrance Sunday, we are reminded that life can demand very real sacrifices from some people. Whatever the merits of the war they're involved in, the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan find themselves confronting a ruthless and fanatical enemy inspired by a bloodthirsty perversion of Islam. If they do not fight the good fight and stay the course on our behalf, many moderate and peace-loving Muslim people in those countries will be let down and abandoned to their fate, and fanatical Muslims everywhere will feel encouraged. But if they continue to resist, in the face of bitter opposition, they will not only take more heavy casualties, they will also risk being painted as meddlers and invaders interfering in a culture and a faith to which they do not belong. It's an unenviable task and there seems to be no easy way out, no obvious way of being rescued from the lion's mouth.

For Christians there are parallels with our own personal life. The Lord stands alongside us in times of suffering, pain and hardship. He rescues us from evil attack, but that doesn't necessarily mean we shall be snatched from the jaws of death. Eventually we shall all have to be rescued and justified through death and in spite of it.

There are also parallels with church life. We are called to persevere even when times are hard, when we face vandalism and indifference, hostility and even persecution. When the going gets tough we are called to feats of endurance, for that is when the tough get going. Will we be rescued from the lion's mouth if we stand firm? Yes, but not necessarily to carry on with business as usual. Just as the Spartan soldiers had to lose their lives to save their nation, and just as Paul's life had to be poured out as an offering to God, maybe we have to be prepared to sacrifice some things, to let go of some things, in order to be reborn and find new life.

When I was a child I was fascinated by a book which my grandparents had about feats of derring-do in the Second World War. It was illustrated by colour plates depicting various heroic events, and one particularly gripped my imagination. It showed the last stand of HMS Rawalpindi, a lookout ship on patrol near Iceland in November 1939 to prevent German battleships from slipping into the Atlantic to attack allied convoys. Her crew encountered the German battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and were able to signal their presence to the British fleet. But, with no chance of escape, the captain and crew refused to surrender and the Rawlapindi was pounded to bits. The picture showed a sailor, up to his knees in water, firing a gun at the distant cruisers while a colleague sits holding his head in his hands. The caption read, 'Burning like a piece of paper, HMS Rawalpindi goes down fighting. It is the proud tradition of the Royal Navy that she never scuppers a ship.'

This story came to my mind once during a church meeting, when people started to talk gloomily about possible closure. I suggested that we shouldn't cut and run. While being realistic about what the future holds, we should be ready to fight the good fight and endure to the end. That church didn't close. It was reborn, in a new form, as a community centre shared with the nearby Anglican Church, and it is still running the race.

Reflecting on Next Week's Bible Passages

2007-10-06T21:51:00.000+01:00

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Jeremiah is writing to people who find themselves living as exiles in an alien land. They are not to give up hope. They are to assume that there is still a future both for them and for their faith. And they are no to try to attack or sabotage the society in which they now live, even though its values and culture are alien to them. Instead, they are to work for its welfare, because if it is a flourishing and successful society they will flourish and be successful too.

Many theologians and religious leaders have understood this to mean that Christians, and Jewish people, should not get involved in politics or in trying to challenge or change the society around them. Instead, they have concentrated on trying to build up and encourage the faithful. At best, they have seen the Church - or their faith community - as leaven in the lump, influencing what happens around them quietly and in almost imperceptible ways. At worst, they have left the rest of society to its own devices and have encouraged believers to draw their wagons into a tight circle in order to keep hostile people, or people who thought and behaved differently from them, safely on the outside.

But I don't think this is what Jeremiah means. He had, after all, been very involved in trying to change the hostile society around him when he was prophesying in Jerusalem, and even went to prison for his pains.

If we believe that God has shown us the right way to live, then seeking the welfare of the society around us means trying to change it for the better and influence the way people think and behave. This can happen on two levels - as we try to communicate what we believe and as we try to put our faith into action in daily life.

While, in normal circumstances, we should be law-abiding and not try to sabotage the way society is run, Jeremiah does not mean us to imagine that it is wrong to subvert and undermine any alien values - such as materialism and secularism - which shape our society at the present time. On the contrary, if we are really seeking the welfare of our society, what choice do we have but to seek to change and challenge everything that is wrong with it? And if we want the Church to flourish, how can this happen unless other people come to believe in the Gospel we proclaim and share its values with us?

Christians today often feel like a tiny beleaguered minority in an alien land or city. Jeremiah speaks to us in a way that perhaps he did not speak to earlier generations, giving us fresh reason to hope and keep steadfast.

How should we be seeking the welfare of our city, and our community, today?

2 Timothy 2:3-15
The passage from 2 Timothy begins with a series of rather gnomic observations taken from ordinary life - describing the outlook of a soldier, an athlete and a farmer. Greek-speaking people loved terse sayings like this and used them all the time as a way of helping them to remember important lessons from life. But the writer, perhaps Paul or a follower of his teaching, acknowledges that the meaning he wants the reader to extract from these sayings will only come to those who are prepared to reflect carefully and prayerfully about them.

That said, the saying about the soldier's life seems relatively straightforward. Christians mustn't be distracted by other agendas. Their job is to accept the suffering and self-denial which is an inevitable part of carrying your cross and following Jesus. Soldiers, too, accept that suffering and danger may be part of their lot, and in return the nation makes a covenant with them to take care of them, and their families, if they are hurt or killed. In the same way, God makes a covenant to keep faith with us if we are faithful to Jesus.

The saying about the athlete also seems reasonably easy to interpret. People who try to win by cheating are likely to be found out, just like the athletes who have been brought down - and have lost their medals, fame and sponsorship - by taking performance enhancing drugs. There is no shortcut to discipleship, no easy route that bypasses the way of the Cross. To imagine that there might be is to delude ourselves.

The last saying, about the farmer, is a little more tricky to understand. After all, Jesus said that the workers in the vineyard who had toiled all day, and done the lion's share of the work, wouldn't get a larger share of the proceeds just because some of their colleagues had come to the job late in the day and only put in a small amount of effort. He also said that the first would be last, and the last would be first.

So what does it mean, in the context of the Christian Gospel, to say that the farmer who does the work ought to have the first share of the crops? Only, I think, that while we can never earn God's grace, and while it is also true that grace is freely given to all who ask for it, something is expected of us in return for what we have received. It is those who, in response to his love for them, are prepared to die for Christ who will live with him. It is those who are willing to endure hardship for his sake who will share his glory. It is those who keep faith with Jesus who will find that he keeps faith with them.

This is somewhat controversial, not least because it seems to be at odds with Paul's earlier teaching, in his letter to the Romans, where he says that we are justified by faith alone and not by anything we do ourselves. Is the writer of the letters to Timothy a follower of Paul who wants to modify that teaching, or is it Paul himself who is modifying it because some people have taken it to extremes?

This is what he had to do elsewhere in his letters when he was responding to Christians who mistakenly thought he had been teaching that we can go on doing wrong, even after we become followers of Jesus. These misguided interpreters of his teaching thought he was saying that God's love revealed in Jesus means we will always be forgiven, no matter how badly we behave. 'God forbid!' was Paul's horrified reply.

Whoever wrote 2 Timothy, the author is in no doubt that we do need to be approved by God. We cannot make ourselves holy or righteous. But, at the same time, only those who were prepared to work for the Gospel, and who need not be ashamed that they let Jesus down, can expect to be approved. To argue for any other interpretation of the Christian faith is just playing with words, in the writer's opinion, and leads to spiritual ruin.

This is a very rigorous understanding of what it means to be a Christian - the sort that often becomes popular during times of persecution or when Christians find themselves in a tiny minority? Is it something we feel comfortable with, or do we find it easier to believe that faith is the only thing necessary for Christians to be put right with God?

Is there any overlap here with what Jeremiah was saying in his letter to the exiles in Babylon, who also needed to remain steadfast in hard times, but who were encouraged to continue trusting in God?

Luke 17:11-19
This isn't a story about the importance of good manners. The grateful man with leprosy didn't just return to say 'thank you', he came back to praise God and because he had faith in Jesus.

The others took their healing for granted, but perhaps they still praised God in their own way. The difference is that they didn't see Jesus' intervention as decisive. Their healing was a life changing event, because it meant they no longer needed to live as outcasts from society, but it didn't change the way they looked at life.

This bring us to the meaning of the phrase, 'Your faith has made you well.' It's not just about physical healing. The word used by Luke to translate what Jesus said means 'to be made whole' or even 'to be saved'. The man's faith changed his life around completely, whereas the other nine lepers were only healed of one disease.

Sharing in God's Harvest - Reflecting on Next Week's Bible Readings

2007-09-30T19:57:00.000+01:00

Luke 17.5-10

There is little doubt that these two sayings started their life separate from one another. We can infer this because Matthew's Gospel has an almost identical saying, about a mountain rather than a mulberry bush, but it isn't linked to the saying about slavery, which is unique to Luke's Gospel. This means we are entitled to consider each of the sayings in isolation, to see what it might have to say to us today. But we may also wish to consider why Luke has chosen to link them. How did he expect them to work together?

The first saying is about the huge potential of faith. If we only have microscopic faith, the world can still be our oyster. In today's Observer newspaper there is an article about the peaceful revolution which toppled the communist regime in East Germany in 1989. The author, Henry Porter, reminds us that it all began with prayer vigils outside a Lutheran church in Leipzig. By the time that 400,000 people were attending each vigil the game was up for the regime and it collapsed.

Henry Porter goes on, as you can probably imagine, to compare the events in East Germany in 1989 to the resistance of the Buddhist monks to the Burmese junta today. It is a similar example of faithfulness and courage even if - so far - it has not met with the same success. History proves, however, that faith can and does move both mountains and mulberry trees.

Today people often say that there's nothing we can do to avert global warming. I'm sure you've heard the arguments. Anything we do, even as a nation, to reduce carbon emissions will be more than offset by the continued growth of carbon emissions in India and China, so why bother trying to make a difference? But as Graham Kendrick said at a concert I attended in Harrogate a week ago, it's a big lie to say that we, as individuals, can't change the world we live in. If everyone takes the same negative attitude then, of course, nothing will change and the crisis will simply get worse and worse. But the sooner that tens of millions of people start working hand in hand to reduce the impact of global warming and take care of our planet, the sooner China and India will agree to take part in the process.

And if we can change the world, then surely we can change the community in which we live too. We may be few in number, but we can still make a small difference through the community projects we nurture and support and. above all, through our prayers and faithful example. A bad example won't change the world for the better, of course, but think of the harvest which a good example can yield - in our families, and among our colleagues, friends and neighbours. I'm not necessarily talking about adding to the size of our congregation. I'm talking about influencing the sum of human goodwill and spiritual growth simply by who we are and how we choose to live. It's good to give thanks for the harvest of the land and the harvest of industry, but we should never forget to give thanks for the mighty spiritual harvest which can grow from tiny acorns of faithful witness.

This saying is often seen as a critique of the disciples. If only they had faith as big as a mustard seed they could uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the ocean. But actually it's not a criticism, it's a word of encouragement. The disciples have asked for more faith, and Jesus' response is, 'You don't need more faith! You already have enough!' For it only takes a little bit of faith to make a world of difference.

By linking this saying with the one about slavery, Luke makes a further point. There is nothing extraordinary about changing the world. It is just what disciples do. As slaves would think nothing of plowing and tending the sheep before coming home to prepare their master's dinner and wait at table, so striving to change the world is simply what we ought to be spending our lives doing. It's not a bonus, on top of believing and worshipping, it's a must. It's part and parcel of what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Is this different from what the saying might mean if it stood on its own? Well, not really. Except that, when it stands alone, the focus of the saying becomes not what we do to serve Jesus, but the very fact of serving. The calling of the disciple of Jesus is to devote ourselves to doing the will of God, night and day - and serving is its own reward. We are to expect no kudos for obeying our calling, no medals, no special recognition. It is supposed to be enough for us to know that we have served the cause, for we are basically worthless when compared to our master and so it is an honour to be able to contribute anything at all to God's Kingdom, however small and insignificant the change might seem.

So harvest time is not just a time to thank you to God for all that we have received. It's also a chance to thank God for the tremendous privilege of being allowed to be in partnership with him. Let's praise God that we can share in the work of building a better world and pray for the strength to continue doing our little bit. And let us consider what Jesus is calling us to do in our community, and our world, today.

Our Calling - Reflecting on Next Week's Bible Readings

2007-09-27T23:10:00.000+01:00

2 Timothy 1:1-14

This passage is a spirited challenge to be faithful to our calling as disciples of Jesus Christ. It could be interpreted just as a message of encouragement for church leaders, an ordination sermon almost, but in the earlier letters of Paul it is made very clear that mission is part of the calling of every Christian. So either this passage is a development of Paul's original ideas, by later theologians who saw a need to set apart leaders for the Church to guide and sustain it, or else - in prison and facing imminent death - Paul has begun thinking about the need to appoint Timothy as his successor and to ensure sound teaching in the Church. In either case, it is legitimate to see the message as applicable to every Christian, even if it has a special resonance for ministers.

The gift of God is within each one of us, as we are reminded at our baptism and confirmation. It is a spirit of love and self-discipline, empowering us to do God's mission, not relying on our own achievements and ability but upon the strength and energy that God will supply. There is no room, in the Church which Paul envisages here, for shrinking violets - for people who are afraid or ashamed to share their faith and to work for change in the world. This is because God's purpose for the Church is to transform the world around us.

Grace, which Paul talks about a great deal in this passage, means the undeserved gifting of God, bestowed on those who have faith in Jesus Christ and are willing to share in his suffering in order to share also in his transforming and life-giving power. This was unleashed by his death on the Cross. If we put our trust in him, he will take care of us. But that doesn't mean he will protect us from suffering and hardship. The Church is no place for cowardice. Instead we need to be resolute to follow the crucified Christ.

Weeping for the City - Reflecting on Next Week's Bible Readings

2007-09-27T22:26:00.000+01:00

Lamentations 1:1-6

The city of Jerusalem, which the people of Judah had always believed was a special, holy place and the centre of the created order, had been ransacked by her enemies. Former allies had turned against her. Many of her citizens had been deported to do hard labour. The Temple was a ruin and no one came to the City on pilgrimage any more. Her leaders were in hiding or had been brought to bay, but the prophet believed that the suffering of Jerusalem was well deserved. People had been complacent and disobedient.

What message does this passage have for us? Sheffield was once a mighty engine of the industrial revolution. Now large tracts of its former industrial heartland are desolate where once they were full of people. But Sheffield has also experienced a revival and many parts of the City never lost theirprosperity . It wouldn't be true to say that her gates are in ruins, or that no one comes to visit Sheffield any more. On the contrary, there are ambitious plans to create new and more impressive gateways to the City - striking buildings which will impress the visitors and commuters who stream in each day, and the City has a large region of influence around it. What a pity then that there is still a widening gap between the most prosperous and the most disadvantaged parts of the City. Some of the residents of Sheffield still have cause to mourn, and this should be put right.

SET ALL FREE

2007-09-23T16:51:00.000+01:00

What does 'slavery' mean? It means treating people as objects or 'depersonalising' them. It means being devalued. It means having your freedom restricted. It means lack of control over, or lack of ownership of, what you do. It means not being properly rewarded for your labour. It means being powerless. It means having no choices. And it means being made a victim of domination by someone else.

When we describe 'slavery' in these terms we can see that it is still very much alive. Modern examples of slavery include the exploitation of migrant labourers, especially illegal migrants like the Morecombe Bay cockle-pickers; people trafficking and the international sex trade; unregulated child labour; and many forms of domestic abuse. People are still bought and sold, even in this country. They are still treated as objects. Their freedom is taken away. They are not properly rewarded for their work and they find themselves powerless and being dominated by unscrupulous masters of various kinds.

So what did Jesus have to say about slavery? He said that we should not be the sort of people who lord it over one another. Instead, he said that he had come to proclaim release for the captives and to set the downtrodden free. He said that we should love one another as he has first loved us. But he also called us to the way of radical obedience to God, which the New Testament often likes to slavery, and - like him - we are called to carry a cross, even though crucifixion was the fate of slaves and the criminal underclass. Above all, we are called to serve and not to be served, in imitation of the one who washed his own disciples' feet, for in God's new order the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

All of this means that we need to place ourselves in the forefront of the struggle against dehumanising and oppressive practices, whatever form they take, making amends for the shameful past of the Christian Church - stretching back to New Testament times - when slavery was not only condoned but even approved of and practised by the followers of Christ. We must not forget that the Bible was used to defend, as well as to oppose, slavery and so we must always be on our guard against its future misuse to justify wrongdoing.

Finally, we can find out about the British slave trade and those who campaigned against it, including John Wesley who wrote a pamphlet against the slave trade which is still available on-line, (see the link on this page to resources about Methodist history). It is one of his most accessible works for modern readers and contains many arguments - for and against oppression - which are still being rehearsed today.

For a firsthand account of the British slave trade we can read Olaudah Equiano's "Interesting Narrative", a bestseller in its day and still in print under the "Penguin Classics" imprint. To see extracts from the book and to read a short account of his life, visit http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/. Olaudah Equiano is pictured at the top of this post.

How did slavery affect our city and our ancestors, and how is it still affecting us now?

(Based on a workshop led by Inderjit Bhogal at this month's Methodist Synod)

Closing The Gap - Reflecting on This Week's Bible Readings

2007-09-23T16:07:00.001+01:00

Luke 16:19-31
Some Christians have taken the teaching of people like Jeremiah and turned it into a 'prosperity doctrine', arguing that if we put our trust in God we will prosper. There is no doubt that Jeremiah did believe something like this, but he wasn't thinking of individual prosperity. His argument was that nations and communities will prosper when they put their trust in God.

In the same vein, the writer of the letters to Timothy explains that, for individual Christians, trusting God means sitting light to our own material possessions and making do with just enough to be content; any surplus should be given away to those in greater need. Thus, in a society made up entirely of believers, no one would strive to be more prosperous than their neighbours and prosperity would, in fact, be shared.

This is not an argument against enterprise, but it is an argument against the idea that the driving force behind enterprise must always be personal gain. The Bible envisages a society in which people will find enterprising solutions to the world's problems not just to make themselves more prosperous but in order to benefit everyone.

There was an example of this on the radio last week. A man has invented a new and cheaper way of purifying water, so that it is safe to drink after a natural disaster or in a war zone. He didn't want to make a huge profit from his invention, he explained. It's already much cheaper than alternative ways of providing pure water to drink in disaster zones but, so long as he could sell enough units to reduce the cost of production and recoup his original investment, he said that he would be happy to reduce the price still further.

He sounded genuine. But, if we're striving after a godly economy, there's an ever better way of doing enterprise. It's called 'social enterprise', where the rewards don't go to the individual entrepreneurs but are reinvested for the benefit of everyone, workers and clients alike. Of course, in a world like ours, where profit is king, it's not a very attractive way of doing business. Entrepreneurs find it hard to understand why they should make the effort of being enterprising unless they are going to benefit themselves.

That's the mindset of the rich man in Luke's story. He doesn't care about closing the gap between himself and the poor man at his gate. He's a devotee of the Prosperity Doctrine, by which I mean that the rich man thinks they have both got what they deserve. Until, that is, their roles are reversed and the gap separating them becomes a great chasm, with burning fire on the side where the rich man now finds himself. Then he wishes that he had listened to the teachings of the prophets about creating a more just society!

How can we close the gap between rich and poor today - in our world and, closer to home, in our city?

What Really Matters - Reflecting on This Week's Bible Readings

2007-09-23T08:31:00.001+01:00

1 Timothy 6.6-19
Jeremiah is happy to assert that there is a link between trust in God and material well-being. He encourages us to trust that God is working for social justice and for an end to oppression. In the world order that God will one day establish, land will be bought and sold freely, and people will get a fair wage for the work that they do.

The writer of the letters to Timothy is not so convinced. When he talks about trusting God for the future, he's not thinking about the promise of heaven on earth but of a pure spiritual union with God beyond this life. To him, therefore, worldly wealth is at best irrelevant, and at worst a distraction from what really matters. So he argues that we should only worry about having enough material wealth to be content.

In saying this, I think he is being true to the teaching of Jesus, who said that we should imitate the wildflowers and the wild birds, which do not worry about tomorrow or about doing better for themselves, but simply are what they are, as God intended them to be. In contrast, the eagerness to make ourselves better off is the root of all evil.

People have sometimes misunderstood the writer. They have thought that money itself is the root of all evil, forgetting that he says it is the love of money which is wrong. Instead of setting their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, wealthy people are to use their money to do good works, being generous and ready to share. This is how we can really store up treasure for ourselves, in a place where neither moth nor rust can destroy it, and thus ensure that we are laying a good foundation for our future. For it is our spiritual life that is the most real thing about our existence, not our material well-being.

However, despite the difference in emphasis this is not in conflict with Jeremiah's teaching about social justice. The writer of these letters does say that by sitting light to worldly prosperity, and sharing what we don't need, we are keeping the commandment of Jesus to love one another as much as we love ourselves.

Never Give Up Hope - Reflecting on This Week's Bible Readings

2007-09-22T21:34:00.000+01:00

Jeremiah 32:1-15
The other day I heard people talking on the radio about buying-to-let, the practice of buying a portfolio of two or three bedroom houses and renting them out to tenants, either as a way of making a living or as an alternative to saving for a pension. Buying-to-let has been very popular in recent years and has been blamed for driving up the price of small houses. But the popularity of buy-to-let depended on low interest rates and on mortgages being easy to obtain.

The landlords who were being interviewed on the radio were finding it tough in today's housing market. One person had three properties which they wanted to buy, but no one would lend them the money. Another person had a portfolio of thirty properties. Was he making any money? he was asked. 'No,' he said. He wasn't even covering the cost of his mortgages. And would he do it again if he were starting from scratch? No, he wouldn't.

Jeremiah's action, in buying his cousin's field, is a bit like someone going out now and buying thirty buy-to-lets. It's a gesture of faith in the future.

The field he buys is behind enemy lines. Doubtless his cousin needed to sell in order to feed his family, who had taken refuge with him in the besieged city. It was Jeremiah's duty to redeem the field – that is to keep it in the family, if he could – by purchasing it from his cousin.

A lot of people would have said, however, that the middle of a desperate siege is no time to be squandering money on land, even if you do have a sacred duty to look after it. And Jeremiah was certain that the tiny kingdom of Judah was about to be conquered by the mighty army of Babylon. Nonetheless, God tells Jeremiah that he should not only purchase the land, but keep the title deeds safe and secure because – one day – land will be bought and sold in Israel again.

What are the things which make us anxious about the future? Jeremiah is proverbial for being someone who always assumed the worst, but here his message is exactly the opposite of doom and gloom. He says things can never get so desperate that we should lose our trust in God.

God's View Point on Disaster

2007-09-18T21:49:00.000+01:00

Jeremiah 8.18-9.1
Jeremiah's lament is a reminder that Christians don't have to be relentlessly cheerful. He looks around for good news and can't find any. The harvest is over, but it has not been a good one. The people are hurting, but there is no one to heal them. They have made mistakes, and their errors are coming back to haunt them, a bit like the managers and directors of Northern Rock who gambled on an endless supply of cheap money and were caught out when times suddenly changed.

Unlike the people who have queued up not just to withdraw their deposits, but to point the finger of blame, Jeremiah chooses not to accuse anyone or rub salt in open wounds. He gets alongside the people in their suffering and mourns with them.

But, of course, it's not just Jeremiah who laments with those who have been bereaved, and mourns those who have died. For Jeremiah is reporting God's view point on disaster. Even when we are responsible for our own downfall, God chooses not to blame us but to share our pain. And the final proof of this is Jesus' death for us on the Cross.

WHAT WE ARE ABOUT

2007-09-16T09:41:00.000+01:00

COMMUNICATION – listening to others and sharing with them where we are coming from: our prayers, our beliefs, our hopes and fears, and ultimately our trust in God.

FOLLOWING JESUS – having a vision of what it means to follow Jesus today, learning from him and putting what we have learned into practice. Christians sometimes call this 'discipleship'. (A 'disciple' isn't just a lifelong learner, but a person who is willing to ask themselves challenging questions which might lead them to try and learn more but might lead them to do something instead.)

LOOKING AFTER THE PEOPLE WHO COME TO US – building networks of care and support in the community and in the 'church family', (which means all of the people who are part of our project). Christians call this 'pastoral care'.

WHY CARE?
“We love because God first loved us.” (1 John 4.7)

God's love enters the world though creation, through Jesus and through the sustaining work of the Holy Spirit. Human beings are called to mirror that love and to express it in our own active caring for the world and for one another. This is the only adequate response to God's love for us. It means we can't just allow life to wash over us; we have to make choices about how to live. It means trying to make a difference – in the Christian community where we gather to share with other believers, in the wider community where we live or work, and in the whole world.

WHAT IS OUR “OFFER” TO OTHER PEOPLE?
In a “healthy” church people know they are loved, newcomers and visitors feel welcomed, everyone feels safe, and everyone can get involved. A healthy Christian community has an impact on the local neighbourhood because of the quality of relationships within the church and its response to the needs of local people. A healthy church offers something different from other community groups, which has a spiritual heart. It prays for people. It supports community development and action to find just ways of overcoming disadvantage. It draws people into the circle of God's love.

QUESTIONS TO THINK ABOUT
Is pastoral care being done in a way that is relevant to how things are now, or is it being done the way it has always been done?
If we listen to another person – their words and their silences – can we create a space for them to exist in, and for God to enter their existence?

(Based on presentations to last week's Synod by Jonathan Kerry & Michaela Youngson)

Jesus Surf Classic - Reflecting on this Week's Bible Readings

2007-09-10T11:17:00.000+01:00

Luke 15.1-10
It's easy to lose track of what this parable is really all about, and get bogged down in descriptions of shepherds and how they herd their flocks in Palestine by leading the way for them across the wilderness. But it's really not about sheep and shepherding. That's just an illustration of the underlying point which Jesus wants to make. He is aware of all of the people, then and now, who are disconnected from God. We can forget about them, and decide that they're simply not meant to get it together with God. Alternatively, we can hope that somehow they will find their way to God, stumbling upon the truth either by accident or by divine providence. Or we can actively go in search of them, which is what mission is all about.

Jesus is an activist. he would surely approve of this week's "Jesus Surf Classic" events in Devon and Cornwall, where some of the world's best Christian surfers are gathering to compete. Pippa Renyard, a member of one of the five Cornish branches of Christian Surfers UK, is reported in The Guardian as saying: "Surfers tend to be a group who don't necessarily connect with a dusty old building like a church. But God is not about a building. He is about a community. We don't try to ram it down people's throats but if they are interested they can talk about God with us and hopefully join the group."

Apparently, some traditional churches remain uninterested or suspicious, though not the Methodist Church in Polzeath, which has turned itself into a centre for Christian surfers and replaced some of the pews with a skateboarding ramp. What are we being called to do to rescue people disconnected from God in our community?

A Word in Time - the online bible study for daily life

2007-09-01T16:26:00.000+01:00

As daily life gets more and more hectic, many find it difficult to make time for the spiritual side of life. Now they can simply log on to www.methodist. org.uk/bible from wherever they happen to be and access A Word in Time, the Methodist Church's new online daily Bible study.

Launching Sunday September 2 as part of the new-look Methodist website, A Word in Time will feature a daily Bible reading, background on the text, reflections and questions to ponder from that week's contributor. It follows the readings in the Methodist Prayer Handbook, All things in Christ, bringing the 40,000 readers of the handbook together with online disciples in their search for daily spirituality. Sundays will be extra special, with a blog attached to the commentary, enabling users to post their own comments and thoughts on the featured passage.

Alison Pollard, Web Writer, says; "the Bible is a central part of our faith, but with our hectic 21st century lifestyles, it's often easy to neglect this essential part of our Christianity. With this exciting new online feature, we are trying to encourage the reader to apply the Bible to their own life and the social and political context in which they live."

Reflecting on The Bible Sunday 9 September

2007-09-01T15:23:00.000+01:00

Jeremiah 18.1-11
Last week I heard about plans to launch a spaceship to probe a far distant asteroid. If it was launched in 2012, the spaceship would not reach its destination until 2019. But although the asteroid is far away now there is a very real chance that it will hit the earth in 2036, causing such a devastating explosion that all life will immediately be wiped out. Should we be worrying about this? The chances that we really are on a collision course with the asteroid are not very great - it may pass close by, but without actually hitting us. However, the impact of a collision would be so terrible that even a tiny risk is worth taking seriously. And it's not too late to change the cause of history, even if a collision seems inevitable . The scientists behind the plan have explained that if we take action soon enough, just bumping a one tonne spaceship into the asteroid would be enough to change its course and save our planet. The mission being planned at the moment isn't designed to do that, however. It would just be a fact-finding visit to take measurements and calculate how close to us the asteroid is really going to come.

Jeremiah has something similar in mind when he prophecies about the consequences of evil. Just as surely as an asteroid plunging towards earth, or a snowballing rolling down a mountainside and gathering yet more snow as it goes, the growing impact of evil can have devastating consequences for the life of a nation - and even for the life of an entire planet. But all is not lost. Jeremiah advises that if the nation turns from its evil ways, disaster can still be averted. And the sooner the nation amends its ways, the easier it will be to put things right with God.

The way Jeremiah talks about God, as if he were constantly planning to pluck up, break down and destroy nations, could make him sound vindictive and cruel. But this is not Jeremiah's meaning at all. Jeremiah means us to understand that, because God is holy, he simply cannot work with the wrong kind of material. If nations persist in doing evil God has no alternative but to abandon the project to help them, and start all over again with new material instead.

These thoughts come to Jeremiah after watching a potter at work. The potter skillfully works the clay but sometimes, despite the potter's skill and persistence, some small imperfection in the clay, or a slight change in the way the pot is shaping up on the wheel, mean that it becomes impossible to go on working on that particular piece and the potter has to give up, roll the clay back into a ball or lump, and start over again. And he wonders, could it be that God will have to do the same with wicked and disobedient nations?

Are we on a collision course with God's judgement in our country today and, if we are, what steps could we take to begin to avert disaster?

Philemon 1-21
Paul begins his short letter to Philemon with some sincere flattery. He has received much joy and encouragement through Philemon's love and support and he wants to appeal to this friendship in order to ask a favour from Philemon on behalf of a man called Onesimus , one of Philemon's slaves who seems to have done something that has left Philemon seriously out of pocket. Paul offers to pay back all of Onesimus ' debts, although there are strong hints that Philemon already owes Paul such a great debt himself that he ought not to take up the offer. Paul also hints that Philemon ought really to release Onesimus from slavery. And even if that seems like a step too far, he must - from now on - treat Onesimus as his brother in Christ, because Onesimus has become a Christian during his time with Paul.

In the middle of the letter there is a play on words. Onesimus sounds like the Greek word for someone "useful", but Onesimus has a reputation for being useless. Now that he has discovered faith in Jesus Christ, Paul says he is no longer useless and in fact has been extremely useful to Paul. There is a suggestion, too, that he could be more useful to Philemon as a friend and brother in Christ than he ever was as a slave.

The letter reveals how difficult it was for the early Church to deal with the issue of slavery. Paul says openly that - as the founder of Philemon's church and his spiritual counsellor - he could have ordered him to forgive Onesimus and set him free. But that would be politically unacceptable, so he asks for a favour instead. However, he doesn't hesitate to make clear - as he also does elsewhere - that in the Church all people have to be treated as equals, regardless of their status, their age, their race, their gender, or the way that the rest of the world treats them.

Although we have long ago got rid of institutional slavery, this letter still challenges us. A new film is about to be released, about a gang-master who employs Polish immigrants to work in the UK. It reminds us that people are still being exploited and that money is still getting in the way of the kind of relationships which God wants us to have with one another. What can we do today to change this?

Luke 14.25-33
This is a very challenging and difficult passage. Jesus urges his listeners to think carefully about the demands of being one of his followers. There is no point in embarking on the journey if we are not prepared for a radical rethink of our values and the way we live.

Jesus doesn't usually explain his stories, preferring to leave it to the listeners to draw their own conclusions, so it may be Luke who has added the concluding words of explanation, 'Therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.' If anything, Jesus has suggested an even stronger level of commitment. His followers must be prepared to give up not only their possessions but also their lives for his sake.

It's the sort of sentiment which is normally considered to be extremist rather than mainstream, and by the time that Paul was writing to Philemon it was already being ignored or reinterpreted. Philemon seems happy to be a Christian who owns slaves, let alone other possessions, and Paul scarcely dares to rebuke him - though he does hint that owning slaves and caring about possessions both fall short of the ideal way for Christians to live.

Does this mean that we can treat today's passage from Luke's Gospel as exaggeration, designed to make the saying more memorable? Elsewhere Jesus often seems to use exaggeration for the sake of emphasis, but in this case I think we have to take the saying at face value. He himself turned his back on his mother, brothers and sisters in order to pursue God's mission. He gave up all of his possessions and, finally, he carried a cross and turned his back on life itself. To be his followers, we have to be prepared to do the same.

In what circumstances might we be called upon to turn our backs on family commitments in order to do God's will? Are there any times when this wouldn't be appropriate? What about the commandment to honour our fathers and mothers?

How would we manage to live without any possessions at all? And if it wouldn't be practical for all Christians to give up their possessions, when might we be called upon to do it?

What would it mean for us to carry a cross and turn our backs on life itself? What things do we need to give up - as individuals and as a church - in order to pursue God's mission where we live and work?

Reflecting on The Bible Sunday 2 September

2007-08-30T14:48:00.000+01:00

(You can read the Bible passages by clicking on the link to the on-line Bible browser lower down the page.)

Jeremiah 2.4-13
This passage has two abiding issues at its core. The first is faithlessness - the refusal to believe in God or in permanent values. Residual belief in God remains high in our culture, with many people retaining a soft spot for God although they never get involved in any organised religion, but there are a lot of faithless people who have deliberately turned their backs on religion and spirituality. They have created alternative belief systems for themselves. Can we hope to convince them that these do not hold water? Probably not.

The second abiding issue is people who change their value systems or their goals for something that does not profit. For much of the last two centuries, many people in the West believed in the idea of progress - that human society, and individual life was steadily getting better. There has indeed been much material progress in the West during that time. Life expectancy is much greater than ever before and most of us live surrounded by an array of gadgets and labour-saving devices that would have amazed our ancestors. But are we happier than people used to be?

Two world wars helped to undermine confidence in the idea of progress. Today's news headlines can only further dampen any remaining optimism. We live in a society which is more hectic, more selfish and self-centered, and more unsure of itself.

When Harold Macmillan told the British people that they 'had never had it so good' people were actually a lot less well off, on average,than they are now. But statistics show that they felt more happy and satisfied with their lot. Have we exchanged the things which made us happy for things that do not really profit us? If so, what have we lost or left behind?

Hebrews 13.1-8. 15-16
The writer of Hebrews develops the theme explored by Jeremiah. But where Jeremiah is negative, bemoaning what we have lost by becoming faithless, the writer of Hebrews is positive. He celebrates the benefits and responsibilities of mutual love. He advises us to be content with our lot and not to strive for greater prosperity or a better lifestyle because what really matters is that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, and he will never leave us nor forsake us. But warm feelings are not enough. Love has to be expressed through real concern for other people, including prayer and action on their behalf. This - not empty praises - is what really pleases God.

What are the things we need to do to share God's love in our community, our City and our world?

Luke 14.1-14
The Gospel passage for this Sunday reinforces the same message about what really matters. We must beware of status-seeking. It is a trap, because the people who really matter to God are the humble, the poor and the disabled. To these we could add anyone who is left on the margins of society and overlooked in the scramble to get on. Who might be added to the list in our society today?