Resources for Lent and Holy Week

This year the Ministry Team in the Wickford and Runwell Team Ministry have once again written our own Lent Course, a five week course looking at journeys in the Bible.

The Bible is full of journeys made by people guided by God. Some are shorter and some are longer. All are transformational. Life is often thought of as a journey. There are high points and low points, paths where we travel swiftly and paths where we feel bogged down, there are some times when we feel like we have come to a dead end and some times when the future ahead looks far away. In this course we look at five particular biblical journeys and think about how the people involved might have felt, and what responses they evoke in us when we hear them. Do they remind us of our own journeys with God? Week 1: Abraham’s wanderings Week 2: The Exodus Week 3: Ruth and Naomi Week 4: Jesus journey to Jerusalem (based on St Luke’s gospel) Week 5: Paul’s missionary journeys (based on Acts) 

These sessions will be offered on Tuesday evening and Thursday afternoon and evening, depending on numbers, starting the week of 10th March. 

Mark of the Cross and The Passion are collections of images, meditations and prayers by Henry Shelton and myself on The Stations of the Cross. They provide helpful reflections and resources for Lent and Holy Week. These collections can both be found as downloads from theworshipcloud.

Mark of the Cross is a book of 20 poetic meditations on Christ’s journey to the cross and reactions to his resurrection and ascension. The meditations are complemented by a set of semi-abstract watercolours of the Stations of the Cross and the Resurrection created by Henry Shelton.

The Passion: Reflections and Prayers features minimal images with haiku-like poems and prayers that enable us to follow Jesus on his journey to the cross reflecting both on the significance and the pain of that journey as we do so. Henry and I have aimed in these reflections to pare down the images and words to their emotional and theological core. The mark making and imagery is minimal but, we hope, in a way that makes maximum impact.

Jesus dies on the cross

The sun is eclipsed, early nightfall,
darkness covers the surface of the deep,
the Spirit grieves over the waters.
On the formless, empty earth, God is dead.

Through the death of all we hold most dear, may we find life. Amen.

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Julie Miller - How Could You Say No.

 

Receiving blessing to be a blessing

Here's the reflection I shared during Evensong at St Catherine's Wickford today:

Instead of starting at the very beginning, a very good place to start this sermon is with the ending of our service. The prayer of blessing at the end of this service aims to ‘crystallize all that has gone before’ in this service and ‘focus it into a commissioning for all we shall set our hand to once we depart.’ It sends us out to be a blessing to others by making ‘the whole world a Eucharist.’ Being a blessing is what I’d like to explore briefly with you this evening.

We come to be blessed in order that we become a blessing to others. That is the pattern in today’s Old Testament reading (Genesis 12.1-4a) where we read of God saying to Abraham, ‘I will bless you … so that you will be a blessing … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

We might wonder how one person can become a blessing to all the families of the earth? The answer is, in the same way as Jesus did through the Last Supper. Abraham set out on a journey to the Promised Land which formed the people of God, who were called into being to be a blessing to other nations. In so doing, he gave all who follow after him a path to follow, a story to inhabit, a people to which to belong and a mission to which they are called. The people of Israel followed that path and inhabited that story when they left slavery in Egypt to journey through the wilderness to enter the Promised Land and established themselves there so that, when Solomon was on the throne, other nations came to learn the wisdom of God. Jesus followed that path and inhabited that story when he walked through the valley of the shadow of death to set a banqueting table for all peoples in the mansions of heaven. We become a blessing to others when we take that same story and experience of belonging out with us from church into our daily lives by seeking to make the whole world a Eucharist.

Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields has said that: ‘The mission statement of the church is to make the world a Eucharist. So faithful service means practices that look like worship—those that gather people and form them as one body, that reconcile and open lives to repentance and forgiveness, that proclaim truth and reveal God’s story, that embrace need and unleash gifts, that express thanks and are open to the Holy Spirit, that share food and wash feet.’ ‘It means extending God’s invitation to all, bringing all to repentance and joining in creation’s praise. It means proclaiming the truth of God through the history of the world and the dynamics of the universe and sharing discernment within the silence of God. It means articulating human need and enabling reconciliation. It means restoring a good relationship between humanity and its ecological home, stirring the heart, setting about work in a spirit of thanksgiving, discovering power under the authority of the Spirit, confronting evil with confidence in the sovereignty of God and sharing in the generous economy of God so that nothing is wasted. Thus all the practices of worship become the habits of discipleship.’

Tom Wright says that, ‘Blessing is not primarily about what God promises to do to someone. It is primarily about what God is going to do through someone ... Blessed are the meek, [Jesus says,] for they will inherit the earth: in other words, when God wants to sort out the world, to put it to rights once and for all, he doesn’t send in the tanks, as people often think he should. He sends in the meek; and by the time the high and mighty realise what’s happening, the meek, because they are thinking about people other than themselves, have built hospitals, founded leper colonies, looked after the orphans and widows, and, not least, founded schools, colleges and universities, to supply the world with wise leaders.

What is God going to do through you? How might you be a blessing to others? It’s not a done deal! The people of Israel had to be exiled from the Promised Land before they returned to their vocation to bless others. God came into the world as a human being because humanity was oppressing, rather than blessing, others. Around our world too many nations are building walls and creating hostile environments instead of blessing others. So, we desperately need churches that will be the catalysts preparing us to be a blessing to others; and worship is the crucible in which such change begins. As St Augustine wrote: 'You are the Body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken. You are to be blessed, broken and distributed, that you may be the means of grace and vehicles of eternal love'; that you may be a blessing.

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Carmel - God Put Your Hand On Me.

You'll never walk alone

Here's the reflection I shared this morning at St Andrew's Wickford:

You’ll Never Walk Alone, along with other songs from musicals, has been included as a hymn in the BBC’s hymn book. Ian Barclay commenting on this in The Guardian wrote that the Songs of Praise programme producers had come to realise that secular songs from shows have taken on some on the status of folk hymns, addressing the spiritual and pastoral needs of many people. Taken out of its context in Carousel, where it is sung by a dead father who has returned to life for one day to the daughter he never knew, it can be sung as a statement of belief that, as Psalm 23 states, God will be with us as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death or through the storms of life.

"When you walk through the storm
Hold your head up high
And don't be afraid of the dark
At the end of the storm
There's a golden sky
And the sweet silver song of the lark

Walk on, through the wind
Walk on, through the rain
Though your dreams be tossed and blown
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone
You'll never walk alone"

Our two readings today (Genesis 21.5, 8-20 & Matthew 8: 28 – end) speak about two storms and the different ways in which God is with people in those storms. The storm in the story of the two men in Gadara is not external but internal. Many of us experience periods of mental ill health when we feel overwhelmed by feelings and emotions, fears and anxieties which rage inside and threaten to overwhelm us. For some of us, the storm of those emotions becomes a more permanent feature of our lives and begins to affect the way in which we relate to others and the extent to which we are able to participate in society. For some, too, the things we use initially to bring some relief from those emotions – drink, drugs, sex, violence – also end up controlling our reactions and responses and ultimately change who we are as people. The two men in this story seem to have been experiencing that kind of internal storm.

The storm for Hagar is firstly an experience of rejection, as Abraham sends her and her son Ishmael away from the family and secondly of wilderness, as the two of them wander in the desert with no help and increasingly little chance of survival.

But in both stories God was there in the storm. The men in Gadara are released from their internal storms, while Ishmael and Hagar find water and a new place to live. God goes with us through the storms of life until we find ourselves on the other side. That is the promise of You’ll never walk alone and of Psalm 23; even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil, for God is with us; his rod and your staff, they comfort us.

God can release the internal storm from with us. In times of crisis and distress we often keep our emotions bottled up inside us until eventually they explode in anger and violence. God can be the escape valve, the person that we can always turn to, the one who is always there to listen and with whom we can pour out all those pent-up emotions releasing the storm within.

God can be the one who leads to refreshment and new possibilities when it seems as though everything around us is barren and wherever we look there is no sign of hope on the horizon.

We may be in the middle of some storm ourselves today as we sit and listen. We may need the internal storm in our lives to be released in peace. We may have come through storms in our lives but still be bearing the scars or wondering where God was at that time. We may need to take this message to our hearts now because there are storms on the horizon. If that is so, we need to know in our hearts that we do not walk alone. That if we look for him we will see God going with us through the storm. That if we trust him we will come to that place of peace where the storm clouds have blown over and we see the golden sky and hear the sweet, silver song of the lark.

Let us pray that we will recognise God with us in the storms of our lives asking for the faith to come through the storm, for release of our internal storms, and for the stilling of our external storms. 

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Katherine Jenkins - You'll Never Walk Alone.

Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome

Here's the sermon I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this morning:

Hospitality is a bedrock of cultures and countries across the Middle East. Everywhere travellers go in the Middle East, they are overwhelmed by hospitality. This culture derives in part from the experience of nomadic peoples in desert landscapes where one had to travel significant distances to find water. To refuse travellers refreshment in such places would have been to let them die which would have threatened the openhandedness that nomadic peoples must depend on to survive. For Jews, Christians and Muslims, the story of Abraham receiving three travellers who turned out to be divine was key, as he was seen to have entertained angels unawares. This story is then contrasted with the sinful response of the people of Sodom to the same three travellers; instead of offering hospitality, the people of Sodom seek to abuse them.

The rabbis teach that Abraham left off a discussion with God to greet these guests when they arrived at his camp. He ran to greet them during the hottest day on record and served them the best food he could put together. Based on this example, the rabbis say that taking care of guests is greater than receiving the divine presence. The fundamental wickedness of Sodom was their hostility to vulnerable strangers and the violence they enacted on the innocent. The people of Sodom had a moral responsibility to offer protection and hospitality to vulnerable strangers, as all the ancient laws of the East demanded, and they stand in scripture as an example of extreme wickedness because they attacked and abused those they should have protected.

Jesus called his 12 disciples to an itinerant ministry which involved going ahead of him to prepare people for his coming and his message. As a result, they took nothing unnecessary with them, they weren’t distracted by small talk along the way, and they welcomed hospitality when they received it but simply moved on to the next place and the next person whenever they were not made welcome. We’ve been listening to and reflecting on the instructions Jesus gave to his disciples in our Gospel readings for the past couple of weeks (Matthew 10). This passage (Matthew 10.40-42) comes as the conclusion to Jesus’ teaching. His concluding words are all about the importance of welcome and they are, therefore, based on Middle-Eastern understandings of hospitality.

Before the disciples go Jesus warns that those who fail to welcome them are not only turning God’s messengers away from their homes and lives but God himself too. As he says, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me” and earlier, “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” When the disciples return to him, he rejoices at the welcome which they have received and the sense that the Gospel has been received from “the diverse and motley group he has chosen as his associates.”

The emphasis in these passages is on the hospitality provided by others to Jesus’ disciples. We tend to think of ourselves as being called like them to take the good news of Jesus to others, so we naturally identify ourselves with the disciples in the passage and think about the response we receive from others when they know that we are Christians. But to really get the force and challenge of what Jesus is saying in this passage we have to put ourselves in the shoes of those the disciples went to and ask ourselves how well do we receive others? The challenge in this passage is about the quality of the welcome provided to others. The great sin here is to be inhospitable and to be inhospitable is actually to reject the divine in our lives.

So, how do we rate on that basis? We think of ourselves as a friendly, welcoming church but it’s important not rest on our laurels and instead ask ourselves how we can be more welcoming, more hospitable to those who come for the first time and those that we don’t know well. When we are here in church, let us make those people our priority, always seeking to speak first to those we don’t know, don’t know well or haven’t spoken to for some time.

Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York has written: "Nurturing a generous attitude of welcome to newcomers is something that needs to be worked at over many years … Welcome is not just what we do when someone comes through the door. It is an attitude which seeks to get inside the shoes of the other person so that they can be welcomed and accompanied at every point of their journey."

We get six mentions of welcome in the three verses that form today’s short reading which suggests the importance that welcome of others held for Jesus. We see this, too, in his teaching that we should love our enemies and bless those that curse us. We see it in his statement that those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and visit those in prison are doing those things to Jesus himself. We see it, too, in his concern to be with those who were excluded from worship and society; those with disabilities, tax collectors, publicans, prostitutes and others. In Jesus, God became one with those who are rejected by others, but the rejected one became the cornerstone of our faith. The experience of Jesus provides a model for ministry. In Jesus, we see that God is most clearly seen among those who are marginalised or rejected (whether by Church or state) and, therefore, those on the edge are the gifts from God which have the most potential to renew us.

Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields says: ‘In his crucifixion [Jesus] was rejected by the builders – yet in his resurrection he became the cornerstone of forgiveness and eternal life. That’s what ministry and mission are all about – not condescendingly making welcome alienated strangers, but seeking out the rejected precisely because they are the energy and the life-force that will transform us all. Every minister, every missionary, every evangelist, every disciple should have these words over their desk, their windscreen, on their screensaver, in the photo section of their wallet, wherever they see it all the time – the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. If you’re looking for where the future church is coming from, look at what the church and society has so blithely rejected. The life of the church is about constantly recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives. That’s what prophetic ministry means.’

Whoever welcomes, welcomes Jesus and welcomes God. If we truly want to see and hear God, then all we need to do is to welcome those we encounter as we will see the face of God in them. God calls us not just to be those who follow him but also to be those sent out to prepare the way for him to come into the lives of others and challenges us, too, to be those who are always welcoming, always hospitable towards others.

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Little Richard - Great Gosh A'Mighty.

Living life joyfully and hopefully

Here's the reflection I shared during tonight's Healing Eucharist at St Andrew's Wickford:

How many of us have watched the TV programme ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ How many of us have done some research into our family history? For those who have researched their family histories, how far back have you been able to go? What has been the most interesting thing that you have discovered? How many of us have known our grandparents? Our great-grandparents? Our great, great grandparents? What is that we find interesting about ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ Why is that we need to know so much about our past?

There can be many reasons why it is interesting to research our family histories; we may track down relatives about whom we knew nothing and broaden our extended family, for instance, or we might come to understand ourselves better by knowing about family traits and characteristics which have been passed down across the generations.

I doubt that any of us have traced our family histories back to Abraham and Sarah but our Bible reading today suggests that we can (Genesis 18.1-15). Abram and Sarai, as they were originally known, were very old and very sad because they had no children. But one night, out in the desert, God made Abram a special promise. God said:

“Look up and count the stars – if you can. That’s how many people there will be in your family one day. Think of the sand on the seashore. How many grains can you count? I’ll bless you and give you such a large family that one day they’ll be as many as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the seashore.” (Genesis 15.1-6)

As a sign of that promise, God changes Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah. God’s promise comes true when Sarah finally does have a baby, called Isaac, when she’s very old. The great-great-great-(lots of greats)-grandchildren of this family are the members of God’s family here today, so we’re all actually members of the same family; Abraham and Sarah’s family, which is also God’s family.

As a result, we’ve got millions of brothers and sisters of all ages and colours in every land all over the world. In fact, just like on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’, when we realise that we are Children of Abraham, we also realise that we have some unexpected relatives because Jewish and Muslim people are also Children of Abraham.

We can see through all this that although God’s promise starts out with small things it can become incredibly massive. Sarah laughed when she heard what God had planned. Just like Sarah we can be sceptical, cynical and mocking about what it is possible for God to achieve through us but, in the story, Sarah’s cynical laughter turns to joyful laughter when her son Isaac is born and the same can be true for us too as we learn to trust that God can use us and achieve great things through us.

We know the difference between cynical laughter and joyful laughter don’t we? Who can give me a cynical laugh? Who can give me a joyful laugh? Sarah’s story shows us how we live life joyfully and hopefully. Patricia De Jong has described what happened to Sarah like this:

“Here is Sarah, at age 90, saying to God: Look, I'm old, I'm tired, I have arthritis and even a little osteoporosis; are you sure we want to get into something new like this now?

But this is when we encounter the marvellous wonder of God, at that very vulnerable moment - when the improbable is mistaken for the impossible, at that moment when we actually believe that our spirits are wasting away, as our bodies are, and God couldn't possibly have any more surprises in store for us, at that moment when we have settled in to things the way they are, instead of things the way they can be through the hope of God …

And yet what better way to live than in the grip of a promise? To wake in the possibility that today might be the day ... To take nothing for granted. Or to take everything as granted, though not yet grasped. To handle every moment of one's life as a seed of the promise and to plant it tenderly, never knowing if this moment, or the next, may be the one that grows.

To live in this way is to discover that God is always blessing us ... This is what Abraham and Sarah found out late in life ... This is what the psalmist had in mind when he wrote, "so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's." (Psalm 103:5) This is the spiritual path we embark upon when we place our hand in the open palm of God ...

Abraham and Sarah believed in God's promises and dared to hope. As Paul reminds us, "hope does not disappoint because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given to us." (https://whosoever.org/a-laughing-hope/)

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Bruce Cockburn - Listen To The Laugh.

New music workshops for the New Year

US composer, conductor, scholar, performer, concert producer, and educator, Delvyn Case, is returning to HeartEdge to run a second series of his 'Jesus Is Just Alright' series of pop music and Jesus, plus a workshop exploring Genesis 22 through the lens of his new cantata.

For over 50 years, pop musicians in all genres have explored the meaning and significance of Jesus in their music. The result is a rich collection of songs that consider important spiritual questions like faith, doubt, and prayer in unique and often provocative ways.

Delvyn Case and Jonathan Evens will, in conversation, mine this rich resource to share rock and pop music for Lent (4 January), Easter (10 January) and Christmas (18 January). Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/jesus-is-just-alright-rocking-the-church-calendar-tickets-225766482627. 

Then on Tuesday 13 January at 15:00 GMT, we will explore Genesis 22 through the lens of a new cantata written by Delvyn. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-binding-of-isaac-according-to-the-elohist-tickets-225877895867.

For millennia, the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac has provoked Jews and Christians to explore questions central to our religious lives: What is faith? What does God require of us? How do our Scriptures reveal those answers?

This ecumenical event explores these questions through the lens of a new musical composition inspired by Genesis 22 by American composer Delvyn Case.

Participants will view a video of the world-premiere performance of this new work and then engage in small-group discussion about the ways it explores the complexities of this ancient story.

Moderators include Delvyn Case, composer and hymn writer June Boyce Tillman, Rabbi Tzemah Yoreh, leader of The City Congregation, New York, and Revd Jonathan Evens.

Delvyn Case is a composer, conductor, scholar, performer, concert producer, and educator based in the Boston area who has set up Rock of Ages (https://www.delvyncase.com/jesus), a website where he shares his research into Jesus and Popular songs.

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Brompton Oratory.

God desires love, not sacrifice

Here's my reflection given during today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:

The scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that “he is one, and besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ (Mark 12.28–34)

Allow me for a moment to take you on a journey through the scriptures to explore the reasons why, in the kingdom of heaven, love for God, others and ourselves is much more important than offerings and sacrifices.

We begin where the Bible begins, in Genesis, with acts of human sacrifice made to appease the gods. People, often children, killed because, when trouble or tension arose in society, the belief was that, by sacrificing one or a few as a scapegoat, order would be restored by the gods for the many. That was the culture which Abraham was called to leave when he left Ur of the Chaldees to found a people that would become God’s people. As a way to create a decisive break with that culture, God took Abraham through a dramatic experience where it seemed that he was, as Abraham would have expected, demanding the sacrifice of Abraham’s firstborn son Isaac. At the very point of sacrifice, God made it clear to Abraham that he did not desire human sacrifice and provided an animal as an alternative. This became part of the founding story for the people of Israel, a people whose ritual sacrifices were of animals and not human beings.

If we then move forward in time, we can pause again for a moment at Mount Sinai and the giving of the Law to Moses. The Law received by Moses contained detailed instructions regarding the sacrifice of animals but also contained the commands quoted by Jesus and the Scribe in our Gospel reading. In addition to the system of sacrifice it introduced, the Law did two things. First, it gave minimum standards for the maintenance of good relations within society – do not murder, do not steal, do not covet etc. Second, in the greatest commandment, it set love for God, others and oneself as the goal to which all the other laws, including those concerning sacrifices, pointed. The Law was given not that people became of obsessed with the keeping of its minutiae but that people moved from the base point of not harming others to the point or goal of the Law, to love God, others and oneself.

We know that many paid lip service to the Law while ignoring it and others did become obsessed with following the minutiae of the letter of the Law and thereby missed the point of the Law. The prophets were the ones used by God to point this out to the people and their rulers. The message of the prophets can in many respects be summed up by these words from the prophet Amos through whom God said: ‘I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.’ Amos was essentially saying, ‘Love God, others and yourself.’

When God’s people ignored God’s messengers, God eventually took matters into his own hands and, in Jesus, showed us, by entering our world and being with us for 33 years, that what he desires is love and relationship. He longs to be with us and enjoy us for who we are, as we also enjoy him. That is the message of the incarnation. It is a demonstration of love.

Yet we still did not understand and, as we have been doing for millennia, made Jesus a scapegoat to excise us of our troubles and tensions, sacrificing him to relieve our fears and anxieties. The God who does not desire sacrifice became the ultimate sacrifice to show that once God has been scapegoated and sacrificed there is really nowhere else to go. There is now no god to be appeased because God does not desire sacrifice and God himself has been sacrificed. This is the end of sacrifice. The curtain was torn in the Temple at the point of Christ’s death because there was no longer any need for sacrifice and the system of sacrifice, the system that began at Mount Sinai, was itself ended in AD70 when, as prophesied by Jesus, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed.

‘The Kingdom of God is justice and peace, And joy in the Holy Spirit!’ Like the Scribe we have come close to that kingdom when we realise that God is one, and “besides him there is no other”; and “to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength”, and “to love one’s neighbour as oneself”,—this is much more important than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’ ‘God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them’ (1 John 4. 16). That is the story of scripture. That is the place to which all scripture leads. It simply remains for us to pray, ‘Come, Lord, and open in us the gates of your Kingdom!’ Amen.

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GSNY Music - The Sun Will Rise.

Being a blessing

Here's my sermon for Schools Sunday at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

Instead of starting at the very beginning, a very good place to start this sermon is with the ending of our service. The prayer of blessing at the end of this service aims to ‘crystallize all that has gone before’ in this service and ‘focus it into a commissioning for all we shall set our hand to once we depart.’ It sends us out to be a blessing to others by making ‘the whole world a Eucharist.’ Being a blessing, that’s what I’d like to explore with you today; first in worship, second in one person who expresses it well today and finally in what it might mean for ourselves, including those of those at school.

In this service God takes us and our offerings – the food, drink and others gifts we bring - and places them in a far larger story than we ever could have imagined by giving them a sacred story and making them sacred actions. As we retell and re-enact what Jesus did at the Last Supper, we also recall what God did to Israel in ‘taking one special people, blessing them, then breaking them in the Exile before giving them as a light to the nations to bring the Gentiles to God.’ ‘In the telling of those stories and the performance of those actions we are transformed into God’s holy people.’ ‘That’s what the regular celebration of the Eucharist is about: God taking an ordinary people and through this story and these actions turning us into the body of Christ.’ When the Eucharist is served, each of us offers all that we uniquely are at the altar and we receive from God everything we need to follow him by being a blessing to others in our daily lives.

St Augustine said: 'You are the Body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken. You are to be blessed, broken and distributed, that you may be the means of grace and vehicles of eternal love.' Based on these thoughts, Sam Wells has explained that: ‘The elements of bread and wine are taken, blessed, broken and shared just as Jesus was taken, blessed, broken and shared. In a similar way the congregation as a whole is taken out of its ordinary pursuits; blessed with the grace and truth of forgiveness and scripture; broken in the disciplines of intercession, peacemaking and food-sharing; and shared with the world in love and service. As the bread and wine are offered, transformed and received, the congregation, and through it the whole creation, is offered, transformed and received.’

We come to be blessed in order that we become a blessing to others. That is the pattern also in today’s Old Testament reading (Genesis 12.1-4a) where we read of God saying to Abraham, ‘I will bless you … so that you will be a blessing … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

We might wonder how one person can become a blessing to all the families of the earth? The answer is, in the same way as Jesus did through the Last Supper. Abraham set out on a journey to the Promised Land which formed the people of God, who were called into being to be a blessing to other nations. In so doing, he gave all who follow after him a path to follow, a story to inhabit, a people to which to belong and a mission to which they are called. The people of Israel followed that path and inhabited that story when they left slavery in Egypt to journey through the wilderness to enter the Promised Land and established themselves there so that, when Solomon was on the throne, other nations came to learn the wisdom of God. Jesus followed that path and inhabited that story when he walked through the valley of the shadow of death to set a banqueting table for all peoples in the mansions of heaven. We become a blessing to others when we take that same story and experience of belonging out with us from church into our daily lives by seeking to make the whole world a Eucharist.

Sam has said that: ‘The mission statement of the church is to make the world a Eucharist. So faithful service means practices that look like worship—those that gather people and form them as one body, that reconcile and open lives to repentance and forgiveness, that proclaim truth and reveal God’s story, that embrace need and unleash gifts, that express thanks and are open to the Holy Spirit, that share food and wash feet.’ ‘It means extending God’s invitation to all, bringing all to repentance and joining in creation’s praise. It means proclaiming the truth of God through the history of the world and the dynamics of the universe and sharing discernment within the silence of God. It means articulating human need and enabling reconciliation. It means restoring a good relationship between humanity and its ecological home, stirring the heart, setting about work in a spirit of thanksgiving, discovering power under the authority of the Spirit, confronting evil with confidence in the sovereignty of God and sharing in the generous economy of God so that nothing is wasted. Thus all the practices of worship become the habits of discipleship.’

That’s the theory and that was the experience of Abraham, Israel and Jesus. Let’s come up-to-date and think for a moment about a similar experience for someone who is proving inspirational to many today. Greta Thunberg was the subject of a giant portrait unveiled on the playing field of a school in West Yorkshire to mark International Women's Day. The 60m long artwork took four days to create and was titled ‘A girl inspiring the world.’ Pupils Hebden Royd Primary School chose the 17-year-old as the woman who had most inspired them saying, ‘We've chosen Greta because she stands up for what she believes.’ She has ‘pioneered a global movement which is so relevant to the area.’

Tabitha Whiting has recounted how Greta Thunberg first learnt about global warming at the age of 8, when her class was shown documentaries about climate change at school. She remembers being more affected than the other students and puts this down to having aspergers and selective mutism. After learning about global warming she couldn’t simply go back to normal, continue with her studies, and think about something else. It profoundly affected her. It affected her so much, that three years later, at the age of 11, she experienced a period of depression. Climate change wasn’t the sole reason for this, but it definitely played a part. She was so deep in her depression that she stopped attending school. Naturally, her parents were incredibly concerned. When they spoke to her about the depression, Greta opened up to them about her climate crisis worries. She gained a sense of release from talking about it. Greta realised that by talking about her worries, she could influence others make a difference. This marked the beginnings of the movement that she has created. Out of her struggle with depression came the spark of activism.

On August 20th 2018 Greta conducted her first school strike. She did not go to school that day, and instead sat down outside the Swedish Parliament. She stayed there for the full length of the school day, posting photos on Twitter and Instagram, and she started to gain traction with a couple of journalists and newspapers coming to see her. The next day, she was back in the same place, striking again. But this time she wasn’t alone. People started joining her on her strike, which took place until the Swedish National Elections on 9 September 2018. She was then asked to make a speech at a People’s Climate March rally, in front of thousands of people. She was determined to speak out about the climate crisis, and that her selective mutism wouldn’t prevent that. She delivered the speech brilliantly, in fluent English. Now, she speaks regularly in front of crowds, politicians, and journalists.

Her school strikes started to go global, with children across the world joining in to make their stand against climate change. On Friday 15 March 2019 a global school strike was called. 1.6 million people took part in the strike globally, from 2,233 cities in 128 countries. It was the biggest single day of climate action that has been seen in history. What started with a single girl sitting outside of the Swedish parliament with a hand-made wooden sign, had become an international movement.

In Greta Thunberg we see one young person following a call that has transformed her life and who is blessing others by addressing a critical social issue and forming an international community. As with Abraham and Jesus, Greta has become a blessing to others by undertaking a journey, creating a story, and forming a community. Our impact may not be as great and may not happen within such a short space of time, yet we too are called to be blessed, broken and distributed, that we may also be the means of grace and vehicles of eternal love.

Although school strikes have been the catalyst for the movement Greta Thunberg has begun, school was the catalyst for her awareness of the climate emergency and schools can be communities that are catalysts for blessing. A Guardian article from the past week explored ways to equip young people to face the challenges of the 21st century saying ‘that the key skills they need to survive and thrive in the 21st century will be emotional intelligence … and the ability to deal with change’. It argued that these ‘are best fostered by an education system that prioritises not traditional academic learning but rather “the four Cs”: critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.’ What is needed the article suggested is ‘a commitment to putting mental and physical wellbeing at the very heart of education’, prioritising mental and physical health, and promoting resilience. That means ‘teaching children to understand their minds and bodies, encouraging them to have contact with nature, helping them to negotiate relationships with others, fostering excellent communication skills, and nurturing creativity.’ Schools, like churches, can be catalysts for communion and creativity. In these ways, they bless that others may be blessed.

Tom Wright says that, ‘Blessing is not primarily about what God promises to do to someone. It is primarily about what God is going to do through someone ... Blessed are the meek, [Jesus says,] for they will inherit the earth: in other words, when God wants to sort out the world, to put it to rights once and for all, he doesn’t send in the tanks, as people often think he should. He sends in the meek; and by the time the high and mighty realise what’s happening, the meek, because they are thinking about people other than themselves, have built hospitals, founded leper colonies, looked after the orphans and widows, and, not least, founded schools, colleges and universities, to supply the world with wise leaders.

What is God going to do through you? How might you be a blessing to others? It’s not a done deal! The people of Israel had to be exiled from the Promised Land before they returned to their vocation to bless others. God came into the world as a human being because humanity was oppressing, rather than blessing, others. Around our world too many nations are building walls and creating hostile environments instead of blessing others. We desperately need churches and schools that will be the catalysts preparing us to be a blessing to others; and worship is the crucible in which such change begins. As St Augustine wrote: 'You are the Body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken. You are to be blessed, broken and distributed, that you may be the means of grace and vehicles of eternal love'; that you may be a blessing.

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Arvo Pärt - The Beatitudes.

Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story - Abraham and Isaac

‘Inspired to Follow: Art and the Bible Story’ is a free resource to help people explore the Christian faith, using paintings and Biblical story as the starting points. It’s been created by St Martin-in-the-Fields in partnership with the National Gallery.

Here is the latest reflection that I have prepared for the series:

Text: Genesis 22:1-12
Image: ‘Abraham and Isaac’ Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Olivier, 1817, NG6541
Location: National Gallery, Gallery D

Reflection:

Johann Heinrich Ferdinand Olivier was born in Dessau where he received his first artistic training. In 1804 he moved to Dresden where he became acquainted with the painters Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich. Friedrich combined landscape motifs with religious symbolism, and pictures like his ‘Winter Landscape’ in the National Gallery represent the hope for salvation through the Christian faith.

From 1807 to 1810 Olivier was in Paris, and in 1811 he settled in Vienna. In 1817 he became a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Luke, an artistic brotherhood (later known as the Nazarenes) founded in Vienna in 1809 by Friedrich Overbeck and Franz Pforr. The Brotherhood was committed to regenerating German religious art in imitation of the works of Durer, Perugino and Raphael. Olivier shared the Nazarenes' enthusiasm for northern medieval and Renaissance art and their interest in the revival of religious painting. The Nazarenes were particularly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites.

In this painting, Abraham and his son Isaac make their way to the place of sacrifice as recounted in the Old Testament (Genesis 22: 1-19). Isaac carries wood for the altar fire and Abraham holds a lighted torch. They appear to be focused primarily on their journey and don’t appear to be involved in debate or argument about the coming sacrifice.

The style of the painting is deliberately archaic, with precise outlines and odd disparities in scale, while the figures of Abraham and Isaac recall the simplified forms of a medieval woodcut. The landscape background is drawn with meticulous care. It is loosely based on Olivier's studies of the countryside around Salzburg, which he first visited in 1815. The distant mountain peak may perhaps be identified as the Watzmann, to the south of the city.

The story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac is not an easy one to handle for a lot of people. There appears to be a lot that is wrong, even barbaric, about the tale. How can a man, elsewhere called a hero of the faith, be prepared to kill his child? And how can a God, whom we talk about as loving, ask anyone to do that? What kind of God would ask Abraham to kill his own son as a sacrifice? Should blind loyalty to God lead us to commit evil, inhuman acts? It is a story that seems like an easy target for people who say that religions cause violence and conflict.

The key to understanding this story is the realisation that child sacrifice was the norm in the religions of the day and that the reason Abraham obeys God so unquestioningly may have been because, horrific and distasteful as it seems to us, there was nothing at that time unusual about the idea that the gods required human sacrifices in order to be appeased. It may be that we see this imaged in the calmness and willingness with which Abraham and Isaac ascend the mountain to the place of sacrifice.

The stories in Genesis about Abraham are foundational stories for the People of Israel. Imagine for a moment that you want to create a foundational story for a group of people that will change their understanding of sacrifice from the understanding with which they have grown up to one which is completely different from the religious practices of all the people that surround them. What kind of story might you tell? It may be that you would tell a story in which the person founding this new nation is taken all the way to the brink of child sacrifice and then dramatically and suddenly pulled back from taking that step.

The legacy of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, the philosopher and anthropologist René Girard has suggested, is that Israel developed a system of animal sacrifice that continued until shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus’ crucifixion, Girard suggests, was both about God identifying himself with all the victims – the scapegoats – who have been sacrificed down through the centuries and also, because in Jesus God himself was scapegoated and sacrificed, the ultimate demonstration of the reality that, as Hosea first stated and Jesus then repeated, God requires mercy, not sacrifice.

In Jewish tradition the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is where Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is said to have taken place. At our partner church of St Stephen Walbrook there is a visible reminder of this in the central Henry Moore altar. By carving a round altar table with forms cut into the circular sides, Moore suggested that the centre of the church reflected the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham and Isaac as a prefiguring of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross and the place for the offering of the Eucharist at the heart of Christian worship. In the Eucharist we remember and re-enact these stories of the sacrifice of Isaac and of Jesus because we need to remember and act on the realisation that God desires mercy, not scapegoats or sacrifice.

Prayer: Grieving God, in your son you experienced the agony of the pointless, savage, premature end of life. Hold the hand of those whose loved ones have become scapegoats; calm the fears of all whose identity makes them subject to the perverse hatred and grotesque violence of others; and hasten a world where all are celebrated for who they are as your children, where difference is a sign of your diverse abundance. Through the wounded yet ascended Christ, your personification of solidarity and embodiment of hope. Amen.

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The Call - Scene Beyond Dreams.

Abraham - The Legacy

Tonight I had the pleasure of giving the final reflection in the Lent Study Programme at St Martin-in-the-Fields. In this year's course we studied Meg Warner's book Abraham: A Journey Through Lent, where the final chapter considered 'Abraham - The Legacy':

Meg Warner writes in the final chapter of our Lent book that with Abraham's death, we are in a position to explore his legacy. Abraham grew during his life, both in maturity and in faithfulness to God. Over time he seems to have 'become' the special person God chose him to be. His obedience has long-term consequences which apply not just to Abraham and his immediate descendants but to the whole world. That is his legacy, and I want to briefly explore three aspects of that legacy now.

First, that the maturing of Abraham’s relationship with God included learning to be in conversation, in dialogue, in debate and in argument with God, in order that Abraham could find God for himself and actually embody God’s characteristics and interests. We see this most dramatically in Genesis 18. 16-33 where Abraham argues and negotiates with God in relation to saving people who live in Sodom. God chose Abraham to “direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just”. Abraham throws that phrase, “what is right and just” back in God’s face in the course of their argument – “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” - “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?". Through their debate, God teaches Abraham to argue passionately for what is right and what is just. As he learns to do so, Abraham becomes more able to do what is right and just with his children and household.

The former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, says that the legacy of this is that there then began that ‘dialogue between Heaven and Earth which has not ceased in 4,000 years’; a dialogue in which God and human beings find one another. Only thus, he suggests, ‘can we understand the great dialogues [found in Scripture] between God and Abraham and Moses and Jeremiah and Job.’ As with those key figures in scripture, arguing or debating with God in prayer can also be a vital and vitalizing part of the maturing of our relationship with God.

A second part of Abraham’s legacy relates to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. Here the key to understanding its legacy is the realisation that child sacrifice was the norm in the religions of the day and that the reason Abraham obeys God so unquestioningly may have been because, horrific and distasteful as it seems to us, there was nothing at that time unusual about the idea that the gods required human sacrifices in order to be appeased. The stories in Genesis about Abraham are foundational stories for the People of Israel. Imagine for a moment that you want to create a foundational story for a group of people that will change their understanding of sacrifice from the understanding with which they have grown up to one which is completely different from the religious practices of all the people that surround them. What kind of story might you tell? It may be that you would tell a story in which the person founding this new nation is taken all the way to the brink of child sacrifice and then dramatically and suddenly pulled back from taking that step.

The legacy of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, the philosopher and anthropologist René Girard has suggested, is that Israel developed a system of animal sacrifice that continued until shortly after the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus’ crucifixion, Girard suggests, was both about God identifying himself with all the victims – the scapegoats – who have been sacrificed down through the centuries and also, because in Jesus God himself was scapegoated and sacrificed, the ultimate demonstration of the reality that, as Hosea first stated and Jesus then repeated, God requires mercy, not sacrifice.

The final area of legacy that I want to briefly explore is in relation to the common origins of Jewish, Christian and Muslim peoples; all descended, as Meg Warner reminds us, from one ancestor, Abraham. In his book Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence Jonathan Sacks examines our common origins in the story of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac and gives us a reading of these stories which ‘is an ingenious and often moving turning upside down of a rhetoric of “chosenness.”’

Sacks notes ‘the extraordinary length to which the text goes to insist that Ishmael will be blessed by God.’ He notes too that because of the way the story is written ‘our imaginative sympathies are with Hagar and her child’. ‘That is what gives the story its counter-intuitive depth’. Further, he notes that Isaac spends time at Beer Lahai Roi, the place of Hagar in the desert, and that Ishmael and Isaac are together when Abraham is buried. Finally, he makes us aware of a Rabbinic tradition based on these aspects of the story to the effect that Keturah, who Abraham marries after the death of Sarah, is actually Hagar returned to Abraham by Isaac as his wife.

Sacks concludes his chapter on the story of Ishmael and Isaac by saying this: ‘On the surface, the story of Isaac and Ishmael is about sibling rivalry and the displacement of the elder by the younger. Beneath the surface, however, the sages, heard a counter-narrative telling the opposite story: the birth of Isaac does not displace Ishmael. To be sure he will have a different destiny. But he too is a beloved son of Abraham, blessed by his father and by God.’

The futures of the two brothers diverge, ‘but there is no conflict between them, nor do they compete for God’s affection, which encompasses them both.’ ‘This reading becomes all the more powerful when, in the Midrash, it is extended to the relationship between Judaism and Islam.’ ‘Brothers can live together in peace’ this counter-narrative implies and Sacks notes that it perhaps ‘needed the twenty-first century, with its ethic and religious conflicts, to sensitise our ear to the texts’ inflections and innuendoes’ and to then grasp this aspect of Abraham’s legacy.

Through this Lent Course and Meg Warner’s book, we have seen Abraham undertake a significant journey. The whole way along the journey he struggled with his faith in the God who had chosen him so unexpectedly. At the same time as all of those struggles, Abraham appeared to grow in his responsibilities and in his relationship with God, so that by the end of the journey he had become the person God chose him to be – a true patriarch, whose faith and obedience had consequences for everybody around him. In a similar way, we can benefit from struggling with these three aspects of Abraham's legacy, as they constantly need claiming and reclaiming, both in our individual lives and our world, particularly because of the ways in which populism and nationalism are currently being used to shape politics and social structures.

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T. Bone Burnett - Every Time I Feel The Shift.

I AM that I AM

Here is my sermon from yesterday's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

At the end of John’s Gospel, the writer of the Gospel says, I have written about the signs performed by Jesus “so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.” At the beginning of the Gospel “he carefully writes ‘the Word was God’, divine, personal, existing in the unity of the Godhead and yet somehow distinct—for ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (1:14).” That is the wonderful story which John sets out to tell us and at the centre of that story he has Jesus make “an absolute and unmistakeable claim to exist in the eternal being of God.” “Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.’” (John 8. 46 - 59)

Stephen Verney explains that, “When Jesus says I AM he is affirming his humanity – the whole of himself, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He accepts what he is, now, at this present moment – his body, his passions, his intellect, his spirit. He is totally self-conscious.

At the same time he is using the name of God: I AM. When Moses asked God, “What is your name?” God answered, “I AM, that is who I AM. Tell the Israelites that I AM has sent me to you.

The heart of the consciousness of Jesus is I AM, God/human being. Human being/God. In his consciousness … earth and heaven, flesh and Spirit become one as they interact with each other.”

Malcolm Guite says that scholars agree that there is no confusion of tenses here, “but rather a proclamation by Jesus that he is indeed the great I AM, the one who disclosed himself to Moses at the Burning Bush as the God of Abraham and who named himself ‘I AM’. We know that this is how his first hearers interpreted this saying, for they heard it as blasphemous and tried to stone Jesus for having said it (John 8:59).”

Jonathan Arnold notes that “there are three different types of “I am” sayings [in John’s Gospel]. Firstly, the metaphorical (“I am the bread of life, light of the world” etc.) … where Jesus identifies himself in comparison to something else, often following an action or miracle, which becomes a sign, an identification, of who Jesus is and an explanation of Jesus’s actions.

Secondly, we have the self-identification sayings (“I am he, I and the Father are one, I am from above”, and so on). These sayings identify Christ in relation to his Father and usually follow some kind of inquiry, when Jesus is in discussion and his identity is called into question or needs verifying, either for the person with Jesus, or for us the reader.

The third kind of statement is the simple statement of existence and this only occurs once in 8.58: “Verily, verily I say to you, ‘Before Abraham was I am’.”

So what is the point of all these ‘I am’ sayings. Is John labouring the point somewhat? Well, if we consider the opening lines of the gospel: “In the beginning was the word” etc. then we have a gospel that is fundamentally Christological in its purpose. John is writing in order to explain that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”

Guite goes on to say that “for those of us who accept that Jesus is the great I AM, that revelation is the very root of our faith”: “The first and primal reality, the foundation of the Cosmos, is ‘I AM’, not ‘it is’. The deepest reality is not a collection of meaningless objects, but a personal God who speaks in the first person and shares the gift of personhood with us. When we turn to Christ we turn towards the great I AM, the source and origin of our own little ‘I-Amness’. Turning and returning to that source is always a great refreshment. No longer do we toil to ‘make ourselves’, no longer are we anxious about who we are, we simply receive our being as what it has always been: a gift. As Verney notes, the good news of John’s Gospel affirms that “The heart of the consciousness of Jesus is I AM, God/human being. Human being/God. The Gospel writer “then declares that his consciousness can become ours. Jesus offers it to us as a free gift.”

Oh pure I AM, the source of everything,
The wellspring of my inner consciousness,
The song within the songs I find to sing,
The bliss of being and the crown of bliss.
You iterate and indwell all the instants
Wherein I wake and wonder that I am,
As every moment of my own existence
Runs over from the fountain of your name.

I turn with Jacob, Isaac, Abraham,
With everyone whom you have called to be,
I turn with all the fallen race of Adam
To hear you calling, calling ‘Come to me’.
With them I come, all weary and oppressed,
And lay my labours at your feet, and rest.

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Jonathan Evens - I AM who I AM.

St Martin-in-the-Fields Lent Programme 2017 – Abraham: A Journey Through Lent

This year at St Martin-in-the-Fields, using Dr Meg Warner as our guide, we will be journeying with Abraham, through his challenges, doubts, false turns and unbelievable promises. Our Lent Study will begin on Wednesday 8 March with an informal Eucharist in which Meg Warner will be joining us to introduce her book, Abraham: A Journey through Lent, followed by simple Lenten supper and study groups.
The cost of the course is £15 which includes a copy of the book and the study materials (or £8 if you already have the book). Join us for the 6 week programme: March 8, 15, 22, 29, April 5, 12.

Week one – An Introduction with Meg Warner
8 March: The Call: Genesis 12.1-18 (Chapter 1)

Week two
15 March: The Promise: Genesis 15 (Chapter 2)

Week three
22 March: The Visitors: Genesis 18.1-15 (Chapter 3)

Week four
29 March: The ‘Other': Genesis 21.1-21 (Chapter 4)

Week five
5 April: The Choice: Genesis 22.1-19 (Chapter 5)

Week six
12 April: The Legacy: Genesis 26 (Chapter 6)

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John Coltrane - Spiritual.

Paying Attention: Emotions

Here is my second address from our Silent Retreat:

Paying Attention: Emotions

Many of the great figures in the Bible seem to have viewed prayer as being more like a constant conversation with God than they did a scheduled time for making requests. In some ways there seems to be a greater understanding of this in Judaism than in Christianity. I’ve been helped and challenged by some of what Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi, has said about this understanding of prayer in a fascinating lecture called Judaism, Justice and Tragedy - Confronting the problem of evil.

He sees Abraham as being the starting point in scripture for this kind of dialogue between God and human beings and said that “there begins a dialogue between Heaven and Earth which has not ceased in 4,000 years”. He calls it the dialogue in which God and Man find one another and says that the mood of these dialogues between the prophets and God has been a never-ending feature in Judaism.

Have a look at the conversation between God and Abraham in Genesis 18. 16-33 and see what goes on there. The first thing to see in verse 17 is that God invites the conversation. He could have hidden his thoughts and plans from Abraham but he chooses not to. Instead he shares with Abraham and invites not just conversation but challenge from Abraham. Because that is what Abraham does in this conversation – he challenges God. What Abraham says to God, recorded for is in verse 25, is stunning - "God forbid that You should do such a thing! To kill the righteous with the wicked so that the righteous should have the same fate as the wicked, God forbid! Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?" It sounds blasphemous that a human being, who as Abraham says of himself in verse 27 is “nothing but dust and ashes”, should speak in this way to his creator. It sounds blasphemous until we remember that God chose to initiate this conversation and this challenge.

What is God doing then through this conversation? Let’s go back to what God said about Abraham before beginning this conversation. In verse 19, God says that Abraham has been chosen to “direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just”. Remember that phrase, “what is right and just” because it the phrase that Abraham throws back in God’s face – “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” - “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?". Through their conversation, God is teaching Abraham to argue passionately for what is right and what is just. As Abraham learns to do this he becomes more able to righteousness and justice to his children and household.

In the same way, God wants us to be in conversation, in dialogue, in debate, in arguments with him so that we can find him for ourselves and actually embody his characteristics and interests ourselves. He wants us to learn to do right through discussion rather than by rote. If all we do as Christians is to learn a set of rules then we will never be able to apply those rules to real life. Because in order to do right we need to apply the Spirit of the Law, not the letter of the Law. Jesus did this constantly and his application of the Spirit of the Law continually brought him into conflict with the religious leaders of his day who were concerned with the letter of the Law. A good example is the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8. 1-11.

We can see this acted out for us by the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. Let’s look quickly at Exodus 19. In verse 6 we read of God saying that the Israelites “will be for him a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”. Priests in Israel were the people who went into the holy place, into God’s presence. So God is saying that he wants all the people of Israel to come into his presence and to speak with him face-to-face. But turn over the page to Chapter 20.19 and you’ll find the people of Israel saying to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die”. In other words, they are saying we’ll obey God’s rules but we won’t speak with him face to face. They appoint Moses to be their mediator, to go into God’s presence on their behalf.

Moses learns to mirror God from his conversations and debates with God. So much so, that his face begins to shine with the reflection of God’s glory. But the people never really learn what God is like because they will not speak with him face to face. They keep him at arms length by using Moses as the mediator and by trying to keep rules which they know but don’t understand. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3.18 that we, like Moses, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are to be transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. That transformation comes as we dialogue, debate, argue and converse with God.

Other people in the Bible who have these kind of conversations with God include: Jacob; Samuel; Job; Jeremiah; Jonah; Habakkuk; Jesus and Paul. The Psalms though are where most of the conversations between people and God are recorded. Virtually all the Psalms are conversations where it is assumed that the hearer is either God or the people of Israel. Some of the Psalms are actually written as conversations though e.g. Psalm 12. In verses 1-4 the Psalmist cries out to God for help, in verses 5-6 God answers and in verses 7-8 the Psalmist responds by expressing confidence in God. Psalm 77 is the record of a similar conversation with God. In verses 1-6 the Psalmist tells us how he cried out to God, in verses 7-9 he tells what he cried out, in verses 10-12 he tells us how God answered his cry, and in verses 13-20 he tells us of his response to God’s answer.

This approach to prayer is one that a number of Christian poets have picked up and used over the centuries:

•             Dialogue – George Herbert

•             Love III – George Herbert

•             Bittersweet – George Herbert

•             Thou art indeed just, Lord – Gerard Manley Hopkins

The conversations with God that are recorded for us in the Psalms are one’s that involve a whole range of different emotions. You might like to read through some Psalms and identify what is the emotion being expressed. Once you’ve done that then choose three of these different emotions that connect with you and think, if you were to have a conversation with God which involved that emotion, what you would be talking about with him and what you would be wanting to say to him. 

We are often quite restrained in our relationship with God and in our praying. Therefore, we often praise God and say that we will obey or follow him but we rarely argue, protest, complain or question him, at least not publicly. Would today be a good opportunity to start including some of these more difficult emotions in your prayer life?

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Mark Heard - Strong Hand Of Love.

A covenant of fruitfulness

Today I was welcomed as the new Associate Vicar for Partnership Development at St Martin-in-the-Fields. As part of explaining the commission I have been given for this role by the Bishop of London I stated that: I understand partnership as a response to God’s endowing Spirit in which each party brings forth its unique gifts to make a relationship more than the sum of its parts. I understand development to mean working with all parties to advance partnerships at the pace and in the depth suitable to the relationship. I understand being an associate vicar to mean, as a priest, speaking to God for the people and for the people to God, and as a pastor helping the people of this place to grow in faith, holiness, ministry and mission.

In his sermon, the Revd Dr Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, said the following in setting out the significance of this new role for St Martins and St Stephen Walbrook:

"... like Abraham and Sarah we’ve been on a long journey. And we’ve made many precious and wondrous discoveries. And we’ve been called by God. And what we’ve been called to is a covenant of fruitfulness, which calls us both to be faithful to God and to bring forth fruit that heals the earth. We can’t do the second without the first. But we can’t be content with the first if we’re being offered the opportunity and we’re hearing the call to do the second.

And this brings us to the licensing of our new associate vicar for partnership development, and to the formal beginning of our partnership with St Stephen, Walbrook. If we were content to enhance our heritage, to strengthen our programmes, and to deepen our common life, we wouldn’t be hiring Jonathan and we wouldn’t be partnering with St Stephen’s. The reason we want today to mark the beginning of something special is because we’re exploring ways to convey our message and identifying how we can enhance our impact. St Stephen’s is an admirable church with faithful people and a glorious building; but by partnering with us, St Stephen’s is saying, ‘We want to walk a journey like the one you’ve been on, we want to find abundance in scarcity, we want to expand our programmes and deepen our common life so we too can be a blessing to communities beyond ourselves.’ And it’s the nature of partnership that at the same time St Martin’s will also grow and change and learn through what the people of St Stephen’s teach us about ministry and mission and faith.

Jonathan is here to walk with the people of St Stephen’s as they make this journey together. And Jonathan is among us to develop a range of partnerships with communities and communions near and far, of which St Stephen’s is, we hope, the first. With St Stephen’s we are making a covenant of fruitfulness inspired by the covenant God makes with Abraham. Our hope is not just that through this partnership St Stephen’s will develop its commercial, cultural, charitable and congregational life so as to become self-sustaining, but that before long it is partnering with other institutions to lead them on a similar path.

Over time we trust we will develop many such partnerships. In some we’ll offer services such as estate and HR oversight to institutions so they can concentrate attention on their programming and common life. In others we’ll walk alongside churches as they develop a model like ours of growing a commercial arm to galvanise their culture and make them sustainable. In others again we’ll be looking to bring our national profile alongside local initiative to enhance work around poverty and destitution. And in others again we hope to partner to help congregations grow in relation to disability issues or enhance other forms of inclusion like our Sunday International Group. In these and many other ways we’ll be looking to establish a covenant of fruitfulness with partners and friends all around the country and beyond.

We could settle for enhancing our resources, developing our programmes, and deepening our common life. Those are all fine and demanding things, and most churches in the country would be overjoyed to have such an aspiration. But we’re being called beyond that. We’re being called to share our message and to influence the wider church and world. And right now the way we’re seeking to do that is by making mutually-enriching partnerships and working with other institutions to help them better realise their vocations. Why? Because we believe that’s God’s way. God in Christ didn’t shout from afar or keep a light hidden on a hill far away. God in Christ made relationships one by one, some close and constant, some occasional and passing, and came alongside people of all kinds, opening up their hearts, setting their souls on fire, and lifting from them the burden of oppression or pain or guilt. That’s what a covenant of fruitfulness looks like. Today we cross that threshold and enter that covenant."

Listen to the full sermon by clicking here - http://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/podcasts/a-covenant-of-fruitfulness/.

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Choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields - Amazing Grace.

In The Wilderness: Preparing for Public Service

In The Wilderness: Preparing for Public Service is an exhibition for Lent featuring paintings by Adam Boulter and poetry by Malcolm Guite which will be St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, from 17th February to 2nd April 2015.

The Biblical wilderness with its rocky mountainous desert has been a place of sanctuary and transformation for prophets and holy men since the dawn of history. Here Abraham and Jacob encountered the divine, Jesus confronted the diabolical, St Paul and the early monks learnt to speak the truth to those who would listen, and contemporary Christians seek refuge from the wars that are ripping apart this region. Here many stories and cultures that have shaped civilisations are layered onto the land. These paintings by Adam Boulter and poems by Malcolm Guite uncover some of these stories and tie them into our lives and times.

Adam Boulter’s work has revolved around landscape and religious themes. It is concerned with a sense of belonging and of the sacred in places as diverse as the inner-city and deserts, and in ancient stories, myths and sacred texts. Adam has exhibited frequently in and around London, and currently lives in Jordan, where he is the Mission to Seafarers Chaplain to the port of Aqaba.

Malcolm Guite is a poet and singer-songwriter living in Cambridge. He is a priest, chaplain, teacher and author. He also plays in Cambridge rock band Mystery Train, and lectures widely in England and USA on poetry and theology.

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Mystery Train - The Ragged Light Of The Evening.

Scriptural Reasoning: Wisdom

The third session of our local Scriptural Reasoning group took place tonight. We used a text bundle on the theme of Wisdom. Here is my introduction to the Christian Text, which was James 3. 13 – 18:

Richard Bauckham notes that “The letter of James begins: 'James, servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Messiah, to the twelve tribes in the diaspora.' … The twelve tribes in the diaspora whom James addresses must be Jewish Christians throughout the Jewish diaspora. He writes to them as head of the mother church, at the centre from which God's people Israel is being reconstituted as the messianic people of God in the last days.” (http://richardbauckham.co.uk/uploads/Accessible/James%20at%20the%20Centre.pdf)

He goes on to explain that communication between the diaspora and the centre (Jerusalem) was constant at that time: “It had long been customary for Jewish authorities and leaders at the centre to address circular letters to the diaspora. The Temple authorities, for example, might write about the dates and observance of festivals. We have a letter from the great Pharisaic rabbi Gamaliel, James's older contemporary and former teacher of Paul, on matters of sacrifice and the calendar, addressed to 'our brothers, people of the exile of Babylonia and people of the exile of Media and people of the exile of Greece and the rest of all the exiles of Israel.' Presumably Gamaliel writes as an acknowledged Pharisaic leader at the centre to Jews of Pharisaic sympathies throughout the diaspora. Not unnaturally, then, the custom of letters from the centre to the diaspora was continued in early Christianity.”

Bauckham also writes about James, the author of this letter, who he understands to be the brother of Jesus and leader of the early Church. “Only one James was so uniquely prominent in the early Christian movement that he could be identified purely by the phrase: “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ (cf. Acts 12:17; 15:13; 1 Cor 15:7; Gal 2:9, 12)” (p. 16). In fact, the epithet ‘servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ’ in James 1:1 is not meant to distinguish him from other Jameses, but to indicate his authority for addressing his readers.”

Bauckham highlights a reference to James in the Gospel of Thomas in relation to the authority he had within the early Church: “Jewish theology could say that the world was created for the righteous and therefore that it was created for the sake of the righteous person, the representative righteous person, Abraham, so the saying in the Gospel of Thomas can call James: 'James the Righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.' James, it seems, was esteemed in his later years, not merely for his authority over the church, but more for his exemplification of the life of service to God and humanity to which the messianic people of God were called. As Abraham the righteous person par excellence modelled the righteousness of faith for his descendants, so James modelled the messianic righteousness of faith in Jesus the Messiah. What that righteousness entailed we can see nowhere more appropriately than in James's own letter.”

A wise person once said, “There is only one way to acquire wisdom. But when it comes to making a fool of yourself, you have your choice of thousands of different ways.” James states, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you” (1.5). Wisdom is a gift given by God that must be wholeheartedly sought and asked for. Once received, it must be relied upon to help one persevere, live a godly life, and have hope. More than just insight and good judgment, wisdom is “the endowment of heart and mind which is needed for the right conduct of life.” (http://www.galaxie.com/article/atj29-0-03)

“James, as a disciple of Jesus the sage, is a wisdom teacher who has made the wisdom of Jesus his own, and who seeks to appropriate and to develop the resources of the Jewish wisdom tradition in a way that is guided and controlled by the teaching of Jesus.”

“James shares Jesus special concern with the heart as the source of words and actions; the teaching of James, like that of Jesus, is paraenesis [an exhortation] for a counter-cultural community, in which solidarity, especially with the poor, should replace hierarchy and status, along with the competitive ambition and arrogance that characterize the dominant society.” (http://www.representationalresearch.com/pdfs/bauckham.pdf)

James distinguishes between Christian wisdom and that of the worldly-wise. The worldly-wise are full of selfish ambition, eager to get on, asserting their own rights. God reckons a person wise when s/he puts selfishness aside and shows disinterested concern for others. This kind of wisdom is seen in a person’s personality and behaviour – not in mere intellectual ability. Accordingly - and this is one of the main themes of this letter – genuine faith in Christ always spills over into the rest of life. It affects basic attitudes to yourself, other people, and life in general meaning that there should be no discrepancy between belief and action. (The Lion Handbook to the Bible)

This all comes across very clearly in Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of this passage in The Message:

“Live Well, Live Wisely

13-16 Do you want to be counted wise, to build a reputation for wisdom? Here’s what you do: Live well, live wisely, live humbly. It’s the way you live, not the way you talk, that counts. Mean-spirited ambition isn’t wisdom. Boasting that you are wise isn’t wisdom. Twisting the truth to make yourselves sound wise isn’t wisdom. It’s the furthest thing from wisdom—it’s animal cunning, devilish conniving. Whenever you’re trying to look better than others or get the better of others, things fall apart and everyone ends up at the others’ throats.

17-18 Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.”

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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Let The Day Begin.