PARISH STUDY DAY - THE BIG STORY - THE BIBLE IN FIVE ACTS

Today, in this year's Parish Study Day at St Andrew's Wickford, we explored the amazing story told through the Bible from Creation to Jesus and the early Church and looked into the future and what it means for us.

Our ministry team each spoke on one of the five acts. I had Act 5, the Future, and this is what I shared:

Act 5 is the final act in the play and is based on the hints we receive in the Bible about the future and the end of time. These revolve around three key ideas: Jesus’ vindication; resurrection; and the coming in full of the kingdom of God.

Jesus’ vindication

In Mark 13: 1-8, we read of Jesus and his disciples going to the Temple in Jerusalem. As they were leaving, one of the disciples remarked on what a magnificent building the Temple was. Jesus’ response was to predict that it would shortly be completely and utterly destroyed. The Temple, at that time, was central to the whole Jewish faith. What Jesus was saying was that the whole way in which Judaism was practised at that time was going to be destroyed. A whole way of life wiped out. It was a shocking claim about a major crisis.

Mark records this for us because what Jesus predicted actually happened. In AD70 Titus, the adopted son of the Roman emperor Vespasian, “entered Jerusalem, burnt the Temple, destroyed the city and crucified thousands of Jews” (Wright). For Mark the fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecy, although a disaster for all those caught up in it, was the final vindication of all that Jesus had said and been and done. In that day, he says in verse 26 of this same chapter, men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. In other words, people will realise that Jesus was who he claimed to be, the Messiah. The destruction of the Temple was proof that Jesus had spoken and acted truly; that he was a true prophet.

Christians over the centuries have often interpreted what Jesus said about the Temple and his vindication as a true prophet in terms of his second coming but New Testament scholar Tom Wright has comprehensively and, in my view, conclusively demonstrated that these passages are best understood in relation to the destruction of the Temple in AD70. Because Jesus is vindicated through these prophecies as being a true prophet, we then know that what he does say about the future can be trusted implicitly.

Resurrection

In John’s Gospel, we explicitly hear Jesus speaking about himself as the resurrection - “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). In John 6:40, Jesus says, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” and, in John 14:19, Jesus says to his disciples, “Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.”

He is able to make these promises because he knows that God will raise him from death on Easter Day. That truth is what his followers come to understand after his resurrection. St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” What happened to Christ will also happen to use. He is the firstborn from the dead and we are those who will follow him by also rising from death. In Romans 6:5, Paul writes, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” and, in Romans 8:11, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” Back in 1 Corinthians, we read in 15:21-22, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” In 1 Thessalonians 4:14, we are told that, “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”

Jesus’s death and resurrection provide the template for our future eternal life, along with the assurance that we will be raised as he was raised. Jesus’ resurrected body differs in some ways from his body prior to death, in that he is not always recognised by those who knew him and he is able to appear and disappear at will. However, there is much continuity too between his resurrected body and his pre-resurrected body. This leads St Paul to state in 1 Corinthians 15.40-44, that:

“There are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of the stars; indeed, star differs from star in glory.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.”
He concludes that we will “bear the image of the one of heaven”, meaning the image of Jesus.
So, the promise that Jesus gives us is of a resurrected future together with him in eternity. But what will that look like?

The kingdom of God

The kingdom of God was the main topic of Jesus’ teaching during his time on earth. Most of his Parables begin, the kingdom of God is like … buried treasure, a pearl of great price, a lost coin, sheep or Son that are found, and so on. Bringing the news that the kingdom of God was coming was the reason for his travels and preaching across Israel during the three years of his ministry. In doing so, he took on the task that God had originally given to the people of Israel, that of being a light to the nations, which is why he proclaimed himself to be the light of the world.

Through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the kingdom of God is established in our world for the first time as, for the first time, a human being lives out God’s intent for humanity in full. In Jesus, we see the rule and reign of God in practice, because Jesus is the fullest expression of God that can be revealed in a human being.

As Christians, we are called to follow in Jesus’ footsteps by living under the rule and reign of God. We do this imperfectly, so can, at best, create temporary signs of what the kingdom of God looks like in practice but when we feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome strangers, clothe the naked, take care of those who are sick, and visit prisoners, we come as close as we possibly can.

However, at an unknown time in the future, God’s kingdom will come in full – as we pray in the Lord’s Prayer – “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven”. St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15.20-28:

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human, for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in its own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “All things are put in subjection,” it is plain that this does not include the one who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.”

The prophets, including Isaiah and John, the writer of Revelation, give us glimpses of what this peaceable kingdom will look like.

Isaiah speaks, in 9.2,6&7, of a people who walked in darkness seeing a great light:

“For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders,
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Great will be his authority,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.”

Then, in 11.6-9, he gives a vision of the peaceable kingdom of God, in which as he prophesies in 2.4 this child “shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more”:

“The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.”

Building on visions like these, John, in Revelation 21, sees earth and heaven united when the kingdom of God comes in full on earth:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

This is the culmination of the story that is told in and through the Bible. It is the vision towards which everything points. It is a vision of heaven come on earth, of eternal peace in the presence of God, where evil is eradicated and God’s rule encompassing all things, and where we are resurrected to be with God, with each other and with creation for ever.

Living God’s future now

Our calling in the present is to creating signs of this coming kingdom by living as fully as we can in anticipation of the coming kingdom. That is why we emphasise Being With as a key theme or idea for our Parish and our lives. In the coming kingdom, there will be nothing for us to fix, there will simply be being with God, with each other and with creation. Each of these will involve endless exploration because, in God, there is always more to discover.

Wonderings

I wonder what excites you about this vision of the future.
I wonder what questions it raises for you about the future.
I wonder how you think we can best live God’s future now.

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Leonard Cohen - Going Home. 

The most dynamic gift to the church

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

Mike Leigh is the well-known director of films such Secrets and Lies, Mr Turner, Topsy Turvey and Life Is Sweet. Improvisation is a significant part of his directorial methods. He begins a film with an initiating idea, which conjures up a number of possible actors he can cast. With improvisation, casting is obviously critical. Since he doesn’t work with formal scripts, the auditions take the form of an exercise where the actor delivers a caricature of a person they know. This demonstrates their ability to observe real people and convert this knowledge to a performance. Once the cast is established, a list of potential characters is devised, out of which a base character who lies at the core of the drama is established. After this, the actor researches the character and does solo improvisations with the director. This process of solo improvisation and research goes on for weeks and even months before the actor is introduced to another actor who has been cast, and they begin duo impros, discovering who each other is and exploring the dramatic potential of the situation. He shoots two thirds of his film without revealing the ending. Then the crew pauses for a week or so while he does improvs of the final scenes. After that, the end scenes are shot. (http://www.markpoole.com.au/articles/improvisation-the-mike-leigh-method.html)

Improvisation is also what Jesus is talking about in this farewell discourse to his disciples (John 16.5-15). He is going to leave them (as happened at the Ascension) and then he will send the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, the comforter and advocate, to them (as happened on the Day of Pentecost). The Spirit will speak to the disciples whatever he hears from Jesus; both the many things he wanted to say to them but which they could not bear at that time and also the things that are to come. Earlier in his discourse, he also said that the Spirit will teach them everything and remind them of all that Jesus had said to them. The result will be that they will do greater things than him.

Jesus said many amazing things that people still repeat regardless of whether they follow him or not. But his farewell discourse to his disciples must be among the most amazing because in it Jesus says that those who follow him will do greater things than him and will be led into all truth. When you think how amazing Jesus’ own actions were, it is hard to imagine how people like us could do greater things than that, and, when you think how profound his teaching was, how could we be led into deeper or greater truth than that?

But Jesus was articulating something that all good teachers think and feel; the sense that all the time he had spent with them and invested in them was not so they would be clones of him, simply repeating the things he did and said, but instead that he had equipped, empowered and enabled his followers to follow him by using their own gifts and abilities and initiative which would inevitably mean that they would do and say different things from him but still with his Spirit and based on all they had learnt from him. He was saying that each one of us is a unique combination of personality, abilities and potential and, therefore, each of us can make a unique mark on the world. His followers can do greater things than Jesus because they will do different things from him in his name and Spirit – things that only they can do for him because they are that unique package of personality, ability and potential.

Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields has described this in terms of improvisation. He says that we constantly “face new circumstances in each generation that the Bible doesn’t give us a script for.” Instead, the Christian story is like “a five-act play -- creation, Israel, Jesus, church and eschaton. We find ourselves in Act 4, and the most important events have already happened. Our role is to be faithful in Act 4, because God will do the rest in Act 5.” “The most dynamic gift to the church is the Holy Spirit working amongst people who learn to trust one another and see the abundant things that God can do with limited materials. That’s analogous to what happens in theatrical improvisation.”

“Improvisation isn’t about being original, clever, witty or spontaneous. Improvisation is about allowing yourself to be obvious.” It’s about being so soaked in a tradition that you learn to take the right things for granted or as Jesus put it the Spirit will teach us everything and remind us of all that Jesus said so that we intuitively do those things on an improvisational basis. People who train in improvisation train in a tradition. The Spirit comes to remind Christians of the Christian tradition by reminding us of all that Jesus did and said, so we embody it in our lives. In this way we can do greater things than Jesus because we will do different things from him, but in his name and Spirit.

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Martin Joseph - This Light Of Ours.

Immersed in the story

Here's the sermon I shared at St Mary’s Runwell this morning:

The favourite Christmas story of the Archbishop of York concerns a two-year-old called Miriam at a church on the edge of Chichester where he was then parish priest.

The red brick rectangular church seated about 80 and was full to overflowing for the Christmas Day service. As every space was taken, the crib scene had been placed under the altar. During the service Miriam wandered into the sanctuary and stood for a while observing the nativity scene. It was a large nativity set and so the characters in the scene were about the same size as the two-year-old. After observing the scene for a while, Miriam carefully climbed in under the altar making her way around the characters to sit in a space within the crib scene where she then remained for the rest of the service.

What she did was essentially an acted parable to the congregation because she became part of the story. That is what happens – it is what we are doing – when we become Christians. In other words, for many of us, it is what is going on when we are baptised.

Baptism is our immersion in the Christian story; a story which begins with God’s creation of the universe and life on earth. It continues with our rebellion as human beings. Our saying to God that we know who we are and what we need to do and, therefore, will go ahead and do our own thing. We all live with the consequences of that right now.

But in the story which the Bible tells, God does not leave us simply to do our own thing. First, he chooses the people of Israel and through his special relationship with them seeks to call all people back to their true identity and purpose and then he sends his own Son, Jesus, to reach out in rescue and return us to him. He does this so that each one of us can find our identity and purpose in God and play our part in bringing the kingdom of God in full on earth as it is in heaven.

When Jesus was baptised, he was saying that he would immerse himself in this story and play his special, unique part within it (Luke 3. 15 – 17, 21 – 22). As he made that commitment, God the Father affirmed him in his identity and purpose by saying, “You are my own dear Son. I am pleased with you.”

As we do what Miriam did and enter the story, then we are also affirmed by God in just the same way. St Paul writes in Romans 8. 14 – 17 that:

“Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children. For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, “Father! my Father!” God's Spirit joins himself to our spirits to declare that we are God's children. Since we are his children, we will possess the blessings he keeps for his people, and we will also possess with Christ what God has kept for him; for if we share Christ's suffering, we will also share his glory.”

What he is saying is that as we enter the story we are adopted by God as his children and become brothers and sisters of Jesus, co-heirs with him of all he possesses.

You may remember the wonderful words of Philippians 2. 6 – 11 which say that Jesus gave up the equality he had with God the Father in heaven in order to be born as a human being, living and dying as our servant in order to save us:

“For this reason God raised him to the highest place above
and gave him the name that is greater than any other name.
And so, in honour of the name of Jesus
all beings in heaven, on earth, and in the world below
will fall on their knees,
and all will openly proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”

That same glory, St Paul says, is shared with us as we enter the story, join the family of God and play our part with the story. The incredible message of Christianity is that our rightful identity as human beings is that of being God’s own dear children with whom he is greatly pleased.

How do we play our part? That all depends on our coming to know the story and what happens within it. New Testament scholar Tom Wright has described Holy Scripture as being like a five-act play containing the first four acts in full (i.e. 1. Creation, 2. Fall, 3. Israel, 4. Jesus). “The writing of the New Testament,” he says, “would then form the first scene in the fifth act, and would simultaneously give hints (Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, parts of the Apocalypse) of how the play is supposed to end ... The church would then live under the 'authority' of the extant story, being required to offer an improvisatory performance of the final act as it leads up to and anticipates the intended conclusion ... the task of Act 5 ... is to reflect on, draw out, and implement the significance of the first four Acts, more specifically, of Act 4 in the light of Acts 1-3 ... Faithful improvisation in the present time requires patient and careful puzzling over what has gone before, including the attempt to understand what the nature of the claims made in, and for, the fourth Act really amount to.”

So, we start by looking at what we know of the story to date – the things God has done in and through Israel, Jesus and the Church – and we also look at the hints we have about the way the story will end with the coming in full of the kingdom of God on earth as in heaven. Then we say to ourselves, ‘What is it that people do in this story? How do they act and behave? And then we start to do and say similar things, as we have the opportunity. As Christians we are never given a script which has all our lines and actions printed on it. Instead, we have to improvise our part on the basis of what we know of the story so far, on the basis of the example provided by those who have lived in the story before, and on the basis of the opportunities provided in the places where we are and among the people that we know.

Living in the Christian story, therefore, is a challenge – something we should know anyway from looking at the life and death of Jesus – but it comes with the affirmation that we are part of God’s family; his dearly loved children, brothers and sisters of and co-heirs with Jesus himself. When we know this, we can relax because whatever happens to us we are accepted, forgiven, loved and gifted by the God who created all things and who will bring all things to their rightful end.

When we do that, we are like Miriam climbing in under the altar to become part of the crib scene. When we do that, we become part of God’s story which makes us his children and gives us identity, purpose and meaning. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Iona - Edge Of The World.