A model prayer – beautiful, balanced and brief

The sermon I've been sharing today at St Andrew’s and Holy Cross Basildon and St Peter’s Nevendon is adapted from Discovering Prayer by Andrew Knowles, published by Lion Publishing:

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, he responded with a model prayer – beautiful, balanced and brief (Luke 11: 1-13). It has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. In his book ‘Discovering Prayer’, Andrew Knowles, a former Canon Theologian of Chelmsford Cathedral, simply and succinctly takes us through the different sections of this prayer for life.

We begin with God - Jesus reminds us to whom we’re talking. We’re coming to Almighty God who is also our Father. We aren’t phoning through a big order to a supermarket store which sells everything. Nor are we practising some weird and wonderful thought-process guaranteed to release psychic powers. We’re coming simply, humbly into the presence of our Creator, having received the invitation to do so from Jesus himself.

It’s good to remember that God is ‘our Father’. We belong to a great, trans-national, cross-cultural family, some of whom have already died and some of whom are yet to be born. Wherever we are around the world, and at whatever point in time we live, we own God as our Father and Jesus as our Lord. So when we pray this prayer, we’re sharing with our Christian brothers and sisters, across every division of colour and class, of politics and economics, of time and eternity.

We say ‘yes to God’ - Not only do we begin with God, we also ask that all he wants to do in our lives and in our world may come about. We ask that all he wants to do in our lives and in our world may come about. We ask that men and women everywhere may realise who he is and humble themselves before him.

We ask that God’s kingdom may come - The kingdom of God exists wherever God is King. It isn’t located on a map, nor do we enter it by holding a passport! The exciting truth is that God is already King of millions of lives. He is already acknowledged as Lord in a vast number of situations. We see the effects of his rule when hate is turned to love, when bitterness is dismantled by forgiveness, when disease is overwhelmed by health, and when war gives way to peace.

But we must remember that God is a father and not a dictator. For this reason his kingdom can only come when individual people invite him into their lives and submit themselves to the changes he wants to make.

This phrase, ‘May your kingdom come’, more than any other in the Lord’s Prayer, has a tendency to rebound on the user. If we really want God’s kingdom to come, then we must open ourselves and our circumstances to God, whatever the cost.

And if we’re looking for the kind of changes in the world that only God can make, we may find that he promptly enlists us in his service! We may find ourselves doing anything from bathing an invalid to mailing a cheque for famine relief. We may even find ourselves called to lob in our whole life as the only fitting contribution we can make to the service of God’s kingdom in a particular situation.

We bring our needs to God - In the second half of the Lord’s Prayer we ask God to meet our basic human needs. We ask him for enough to live on, for forgiveness, and for protection.

‘Give us day by day the food we need’ has a strong echo of the days when the Israelites were supplied with manna in the desert. Every day they had ‘enough’, and the Lord’s Prayer asks that we may have the same experience of god’s faithful provision each day as it comes. In an age when many people are run raged by their desire for money and possessions, this is a wonderful promise from Jesus. All the same, we should notice that it is everything we need that God will provide, and not everything we want.

‘Forgive us our sins, for we forgive everyone who does us wrong.’ This reminds us that our standard of living is more than a roof over our head, food on the table and a shirt on our back. Our well-being is intimately tied up with personal relationships – within ourselves, between ourselves, and between ourselves and God. Our recurring need here is for forgiveness. We hurt people by our self-centredness, our anger and our prejudice. We hurt God by going our own way in defiance of his loving law, wilfully defiling all that he intended life in this world to be.

So we ask for forgiveness. We feel the need and we say the words. But it’s no easy matter for God to forgive us. It cost him the life of his only Son to show the reality and consequence of sin. As he died on the cross, Jesus took on himself the results of all our sin. This is the only way by which we can be forgiven and restored to spiritual life. This is the Christian Good News: that life with God – something we can never earn and certainly don’t deserve – is his free gift to us through the death of Jesus. Our sins are not only forgiven but forgotten, and if we mention them to God again he’ll wonder what we’re talking about.

But as we ask God to forgive us, we must check if there is anyone who in turn needs our forgiveness. How do we feel about our worst enemy? Is there any member of the family, or anybody at work, against whom we’re nursing anger, bitterness or resentment? Only as we forgive others can we enter fully into the wonderful experience of God’s forgiveness of us. This is not just a nice idea. It’s a condition for our own forgiveness. Elsewhere Jesus warns that if we don’t forgive, then we in turn shall not be forgiven. This teaching alone, if we take it seriously, will completely change our lives.

‘And do not bring us to hard testing.’ Sometimes this is translated, ‘Lead us not into temptation,’ and we may well wonder when, why and how God could possibly want us to be tempted. And we would be right – he doesn’t. But while God will never lure us into evil, he will sometimes allow us to be tested. Just as we will put ourselves through all kinds of discomfort to get fit or lose weight, so God will allow pressure on us to strengthen our faith or increase our insight.

In the face of this testing, Jesus includes a very human plea that God won’t go over the top in his efforts to refine us. It is encouraging to hear Jesus say this, because he was tempted over a longer period and with greater intensity than we’ll ever know. Enticed by Satan, or daunted by God, we often given in at a very early stage. Our Christian integrity disintegrates and snatches at hypocrisy to cover our shame. But while we often capitulate, Jesus never did so.

The Lord’s Prayer recognises that temptation is an integral part of our daily life. We’ll never lose it, so we must learn to use it. If we can use the force of temptations to push us closer to the Lord, rather than sweeping us away from him, then we’ll be harnessing their power for our benefit.

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Marvin Gaye - The Lord's Prayer.

The Kingdom of God has come near you

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Mary's Runwell and St Catherine's Wickford this morning:

In the National Gallery in 2013 you could find a St. Francis without a head and with a candy-grabber crane that went inside his body and which, if you were lucky, pulled out a T-shirt saying chastity, obedience and poverty; another St. Francis was mounted on a donation box and, when you put money in, he hit himself over the head with a crucifix. Michael Landy’s large-scale sculptures consisted of fragments of National Gallery paintings cast in three dimensions and assembled with old machinery, cogs and wheels, meaning that visitors could crank the works into life with a foot pedal mechanism.

They sound like pieces designed to mock St. Francis and other Saints represented and yet Landy is an artist who is fascinated by the renunciation and kindness that Saints like Francis have shown through their lives. Landy is best known for two works. The first being an installation in a former C&A store on Oxford Street, where over a two week period, he destroyed all his possessions except for the clothes in which he stood. The second being ‘Acts of Kindness’ where Landy asked members of the public who had witnessed or taken part in acts of kindness while travelling on the tube, to write about them. So, as at least one of the art critics reviewing the show at the National Gallery, has noted while enjoying the jokiness of the lucky dip St. Francis, “you also sense that Landy thinks Britain could do with a little of St Francis’s spirit.”

St. Francis lived out his faith and that is what today’s Gospel reading (Luke 10. 1 – 11, 16 – 20) is all about. This passage from Luke’s Gospel gives us Jesus’ inspirational team talk just before sending his disciples out to be his advance guard preparing those in the towns and other places to be visited by Jesus shortly after. He gives his disciples a message to share – “The Kingdom of God has come near you” – but his main focus is on the behaviour and attitude of his disciples; the way in which they live and act.

He instructs them to live simply (“don't take a purse or a beggar's bag or shoes”); to be focused (“don't stop to greet anyone on the road”); to be peace givers (“whenever you go into a house, first say, ‘Peace be with this house.’”); accept hospitality (“stay in that same house, eating and drinking whatever they offer you”); bring healing (“heal the sick in that town”); share your message (“say to the people there, ‘The Kingdom of God has come near you.’”); and move on when not accepted (“the dust from your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you”).

These instructions of Jesus became a model for itinerant preachers throughout Church history including St. Francis and his followers. The words “Preach the Gospel at all times, if necessary use words” are often attributed to St. Francis but, while certainly reflecting something of what he said and did, that is not a phrase he actually used. ‘Francis did focus on proclaiming the word in deeds – as well as in words. And if you have ever read any of Francis’ own writings it is easy to see that Scripture is infused everywhere in his words, his life and his being – and his actions. It is easy to see where the oft-quoted phrase came from; for example, the Legend of the Three Companions’ includes this inspirational team talk from St. Francis:

“Calling together the six brothers, Saint Francis, since he was full of the grace of the Holy Spirit, predicted to them what was about to happen. “Dearest brothers,” he said, “let us consider our vocation, to which God has mercifully called us, not only for our own good, but for the salvation of many. We are to go throughout the world, encouraging everyone, more by deed than by word, to do penance for their sins and to recall the commandments of God. Do not be afraid that you seem few and uneducated. With confidence, simply proclaim penance, trusting in the Lord, who conquered the world. Because by his Spirit, He is speaking through and in you, encouraging everyone to be converted to him and to observe his commandments”’ (http://friarmusings.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/preach-the-gospel-at-all-times-if-necessary-use-words/)

But what has all this to do with us, as we are generally not being called by God to become itinerant preachers? The answer is very simple, that our actions, as well as our words, speak powerfully about our faith. Negatively, this is the reason why Christians are often criticised as being hypocrites; others look at what we do and complain that we aren’t practising what we preach. When our actions and our words come together, however, then our witness is powerful; to see that we only have to think of examples provided by Saints like Francis or more recent followers of Christ like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jnr, Mother Teresa, Oscar Romero, Desmond Tutu, among others.

This is also one reading of the message which Jesus gave his disciples to proclaim. Do you remember what it was? It was not quite the message that we might have expected or anticipated. The disciples weren’t given the message that ‘God is love’ or to ‘repent and believe’; instead they were told to say that “The Kingdom of God has come near you.”

What did that mean? The disciples were the heralds for Jesus’ imminent arrival in that place, so it would certainly have meant Jesus is coming and the Kingdom of God arrives where he arrives. But, because the disciples were also living out their faith in practice, as those bringing peace and healing into the communities they visited, it also meant that the Kingdom of God could be seen in their lives and examples too. This can still be true for us today. Doing good, for Christians, is not about our salvation – it’s not about earning God’s love – instead it is a consequence of our salvation; because God has loved us so much, we then want to love others and, as we do, the Kingdom of God comes close to those we love, help and heal.

That is the challenge of this passage for us today and so, in the words of St. Francis:

Dearest brothers and sisters let us consider our vocation, to which God has mercifully called us, not only for our own good, but for the salvation of many. We are to go throughout the world, encouraging everyone, more by deed than by word, to do penance for their sins and to recall the commandments of God. Do not be afraid that you seem few and uneducated. With confidence, simply proclaim penance, trusting in the Lord, who conquered the world. Because by his Spirit, He is speaking through and in you, encouraging everyone to be converted to him and to observe his commandments.

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Big Star - The Ballad Of El Goodo.

A new possibility for the world, existence, and history

Here's the sermon I shared at Holy Cross Basildon and (in a condensed form) at St Andrew's Wickford this afternoon:

To us, the resurrection is a wonderful event. One that we have been celebrating since Easter Sunday in hymns such as Jesus lives! and Thine be the glory risen, conquering Son. But to the women who first encountered the resurrection it was anything but wonderful. Instead, it was a shocking, unexpected, fearful experience.

We are often surprised to read that that was their reaction because we are so familiar with the resurrection stories and the idea of resurrection itself. And we wonder why they weren’t instantly grateful to know that their teacher and Lord was alive again. But those people who were there at the time were on unfamiliar and disturbing ground and they were unable initially to see the wonder and glory of what had occurred.

And many people today who are not Christians would react in ways that are similar to the reactions of those women. Many would struggle with the whole idea that someone can rise again from the dead and would view this central Christian belief as a reason for rejecting, rather than accepting, Christianity.

So, what I would like to share with you this evening then are two things from this passage that suggest that Jesus did rise from the dead and two things that suggest why his rising is important for us today.

First, the reaction of the women suggests to us that there was nothing in the Judaism of their day that had prepared them for the idea that one person could rise from the dead. They were distressed and fearful, in part, because they had no way of understanding or comprehending what had happened. It was totally outside of any frame of reference that they had.

Most Palestinian Jews at the time believed that God would resurrect the bodies of the dead at the end of the age. When Jesus had spoken to the disciples about his own resurrection, it is probable that they would have understood him to have been meaning that he would rise again as part of this general resurrection at the end of the age. This belief in a general resurrection was not accepted by all Jews. The Sadducees, in particular, argued that there was no resurrection at all. But even where this belief in a general resurrection was held, there was never any thought that one person would rise ahead of everyone else.

The reaction of these women - bewilderment and fear – is entirely consistent with situations where we are confronted by things that are totally outside our way of understanding the world and life itself and which radically challenge beliefs which we had thought were unchallengeable. The idea that one person could rise from the dead was so far outside their understanding of life, death and God that they could not have invented it. And, if they had, then they would not have responded with astonishment and fear because they would have known where the idea had come from and would have wanted to have appeared confident in their claim. You don’t convince anyone by being confused and in hiding.

So, instead the reaction of these women suggests that something significant had occurred and that that significant something could only have been the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

The second factor in this story which suggests that Jesus did rise from the dead is the idea that it was women who first discovered his resurrection. The Judaism of their day, like most cultures at that time, was patriarchal. The testimony of women, particularly in a court of law, was either inadmissible or regarded as of lesser value than the testimony of men. If the disciples had wanted to make up a story about Jesus rising from the dead then they certainly wouldn’t have said that it was the women in their group that had discovered his resurrection.

It is interesting, in this context, that the first known pagan written critique of Christianity builds on the Gospels’ report of women as the first witnesses and proclaimers of Jesus’ resurrection. It is called The True Word and was written by the middle Platonist Celsus in A.D. 175. Celsus claims that a ‘hysterical’ female was the witness to Jesus’ resurrection. To Celsus’ patriarchal mind all women were unreliable witnesses because they were hysterical and as a result, he then discounts the claims of the Gospels about the resurrection.

Both these factors then can give us confidence that the resurrection stories are telling us about actual events because if they weren’t then the Gospel writers would not have written them as they have. If the stories about the resurrection had been made up, then in order to be convincing they would have had men as the first people to discover that the resurrection had occurred and those people discovering the resurrection would be portrayed as entirely confident and clear about what they had seen and heard instead of the portrayal that we actually have, one of confusion and fear.

These are not the only factors which give us confidence that these stories have the ring of truth but they are two that emerge clearly from this account of the resurrection in Mark’s Gospel. What of the meaning of the resurrection though? Why is it so important and how can it affect us today if we believe that it occurred?

Again, two ideas drawn from this account. First, the message of the young man to the women (verse 7) – “He is going … ahead of you”. Literally, this means that Jesus had gone to Galilee where he would show himself to the disciples when they followed him there. But, at another level, it indicates what Jesus’ resurrection means. We read in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus has been raised from death as the guarantee that we will also be raised from death. He is described as being the first fruits of those who have died. In rising from the dead, he has gone ahead of us into the new risen body and existence that we shall experience in future when Jesus returns to this earth to fully bring God’s Kingdom into existence here.

When Jesus walked the earth, he looked ahead to that future time when the Kingdom of God will be made perfect, and all suffering will come to an end. But he also announced that, because of him, there is a sense in which that Kingdom has already begun. When he healed sick people and brought good news to the poor it was a sign that the Kingdom had come. In the same way, when he overcame death by rising from the dead he became the first fruits of the Kingdom, an example of what we will all become in future.

Jesus wants us to be signs of God’s Kingdom in the same way that he was. He commanded us, his followers, to love in the way that he did. He wanted people to see us practically demonstrating love, so that we will clearly be recognised as men and women who belong to God. When Christians take action on behalf of the world’s poorest communities we not only put into practice the values of the Kingdom of God here and now but also become signs of what the Kingdom will be like when it is made perfect in eternity. That is what it means to pray, ‘Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.’

So, by the resurrection, Jesus has gone ahead of us in signing and establishing the Kingdom of God and calls us to follow where he leads. In this way, as the theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, the “resurrection of Christ does not mean a new possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility altogether for the world, for existence, and for history.” That’s the first indication of what resurrection means in this passage.

The second, takes us back to the women and their position in a patriarchal society. God deliberately chooses women to discover Jesus' resurrection because the Kingdom of God, of which the resurrection is the first fruits, is to be a place of equality and inclusion. In his ministry, Jesus consistently included in God’s Kingdom those people in Jewish society that were excluded – he included women in his followers, he brought lepers and possessed people back into the community by healing them, he ate and drank with tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes.

Therefore, it is significant that it is people who were thought of as being second class in the society of his day who become the first witnesses to his resurrection. In the Kingdom of God which Jesus’ resurrection inaugurates, no one is second class and this is why the Apostle Paul writes in his letters, “there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free men, between men and women; you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Just as we are called to be signs of God’s Kingdom in the way that we love, so we are also called to be signs of God’s Kingdom by the way in which we include those who are excluded in our day. In our churches we need to be able to demonstrate that we are all one in Christ Jesus by there being no difference in the way that we accept men and women, white and black, rich and poor, straight and gay, non-disabled and disabled, the settled and the migrant, people of faith and people of no faith. We are called to be a people of liberation who cross the divides erected by our society. Who, as Jurgen Moltmann has said, in solidarity enter “the brotherhood of those who, in their society, are visibly living in the shadow of the cross: the poor, the handicapped, the people society has rejected, the prisoners and the persecuted.”

Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of a new way of being human – a way of being human that ultimately knows no death, no grief, no crying, no pain, no inequality and no exclusion. Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of the healing and renewal of human beings, human society and the entire world. This is the meaning of the resurrection. This is where we, and our world, can be heading, if we get on board with God.

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Delirious? - Our God Reigns (Forever His Truth Shall Remain).

Hope: The light of the promised future that is to come

Here's the reflection that I shared during Reflective Evening Prayer this evening at St Mary's Runwell. 
The readings were Lamentations 3:19-33 and 'Hope' is the thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson.

Disasters are frequent occurrences, “some natural, many more due to man’s ham-fisted neglect of the planet or our inability to get by without recourse to violence.” “The result is always the need for a new start, and how we respond and rebuild colours an uncertain future more than ever. Yet, for all the carnage and chaos that catastrophes bring, an odd truth is apparent: disasters do give us the chance to shape things differently.”

As a result, as Terry Eagleton writes in Hope without Optimism, “the most authentic hope is whatever can be salvaged, stripped of guarantees from a general dissolution.” It is whatever survives a general ruin. This is where we find the writer of Lamentations; bowed down with the reality of exile, yet trusting that it is in the nature of God to bring a new beginning from this disastrous affliction which is “wormwood and gall” to him. Similarly, Emily Dickinson claims that, hope is heard most sweetly in the Gale, “the chillest land” and “on the strangest Sea”.

Hope, Eagleton writes, “is to be found in the unfinished nature of the actual, discernible as a hollow at its heart.” “Potentiality is what articulates the present with the future, and thus lays down the material infrastructure of hope.” Hope is about a vision for a future that is different from the present; one which therefore requires imagination and vision. For Christians that vision is of the kingdom of God; which has begun to be realised but is still to come in its full reality.

As a result, in Theology of Hope Jürgen Moltmann argues that “Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present. If we had before our eyes only what we see, then we should cheerfully or reluctantly reconcile ourselves with things as they happen to be. That we do not reconcile ourselves, that there is no pleasant harmony between us and reality, is due to our unquenchable hope. This hope keeps man unreconciled, until the great day of the fulfilment of all the promises of God.

The Church, then, is intended to be “the source of continual new impulses towards the realization of righteousness, freedom and humanity here in the light of the promised future that is to come.” Our hope should “provide inexhaustible resources for the creative, inventive imagination of love.” It should constantly provoke and produce thinking of an anticipatory kind in love to humanity and the world, “in order to give shape to the newly dawning possibilities in the light of the promised future, in order as far as possible to create here the best that is possible, because what is promised is within the bounds of possibility.” “Thus it will constantly arouse the ‘passion for the possible’, inventiveness and elasticity in self-transformation, in breaking with the old and coming to terms with the new.” The Christian hope should always have “a revolutionary effect in this sense on the intellectual history of the society affected by it.”

“Wherever that happens, Christianity embraces its true nature and becomes a witness of the future of Christ.”

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Van Morrison - These Are The Days.

On the third day I finish my work

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Catherine’s Wickford and Christ Church Wickford:

The singer-songwriter Bill Fay died recently aged 81. A very private man, he rarely performed in public, but his songs nevertheless touched the hearts of many people.

This was despite a long period, from the mid-1970s to the 2000s, where he was without a recording contract. Such setbacks didn't seem to phase him and he found other work while continuing to record his songs. Eventually, the strength of his early work, which had been overlooked at the time, brought attention back to him and he recorded three well-received albums before he died.

His life mirrored the faith and belief that he poured out in his songs. Songs which are laments for the violence and lack of care often seen in our world together with celebration of the everyday acts of love and care undertaken by ordinary people. The latter reveal God's love in the midst of difficulty and point towards a future day when love will reshape the world in the image of Jesus Christ.

In today's Gospel reading (Luke 13:31-35), Jesus, himself, is facing the forces of violence as Herod is seeking to kill him in the context of a conquered nation ruled by the Roman oppressors. His response is to continue working in the face of the threats around him and to lament the effect the oppressive forces have on the people around him.

He longs to gather those around him and shelter them from the storms of life as a mother hen does with her chicks by bringing them under her wing for warmth. In this way, he shows us the mother heart of God, which is overflowing with love towards us. Lovingly, Jesus is saying he wants to be like the mother hen gathering God’s people to him where they will then experience safety and love. At the same time that he makes this specific statement to the people of Jerusalem, he is also paying a wonderful tribute to motherhood itself by equating the love which God shows towards us to the love that mothers show towards their offspring.

This is one of several passages in scripture where God is described in feminine terms. Given the patriarchal nature of the society in which the Bible was formed, it is surprising to find any references to God as feminine and it is particularly significant to find this reference on the lips of Jesus.

The Bible tells us that God is Spirit and therefore not male or female. When human beings enter the story of creation, it is as beings made in the image of God, both male and female. So, God is ultimately not gendered in the way that we are and it is important for us to understand and celebrate the way God expresses his love through both genders.

Jesus laments here over the patterns of response in our world which see those who are different from us and have a message of change being scapegoated and killed. Scapegoating others is the way in which we consistently act as human beings. We desire something that is possessed by someone else and become disturbed through our longing for what we don’t have. We resolve our disturbance by creating a scapegoat of the person or people who appear to have or prevent us from having what it is we desire. When the scapegoat is killed, we can gain what we desire and also release the sense of disturbance that we feel.

That is what Jesus knew he was facing and his response was to double down on his work of healing and care until such time as his death came when the people would then say 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’

That change would come about because on the third day his work would be finished; the third day being the day he rose from the dead. The scapegoating and crucifixion of God is the ultimate demonstration of God's love for humanity but it is the resurrection that then changes the arc of human history away from oppression and towards peace. Jesus is resurrected as the first-fruits of a new way of life wholly characterised by love and where there is no more mourning or crying or pain.

In rising from the dead, he has gone ahead of us into the new risen body and existence that we shall experience in future when Jesus returns to this earth to fully bring God’s Kingdom into existence here. When Jesus walked the earth, he looked ahead to that future time when the Kingdom of God will be made perfect, and all suffering will come to an end. But he also announced that, because of him, there is a sense in which that Kingdom has already begun. When he healed sick people and brought good news to the poor it was a sign that the Kingdom had come. In the same way, when he overcame death by rising from the dead he became the first fruits of the Kingdom, an example of what we will all become in future.

All of this is also to be found in the songs of Bill Fay. In ‘There is a valley’ he sings:

“There is a hill near Jerusalem that wild flowers grow upon
Flowers don't speak, but they speak to each other of a crucifixion
Just because he said he was the son of God
And the fury of the moment they felt they could only silently look upon
Every city bar brawl, every fist-fight, every bullet from a gun
It's written upon the palms of the Holy One
Every city bar brawl, every fist-fight, every bullet from a gun
It's written in the palms, in the palms of the Holy One”

In ‘Still some light’ he encourages us to go on in the face of this world’s troubles because we have seen the light:

“Still some light for this frail mankind, still some hope, some end in sight
Still some light for this frail mankind, still some grace in troubled times
When this world seems like a market place, where souls are bought and sold
And it’s all to easy, for a soul to grow cold
When this world seems like a market place, where souls are bought and sold
God knows it ain’t easy, don’t give up on it all, still some light”

The light that we have seen is ‘The Healing Day’ that is still to come:

“It'll be okay
On the healing day
No more goin' astray
On the healing day
Yeah we'll find our way
On the healing day
To where the children play
On the healing day

When the tyrant is bound
And the tortured freed from his pain
And the lofty brought to the ground
And the lonely rage

Ain't so far away
That healin' day
Comin' to stay
The healing day”

In the face of violence and oppression, Jesus doubled down on his ministry of healing and his acts of love and transformation. Following in Jesus' footsteps, Bill Fay continued to sing of this world's transformation into the image of Christ despite being ignored and overlooked for many years. In a changing world where hatred of others is on the rise and where authoritarian figures are increasingly being given power to oppress, we are challenged by their examples to continue to act in the ways of love as a sign of the coming kingdom of love. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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Bill Fay - Still Some Light.

Realising the worth that God sees in us

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

“Ever since God created the world his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen, they are perceived in the things God has made.” (Romans 1. 20) That is the claim which St Paul makes in the first chapter of Romans and that understanding forms the basis of the teaching about worry that Jesus gives us in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6. 25 - 34).

The teaching Jesus gives us is based on lessons drawn from his understanding of nature and creation. Firstly, he looks at the cycle of existence – the circle of life - which enables all creatures to live and flourish in their way and time. 

Birds provide his specific example, possibly because they would have been prolific and yet are not reliant on human beings for their survival. The birds don’t do any of the things that human beings do to provide food for themselves – they “do not sow seeds, gather a harvest and put it in barns” – yet, in the circle of life there is a sufficiency of the food that they need in order to survive. 

In this way, Jesus says, we see that God the Father is taking care of them. For Jesus, God’s provision for the birds is a sign of the worth that he sees in his creation as a whole and in each specific part. Just as the creation as a whole is “good,” so are the birds which are found within it. If that is true of birds, then is it not also true of human beings? “Aren’t you worth much more than birds?” Jesus asks. 

In Eucharistic Prayer G we read that in the fullness of time God made us in his image, the crown of all creation. That gives us incredible worth and value, in and of ourselves and regardless of how we feel about ourselves. Jesus is saying that the power we have over creation and our unique position in creation - being conscious creators – speaks clearly to us of this incredible privilege of having been made in the image of God.

To what extent do we appreciate this reality? Often, we can be so caught up in the busyness of daily life that we do not stop to reflect on the wonder of existence and our existence. Stop for a moment to think about the incredible complexity of our physical bodies and of our conscious existence. 

Stop for a moment and think about the incredible achievements of the human race – the great art we have created, amazing technological developments and inventions, the cities we have built, the scientific and medical advancements we have seen, the depths of compassion and sacrifice which have been plumbed by the great saints in our history. While we are also well aware of the darker forces at work in human beings, our positive abilities and achievements reveal the reality of our creation as beings that resemble God in his creative power and energy. We can and should celebrate this reality – realising the worth that God sees in us – at the same time as giving thanks to our God for creating us in this way.                

Isn’t life worth more than food and isn’t the body worth more than clothes, Jesus asks us. Often, we can be so caught up in the busyness of daily life that we do not realise the wonder of our existence and do not realise all that we could achieve if we were to use our abilities and creativity more fully in his service. “We were meant to live for so much more” is how the rock band Switchfoot put it. Jesus challenges us to be concerned with more than the worries of daily life, to be “concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he [God] requires of you.”

Stop for a moment and think of the unique way in which you have been created by God – the unique combination of personality and talents with which you have been blessed – and ask yourself how these things could more fully be used for the building up of the Kingdom of God on earth, as in heaven.

Stop for a moment and think about the Kingdom of God as described in the Beatitudes with which Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount. The Kingdom of God is a place of happiness for those who know they are spiritually poor, a place of comfort for those who mourn, a place of receptivity for those who are humble, a place of satisfaction for those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires, a place of mercy for those who are merciful, a place in which God is seen by the pure in heart, a place in which those who work for peace are called God’s children, and a place which belongs to those who are persecuted because they do what God requires. What might God be calling us to do for him to bring the Kingdom of God to others?

Jesus argues that the goodness and worth of all created things can be seen in the way that creation provides all that is needed for creatures and plants to live and thrive. Our worth is greater still because we are made in the very image of God having power over creation and innate creative abilities ourselves. It is incumbent on us then to use the power we possess for the good of others and for the good of creation itself. We are, as God says, in Genesis to cultivate, tend and guard creation. Bringing happiness, satisfaction and belonging by giving comfort, practicing humility, sharing mercy and working for peace are all powerful ways of tending and guarding creation and building the Kingdom of God on earth, as in heaven.

Stop for a moment to recognise the something more for which we are meant to live. Dedicate your life to be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what God requires of you.    

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U2 - When Love Comes To Town.

Transformation and change

Here's the reflection that I shared in the Church of England's online service and at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

The story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana is a highly symbolic story of transformation (John 2: 1 – 11). It is a story that happens on the third day; the day which will become the day of resurrection. The third day is the day when what was dead comes back to life and here, we have a story of a wedding feast which is about to descend into disaster as the wine fails but which is then saved when water is turned into wine.

The water which becomes wine is that which was used for ritual washing. There were many reasons in Jewish law why cleansing from ritual impurities was required, so this was water which was in regular use. Jesus turns this water into wine which, at the Last Supper, was to become the symbol of his death. This wine of his death, unlike the water, is a once-for-all sacrifice for sin, just as the miraculous wine created at this wedding was a never-to-be repeated wine.

The wine saves the wedding feast and reminds us of the wedding which is still come between the bridegroom Jesus and his bride, the Church. That marriage is a symbol of God’s coming kingdom in which the governing principle is, “love one another.” Through this symbolic action Jesus is also seen to have moved from being the carpenter’s son to being God’s Son, the Messiah.

So, we have a story which is rich in symbolism and one where the symbolism speaks of sacrifice and transformation. Each transformation involves something ordinary – water, a wedding, and a carpenter’s son. Throughout his ministry Jesus is constantly taking ordinary, everyday things and transforming them so that they express something of God and his kingdom:

Jesus takes water and transforms it into the very best wine.
Jesus takes a child’s lunch and feeds 5,000, with 12 baskets left over.
Jesus takes bread and wine saying this is my body and my blood.
Jesus takes human life and makes it reveal God.
Jesus takes the ordinary and transforms it.

Jesus tells stories of lost coins, lost sheep, lost people, of seeds and weeds, of yeast and mustard and figs, of shepherds and farmers, workers and tenants, masters and servants, widows and judges, the proud and the penitent, the beaten up and the foreigner, the wealthy and the starving.

Jesus says,
He is the bread of life, we will not hunger.
He is the water of life, we will not thirst.
He is the light of the world, we will see.
Jesus takes the ordinary and draws out revelation.

Jesus says,
We are the salt of the world, the taste bringers.
We are the light of the world, the clear sight bringers.
Jesus takes the foolish things of the world to shame the wise,
the weak things of the world to shame the strong,
the lowly things, despised things and the things that are not
to nullify the things that are.
Jesus called the 12 and the 72,
Those who were not wise, not influential, not of noble birth
to change the world.
Jesus calls you.

Jesus calls us to transformation. A transformation that is, as in the symbolism of this story, from constant impurity to purity through Jesus’ actions. This transformation occurs as we take into ourselves Christ’s sacrifice – as we drink the wine that represents his blood shed for us – and, when we do so, we become part of the best wedding feast possible – the wedding of Jesus and his bride the Church – which is the Kingdom of God, where the governing principle is, “love one another.”

Christianity is a religion of transformation and change because we are to grow into the likeness of Christ by being conformed to the pattern of his death and resurrection. We act out this story of transformation leading to celebration each time we celebrate communion. The bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ for us and we receive Christ into our lives being changed into his likeness in the process. We may arrive at communion as ordinary human beings but we leave as those who are being transformed into the very image and body of Christ himself.

Are we receiving Christ’s body and blood in order that we become like him? Is that why we come? Is that our prayer? Is that the one thing that we desire above all else?

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St Martin's Voices - I Am Changed.

Signs of the kingdom now and nearby

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

In our Gospel reading (Luke 21. 25-36), Jesus talks about signs that the kingdom of God is near which are not always seen or noticed.

There is a condition called presbyopia that relates to this. Presbyopia is when your eyes gradually lose the ability to see things clearly up close. It is a normal part of aging. In fact, the term “presbyopia” comes from a Greek word which means “old eye.” You may start to notice presbyopia shortly after age 40. You will probably find that you hold reading materials farther away in order to see them clearly.

What happens is that your clear lens sits inside the eye behind your coloured iris. It changes shape to focus light onto the retina so you can see. When you are young, the lens is soft and flexible, easily changing shape. This lets you focus on objects both close-up and far away. After age 40, the lens becomes more rigid. It cannot change shape as easily. This makes it harder to read, thread a needle, or do other close-up tasks.

There is no way to stop or reverse the normal aging process that causes presbyopia. However, presbyopia can be corrected with eyeglasses, contact lenses, medication, or surgery.

This condition means that we see things close up better when we see with the eyes of a child. Jesus spoke about our needing to become like little children in order to see the kingdom of God. A Catholic nun who was also an artist called Sister Corita Kent has described the way in which children look and learn:

“Ask [a] child to come from the front of the house to the back and closely observe her small journey. It will be full of pauses, circling, touching and picking up in order to smell, shake, taste, rub, and scrape. The child’s eyes won’t leave the ground, and every piece of paper, every scrap, every object along the path will be a new discovery.

It does not matter that his is all familiar territory – the same house, the same rug and chair. To the child, the journey of this particular day, with its special light and sound, has never been made before. So the child treats the situation with the open curiosity and attention that it deserves.

The child is quite right.”

The central premise of this parable — that the kingdom is near, now — is a promise that the church needs to here regularly. Watch for the signs, Jesus says, and you will see that your redemption is drawing near, and indeed is already near.

"The Greek word here is engizo, a verb which expresses the immanence, the “coming nearness” of someone or something." So, here, "in this unusual parable and its visualization of this vital New Testament idea of “nearness,” we find the imperative of the gospel, its life-giving assurance — the Kingdom is not far off; it is not waiting; it is not an undiscovered country; it is right here in Jesus, the Son of Man, and in his proclamation. This is the good news: the kingdom of heaven has come near."

So, what is it that we’re missing, what is it that is close by, near to us, that we’re overlooking? Luke has already answered that question for us near the beginning of his Gospel. In Luke 4, we read of Jesus going to the synagogue in Nazareth, being given the scroll, reading words from Isaiah, then sitting down and saying ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

The words he read are his manifesto and the signs that the kingdom of God is near:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

So whenever and wherever we see good news brought to the poor, release proclaimed for captive, recovery of sight for those who are blind and freedom brought to those who are oppressed then we are seeing the kingdom of God coming near.

That is what we are to look out for. That is what can often be seen nearby but which is missed when we, as the Church so often has done, look for the coming kingdom in the far distant future instead of the here and now.

'The kingdom is directly related to Jesus himself. The king is present with us, so the kingdom is near.' 'In Jesus, God was beginning to reign on earth in a new way, in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. Under God’s sovereign authority, righteousness will triumph over injustice and multifaceted peace will fill the earth.

Through Christ, you and I can live today under the reign of God today, however incompletely. When we seek God’s agenda for our lives, when we live for his purposes and glory, when we bow before him in worship, we are experiencing the kingdom of God, in anticipation of that day when all the earth will flourish under the glorious reign of God.'

'God's kingdom is all around you. There's nowhere you go that God doesn't reign. You either choose to recognize the truthfulness of that and live accordingly, or you choose to live in rebellion, rejecting the truth. If you choose the latter, you will find that your life doesn't go quite the way God intended. We're meant to recognize that the reign of God is all around us and to live accordingly.'

As we have seen, 'the knowledge that God's kingdom is all around us is not meant to lead us to ignore the world, saying, "None of the problems in the world really matter, because I live in the kingdom of God." Instead, it's meant to compel us to try to help this world look more like the kingdom of God. We live in rebellion, and the world lives in rebellion, so we see a lot of things in our world that are broken and reflective of our brokenness. But we pray: "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."' In teaching us to pray this prayer, Jesus is encouraging us to see with the eyes of a child and to see what is nearby and close up, his kingdom in our lives and our world.

This is our Advent task to look with the eyes of a child for the kingdom of God nearby now, remembering that advent means arrival and that the incarnation involved God moving into our neighbourhood as a child.

So, we pray: Grant us, Lord God, a vision of your world as your love would have it: a world where the weak are protected, and none go hungry or poor; a world where the riches of creation are shared, and everyone can enjoy them; a world where different races and cultures live in harmony and mutual respect; a world where peace is built with justice, and justice is guided by love. Give us the inspiration and courage to build it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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The Innocence Mission - Cloud To Cloud. 

The kingdom of Christ the King

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

Jesus and Pilate
head-to-head
in a clash of cultures.
Pilate is
angular, aggressive, threatening
representing
the oppressive, controlling
Empire of dominating power,
with its strength in numbers
and weaponry,
which can crucify
but cannot
set free.
Jesus is
curves and crosses,
love and sacrifice,
representing
the kingdom of God;
a kingdom of love,
service and self-sacrifice
birthing men and women
into the freedom
to love one another.

The way of compassion
or the way of domination;
the way of self-sacrifice
or the way of self;
the way of powerlessness
or the way of power;
the way of serving
or the way of grasping;
the kingdom of God
or the empires of Man.

Stephen Verney, a former Bishop of Repton, in ‘Water into Wine’ his commentary on John’s Gospel, notes the way in which this Gospel consistently speaks about there being two different levels or orders to reality. What he means by this are different patterns of society, each with a different centre or ruling power. He gives as an example, the difference between a fascist order and a democratic order: “In the fascist order there is a dictator, and round him subservient people who raise their hands in salute, and are thrown into concentration camps if they disobey. In the democratic order … there is an elected government, and round it persons who are interdependent, who share initiatives and ideas.”

So, what are the two orders that he sees described in John’s Gospel? In the first, “the ruling principle is the dictator ME, my ego-centric ego, and the pattern of society is people competing with, manipulating and trying to control each other.” In the second, “the ruling principle is the Spirit of Love, and the pattern of society is one of compassion – people giving to each other what they really are, and accepting what others are, recognising their differences, and sharing their vulnerability.”

When Jesus says that his kingdom is not from here (John 18. 33-37), in this world, he means that it is not a kingdom of the ego dictated by the needs and insecurities of the one in power, instead his kingdom, which comes from elsewhere, from God, is a kingdom of compassion, acceptance, difference and vulnerability.

When John writes of Jesus as faithful witness in the Book of Revelation (Revelation 1. 4b-8), he means that Jesus, as witness, revealed to us the very image of God as he was God in human form. His actions and teaching together are the fullest expression of God that can be given and seen in a human being.

As firstborn of the dead, he was both the first to rise from death with a resurrected body and then the one who leads us into that same experience so we can also rise from death and live forever in God’s presence in a new heaven and earth that are joined together to become one.

As ruler of the kings of the earth, he is pre-eminent over all earthly monarchs because as God’s Son he precedes them all, being involved in the creation of the world and all that exists, and, through his life, death and resurrection, sits at the right hand of God and has the name that is above all other names and before which every knee in heaven and on earth must bow.

His death is the act by which we see that we are loved absolutely by God because he does not hold his only Son back from the sacrifice of his own life, breaking for a time the bond between Father and Son. Both were necessary for that to happen in order that we might come to know the depth of love that both have for us as human beings.

Whenever we respond to that love, we become part of his kingdom of love in which his people are his priests because they worship by living lives based on the example of Christ the King. A king and a kingdom where “the ruling principle is the Spirit of Love, and the pattern of society is one of compassion – people giving to each other what they really are, and accepting what others are, recognising their differences, and sharing their vulnerability.”

The Jesus whose kingdom is not from this world is Christ the King, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. He came into the world to testify to the truth and everyone who belongs to the truth listens to his voice. He loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood making us to be a kingdom, priests serving God his Father forever. To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

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Crown Him With Many Crowns.

The narrow way and the climate emergency

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

''Sir David Attenborough issued a warning ahead of the UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021 that leaders must act now or “it’ll be too late” for the planet.

Cop26 was billed as the last best chance to keep global temperature rises to no more than 1.5C, with Sir David critical of those who deny the climate crisis. In conversation with BBC science editor David Shukman, the naturalist and broadcaster said: “Every month that passes, it becomes more and more incontrovertible, the changes to the planet that we are responsible for that are having these devastating effects.” He added: “If we don’t act now, it will be too late. We have to do it now.”'

There is a narrow window in which we can change. The time is short, and the gate is narrow, as Jesus said to his disciples in our Gospel reading ((Luke 13.22-30).

When he spoke those words, Jesus knew his time was limited. He knew Jerusalem and death was fast approaching. He knew that through his ministry in Israel God's people were being given an opportunity to respond in a new way, yet the opportunity would not be there for long. Therefore, he and his disciples travelled the length and breadth of Israel in the three years before his crucifixion to share the good news of the opportunity that was before the people but only for a short time.

They went with the message that ‘The Kingdom of God is near you now.’ Now was the time when the Kingdom of God could be seen and touched and experienced because now was the time that God himself was with them. He sent his disciples ahead of him to say that the Kingdom of God was coming near, that it would be experienced in the time when he arrived. So, the time to respond and experience and join was now.

The Gospels, therefore, are full of urgency. Jesus' parables are stories of decision, stories in which people find out that time has beaten them and the moment for response has passed. Are we like, the wise or foolish bridesmaids? Those that were ready for the coming of the bridegroom, or not? Are we like, the farmer who built his big barns planning to eat, drink and be merry but whose life was demanded of him that night? Or will we be like the Prodigal Son who realised change was possible and seized the moment by returning to his father and being reconciled.

Life consistently challenges us to decide in the moment. If there is one thing that the pandemic taught us, it is that life is short, and we do not know what is around the corner. Therefore, we should not put off what we know we should do today. Our time is short, the gate is narrow, the time for decision is now.

That's certainly the case in regard to the climate emergency. Global efforts to tackle climate change currently are wildly off track the UN has said, as new data shows that warming gases are accumulating faster than at any time in human existence.

UN Climate Change, the UN agency tasked with addressing the issue, carried out an analysis on the carbon cutting plans that have been submitted by close to 200 countries. The UN wanted to see how much progress is being made in driving down emissions that are threatening to push global temperatures well above 1.5C this century, a level beyond which scientists say extremely damaging impacts will occur.

Right now, when the plans are added up, they indicate that emissions will likely fall by just 2.6% by 2030 compared to 2019. This is far short of the 43% reduction that scientists say will be needed by the end of this decade to keep the world on track for net-zero carbon by 2050.

“The report’s findings are stark but not surprising,” said Simon Stiell, executive secretary of UN Climate Change. “Current national climate plans fall miles short of what’s needed to stop global heating from crippling every economy, and wrecking billions of lives and livelihoods across every country.”

“The climate is changing fast," says Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown. “At the moment, we are still in a position to just about adapt to the changes in the climate. But it is going to get to a point where we will reach the limit of our capacity. Then we will see a lot of unavoidable impacts.” "The higher we allow the global temperature to go, the worse things are going to be”.

We are still in the narrow window of time available to us in relation to the climate emergency, although Cop26 and subsequent conferences have clearly not yet delivered the scale or urgency of action required. In the words of the singer-songwriter Lou Reed:

'This is no time to ignore Warnings
This is no time to clear the Plate
Let's not be sorry after the fact
And let the past become our fate

This is no time for phony Rhetoric
This is no time for political Speech
This is a time for action
Because the future's within Reach'

So, just as Jesus stated in relation to his own mission, we too need to strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able because by then it will be too late. In our current situation, that prediction would be a disaster for the generations that follow us. Amen.

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Lou Reed - There Is No Time.

Visual Commentary on Scripture: Fishers of People

I'm delighted that my third exhibition for the Visual Commentary on Scripture has just been published and can be found at Fishers of People | VCS (thevcs.org).

This exhibition uses Damien Hirst's 'Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding (Left) and (Right)', John Bellany's 'Kinlochbervie', and Paul Thek's 'Fishman in Excelsis Table' to discuss Matthew 4:12-22 and Mark 1:14-20. These artworks give us what is essentially a collage of the kingdom whereby we are invited to imagine the kingdom of God as a body of water in which Christians are immersed and through which they are raised.

My first exhibition for the VCS was Back from the Brink on Daniel 4: 'Immediately the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers, and his nails were like birds’ claws.' (Daniel 4:33). In the exhibition I explore this chapter with William Blake's 'Nebuchadnezzar', 1795–c.1805, Arthur Boyd's 'Nebuchadnezzar's Dream of the Tree', 1969, and Peter Howson's 'The Third Step', 2001.

My second exhibition is A Question of Faith and explores Hebrews 11 through the paintings of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon. McCahon is widely recognised as New Zealand’s foremost painter. Over 45 years, his work encompassed many themes, subjects and styles, from landscape to figuration to abstraction and an innovative use of painted text. His adaption of aspects of modernist painting to a specific local situation and his intense engagement with spiritual matters, mark him out as a distinctive figure in twentieth-century art.

The VCS is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art. It helps its users to (re)discover the Bible in new ways through the illuminating interaction of artworks, scriptural texts, and commissioned commentaries. The virtual exhibitions of the VCS aim to facilitate new possibilities of seeing and reading so that the biblical text and the selected works of art come alive in new and vivid ways.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three art works, and their associated commentaries. The curators of each exhibition select artworks that they consider will open up the biblical texts for interpretation, and/or offer new perspectives on themes the texts address. The commentaries explain and interpret the relationships between the works of art and the scriptural text.

Find out more about the VCS, its exhibitions and other resources through a short series of HeartEdge workshops introducing the VCS as a whole and exploring particular exhibitions with their curators. These workshops can be viewed here, here, here and here.

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Newsboys - Fishers Of Men.

Dedicate your life to be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God

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

“Ever since God created the world his invisible qualities, both his eternal power and his divine nature, have been clearly seen, they are perceived in the things God has made.” (Romans 1. 20)

That is the claim which St Paul makes in the first chapter of Romans and that understanding forms the basis of the teaching about worry that Jesus gives us in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6. 25 - 34).

The teaching Jesus gives us is based on lessons drawn from his understanding of nature and creation. Firstly, he looks at the cycle of existence – the circle of life - which enables all creatures to live and flourish in their way and time.

Birds provide his specific example, possibly because they would have been prolific and yet are not reliant on human beings for their survival. The birds don’t do any of the things that human beings do to provide food for themselves – they “do not sow seeds, gather a harvest and put it in barns” – yet, in the circle of life there is a sufficiency of the food that they need in order to survive.

In this way, Jesus says, we see that God the Father is taking care of them. Jesus is saying in effect what is repeated in Genesis 1 that God’s creation is good and provides all that is needed by the creatures which live in it. In Genesis 1 we specifically read that God has provided in creation the food which the birds need in order to increase in number (Genesis 1. 22 & 30).

For Jesus, God’s provision for the birds is a sign of the worth that he sees in his creation as a whole and in each specific part. Just as the creation as a whole is “good,” so are the birds which are found within it. If that is true of birds, then is it not also true of human beings? “Aren’t you worth much more than birds?” Jesus asks.

In Eucharistic Prayer G we read that in the fullness of time God made us in his image, the crown of all creation. Genesis 1 tells us that God made us to be like him, to resemble him and be made in his image. That gives us incredible worth and value, in and of ourselves and regardless of how we feel about ourselves. Jesus is saying that the power we have over creation and our unique position in creation - being conscious creators – speaks clearly to us of this incredible privilege of having been made in the image of God.

To what extent do we appreciate this reality? Often, we can be so caught up in the busyness of daily life that we do not stop to reflect on the wonder of existence and our existence. This Harvest Festival, stop for a moment to think about the incredible complexity of our physical bodies and of our conscious existence.

Stop for a moment and think about the incredible achievements of the human race – the harvesting of food around the world, amazing technological developments and inventions, the cities we have built, the scientific and medical advancements we have seen, the great art we have created, the depths of compassion and sacrifice which have been plumbed by the great saints in our history. While we are also well aware of the darker forces at work in human beings, our positive abilities and achievements reveal the reality of our creation as beings that resemble God in his creative power and energy. We can and should celebrate this reality – realising the worth that God sees in us – at the same time as giving thanks to our God for creating us in this way.

Isn’t life worth more than food and isn’t the body worth more than clothes, Jesus asks us. Often, we can be so caught up in the busyness of daily life that we do not realise the wonder of our existence and do not realise all that we could achieve if we were to use our abilities and creativity more fully in his service. “We were meant to live for so much more” is how the rock band Switchfoot put it. Jesus challenges us to be concerned with more than the worries of daily life, to be “concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he [God] requires of you.”

This Harvest Festival, stop for a moment and think of the unique way in which you have been created by God – the unique combination of personality and talents with which you have been blessed – and ask yourself how these things could more fully be used for the building up of the Kingdom of God on earth, as in heaven.

Stop for a moment and think about the Kingdom of God as described in the Beatitudes with which Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount. The Kingdom of God is a place of happiness for those who know they are spiritually poor, a place of comfort for those who mourn, a place of receptivity for those who are humble, a place of satisfaction for those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires, a place of mercy for those who are merciful, a place in which God is seen by the pure in heart, a place in which those who work for peace are called God’s children, and a place which belongs to those who are persecuted because they do what God requires. What might God be calling us to do for him to bring the Kingdom of God to others?

Jesus argues that the goodness and worth of all created things can be seen in the way that creation provides all that is needed for creatures and plants to live and thrive. Our worth is greater still because we are made in the very image of God having power over creation and innate creative abilities ourselves. It is incumbent on us then to use the power we possess for the good of others and for the good of creation itself. We are, as God says, in Genesis to cultivate, tend and guard creation. Bringing happiness, satisfaction and belonging by giving comfort, practicing humility, sharing mercy and working for peace are all powerful ways of tending and guarding creation and building the Kingdom of God on earth, as in heaven.

This Harvest Festival, stop for a moment to recognise the something more for which we are meant to live. Dedicate your life to be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what God requires of you.

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Michael Kiwanuka - Place I Belong.

The kingdom of heaven is like this …

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

“The kingdom of heaven is like this …” That is how many of Jesus’ parables begin and his introduction makes clear that the parables are told not to impart general spiritual truths but to help us recognise the kingdom of heaven when we see it. Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is like a seed, a portion of yeast, a hidden treasure, a fine pearl, a fishing net, and a storeroom containing both new and old items.

The parables of the mustard seed and the yeast are both to do with small things that have a big impact. Jesus describes the mustard seed as being the smallest of seeds but it grows to become the biggest of plants; a tree in which birds can make their nests. The phrase a ‘mustard seed’ has entered our language as a little idea that grows into something bigger and that is of course literally what happened with the Jesus movement itself. It was a relatively small grouping of obscure people that died when its founder, Jesus died, but which, following his resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost grew to become the largest religion in history and also within the world currently.

The story of the yeast gives us a different way of understanding the kingdom of God through a growth that is not just in terms of size but also in terms of influence. The yeast does not become large but its effect in the dough is to cause it to rise. In this story the kingdom of God, although small, is the catalyst for change and development.

Today we have read parables in which the kingdom of God needed to be searched out and in which to gain the kingdom of God involved giving everything we have (Matthew 13. 44-46). In these parables the kingdom of God is like a treasure and a fine pearl; both precious and beautiful. How can we understand this aspect of the kingdom? We could say that the kingdom is both precious and beautiful because it is the place where people live as God intended us to live. It is a place of “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control” (Galatians 5. 22-23). It is a place where there will be “no more death, no more grief or crying or pain” (Revelation 21. 4).

Such a place is indeed worth searching for and giving everything for. In fact, it can only be gained by giving up everything we have. As Jesus said on a number of occasions, “whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Luke 17. 33). We only find and enter the kingdom of God when we give up our selfish grasping after life for ourselves and what we can get out of it.

Finally, Jesus told two parables that show the inclusivity of the kingdom of God. In the parable of the fishing net, the kingdom includes both the good and the bad; while in the parable of the storeroom the kingdom of God contains both the old and the new. You might say, “that’s all well and good but the parable of the fishing net is about the good being kept and the bad thrown away.” You would be right, but it is important to note that that judgement is God’s judgement and is carried out at “the end of the age.” In the meantime good and bad are both in the net together and we don’t know which is which. So, we have to trust God’s future judgement and not attempt to pre-judge people now.

In this parable, and the parable of the weeds, Jesus is commending here the aspect of Anglicanism that, it seems to me, has always been its great strength and glory; its holding together from its inception of ‘catholics’ (with a small ‘c’) and protestants and in more recent centuries its holding together of the diverse streams that have developed within those traditions – anglo-catholicism, evangelicalism, liberalism, the charismatic movement and so on. By holding these things together now we show our humility (in that we know we can’t judge rightly ourselves) and trust in God’s ability to judge rightly (and perhaps surprisingly) in future.

These parables suggest that the kingdom of God has small beginnings but major influence and effects. They suggest that the kingdom of God reveals how human life should be lived here and now but requires us to give up our selfish ways of life in order to find it. And they suggest the kingdom of God is found in communities that are inclusive, humble and trusting. The Christian Church has, at its best, been a sign of the kingdom of God in the world and in this community. The challenge for us this morning is to learn from these parables and continue to do what Jesus did by creating signs of the kingdom of God in our own day and time.

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Taize - The Kingdom Of God.

The Kingdom of God as a mustard seed

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

The Kingdom of God, Jesus says, begins as something small, unregarded, and insignificant.

We see this lived out in Jesus’ own life. In human terms his life was small and insignificant, like the mustard seed (Mark 4: 26-34). His birthplace was described as being least among the clans of Judea. His home town was a place from which no good was known to come. In appearance he was without beauty or majesty, undesired. In his life he was despised and rejected, unrecognised and unesteemed. In his death he was made nothing. An insignificant man who died in a insignificant part of the world.

That ought to have been the end of it but instead it was only the beginning. From that small beginning, Christ’s body – the Church, the gathering of all those who believe in him – has grown so that for many centuries Christianity has been the largest religion in the world; and that remains the case despite secularisation in parts of the Western world.

The Early Church reveals the same pattern to us. Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1.26-31) and said, “think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” He said in this letter that, in the eyes of the world, Christians are foolish and the message of the cross is foolish.

The same words could actually be applied to us: none of us are major intellectuals or academics; none of us have major influence or power in terms of work or politics; none of us, so far as I know, were born into the aristocracy. The reality is that wonderful as each of us are, we are not major players on the world stage and that makes us, in human terms, one among millions of other human beings around the world. When we think of ourselves in those terms it easy to see ourselves and what we do as being small and insignificant.

We may not like to think of ourselves as being foolish, as well as insignificant, but that is how Paul describes the Corinthian Christians from the perspective of those considered wise in their culture. It is no different today, Richard Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion that God is a “psychotic delinquent” invented by mad, deluded people and our faith in God is a “process of non-thinking,” “blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.”

BUT what Jesus demonstrates through his life, death and resurrection and what Paul states in his letter to the Corinthians is that “the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.” The Message, a contemporary paraphrase of the Bible, puts it like this:

“Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.”

What Jesus has done for us, in giving us a clean slate and a fresh start – points forward in history to a time when the whole world will be given a clean slate and a fresh start. In Revelation 21 we are given a wonderful future vision of God making everything new; of God moving into the neighbourhood permanently, joining earth and heaven together, and making his home with us. Wiping every tear from our eyes as death, tears, crying and pain are all gone for good.

Now we don’t have to understand how this happens. Jesus told the story that we heard this morning of the man who scattered seed in his field without knowing how the seed grew. Farmers in Jesus’ day didn’t understand the science of how plants grew but they knew that the process of sowing seeds into soil worked and produced corn. It is not necessary to understand in detail the processes of germination and growth in order for the harvest to come.

Jesus is saying something similar to us. Just as we could not have anticipated that an insignificant rabbi for Israel who was killed after only three years of teaching would become the greatest figure in the history of humanity, so we cannot expect to understand in detail God’s plans for the future of the world; how the Kingdom of God will finally and fully come, how the vision of Revelation 21 is to be achieved.

What we do know though is what Jesus has shown us of the Kingdom of God coming through his life, death, resurrection, and through the change that he has made in our lives and those of others that we know. He introduces the Kingdom of God into the world and into our lives. He is the first fruits, the first sign of that coming Kingdom and, because we can trust him, we can trust that the Kingdom will come both more fully in our lives and completely in the new heaven and new earth.

This is not blind faith because, like the farmer, although we do not understand the detail of how the process or plan works, we know that it does work from the evidence of Jesus and from the evidence of his Spirit in the lives of countless Christians throughout history including ourselves.

And because we know that the process or pattern or plan of the small, the insignificant, the foolish being used by God to achieve great change, we can trust that our lives also have meaning and significance as we put our faith into practice in small acts of compassion here and little words of witness there; at home, at home, in church and in the community. We don’t know what God will cause to grow from these actions and words but we trust that they will take root and grow because that is the pattern that we, and Christians throughout Church history, have observed in practice.

So: “Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don't see many of "the brightest and the best" among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn't it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these "nobodies" to expose the hollow pretensions of the "somebodies"? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ.”

unregarded

Birthplace,
least among the clans of Judea.
Home town,
a place from which no good was known to come.
In appearance,
without beauty or majesty, undesired.
In life,
despised and rejected, unrecognised and unesteemed.
In death,
made nothing.
His followers,
not wise, not influential, not noble – fools!

The light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the bodies and form of human beings.
Light shining
through the gaps and cracks of clay pots.
Light shining
in the unexpected places, despised faces, hidden spaces.
Light shining
in the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry.
Light shining
in the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers.
Light shining
in the persecuted, the insulted, the falsely accused.
Light shining
in the lowly, the despised, the nonentities.
Light shining
in weakness and fear and trembling.
Light shining
in the foolish followers of the King of Fools.

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Delirious? - King Of FoolsKing Of Fools.

Identities that no longer hold us in the way they once did

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

When Jesus appeared to his disciples following his resurrection, he was both like he was before his death and different. On the day of his resurrection itself, Jesus appeared to the disciples at various times and places when it was physical impossible to be at so many different places in one day. His glorified body didn’t seem to have the same limitations his earthly body possessed before his resurrection. We are told that he was able to appear and disappear, travel great distances, and pass through the wall or the locked door of a house. As a result, St Paul writes about an earthly body and a resurrection body with continuities and differences between the two.

Resurrection, it seems, is not simply a continuation of our current experience but a new dimension of living. Jurgen Moltmann reflects this idea when he says, the “resurrection of Christ does not mean a new possibility within the world and its history, but a new possibility altogether for the world, for existence, and for history.” Jesus gave us a hint of this, too, is his response to the Sadducees that we read about in today’s Gospel reading (Mark 12.18-27). Those who are resurrected, Jesus says, neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

We don’t know what it is like to inhabit a resurrected body or live a resurrected life, as the Bible just gives the sense that there are similarities and differences, continuities and changes. As a result, it is unhelpful to speculate about that future. So, what can we say about the nature of relationship in eternity on the basis of Jesus’ response to the Sadducees?

In following Jesus, we follow someone who posed some very significant challenges to our understanding of the place of family. "The obligation to bury one’s father was regarded by many Jews of Jesus’ time as the most holy and binding duty of a son; but Jesus says that that is secondary to the call to follow him and announce God’s kingdom" (Luke 9. 51 - 62). This call cuts across family life and our traditional understandings of family.

In Matthew 12, when Jesus was told that his mother and brothers were nearby, we read that he said: "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? … Whoever does what my Father in heaven wants is my brother, my sister, and my mother." Then in Matthew 10 we read of Jesus saying: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I came to set sons against their fathers, daughters against their mothers, daughters-in-law against their mothers-in-law; your worst enemies will be the members of your own family."

Tom Wright notes in his commentary on this passage that Jesus is quoting from the prophet Micah (Micah 7.6) who predicts the terrible divisions that will always occur when God does a new thing. "Jesus came to bring and establish the new way of being God’s people, and not surprisingly those who were quite happy with the old one, thank you very much, didn’t like it being disturbed." "He didn’t want to bring division within households for the sake of it," Wright says, but "he knew that, if people followed his way, division was bound to follow."

Jesus, himself, did not marry and had no physical offspring. As we have seen, his emphasis was on his followers as his family, rather than his blood and adoptive relatives. His death was for the entire family of God - all people everywhere – and, as we are noting today, he taught that after the resurrection people will neither marry or be given in marriage.

Through his resurrection, Jesus has gone ahead of us in signing and establishing the Kingdom of God and he does so as the forerunner for ourselves. He was experiencing what we will later experience ourselves. The Kingdom of God, of which the resurrection is the first fruits, will be a place of equality and inclusion. In Jesus’ ministry, as Peter Rollins has pointed out, "we find a multitude of references to one who challenged the divisions that were seen as sacred, divisions between Jew and Gentile, male and female, and slave and free. Jesus spoke to tax collectors, engaged with Samaritans and treated women as equals in a world where these were outrageous acts." Jesus, for example, refused to perpetuate the divisions between Jews and Samaritans when his own disciples want to see revenge enacted on a Samaritan village for rejecting them.

More than this, though, in his incarnation we are presented with a picture of God, in Jesus, being progressively stripped of all his prior identity as God’s Son. Rollins writes that, "This is called kenosis and describes the act of self-emptying. This is most vividly expressed in the crucifixion, where we see Christ occupying the place of the complete outsider, embracing the life of one who is excluded from the political system, the religious community, and the cultural network."

To do this is to cut through the divisions which exist in society because of our different identities. This is what Jesus meant when he said he brought a sword into the world. He cut into "the very heart of all tribal allegiances, bringing unity to what was previously divided":

"There is no change biologically (male or female), religiously (Jew or Greek) or politically (slave or free). Yet nothing remains the same, for these identities are now drained of their operative power and no longer hold us in the way that they once did. These identities no longer need to separate us from each other."

Our "concrete identity continues to exist, but it is now held differently and does not dictate the scope and limitations of one’s being.” As a result, St Paul suggests “We are no longer to act as though we are defined by the things we own, the things that happen to us, or the relationships we have. While these continue to be important, we must hold them in a way that ensures they do not have an inescapable grasp upon us.” “Paul understands this radical cut as emanating directly from one’s identity with Christ, for Paul understands participation in the life of Christ as involving the loss of power that our various tribal identities once held for us."

At the Eucharist we commemorate the act in which Jesus let go of every identity by which he was known, becoming nothing, in order that we might come into a new life within the family or kingdom of God where all are one and where there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female.

Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of a new way of being human – a way of being human that ultimately knows no death, no grief, no crying, no pain, no inequality and no exclusion. Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of the healing and renewal of human beings, human society and the entire world. That is the meaning of the resurrection. That is where we, and our world, can be heading, if we follow in the footsteps of Jesus. That is what Jesus is indicating to us when he taught that after the resurrection people will neither marry or be given in marriage.

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Anawim - Give Us The Peace.