A positive legacy for future generations

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Mary’s Langdon Hills this morning and will share later at St Peter's Nevendon:

In Jewish society, land belonged first and foremost to God. The land in which the Jews lived was the Promised Land given to them by God when they were a nomadic people. Ultimately, the land was not theirs but God’s. In a sense, they held it in trust.

This is a positive attitude for all of us to have towards our possessions. Ultimately, our home, our money, our savings, our possessions are gifted to us by God and we are stewards of them. If we think like that then, instead of thinking how can I spend what I have on myself, we start thinking how can I use what I have been given for the glory of God. If we start asking ourselves that question then we are on the way to being good stewards of our resources.

When the people of Israel entered the Promised Land, the land itself had been divided up between the twelve tribes down to the level of households. In that patriarchal society the father was head of the household and ownership of the land passed from the father to the eldest son. But the land was held and used for benefit of the whole family and that was one of the reasons why it was not supposed to be sub-divided between younger members of the family. If the land was continually sub-divided eventually it would no longer support family life.

This is perhaps why Jesus was angry with the request of the man in the crowd that we read about in verse 13 (Luke 12. 13-21). He views it as a greedy request because the man wants the property for himself and that will be to the detriment of the wider family. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father does divide the property between both sons. The younger son squanders his half meaning that when he returns everyone has to live on half the property; whereas before they had benefited from the whole property. When you understand that, you understand why the elder brother of the Prodigal Son is so angry with him.

The story that Jesus then tells is a story about greed and living selfishly. The rich man in the story has so much that he can store all he has, stop farming and comfortably live off all he has until the end of his life. This is self-centred because he has decided to do nothing else but to take live easy, eat, drink and enjoy himself. But it is also selfish because he is using up and squandering the inheritance that he should be leaving to his wider family. How will they live in future when he has squandered all his resources on himself and there is no longer a working farm?

Jesus’ punchline then is not just that the rich man will not enjoy his wealth because he will die that night. This parable is a reminder to us of the brevity and uncertainty of life but it is also about the man thinking he can have it all in defiance of the legacy he should leave to his family and then finding because he suddenly dies that the legacy he should have left but didn’t is actually the legacy that his wider family receive. “Who will get all these things you have kept for yourself?” God asks the rich man in the story. The answer is the wider family who should rightfully have received then anyway.

So God is concerned about the legacy that we leave as stewards of all that he has given to us. There are at least two broad implications of these lessons for us in the West where each person consumes about 100 times as much commercially produced energy as an average Bangladeshi and where, in terms of impact on the planet, rich countries are far more overpopulated than poor ones.

The first, is that as good stewards we have a responsibility to share our abundance more equitably with others. The second, is that we need to leave a positive legacy to future generations.

John V. Taylor, a former Bishop of Winchester, published in 1975 Enough is Enough, a book which kickstarted the simple lifestyle movement with its slogan of ‘Live simply, that others may simply live.’ The time since has not yet led us to the point of collectively owning the lifestyle changes we need to make to make a difference. The prophetic cry, from those like Taylor for a greater simplicity of lifestyle, whether from moral choice or economic necessity, is one that has been effectively sidelined during our past prosperity but is one that we, as church and culture, desperately need to hear as we face a global race to exploit scarce resources.

If we were to genuinely hear and respond to their cry for the abandonment of over consumption and the adoption on an ongoing basis of a simpler lifestyle then not only could we learn not to repeat the issues raised by our over consumption but we would be also be returning to Jesus’ command to the Rich Young Ruler that we should use our wealth for the benefit of others.

That statement that, in the light of his coming kingdom, we should sell our belongings and give to the poor comes hot on the heels of this story about the rich man who piled up his riches for himself without reckoning on the crisis of his imminent demise. Just like Jesus’ disciples, we too face a coming crisis which necessitates the adoption of a simpler lifestyle.

If we hear these prophetic cries, if we learn lessons from the over consumption of our Western prosperity, if we take on board the plain meaning of Jesus’ words then, with John V. Taylor, we will say that “enough is enough!” and will seek to turn a temporary to a permanently simpler lifestyle; living simply that others may simply live.

The picture is, of course, by no means, wholly negative. Much of what happens at the grassroots of church life is actually a real challenge to the public perceptions of what Church is about. Many congregations are genuinely seeking to engage with environmental concerns and offer help in living more simply but much more still remains to be done.

The responsibility that Jesus places on us in this passage is not to store up our resources for ourselves and to leave a positive legacy for future generations. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A blessing on the earth

Here's the reflection that I shared earlier today as part of the Midday Meditation Services for Holy Week at Billericay Methodist Church, Western Road. These are reflective 45 minute services throughout Holy week to help with reflection on the life, ministry, and death of Jesus as we look towards a promised resurrection, with carefully chosen choral music: 

The Annual Lent Lecture given here, at Western Road, earlier in Lent was entitled: ‘The Bible and People of Other Faiths: A Personal and Theological Journey’ and was given by Dr Elizabeth Harris, honorary Senior Research Fellow within the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion, University of Birmingham, UK. Elizabeth gave helpful and fascinating insights into understandings of people of other faiths within the Bible and our readings today provide an opportunity to revisit that same theme and its relevance to the events of Holy Week.

‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’ (Isaiah 49: 6)

These are words originally spoken to the People of Israel, as the servant of God, but then understood by the Church as applying to Jesus, who fulfilled the task originally given by God to Israel. Although the Israelites were God’s chosen people, they were not to keep God to themselves. God’s intent in making Israel his chosen people was that they should be a light to the nations so all people would be God’s people. When Jesus speaks of himself as the light of the world, he is saying that he is acting as Israel, as God’s servant, by bring the light of life to all people everywhere.

We see Jesus acting on this basis in our Gospel reading too:

among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They … said … ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ … Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. (John 12: 20-22)

It is when people of other faiths and other cultures come and ask to see Jesus that Jesus knows it is time for him to be glorified through the crucifixion and resurrection. It is for this reason that, once filled with Jesus’ Spirit, the apostles, including St Paul, take the message of Jesus, in word and act, to all the nations of the then known world. As St Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians:

we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1: 23 & 24)

Although there is considerable debate in the early Church about the Gospel being preached among the Gentiles, it becomes increasingly clear that the love of Jesus cannot be contained solely within the Jewish church and must be shared and spread more widely among the Gentile peoples too.

The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has helpfully spoken of two strands of theology to be found in the Old Testament; a core testimony and a counter testimony. The core testimony is supportive of the institutions of the day, whether the Judges or the Kings, and sees Israel as a beacon of light in an embattled world surrounded by hostile, unbelieving nations. The counter testimony is in large part the voice of those who do not have power – the Israelites, themselves, when slaves or in exile, those who are oppressed by the wealthy and powerful, those who are foreigners and migrants, and those who are people of other nations and other faiths. When Jesus enters our world as one of us, he does so as someone who is part of the counter testimony and through him the counter testimony is seen to be the testimony which embodies the nature of God most fully.

As a testimony which is counter to the testimony that claims God for the Israelites alone, the counter testimony is an inclusive testimony. In relation to people of other faiths, this means that the counter testimony sees all people as God’s people. We see this specifically and surprisingly expressed by a number of the prophets.

In Amos 9.7-8, the prophet says:

“Are not you Israelites
the same to me as the Cushites?”
declares the Lord.
“Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt,
the Philistines from Caphtor
and the Arameans from Kir?

Here, there is no mention of the Israelites as God’s special people, instead all people are God’s people and it is noted that the Philistines and Arameans had their own Exoduses, as did the People of Israel when they were freed from slavery in Egypt. Later in the same chapter Amos speaks of all the nations that bear God’s name, not just one (Amos 9. 12).

Malachi prophesies of those who will see God’s plans with their own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!’ (Malachi 1. 11) Isaiah gives the greatest and clearest vision of a harmonious kingdom embracing all nations where there is peace between all peoples and all creatures. In Isaiah 19. 23 -25, we read of this vision specifically in relation to Assyria, Egypt and Israel:

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Similarly, Jesus says that: “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So, there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10. 16). In his teaching, he specifically teaches, through the Parable of the Good Samaritan (who is a person of another faith), that we should receive from our neighbours who follow other faiths (Luke 10. 25-37).

That is what we see St Paul doing when he preaches at the Areopagus in Athens. There, he specifically visits the range of worship places in Athens, compliments the people on their faith, begins his sermon with reference to one of the altars and quotes from their poets (Acts 17. 16-34).

In a report called Embassy, Hospitality & Dialogue prepared by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali for the 1998 Lambeth Conference, Bishop Nazir-Ali takes us across similar ground. He notes that Amos declares that God has a purpose for and acts within the history of the various nations, both far and near and that the language of the Exodus from Egypt is used to describe God's "saving plan" for these peoples (Amos 9:7). Also, that Malachi speaks of the ways in which God is recognised and worshipped, however inadequately, among the nations. In some cases, in ways that are worthier than the worship of Israel itself (Malachi 1:11).

In both Isaiah 19 and in the so-called Apocalypse of Isaiah (Chapters 24-27) there is a reference to a blessed community of nations. God's blessing no longer applies solely to Israel, the other nations are also blessed. Israel is the primary recipient of this blessing and also God's instrument in extending it to others, but there is also anticipation of a future which belongs to God.

The universalism of the New Testament arises out of the response to the Gospel by the poor, the marginalised and the foreigners. We are told that the common people (ochlos) heard Jesus gladly (Mark 12:37). He keeps company with the sinners and outcasts of society (Matthew 9:10-13). Foreigners respond positively to the words and works of Jesus (Matthew 8:1-13, Mark 7:24-30, Luke 17:11-19, John 12:20-21). This is confirmed in the experience of the Early Church which is alerted to its world-wide mission by the response of those either on the margins of the synagogue or outside it altogether (Acts 13:44-48).

Jesus’ encounters with Gentiles were encounters with people of other faiths and by studying these encounters we can explore Jesus’ approach to those of other faiths. Jesus crossed cultural and religious boundaries in order to speak with those such as the Samaritan woman. In Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan, it is the person from another faith (the Samaritan) who is a good neighbour to the person from God’s chosen people.

Paul had a multi-cultural upbringing. He was born and grew up in Tarsus in Cicilia (Acts 21: 39), a city noted for its Stoic philosophers. From other sources it seems likely that Paul’s parents were carried off as prisoners of war from the Judean town of Gischala to Tarsus. Presumably enslaved to a Roman, they were freed and granted Roman citizenship which was then also passed to Paul. In Tarsus Paul would probably have had an education in Greek culture before going to Jerusalem at about the age of 12 to study under the famous rabbi Gamaliel (Acts 22: 3). In his ministry, Paul visited the worship places of other faiths (Acts 17: 23), quoted from the writings of other faiths (Acts 17: 28; 1 Corinthians 15:33; Titus 1:12), and used rhetorical approaches learnt from Greek oratory.

Both Scripture and our experience provide criteria that God is working in the cultures and histories of all people. In different ways, people respond to this divine impulse and the Bible, as the inspired record of God's saving acts, provides us with a means of discerning how God has been working in the history, the culture and the spirituality of a particular people. Awareness of the divine need not be confined to the structures of institutional religion. Indeed, it may not be found there at all! It can be a very private affair and sometimes it may be found in counter-religious movements which set out to affirm human dignity and equality and which challenge oppressive social institutions.

As was the case when Elizabeth Harris spoke to us, this review of Biblical passages that relate to relationships with those of other faiths seeks to show that there are a range of possible ways to understand and relate to our neighbours of other faiths. In relation to Holy Week and Easter, we are reminded that Jesus’s purpose in going through the cross to resurrection, was with all peoples of all faiths in mind and that his vision was that of the peaceable kingdom in which all peoples live together in peace with one another, with God and with creation. However we understand our relationship with those of other faiths, may we make that our prayer, now and always:

God of unity, whose Son said, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So, there will be one flock, one shepherd. You love our human family and every work of your hands: As children of Abraham, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with other believers and all persons of good will, we thank you for having given us Abraham, a distinguished son of this noble and beloved country, to be our common father in faith. We ask you, the God of our father Abraham and our God, to grant us a strong faith, a faith that abounds in good works, a faith that opens our hearts to you and to all our brothers and sisters; and a boundless hope capable of discerning in every situation your fidelity to your promises. Make each of us a witness of your loving care for all, particularly refugees and the displaced, widows and orphans, the poor and the infirm. Open our hearts to mutual forgiveness and in this way make us instruments of reconciliation, builders of a more just and fraternal society. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leontyne Price - The Crucifixion.

God's presence in cloud and fire

 Here's the reflection that I shared at St Catherine's Wickford this evening:

As they travelled through the wilderness, God’s presence was shown to the Israelites by a cloud and a fire (Numbers 9.15-end). These symbols help us to understand aspects of God’s support and presence in our lives too.

The cloud was both a guide to the Israelites and an immersive presence. When they were outside the cloud, the movements of the cloud were able to guide them on their journey through the wilderness and God continues to guide us as we pray, whether through the Bible’s teachings or through the prompting of our hearts. When they were within the cloud, they became immersed within it and surrounded by it. This provided protection for them but also, because the cloud could not be fully seen from the inside, revealed God’s omnipotence; the all-surpassing greatness of his being which can never be fully known or understood by human beings. 

‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ is a Christian spiritual classic, written in the fourteenth century, which sets out to describe a transcendent God who exists beyond human knowledge and human language. The anonymous author asserts: " We can not think our way to God. He can be loved but not thought." So, we dwell in a not-knowing where contemplation, calm, and above all, love, are the way to understand the Divine.

The fire provides light, warmth and inspiration. The light of Christ is revelatory as it reveals the good and bad in our lives and communities. Light reveals those things that have been hidden so we can see their true nature; whether live-giving or life-denying. Fire also provides a warmth that encourages everyone to gather together around its source. The fire of God’s love is what draws us to church to gather together and together receive that love. 

Finally, fire is inspiration, as was the case for the first disciples at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon them with tongues of fire giving them the gift of inspired utterance in a number of different languages so they could speak God’s message to all that were present in Jerusalem at that time. God continues to inspire and equip his people who turn to him in prayer.

Like the people of Israel, may we also know God as guide, as omnipotent, as revelation, as love and as inspiration. And may we pray that we might experience him in each of these different ways. Amen.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anawim - Give Us The Peace.

The two things that matter

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

The Jewish people to whom John the Baptist was speaking in today's Gospel reading (Luke 3.7-18) thought that they were God’s people because of their birth; because they were Abraham’s ancestors (v 8). John the Baptist tells them that that isn’t the case. If the people of Israel are like a tree, he says, then God can cut that tree down at its roots.

Many of us will have grown up in Christian families, just as all those to whom John was speaking had grown up as Jews. Like them we may well have attended services for the worship of God since we were children and we, like them, might think that that makes us a part of God’s family. John’s message is that that is not the case.

There are two things that matter says John. Two things that make all the difference and family roots and traditions are not included. The two things that matter, says John, are firstly how we respond to Jesus, the coming Messiah and secondly whether our response involves actions as well as words.

John pictures Jesus, the coming Messiah, with a winnowing shovel separating the wheat from the chaff. He is saying that the coming of Jesus will separate out the true people of God from the false and it is by our reaction to Jesus that this will become apparent. Isaiah speaks about God being like a stone over which people stumble and, in the New Testament, both Paul and Peter apply this image to Jesus. Jesus himself says that he did not bring peace but a sword and came to set sons against fathers, daughters against mothers and so on. What he is talking about is the reality that as the coming Messiah he would be a controversial figure about whom people would be divided, even in the same family.

It is by our reactions and responses to Jesus, John says, that we can see who are God’s people and who are not. The question for us this morning then is who do we believe Jesus to be. Is he the Messiah, the son of God and saviour of the world, or was he just a good man but a man nonetheless? What we believe is important because, John says, if we reject Jesus then we reject God.

But within our response to Jesus as God’s son, as the Messiah there is also a further level of consideration. Is our response to Jesus just about words that we speak and beliefs that we keep in mind or do those words and those beliefs change our lives; do they affect the way in which we live? Our actions reveal our true beliefs. Do those things that will show that you have turned from your sins, John says to the crowd in verse 8. Don’t just mouth meaningless words but put your money where your mouth is and do the things that will demonstrate that your life has been turned around by your encounter with Jesus.

What are we to do, the crowd, the tax collectors and the soldiers ask John in verses 10 – 14. His response is not actually that demanding; do your job well, do it fairly and honestly and be generous with what you have.

Working hard and well and being generous are signs that we have changed from people who are out for ourselves to people with a concern for God and for others. It is that change that God is looking for in our lives. It is that change that shows Him and other people that we have had a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ that has changed our heart and not just our mind or our words.

These then are the two things that John the Baptist says matter when we stand before God; our response to Jesus and a response that involves practical change in our lives to show that we have genuinely encountered Jesus and accepted him as God’s son, the Saviour of the World. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nirvana - Lord, Up Above.

Receiving blessing to be a blessing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Carmel - God Put Your Hand On Me.

Meaning, significance, shape and purpose

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

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist who is best known for creating a hierarchy of needs. ‘This is a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization.’ At the bottom of the hierarchy are the basic needs of human beings; needs for food, water, sleep and sex. Maslow’s model works as a hierarchy because a pressing need must be mostly satisfied before someone will give their attention to the next highest need, which includes our need for our lives to be given meaning and significance.

The stories of the feeding of the four thousand and the five thousand (Matthew 15:29-37) are stories of Jesus meeting the basic needs of the people with him but are also stories about that action having a deeper level of meaning and significance.

The people who were with Jesus had been with him in the wilderness for three days without any significant supplies of food. While some may have brought small supplies of food with them, in essence they had been fasting for much of the time Jesus had been teaching them and, for those of you who have visited the Holy Land, you will know that the Wilderness is unforgiving terrain in which to be without sustenance.

Jesus is concerned for these people and, out of compassion, meets their basic need for food in that testing environment but, just as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs suggests that once our basic needs have been met then our needs for meaning and significance come into play, Jesus’ actions here also have a deeper level of meaning, if we and they are alert to it.

We can see this if we think for a moment about the outline of this story and the extent to which it reminds us of another story. A group of Israelites are in the wilderness and are hungry because they have too little to eat. In response God provides them with bread to eat. That is the outline of the feeding of the four thousand but it is also, in essence, the story of God providing manna in the wilderness to the Israelites when Moses led them from Egypt to the Promised Land. The similarity is deliberate, whether on the part of Jesus or Mark, because through this action Jesus is seen as the new Moses for the people of Israel.

Following the parallels between these two stories through means that the people of Israel are to be seen as being in slavery once again – whether that meant the political oppression of their Roman conquerors or, as St Paul suggests, under the bondage of sin. The Exodus – the salvation of the people of Israel - began with the death of firstborn sons and, in the story of Jesus, our salvation comes through the death of God’s only Son. Jesus leads his people through water – in the original Exodus that was the path through the Red Sea, but, for Jesus’ followers, it is the rite of baptism. They go on a journey through the wilderness – where, as we have seen, they are fed and provided for – and end their journey when they enter the Promised Land – which Jesus spoke about as being the kingdom of God that he initiated but which is still to come in full.

The parallels are plenteous and very close as the people of Jesus’ day were intended to view him as the new Moses. At this deeper level of meaning and significance it is possible, from this one action, to understand the whole of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

God is also at work in our lives to bring and to reveal meaning, purpose, shape and significance to our lives too, if we are alert to this deeper level of life and our not solely focused on the meeting of our basic needs. We all have a need and a desire for there to be more to our lives than simply the survival of the fittest; the scramble to meet our basic needs. As Maslow’s hierarchy of needs recognises, when we are in genuine need and poverty, it is very difficult to think about anything else other than survival. But, when we are in the fortunate position of having our basic needs met, we have the time and space and inclination to look around us to see the way in which God can bring meaning, significance and purpose into our lives; with that purpose including the development of a compassion, like that of Jesus, which sees the needs of those whose basic needs are not being met and responds to that by sharing at least some of what we have.

Your life is not simply about having enough to survive; the meeting of your basic needs. God wants you to see a deeper level of meaning, significance, shape and purpose to your life. Are you open to see the meaning and significance that he brings or does a focus of getting prevent you from seeing and receiving what he is already giving?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Neal Morse - The Temple Of The Living God.

What do these stones mean?

Here is the sermon that I gave at today's Service of Remembrance held at the Wickford War Memorial in Memorial Park:

What we are doing here today has ancient origins. The Old Testament speaks of the People of Israel, when they crossed the River Jordan on dry land to enter the Promised Land, picking up rocks from the river bed and setting them up in the Promised Land as a memorial to their crossing over into a new world (Joshua 4).

Stone was chosen for this memorial, as is the case with our Memorial here, because it endures from generation to generation. No names were carved onto the rocks that the Israelites set up as a memorial but 12 rocks were chosen and set up to represent the 12 tribes of Israel. Their leader, Joshua, explained to the Israelites what the memorial meant saying, ‘When your children ask their parents in time to come, “What do these stones mean?” then you shall let your children know, “Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry ground.” For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we crossed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, and so that you may fear the Lord your God for ever.’

We gather today to do essentially the same thing, to ensure that our children and, through them, our children’s children, down through the generations, honour those who serve and served to defend our democratic freedoms and way of life and remember the service and sacrifice of the Armed Forces community from Britain and the Commonwealth, in particular those from this area. As the number of those who served in the two World Wars lessens with the passing years, it becomes ever more important that we gather in this way and honour those who gave their lives for the freedom that we enjoy. The two poems which are part of this Act of Remembrance today suggest that that message has been heard and is understood.

The memorial that the Israelites set up after crossing the Jordan was not the only way in which that great event was remembered. We know of it today, because the story and Joshua’s instructions were written down meaning that we can still read them today. We can do the same here in Wickford and Runwell, thanks to the work of Steve Newman and the Wickford War Memorial Association who, through the book ‘Wickford’s Heroes’ and their website enable us to read the stories of those from this area who gave their lives in the two World Wars.

The Rt Hon John Baron MP, in his Foreword to the book, says that he was so taken with this book because, “in highlighting the tremendous sacrifice of lives so young, we are reminded yet again that war must always be a measure of last resort, to be taken up only when all other possibilities have been exhausted.” The RBLI speak of our helping towards building a peaceful future. The Bible envisages a time when people “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.” Our prayer today, as we honour the sacrifice of those who have died in war, is to inhabit that other country where “her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace.”

The best way to show our gratitude for all those who make these sacrifices is to remember, to give thanks and to try to bring about a better world. We can do this by working together for reconciliation and justice; by being kind and forgiving to all - in our closest relationships, our neighbourhoods, our communities, our nations; by being selfless ourselves. God loves us all alike and wants us all to live in peace and harmony and to thrive, as one family, where everyone is equal and valued for their place in it. If we all recognise that, we come closer to that other country about which we sang in our hymn. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I Vow To Thee My Country.  

Seeing the gifts God is giving

Here's the reflection I shared in today's Choral Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

In today’s Old Testament reading (Exodus 17.1-7), we're with the People of Israel after the Exodus in the midst of the wilderness where there is no water. The sun is beating down and we're dehydrating. We're also complaining - quite understandably, because the situation is dire, and it looks as though we're likely to die. We want to go back to Egypt because, although we were slaves there, ill-treated and exploited, at least we knew where our food and drink was coming from.

But at the point when all seems lost and hope is exhausted, God reveals the hidden spring of water within this wilderness landscape. As a result, it looks as though God was somewhat late in arriving on the scene. The singer songwriter Sam Phillips writes that:

'Help is coming, help is coming
One day late, one day late
After you've given up and all is gone
Help is coming one day late'

She continues:

'Try to understand, you try to fix your broken hands
But remember that there always has been good
Like stars you don't see in the day sky
Wait till night

Life has kept me down
I've been growing under ground
Now I'm coming up and when time opens the earth
You'll see love has been moving all around us, making waves

So help is coming, help is coming
One day late, one day late
After you've given up and all is gone
Help is coming one day late'

In her song, help, goodness, life and hope are all around but hidden or overlooked, as was the vital spring of water in the wilderness. Maybe, the issue is not one of God turning later than we expect but instead that how we perceive things needs to change in order that we start to see what is in fact already there.

As Christians, we don’t have to look far for a mission statement for the church. ‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’ (John 10.10) Living abundant life. That’s what the Father intends, the Son embodies, the Spirit facilitates. God is a God of abundance who is continually giving us all we need even in the midst of scarcity and trouble; perhaps, especially, in the midst of scarcity and trouble.

Our problem is that we don’t always recognise and receive the gifts that God is giving. In order to see what God is giving us, our mindset needs to change from a deficit mindset which sees problems to an asset mindset which looks for resources. The Israelites had a deficit mindset as they were focused on the problems they were experiencing and that was what led them to complain. It meant they weren’t looking around them to see what assets there were where they were. When we develop a habit of looking for assets, we then begin looking at our situation widely and broadly and notice what is ordinarily hidden to us by being on the edge.

I wonder whether the experience of the Israelites in undercovering the hidden spring of water in the wilderness is not somewhat similar to the experience many of us have had in the pandemic; of help, of goodness, of life, of hope being there in plain sight within our local communities but only seen, appreciated and valued when we were forced to stop and look and reflect. Community like never before. Kindness at its proper level. These were some of the discoveries of the first lockdown. Qualities that were always there within our communities but only revived and received in the adversity of the pandemic.

Let’s make that love normal by praying for eyes to see and ears to hear, that we might receive all that God, in his abundance, wishes to give us; receiving those gifts in the form in which they are given to us. Amen.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sam Phillips - One Day Late.

God was with them as they went through

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

But now thus says the Lord, / he who created you, O Jacob, / he who formed you, O Israel: / Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; / I have called you by name, you are mine. / When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; / and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; / when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, / and the flame shall not consume you.

These words from the beginning of Isaiah 43 are emblematic of the story we have heard today of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Fiery Furnace (Daniel 3). Their experience was of God with them as they passed through the flames; their time of trial and trouble. King Nebuchadnezzar and his counsellors saw four men unbound, walking in the middle of the fire; and the fourth had the appearance of a god. God was with them as they went through their trial.

That is the story of the People of Israel; God was with them as they went through the waters of the Red Sea, God was with them as they went through the wilderness, God was with them as the crossed the waters of the Jordan into the Promised Land, and God was with them again as they went into exile in Babylon.

God was with them as they went through. That was their experience; an experience that they extended even into the experience of death itself. So, they sang with the Psalmist, ‘Even though I walk through the darkest valley, / I fear no evil; / for you are with me; / your rod and your staff— / they comfort me.’

Jesus came as Emmanuel, God with us, in order that we know that God is with us in all of life, not simply in the times of trial. For 90% of his time among us he lived an ordinary life as a child and young adult in Nazareth, that we might see God with us in every aspect of our day to day lives. He then experienced torment and trial himself, even unto death, as assurance that God remains with us in those times of trial too.

It was this reality that those he encountered in his ministry found hard to understand (John 8. 31-42). The reality of God being with us is what Jesus had experienced in God’s presence and is what he was sent into our world to show and share. We can readily understand why those encountering Jesus had difficulty in understanding, as their expectations of a Messiah had been shaped by dramatic stories of presence, such as that of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the Fiery Furnace. They were looking for one who looked like a god and instead got Jesus, an ordinary man growing up in an ordinary family in an ordinary town. His ordinariness was a stumbling block to many and yet was the key to understanding what God was doing through the incarnation; as it was for understanding what God was revealing through the incarnation.

We continue in Jesus’ word and know the truth when we recognise the reality of God with us in our lives and world, especially in our trials and troubles, and as we seek to be the hands and feet, eyes and ears of God in our world by being with others. Being with is what Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego experienced of God in the fiery furnace and is what God revealed to us through Jesus. Being with others is then our response to all that we have received from God.

We gain comfort from these stories by remembering that God is with us in our time of trial, as was the case with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. God will go through this time of trial with us, whatever it entails for us. We experience challenge through these stories as we explore what it means today to continue in Jesus’ word, life and truth by finding ways to be with others at this time.

‘thus says the Lord, / I have called you by name, you are mine. / When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; / and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; / when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, / and the flame shall not consume you.’

‘Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sofia Gubaidulina - The Canticle of the Sun of St Francis of Assisi part I.

Discover & explore: Promises

Today's Discover & explore service at St Stephen Walbrook was on the theme of Promises and featured music from the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields including several movements from Fauré's Requiem and God be in my head by Walford Davies. The next Discover & explore service will be on Monday 7 November at 1.10pm and will explore the theme of Safety.

Here is the reflection from today's service:

Promises are like pie-crust writes Christina Rossetti; easily broken. As a result, she suggests that she and her friend make no promises to each other, as these could become bonds or ties on their relationship, and instead simply enjoy their time together for what it is.

Rossetti is speaking of human promises, of course. As a committed Christian, it is unlikely that she would have thought of God’s promises in the same way. And yet, we do have the experience of feeling that God has broken his promises towards us.

In a recent sermon at St Martin-in-the-Fields, I told the story of the blind and deaf Cornish poet Jack Clemo, who believed that God would invade his isolation by giving him the threefold happiness of healing, marriage and success as an Evangelical poet. As a result, he made few attempts to live with his disabilities, refusing to learn braille for example, and wrote some poetry which seems critical of
those who chose to live with the experience of disability rather than seeking cure through God's
invasive power.

He achieved a measure of success as a poet and also married in his 50’s, but, despite much prayer for healing over many years and many moments when he thought healing had come, never experienced the physical healing which he fervently sought. His biographer, Luke Thompson, writes that ‘However we interpret Jack’s beliefs about the role of God in his life, they seem wrong. Over and over again, his statements and expectations were disproved; the signs and patterns perceived were incorrect; God’s promises were broken. It would be possible to construct a picture of a divinity working through Jack’s life, but it would require a complete renegotiation of the terms’ (Clay Phoenix, Ally Press, 2016). Jack struggled with God’s failure to grant to him the supernatural transformation that he desired and this desire and struggle left him isolated and lacking in solidarity with other disabled people.

Jack believed that he had been given a personal threefold promise by God and, understandably, struggled when parts of that promise were not fulfilled. In understanding that situation, and others which may be similar, we need to question whether we have correctly understood what God says about promises in scripture.

Sam Wells helpfully writes that, ‘When something awful happens or we get some terrible news, we experience this question in an extreme form. Why? Why me? Why now? How can I go on? What’s the point? Finding a way to live, and especially coming to terms with a damaging accident or horrible setback, is about identifying some kind of a story that traces together a series of otherwise inexplicable circumstances. Once you’ve done that, you then set about locating where you are in that story. And then you act your part in that story. You could pretty well summarise the human quest as simply as this: searching for a story to live by, discovering one’s place in that story, and living into that place in the story.

And that’s exactly what the Bible is. It’s a story that ties together all things, from creation to the
end, and an invitation to discover our place in that story and take up our part in it.’

There are ‘three questions the Bible asks us – the questions of whether there is a story, where we are in it, and how to play our part in it – and holds our gaze until we give the answers. And these are the three questions. Do you believe the world was created so that we might share in a banquet and be God’s companions forever? Do you believe that through Jesus and at great cost the invitation to that banquet was extended to you and many others by amazing grace? Do you believe that the way to answer God’s invitation is to allow the Holy Spirit to fashion your life so that when you are called to the banquet you clearly belong there because you’ve been living the life of the banquet and sharing the company of those invited to the banquet long before you were finally a guest there? It could be that those three questions are the most important ones anyone will ever ask you.’

The answers to these questions are all ‘yes’ in Jesus. He demonstrates that there is a story, he tells us about our place in the story and he enables us to play our part in the story. God promised when the world was created that we might one day be restored to relationship with him, sharing in an eternal banquet and being his companions forever. He worked to fulfil that promise, firstly by engaging with all those he had created, then by focussing on the People of Israel and finally by sending his own Son Jesus. It is through Jesus that he has kept his promise to us and this is why, in Jesus, all God’s promises are ‘yes’.

This is of particular importance today as we celebrate All Souls by remembering and giving thanks for all who have gone before us into glory. It is because of Jesus, that we have hope that our loved ones are living the life of the banquet and sharing the company of those invited to the banquet long before we were finally a guest there. It is because Jesus said ‘yes’ to God and became the answer to God’s promises to restore us to relationship with him, sharing in the eternal banquet and being his companions forever.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jeff Buckley - Grace.

Conflict, surrender and peace

Steve Turner’s poem ‘History Lesson’ is simple, short and blunt:

History repeats itself.
Has to.
No-one listens.

Remembrance Sunday is an attempt to ensure that people in the UK do learn lessons from our experience of two World Wars, as well as remembering those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in wartime. On one level, we could perhaps argue that lessons have been learnt in that there have been no more wars on the global scale that was experienced during World War II and yet conflict has continued to bedevil humanity. There are, for example, 12 conflicts in the world currently which are causing at least 1,000 violent deaths each per year (and often much more) plus another 32 smaller-scale armed conflicts that are currently causing a smaller number of violent fatalities each year. The fact that Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday coincide this year also reinforces this point, as World War I was supposedly the 'war to end all wars' but was then closely followed by World War II.

Why is conflict so much a part of our human existence? Why, despite the devastation and loss of life that we saw in two World Wars, does it still seem that we are so far from the ability to live in peace with one another? I want to suggest a partial answer to us this evening using the story of Jonah.

The story is both well known and relatively simple. Jonah is tasked by God with preaching to the Ninevites but instead turns tail and takes a ship heading in the opposite direction. A violent storm leads the sailors to throw Jonah overboard. The storm then calms and Jonah is swallowed by a great fish. Inside the fish Jonah repents and, once spewed out onto dry land, travels to Ninevah where he delivers the message God gave him. The Ninevites hear him, repent and are saved from disaster. Jonah is angry with God because the Ninevites are the enemies of the people of Israel and so he wanted them destroyed.

That hatred of the Ninevites was the reason why Jonah rejected God’s call on his life and took a ship in the opposite direction to the place God had wanted him to go. Protection of his people - the people of Israel - by the destruction of their enemies - the Ninevites - was more important to him than doing God’s will. Jonah was angry with God because he thought God should only be on the side of and care for his people and therefore he wanted to try to frustrate God’s plans to save their enemies from disaster. He was angry with God because he wanted to possess God by keeping him only as the personal God of his people.

Jonah had actually completely misunderstood God’s relationship with the people of Israel and the reason for it. The choosing of the people of Israel as God’s chosen people and the gift to them of the promised land was not so that they would be protected by their own personal God in a land that was theirs to own. Instead of being their property, the promised land was a gift from God which enabled them to be a light revealing God to the nations around them. So whenever they thought about themselves and the protection of their own possessions, they were actually wandering away from God’s will for their lives.  

When Jonah did this, his lack of surrender to God’s will and God’s way caused disturbance - the storm - in his life which also affected the people around him. It was only when Jonah recognised that the storm - the disturbance in and around him - was directly connected to his lack of surrender to God’s will that the storm died down and he had time and space in which to repent and return to God’s way.

It is the same for us. When we are concerned with what we think of as ours - when we are saying this is mine, my property, my church, my nation - we are automatically anxious, worried and fearful because we are in defensive mode and we experience disturbance; disturbance which affects others because we are trying to protect what we think of as ours from those we think will take it from us. By contrast, Jesus calls us to give up our lives and let go of our possessions by handing them over to him - to let go and let God. When we genuinely do this we find we are at peace because whatever we have and wherever we are and whatever we do is then in God’s hands - everything is his and his gift to us. We experience contentment with what we have and where we are and what we do because it is all God’s gift to us.

As we read in the Letter to the Philippians, ‘I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.’

Conflict and disturbance arises in our lives and in our world whenever we, like Jonah, have not surrendered to God’s will. Again, like Jonah, this occurs whenever we want to possess or protect things for ourselves, our group or our people. Instead God calls us to let go and let God; to simply acknowledge that we own nothing, that all is God’s creation and gift. When we let go of our claim on the things around us, including our own lives, we start to genuinely trust God and learn the secret of being content in any and every situation. In this state, there is no disturbance or conflict because there is nothing to possess or protect and therefore we can know and share peace with others.    

Jesus shows us how to do this by laying down his life for the sake of others and his resurrection reveals the new life that results. Just as he called his first disciples, so he calls us to follow in his footsteps by taking up our cross and losing our lives for his sake; letting go and letting God.

Will we be like Jonah and resist the call of God which leads to turmoil and disturbance in our lives and our world or will we be like Jesus’ disciples who gave up everything to follow him? Before deciding, we should reflect that to follow him is the way that leads to abundant, peaceful, contented and eternal life. It is as we surrender to God and to his will for our lives that we come to know his peace in our lives and are enabled to share that peace with others.

 

I began with a poem so I’ll also end with one. This is ‘Silence’, a poem written by Malcolm Guite immediately following the commemoration of the two minute silence:

November pierces with its bleak remembrance
Of all the bitterness and waste of war.
Our silence tries but fails to make a semblance
Of that lost peace they thought worth fighting for.
Our silence seethes instead with wraiths and whispers,
And all the restless rumour of new wars,
The shells are singing as we sing our vespers,
No moment is unscarred, there is no pause,
In every instant bloodied innocence
Falls to the weary earth, and whilst we stand
Quiescence ends again in acquiescence,
And Abel’s blood still cries in every land
One silence only might redeem that blood
Only the silence of a dying God.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Kiwanuka - Worry Walks Beside Me.

The litmus test for public leadership

Less than a week on from the Diamond Jubilee weekend, where we thanked God for the 60 years of our Queen’s reign, and the lectionary has us reading 1 Samuel 8 where God says, through Samuel, that in wanting to be ruled over by a King, the people of Israel were rejecting him and his rule over them. Did those who compiled the lectionary deliberately select this reading for the Sunday after the Diamond Jubilee weekend as a corrective to our celebrations and is this passage the definitive word on monarchy to be found in the Bible?

I don’t know the answer to the first of those questions, having no idea what goes through the minds of those who compile the lectionary year on year but the second question is well worth exploring more closely before looking at 1 Samuel 8 itself more closely.

The first thing to say is that, as Sam Norton (the Rector of Mersea) put it recently on his blog: “One of the most important things to understand about the Bible is that it is a library of Holy Scripture – that is, there are many different voices within the Bible (even within particular books of the Bible) – and this is of God. That is, it is in recognising both what different books have in common, and where they disagree, that an individual Christian is enabled to come to a mature understanding of the text.”

On some subjects, like the value or otherwise of monarchies, the Bible has a huge amount of comment (but often without there necessarily being any clear agreement on the subject), while on other subjects, like that of same sex relationships, the Bible has hardly anything to say. It is interesting to note that the issues on which the Bible has lots to say are often issues that we don’t view as controversial, while issues on which the Bible has little or nothing to say can sometimes assume huge importance in the life of the Church.

This is one illustration of the fact that we often assume we know what the Bible says when actually we haven’t really got to grips with what it says at all. Our Gospel reading (Mark 3. 20 - 35) is a case in point. Many Christians assume that the Bible supports what we now call ‘family values’ but, as our Gospel reading shows, the Bible often asks deep and searching questions of what it is that we value about family life. Because the Bible often does not actually say what we seem to want it to say and doesn’t always take a simple or consistent line on particular issues, it seems that we can actively shy away from wrestling with the challenges or complexities that it poses in favour of something simpler and more comforting.

So, having set all those hares running, as we come back to 1 Samuel 8 we need to come with an openness to hear what the Bible is actually saying to us, which on this occasion also means being open to the possibility that our celebrations of monarchy last weekend were entirely wrong.

A good guide, who I commend (because he takes the complexities of reading the Bible into account), when reading the Old Testament generally is a Bible scholar called Walter Brueggemann. Brueggemann writes that: “… in 1 Samuel 8, Samuel is in deep dispute with Israel over the function and nature of public leadership. Israel wants a king, in order to be “like the other nations.” Samuel, here the reliable voice of Yahweh, refuses them a king, on the grounds that human kingship is an act of distrust in Yahweh … This interpretive tradition, suspicious of concentrations of power, anticipates that the centralized government is in principle exploitative, usurpatious, and self-serving. We may say that this recognition is fundamental to a biblical critique of power.”

The people of Israel, in the course of the rest of their history, were going to endure many examples of monarchs who were self-serving and who exploited their position and power for their own ends. What God said, through Samuel, would occur did occur on many occasions in the subsequent history of the people of Israel.

But that is not all that this passage or the Bible, as a whole, says on the subject because God and Samuel, despite their misgivings and predictions, all the people of Israel to have what they want. Why do they do this? In part, because there is another, more positive, strand of thinking in the Bible about monarchs. This is the strand which sees David and, initially, his son Solomon as great Kings under whose reign Israel was at the peak of its prosperity and influence.  

Brueggemann notes that the kind of kingship that we see David and initially Solomon exercise: “had the establishment and maintenance of justice as its primary obligation to Yahweh and to Israelite society. This justice, moreover, is distributive justice, congruent with Israel’s covenantal vision, intending the sharing of goods, power, and access with every member of the community, including the poor, powerless, and marginated.”

This is what Brueggemann thinks the Bible sees as key to any form of public leadership: “The claim made is that power – political, economic, military – cannot survive or give prosperity or security, unless public power is administered according to the requirement of justice, justice being understood as attention to the well-being of all members of the community.”

This, then, is the litmus test which, as those seeking to be faithful to what the Bible actually says about monarchy and all forms of public leadership, we should be applying to all those who have power and authority over us in some fashion – monarch, prime minister, cabinet, government, and local authority councillors and officials. The questions we should be putting to them and using to assess their value and legitimacy are questions of justice, particularly for those who are the poorest and least powerful.

It is interesting then to note that this is the very test that the Archbishop of Canterbury used in his sermon at St Paul’s Cathedral last Tuesday. In that sermon, he criticised “the traps of ludicrous financial greed, of environmental recklessness, of collective fear of strangers and collective contempt for the unsuccessful and marginal” and said that what will save us from those traps is a vision of dedicated service to others. One important aspect of discovering that vision is to have “stories and examples available to show it’s possible.” One of those stories over the past six decades, he said, has been that of the Queen who “has shown a quality of joy in the happiness of others” and who “has responded with just the generosity St Paul speaks of in showing honour to countless local communities and individuals of every background and class and race.”

He was saying that the Queen passes the litmus test set within the Bible for those in public leadership but at the same time making it clear, as the Bible also does, that those who lead us into “the traps of ludicrous financial greed, of environmental recklessness, of collective fear of strangers and collective contempt for the unsuccessful and marginal” are not worthy of the office which they hold.

As we follow the story of the monarchy through in Israel’s history, we see this worked out in practice. Brueggemann writes that: “… the royal system was not finally effective in sustaining Israel … at the centre of Israel’s self-awareness is the debacle of 587 B.C.E., when king, temple, and city all failed.”

What happens next is fascinating and central to the development of Christianity: “The dynastic promise … was turned to the future, so that Israel expected the good, faithful, effective king to come, even though all present and known incumbents had failed. Out of concrete political practice arose an expectation of the coming of messiah: a historical agent to be anointed, commissioned, and empowered out of the Davidic house to do the Davidic thing in time to come, to establish Yahweh’s justice and righteousness in the earth.”  

As Christians, we believe that Messiah to have already come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and that through his life, death and resurrection the establishment of God’s justice and righteousness on earth, as in heaven, has begun to be established and is now awaiting his second coming for its full completion. This brings us back to the place where we began, the centralizing of power in the hands of one human being is always likely to lead to that power being used in ways that are self-serving and exploitative. It is only we acknowledge God as the ultimate and just ruler of all that our lives and society are placed in their proper perspective.

As we await that day, we can both hold our rulers to account on the Biblical basis of the issue of justice for all and, as the Archbishop emphasised in his Diamond Jubilee sermon, seek “the rebirth of an energetic, generous spirit of dedication to the common good and the public service, the rebirth of the recognition that we live less than human lives if we think just of our own individual good.”  

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Madness - Our House.

Life lived as gift

Forty years after the Israelites had been freed from slavery in Egypt they stood on the brink of the Promised Land ready to cross over the River Jordan and live in the land that God had promised to them.

They were a people who had no land of their own. Their ancestors were wandering Arameans who had no land and who took their families to live in Egypt. In Egypt they had no land because they were slaves. Rescued by God, they wandered in the wilderness without a home for forty years before coming to the Promised Land.

The Promised Land was a gift to them from God and because this land which became their home was not actually theirs but God’s, so they were to give back to God out of thankfulness for all that they had been given. Their life and the land – everything that they had and were – was a gift from God and to show this when the arrived in the Promised Land they were to place in a basket the first part of each crop that they harvested and to offer it to God at the place of worship.

In our culture we no longer think like this. In our culture we tend to think that the things we have are ours because we have earned them. We may have bought the freehold on our home with money that we have earned though our own work, time and talents. The salary that we earn is paid into our bank account to do with as we choose because we were the ones who worked to earn that money. We no longer think of land, home, money and possessions as gifted to us because we think of them as earned by us.

This means that we think we can live independently. Our way of life in a market economy is based on quid pro quo, always getting something in exchange for what we give. We are then free to purchase commodities with no strings attached making our market economy impersonal and leaving us thinking we can pursue personal gain in total disregard for the community as a whole.

At the time that the Israelites lived in the Promised Land because they worked the land for a living they knew that their life did not depend solely on their own efforts. It was not enough that they worked to sow their crops in order that those crops grew. They knew that the soil was needed to nurture their seeds, that rain was needed to water those seeds, that sunshine was needed for the growth of those seeds. They knew that their life, their survival was not simply down to them. Life itself was a gift. Today we are disconnected from the land and from the natural cycle of the seasons and it is much harder for us to acknowledge that life is a gift.

When life is viewed as gift, we can give to others without expecting anything in return and this has the opposite effect of establishing and strengthening the relationships between us, connecting us one to the other. This kind of living recognises the delicate balance of interdependence and responsibility. It means an awareness of how we, as individuals, fit into the life of the whole. Living in this way – as part of a gift economy – develops a sense of interdependence, engenders attitudes of compassion and generosity, forces us to reappraise the way in which we think about and measure value, and reminds us of the interconnection of our lives to other human lives, to non-human lives, and to the non-living world.

When Jesus was tempted he too was in the wilderness and the temptations with which he was confronted were the same temptations to which our culture succumbs. Jesus was tempted to provide for his own material needs by turning stones into bread; he was tempted to gain prestige and celebrity for himself by throwing himself from the highest point of the Temple and surviving; and he was tempted to gain all the power and wealth of the world for himself.

In other words, he was tempted to live independently of God and refuse to view life as being God’s gift to him. Jesus rejected these temptations and, like the people of Israel leaving the wilderness for the Promised Land, continued to thank God for the gift of life by living his life as a means of thanking God for all his gifts to us. He did this through humility, service and finally death, not by a devilish seeking after power and status.

David Runcorn says that “the life of God is non-possessive, non-competitive, humbly attentive to the interests of the other, united in love and vision.” To be God-like, he writes, “is not to be grasping” and so “Jesus pours himself out ‘precisely because’ he is God from God.” The Biblical word for this is kenosis, the self-emptying of God. But Runcorn goes on to point out that this self-emptying or kenosis characterises every member of the Trinity and argues that Jesus’ incarnation “offers us a mysterious and astonishing vision”:

“the Holy Trinity as a dancing community of divine poverty. Each eternally, joyfully, dispossessing themselves; emptying, pouring themselves out to the favour and glory of the other. Nothing claimed, demanded or grasped. They live and know each other in the simple ecstasy of giving.”

Today, we have the opportunity to do the same; to reject the temptation to think of all that we have as our own, to view our lives and all that we have as a gift from God, and to participate in the dance of the Holy Trinity. When we do that, we are acting as stewards because stewards have the job of looking after something that belongs to someone else. As Christians, we are stewards of all that God has given to us – our life, our talents, our time, our money, our possessions, our family, our community, and the world in which we live.

The people of Israel gave the first part of their harvest to God. Giving back to God was the first thing on their agenda, their first consideration. We should each give, the Apostle Paul says, as we have decided, not with regret or out of a sense of duty; for God loves the one who gives gladly.

As they came to the worship place the Israelites reminded themselves that it was God who had rescued them and God who had given them the land he had promised. We should also remember that God has rescued each of us from sin and gifted us with time, talents, treasure, people and the world in which we live. Let us, as a result, view life as a gift and give back to God generously and joyfully.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marvin Gaye - God Is Love.

The suffering God (3)

To conclude I shall explore some of the implications for understanding the place of suffering and evil in God’s world that derive from understanding the relationship with God as one within which suffering can be protested and where our relationship is with a God who himself suffers.

First, protest within relationship implies freedom (2 Cor. 3: 6 & 17). Relationship with God cannot therefore simply involve unquestioning obedience and, were this to be the case, then God could be served just as well be automatons. Relationship with God must then be something freely entered into and freely maintained. This has important consequences for our understanding of evil in God’s world. For human beings to have this freedom requires an ‘epistemic distance’ from God which appears to have been achieved through biological evolution.

Biological evolution, however, brings the twin issues of becoming - an evolving world contains imperfections, which are, or result in, natural evils - and selfishness - development through the ‘survival of the fittest’. Left to their own devices these two would seem to hopelessly bias humanity against relationship with God but they are counter-balanced by the order within the universe and by cultural evolution which is predicated on co-operation not opposition, leaving human beings living with free will within a deterministic framework. This freedom does not just apply to our ability to choose or reject relationship with God but also to what happens within relationship as well. After all, as Christians we believe that the truth/Christ sets us free for freedom.

This leads on to the second implication, that protest within relationship implies intimacy (2 Cor. 3: 7 – 18). Such freedom to argue, berate, converse, debate, discuss, and protest within relationship can only occur where there is trust and long-term commitment. Between human beings this occurs most clearly within marriage relationships where we can choose to become naked in both our bodies and our thoughts. This is one reason why marriage imagery is often used of the relationship between God and his people.

The most significant learning that occurs within human lives occurs by observation, action and discussion within relationships, firstly within our birth families and then within relationships of choice. It is no different in relationship with God, within this intimacy we can observe, discuss and imitate in naked honesty. It is this pattern that we see in the lives of those who come closest to God - Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Job and, supremely, Jesus. Within this intimate relationship it is possible to become like God, learning a way of life that is counter to the selfish determination of biological evolution.

The third implication then, is of maturity (2 Cor. 3: 18). Growth occurs within relationships that contain the freedom and intimacy that we have examined. This growth, which is growth in partnership with God, is what God has offered humanity from day one of consciousness. It is pictured in the creation stories in the imagery of ruling in God’s image, tending the Garden at God’s request and naming the animals that God brings. It is the privilege of developing further the world that God has made, through the selfless imagination of the possibilities inherent in each aspect of creation, until it reaches its full perfection. It is growth that is individual, cultural and cosmic. It is this, towards which the choosing of Israel and the giving of the Law lead.

It is appropriate then that it is the one to whom the Law leads who, through his life as a divine-human Jew, his suffering and his rising again, opens up the possibility of entering into this partnership relationship with God for all once again. A possibility that is only achieved through the self-emptying and suffering of God leading to the awareness that those entering in to this free, intimate, maturing partnership to perfect creation will follow where God has led and themselves accept and embrace suffering (2 Cor. 4: 7 – 12).

Finally, there is the implication of an eschatological resolution to the problem of suffering and evil in God’s world (2 Cor. 4: 16 – 18):

“... God has ordained a world that contains evil - real evil - as a means to the creation of the infinite good of a Kingdom of Heaven within which His creatures will have come as perfected persons to love and serve Him, through a process in which their own free insight and response have been an essential element.” (John Hick)

Again, this is a perception that is common to both Christians and Jews and one that is seen by Jews such Cohn-Sherbok as providing “an answer to the religious perplexities of the Holocaust”. “The promise of immortality offers,” he suggests, “a way of reconciling the belief in a loving and just God with the nightmare of the death camps”.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Johnny Cash - Redemption.