You are enough

Here is the sermon I preached today at Holy Trinity Brussels:

Standing proud in the heart of Manchester’s university district on the exterior of St Peter’s House, a 22 x 13 foot billboard towers above the streets below, giving a refreshingly affirming message to passing students and commuters. It says, ‘You are enough’. It would be easy to assume this is an affirmation of the kind of individualism that says ‘I’m alright, Jack’ as ‘I’m looking after No.1.’ However, as St Peter’s House is the base for the Christian chaplaincy team for the Manchester Universities and the Royal Northern College of Music, that’s unlikely to be the intended message.

The artist who created the piece, Micah Purnell, notes that, ‘Capitalist ideology aims to impart the notion that we are worthy of love and belonging - once we have bought into the product or service. Consumerism wraps things up in neat little packages and sells them as idealised gifts of perfection. Advertising props up this notion with the assumption that we are inadequate - stealing our love of ourselves, and selling it back at a price.’

He goes on to say that Brené Brown, a research Professor at Houston University, has found through extensive quantitative research that the one thing that keeps us from love and belonging is the fear that we are not worthy of love and belonging. She found that those who fully experience joy and live wholeheartedly have four characteristics in common: the courage to accept their imperfection; compassion towards themselves first; the ability to let go of who they should be in order to be who they really are, and to embrace vulnerability and unknowing. His installation, therefore, says, ‘You’re not perfect, you’re never going to be, and that’s the good news.’ You are enough, as you are.

At the last HeartEdge conference in Edinburgh, Cormac Russell, the Managing Director of Nurture Development the lead partner in Europe for Asset-Based Community Development, also said, ‘You are enough’. His point was that in every community there are leaders, makers, traders, networkers, peace brokers, gift givers and receivers, labelled/marginalized folks and connectors. Some of these folks then get together with a few of their neighbours and initiate a project; organize an event, share casual moments, help one another or respond to an immediate crisis that impacts the wider community.

He went on to point out that what often happens where a community group comes up with a great idea, develops it as a project and makes it successful; is that when it grows; they receive funding and go on to employ a paid worker to run the project. As a result power and responsibility relocate from the residents to the professional. The residents in question either pull back expecting the professional to take leadership responsibilities. Or they stay involved but solely as advisers on a management committee, no longer as the makers and producers of the effort, but as the key informants, advisers and sometimes managers of paid staff. Additionally, initiatives that are, in practice, led by paid, albeit well meaning, practitioners, not by local people, inextricably link the longevity of the initiative to future funding and paying the salaries of professionals.

By countering that kind of development Asset-based Community Development essentially says that the work of building community belongs to those who reside in that area as a birthright, it is the work of near neighbours; not salaried strangers. That means if neighbours don’t do it - it won’t be done. Cormac was saying, ‘You are enough’ to us, because, in any community, residents can initiate their own action and tap into local assets that are within their own control. That doesn’t preclude future action to address structural issues, but it does build a wider base of residents who can deepen their sense of what they want from outside because they know what they internal assets they have.

Similarly, in HeartEdge, we believe that we can do unbelievable things together if we start with one another’s assets, not our deficits. In a community of fear – a deficit culture - we begin with our hurts and our stereotypes, and find a hundred reasons why we can’t do things or certain kinds of people don’t belong. Churches today are often quick to attribute the decline in numbers attending church to a hostile culture or an indifferent, distracted population or even a sinful generation; but much slower to recognise that our situation is significantly of our own making. But when we do take off labels like disabled or wealthy or migrant or evangelical or single and instead see qualities like passionate or committed or generous or enthusiastic or humble then there’s no limit to what a community of hope can do.

We believe that churches and communities thrive when the gifts of all their members are released and they build one another’s assets. Sharing our particular assets (the skills, experience, insights and ideas) with other members will foster a wider understanding and model the practice of hospitality towards others. God is giving the church everything it needs for the renewal of its life in the people who find themselves to be on the edge.

If we’re looking for where the future church is coming from, look at what the church and society has so blithely rejected. The life of the church is about constantly recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives. And, as in Asset-Based Community Development, that includes all those in the wider community with whom we can partner. We believe the Holy Spirit is moving beyond the conventional notion of church, and believe in modelling the life of heaven by being open to partnership with what the Spirit is doing in the world. That, too, is a way of saying ‘We are enough.’

The temptations faced by Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4.1-11) were all temptations to see his situation and his trust in God as being insufficient, or ‘not enough.’ His temptations began with the reality of his situation, the fact that he was hungry because of fasting for 40 days. He had not had enough food and the temptation was to say that there was not enough and use his power to create food from nowhere. Jesus responded by saying that the words of God were enough for him. The second temptation was in regard to his mission and his then obscurity. Jesus was on his own in the wilderness and was offered celebrity and fame because his obscurity was clearly not enough to achieve his mission. Jesus’ response was essentially saying that the path he was following was enough. The final temptation was linked, but, instead of being focused on fame, was focused on power. Jesus’ mission was to save all humanity and he was offered power over all humanity as a shortcut to success and as recognition of the lack of power he possessed as an insignificant carpenter in a backwater of the mighty Roman Empire. Jesus responded by saying that God’s way was enough for him.

Jesus’ was tempted on the basis that who he was and what he had were not enough to achieve the mission he had been given. He was tempted to think of himself, his situation and God, in terms of scarcity and deficit. But deficit is not our modus operandi as Christians. We don’t have to look far for a mission statement for the church. Jesus said, ‘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.

Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields says that, as Christians, we are called to live in such a way that gratefully receives the abundance God is giving us, evidences the transformation from scarcity to abundance to which God is calling us, dwells with God in that abundant life, and shares that abundance far and wide. Jesus is our model of abundant life; his life, death and resurrection chart the transformation from the scarcity of sin and death to the abundance of healing and resurrection; he longs to bring all humankind into reconciled and flourishing relationship with God, one another, ourselves and all creation. Discipleship describes inhabiting that abundant life. Ministry involves building up the church to embody that abundant life. Mission names the ways that abundant life is practised, shared and discovered in the world at large.

In the middle of the wilderness where he literally had nothing, Jesus received God’s abundance, the abundant life that would sustain him throughout his journey to the cross, and beyond. Similarly, in a time of scarcity, when the church in the West seems to be getting smaller; and the church seems to be becoming narrower, we need to recognise that God is still giving the church everything it needs for the renewal of its life, often in those people who find themselves to be on the edge. A true gospel is one where we receive all the gifts God is giving us, especially the ones that the church has for so long despised or patronised.

Lent is commonly though of as being about those things we give up. But Lent is ultimately about our opening up. Opening up our lives to receive more of the abundance and the gifts that God is giving to us. We give up some of our usual  practices in order to have more time for God and with God. More time to open up to him and deepen our relationship with him. That was what Jesus was doing in the wilderness and, like him, we too can discover that, as we receive all that God is giving to us, God is enough, God's abundance is enough, our communities are enough, and we are enough.

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

Maurice Duruflé - Ubi Caritas.

The healthy eating or fast food options of life

Here is my reflection from today's lunchtime Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

I’d like you to imagine going on from here to a choice of two different meals. The first is a hamburger from a fast food outlet and the second some sandwiches made from freshly baked bread. Given the choice, which would you choose?

What we choose to eat has consequences for us. Bread, for example, forms a major part of the 'Balance of Good Health' healthy eating model for the UK. Bread, other cereals and potatoes should make-up approximately 33% of our diet and that’s because flour and bread provide us with more energy value, more protein, more iron, more nicotinic acid and more vitamin B1 than any other basic food.

On the other hand, the hamburger probably contains about 25% fat by weight, as the higher the fat content the juicier the burger. A standard frozen hamburger typically contains about 7.3g of fat and about 118 calories. When we combine foods with high fat and sugar content with very little exercise then, as a nation, we start to put on weight and that is why it is estimated that, in the UK, one in five men and a quarter of women are overweight, and that as many as 30,000 people die prematurely every year from obesity-related conditions. What we choose to eat has consequences for us.

Jesus says essentially the same thing in our Gospel reading today (John 6. 35 - 40). He says that if we want to live and live well, in fact, if we want to live forever then we need to eat the ‘Bread of Life’. In other words, we need to choose the healthy eating option in our lives rather than the fast food option.

What is the healthy eating option in life? What is the ‘Bread of Life’? It is Jesus himself. “I am the bread of life,” he says, “he who comes to me will never be hungry.” “Whoever eats this bread,” Jesus says, “will live for ever.” This is where Jesus’ picture language can seem to get confusing because Jesus is a person and how can you eat a person? But this is why when Jesus uses picture language we must understand what he means by those pictures and not take what he says literally. Some of the people who opposed the Early Church did take sayings like this literally and accused Christians of being cannibals! But that is not what Jesus means at all.

How do we feed on Jesus? Here are three ways:

• First, in verse 47 Jesus tells us to believe in him. Believing means to put all our trust in Jesus and in what he has done and said. Just like bread is a staple food by believing in Jesus we make him the staple part of our lives.
• Second, when Jesus was tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread he said we do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from God’s mouth and here in verse 45 Jesus talks about being taught by God. God’s words are recorded in the Bible as are all that Jesus said and did. We feed on him by reading all we can about Jesus and then by putting it into practice in our lives.
• Third, in verse 56 Jesus talks about communion when he says, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in him.” The Eucharist reminds us of all that Jesus has done for us in dying and rising again and as we eat the bread and drink the wine we are taking Jesus and all that his death and resurrection mean into ourselves.

When we feed on Jesus in these ways we are making the healthy choice for life, the choice that leads to life forever. In our lives when faced with the choice between the healthy eating option and the fast food option we don’t always choose what is best for us and we then suffer the consequences later in life.

What choice will you make for your life today? Will you choose to feed on Jesus, the ‘Bread of Life’ or will you reject Jesus and choose the ‘Fast Foods of Life? The choice is ours but the Bible clearly sets out for us what is the best choice for our lives.

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

Richard Proulx and the Cathedral Singers - I Am The Bread Of Life.

Temptations, needs and fulfilment

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. The other levels of his hierarchy include: safety; belonging; esteem; exploration; harmony; and self-actualization.

The temptations which Jesus faced in the wilderness (Matthew 4. 1 - 11) can be mapped onto Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The first temptation is about his basic need for food – ‘command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ Jesus responds by, in effect, saying that his basic needs have already been met. As a result, the final two temptations come higher up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, being to do with the need for esteem.

The temptation to jump from the pinnacle of the temple is about the temptation of celebrity; in this case, gaining esteem by undertaking a sensational act. The final temptation is about the gaining of esteem through the exercise of power and wealth – the kingdoms of the world and all they offer in terms of wealth, power and worship are offered with the only price paid being the worship of someone other than God.

Jesus essentially responds to each temptation by saying that God is all he needs. Whatever our human needs may be – basic, safety, belonging, esteem, exploration, harmony or self-actualization - Jesus is clear that God meets and fulfils every need as we make him central to our lives.

Maslow observed normal human behaviour and used his observations to create his hierarchy of needs. The temptation to put the focus on ourselves and our needs as we go through life is strong in each one of us. Maslow sees that and designs his theory accordingly.

George Monbiot, in a recent article, says that we have built our society on our need to have our individual needs met. He writes that individuation – the focus on the meeting of our individual needs - ‘is exploitable’ and therefore social hierarchies have been ‘built around positional goods and conspicuous consumption.’ As a result, ‘we are lost in the 21st century, living in a state of social disaggregation that hardly anyone desired but which is an emergent property of a world reliant on rising consumption to avert economic collapse, saturated with advertising and framed by market fundamentalism.’

Jesus turns this on its head by putting the focus on God. Maslow says that what matters is that our needs are met; making us the central players in our own drama. Jesus says that God has to be central. It is when we put him first that everything else falls into place and we have the sense that all our needs are met in him.

In the wilderness, Jesus was hungry, was living in obscurity and was both poor and lacking in influence. Although his basic needs and his need for esteem were not met in human terms, nevertheless, because God was central to his life and being, he was fulfilled despite his evident lack of food and esteem.

In his second letter to the Church in Corinth (2 Corinthians 1. 3 - 11, 4. 8 - 9), St Paul writes of being so utterly, unbearably crushed that he and his colleagues despaired of life itself, but were consoled in their affliction by God. As a result of this consolation, though afflicted in every way, they were not crushed; though perplexed, they did not despair; though persecuted, they were not forsaken; though struck down, they were not destroyed. In the same way as we have seen with Jesus and his temptations, the testimony of Paul is that despite their needs not being met humanly, the centrality of God to their lives meant that they were fulfilled nevertheless.

So where is our focus in our lives? Do we do what Maslow observed was common to human beings and focus on the meeting of our needs - putting ourselves and our needs first - or are we turning Maslow’s hierarchy of needs on its head and making God central to our lives, our thinking and our actions? Our choice will determine whether we, as consumers, continually chase fulfilment throughout our lives never fully finding what it is we seek or alternatively, as Christians, come to know fulfilment even when the needs which Maslow noted are not met as he envisaged.

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

Vineyard Worship - Jesus, Be The Centre.

Following in Jesus' footsteps

Immediately before today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 14. 22 - 33) where the disciples are caught up in a storm, we read about the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. The disciples had had a wonderful experience and had grown in their faith. This was immediately followed by their going through a storm. 

This is a common experience in the lives of Christians and in church life. After enjoying positive experiences and developments in our faith, we then go through some kind of trial which tests our faith. It is easy to wonder why that should be so and there are no easy answers.

One of the people I have been reading during my sabbatical has been Julian of Norwich. She doesn’t answer that question but she does say this, God did not say 'You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted'. But he did say, 'You shall not be overcome.'

So our Gospel reading this morning has things to teach us about how to respond when storms come in our individual lives and as a church. Jesus comes to the disciples in the storm walking on the water. He doesn’t still the storm on this occasion instead he calls Peter to walk to him on the water. Peter begins to do this but then becomes afraid and begins to sink. At which point, Jesus supports him and they return to the boat and the storm is then stilled.

In the midst of this storm Peter is asked to do something which seems impossible. He is asked to do what Jesus is doing, to follow in Jesus’ footsteps. In his storm Peter was called to walk on water but what is the equivalent for us in our storms?

All Jesus’ disciples are called to follow in his footsteps by doing what Jesus did. Like Peter being called to walk on water, following in Jesus’ footsteps often seems impossible for us because what Jesus did was to give everything he had for the love of others. Out of love for all humanity he left everything he had with God to become a human being, being born as a baby at Bethlehem, and he then gave up his own life on the cross when he was crucified out of love for all people everywhere. When we think through what following in Jesus’ footsteps actually means we quickly find, as individuals and as a church, that there are all sorts of reasons that prevent from fully doing what Jesus did and giving all that we have and are to others out of love for them. As a result, we are like Peter who began to walk on the water but couldn’t keep going. What Jesus calls us to do and to be by following in his footsteps seems impossible for us to achieve.

Yet we know of some, like St Francis of Assisi or MotherTeresa, who have followed in Jesus’ footsteps more fully than any of us have yet managed. So, we know too that it can be done to some extent and, with that in mind, we need to be prepared, like Peter, to make the attempt, even if that means we fail to fully follow through. As he was with Peter, Jesus will be alongside us and will restore us so that we are then able to try again.

The storms we face in life are times of trial, times when life seems at its most difficult or most challenging. The temptation in these times is to lose our focus on Jesus - on who he is, what he did and how he acted – when that happens, like Peter, the worries of life crowd in and distract and we fall. In the storms we face, the more we continue to follow in Jesus’ footsteps by giving all we can to our fellow Christians and in the wider community, the more we will experience the ability to walk on water and come through the storms instead of being overwhelmed by them.

Julian of Norwich reminds us of the importance of prayer in these circumstances when we feel buffeted by the storms of life and don’t feel God’s comforting presence alongside us. She wrote, “Prayer fastens the soul to God, making it one with his will through the deep inward working of the Holy Spirit. So he says this, 'Pray inwardly, even though you feel no joy in it. For it does good, though you feel nothing, see nothing, yes, even though you think you cannot pray. For when you are dry and empty, sick and weak, your prayers please me, though there be little enough to please you. All believing prayer is precious in my sight.' God accepts the good-will and work of his servants, no matter how we feel.”

As she reminds us, “God did not say 'You shall not be tempest-tossed, you shall not be work-weary, you shall not be discomforted'. But he did say, 'You shall not be overcome.'”

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

Dave Bainbridge - Until The Tide Turns.

What do we really want or need?

The South East, along with the South West, had some of the highest levels of average life satisfaction ratings in England recorded during 2012/13. You may not be aware that the Government now measures National Well-being but that is the case and, in terms of people’s personal well-being, the questions asked are:

1. Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays?
2. Overall, to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?
3. Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?
4. Overall, how anxious did you feel yesterday?

How would you answer those questions? The Government is saying that our sense of well-being comes from our sense of being satisfied, feeling our life has worth, feelings of happiness and low levels of anxiety. Do you agree?

We tend to expect that most people, if asked, will say that money, fame or power are the things that they really want. Here’s a fairly typical statement from one online blogger about this question: "Most people would list money as the most wanted thing in the world … We can't deny the fact that money forms an essential part of our life, and without money, people generally are miserable and live miserably …  The other primary things that humans desire and seek (fame, happiness, success, etc.) also are connected to money and mostly are a direct result of being financially well-off. So, in my opinion, money is the thing people want most in the world."

Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who wanted to understand what really motivates people. He devised a model called the hierarchy of needs which suggests that we are all motivated to achieve certain needs but that our basic needs have to be satisfied before we will be motivated to achieve our higher needs. On his five stage model our most basic needs are physiological i.e. for air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, and sleep. Next come safety needs - protection from the elements, security, order, law, limits, stability, and freedom from fear. After that come social Needs - belongingness, affection and love, - from work group, family, friends, and romantic relationships. Then come esteem needs - achievement, mastery, independence, status, dominance, prestige, self-respect, and respect from others. Finally, come self-actualization needs - realizing our personal potential, self-fulfilment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs gives a broader perspective on the question of what we really want as human beings but it doesn’t fully accord with what we see Jesus saying and doing in today’s Gospel reading which is also an exploration of what we really need, want or think is most important in life.

The temptations Jesus faces in the wilderness are threefold; food, fame and power (or on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - basic needs and esteem needs). Jesus has been fasting in the wilderness of forty days and forty nights. He is very hungry but he resists the temptation to meet his basic needs by turning stones into bread. He quotes scripture to argue that receiving from God is more fundamental to human well-being than food itself. Jesus keeps his focus on God. Hearing from God is what is most important to him. God’s word is his food, his breath - the thing he needs more than anything else in this world.

Then Jesus is tempted to achieve celebrity or fame by a public act of self-aggrandisement - jumping from the highest point of the Temple and surviving. The result would be that everyone would know how wonderful Jesus is because God would not allow him to die. Jesus responds by quoting again from scripture - "Do not put the Lord your God to the test." He knows who he is and doesn’t need to adulation of other human beings in order to feel confident in his relationship with God.

Finally, he is tempted by power - "all the kingdoms of the world in all their greatness" all to be given to Jesus if he follows the way of the world rather than that of God. Again he quotes from scripture in replying: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him!’

This is what is at the heart of the matter for Jesus. In responding to these temptations, he is fulfilling the Law by keeping the greatest and the most important commandment: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind’ (Matthew 22. 37).

The temptations he faces are, as Tom Wright writes in ‘Matthew for Everyone’, all ways of distorting his true vocation: "the vocation to be a truly human being, to be God’s person, to be a servant to the world and to other people". Jesus is "committed to living off God’s word; to trusting God completely, without setting up trick tests to put God on the spot. He is committed to loving and serving God alone. The flesh may scream for satisfaction; the world may beckon seductively; the devil himself may offer undreamed-of power; but Israel’s loving God, the one Jesus knew as father, offered the reality of what is meant to be human, to be a true Israelite, to be Messiah."

"When Jesus refused to go the way of the tempter he was embracing the way of the cross. The enticing whispers that echoed around his head were designed to distract him from his central vocation, the road to which his baptism had committed him, the path of servanthood that would lead to suffering and death. They were meant to stop him from carrying out God’s calling, to redeem Israel and the world.

The temptations we all face, day by day and at critical moments of decision and vocation in our lives, may be very different from those of Jesus, but they have exactly the same point. They are not simply trying to entice us into committing this or that sin. They are trying to distract us, to turn us aside, from the path of servanthood to which our baptism has commissioned us. God has a costly but wonderfully glorious vocation for each one of us. The enemy will do everything possible to distract us and thwart God’s purpose …

But, as God’s children, we are entitled to use the same defence as the son of God himself. Store scripture in your heart, and know how to use it. Keep your eyes on God, and trust him for everything. Remember your calling, to bring God’s light into the world. And say a firm ‘no’ to the voices that lure you back into the darkness."

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

Rosanne Cash - What We Really Want.

Facing down the demons of our day

I'm using Niall Cooper's excellent post Power, fame or fortune? What’s your Lenten challenge? in the sermon slot for our Holy Communion services today at St John's Seven Kings.

Cooper suggests that: "For Jesus, the Lenten challenge was also fundamentally to face down the demons of his day: Temptations to worship false idols; to seek power, fame or fortune. Make no mistake: Such demons are just as real and just as calculatedly designed to appeal to our deepest human desires as in Jesus’ day."

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

Marvin Gaye - Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler).

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.