Travelling Light: A Service for the Third Sunday after Trinity | The Church of England

Here's the reflection that I shared in today's national online service for the Church of England:

Cliff Richard once sang that he had no bags of baggage to slow him down, no comb and no toothbrush, nothing at all to haul. He was travelling light because he just couldn’t wait to be with his baby that night. I wonder whether Eugene Peterson had that song in mind when he translated this reading in ‘The Message’, his version of the Bible in contemporary language. His version of Jesus’ charge to his disciples starts like this: “Travel light. Comb and toothbrush and no extra luggage.”

Travel light. Jesus was calling the 70 to an itinerant ministry (Luke 10.1-11, 16-20). Their focus was on going ahead of Jesus to prepare people for his coming and his message. So, they took nothing unnecessary with them, they weren’t distracted by small talk along the way, they welcomed hospitality when they received it but they simply moved on to the next place and the next person whenever they were not made welcome. No distractions, just a clear focus on their task and their message.

We also need to travel light in our individual lives and our corporate Church life in order that we are focused on our core task of sharing the good news about Jesus in actions and words. But there is also a second reason for travelling light which is to do with the footprint that we leave on the world. By sitting light to possessions and by accepting hospitality as it was offered to them, the 70 imposed as little as possible on the people, villages and areas through which they travelled. In our society, since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, we have done anything but. Our footprint has been heavy on our world as we have exploited its resources for our own gain and we are still struggling to realise the consequences.

John V. Taylor's book, ‘Enough is Enough’, kickstarted the simple lifestyle movement. ‘Live more simply that others might simply live’ was their slogan and it is one that Eugene Peterson sees as coming out of the instructions that Jesus gave to his disciples before he sent them out on their mission: “Don’t load yourselves up with equipment,” he writes, “Keep it simple; you are the equipment. And no luxury inns – get a modest place and be content there until you leave.” Keep it simple. Travel light. These are the key messages of Jesus’ instructions.

Why? To keep us focused on our message and mission and to tread lightly on the earth as we do so.

Travelling light / without / a purse / without / a bag / without / shoes / without / equipment / you are / the equipment / you are / all you need

Travelling light / no / special appeals / no / luxury hotels / no / looking / for the best / cooks / keep it / simple / keep it / modest / be / content

Travelling light / don’t stop / to make / small talk / with those / on the road / move on / reach / your destination / the harvest / is great / but the / workers / few

Travelling light / do stop / to bless / the homes / in which / you rest / for all / you receive / give thanks / and peace / don’t create / when made / unwelcome / shrug / your shoulders, / wipe / your feet / move on

Travelling light / don’t / fill your barns / simply / to eat, / drink / and / be merry / don’t / store up / riches / simply / to rust / and decay / don’t / store up / riches / simply / for others / to steal / your heart / will be / where / your riches / are

Travelling light / do / store up / acts / of love, / hope / and faith / do / store up / the things / that remain / do / store up / treasures / in heaven / your heart / will be / where / your riches /are

Here's the earlier service that we recorded at St Andrew's Wickford in January:

My recorded sermons for the Diocese of Chelmsford's Weekly Sermon series can also be viewed below.

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St Martin-in-the-Fields - Morning Song.

Creation: dominion vs responsibility

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

Last week I led a funeral service for a wonderful lady whose passion through her life had been for animals and nature and who had worked in ecological conservation. I used a part of Genesis 1, the first account of creation found in the Bible – today we have heard part of the second account (Genesis 2.4-17). I used that reading in order to speak about that person’s ecological action but chose to read the passage in the version written by Eugene Peterson called The Message.

I did so because of a key difference in the translation of a key word. Many English translations of Genesis 1 states that human beings have been given dominion over the natural world. Dominion is generally understood to mean the right to govern or rule or determine. Those who have dominion are understood to possess the ability to wield force, authority, or influence, to direct and restrain, to make arbitrary decisions and compel obedience. As a result, humans having dominion over nature has generally been understood as meaning that we have the right and the ability to exploit natural resources and to shape nature to serve our needs. In other words, all the attitudes and actions that have led to the climate emergency.

Eugene Peterson resists that understanding of the relationship between human beings and the natural world by using a different translation. He writes of human beings being responsible for every living thing that moves on the face of the Earth:

God spoke: “Earth, generate life! Every sort and kind:
cattle and reptiles and wild animals—all kinds.”
And there it was:
wild animals of every kind,
Cattle of all kinds, every sort of reptile and bug.
God saw that it was good.

God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them
reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air, the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”

God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God’s nature.
He created them male and female.
God blessed them:
“Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.”

That responsibility for, rather than dominion over, the natural world is what we also see in today’s reading from Genesis, where human beings are placed in the Garden of Eden in order to till it and keep it, or as The Living Bible says, to tend and care for it.

Later this year, we will be having a Stewardship month in which we will reflect on different aspects of stewardship as part of our response to the generosity of God towards us. One aspect of our stewardship involves stewardship of the natural world and its resources. Being a good steward means caring for and conserving the world in which we live and the resources within because to do otherwise selfishly uses up those resources for ourselves and alters the natural cycle of life in ways that harm the world and all that lives on it. We will, therefore, be encouraging all of us, as we have done previously, to look again at the actions we can take to show responsibility by caring for this world, rather than acting in ways that dominate and exploit the natural world.

The words we use have consequences and significant impacts, so we need to be careful about our use of words, including within scripture. The difference between domination of nature and responsible care for nature is immense, as is demonstrated by the climate emergency and the actions of those on opposing sides of the debate. Let us be those who seek to tend and care and keep the earth. Amen.

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11:59 - Psalm 24 - The Earth Is The Lord's.

Resurrection - The only way is up!

Here's the sermon I preached in yesterday's 8.00am Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

In his great book The Gulag Archipelago Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote of the way the Siberian labour camps to which the Soviet government consigned those they deemed enemies of the state robbed him of everything that makes life meaningful: “He is robbed of his name – he is known only by a number. He is robbed of books and pen and paper – a dreadful deprivation for a writer of his stature. He is robbed of work he can do with dignity. Instead he must labour as a slave. He is deprived of sufficient food and sleep. He gets no letters. He hears no news of his family or of the outside world. He is stripped of his own clothes and dressed in verminous rags. He is robbed of his health – he succumbs to cancer.

Solzhenitsyn, robbed of everything, sinks as it were to the bottom, to the very base of being. And then he says something extraordinary. He writes of the day, ‘when I deliberately let myself sink to the bottom and felt it firm under my feet – the hard rocky bottom which is the same for all.’

On the Friday that we call ‘good’, Jesus too descends to rock bottom. He is betrayed by a friend, arrested, deserted and denied by his friends, falsely accused, wrongly condemned, beaten and mocked, before being killed by extreme torture. More than this even, scripture implies that in death Jesus descends to hell and, if hell is separation of God and the absence of all that is good, then, because Jesus cries out “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” we can understand that he enters hell.

As a result, we can say that however low you go Jesus has already been there and that it is Jesus that we find when we, like Solzhenitsyn, reach rock bottom. He is the rock that we find when we have lost everything that is ours or have reached the outer limits of who we understand ourselves to be. He is the firm foundation on which a different way of life can then be built because when you do reach rock bottom and find there a firm foundation on which to stand, then the only way to go is up.

Some of you will remember these lines from Yazz’s No. 1 song:

“We've been broken down / To the lowest turn / Being on the bottom line /
Sure ain't no fun ... / I wanna thank you / For loving me this way / Things may be a little hard now / But we'll find a brighter day

Hold on, hold on / Hold on, Won't be long

The only way is up, baby / For you and me now / The only way is up, baby /
For you and me now”

That is what we celebrate today and that is why this is an Easter Day sermon and not the Good Friday sermon that it has appeared to be so far. Jesus reached rock bottom on Good Friday but that was not where the story ends. For Jesus, the resurrection meant that the only way for him, following Good Friday, was up. And because Jesus dies and is resurrected as the forerunner for each one of us, this can be our experience too. Jesus went into the depths of human sin and suffering to save us, to bring us up and out from our depths of sin and suffering into new life together with him; a life in which resurrection has begun to be our experience and will become our eternal experience.

This change was brilliantly captured in a sermon that the American preacher and sociologist, Tony Campolo has made famous. A sermon based on the repeated line; “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming”:

“It was Friday, and my Jesus is dead on a tree. But that’s Friday, and Sunday’s coming.

Friday, Mary’s crying her eyes out, the disciples are running in every direction like sheep without a shepherd. But that’s Friday, and Sunday’s coming.

Friday, some are looking at the world and saying, “As things have been, so they shall be. You can’t change nothing in this world! You can’t change nothing in this world!” But they didn’t know that it was only Friday, and Sunday’s coming.

Friday, them forces that oppress the poor and keep people down, them forces that destroy people, the forces in control now, them forces that are gonna rule, they don’t know it’s only Friday, but Sunday’s coming.

Friday, people are saying, “Darkness is gonna rule the world, sadness is gonna be everywhere,” but they don’t know it’s only Friday, but Sunday’s coming.

Even though this world is rotten, as it is right now, we know it’s only Friday. But Sunday’s coming!”

St John in his Revelation prophesies: “I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea. I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband. I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God. He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone." The Enthroned continued, "Look! I'm making everything new.” (Revelation 21. 1-5, The Message)

There is light at the end of the tunnel. Ain’t no valley low enough to keep us from Jesus, even the valley of the shadow of death. A change is gonna come. The times, they are a’changin’. We can move on up to our destination. We will rise from the ruins. The only way is up. The songs and the clichés find their truth in Jesus and his resurrection which is the promise of our own personal resurrection and the resurrection of our world itself.

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Yazz & The Plastic Population - The Only Way Is Up.

Scriptural Reasoning: Wisdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Live Well, Live Wisely

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

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

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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Let The Day Begin.

Apocalypse Now

I'm contributing, for the third consecutive year, to the Exploring Spirituality Day in the St Albans Diocese on Saturday 22nd October 2011 at Christ Church, Radlett, 9.30am - 3pm, £8 in advance, £10 on the day.
My workshop is entitled Apocalypse Now! and is described as follows: Exploring apocalyptic literature: scriptural and beyond. How should we read the apocalyptic passages and books of the Bible? What do they reveal to us of God's workings and God’s realm? And where has the line of this style of writing continued - through beyond the solely scriptural? Come with eyes wide open to the possible and the remarkable.
The theme of the day is ‘In the beginning...’ - Well loved opening words for the final reading at the Christmas Carol Service, perhaps. Or words used in the telling again at the Easter Vigil of the events surrounding the creation of our beautiful world - events that recall God’s creative impulse and enjoyment of all that was brought into being - all that was beheld as ‘good.’
Some love the King James Version, others The Message. Some like the settings of the Psalms in the NIV but prefer Mark as found in the NRSV. And what if you don’t know what any of these letters mean?!

This year’s Exploring Spirituality Day is all about the Word - in whatever translation suits you, and in the different ways in which we experience it. This year’s Workshops will afford an opportunity to explore and encounter the Word of God in ways that are new and unusual to some, as well as familiar and comfortable for others.

The gift of God’s Word is just that, gift. This year we celebrate 400 years of the King James Bible - but loving the beautiful Shakespearian quality of this particular text does not mean there is no space for anything more contemporary. We do well to enquire as to how God has continued to inspire Biblical Scholars to craft phrases that are useful and reflective of our age but that also retain depth of meaning and inspiration in purpose.

The Very Reverend Jeffrey John is keynote speaker for the day. Jeffrey is noted by many as a gifted Scholar and Preacher. For the past seven years he has served as Dean of St Albans, previously serving at Southwark Cathedral as Canon Chancellor.  

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Kirk Whalum - It's What I Do.