Amazing Grace

 

Sunday 28^th February – Lent 2

Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16. To inaugurate a new status and new responsibility, the Bible assigns new names. Abram and Sarai, meaning “High Father” and “mockery” are now to be known as Abraham and Sarah meaning “Father of many” and “princess”. It is a story of God’s grace and faithfulness that his promises will be fulfilled that people of such a great age are to become parents against every natural expectation and biology.

Romans 4: 13-25. Abraham was righteous before God through Faith because he lived centuries before the law was introduced to Moses. Therefore, Paul returns to the very genesis of the people of Israel to argue that being declared righteousness before God through Faith is the original godly position and is true for all “his descendants”, that is us! The law was introduced to teach/guide an errant people, but it is faith in God that makes us right with God.

Mark 8: 31-38. Peter is told he is satanic for daring to suggest that Jesus not follow what has been discerned by Jesus to be the will of the Father. Jesus then goes on to say that anyone who tries to follow in his footsteps must do likewise. What this looks like in practice has been debated in the church for 2000 years. Courage to stand up and be counted? A devotion to speaking the truth despite where it might lead. A willingness to stand up to powerful interests if that is what is called for. A keenness to see people through impartial eyes. All said, it means discerning God’s will and having the strength to follow where that leads.

 

Salvation through faith in God’s grace has become a cornerstone of the Christian faith as though it was always self-evident but how did St. Paul arrive at that judgement?

Surely the Jewish faith was built on law and observing the law that was inaugurated through Moses receiving the ten commandments on Mount Sinai and all the subsequent revelations that governed every aspect of a person’s life?

Paul goes back far further than Moses – to the very Father and progenitor of the people of Israel, Abraham.

Everything flows from Abraham, He is the start of it all and today three faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam recognise Abraham as our spiritual Father. Those three religions are all cousins to each other.

What struck Paul like a sledgehammer was that when Abraham was declared righteous before God, it wasn’t through observance of any law because the law didn’t exist yet and wouldn’t do for another few hundred years.

No, Abraham was declared right with God because he believed God (Genesis 15:6) and as Abraham is the spiritual father of us all, we inherit that blessing.

Belief can be expressed as trust and trusting that God can achieve his promises despite all evidence to the contrary.

Trust existed alongside doubts in that original story. Both Abraham and Sarah famously doubted and laughed at God’s promise so if we are taking this story as our template for faith as Paul did, then we see for ourselves that trust and doubt do go together in human beings.

I wonder how many Christians have beaten themselves up because they feel guilty about having doubts. Trust is an act of will that transcends the doubts that are normal in all people.

We choose to trust despite our fears and doubts and in the case of Jesus despite where it could lead.

How much Jesus intuitively perceived what might happen when he went to Jerusalem I don’t know but he trusted his Father that it was the right and good thing to do.

So much so that when Peter suggested that he avoid the suffering that was God’s will he called Peter Satan which I think you’ll agree is pretty strong stuff.

It’s a commonplace that nowhere in the New testament does Jesus ever ask for anyone’s worship but he does ask or instructs us directly 13 times for people to follow him so imitating Christ is very important.

As Jesus says himself “I am the way, the truth and the life” The way or road that Jesus walked is our template for how we approach life.

He didn’t want to do it – think of the prayer in the garden of Gethsemene where he sweated blood and yet said “Not my will but your will”

He trusted that God would stay faithful to him despite anything and everything that would happen to him.

When Jesus died on the cross in agony, preaching forgiveness of his persecutors as he died – so continuing to trust God and his way of forgiveness and peace – everyone thought that he had been abandoned, friend and foe alike and the disciples scattered, but God remained faithful and raised Jesus victorious on the third day.

The faithfulness of God extends beyond this mortal life which leads me to remember the old maxim about finding belief in God difficult and fraught with doubt, that while you may have no belief in God, God believes in you.   

 

 

 

The discipline of Lent

 

Sunday 21^st February – 1^st of Lent.

Genesis 9: 8-17. What is significant to me is that the covenant, mentioned four times, is with all creation. God is not simply the God of human beings but the God of the entire created cosmos. This for theists, carries implications for how we treat both animals and the world around us. One way of dealing with human perversity is to try and destroy it (via the Flood) and the other is to wean the human race off of perversity towards a love of peace and justice- an example of God’s Grace, signified by the rainbow.

1 Peter 3: 18- 22. A common icon in Eastern Christianity, is of the risen Christ standing over the entrance to hell, using the cross to span the fissure and pulling up people either out of their graves or sometimes out of death itself into the light. This is a graphic illustration of this mysterious passage where Jesus reaches even down to the already dead (and presumably judged “in the time of Noah”) and pulling them to life and light. The forgiveness and Grace of God knows no bounds.

Mark 1: 9-15. The wilderness is a place of exile, distress and testing. The Jews wandered for forty years in the wilderness before alighting upon the promised land and Jesus was similarly tested for forty days before starting his ministry. A time of distillation of the essential message he carried for the world and a forging of his character and incorruptibility. A season of retreat, challenge, testing and growth remains with the church as a whole through the practice of “retreats” and the more widespread notion of an annual Lenten discipline.

 

Our Christian lives are shaped, if you belong to a traditional church like the CofE, Roman catholic or Orthodox churches by observing seasons that have their own internal logic and reason.

Every season concentrates on one aspect of our faith and concentrates on it.

So to use the most important season, Easter, as an example. For a Christian the resurrection informs our entire belief system 24/7 365 days of the year but we still reserve a special day – Easter Sunday and the weeks that follow it -to concentrate on the resurrection and what it means.

Similarly, with Lent. The practices we employ to come into a closer relationship with God is something we should also be engaged with 24/7 365 days a year but in the forty days before Easter we still have a special period where we concentrate on that particular job in hand.

And that is the job in hand. Fostering a closer relationship with God revealed in Christ.

The method you use to foster that relationship is not the important thing – the closer relationship is what counts and we are all different.

If fasting works for you do that. If intellectual stimulation works for you, read a spiritual book, engage with a course or Bible reading scheme.

Prayer and contemplation underpin whatever we employ to foster that relationship because in prayer we enter into that ongoing personal relationship with God. The form that prayer takes is not the important thing – it is the result of that way of prayer that is important.

As a part of that universal catholic church we encourage all forms of prayer but actively promote two main forms because they are tried and tested.

The cycle of liturgical morning or evening prayer recognises that people need rhythm, repetition and appreciate a tried and tested method that is given to them which takes away a lot of anxiety for many people. There is still space for your own prayers but there is a framework into which extempore prayer fits.  

Some respond better to complete silence and meditation is their thing.

Others find that too stark and prefer music, candles, icons or chant to concentrate your mind.

Others find that any set form puts them off and life is itself a prayer.

What works for you is what is important because the goal is the important thing and not the means of getting there.

Doing good works is what works for many and many people never feel closer to God than when they are helping someone less fortunate than themselves.

You don’t need to choose between all these different ways. You can and probably need to engage with a little bit of all of them in reality.

That’s why our weekly communion service is so important. There is a set framework – the liturgy, which changes with the seasons.

It has Bible readings, public intercession, reflections on God’s word, music, a time of confession and absolution, a demonstration of our peace with God and each other and the climax of each event is the taking of communion which is a public statement of fact and intent that we are in communion with God and each other through the body and blood of Christ

Our goal is communion with God and all things.

We do that every time we meet to worship but the season of Lent asks us to specifically think about that in a more structured and disciplined way.

There is a rich tradition spanning 2000 years, 5000 years with the Hebrew scriptures of different forms of trying to foster a close relationship with God in Christ so be curious and take time to explore them.

I hope and pray that the result of whatever you do and try will achieve the end it was meant to do and that its effect and practice will outlive the confines of this short season.  

I've seen the light!

 

Sunday 14^th February – Sunday before Lent

2 Kings 2: 1-12. The “double portion” of Elijah’s Spirit asked for by Elisha isn’t a selfish request. A double portion usually in Hebrew means the two thirds of the estate inherited by the elder son so Elisha is actually asking to be Elijah’s heir or successor. The only two people in the Bible not to die are Enoch (Gen. 5.24) and Elijah, which obviously fed the belief that Elijah would return to make a straight path for the messiah.

2 Corinthians 4: 3-6. Light is a natural symbol of revelation but for many people they can’t see that light and the truth remains veiled. Before we get too judgemental here we need to remember that Paul himself knew enough about Jesus to attack his followers originally. He too was veiled, and it took a massive mysterious vision to shake him out of his original assessment and cause the scales to fall from his eyes.

Mark 9: 2-9. The transfiguration of Jesus is an event without parallel in the gospels and reveals to James and John that Jesus is not one of three people – Moses and Elijah being the other two, but he is above them and exceeds them in every way. In this revelation of God, the Father speaks out of the cloud (denoting the divine presence) and repeats the words heard at his baptism “This is my son, the beloved” and adds “Listen to him!”. Faith in Jesus exceeds all other kinds of faith.

 

 That people don’t respond positively to the gospel in our time is hardly new, although it’s tempting to think that.

Jesus after all, the personification of the gosepl was crucified by his opponents and all the saints and apostles encountered major opposition usually resulting in their torture and death as well.

Indeed, perhaps our greatest evangelist, St. Paul started out as a persecutor of the followers of the good news.

To Saul, using the idiom he himself uses in his letter to the Corinthians, the gospel was veiled from his eyes, until he was jolted out of that state by the spiritual equivalent of a massive kick up the backside – his conversion experience on the road to Damascus.

To say that all those who don’t see the gospel as “good news” have their eyes veiled from seeing the truth is a more poetic way of expressing it.

What is needed is light. The thicker the veil, the brighter the light has to be to penetrate and get through the veil.

Peter, James and John were having trouble appreciating just who Jesus was and what he represents and the transfiguration of Jesus where his clothes became dazzling white, Moses and Elijah appeared and the voice of God boomed out proclaiming Jesus as his beloved Son was supposed to be that literal dazzling shining light to bring them to their senses.

But even this display didn’t work initially – with them offering to build three dwellings for them. Only in hindsight did this vision of the uncreated light of God shining through Jesus have the desired effect.

Peter had already made his confession “You are the Christ” in the last chapter but what this revelation meant had yet to really sink in.

What all this tells me is that getting people to accept the possibility of God, then accepting that he is present and was specially present in Jesus, that he is love and wills are health and happiness is a hard job at every step in the process. And that even mature followers of Jesus always have much more to learn, which usually comes in step changes.

So the whole church is a learning and developing school of thinking, prayer and contemplation that has to start from scratch in each generation.

My message today then is simply to be kind to yourselves.

We spend far too much time fretting and becoming angst ridden at the state of the church, our personal faith, the ambivalence of most of the population to the gospel, and while this anxiety is natural it is also counterproductive.

We only have direct control over what we ourselves do and believe, so we need to discipline ourselves and as long as we are attending communal worship, praying, reading the Bible and other spiritual works, and trying to act out the gospel principles that is all we can do.

Otherwise, we can become trapped by our own fears and pre-occupations. To shake us out of that that state we need to do what Jesus did often. Retreat to a quiet place and for prayer and contemplation.

Contemplation is seeing through God’s eyes and knowing the oneness of all creation, seeing love light and God’s hand in and through all things. What is required for contemplation is stillness, calm, quiet and communion with God.

To go forward Jesus first took a step back. The church would do well to follow our Lord as he asked us to.

Instead of jumping on every trendy bandwagon, or making political gestures, we need to retreat and gel together in a calm unified whole, centred on the gospel of healing, peace and truth. And rest there a while.

Spiritually refreshed and in God’s renewed strength we can move forward, knowing full well that the road is long, difficult and stony but being fazed by that. Not being surprised by people not understanding or even deriding us. Jesus went before us and we are in communion with him who experienced all this before us.

That sense of peace and joy that pervades both good and bad times is the ultimate mark of a Christian that we can all aspire to but it doesn’t happen by chance. It takes, time, discipline, stillness and contemplation.   

 

God's story - Our story

 

Sunday 7^th February – 2^nd before Lent (or Epiphany 8)

Proverbs 8:1,22-31. Wisdom has a divine quality in the Bible and is treated as a “person”. Wisdom was there at the very beginning of creation and was “rejoicing in creation and delighting in the human race.” The quality of reason and wisdom also has another way of being expressed in the Bible as the “Logos” hence the reason we have John’s prologue today. Logos is usually translated as “word” in English Bibles and Jesus is the word made flesh but could be expressed as the “wisdom of God made flesh”

Colossians 1:15-20. Three mystical and mysterious readings today and this one from St. Paul is no exception. The universal Christ is the “image of the invisible God” and in Him God was reconciling himself to all the world through Him. God in Christ is revealing that his ubiquitous presence is in all things and he cares and loves all that he has made and wills its salvation.

John 1: 1-14. This powerful piece of exalted theology that we last heard at Christmas caps off three mind expanding readings today and together they form the outer layer of the “cosmic egg” under which we live and move and have our being. God is the light that enlightens all things yet made especially visible in Jesus Christ. When we believe that God is in Christ (and everything else besides) we see that we are children of God.

 

In the comedy “The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” the answer to the question “what is the meaning of life?” – the answer was 42.

But how do we make sense of our lives, our relationships. History, good and evil, Life itself?

The answer is through stories

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the three layers of meaning that shape our lives and identity starting with the personal one which is MY story, then the more corporate one including things like our church, race, nationality etc. which is OUR story bigger than just MY story but still limited and then went on to describe the story that both encompasses and transcends those two layers of meaning which is THE story or GOD’S story.

And all of today’s readings operate very much on that level of the overarching story of the whole of creation and how we fit within it.

“God’s story” which is the story of God’s relationship with the world and where we fit within that story broke through into human consciousness via the story of the people of Israel, and primarily through the law and the prophets but that story was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Kingdom of God that Jesus preached and acted out is the overarching story of God’s love and care for all that he made. Through Jesus the Father came into communion with us

Through bread and wine we act out God’s story every time we partake in Holy Communion. We don’t need to fully understand it we just need to get on and do it. The Father came into communion with creation and we re-state that communion when we commune with the Father, through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In eating the bread, which we call the body of Christ, we proclaim our union with God and all creation. “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8)

When we drink the wine which we call the blood of Christ we bring ourselves into communion with all the unjust suffering and injustices in the world.

Coming into that intense personal relationship with the Father John’s gospel calls becoming a child of God.

This change of perception of who we are in relation to God – a change from thinking that God is distant, unapproachable, uncaring to being close, involved, loving and caring is an emotional one and can be sudden or something that evolves over a life-time.

This change of mindset is what Jesus calls for when he calls on us to “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”.

This is the good news that exploded in the world just over 2000 years ago and caused the greatest peaceful expansion of any religion ever seen before or since.

Trying to re-state and re-capture that excitement is the goal of the church in every generation.

That God created and Loves all things

That God is present and active within creation and can use all things – including pain death and suffering as well as Love beauty and creativity to speak to us.

That God is a living God and in Him we know eternal life.

However high and distant you imagine God to be to you, know when you take the bread of thanksgiving that God is here, active and present to you.

Using something as everyday as a piece of bread, God says to you “I’ll meet you there”.

Amen.