Remembrance Sunday at Stebbing and Lindsell

Readings Micah 4, 1-5 and Philippians 4, 6-9

We will remember them.

It is 70 years ago this year that the Second World War began, and it is 90 years since we first held a remembrance Sunday – 91 since the end of the war, so 90 since the first annual marking of its ending.

But of course – and unfortunately - Remembrance Sunday is about so much more than that these days. It has been hard this week to frame in my mind what to say today after events first in Afghanistan and then in Fort Hood, Texas, in which virtues like honour and trust were discarded for personal and political gain at the cost of 18 lives.

I want to start with the obvious. Remembrance Sunday is ever more important year by year, as the number of living veterans of the first Armistice Day dwindles to almost none. It also remains important because in the news every day, and never more so perhaps than this week, conflict, death and injury are unavoidable, and we need to find some way of making sense of it all. I hope in what we do here today and what I say in this address we can try to do that.

In the three years we have been here there have probably been more deaths of UK service personnel than at any time for a good few years. But the conflicts that have taken their lives are far away from our lives; we do not see what they saw and we do not share their experience in any way really, in spite of the media coverage it all gets. This is a great contrast with conflicts of the past where the nation was under a fairly constant threat and the population as a whole considered themselves to be at war, even though it took weeks sometimes for news to get through. I guess that although we are constantly aware of what’s going on in Afghanistan, we do not actually consider ourselves to be at war – these days that is what soldiers do. So today of all days, we should not forget them.

The most significant thing I have learned in getting to know soldiers over the last few years is that they all love peace; they strive for it and long for it. That is why a reading like Philippians 4 is actually a good one for today; at first hearing these words do not sit well in a context of war, especially if you are a pacifist, but put yourself in the shoes of a soldier in Kandahar reading these words today from his or her special Armed Forces edition of the new testament. What better words could there be to both encourage and comfort someone like that? Yes it is true that there is very little that is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy in what we see on our TV screens from war zones around the world. All the more reason then for us, as for that hypothetical Bible –reading soldier to follow the apostle Paul’s advice to the Philippians and think about these things, because by their very nature they remind us of God’s Kingdom, and they focus our minds on trying to bring that to fruition.

Which is also what is going on in the prophecy of Micah 4. It has a short term fulfilment in the return of God’s people from exile, but when we reads it with our New Testament Christian glasses on, we see it referring metaphorically to the future rule and reign of God, with the consequence of peace and reconciliation. It is a famous passage often cited by people who oppose war, but I wanted us to hear it today because I believe Micah speaks into our current world as a voice of hope for the future, and as an encouragement to see the sacrifice of wars past and present not as futile, but as building towards a future in which the words of Micah speak of reality, not as a prophecy, and the words of Paul to the Philippians are more immediately relevant. We are not yet beating our sword into ploughshares, and there is still a lot of ugliness dishonesty, impurity, ignobility, and so on in the world, but our purpose in acting as we are called to, whether military or civilian, must be to work within God’s plan towards the goal these words spur us on to.

It is traditional on occasions such as today to draw a comparison between the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of human lives in war, and in one sense my conclusion today is not going to deviate from that tradition. I will say as I always do that any comparison must point to the supremacy of Christ’s sacrifice, because its efficacy, as we are about to sing, means that God’s wrath is turned away form humanity – “On that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied”.

There is a painting that belongs to the Royal Corps of Signals in Blandford, Dorset. It is called “Through”, and it depicts the body of a signaller, lying in open ground it what is clearly a battle situation. The signaller has given his life to re-connect a severed signals line, thus enabling two separated groups of soldiers to communicate. To me there is no co-incidence in the fact that the soldier’s body lies with arms outstretched and knees drawn up to one side, in the manner of a crucified body. The painting tells a story about human heroism, but it portrays a more profound truth about the supreme sacrifice, of Jesus Christ, which restored the connection between God and humanity that had been broken by human sinfulness.

Paul wrote to the Philippians, telling them “the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts in Christ Jesus”. The key words in that phrase are the last three – God’s peace is made available to us in Christ Jesus – through faith in him and by an acceptance of the validity of his teaching and the achievements of his sacrifice.

As we remember today all those in the past and in the present whose lives were spent in protecting our freedom, I feel the best way of making sense of the pain and the suffering of war today is to look at it all in the light of Christ’s own suffering. Not that we see Afghanistan as some kind of holy war, but that our understanding of what is happening in the world is always subject to the sovereignty of God.

All Saints 1 Nov 2009 at Lindsell and Stebbing, and All Souls at Stebbing

Isaiah 25, 6-8

John 11, 32-44

Today's Gospel presents a dramatic working out of the second beatitude: 'Blessed are those who weep now, for you will laugh' (Luke 6.21) or Matthew 5.4 'Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.' It is a theme echoed in Isaiah 25.8, and then in Revelation 21.4, as tears in the face of death are turned to joy.

All were weeping at Lazarus' death, and Jesus shared the sorrow of his friends. But his real response will be to enact the words of the second beatitude. His prayer at Lazarus' tomb does not ask for a miracle. He says 'Father, I am giving you thanks' (eucharisteo in Greek). His expression of confidence and joy uses a word, which we associate with the Eucharistic Prayer, which we of course make through our risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Tonight we will be thinking more about death and resurrection as we celebrate All Souls at Stebbing and Great Saling, with those who have been bereaved. This morning I would like to concentrate more on the status of the living church and the communion of all saints

The saints, in the way the term is used in the New Testament, are the community of believers who share a faith in Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. You do not have to be dead or even dead famous to be a saint. St Paul frequently addresses his letters to “the saints in ..”  

While I guess it is a bit strange that the Gospel chosen for this day is not about someone whom we would necessarily regard as a saint in the stereotypical sense, hre story of Lazarust does make the dramatic point that risen life with Christ is a free gift from God to all who are called to be saints. Famous saints like St Francis, or St Maximilian Kolbe, who did things to get themselves and more importantly God noticed are all very well, but if we concentrate too much on them, we might miss out on the person they are trying to draw us to – Jesus. St Therese of Lisieux - whose relics recently toured the UK, is all very well, but she’s no different from you or me in the eyes of God.  To focus too much on any saint, if our relationship with God suffers, is like going on a journey, but stopping at the first signpost to our destination, and just standing looking at it.

 The dead Lazarus, bound in his grave clothes, could do nothing for himself, but he was given life as the free gift from God. Having said he’s not normally listed under saints, we need to remember that travellers to Paris are sometimes greeted by him, if they arrive by train at the Gare St Lazare.

Though of course St John couldn’t have known about that rather good designation for the end of a journey, he invites us to note the parallels between the raising of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus, which of course opens the way to us to our final destination in the new creation.

Think about it for a second. Both stories have women called Mary who weep; they both involve cave tombs with stones rolled away. In both narratives there is a lengthy time the body spends in the tomb, and references to grave clothes, and (implied by the spices on Easter morning, and overtly here,) the resultant smell. Of course the passages are ultimately linked by the sheer impossibility in human terms alone, of coming to life again.

 The similarity continues then with the appearances of Lazarus and the risen Christ from their tombs. Lazarus emerges bound in strips of cloth, and Jesus orders people to unbind him. This is a symbol of the way in which we are bound by sin and death, and a reminder that the risen Christ will proclaim release from sin when he appears in the upper room (John 20). There, his authority to release people bound by sin will be given to his disciples. With this, the tears are at an end as, in the words of Isaiah (25.8), 'He will swallow up death for ever.'

One  Tuesday night last month at the course in Christian studies we were looking at the apostle’s creed, and considering what those ancient words mean for the relationship of believers to each other and to God. I was blessed to be in a small group as we discussed the final paragraph:

       I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.

Amen.

As a group we noticed how there a natural and gracious sequence in these words: the Spirit of God brings together the church on earth and the communion of saints, which transcends the boundaries of space and time. The communion is based on forgiveness – by God’s grace alone we are saints, remember, and centres on the resurrection of the body – the body of Jesus yes, but also our bodies, when we make the transition from being part of the earthly church to just being members of the communion of saints in eternity.

But I promised to focus on the living this morning, so I wonder how we really ought to feel about the communion of saints. I’ve never been much of a protestant, until last week anyway, and I do, you’ve probably noticed, celebrate saints’ days from the lectionary whenever I can. I’m not doing this, I’m sure you realise, because I think that saints are more important than Jesus, or even because I think they are as important as Jesus. I do it because they point to Jesus, and so help us on our way.

That is our task too, but that’s another story.

All Souls at Stebbing

1 Peter 1 3-9

You know typing, right – well, the fact is I have to do a lot of it these days, but haven’t had a lesson since I was 17. I know I’m doing it wrong, but I’ve just kind of adapted to the keyboard and screen so that I can get on with the job in hand.

The other day I was typing an address for a funeral, and instead of writing about the hope of eternal life, I wrote about the hop of eternal life. That’s funny now, but I had a hard time trying to keep a straight face at the crematorium.

If I knew how to type properly, and didn’t rely on computers to do my grammar for me, my life would in a way be simpler, less complex and more joyful. I’d be doing fewer corrections too!

Why am I talking about typing, you ask, well, because it is a bit like life, especially the life of a Christian; we do it, but not all of us actually know what we’re doing. Some of us were taught about it in our youth, some more recently, but under stress it is hard to call to mind things from the recesses of our memories.

But our struggle with life, like my struggle with the keyboard, doesn’t normally show, it just sometimes comes to the surface when we are under pressure or stress, as we are when we suffer bereavement.

Church, then, is like a typing class; it gives us the things we need to do life together, even in the darkness. Here we can find support, comfort and (by the grace of God) strength to carry on. Here we can soak up the wisdom of the Scriptures and our traditions, that have served us for many centuries and are still of indispensable use today. Here we can find a comforting shoulder, a listening ear, and even simple things like a cup of tea and a box of tissues. Things we need for every day, but particularly so in our loss.

But the picture breaks down at this point. If you attend a class – for typing or whatever, you have a teacher, who spends some time with you and then you are left on your own to get on with it. With God it is not like that. Yes, Jesus did spend some time on earth, but after he left he sent the Holy Spirit to be our comforter and guide, so we never need to be alone; we never need to be alone. Even in the deepest darkest moments of our sorrow or suffering, we never need to be alone.

Jesus doesn’t just teach us how to live in good times and in bad, then leave is alone -  he walks with us on the journey through life.

You and I find comfort in the love we receive from others, the practical help, the hug, the company; in the touch of a comforter’s hand, you may be assured that you are receiving the love of God.

So if you are feeling a little like an untrained typist trying to type a dissertation, be assured you are in good company. Church is not about being superior and saying “we know how to do this”. Church is really just a bunch of people who know they need God’s grace and strength, and are brought together on a common journey to seek these things. We are, you might say, the walking wounded, but because we walk with the wounded saviour, our heads do not drop.

Our reading spoke of the inexpressible joy of knowing Christ; perhaps that is what is meant by the hop of eternal life?

But the hope of eternal life, which never disappoints us because the Holy Spirit has been given us, is always waiting for us to reach out and claim it for ourselves, and then we shall find rest for our souls.

Lindsell 11 10 09

Yesterday's sermon can be found here

Stebbing and Lindsell 04 10 09

please visit the Friends' Meeting House for last Sunday's sermon

thanks

Lindsell, Little Saling and (partly) Stebbing, 13th September 09

This (it being a frantic week) owes a lot to Roots on the Web. The readings Were Proverbs 1, 20-the end and Mark 8, 27-the end. I kind of used this script at Stebbing but deviated massively because I needed to launch the vision statement there.

This week as we continue to travel through Proverbs and St Mark, we are directed to the difference between God's way and our own, and exhorted to follow his wisdom and commands.


The teaching in Proverbs is delivered as from a father to a son, and some of it may be based on the teachers of the Egyptian and Babylonian Empires. But what is remarkable alongside this heritage is the high regard given in the Book to women, of which we shall hear even more in next week’s reading. The book begins (chapter 1 verse 8) by giving respect to a mother's teaching alongside that of a father. And now Wisdom itself is personified as the most desirable of women. Wisdom is the revelation of God, the fountain of life, giving us discernment, which frees us from death and leads to life. The Wisdom of the God of Israel is not a goddess like those of ancient fertility religions. She is the word of the living God who pours out the divine Spirit (1.23). Those who respond to her will share in the messianic banquet, as we read in chapter 9 verses 1-6). It is fascinating and perhaps unexpected that the book of Proverbs contains a resurrection hope.

From chapter 1, though, the first call of Wisdom is to conversion. The path of violence must be abandoned and the first step on the path to life is to recognise how pervasive violence is in those who turn their backs on 'the fear of the Lord'.

The punishment envisaged for this failure to seek divine wisdom is not a thunderbolt from heaven. Rather, it is simply that the foolish will reap the consequences of their own folly. They 'eat the fruit of their way' because they have ignored God's call.

The view expressed in Proverbs had been a simple message; that 'those who listen to me will be secure and will live at ease' (1.33). Later Wisdom literature like Job, Ecclesiastes and Lamentations would temper this sunny innocence with a realistic recognition that things do not automatically go well for those who follow God's way. This provides the basis for Jesus' remarks in today's Gospel reading from Mark 8. It probably also resonates slightly better for us in the light of our own life experiences. Perhaps that’s why Proverbs doesn’t feature heavily in books with titles like “why do bad things happen to good people?”

Jesus asked the disciples who they say he is, and Peter confesses him as the Christ, i.e., the Messiah. Having commended Peter's answer by indicating that his confession is divinely revealed, Jesus immediately goes on to outline the nature of his understanding of the Messiah. He was not going to be a warrior king at the head of a triumphant army who would come to overthrow the occupying forces and “restore the Kingdom to Israel”. Our familiarity with that phrase from Acts chapter 1 is an indication that even after the resurrection, the disciples didn’t necessarily get the message!

Instead, Jesus explains that his destiny is to be a wounded figure who is eventually killed. Nonetheless, even here there is hope for vindication through resurrection.

I have always been intrigued by this episode. It reveals so much about Jesus but challenges us in two ways; first, to consider his very nature, ands second, in our own response to his question, “who do you say that I am?”

We confess in our creeds that Jesus is God incarnate; we acknowledge his authority and power and we worship him in response to those things. But I can’t help but wonder whether Jesus was really expecting Peter to give the answer he did. Can he have known it was coming and so did he therefore plan his consequent teaching session on what was to come, or was it all spontaneous? We will never know.



What we can be sure of though is that Peter made his declaration unprompted, other than by the words he had heard and the actions and attitudes he had seen coming from Jesus. We could I suppose conclude that whether or not he foresaw Peter’s response, Jesus seizes this moment to tell his disciples about his death in order to reinforce the point that he is not the Messiah that most Jews were waiting for. He is God, but he is human and has to react as a human to the workings of Peter’s very human mind.

And so, when we are asked, “Who do you say that I am”, we probably know the answer we are expected to give, if we say the creed often enough. Yet I acknowledge that not everyone here would answer that question in the same way as Peter did. This passage is frequently used to indicate the importance of personal confession of the person and nature of Christ in the Christian faith, and there is no doubt that our faith is edified by being able to say it with him, but we need to remember that Peter didn’t say this out of nowhere; his confession was not out of the blue, but was the result of spending a lot of time sitting and listening to Jesus’ teaching, watching him in conversation with others, and presumably worshipping with him. We need to remember this because if we forget it, our ministry of welcome to those who come along to church looking for something or someone, and our ministry of inclusion of those who struggle to confess like Peter, will be compromised, and we will appear to be saying, “If you come here, you need to be able to say that”, which of course we are not saying at all.



Peter’s confession may have been sudden, but it was a long time coming. Unfortunately his next pronouncement is less well considered, as we then turn from the wounded servant messiah to wounding tongues. Having just been commended by Jesus, Peter is then sharply rebuked for daring to suggest that the way of suffering was not an appropriate way forward. Peter's response to this public rebuke is not recorded but it is not unreasonable to think that he would at the time have felt stung by that censure, and he might remember it forever.

However, when we recall that Mark's Gospel may well be based on Peter's preaching, the fact that this is remembered would seem to indicate that by this time Peter was happy to admit to his fault, rather than feel resentful about the just rebuke. He had not appreciated the divine wisdom behind Jesus' remark, and behind his going the way of the cross. Are we wise enough to listen when we are called to account, or do we make the occasion one for bearing a grudge and trying to get even?

lindsell salings 16 08 09

For todays sermon please go here

Lindsell 030509

Text was Acts 4, 5-12 and John 10, 11-18

"True leadership and discipleship cannot be separated from the personal love of those whom we know by name and voice."

In John's Gospel, Jesus picks up the metaphor of the shepherd, familiar to his hearers from the 23rd Psalm and gives it a new, self-referential, twist: the good shepherd is the one who is prepared to face death in order to fulfil his responsibilities.
In Acts, Peter follows his master's example. By healing the cripple and fearlessly proclaiming the source of his power, he puts himself in immediate danger. In each case, the willingness to sacrifice oneself is tied to personal love: the shepherd knows the sheep by name and they know his voice; the disciples act in the name of Jesus; the ones we care for are our brothers and sisters.
Peter is the dominant figure in the early chapters of Acts, and his appearance here is typical. After a night in prison, he and his companions are brought before the Jewish religious authorities. The assembled array is impressive: rulers, priests and scribes; the high priest and members of his family, listed by name. The disciples are thrust right into the middle of all this. They are unlettered, ordinary, men, as Luke reminds us a little later; we know also from his Gospel that Peter's nerve had failed when his master had been arrested. But now he is transformed: he speaks with the freedom and confidence that was, in the ancient world, the mark of a philosopher. His style is fluent and authoritative, more a sermon than a speech of defence. He even emphasises the errors of his prosecutors by adding 'you' to the Old Testament quotation, 'This is the stone which you builders rejected', and by insisting on the resurrection of Christ before the Sadducees, who rejected even the future resurrection. The transformation of Peter reveals the power of the Holy Spirit, bestowed on the apostles at Pentecost.
Jesus is rarely in the New Testament described directly as 'God'. Instead, the writers repeatedly ascribe to him activities or titles or descriptions that properly belong to God. Here Jesus identifies himself with the Good Shepherd who, in the Old Testament, stands for God. Ezekiel 34 makes a contrast with the bad shepherds, who neglect and exploit their flocks; Psalm 23 gives details of the painstaking care provided by the true herdsman. In John, Jesus contrasts the shepherd with the hired hand: the one abandons his charges at the first sign of danger; the other faces death for the sake of his sheep. The extension of the Old Testament metaphor is striking: Jesus identifies himself with God precisely in his self-giving death.
Jesus' claim is that his relationship with the Father, one of mutual love and knowledge, is the source of his love and knowledge of his sheep. They are his own: the Greek word idios is used of members of one's family. It is the unity between Father and Son that makes unity among the sheep an imperative. That is why the 'other sheep' will become part of one and the same flock. Some scholars argue that the 'other sheep' are scattered groups of Jewish Christians in John's own day, facing persecution by the synagogues; most think that they are the non-Jews who will eventually become Christians. In either case, the readers are reminded that they are all linked as members of one family through the one shepherd.
And the one shepherd is of course unique. As Peter says in his conclusion, “Salvation is found in no on else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.” He is the only one.
Its worth noting that although at Easter we talk about how Jesus rose from the dead, this passage makes it clear that it was God who raised him; he did not do it himself. The work of Christ on the cross, and the power of God which raised him from the dead, are how our salvation is possible. Peter’s speech before the Sanhedrin sees them with their backs against the wall, defending their faith and seeking to ensure the truth about Jesus is properly understood. Clearly, Peter took an enormous risk in speaking out, and could have suffered a similar fate to that of Jesus, but the Sanhedrin eventually release him and John.

I find it fascinating that Jesus’ picture of the sheepfold, with himself as the shepherd, the protective gate (verse 7), while apparently first of all implying a protected, isolated community, if we see the sheep as the Church, is of course followed by the statement from Jesus that “I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen, I must bring them also … there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” So its actually a call to be inclusive of outsiders – whether, as we have seen, these other sheep are from other churches or from no church at all.
Here at Lindsell this is what we aim to do, to be inclusive, and we need to be ready to be transformed by our encounter with other sheep. I’m no farmer, but I do know that when you introduce new stock to a flock or herd, the gene pool is altered over generations and the animals become different – I wonder how long it would take fro a flock of plain white sheep to become spotty with the introduction of just one Jacobs ram? In the same way, as we grow as a church, and we are the only officially growing church in this benefice right now, we need to hold in tension our stated aims to have an open door and to hold to traditional values.
Our shepherd does want to let other sheep into the sheepfold, but are we ready to receive them? Have we perhaps regarded the sanctuary of this building, this church family as somehow sacrosanct? I think perhaps not so far in my experience, which is why we are growing. Yet at the same time we do not need to compromise our gospel faith, and instead we should be ready to model it by word and deed.

The sheepfold Jesus spoke of might have been made up simply of a circle of thorn bushes with a gap guarded by the shepherd – who would lie down across the entrance, hence lay down his life – but I suspect that for us the thorns are not just o protect us from what is outside; if you are sitting in or near thorns you cannot stay comfortable for too long and you have to move; the thorns in our sheepfold then might be a motivation to get up and go out- to turn the church inside out, for the sake of the other sheep, the people we know and love, who aren’t here today.

Using some material from www.rootsontheweb.com by Sister Margaret Atkins

Lindsell and Great Saling Easter day 09

Readings were Isaiah 25, 6-9 and Mark 16, 1-8

As we celebrate Easter, I’d like to ask, what does the Christian teaching of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead mean?
Our Old Testament reading from Isaiah 25 poses this question in its expectation that God will destroy death. In actual fact, there is almost no certain resurrection hope in the Old Testament, but Isaiah uses metaphorical language to describe the nature of the era that would result from God's saving intervention. In the short term he was talking about a return to Jerusalem from exile – reference to “On this Mountain” is intended to mean the city built on Mount Zion. As we read the passage with our New Testament Easter perspective, it is hard to avoid reading the cross and the resurrection into verses like “on this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples… he will swallow up death forever.” Today of all days, these words evoke a dramatic picture of Calvary’s hilltop scene, and of Matthew’s image of the Temple veil being torn in two as Jesus died. The first thing resurrection means then, is that death need not be the end.
This theme is echoed in Revelation 21, which speaks of the New Jerusalem, the ultimate intimacy with God, where there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain. This is what the resurrection of Jesus opens up for us. The language of salvation in Isaiah 25 points us to the work of Jesus upon the cross, and the love of God in raising him from the dead. So the second thing resurrection means is that we can be in a personal relationship with God, both in Christ and because of what he achieved.
But who is “we”? In the Old Testament as a whole, the focus is on God’s relationship with his chosen people, the Jews. In this passage however there is a prefiguring of the New Testament’s re-definition of that term, as the biblical hope for Israel is extended to include all of humankind. This universal hope and the promise that death is irrelevant make this an entirely appropriate passage to be thinking about on Easter Sunday. What Jesus won by conquering death is available to all who put their trust in him, not just people of one ethnic group. Even this seems to be prefigured in Isaiah 25 verse 9; “This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.” So the picture Isaiah paints of a people returning to their home city has become a picture of the Kingdom of God, of those who by putting their trust in Christ have been delivered from death and will dwell with God. The third thing that resurrection means is the redefinition of humanity as potentially all being the people of God. No one is outside this scope, no matter how evil they may appear; the victory of the cross and the empty tomb is just as available to a mass murderer as it is to you and me. We would both simply have to place our faith and trust in Christ, and the burden of our sin, whether great or small, is washed away.
So what actually happened at the resurrection? Well Mark 16 is as interesting for what it does not say as for what it does say. It describes the appearance of an angel but not that of Jesus himself. When we set Mark’s account alongside the writings and theology of St Paul, Paul has no description of the empty tomb and Mark has no description of the resurrection appearances.
In fact we must read both narratives in the light of each other. The empty tomb, as described in the Gospel, is an unambiguous symbol which finds its meaning when read alongside the resurrection appearances, which we will be looking at over the coming weeks. The resurrection appearances gain their definitive meaning from the description of the empty tomb. Put together, the Easter message is that Jesus, in rising from the dead, was revealed as a glorious heavenly being who was entitled to universal worship. The absence of a body supports a faith in the resurrection of the body rather than just a separation of body and spirit. The fourth thing that resurrection means then is that in Christ God re-drew the boundaries of heaven and earth, and opened the gate between them.
The original version of the Gospel probably ended at Mark 16.8, since what follows is a kind readers’ digest version of the resurrection appearances from the other gospels. If this is the case, the subtle absence of full narrative closure is striking. The women said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. Indeed, the original Greek wording appears unfinished: 'they were afraid of … ' what? We never find out. Somehow, Mark is hanging on to his notion of a secret right to the end, and doesn't ever actually say that the risen Christ was seen. So we need to acknowledge that resurrection also means a mystery. We simply don’t know how he did it.
In conclusion, Mark’s account brings us back to the question of what the resurrection means and how the disciples became convinced about it. It leaves space for doubts and fears but is unequivocal in the description of the empty tomb, and of the coming mission of the disciples to go into Galilee, and thence into the entire world. From there we return to Isaiah’s picture of a salvation given by God for the whole world to benefit from. Yet there is no passivity in this; in language reminiscent of the New Testament, Isaiah portrays the nations of the earth acknowledging God, and putting their trust in him for salvation.
To fully take the meaning of resurrection on for ourselves, for our own faith, this is what we are called to do as well.
Let us pray.


Some material by Rev'd Dr Jonathan Knight taken from www.rootsontheweb.com and is copyright © Roots for Churches Ltd 2008.

Lindsell and Stebbing Palm Sunday 09

Readings were Psalm 118 and Mark 11,1-11

You know that feeling you get when someone starts telling you a story about something that happened to them, or a joke, or whatever, and about 5 seconds in, you remember that they have already told you this thing, and you know what’s coming at the end of the story, you’ve heard the punchline? You are usually too polite to stop them and say, actually you told me this yesterday or last week or whenever, so you listen on to the end, and there is no impact for you, because you’ve already heard it.

Well, as we arrive at the beginning of Holy Week, I am only too aware that we know the end of the story; it is a story that has been told many many times to us and to our forebears; how Jesus Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and was welcomed as a King, but within days had been tried and condemned to death, executed and buried as a convicted criminal, yet rose from the dead after 3 days in the tomb. We know the end of the story because we are still living in its light. We know the end of the story, but that ought not to diminish the impact for us of this episode. It certainly did not diminish for Mark’s first readers, who evaluated the triumphal entry in the light of the resurrection. Of course, we can only call it the triumphal entry if Jesus does go on to rise form the dead.

I’m fascinated by the fact that the crowds welcomed Jesus with open arms, they put down their cloaks and their palm branched to line his route from the Mount of Olives into the valley and up into Jerusalem. So they welcomed him but really they had no idea who he was; only the disciples – and arguably not all of those, had any clue. I was reminded of this on Thursday morning when, while waiting for my sports news bulletin on BBC breakfast TV I was subjected to 25 minutes of coverage of g20 leaders arriving at Excel; the cameras were all waiting for Barak Obama, but he was in a jam (or something) and so in the delay a stream of lesser faces were shown arriving, and the hapless newsreaders struggled to work out who the people greeting Gordon Brown were – the classic example being, on the arrival of an oriental chap, “So that’ll be the prime Minister of Japan”, “ no Bill, that’s Ban Kyi Moon, the UN secretary general.”

In our celebrity driven culture there is a tendency to run from one media hype to the next – for journalists and photographers that is sometimes literally true – if you have ever happened to be in an airport when film or sports stars are arriving you’ll know what I mean. They didn’t have media hype in Jerusalem in 33AD, but they did have an expectation of a coming King, a coming Saviour, to deliver the people from Roman occupation. So if the news came that Jesus was riding into town, the expectation would be high. The gospel writers reflect this expectation by showing Jesus as King – and not just King of Israel but of the entire world. The expectation may then have been exaggerated, much as tabloids tend to exaggerate today, but the gospel writers had a good reason for that – they wanted to make sure their readers got the point about the Messiah’s kingship being of David’s line, but of a different order – Jesus did not ride in as a conqueror but as a suffering servant. He did not come to boot the Romans out but to inaugurate a Kingdom not of this world.

It’s perhaps mostly about perceptions. Jesus was perceived by the crowds to be one kind of King, when actually he was and is a different kind of King altogether; his Kingdom is not of this world; he may have been born into a royal family but in order to ascend to the throne he had to die rather than stay alive, and citizens of his Kingdom are not limited by time space or geography. This has been a big challenge to me recently. As both Lindsell and Stebbing have bee thinking in recent months about how to describe ourselves and our vision, it is good, although not always easy, as part of that process, to consider how we are perceived by those who do not come to church.

In Lindsell I find that there is generally at the moment a perception of the church as being indeed a place of traditional values, an open door and a warm welcome. Our challenge is to make that perception into a motivation for people to welcome God into their lives in Christ. I am happy to be part of a church that stands for the things we say we stand for; what I wonder is, do any of them matte to those who aren’t here? And if not, how can we make it so that they do matter. My hunch is that we will need to carry on doing what we do – caring for others, those in need and those bereaved, and caring for our community, with a servant heart. This I believe is the pattern that fits with Jesus’ example.

In Stebbing I am beginning to realise that our pattern of church is a broken one. Firstly, because of a potential misunderstanding of what this service and the service at 5 pm tonight, are actually about. They are not primarily designed for people who already come to this church; rather, they are both intended to provide a means for us to open our door wide. In the morning, it is open those who do not currently come but who would prefer this kind of formal liturgical worship, and in the evening the same – for informal café style worship. So if regular church members are staying away “because they don’t like that kind of service”, then they are unable to invite anyone to come along, and the evangelistic endeavour is undermined.
Secondly, it may be that the perception of what church is for, who church is for and how we are part of church, is mismatched between church and village. In order to rectify that there is only one solution – to turn ourselves inside out. Then the village as while can see who we are and what we stand for, and then also there will be no wall between us. This will make is quite vulnerable, but I believe it is the pattern that fits with Jesus’ example.



That is the question to ask, isn’t it? “What would Jesus do?” There are many answers to this question, but they would all involve 2 things – a servant heart and a desire to glorify God.

One thing I know Jesus would not do is vote for the BNP. I only mention this because you are going to start seeing election posters for the European elections soon with an assertion from the BNP that Jesus would vote for them because they stand up for the persecuted. Of course, this is a democracy and you are free to vote for those loonies er… I mean that party of you so wish, but let us remember that Palm Sunday is not about democracy, it’s about monarchy, the Kingship of Christ over the entire world. Jesus’ Kingdom is not like a country or even a nation on this earth; it is not subject to elections for it is a true theocracy, in which God reigns, and as our Psalm reminded us, The Lord is good, and his love endures forever.

So even though you know what happens at the end, journey with me this Holy Week. Come with us on the Good Friday walk, and hear and re-live the passion narrative, the story of Jesus’ trail and crucifixion and death. And as you journey, reflect upon your own lives, as I will be reflecting upon mine. And as we near the celebration of resurrection, just after we have held our APCM, let us also think about a new start, for a new year, with a new and fresh vision to serve the people and glorify God. We need not worry if we are going over old ground, after all, at the end of the Triumphal entry, Jesus left the city and went back to the Mount of Olives.

The end is a bit sudden, but "live", we went straight into an act of commitment and the blessing of the palms

Lindsell Stebbing and Great Saling 29th March 09

It's quite a rare thing for mew to preach in all three services in a day, and probably even rarer to preach the same sermon in all three churches.
The readings were Hebrews 5, 5-10 and John 12, 20-33
There were a lot of ad libs, for example about PSA. The bit of the shack I read out was from page 31 where Mack and Missy are talking about whether God is mean to send Jesus to the cross

Why is Jesus like the Internet?
One reason is my spell checker won’t let me write either of those two words without a capital letter!
This week in Stebbing the broadband Internet connection wasn’t working.
As a result I found myself getting quite stressed, and realised just how much I rely on these things for communication, to stay connected to lots of networks and to receive and send lots of information. I felt cut off, and it made me think about being cut off from God.
Last week after church at Little Saling, young Oscar Roe asked me “What is salvation?” I gave him an answer, but I’m not sure it was an adequate one. This week, I might have answered using the broadband cut off metaphor.
Without Christ, we are cut off from God, we cannot get through to him and we cannot come into his presence, but Christ provides for us a means of communication with God, and he is also the provider to us of everything God wants to give us. Just as our computers give and receive information from other computers via the Internet, Christ the means both of our communication with God, and his communication – of his love, his guidance, his power and his comfort – with us. When our Internet connection goes down, we may feel cut off, but that state of isolation is nothing compared to the condition of being cut off from God.

In this sense then, Jesus is, as the writer to the Hebrews says, the source of our salvation, as well as being the means. He is how we receive God’s gift of eternal life – through faith in him, and he is the reason we can receive it, because of his death upon the cross. Hebrews tells us that Jesus’ priesthood was not a human institution but a divine appointment. It was God’s purpose, and Jesus’ choice, to take the path he walked, the path to the cross.

So then, another way Jesus is like the Internet is that you don’t need to know how it works to benefit from it.
What I mean by that is, I don’t understand computers beyond a limited amount of information like how to switch them on and off, or how to … er, actually that’s about it. Yet I can still use one and benefit from the communication tools it affords me (when it is working of course!)

In the same way, there are whole libraries full of books on the theology of the cross. Theologians from all shades of the church have spent the last 2 millennia puzzling over the mechanics of the cross, how it is that one man’s death at one point in history can have such far-reaching and fantastic consequences. There are lots of different theories of the atonement, but they remain theories. I am not one of those people who assess a Christian’s orthodoxy on the basis of which theory of the atonement they subscribe to. But there is one issue surrounding this that has been debated recently, and which our readings today offer interesting insights on.

Hebrews speaks of Christ’s obedience, and John’s gospel portrays Jesus predicting his own heath, and speaking of its consequences. John’s Jesus is a man who knows what he has to do, yet still chooses to do it in the face of extreme distress. Some people say they do not like the idea of God forcing his Son to die, railroading him into making a sacrifice. This, it is said by some, is inconsistent with the idea of a God of love and grace, which the New Testament tells of. This approach regards the idea of God sacrificing his son as barbaric, just as we would regard the story of Abraham and Isaac as barbaric, if God had not intervened to stop the patriarch from killing his own son.

However, it is clear that Jesus knew his own mind – he was daunted by the prospect, but he trusted God. He was aware of the stakes, but he chose to go to the cross; he was not railroaded and could have taken another route; yet he knew the Father’s will. Not that it was a vindictive death sentence laid down by a vindictive God, but that when he was lifted up form the world, he would draw all people to himself. Lifted up in John is a reference to the cross, the throne of the King.

To reinforce this point I would like to read a paragraph from the Shack (p31)

So, if you like, to answer Oscar’s question more articulately, salvation is the fact that Jesus chose willingly to die for us. He knew his sacrifice would not be in vain, and he became obedient to his father in choosing to die. His death conquered death for us; that is salvation, that even though we die yet shall we live, because that’s what he did – but we must save the last bit for Easter.
So to conclude, Oscar, salvation is being saved from death, being brought into God’s family, God’s kingdom. It is something Jesus has done for us upon the cross, but we are not passive it this. Just as Jesus chose to die – his Father did not compel him, but he chose to die, we have to choose to follow him, to trust him and to believe in his promises.
When we have done that, if it’s not too trivial a comparison, Jesus is our Internet connection to God. Through him we receive messages, reassurances, encouragement, rebukes, healing and forgiveness. Through him we send to God our worship, our praises, our prayers, our confessions, our frustrations and our distress. In doing this we draw closer to Christ, closer, by the power of the Spirit in us, to each other, and closer to our Father God.

Little Saling mothering Sunday 09

Readings Psalm 34, 11-20 and John 3, 14-21
Today as we celebrate mothering Sunday I am going to explore our two readings with regard to how God is like a mother, and how his church is a family for believers. These readings might not necessarily have jumped out at you as the obvious ones for the festival we celebrate today but I hope that by bearing with me you will see how it all fits together. I want to begin by saying that when reflecting upon human motherhood and parenting I am pretty much assuming that we have had a good experience in that regard. If this for you is not the case and so this celebration of mothers is a difficult one for you then I hope that you can draw comfort from the pattern of our Lord, if not from your own mother. Please, if you are struggling with this issue, take the opportunity to speak with me after the service and we can arrange to meet up and talk things through prayerfully.

The Gospel reading, John 3.14-21 is of course one of the most famous passages in the Bible. At first glance it says nothing to us about mothers, being the outcome of a meeting of two men, Nicodemus and Christ. However, there are some connections, which I will unpack in a moment, but first let us dwell a moment on verse 17; everyone is familiar – some perhaps overly familiar – with John 3, verse 16, perhaps one of the most famous verses in the Bible, through which many people have come to faith. But its neighbour verse 17 is always in its shadow and deserves an outing – “For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him”. If verse 16 is an invitation to find hope in Christ, verse 17 gives us a pattern of how to behave when, living in that hope, in faith in Christ, we relate to the wider world. God’s purpose is driven by love for the world. It may not always feel like that or appear like that, but as Christians we are called to bring the salvation that God offers to the attention of the world, rather than to condemn it.
John 3 picks up the thought of Numbers 21, where Moses commanded that a snake be lifted up so that those who looked to it could be delivered from the bite of poisonous snakes. The New Testament Christian significance of this image is of course the concept of looking in faith to the cross of Christ, to be delivered and saved from death. Those who look to the crucified saviour can be delivered from sin if they believe in the offer God has made. Belief/faith/trust is the New Testament equivalent of covenant responsibility in the Hebrew Bible. There is a delicate balance to be maintained here. God's offer of salvation in Christ, like his entry into covenant with Israel, depends on God's free choice as creator dealing with creation. The biblical view is that God both demands but also enables our response to him.
In this way God is very like a human mother, who in relation to her children both enables (by her love and care for them) and demands (by her parental influence and discipline) their response to her. To me Psalm 34, while it does not specifically refer to God as a mother, contains many things that we would naturally associate with a motherly role – protection, care, healing, watching out for us. All of these are ways in which our mothers (and our God) love us and provoke in us the response of love and trust.
Whilst we have to believe and trust, which God himself will enable but not compel, it is God's initial grace and not our response that enables the saving action. As St John’s first epistle puts it, we love because he first loved us. Christian theology is full of paradoxes! God offers us salvation, will enable us to enter into it but never compel us to do so. If we decline God's offer, however, we place ourselves in a position where we will be judged for failure to respond to God. This is as much a call to be moral in our dealings with our neighbour as to honour God.
It may seem paradoxical but it still seems to me to be a good pattern of parenting, to inspire mothers and fathers today. For example, I am very aware of the pressure my children are under as vicarage kids – at the age they are now, they have to go to church, and have no choice. However, if one of them expresses doubts or disbelief it is our practice to allow space for that, and to allow for disagreement with our approach to faith. We do not compel our children to follow Christ just because we do so “professionally”, but we provide for them a means by which to follow him as and when they wish to.

And the church, which for me, with respect to the recipients of posies on Mothering Sunday through the ages, is the focus of today’s celebration, has a key role in this. The church provides the context not only for us to freely enter into relationship with God, into salvation, and also the context in which we as parents or even grandparents pass on without compulsion the faith we have received to the next generations of our families. On mothering Sunday it is right to celebrate and pray for mothers, but we ought also to be praying for and celebrating the family of the church, the household of faith.

Using some material by Rev'd Dr Jonathan Knight taken from www.rootsontheweb.com

Great Saling 15 March 09

The readings were 1 Cor 1, 18-25 and John 2, 13-22.


I have been thinking a little about fame this week, and about how our society behaves towards those who are in the public eye. This has mostly been because of the media coverage in recent weeks of the reality TV star Jade Goody, who is dying of cancer, and who was baptised into the church of England this week.

Just a couple of months ago many people who never watch reality TV had never heard of Jade, but now even the Prime Minister is sending her his condolences, and even the broadsheet newspapers are giving her headlines, whereas before she was a staple for the tabloids. Jade is one of those people who is famous for being famous (or infamous); it was clear from the start that her aim was to get as much media attention (and so also as much money) as she could, by profiting from Britain’s current fashion for reality TV programmes like Big Brother. Jade wanted fame and fortune and she got it; now she (or rather her agent) is even making money from coverage of her terminal illness (although she has at least decided to use this money to set up a trust fund to provide for her sons after her death.)

Our society encourages the promotion of the self, over and above ideology, theology or ethics. Famous people are to be looked up to just because they are famous not because they have even said or done anything worthwhile – It might just be because of what they wear, or who they are married to. The sad thing is that the public lap it up as well. They truly believe the old adage that anyone can be famous for 15 minutes, even if it is by humiliating themselves on national TV.

It’s sad mainly because it is the exact opposite of the approach that Jesus took, and which Paul advocates in his letter to the Corinthians. Jesus might have made a bit of a spectacle of himself in casting out the moneychangers and merchants from the Temple, but he did not do it as an act of self-promotion, but because zeal for his Father’s house had consumed him. In this episode we see Jesus' zeal for the law. The Christian meaning of the passage in John 2 is that, in Jesus, God's will has been perfectly disclosed and that he is the man who both embodies the kingdom and challenges on its behalf. Indeed, while he might arguably be called the most well known figure in human history, Jesus never did anything to make himself famous; he just wanted to point people to God.

And in the early church, the apostles undertook a similar task. They were often misunderstood or misinterpreted. For example, the preaching of the cross did not always commend itself to outsiders. According to Deuteronomy 21.23, those whose bodies were exhibited on a gibbet were regarded as cursed by God; while Romans saw crucifixion as a worthless person's death. Paul's rhetoric turns the situation on its head: what the world regarded as folly was in fact the supreme demonstration of divine wisdom. Here we have the tension of Christian living in a nutshell. The Christian Messiah was rejected by the priestly authorities as a pretender and crucified by the Romans as a troublemaker. It follows that those who follow Jesus follow a path of suffering as well as service, in the footsteps of their Lord. We need to learn to look beyond the obvious to see the true meaning of Christianity in action. But we should not confuse being a fool for Christ's sake with merely being a fool.

For now it seems the world is upside down again, because foolish and adolescent behaviour by “celebrities” is regarded by the media as a wise thing to report on, because we have an appetite for knowledge of Wayne Rooney’s brother in law’s court appearances, or Jade Goody’s husband’s conviction. Why is this? According to the BBC it is partly due to the death of the Fleet street investigative reporter and the rise of the PR agencies who make money out of telling us what is or isn’t news. I prefer to see this as an unfortunate turn in society towards the self and away from community. In matters of faith therefore we are called to put others first, to build a community that points other s to Christ.

John places the 'Cleansing of the Temple' at the beginning of Jesus' ministry whereas the Synoptic Gospels locate it at the end, during Jesus' last days in Jerusalem. Additionally John changes tack half way through, referring the Temple in Jerusalem to the temple of his own body under the assertion that Jesus would be raised three days after death.
John uses a story about Jesus to make a point: that Jesus predicted his own death and resurrection from the beginning of his ministry. Both of these points make sure the reader understands God’s plan was always there; Christ’s redemptive work was not a self-centred ploy to gain attention, but a sacrificial self-giving, that gave eternal life to those who follow him. Now that really is good news!

Using some material by Rev'd Dr Jonathan Knight
taken from www.rootsontheweb.com and is copyright © Roots for Churches Ltd 2008.

Stebbing 8th Feb 09 - Our Vision

This sermon accompanies our current home group work of discussing and working towards a statement of Our Vision for the church. At one point I mention a video was shown ; the one I have posted here from Youtube is the same text but an inferior visual experience. The original, produced by Worship House Media, I first saw at New Wine in a seminar by Nick Cuthbert

The readings were Exodus 3, 1-12 and Matthew 14, 22-33

After 700 years of doing what he was built for, he’ll discover what he was meant for.

Well this church is not quite 700 years old, but unlike Wall-E the robot, we have known for a while what we are meant for. The question before us today is, how do we put that knowledge into action, to bring the gospel to this community, and to build up God’s church in this place, at this time??

Today, as I outline in a bit more detail the process that we are going through at the moment, as we prepare for the vision away day at the end of March, there are a number of things I need to make sure we all understand.

First, I want to make absolutely clear that we are not developing this Vision because the church has been ineffective in the past; rather, following a period of reflection and consolidation among the Leadership Team, we are seeking to lay out clearly what our core values and core purpose are, so that we all know what we are aiming for, and also so that we can see whether a proposed event or action fits into that purpose, and is consistent with those values.


Second, we feel that a greater involvement in the process of discernment will lead to a higher degree of ownership across the church, once we arrive at the end of the process and have our Vision. We have been getting homegroups to think carefully about a number of aspects of the Christian life, and of the life of this Church, and the leadership team will be reflecting on those discussions both in the run up to the away day and on the day itself. However, Vision is not developed by consensus, it should produce consensus.

By that I mean it is to God ultimately we are looking for a Vision together, so this process is no guarantee that everyone will get their idea included in the end product. Having said that I believe that the process of discernment is enhanced by the inclusion of as many people as possible. With that in mind we are holding a half night of prayer in Church on Friday 13th March, to under gird this process with prayer and to ensure we are listening intently to the Holy Spirit. Please come along, even for only a few minutes. Everyone is welcome.

Thirdly, I want to let you know exactly what we are aiming at. I know many of you will have been involved in the formulation of vision or mission statements in the past, at work or school or other churches, so you might be familiar with what I am talking about, or you might have done it differently. If you know other churches’ vision statements, they might help us, they might not, but it’s always worth looking out for them. Of course, the Army has already nicked my favourite – “Be the best”.

You may have noticed that this year we don’t have a motto verse on the monitor. Can anyone tell me what the motto verse was for last year? And the year before?
The statement of our vision is intended to give us as a church a clear direction, not going from pillar to post, on the crest of the latest wave of trendy schemes and ideas, but staying a course God has set for us and being clear about our aims. Our motto verses changed every year at the whim of the vicar and the leadership team, but this is OUR VISION. It will be a statement that says who we are, what we do and what our aims are. It will be renewable and revisable – say every 5 years, since I think it’s about 5 years since you were last engaged in anything like this.

Our Vision will have a set of concise core statements behind it – rather as we have used the New Wine values in the past. There’s nothing wrong with them but can you remember them all? The most important thing about our vision is that we will all be able to see it, understand it and put it into action. As Bill Hybels of Willow creek Community Church said, “Vision is a picture of the future that produces passion in people”, and alongside that goes a saying of Walter Wright, “Vision is seeing tomorrow so powerfully it shapes today”.

The Bible says in Proverbs 29 that where there is no vision, no revelation, the people run wild; in developing our vision, we want to set a course that will keep us focused today, keep us in tune with God’s will for this community, and above all, keep us growing and moving faithfully forwards to the coming of the Kingdom.

If you are thinking we don’t need a vision, have a look at this, a parable of what happens when a church loses direction. (SHOW LIFEBOAT VIDEO).


Now, when Moses encountered God at the Burning Bush, he had a vision of God, who gave him a vision for his people – “to bring my people out of Egypt”. God also give Moses a promise that he would be with him, and a hope for the future – “you will worship me on this mountain”. I believe God is with us on this journey, and that he has given us a hope for the future in Christ.

On Wednesday at prayers, Mary had a picture of a coil of rope all neatly placed. She saw a contrast between the size of the rope all neatly coiled, and how far-reaching it would be, how much more able to do what it was meant for it would be, if the rope were uncoiled. It would get wet and dirty, but it would be doing what it was meant for. I do believe this church is like that coil of rope.

I want to acknowledge that this kind of strategic exercise can make a church feel a little insecure, a little wobbly. As I have said we have been consolidating in the leadership team, and it may be that as a result of the development of our vision, things might change, but as with the Israelites leaving Egypt, the changes that came along were all made in order to achieve God’s purposes. It is also worth repeating two things I have said before from out here; first, just because you change something doesn’t mean what was there before was wrong, it’s just different now, and the second thing is “do it afraid”.

When Jesus walked on the water out to the boat his disciples were in, they were terrified. They were without their leader and they were at a loss to understand or explain what they saw. Peter though, showed signs of visionary leadership, signs of great faith, when he said “if it is you Lord, tell me to come to you on the water”, although maybe he didn’t think it really was Jesus and didn’t think he was going to have to get out of the boat! In that sense, then his challenge was to handle the surprise he got when Jesus said, “Come”. Of course, he might have done well to take the advice on this poster but unfortunately for him it didn’t come out until 1906 years after his water walk.

Because of course he faltered, and Jesus saved him. I am fascinated by the lack of response to Jesus’ question “why did you doubt?” Peter didn’t doubt Jesus, he doubted himself. I don’t believe for a second he doubted that Jesus would save him. What was most amazing then was not that Jesus walked on the water but that Peter did; but as John Ortberg famously said, “if you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat!

But actually if we just keep calm and carry on, we’ll end up like the life saving club. Getting out of the boat means trusting God to save us and guide us, but also believing in ourselves, that with his help, we can do it.

So please pray, and please listen to what God says in response. This is so much more than just a marketing exercise.
Remember, what we are after is a core ideology, our core values and our purpose. This will be something that defines the enduring character of a church like us, and which will give us guidance and inspiration for the future, today. If it is short and snappy and easy to remember that’s great, but we are not advertising executives.

Francis Drake, in 1577 at the beginning of the exploration of the Western Hemisphere, reputedly prayed this prayer, which I think sums up well what our attitude should be as we set sail on the next stage of our journey.

Disturb us, Lord, whenWe are too well pleased with ourselves,When our dreams have come trueBecause we have dreamed too little,When we arrived safelyBecause we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when

With the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirstF

or the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wider seas

Where storms will show your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.
To push back the horizons of our hopes;

And to push into the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

Stebbing 18 01 09

Readings John 1 43-51 and Revelation 5, 1-10

Who’s in charge?
Who rules the world?
Is it the governments?
Is it the armies?
Is it the financiers and the markets?

No, it is the Risen Christ.

Who’s in charge?
Who rules over your life?
Is it your parents?
Is it your spouse?
Is it your children, your boss, your workforce, your colleagues?
Is it your teachers, your neighbours, your bank?

No, it is the Risen Christ.

He reigns; he is the Lion and the Lamb (at the same time apparently, a careful reading of Revelation 5 will show us). He is the lamb that was slain in the Exodus and on the cross, and the Lion of Judah, the King of God’s people, the head of the Church, his bride.

Now, all of that is what the Bible teaches us; if when he walked the earth Jesus could see into the heart of humble and faithful (yet apparently prejudiced) men like Philip and Nathaniel, he can quite easily see into our hearts, and in most of us he will see I suspect a tendency to doubt. A tendency to watch the news and read the papers about Gaza, about Zimbabwe, about children neglected dying in this country let alone in Palestine through lack of care, knife wounds and gunshots, to think about divorce rates, financial rates and heart rates, and conclude that God doesn’t care, that he isn’t here (or these) and that we – you and I – don’t matter.

Now we might not consciously be thinking that. Of course we are here because we are Christians, and it is not my intention to disparage your faith; quite the opposite, I wish to build it up, and to do so by reminding us all that in spite of everything, in spite of how we feel, or how our circumstances or the circumstances of the world are changing, Jesus reigns. I can say that as someone whose wife has been off work for nearly six months with a mystery illness. I’m not saying it’s easy, or even that it’s meant to be easy.

I’m just saying, he reigns.

He reigns because “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been given to him.

He reigns because he was enthroned – upon the cross he was lifted high, and declared a King. When he rose from the dead and ascended he brought the physical to the spiritual realm, as the first fruits of the new creation his is a physical body in a heavenly realm.

His triumph over death enables him to open the scroll in the right hand of God, and in the act of taking it from God’s hand, he attracts the worship of heavenly and earthly creatures. Those are the actions and status of a King.

He reigns because his death and resurrection brought in his Kingdom, peopled from every nation tribe and language.

And that includes you and me.

In his commentary on Revelation, Robert wall says,
“The community of faith represents God’s rule on earth as an alternative to the world order and its evil powers and principalities. “
That’s what it means when Revelation tells us that “they” – that is the kingdom of priests to serve our God – “will reign on the earth”.

Does that mean that one day the world will be run by a bunch of vicars?

I hope not!

Of course these are the priesthood of all believers, and before we all go power crazy at the thought of reigning over the world, lets just remember that for St John the Divine, who experienced these visions of heaven, the priests of the kingdom have a primary function – to serve God – and a secondary status as part of the kingdom community that reigns, yes, but only with the authority that Christ has, nothing of our own.

And the Kingdom’s essential purpose this side of the new creation is to provide, as we’ve just read, an alternative to the world order and its evil powers.

An alternative way of reigning, by serving and an alternative way of winning, by dying.

By the way, reference to “the world order and it’s evil powers” does not mean that this sermon is going to turn into one of those political rants that I have been a little bit prone to recently, although I do defy anyone to tell me that evil principalities and powers are not involved in what’s going on between Israel and the Palestinians right now – no matter whose side you’re on, its evil.

Now Nathanial didn’t know very much about Jesus, if anything, but somehow he was able to discern that Jesus is the Son of God, the King of Israel. The “greater things than that”, which Jesus promised that day, are for the time of the church, the time we live in today. That’s exciting, isn’t it?

It is, and even though often we are working on the basis that our default setting as Christians should be “we are not worthy”, the worthiness of Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, means that we have a worthiness, a worth, in God’s sight; we will reign with him.

That means we are important in his sight, we have a value for God, and so also for each other.

If the discussions of Psalm 139 at your homegroup this week were anything like ours you will have had some pretty honest sharing, but you will have also perhaps dwelt on the importance of the church family, on the joy of fellowship and the blessing of receiving support and encouragement form each other.

Because sometimes it is a tough thing to think God goes everywhere with us – as Erasmus once said (except he said it in German, and Carl Jung had it on his wall in German) “Bidden or unbidden, God is present”.
This is not always a pleasant thought, because we don’t always like where we are or who we are inside.

But God’s plan for us is that we will reign with him; he wouldn’t have planned that if there was a means test for the kingdom based on how sorted we can get ourselves.

Because that’s the best of it, he is with us all the time because he wants to be, because he longs to transform us and make us the people we were meant to be.

There could be a thousand different things in your life that you love, and a thousand that you wish would just go away or shrivel up; God loves you because of and in spite of all of these, and he wants by his Spirit to free us form the burdens we carry.

The Holy Spirit reigns; we don’t talk about that much, we mostly think of Jesus and the Father reigning but if the Spirit didn’t reign I wouldn’t be here today, nor would I ever conduct a wedding of non-Christians or baptise a child.

The lamb upon the throne of God is a heavenly scene; the Spirit’s reign is among the kingdom of priests upon the earth; the church invisible that transcends the human institutions.

It is this reign that we submit ourselves to by assenting to God’s will, because the Spirit will not invade your borders uninvited, or blast you with rockets you don’t want, but if you want to be a citizen of heaven, a priest of the Kingdom, the Spirit of God is there for you to work God’s transformation so that you and I can daily be renewed and become ever more Christ like, in growing to be the people God wants us to be.

So let’s just remind ourselves,

Who’s in charge?
Who rules the world?
Is it the governments?
Is it the armies?
Is it the financiers and the markets?

No, it is the Risen Christ.

Who’s in charge?
Who rules over your life?
Is it your parents?
Is it your spouse?
Is it your children, your boss, your workforce, your colleagues?
Is it your teachers, your neighbours, your bank?

No, it is the Risen Christ.

Stebbing and Lindsell Baptism of Christ

You may remember before Christmas, during our advent journey, we looked at the arrival upon the scene of John the Baptist. We read in both John’s gospel and in Mark of his call to repentance. Now, today on the feast of the baptism of our Lord, we have the next little episode of John’s ministry; the baptism of Jesus from the end of Matthew chapter 3.

I often approach my preparation for preaching as a kind of problem solving exercise, and today is a prime example of this. Over Christmas we celebrated the birth of God’s Son, who the New Testament is at pains to tell us - in verses such as 2 Corinthians 5, 21 - was without sin. Jesus did not sin; he lived the perfect human life as a man, and he lived it by human means, not by divine means. Because he was fully human, when Jesus resisted temptation, he did so in human strength, and when he healed people, though it was with the power of God, he did it as a human being, which is how healing happens in the church today; Jesus didn’t use any supernatural power that the Holy Spirit has not given to the church. When we pray and people are healed, that is the same kind of miracle as Jesus did. But that’s another sermon!

So if Jesus was the perfect human being, without sin, who lived a perfect and blameless life, why did he go to John the Baptist for baptism, when this involved a public repentance of sins? If he didn’t sin, why did he need a baptism of repentance? This is the problem I seek to solve in my mind and in your heads today.

I think there are two possible approaches to this; either we behave as the liberal do, and chuck out the idea that Jesus did not sin, discounting it purely on practical grounds as impossible, or we find another conclusion. You will be glad to hear that I am not going to take the first option, but rather the second; the Bible is clear on Jesus’ perfect life, and that in itself has a huge impact on the atonement – without his total perfection, his sacrifice would have been in vain. Sin could not be conquered by a sinner, but by a perfect, spotless lamb.

So what is going on here? Well, let’s first have a look at what exactly John was calling people to.
Every Sunday we have our prayers of confession, and if you’re like me you need to be confessing during the week as well. There is a lot of talk about “repentance of sins” when it comes to the Church of England’s liturgy. However I don’t think we mean the same thing by that term as John did. The Greek word metanoia, which is at the heart of John’s message doesn’t mean, “saying sorry”, it implies a total turnaround, a life-altering decision to change the direction of one’s life. We might do that once in a while – especially at the beginning of our faith journey, but its not something that happens to us every week.

But at the time of Jesus it was widely expected that the Messiah would be revealed following a time of national repentance, when the whole nation would change. The context of John’s preaching and baptising ministry then was one of national crisis – the Romans had occupied the nation, and had already put down one revolt following the Maccabean uprising. The very fabric of the religious life of God’s people was under threat – remember that the main Roman fort in Jerusalem, the fortress of Antonia, actually overlooked the Temple, so that architecturally and in terms of privacy, Jewish worship was dominated by Rome. With the crisis came the expectancy of a messiah, God’s anointed servant who would come to rescue the nation. Prophecies like Isaiah 42 fuelled this expectation. As the people cried out for justice and freedom, they would have returned to these words in hope.

The boot is on the other foot in the Holy Land this week. Israel is in the Roman role, as the oppressing invader, and the Palestinians are the occupied and oppressed poor. It is interesting that in Hamas videos available on You tube, the leaders are still castigating Rome and vowing to destroy it because of the crusades. We might think Israel is milking it a bit by using the suffering of Jews in the Holocaust as an excuse for violence, but Hamas seems intent on keeping alive a conflict that was over 800 years ago – and which at times saw Jew and Muslim soldiers shoulder to shoulder defending the walls of Jerusalem from Christian invaders.

Right, rant over … back to the text.

Who knows how much John knew about how his relative Jesus would indeed fulfil this prophecy and so many others? All that is certain is that the Lord led John to begin calling people to repentance, calling them back to himself. There must have been some understanding in John of the nature of Jesus, because he says, “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?” In other words, John recognises that Jesus is “the one more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry,” that he was announcing to the people just before this episode. He doesn’t understand why Jesus would want to be baptised, but as we learn from John chapter 1, God had revealed to the Baptist who Jesus was.

Jesus’ first public words in Matthew’s gospel then are a correction of the theology of his cousin. “Let it be so now, it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness”. These words are the answer to the question “why did the sinless Christ need to be baptised?”

But what do they mean?

Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t say, “it is right for you to baptise me”, or even “it is right for you and me to do this.” The “us” doesn’t just refer to John and Jesus. It refers to everyone there who wants to be part of John’s call to repentance to bring in the messiah. As Robert Mounce puts it in his commentary on the NIV text, “Jesus’ own baptism demonstrates his solidarity with the people.”

This reminds me of the Robert Redford film “Brubaker”, about a prison governor, who chooses to enter the prison on his first day at work with a busload of convicts. Unrecognised, he undergoes everything they had to as they were brought in. Only later is his true position revealed. In the same way, Jesus undergoes the same ritual as everyone else; only when he comes out of the water does anything different happen, and we’ll come to that in a moment.

I like to find ways to explain the gospel in plain English, to make it easier for people to understand, so I think stuff like “to fulfil all righteousness” is the kind of thing that might make my preaching tutor say, “go away and put that into words that an ordinary person can understand”. But that’s what Jesus said to John, so we’re stuck with it.

At moments like these I head for the bookshelf and see what other versions have; the Message says “God’s work putting things right all these centuries is coming together right now in this baptism.” The good News says,” In this way we shall do all that God requires.”

Remembering that the Message is a paraphrase not a translation helps me get over the “all these centuries …” bit, but I think these two other takes on a strange sentence do confirm that God wanted Jesus to fully experience humanity, including a baptism for repentance of sins, and also that this was God’s plan from all eternity.

And the baptism obviously met with God’s approval because of what happened next.

The account of the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus in Matthew indicates that God’s voice was heard by everyone there – “this is my Son…” Mark and Luke have “You are my Son”, indicating that only Jesus heard the words addressed to him. But if Matthew’s emphasis is on the identification of Christ with a whole people whom he has come to save, it would make sense for his account to involve God addressing everyone, letting them know “this is my Son.” Has Matthew tinkered with what actually happened? Possibly, but it is still God’s word; in all three synoptic accounts only Jesus sees the Spirit descend upon him. In John, the Baptist sees him too. Eventually everyone will have heard the story of what happened that day; Matthew then is telling a story that was a key element in the identity of the people he wrote for; since they know what God said to Jesus, why not tell it as if they had all heard it then, instead of later on. The differences in the accounts do not negate who Jesus is declared to be.

Why was Jesus baptised? Essentially, in one way or another, that day, there was a glimpse of glory, a little peek at the true nature of Jesus. Matthew is strong on community, wanting everyone to identify with Jesus as a child of God with whom he is well pleased, because they have repented and return to him. What a tragedy for Gaza that today’s Israel cannot hear that same voice and take that same step of repentance.

Christmas Eve Stebbing

I wonder whether you’ve ever asked yourself what it will be like to meet God?
It might be a little bit like this … (show matrix clip - the bit where Neo is taken by Trinity to meet Morpheus)

Now, for some people the idea of meeting God only fits if we’re talking about meeting him when we die.

But the whole point of Christmas is that you don’t have to wait until you die to meet God. Like Neo, you just have to wake up to reality. God came and lived on earth as a man in the person of Jesus. That’s what we are celebrating tonight.

By his Spirit, Jesus is with us now as we worship. We can know him personally in the here and now because of that.

When Neo met Morpheus in the Matrix, Morpheus said to him “Let me tell you why you’re here [complete quote]
Neo got some answers as a result of his encounter with Morpheus, but of course he had to go deeper to get the full story, and even that he doesn’t fully understand – but I’ll have to let you watch the film yourself to find out more.

And we can get some answers – perhaps answers about why we’re here tonight. What has brought you? A sense of tradition, of community? A sense of the spiritual heart of Christmas in the face of so much consumerism?
Maybe for some the reason has more to do with questions – will I still have a job next year, will I still have a house next month?

There is something wrong with the world, Morpheus was right about that. We have been tricked into thinking that everything will always be all right. It’s not malicious, but it is a natural consequence of secularism that people should forget about the fact that the world is broken. So a false world, of bright colourful advertisements for things you do not need but think you want, of celebrity fashions and gossip masquerading as culture, a world where football player’s wives get as much media coverage as politicians, and where television and the internet are how we learn what passes for the truth. We don’t live in a computer generated alternative universe, like the Matrix, but we do live in a world where the most powerful media voices get to decide what the truth is.

When Neo awakes after his life-changing encounter with Morpheus, he is greeted with the words “Welcome to the real world.”
That’s why I used that little clip at the beginning of this service. You might think that church is just one facet of life these days, but in fact this is the real world, people worshipping God together, celebrating the birth of his Son and sharing in the celebration meal he left us with. This is how it’s meant to be, not just at Christmas but all the time. This is the real world, a world where God and humanity come together, and where heaven breaks into earth.

So, where would you go to meet God? The shepherds and angels were led to a stable where a baby lay in a manger. Our church is much cleaner and neater than that first Christmas Eve. For a long time I’ve thought about bringing a bucket or two of manure in to authenticate the stable experience, but I don’t think the wardens would like it very much!
Still, a church is a good place to meet God – we call it “God’s house”, but that doesn’t mean he is only ever here. You may encounter him in the woods, the fields, by the kitchen sink or in the bath. You may even meet with God at the place of your deepest pain.

There is a book out at the moment that tells the fictional story of someone for whom that is the case. It’s called “The Shack”, and it is about a man who encounters God powerfully and supernaturally in the shack where the man’s daughter was murdered. And the encounters are no quite what you might expect.

A repeated phrase that God uses in “The shack” is “I’m not who you think I am”. I will let you read the book to get the details, but be ready for a challenge, for, while it is a fictional work, there are many things to challenge the way we feel about suffering, about how God the Trinity relate within themselves and supremely about the human habit of putting God in a box and not coping when He gets out of it and behaves in ways we aren’t expecting.

So, if you think God doesn’t care about human suffering, if you think God is remote and uninterested in your deepest needs, and especially if you think of God as a man with a long white beard, read “the shack” and find a pleasant and faith building surprise.

But then, at Christmas there are many ways in which God is saying “I’m not who you think I am.”

It is right that we celebrate the coming of God to earth as a human child, but not so right if we make him stay as a baby and forget about his adult life, teaching, death and resurrection.

When Jesus was born, people were longing for a King to rescue the Jews from years of oppression and occupation. That’s how they were reading Isaiah’s prophecy – as a purely political messiah, and as royalty. So just by being born in poverty and being laid in a manger, Christ is already saying “I’m not who you think I am”.

Yet there is a tendency to think that is all he is, the Christ-child, meek and mild, in the manger at Christmas, then put back in the attic for the rest of the year, for the rest of our lives.

But of course the New Testament doesn’t stop after the three wise men go home. So if you only think of Jesus as a baby at Christmas, his message for you today is “I’m not who you think I am”.

For the angels said to the shepherds that a Saviour had been born, so even at the heart of the Christmas message, Easter is there. Even as his birth was announced, Jesus’ death gets a look in. The vulnerable baby born in poverty grew into a wise and charismatic teacher, a worker of miracles and healings, a thorn in the side of the Roman authorities. In his three short years of ministry Jesus said and did things that would turn the world upside down – which is in fact the right way up, from God’s point of view. His sacrificial death upon the cross has been called the focal point of history, and it was literally epoch-making in its significance.

Because Jesus died, the sin and wrongdoing that plagues human relationships has been finally defeated. Because of the cross of Christ, no one need remain cut off from God or their neighbour, but all who believe in him are welcomed into the family.

But the dead Christ on the cross is not the end of the story either; if you can only picture Jesus as a dead body in art or jewellery, today he is also saying to you, “I’m not who you think I am”.

Because of course he didn’t stay dead; No event in history has spawned more words of writing or brush strokes of art than the resurrection of Jesus. His vanquishing of death itself has opened the gates of heaven to all believers. His resurrection paves the way for the resurrection of all God’s people in the new creation.

So it’s not just a story of life and death, it’s more important than that; this celebration we start tonight, around a manger in a small town in the Middle East, has eternal and cosmic consequences for the whole world.

Because when we say we believe in Jesus, we are not saying just that we believe he did walk the earth 2000 years ago and did say and do the things we read about in the Bible and sing about in hymns and carols. We’re not just giving our assent to a historical figure.

So if you can only think about Jesus as a character from the past, from history, tonight he is saying to you “I’m not who you think I am”, because as I said at the start of this sermon, Jesus is here with us now by his Spirit; Christianity is a relationship with God in Christ, a relationship with a real person who lived and died and rose again; a relationship based on trust, fed by prayer and worship, and a relationship that transforms your life.

That is what God gave us at Christmas and its what’s on offer here tonight. If you’ve never taken that step of faith, never really trusted in or reached out to the risen, living Christ who is reaching out to you now, but you want to receive the best Christmas present of all, then bring your order of service up to the rail at communion, and we will pray with you. If you still have more questions, there are leaflets at the back of church called “why Christmas?” which will help you so do please take one home with you.

Now when Mac met God in the shack it changed his life, and when Neo met Morpheus at the beginning of the Matrix it would change his life. It would not make it easier, but it would make it into a truly worthwhile adventure; that is a good summary of what it means to meet God in Christ, which is why I wanted to show that clip tonight, and why I return to it now as we close.

Morpheus said, “Let me tell you why you’re here …”
I can’t tell you all why you’re here tonight, but I can tell that this community has a spiritual hunger that can only be satisfied in knowing Christ fully; the baby in a manger that grew to be a man who would die and rise again to save humanity from our sins. The God who became a man so that we could live with God for eternity;

Welcome to the real world

Let’s pray.