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.

Stebbing Advent 3 14 12 08

Are you looking forward to Christmas – now there’s a sentence that can mean more than one thing!
Our link theme for the readings today is “Jesus who is to come”.
Last week in the morning we looked at Mark’s account of John the Baptist’s ministry, and today we look at the same events, through John’s eyes.
It’s all about looking forward, and being sure we’re ready for what’s coming. That’s why I said my opening question could have more than one meaning.
I will admit to having a certain sympathy with the humbug club, a group of self confessed grumpy old men from the Victory pub in Walton on the Naze, who are campaigning against Christmas.
“Against Christmas?” you exclaim, “how can the vicar be sympathetic to that”
Well, It’s because the Christmas these chaps are against is the one that starts just after Halloween (and don’t get me started on that) and is a purely commercial exercise. They are in favour of Christmas as being one day long, not three months.
You see I don’t look forward to that kind of Christmas, because it muddies the waters of the true meaning of the festival – not about material gifts and gastronomic excess, but about the gift of a child into poverty, who would live, die and rise again to redeem humanity.
Advent is about preparing for Christmas as in the 25th of December, the mass of Christ, the celebration of his birth but it is also about preparing ourselves for the second advent, the second coming, when there may not be another birth in a stable, but Jesus will return to earth one day. This is of course a good thing, and advent and Christmas are also about giving thanks and rejoicing in the wonderful provision our God has made for our salvation.

In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul also tells us to rejoice, pray and give thanks. In all circumstances to hold fast to what is good and to avoid evil, so that we may be found to be blameless at 'the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ', which liturgically is now not very far off. So on Christmas day, will you be ready to worship, or just ready to curl up in front of the telly? Of course Paul is clear that the coming of Christ will be a final historical event, not a repeatable act of worship. We vicars struggle sometimes to put across Christmas in a fresh way each year; with the Second Advent, we won’t have that problem!
I think it is very important to look carefully at Paul’s instructions at the end of 1 Thessalonians, which are after all given in the light of the coming of the Lord. We need to be certain we have read this chapter properly for lots of reasons. Some are to do with the theology of the end of the world, but in the time we have today I can’t cover all of that, so let’s focus on verses 16 to 18.
I had a friend a few years ago whose faith was very strange. When she fell over and broke her ankle she said “thank you Lord for that”. I asked her what she was on about and she pointed me to 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 18, so I duly went and read it
“Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus”.
The key word is the third one “in”; not “for”. My friend had a skewed vision of how God wanted her to behave; she thanked God that she had broken her ankle. What he was wanting her to do was to thank him for his saving grace, love and power, even though she had broken her ankle. This is no the same thing, is it?
Now obviously in retrospect we can often see that unfortunate circumstances are used by God to bring about the good things in our lives. For example if Ruth had not been off sick from work in 1992 I would never have met her and we wouldn’t be here today. I’m sure many of you can tell similar stories.
But if we’re thinking about advent, it’s not about what’s happening to us, it’s about what’s going to happen with God, and Paul wants his readers to be clear on what that is (hence the “thief in the night” stuff earlier in the chapter) and how they should prepare such that with the help of the Spirit they will be blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the gospel reading we continue the theme of authentic preparation for Jesus who is to come. John the Baptist is preparing the way, but now in John's version the story has been written in a completely fresh way. This is John the Baptist's only appearance in the fourth Gospel, save that the passage continues to verse 37 with the reference to Jesus being the Lamb of God, but that reference to the paschal lamb is about Easter rather than Christmas.
The Evangelist's theological statement about John in verses 6-8 is followed by a short narrative from verse 19 which expands a little on what we saw last week in Mark. Verse 19 looks aggressively anti-Jewish in style but the Greek word Ioudaioi can also be translated Judeans, which is more appropriate here as the priests and Levites in question come from Jerusalem, the capital of the province that the Romans called Judea. They would not actually have been sent by the Pharisees (v. 24) who were a lay group who had little political power, though much social influence.
When questioned, John came clean and said he was not the messiah (as he had disciples, there may have been people who thought he was). Nor was he Elijah, nor the prophet of Deuteronomy 18.15-19 who would be a successor to Moses. His only claim, through the words of Isaiah (40.3 again), is that he prepares the way for the messiah, the successor of Elijah and Moses. John, then, is very keen to make sure people get the right message about the messiah – that it’s Jesus who is to come, and not himself, and that the messiah will not be as people expect – the Lamb of God terminology we read later in the chapter can only have had sacrificial meaning for his original hearers.
The priests' question about why John baptises is odd. Why shouldn't he cleanse people with water in a ritual of repentance? Indeed if you go to Jerusalem today you will see many ancient ritual baths known as mikvahs – or to be more accurate, mikva’ot, in which Jews prepared themselves for a visit to the temple. In these, there is a sort of twin tub system whereby the worshipper walked down one set of steps immersing their body in water, before moving over to another compartment and climbing back out. So baptism, which just means, “dunking” in Greek, was not a new phenomenon; it’s just John’s was more specifically a baptism of repentance in the light of the arrival of God’s promised messiah. He also de-ritualised it by doing it in a river, not in a special bath.
This question of baptism was probably not a Jewish problem from around AD 28, so much as a Christian problem at the end of the first century: why should John baptise when – as we know – Christian baptism is the real baptism? Surprisingly there is no mention here of baptism in the Holy Spirit (cf. Mark 1.8) – we have to wait for John 3.1-10 for that – though John makes it clear that someone greater is about to come after him. And of course Jesus’ command to baptise in the name of the father, the son and the Holy Spirit re-aligned the parameters of baptism and made it a specifically Christian thing. Let’s not forget that some people in Acts 19 received the Holy Spirit after Paul prays for them and lays his hands on them, because they had only received the baptism of John.
So, Paul and John want their hearers to be ready for Christ’s coming; if we are more concerned about whether the tree, the turkey and the mince pies are ready, then we would do well to reconsider their words.
Not that we have anything to fear, but because God wants us to be ready, and as Paul says, “the one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it”.

Lindsell and Stebbing December 7th Advent 2

Active preparation unites today's readings. In Isaiah a road is to be prepared for the king. In Mark, John the Baptist declares the need for repentance before the King comes.
Old Testament The original context for the prophecy of Isaiah 40.1-11 was exile in Babylon about 540 BC and the hope of return to Jerusalem (vv. 1-2) but as a reading for Advent, Isaiah's hope of salvation looks to the Christ. The original unspecified “voice” of verse 3 becomes in Mark's Gospel, John the Baptist.
The first image in Isaiah’s prophecy is of the land being smoothed for God's pathway, when 'the glory of the Lord will be revealed' – a line that always draws the musically inclined to the first part of Handel's Messiah. The prophet then reminds us of our mortality (Brahms' German Requiem according to my sources) but while we wither like grass, 'the word of our God will stand for ever'. Advent is perhaps a difficult time for some, especially if they have been bereaved this past year, and are dreading the first Christmas without their loved one; these verses can offer hope – things in our lives may change, but God’s word is always the same. And by the way that doesn’t mean that all my sermons are going to be the same as last Christmas.
The word here is the 'good tidings', the evangelion, which we translate as 'gospel'. Who is this word for? Well, for Isaiah it is to Zion – i.e. Jerusalem, but standing for the whole nation longing to return from exile.
And what is the message - that 'here is your God' (v. 9). This is the kind of God they were to expect; God comes as a warrior in verse 10 but Isaiah then uses conventional pastoral imagery to portray God's future care for his people (v. 11). So the Lord will come in power, but not without the gentleness and care of a shepherd.
For Mark, the message is also for Jerusalem, and the surrounding countryside, so perhaps not quite so wide in its scope at first glance, but really Mark’s point is that John’s words focus the coming of the Lord in power and with love as prophesied by Isaiah, on the coming of his cousin, Jesus as the Christ.
Mark 1.1-8 is about preparation too. The opening sentence tells us first what kind of literature we are about to read: gospel, good news. Although it takes the form of a narrative, it will not be an objective, chronological biography. While the book is about a historical figure and will be full of historical information, it is a news broadcast and the news is about a victory – euangelion is the word Rome used to announce an imperial victory.
Jesus is introduced in Mark 1 verse 1 as the Christ, which means 'anointed one' (messiah in Hebrew) and this places him in the context of Jewish messianic expectations. That verse also makes a bit of a nonsense the idea that Mark was trying to hide Jesus’ true identity. If he wanted to conceal it, why put it in the first sentence of your work?
The messiah is the anointed king of Israel. These expectations of a new, divinely appointed king frame many of our readings for this period before Christmas. 'Son of God' was an expression used of the Jewish king and could indeed be used of any of God's people. It does not necessarily at this point in the narrative refer directly to the divine son as in the second person of a trinity, but it would be wrong if we never read that sense back into these words. After the introductory sentence, there is no mention of Jesus, but because we have read the story before we know who John means when he speaks of “one more powerful than I”.
Before John is named, he is placed in the context of a divine plan. In Malachi 3.1 God announces that he is sending his messenger to prepare your, i.e. the people's, way. Mark combines this with Isaiah 40.3 prophesying that one from the wilderness will come to 'prepare the way of the Lord'. Clearly Mark understands John to be the messenger and Jesus now to be the Lord, kurios, the word used of God in the Greek Old Testament. Such a high christology shows that 'son of God' in verse 1 does imply divinity.
John appears in the Jordan valley, which is only just 'the wilderness' and it is certainly an exaggeration to say that all of Judea and Jerusalem went to hear him, but that exaggeration is perhaps justified in showing the impact of the message that John fore ran and foretold.
I do find the slightly different punctuation between the two passages intriguing. Isaiah’s sense is that the way for the Lord will be prepared in the desert, and so in Mark we have John – the voice – calling in the desert, but the way itself is not just in the desert by the time we get to Jesus. So John is himself (by being in the wilderness) fulfilling not just the voice role but the preparation too.

The dress and diet of John (v. 6) show him to be an Elijah figure (1 Kings 17 – 2 Kings 2). This is important because Elijah is said not to have died but to have been taken straight to heaven, so the belief grew that Elijah would return to earth to announce the beginning of the messianic age.
John is not Elijah, but he carries out Elijah's role. In order to prepare for this new event in Israel, indeed to prepare for a new Israel, John began a movement of national repentance with a ritual of mass baptism (literally a 'washing') in which people confessed their sins in anticipation of their forgiveness. This then is the heart of the preparation that Mark, in the mouth of John, calls his readers to.

But the one who is coming will wash them in the Holy Spirit, reflecting what we read about Christian baptism elsewhere in the New Testament. So the great story begins, although, in the spirit of Advent, we have to wait until after Christmas to resume Mark's narrative.

(using material from Rootsontheweb by Geoffrey Turner)

Stebbing and Lindsell Remembrance Sunday 08

This was partly lifted from Roots again (lack of time)

This year there has been a very successful charity song called “Hero” which has raised money for the Haig fund. It is most encouraging because it is from the X factor, and shows a desire among the young to continue to remember. At any victory celebration there must be two emotions: joy that the war is over and sadness at the appalling cost of that victory (which we express today). It used to be the custom on this day to focus on the two world wars of the twentieth century, but in a new century, and as time marches on, we acknowledge with sadness that there are still many conflicts in the world; there are still millions of victims and thousands of heroes and in any consideration of war, we must remember them too, pray for them and press for solutions to be sought. We may have different opinions here about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the faithfulness and courage of her majesty’s armed forces today in going to those places – as Lt Col Stephen Hughes from Stebbing Green has done, returning a couple of weeks ago to Basra, makes them all heroes.
One of the marks of a true hero is their willingness to lay down his or her life in the full knowledge of what will happen to them. Jesus died so that others may have life. St Maximilian Kolbe was interned in a concentration camp and voluntarily took on the death sentence of a young Polish Officer. Before the 2nd world war he had an extensive ministry across the world, setting up Franciscan communities – including one in Nagasaki, Japan. At his base in Poland he and his fellow brothers undertook publication work, including materials considered anti-Nazi. For this work the presses were shut down, the congregation suppressed, the brothers dispersed, and Maximilian was imprisoned in Pawiak prison, Warsaw, Poland on 17 February 1941. On 28 May 1941 he was transferred to Auschwitz and branded as prisoner 16670. He was assigned to a special work group staffed by priests and supervised by especially vicious and abusive guards. His calm dedication to the faith brought him the worst jobs available, and more beatings than anyone else. At one point he was beaten, lashed, and left for dead. The prisoners managed to smuggle him into the camp hospital. When he returned to the camp, Maximilian ministered to other prisoners, including delivering communion using smuggled bread and wine. In July 1941 there was an escape from the camp. Camp protocol, designed to make the prisoners guard each other, required that ten men be slaughtered in retribution for each escaped prisoner. Francis Gajowniczek, a married man with young children was chosen to die for the escape. Maximilian volunteered to take his place, and died as he had always wished - in service. In 1982 when Maximilian Kolbe was decalred a saint by Pope John Paul II in Rome, among the crowd in St Peter’s Square was Francis Gajowniczek, and his children and grandchildren. A very concrete example of Jesus’ words “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” and also a clear example to today’s generation of the way that heroes of the faith end up as saints.
In these times of financial uncertainty it is particularly encouraging that Remembrance time remains a priority. For those who struggle financially it is tempting to think of ones self, not others. We might even be tempted to make a comparison between the daily news of financial losses and the reporting of war dead – thankfully now not every day, but still quite frequent. Both will bring a sense of hopelessness and despair to some, but there is a difference; shares do regain value, but dead soldiers don’t come home.

A sense of perspective then is helpful. We might be suffering, but that is nothing compared to those under fire now or in the past. We might have had to transfer our trusts and shares and savings to another bank, but that is insignificant when compared to soldiers of many armies in many wars since 1918 who had to transfer their trust from a dead officer to a new one who might only just be out of his teens.
The transfer of trust, while it sounds like a financial act really sums up the solution to some of the dilemmas we face at Remembrance time. How do we see an end to this violence? How can we find hope? Was the sacrifice of so many lives worth it?
Just as we might transfer our savings from one bank to another, to be a Christian means making a transfer of trust from humanity to God – from human power to the saving power of Jesus Christ.
There is always talk of sacrifice on Remembrance Sunday, and those who know me well will understand I’m not going to let the chance go to talk of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

This is not to disparage the sacrifice of the many who laid down their lives in the world wars. It may be true that the war to end all wars, which came to an end 90 years ago, didn’t fulfil its potential, but Europe would be a very different place today had not millions of people given their lives for the cause of freedom in two world wars. Individual bravery and sacrifice continues today – its not a co-incidence that medals given for bravery and valour are called crosses, for they echo and recall to mind the cross of Christ, its sacrifice and also its victory.

And that’s what we are transferring our trust into – the power of the cross, a once for all sacrifice that truly is the death to end death. Hope arises from the cross because Christ gave his life, and then overcame death itself in the resurrection; if we trust in the cross it is not to dwell upon death, but to know the power of the resurrection, and the love of God, poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Supremely, also, the sacrifice of the cross brought about reconciliation between humanity and God. Today as every Sunday we pray for reconciliation between warring nations and factions; without the reconciliation won by the cross of Christ this would be a futile exercise. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” – God sets the precedent in enabling us to be reconciled to him; the outworking of that reconciliation comes in he bringing of true peace – more than just an absence of war - to the conflict-ravaged places we see and hear about every day.
As Jesus said, “This is my command, Love each other”.