Category anglican

The best way to explain the holy spirit?

christianthoughts Leave a comment

Is it to experience it?

Ask yourselves these questions

1/ Has anyone felt guided?

2/ Has anyone felt enabled by the holy spirit

3/ Has anyone had something happen just at the right time and thought – I know who did that

4/ Does anyone have any story they would like to share about how the Hs has worked in their lives?

Have a little think about these please – I’ll have a couple as well??

Today I wanted to talk about the experience of the holy spirit, how we experience it.  Next week is Trinity Sunday, where pastors all over the world will try and explain a mystery.  A dynamic relationship.  Luckily today I am only doing that with one part of the trinity and that is the gift we were given in Pentecost.

Albeit I think explaining a mystery a bit of a zero-sum game.  How do you try and logically explain something that defies logic, and every metaphor comes up short. Possibly another way is to talk about how we experience it? What do the limitations of our senses and intellect make of how we experience it

I think the best way to know the holy spirit is to look at the results of its actions.  The church is well versed in that as you would expect.  It uses its ability to spot the spirit in action to direct people to their calling.  Oh Mick sits in Costa, wanting to talk about Jesus, that makes him an evangelist and a spin off of that desire is the desire to preach.  Both of them are desire to tell people about him.

Also, we give names to the things  stuff we do, naturally  

I found out that my constant chatter with Jesus and bringing him to mundane stuff and being aware of him was like very  Benedictine practice. 


This evidence is used by the church a lot, to find out what God is wanting you to do and what you will fit naturally into. No good calling a guy called to the fringes, into a church for his main duties.  The spirit is persistent, and fighting it chafes until we follow.

I tried to listen and the church showed me ways I could find an outlet for this calling.

In our prayer of Jesus last week, Jesus quite clearly says that us disciples were chosen by God and given to Jesus.   Chosen and Given, how do those that have been chosen know how to act, what our calling is ? Well, here we all are today for one. Evidence of the agent of the holy spirit, directing people given to Jesus to follow him.


Then you find stuff out like this. A study that happens every few years and takes in a large number of people showed this

  • There’s been a 40% increase in an awareness of God,
  • A 90% increase in people attributing things to God
  • An 80% increase in the awareness of a sacred presence. (These stats are from a large study done by the CofE).

you would expect these numbers to come from people of the church or some faith or another?

You would be wrong, they come from unchurched people of no faith, or even atheists.

So Gods chattering away through the holy spirit to all sorts its seems!

So the holy spirit is not just for the saved, its talking to everyone.  However, the world lacks a name for it, even a direction of where to find out, just as I did before I came in through that door

As Christians, Scripture and our readings today give us a name for what the world calls  “an awareness of a sacred presence”.

The holy spirit –  we have seen its evidence and influence


The holy spirit

We seek it through prayer, we hopefully find it in here.

Without doing Trinity Sunday before next Sunday, the agent in the trinity.

Its hard to overestimate the importance the holy spirt in scripture its everywhere, 18 times in 8 chapter in romans alone!



It’s referred to in the bible as a he, in scripture its always referred to in male terms, make of that what you will,  it’s never seen as lesser, it is seen as  a deity a god, so an equal partner. Not less than the father and the Son, in fact in some ways more.


More fully personal integrated into us, more aware of itself and the person, an agent of Christ that enables and gives gifts,

Like us the holy spirit has its own gifts, and it gives gifts

In our stories today, it acted as a global translator, In other stories of the bible It gives gifts of teaching, prophecy, faith, strength, being able to tell true and false spirits, healing, of doing powerful works (see a bloke who got unclassified in maths passing a theology diploma for details)

It’s the thing that binds us into a church, Christ being in us happens through the spirit.

And as our study showed it’s chattering away with all of humanity, and not just us in here today.

However, We know who’s chattering, we know to listen, and we try and listen, we are hopefully more aware?

here’s the ask for todays sermon, here’s the thing. Maybe having had a few thoughts on it, seen how powerful and important and unique the holy spirit is, equal partners, with and in dynamic relationship with God and Jesus,
here’s the ask

We can also , maybe we could and perhaps should try and get better at being with and aware of the holy spirit.

With all that it can do? Who wouldn’t want the gifts it can bestow?

How? Can we tell that?
well it can just happen , in our lives, in ways we don’t expect of course, like it does in the rest of the world, where God works through the spirit. Before we name it in hindsight


But to get better at it, how can we do that?

Its really simple, how we get better at it…

How we practically increase our awareness, our ability to react to its proddings

We can pray for it
We can ask it into our quiet moments.

Because

What we ask for in prayer if it happens , happens through the holy spirit

Remember it doesn’t have to be a posh prayer, or a formal one, lord knows I prayed to Jesus enough times in a sort of hello mate sort of way, in my normal speech for a long time. You can too. It works… Maybe not in the way we expect, like wind and tongues of flame in our stories today, it has a will of its own.

But with all the gifts it can bestow, I think we should learn to call and listen to the holy spirit.

Give it a go… the spirit

The agent in the trinity.

Amen

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Why I am the way the truth the life – is not plural

christianthoughts Leave a comment

Yesterday King Charles became defender of the faith.   Today’s reading asks us important questions about how we might do that.  What does it mean and how do we defend the truth of the bible?

For some these passages we are reading today are seen as akin to theological colonialism, passages that belong to a less enlightened view of the world.  One that we have progressed from.   The very idea that in a post-modern world there is a truth, a single truth, is anathema.  Every truth is up for debate, even science is debated with, and every fact is countered on social media.    Post modernism is seen as the new enlightenment.

However , this truth, that Jesus talks about today isn’t a group of truths, he doesn’t say a truth he says the truth.

He didn’t make a mistake when he said that.
To back that assertion up, I will state the case clearly as I can.   Everything in the bible points to Jesus, from in the beginning was the word, through all the Old Testament, through to all the gospels that tell his story, through to acts and the letters, which explain more about how the world changed as a result. Jesus never says he is the son of a god, but the god.

So all of us who stand in up the front here on a Sunday, were taught systematic theology.  The way that works is if you hold a certain belief about the bible, the next phase is to check what that does to the rest of your theology and what dissonance that causes.  What in the bible either reaffirms or contradicts this view that I have. What else do I have to revise or revisit, what else in scripture reinforces my view or makes that perspective more difficult. Not just direct scripture, but the narrative of the story and other stories that may have nothing to do with this one apart from perhaps the underlying narrative of the story.

The bible overlaps, interlocks, repeats itself, characters pop up, they appear  in sequence,   they repeat things, say things that mean the same, things that happen are explained later etc so when we remove one part or change the meaning of one part , then we have to look to see if that works everywhere.

Think of is like a jenga board.

So let’s work on three things, Jesus is god, Jesus is alive, Jesus is the only path we have been given, the only mediator between us and God.


So let us be plain,  Jesus was both fully God and Fully human, he was not a teacher on a par with Bhudda or Confucius, he repeatedly alludes to that fact.

As it says in Romans  Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  There’s no a lord, in among other lords implied here as well.

So Jesus knew he was God, and human, he ratified that by what he did on the cross, he ratified that by the hundreds of prophecies his deeds fulfilled.

What do we have to say really didn’t apply to Jesus because if we disagree with that, then all the prophecies aren’t really about him, they were never fulfilled, they were a coincidence and Elijah and Isaiah really get battered.

So if he isn’t God we have to pull out vast tracts of the old testament, which then ruin the narrative of that?



if we accept that idea what does that do to our world view.  At the very least it means we have to take the things he said and did seriously and the words of his book seriously, because we just accepted these are the words of God.

So we can say that the new testament confirms jesus is god.  There are various passages where is shows that Jesus is alive past his death,  there are many, but one of the clearest is Stephen when he saw him just before he was stoned to death. He explained what he saw…
So if Jesus isn’t God and he isn’t alive, Stephen has to go
Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

Then we have to answer post modernism.
I don’t think anyone here has a problem with that,
Then we come to the single truth bit
we have todays , where he states he is god, and the single path

john 14

5 Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.[d] From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

So that’s one tract that says it, but if we disagree with that where else do we have to take the eraser too?

There are numerous places where our god is stated as a sole mediator

1 Timothy 2:5 

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,

Peter and John as they stood in front of the Sanhedrin in fear of their lives, where it would have been much easier to cave into well, he wasn’t really the messiah, and not a messiah.

what do you have to do with this scripture when they said ?  in acts 4:12

12 Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

13 When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus. 

And Paul speaking to Corinth when he said.
1 Corinthians 8:6 ESV / 76 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.


Or Jesus when he calls himself a singular door…

John 10:9 ESV / 223 helpful votes Helpful Not Helpful

  • I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

So Everything leads to Jesus, and Jesus and the rest of scripture see’s him as a sole path to redemption.   If you have jesus as a river among many rivers to the ocean, then as with all systematic theology, you have then to see what else has to go out the bath with the baby?

We if we aren’t happy with John 14:6 acts and Corinthians we have to deal with Jesus I am statements (not we are)

I am the bread of life. 6:35, 48, 51.

  • I am the door of the sheep. 10:7, 9..
  • I am the resurrection and the life. 11:25.
  • I am the way, the truth, and the life. 14:6.
  • I am the true vine

    In fact there are at least a 100 verses that say Jesus us god and the sole path to salvation

    or https://www.openbible.info/topics/jesus_being_the_only_way

There are at least a 100 pieces have to come out of your Jenga stack and it still has to stand.

So by deduction and pulling the jenga pieces away we then have to see what we are left with

A clearly mistaken God and Paul, and peter.

There are many places in the bible where he is stated as a sole mediator, path, door, gate, vine, means to the resurrection and the life

To look for the reverse, in no way is he referred in any sense in the plural, in role, in purpose, in how we should view him.

In our culture that is uncomfortable.

Lets do one very important thing to this view,  it is not unmerciful, its not judgmental, its not unkind,

 its not saying everyone who doesn’t go this path is damned.

Jesus showed love to everyone, the woman at the well, people of other religions were held up as examples in the good Samaritan.

the centurion, the thief on the cross all ascended into heaven. 

There is a difference
But us, us Christians we know differently so we have a different standard

Luke 23 answers us these questions

47 That slave who knew what his master wanted, but did not prepare himself or do what was wanted, will receive a severe beating. 48 But one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.

we get away with that much less lightly because we know, we know who he is.

Lastly I will let an Islamic scholar answer my final position, when asked by an audience member what do we do about the unbelievers?


His answer and mine is that its not mine to judge?

because as the bishop said if I get to heaven three things will surprise me

1/ I am there

2/ The people I expected to be that aren’t

3/ The people I never expected to see that I have.



lastly Charles didn’t do defender of the faiths ,  Charles is odefender of the faith and supreme governor of the Church of England.

That is right , its every Christians job to defend our faith, but we must also remember

This isn’t the same as not defending the rights of all faiths, their disciples have the same rights that our lord gave all of us to be loved by him, to flourish without harm.

Our lord defended the rights of all faiths and so must we,


Justin welby is going prefaced this vow with

making clear that “the church will seek to foster an environment in which people of all faiths and beliefs may live freely”.

That’s the goal, for us, to liberate as many people from financial and spiritual poverty as possible, and let the lord do the rest.

Because , as Father Joe said, when I get to face our lords judgment, all I want him is to look at me and say “nice try”.

Amen

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The inhibiting callousness shown to Christian’s who doubt – by Christians

christianthoughts Leave a comment

So here we are in easter, and we are stepping through the stages of Jesus story .  When the previously dead Jesus appeared to many people until he ascends to heaven where he lives and is alive today.

Wait

Did you hear what  just said?

Sounds so normal to us Christians doesn’t it, 

or does it? Because truth  be told, we have all looked at that at some point, wondered, and thought that is mad.

On some levels it of course is by our mundane levels of normality. dead people don’t walk around showing off the wounds that killed them to prove who they are.

We kind of all go, well Thomas that’s you sorted. 

But we also have days when we see just how mad it is.

Miracles of course are by their definition mad, because they have to break rules of nature , maths, sanity and normality to be miracles. 

However

We also know that the world is more than you can measure, add up, see or touch.  Our senses are not all the world, they are just the tools we are given.

But this story butts up against that what we see as totality 

It’s extending Thomas idea of possible , but today 

Todays sermon is about the days when we can’t see past normal and find it hard to accept and doubt.

What do we do about that?

How do we react to doubt ?


In Christmas we are careful to ensure all the people who may be unhappy are included.


On Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, we ensure those without parents or recently bereaved are supported.

Easter, when we are asked to have faith that Jesus rose from the dead, what do we do with the doubters?

The fact that they don’t get a mention says a lot.

They are disregarded almost as party poopers.

However

I think Christian’s need to work on how we react to our and 

others doubt 

What should we do, think and act when we find people who doubt, and when we ourselves doubt.


That’s all of us at some point by the way.

I would say we can be unkind to ourselves and others when we doubt 

The reverse of loving others and ourselves.

As a whole 


We all want and portray an Instagram-perfect relationship with God,. Every Christian hymn and song on the radio is this soaring love affair with a God we are certain about.
They all sound like the first flush of love, when we first come to God, but as with all relationships when humans are involved long term  it isn’t like that

We all have doubts at times, I’m here to say it’s ok even good!

doubt and the reality of it is writ large all through the bible.

Abraham doubted when God told him that an aged Sarai would become pregnant, and God was offended when he heard her snicker behind the curtain?

The psalms are full of doubt, Jesus asked why he was forsaken.

Julian of Norwich noted when God said I shall make all things well, and all things shall be well etc.

What’s less noted is that god 

Was responding to her doubts and questions

Julian, also describes four kinds of fear, the third of which is doubt. Doubt as a fear may describe why we talk so little about it.
Why we feel uncomfortable when we speak of it.
Why we try to hide it and portray certainty?

Today I wonder 

I wonder 
Why whenever anyone does or is brave enough to show it. We do what we do in very few other circumstances,
We sort of speak over it, tell them to get over it, offer cures like its an illness, and try and pull them along.
Secretly of course feeling our own doubt rise and hoping they stop speaking soon.

I think some of the great preachers are thus because for a little while they can make us certain, more certain than usual.
We have gone past asking depressed people to cheer up!

But we blithely tell people who doubt, pray about it.

Doubt can make it hard to pray of course, because doubt can make us wonder to whom we are praying too.

That difficulty of prayer when we doubt can be made worse by expecting deep formal prayer at those times.

True routine can be the ladder back, a way to keep going.
Hopefully anyone who went on our lent course has seen the lie that God needs formal prayer.
Or seen the diversity of prayer, or wondered what God see’s as “good” prayer.

In the same way that we see good and bad prayer, I think we sometimes put faith and doubt in good/bad boxes.

I have no doubt, that the enemy likes doubt better said  really likes how we react to doubt and that has to change.
We have to stop putting doubt in bad box.

Why 
I have no doubt that doubt and moving through the phases of it is how we become stronger in faith.
Even extended, crippling periods 
I had 15 years of doubt and testing of Jesus before I wrote a very long email to Jane and came here.
Resolving those doubts are now the foundation of my faith, the very basis of my evangelism.
Because I can now state that he overcame my doubts with persistence, his patience, and logic.
but it wouldn’t matter if  I hadn’t yet. Because his timing is perfect.

however to enable that timing, to be his enabler  we have to change

I think that how we speak to each other about our doubts in church or worse still how we don’t has to change.
Its almost a taboo subject, and its slowing us down.

Fear of doubt stops us doing evangelism in case someone makes us doubt.

It stops us reaching out to those that doubt in case its infectious?

Jesus however just goes, have a look here you are, see the proof?

He understands its normal, just like some of those bodily functions we don’t talk about.


Normal , but covered up and made something to be ashamed or guilty of as a result.

I am here to say Jesus never reacted to Thomas doubt with shock or shame.
Never told him to shut up, never made him feel abnormal, lesser etc.
Never thought of his doubt as bad…
Have a look at my wounds.

Alas not many of us have the risen Jesus to sort of poke our fingers in, but he’s up for any other sort of inquiry. 

I have no doubt, that doubt is just part of the journey of faith. 
We as a church must find new and better ways of helping each other through these periods, not searching for a cure, not seeking solutions but being present.

Worst of all sort of slipping away, or making the space awkward when people doubt.
Not even hoping they come through it really, because they will or wont in God’s time.
But knowing we love them just the same and are happy to be around doubt, and lean on our faith to pray for all.
Jesus met many doubters and prayed for them all.

We need to seek out those who doubt in our community, those inside and outside these walls.

the evangelical. And catholic church overcomes this by replacing places of doubt with a certain theology.~

Don’t doubt here are the answers….


But when questions arise this certainty that approach leaves no room to explore. I have also seen many fall by the wayside as they cannot reconcile the received wisdom with their own experience.

I don’t think certainty about everything on a God who is more than we can ever imagine is ever the way to faith 
I think we only grow through doubt, and we will only truly do that when we lose our fear of it, and lose our desire to stay away from it.
To love and Not cure those who have it. To understand they have dared to grow, as opposed to seen or  shown assome sort of betrayal or weakness 
They will take the journey our lord has for them, and for us?
We can pray
To bring God in when we can.

That I think it when we and our church begin to grow.

Doubt is normal, doubt is growing, and doubt is how we find out more about our God and us together 

Jesus is quite happy to let us just stick our fingers into him, and find out however we need to have faith in him.
Sometimes he just lets us learn through doubt

Ask Thomas, Ask Sarah or Abraham.
If your able
Ask Jesus.



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Easter Sunday, when the thief became Jesus family (and yours).

christianthoughts Leave a comment

So Mary Magdalene visits the tomb, and finds him gone. She goes to Peter and tells him, we learn that the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved run faster, Not sure what he believed because we are also told they haven’t figured out whats going on yet. That doesn’t happen till Emmaus. However, presumably after a bit they are a bit shocked, and then the men, they go home. Rather typically leaving the women to it.

This encounter from here on it is between Mary and Jesus.

Mary doesn’t go home, and presumably after a while, peeks into the tomb.

She sees angels, the Angels who are in on the whole gig, rather cattily if you ask me say to her.

Woman, why are you weeping?’

and then turning around she sees Jesus.
They have that conversation where her brain doesn’t recognise the person in front of her for a bit. We all have that, people you don’t expect to see turn up at work, or in the supermarket, and because our brain has filed them as footy chums, or people we meet in church our brain doesn’t go “oh its Sarah” from church turned up at my office! How much more if they are dead!

Until they go Hello mike….

Jesus does exactly this and says “ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!” it’s got an exclamation mark.

Which means it was said emphatically!

In the same way as we say oh no look at this mess!

So Jesus has twigged whats happened with Marys poor distraught brain and gone MARY!

He could have added come on, get with the schedule it’s me 😊

Then he says
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
Then he says what we are going to talk about today….

Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘
I am ascending to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”

This is a massive statement
Up until now Jesus has called his disciples , followers, servants, friends, people who he loves.

Now he calls them by a new name, Brothers, and by the way he said this to a sister first.

How does this change things?

. A seismic change in relationship as understood by Jesus.

Think, we can have followers, people who admire us, the world is full of celebs and acquaintances.

Instagram accounts can have millions

I once had 25000 followers on a west ham fansite

Never knew any of them, cared about the number as it related to hits, and created more followers.

Brother, Father

Brother is family, blood relative, family comes first.

We like to think we would die for our family, jump under a bus, suffer for them, support them, they are truly part of us. To bring up a child includes a massive commitment from the day they are born. Family is a great way of looking at us, who of us doesn’t have a family member we find hard work and yet love and would do anything for?

what wouldn’t you do for family.

You forgive family, even as imperfect people we forgive family.

And in a similar way that your family is in you and you are in your family, so Christ is in us and we are in Christ. I would say at levels beyond cells and Genes like family, how much more embedded and intertwined is us is our lord.

I think it would be harder than to try and take the milk out of your tea.

So we forgive family as imperfect as we are

Imagine if you are love embodied, how fast would you forgive, how perfectly would you forgive.

This forgiveness opens the gates of eternity to us because we are now God’s family.

We live in relationship with God, and nobody can affect that. God has claimed us as family, he made us, he is in us as we are in him.

When you walk out of here today remember as Paul said in romans 8
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That’s whats happened today, your worth your value, your inherent preciousness is now defined solely and singularly by God. Nothing can alter that, when you see things that try and shape you to a size 10, ir to some trend, or to look younger, or to match up to others value system, or measuring stick, when your boss thinks your lesser than someone else in his team, when life tries to tell you that you are lesser, through abuse, through addiction whatever, through sin, or lust, or anger, or being poor, or when others leave you, or when people put you down..

From the moment Christ calls you brother,

Your value is steadfast, unchanging, unchangeable eternal, perfect. Your inherent worth can no longer be affected, why
Because you have the greatest power in the history if everything ever on your side,
That same someone who is willing to die for you is on your side,
you have the prince of peace working for you,
the king of kings ruling over everything justly on your behalf ,
the bread of life being given to you,
the redeemer saving your very soul, the wonderful counsellor to ask for guidance.
The lamb of god, taking away your sin by being willing to go to slaughter for you.
The everlasting father, your father, your brother waiting for you when your time comes.

What is this world compared to that, what is this faith that we share other than a faith imbued by hope every single day no matter what happens to us.

In Nordic countries they have an expression when things go wrong, when the bus doesn’t turn up, or the train is late whatever they say…

hope dies last.
Hope dies last

We however are different

As Christ’s family hope never dies.

Hope never dies and that means we are people of hope.

Hope for today, hope for tomorrow, hope for whatever calls us just over the horizon, that which we could never hope to achieve by ourselves.

That hope is the hope we share as Christians

remember that whatever happens now or in the future.

you have hope, because Jesus calls you brother.
The thief on the cross shows us how we get to be he brother, he never went to church, was never baptised, never confirmed, wasn’t ordained of licenced, he was a thief, a sinner, a man we would think twice about entering our homes. And yet he was first into paradise alongside Jesus.

Bu knowing who he was, by calling him his true name.
And for that, all that

He asks for one thing in return
tell people about him.
For me that’s my lifes aim, the goal he has set me, the thing I try to engineer as best I can, in sermons like this with the street and rail pastors etc.

For you, you decide, and remember, if you have worries or doubts, or think it’s a commitment, or hard to do. remember its family that’s asking you? Jesus is family now.

What has family done for you?
What wouldn’t you do for family.

And he wants you to tell he people he is risen!

Alleluia
He is risen indeed!

Amen

John the Baptist proven to be the humblest by st Benedict

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Today I thought we could talk about John and humility. 

That’s because I love john the Baptist, one of the most humble people in the bible.

  You may wonder why I think that? 

Well

To prove that 

We are going to explore that connection in the most book of common prayer/Anglican ways/ We will delve into the world of St benedict, founder of the Benedictine monks in the 5th century an creator of the rule of benedict, which unchanged has been the bedrock of Benedictine monasteries.

If your wondering why that way

Well it’s because Benedict and anglicanism, are inseparable  its because we have to understand benedict to understand the church of England. Thomas Cranmer who created the book of common prayer and a large part of the way we carry on , Cranmer used Benedict as a framework, and shamelessly borrowed from him.


The Book of common prayer is basically  a softened version of the rule of Benedict.    For instance The names of our services come from Benedict, where Benedict has 7 services, we have three, 

Benedictine monks read the psalms in a week, cranmer spread that over a month. 

When we do lectio divina we most commonly read a passage 2-3 times, benedict gets it read 7 times and so on.   

Benedict wanted a community that was guided by and aware of scripture, cranmer used this idea and used it to power the English reformation and got everyone in church hearing scripture, and wanted the community of the uk led by it. However not everyone is called to be a monk so he softened it a bit.

So when we look at the word humility doing it from a Benedictine perspective is very close to doing so from an church of England one,


One of the core concepts that any Benedictine monk has to learn is humility, and I think like so much of benedict it provides us a good framework to build on to understand what biblical humility truly means. Then I think we will see that John fits the bill as a humble person.

Benedict explains his 12 pillars of humility in 5th century English, so we will use a modern day abbot (head man in a monastery) description of what we should do with it.  Abbott Christopher Jameson tries to help us understand what Benedictine concept of humility is about.  Lets see how it fits with John

  • The world Humble comes from the Latin Humus which means soil. So better interpreted being humble means being “down to earth”.
    • John is down to earth, he doesn’t wear fancy clothes, and he point away from himself at all times. He isn’t pretentious.
    •  
  • Being humble is not being passive, this is apathy.
    • John is very active but actively preparing the way and point to Jesus 
  • Humility is the task of remembering we are not the centre of the universe. Often when we come into conflict when you search for the cause, someone somewhere has seen their needs as greater, than those of others. It may be ourselves.
    • John always put himself second to Jesus 
  • In Good to great a book that has led to the creation of many successful companies the idea of a humble leader is seen as one of the core things that leads to success. Extreme personal humility paired with extreme personal self-will.  However the will is not for the self, but for the success of the company as a whole.
    • This is so John he is all about the success of the mission and not of himself. He was succeeding and built quite a following of his own
  • Being humble may not be being quiet or introverted.
    • I think you can see joh both ways when he was up in the mountain and the charismatic leader
  • The world rightly rejects humiliation, and we fear that pursuing humility opens the door to the other. Humility is being down to earth and pointing away from yourself it is not humiliation.
    • John was never see as a person that was humiliated, despite his humility we to this day see john as true to himself and Jesus a person of value.  As jesus said no greater man than jon
  • When the devil tempted Adam and Eve, he taught them the sin of pride. They forgot they were Humus, of the earth


So I hope that’s maybe shared a thought on what humility is, as the guys that built the framework of our church, many successful companies and Jesus put such store by it. Humility, remember jesus first words on the sermon on the mount were “Blessed are the meek”   for they shall inherit the earth. So much truth in that, and 2000 years later we find out it’s the core of building massive companies and in building a foundation for how to behave in the context of our faith!

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Why did John call him the “Word” and the “Light”

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Up until now all, our Christmas stories began at the stable, or with the wise men, or with Mary’s divine conception and so on.
John starts way before any of them , Johns’s story begins before he was called Jesus, before he joined us…John starts at the very beginning of everything , where Jesus started time, where everything came into being through him.
Before he was Jesus , So he calls him – the word,
The Greek for “word” is Logos, which means logic and reason.
So , Jesus is the reason, the logical reason it all began

And John calls him the source of it all. Cos next John days saying all life came from him, and began with him, . . Jesus is the source and the reason for it all. Without him, nothing came into being.

So when we start Jesus story at the manger, that’s very far from the truth. It’s just where he joined us . Jesus had no beginning, he was the beginning, and he will come again at the end.
Then he calls Jesus the light.

Which is another strange name . Why would you call someone the light?

I had a caravan when I was a kid and it was stupendously dark some nights. You woke up and literally you could not see a hand in front of your face, the proper absence of light you rarely see these days.

However we had calor gas lights, and even the first one coming on extinguished the darkness, the smallest match killed that darkness stone dead. The presence of light, killed nothingness of the dark, the absence of light was taken away by the smallest spark.
So really what we call darkness, like a darkness of the soul is really an absence, of anything. Darkness isn’t active it’s passive.

Jesus is the light, the reverse of an absence, a presence. His presence contains, love, morality, a path to eternal life, order, compassion, empathy, and salvation. All of these things are the reverse of nothing, and even a little of them where these things are absent totally changes things.

Is it any wonder then that people who live in the dark hate the light, because they know even the smallest spark ruins it totally and we can never now know it again.
Is it any wonder that albeit he was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him?

Because the dark which is an absence cannot know anything, because its an absence of reason, chaos cant understand order, the absence of love cannot understand love when it see it. All it see’s is its own demise. That’s why he wasn’t accepted by all and still isn’t. Because darkness cannot accept light, it can only be extinguished by it. Its such a dramatic change from even the smallest light, and Jesus was the source of all light and life and is.

So in John Jesus is the source of everything, the reason for everything, and the thing that banished the darkness of our souls. And he decided to lay in the cradle tonight. Everything became contained in a small child. Why would he do this, through love. So that he can understand and know his creation, and save it from itself, from its absence of love.

he knew his message wouldn’t be enough, so he chose to die to forgive us our lapses, but now his message is a thing in this world, and like a small light in the darkness you cant ignore it, and we cant go back into darkness.

That’s what happened tonight, in a world where love was absent, love came into the world and joined us and we can never know a world without love ever again. This is why john called him the reason, the logos, because he is the reason we know what love truly is.

His life with us he explained what we had to do, showed us what we had to do and lived like we have to do. All of these things are the opposite of nothing, the example once set can never be unset, the darkness of the absence of knowing and now these things can never be unknown and defeated.

We all know this love in our lives, we all know his presence, we will know him forever for all eternity, that’s how long his light will last once it was lit on this night.

Our task is to share that light with whoever we meet, to be the reverse of an absence of love and make that light fill all the places where love is absent,

Amen

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Faith and hope during advent

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Romans 8  1-4 14 to finish

Three sayings on faith and hope.

Christ is both the object hoped for and the hope inspired by it, said Moltmann.   

The faith we have takes its stand on hope and hastens beyond this world, said Calvin.

 “Faith is about what is beyond the horizon of the humanly possible. Faith is exploring what people could never achieve by themselves. Faith is the mysterious need in us to get to where we could surely never go. Faith, in fact, is about what we call God. Faith is the inkling that we are meant to be divine, that our journey will go beyond any horizon at all into the limitlessness of the Godhead. Said mccabe

These ideas are all based on our reading today. They are more easily summed up by saying Christian’s  are people of hope.  We have been chosen since before we were born to know this hope, and we were led by the spirit to bring it into our daily lives such that we are here today.

  Our faith knows as McCabe said that we are destined beyond the horizon, like the sun,  just before it comes into sight, lights up the sky from something that is hidden from us for a short while just before it comes into view.

Knowing these things should, as Paul says , mean that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us”.   

This does  not mean suffering is meaningless nor without value to god and we know  this because of what’s about to happen in advent.


Jesus  is coming to join us,  as a vulnerable child born into poverty destined to suffer. So  while his promise puts everything into perspective, we should see the, way he chose and chooses  to join us in our suffering to prove that he isn’t asking for anything he isn’t willing to endure or doesn’t care about, Both then and now  the Christ then and the Christ in us suffers with us present tense.

The fact that Jesus came and lived In Galilee are facts  indisputable such that even atheists would not argue with them,   we know however this is based on the narrow lens of science. 

However, Christians have a wider lens, and our facts are based on more than the things we can prod or measure with a ruler.

Our facts reflect the true nature of the human condition and true nature of reality.  Our facts also  rely on the knowledge the holy spirit imbues us with that lets us know the dawn is just below the mountaintops.  

This is why Jesus  calls himself the way, the truth, and the life. 

He shows us the way , we live the life  , because we know the truth 

Our faith  our hope is built on the implications of these facts , and goes forward  always in hope , on its promise.   

The promise of being made whole and  liberated from bondage and  decay by being brought into the freedom and glory  of wholeness by being the children of God. People who call god father and friend 

This is why ours is a joyous faith, not one obsessed by misery or one endured in sackcloth and ashes, but one that lives in joyous celebration of the journey our faith has set us upon.   

The perspective that gives to our lives. 

This is the joy our lord asks us to share with others and is something we can do much more easily at Christmas a time when gifts of all types are shared.

The greatest gift of all we share  is hope, because we are children of hope, and we bring all this world’s suffering into perspective for us and for those around us.   

As we come into a season where the light of the world is joining us, our job is to share that light and the hope it brings.

Amen 

Luke on Resurrection and Marriage

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Luke 30 27-38

I am going to talk about how today’s reading I think it helps us In three ways?

One it shows us how to approach people who have a different world view on religion?

Secondly, it shows us the thing that’s coming next.

Third it does what I am going to do today which is leave you with a question

To explain some of what’s occurring, we have to get that this reading shows us how strange Jesus’s world was to our eyes. We have to work with the strangeness to understand what’s going on

In today’s reading, The Sadducees use their understanding of the world to try and catch Jesus out.

The Sadducees were really the aristocracy of the Jewish world, powerful people. In their world view they wanted peace with Rome and the Romans (who wants to rock the boat when life is good). They also did not believe in Jesus version of the resurrection. In their view the world sort of got reconstructed by God with the haves and the have nots still well in place (again why worship a God that rattles a world that’s working for you).

So when they speak to Jesus about divorce they are coming at it from a perspective of what was called levirate marriage. That looked after the women who would have been left with nothing if the husband died.

She essentially got passed down like an inheritance to the next nearest relative who already may have a wife and now he had another one. The sadducees wanted to know whose wife would she be at the day of the resurrection if this had been going on for 7 brothers dying. That way the poor woman when she’s resurrected won’t be any worse off. The world still works for them, justice is served because, She will still belong to someone, they just want him to work out who?

Essentially trying to catch Jesus out on a point of law, but seen from their world view. This is why they call him teacher. If you’re a teacher solve this riddle.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who thinks everything that we believe in is dangerous nonsense. It can be hard going, the two worlds sort of collide and you can only state your truth and see what happens, This is essentially what’s happening here.

This is Jesus showing what to do when we encounter a strange worldview. Simply state our case and make it clear, where we differ. That’s what Jesus is really showing us today. How to work with encounters with views that are so strange and so opposed to what we as Christians think. Just state your view, as truth,

Quite often we start from a place of ours being a truth, one among many. Jesus response shows his starting place is, his is the truth. Not one among many, his response shows he thinks the Sadducees simply mistaken and states the sole truth. There’s no apology, no equivocation , no heat, just his truth stated as truth.

That’s how to explain our faith thank you Jesus,

We need to learn from that

Then

there’s something else

I think more importantly, he gives one of the clearest descriptions of what happens to us when we are all resurrected on the last day.

He points out that all those that have become followers of him will be resurrected as children of God his term, but not as man and wife, not under the sort of societal laws that we have. These ideas of man and wife are no longer relevant as we are all essentially now true children of God, the same God treats Moses, . Like Angels as Jesus says. They can’t die, they won’t marry or be married (people on the living in love and faith course that was take note)!. The new reality is very different . The social structures are broken when we rise with him, even marriage is gone.

This is him describing what the source of Christianity here is. This is the thing that we often relegate to the postscript of our faith, the things that’s going to happen after we get through all this toil and trouble. This is Jesus describing the afterlife. It’s one of the very few places this happens

So we need to take special note here because Jesus rarely explains this. This is as clear as it gets .

We will be God’s children, as Jesus says great term the children of the resurrection

That we will become and I quote, people who no longer die; we will be like the angels. To God nobody dies, they simply join him, they are alive now to a god that’s alive and they are alive later a god that’s alive. To the same God that’s alive and with us when today when we are living and dead. He makes no distinction. As far as god is concerned your alive now and alive then.

We live with that promise and that’s something which should make our faith joyous because that’s what’s and that’s what’s here now because of our faith in him. Grace enables us to access this.

Everything we experience is experienced light of this fact. Like our children and grandchildren who live in the excitement of Christmas, and nothing can alter the crescendo of Christmas day. That’s what our lives and our faith is about. This hope doesn’t just exist tomorrow it exists today. Because the same Jesus who makes this promise real is alive today, and the promise of his present and future with us is our present and future with him.

However the next part of the journey with him is not like this one. In the new reality nobody dies, we are children of God. As he says He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.

if you have that hope, that certainty know that sole truth. What joy every day really is , what transient our troubles when we have a future of being like angels, that never die, when that’s what’s in store?

Jesus stated these things as a simple truth today. A simple truth, for Jesus, that I think would never lie to us.

If what Jesus is telling us IS the truth?

Here’s the question

What would you do for that?
What does that do for your daily lives?
It should affect it, but the question for today is that I would like to leave you with is.

How?

The parable of the persistent widow is all about relationships

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Luke 18 1-8 Psalm 66 1-11 2 Timothy 2 8-15

The readings this week are about relationship and community. They are about family, they are about
loving someone enough to look after them, to make sure they are safe. To know they love you
enough so that when you give them bad news they will know you mean well and the other way
round.


I always remember It was on the 59th minute or so of a 1 hour interview someone told me that I
had done the whole thing with the tail of my suit jacket firmly tucked into my trousers. I had dashed
out the rest room and nobody thought to tell me.


Family tell you things like that, family calms you down when your flustered. Family stop you crossing
the road when the cars coming, tell you when your breath smells, encourage you when your
flagging. Let you know if you have been rude, and love you lots and lots through all those things. On
your good days and your bad days, the dialogue keeps us on the straight and narrow. You accept all
those things from family because they love you lots and lots.
They stop you eating too much chocolate.


How our families do that is by the constant dialogue of family life
We can understand exactly how Paul did that because of his letters. In todays reading the
community, he is talking to Timothy in Ephesus, which was in modern day turkey, about an hour’s
drive from Izmir where lots of people go on holiday.

The aim here is to help Timothy understand
how to create a good culture and deal with problems, and some problematic people in a very new
church, and a lot of Timothy must be seen in that light. That specific person, being told how to
manage that specific church, with specific people, in it causing it very specific problems. He
includes prayer in his letters as a thing to do and as a way, he was guided.
, so when Paul directs people, it we can read his letters?


When it’s family or friends they speak to us
How do we do that with God though, how do we talk to god and how does God direct us?
We could write letter or poem like the person that wrote the psalm has done.
A psalm is sort of a letter or a poem to God really. Looking at them they are people bringing their
joy, and Desires and complaints to god, the psalms also show us how god directs the writer, and
then by us reading them directs us.


The majority in fact of our psalms are mainly people complaining, moaning, asking for justice. So our
psalms show us God values and listens to our distress and takes it seriously. They are called psalms
of lament.


Jesus story today shows us another way we can do all that a psalm does with God, and that’s called
prayer. Prayer is dialogue with god, prayer is working directly with the greatest force in all creation.

Jesus also showing us how to pray shows also a very important thing about prayer, Persistence
often pays off.
Persistence can sound. hard, but like when I want a new set of golf clubs, or Mrs T wants a new
kitchen, you may want a new game, or a new phone, or whatever it is we want. When our family
wants us to behave better. Sometimes being persistent is the best way.

That’s what our reading says, be persistent. That sounds like taking great chunks of our day and
setting them aside, but Our heritage as Christian’s show there are lots of examples of different ways
to pray.
The way we can be persistent doesn’t have to mean kneeling and closing our eyes. These are good
ways of making God your center of attention. But Prayer can Take many forms , A dialogue as we
drive , or shower , or over dinner, or before we sleep or whenever is just as good. As long as you are
paying attention to God, then God is paying attention to you. In fact God is always paying attention
to you even when you are not.


That’s the thing about prayer it can take many forms, and be like many things. It can be at the
shopping Centre,it can be a letter , or a psalm, it can be as we walk, it can be eyes open or closed, it
can be happy or sad. Restricting prayer to that 5 minutes or so when we “do prayer” is like saying to
your family, I am only going to talk to you for one hour today when we do our chat.


They would wonder what’s gone wrong, and be very sad. Also you probably wont get those trainers
or golf clubs or kitchen. Prayer is a dialogue, spoken or unspoken,, written or unwritten, happy or
sad, angry or calm. But it should be just part of life. I quite often ask God into my business meetings
before I start and it does really help?


In the bible we do prayers of confession (we did that right at the beginning of the service today) of
adoration, people make promises to god, people ask for healing, prayers of thanks, and later we will
do the Lord’s Prayer which is us asking god for seven different things.


Prayer is that constant awareness of God, that can fluctuate and gods awareness of us which never
does. St Benedict says we can give whatever we do to God because Gods in it already, the washing
up , the cooking. We can say this is for you and offer it to him. Like the old song the little drummer
boy, we can make whatever we do a gift to him. Even playing the drums as best we can. God wants
us to involve him in everything we do.


That’s what Jesus means today, persistence, meaning the constant dialogue that goes on between
people we love. All the magnificent, moving, good bad, boring mundane stuff of our daily lives
shared with God.


and that as Jesus says today is when prayer really works, for us for God and we really become part of
Gods friends and family. That of course is what God really wants.
Amen

The parable of the shrewd manager and our late queen

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Luke 16 1-13 The Parable of the Shrewd Manager

Question 

Who in this last week of thinking about our queen has really thought about or been jealous of her money?

How many  of all the eulogies we have heard have been centred on that fact?

They have been about her service, her faith, humour, but money

When her funeral happens in the morning how much will be about that.

Not any I have heard, a few republicans have mentioned it in regards to her role, but not her.

She got the subject of money correct among many things.

On the subject of money, we do need money…..

On the other end of the scale Ive been poor and having enough is nicer, it solves many issues. I recall one time needing to do some overtime to pay a utility bill, and I had an MOT, and that failed, and then I couldn’t use the car to do the overtime to pay the bill, and of course now I had two bills to pay.  Ive seen the shanty towns in Colombo, and in Johannesburg and my problems shrink further still compared to that.

 Having enough relieves that sort of stress, and in our story its that sort of stress all the people that owed the money were no doubt u under owing so much money.

Because all the people spoken about today who were owed money were rich?

All those that owed it were tenant farmers, and my uncle bob was one of those and he didn’t have much money I can tell you. Life was hard, hand to mouth, making their own food on an allotment to fill the gaps.

There are various interpretations of this parable, and I am comforted that Paula Gooder in places found it as confusing as me?  But here’s where I landed, the word used for squander is actually closer to spreading around, so a sort of wasteful sharing if you like.

I think its about recognising that which we sow on earth is reverberated in heaven, part of that which is reverberated is what we do with what we own, are owed, that make cake a difference. that is to say the manager is rewarded for spreading about the money and alleviating the stress that the tenant farmers were under by the landlord.    

Why? Because as he said you cannot serve two masters, your eyes are either on gathering in as much money as you can, or transversely while owed a lot, you can gather in as much as is fair, or as much as people can give when the bill is owed and the MOT’s due.  

The idea in this story is in not being a slave to money means you tend to be a little more generous and therefore spread a little more happiness around. The reverse leads to the reverse, you gather in every penny, are not generous, and you spread sadness.

I think also that a message comes across, that the landowner was less worried about the squandering of money, of that spreading around but that it had to have a purpose, to make his tenants lives happier, and less stressful.


So essentially this parable is saying, our lives can tell a different story than the money we have, or the wealth we accumulate if that isn’t the sole lord and master of our lives.  

This is why I think the queen albeit immeasurably wealthy, her life told a different story.  Her legacy isn’t all about that, it’s a fact but to most not the most important one. In fact I am not sure I or many  would swap my average  life of comfort, for her wealthy life of service to all.

As in this story its not not having money that’s the problem its allowing it to take over our lives, our society, our government etc. When we measure the treasures, we store up in heaven none of them will have pound signs attached, of that I am sure.  When we measure all those things that detract from them, how we treated others as a result of measuring the world as profit and loss will be part of it.

That idea extends into so many things, into our health system, social security, refugees, how we help those that are homeless and all those in need. Its why I always wince when we measure those things solely by money and not by real need.  Because as Jesus is showing us here, that is the real sin, not squandering the money, but where its squandered and how and why. 

We have a god of outrageous love and grace, and by any terms when love is given like that it could be measured to be squandered, but its not really. Because we get it back when we are in the phase of existence our dear queen is, where shis is inheriting all the rewards of her grace and kindness as we speak I am sure.

Money and how we treat people as a result of how we spend , share or withhold it , has ramifications far beyond our earthly debt. Jesus did just clear the debt because the landowner was owed it, but he also didn’t squash the people that owed it.  The landowner was owed money but not obsessed by it.

So much of our society is obsessed by things, and has lost the idea that sharing those things stores up treasures in heaven used well.

  How empty does celebrity or fame, or bling become when we see what we can really be given in return.  I used to get ever more guilty as I progressed in my career thinking its about giving everything away and living like a hermit.  But its not about that so when 

in Luke 6 Jesus says 

 anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

Todays passage shows it doesn’t matter if you have another 2 coats indoors, if you give to whoever needs,


So our goal isn’t to necessarily become poor, but to not be defined or to define ourselves by what we have, rather by what money enables us to do for others,  how we can use that wealth to store up treasures in heaven.  

Our legacy is really when we are gone and people speak about us and we face his judgment, that the measure isn’t what we had, but whether it obsessed us, owned us , defined us.    Listening to the stories of the queen this week, I think she got that right, and made our world, our country our commonwealth a better place and that’s whats going to define her.

On a smaller scale perhaps  that what the goal of our lives should be