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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

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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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The problem with taking Christ out of Christmas

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The streets are decorated with all manner of shiny things. The adverts are full of idealistic beaming relatives as some consumer good or another is bestowed upon them.  Every family is perfect, and every film is heartwarming.   People work hard to put lights up on houses despite the price of energy, and people stretch burdened finances further so that our kids have the latest thing.

On this very point, Peter Andre is pleading with radio stations to listen to what the British public asks and I quote, and stop broadcasting the classic Christmas song ‘Most Wonderful Time of the Year – out of respect.  He says and I quote, While I acknowledge there are some extremely pleasant moments during Yuletide festivities, these are normally fleeting and often come with a busy schedule, an empty wallet and not much to show otherwise. “Strip back the gift-giving, tinsel and twinkly lights, and people are left with the stark reality that this time of year is cold, dark, and expensive.


Sue very soon is delivering a Blue Christmas service for those who find all this pressure to be happy, full of gifts, and expectations of beaming as they go around a crowded Tesco’s just too much when their reality is one of loss and sadness. The reverse of the image we are asked to aspire to and worse still – deliver.

Why has all this happened?  Because all the paraphernalia of Christmas has become exploited,
It lost its roots as a result. Give it a week after Christmas day and Cadbury eggs will be in the stores.

Contemporary Christmas has become just another impossible thing to aspire too, like women’s magazines that are filled with body shapes that are ruled as perfect. That causes so much harm as our kids try and conform.

None of this is Christian really; none of it has anything to do with the Babe in our story today.

However, they do have one thing in common, a request for a certain conformity, an ideal of how to behave, Jesus does have a very, very big ask.

 The Christian Christmas does have high standards.  The difference is we are asked to give to others, love and forgive to a ridiculous standard all year round, to conform to godliness as best we can.   That’s our universal conformity. That’s we know this is the only way the world works.

However, unlike in the Ads and films etc. There is a massive difference,  When it all goes wrong, it is not such a disaster.

Why?

Because

In reality, one very special thing is happening in today’s reading,

We are being forgiven our sins.  That’s it. We have grace, which the glossy ads lack.

We are being forgiven our sins.

We are being forgiven, and the ask is, we are being asked to forgive.

By a child who in our story today, has no consumer goods and yet carries the one gift we all need. Forgiveness and the gift of God calling us friend

There was a little part of me that wanted to stop my sermon here and just let that sink in.

So while both these ideas are both asking for conformity, one for an ideal Christmas, one for the ideal Christian.  The big difference is, the adverts don’t let us off, the pressure to conform is relentless and the price of failure a ruined ideal, not just for you but for all those you love.  A fearful thing that causes our kids to suffer such stress, as they can’t live up to Instagram perfect, or fit in that dress, or change shape.

In our version of conformity, the idea of conformity has been abolished by the act of forgiveness of a loving God.  We are asked to aspire and try hard, but we are forgiven as we are.


The forgiveness that is bestowed has many wonderful effects, bit here’s one I love to point out.

Emanuel, God with us joined us to forgive us for imperfection, in fact, to abolish the very idea because we are all made in his image, and every image is just how he wanted; this sets us free from the tyranny of failure to be enough. We are enough, all of us, every person born or yet to be born. We are enough; we are loved.

Because he made us as and loves us as we are, We are asked to come as we are and not as we aren’t; in messy families, in the arguments and the squabbling, the difference between our Christmas and the commercial one, they sell perfection. We come as loved, just as we are and only as angels as children of christ on the last day by a loving God.

This sets us free from any external valuation anyone or anything may place on us, including the valuation we put on ourselves. Nothing that happens on this earth can affect our value as human beings; nothing can make us any less in any way because we are loved enough to die for, to come down as a baby just to meet us where we are. We are enough

So as you step out of church today, I hope you feel released from the pressure of delivering a perfect Christmas because it was never the ask, in our Christmas, that was never asked for, in fact, imperfection was what god loved because he abolished the very idea.

.  Our Christmas has not even got the worry of a  dry turkey or the expectation of needing to be happy on the agenda, really. You are forgiven for not being able to conform to an idea of Christmas that God never made.  The idea he asks you to conform to is love and to forgive just as you are forgiven when you drop from those heights.  

Remember


It’s expected it was known that it would happen and he sent us his son to set us right with a perfect God. Through grace

So now know you are free from the expectation of being a  perfect person by the child that was born in today’s story. Born into a less-than-perfect world,  Born into a less-than-perfect situation, into a less-than-perfect family.  This is where God joined us to forgive us.

God could have joined us in the top suite of a hotel with more money than Elon musk, with perfect abs and an Aston martin and an Instagram model on his arm.

But he joined us here, as a baby, with refugee parents and in a stable, and he chose that place to come to forgive a world that needs it.

That’s it

That’s what happened in today’s story.

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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 

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The How, When, Where and Why of prayer

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Luke 11- 1-13

Nobody really knows why Luke’s Lord’s prayer is shorter than Matthews. It’s just one of those things, but what both versions show us is persistence is vital. Each one a vital petition that we say on numerous occasions, I think the Lord’s prayer is mainly for us, it’s about keeping us on track and giving us a prayer to say keeps us persistent. That makes sense because prayer as someone said
Prayer IS God, it is the movement of God to man and man to God, the rhythm of encounter and response. The more we move back in focus toward God the more he responds.


The mistake we can fall into is to call prayer that moment we bow our heads and clasp our hands.
Why because even a passing thought as to what God might be is that he is always, has been and always will be, is that he doesn’t wander off. He is always present. That means there’s nothing we do that we cant give to God, do as if Gods with us, because he is.
Something that really reached me when I heard about it is Benedictine spirituality. The Benedictine monks lived lives of prayer and hard work. However, St benedict said that we never need to separate the two. Because we can bring God into all our mundane activities. This teaches that everything we do can be done to the glory of God, everything we do can be a sacramental object where God is made present. We don’t have to wait for a eucharist, we can turn the washing up into a eucharist. A thin moment where God is with us. I recall doing the washing up once and really making sure it was perfect, because this was an act that God was present in. Because its self evident God is always present, Paul knew the separation or lack of awareness of God was artificial.

Paul uses the phrase to be “In Christ”, and Christ tells us he is in us and we are in him. Christ can no more be separated from anything we do that to say our Leg isn’t with us on a walk. It’s us that sort of lose sight of him and forget he’s around. To say hes always watching, makes it sound creepy, but he cant not be around, hes every where at all times, in us and with us and around us. Ive been married 30 years this year and Mrs T has seen me at my best and at my worst, and that process deepens our relationship and bonds. Its no more intrusive having God around while I do the washing up and having Mrs T around. In fact that chatter while the mundane acts of life continue is truly relationship.
So This means if I do the washing up, and give that act to God, I should do it to the best of my ability because he is in that act. He’s there anyway, but we can make everything we do an act of prayer that we bring God into, share that moment with God. As st Benedict said we can make the Hoe and the scythe as holy as any sacramental object on our altar today.

To look at that point in a different way, The liturgy of a service is different between our three churches, and liturgy is the act by which we cultivate the feeling of a presence of God, the differences reflect not God but us, how we relate to him. Christ is in all our churches, but fair to say he is in the checkout at Aldi’s, and the car wash, and in dinner making, and the hoovering. It’s us who lose awareness. Our churches and our services simply heighten that awareness.
That’s why Jesus wants us to knock, not because God needs a wakeup call, hes not asleep, we are.

The process of knocking helps us to wait for an answer, to expect or hope for his presence.
God does not sleep, if he does, hes not God. Its about practicing his presence, the more we practice the greater we become at being aware and guided by him. Prayer brings us into contact with the greatest force in all creation, a force that loves us enough to die for that wants to be with us, and for us to be close to him. Really, however, we do that is fine by God, because the formulaic prayer we say in church, or the whispered prayer at work, or the practice of awareness of him is really all he wants, he wants us to knock.
This continuous prayer, that we bring into all the nooks and crannies of our life, may bring God into places we would rather he not be. Bit we are a little ashamed of, that we wouldn’t look at too much because we don’t like what it shows us. So this in turn demands we need to lose our scruples when praying, As alain fenelon said Just as water quenches fire so do scruples act on prayer. Without going into the full quote, basically what he means is that if we are so eaten up with how to pray, and our own self loathing or guilt we become self-obsessed, or obsessed with detail. The object of prayer is then lost, and the well spring of grace emanating from prayer because we are put off prayer. The lack of prayer is far more crass than any sin we will not bring before him, because we cut ourselves off from him. The word sin means moving away from God, and lack of prayer does indeed move us away.

This isn’t news by the way St Benedict knew it, and St Ingatious as well. The examen from st Ignatius takes all those parts of the day and lays them at the foot of God, we give thanks for everything we get, we petition that ourprayer be fruitful (so pray our prayer is good and helpful, , we review our day and bring all of it too him , the we ask for and receive forgiveness taking on board we have been forgiven, and we try to move on with all those things supported by grace doing our lives a little better than before.
Hopefully what you can see is what Jesus is asking for here, persistence, practice, and praxis, the doing of a thing.

That point is essentially what today’s reading is all about, God wants us to pray. Pray in church, pray with out hands clasped, eyes shut or dancing, or driving, of fishing, or golfing, or watching our footy team (as a west ham fan they need a lot of prayer) , playing with our children, mowing the lawn.
God wants is to come as we are, lose our scruples and bring whatever we are to him, whatever we have become, whatever he made us to be, to the greatest power in creation.
So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

The thing that will be given to us is the wellspring of Grace waiting with just a small change in focus on him. The Lords prayer is an excellent tool for doing so and it’s a way of pestering God for these things, and as in the way of prayer those things get turned back on us as we enable others to have their prayer answered with daily bread and sins forgiven, with a sincere desire to make his kingdom come a little closer with each deed we do guide by him. This idea in Benedictine spirituality of being present in every little thing we ensures this is a constant ebb and flow throughout the day. We never need to leave him.

Its why our Christian life is so blessed with mindful meditative forms of prayer, such as the jesus prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living god have mercy on me – a sinner, said repeatedly out loud or to ourselves and like all good meditation we focus back on those words alone. The aim is to practice the presence of God. The journey this takes us on is described in one of my favourite mystics Terese of Avilla , we journey from conversion to companionship and ever deeper into a relationship with God, into every more interior castles, were we open ourselves ever more to God, removing those scruples that Fenelon so despised.

But hopefully, what today was is a few thoughts about what prayer is or. Its certainly about more than clasping our hands and bowing our heads, that as well, but its more about bringing him into every little thing we do. Imagine this for a moment, when you next speak to whoever your significant other is you say to them, in this relationship I am only going to really be with you for 2 hours on a Sunday, and when I want to speak to you or feel drawn too during the week. I think they may think you had just lost your noodles.

We all know that’s not how relationships work, not how they survive, not how we learn who the other person is. Relationships happen over a thing that just is, all the time, day on day out. Over the small things of life, and the big things. Sometimes we need that chat over the dining table, but mostly its just about being there.

That’s where he has asked to be, simply with him as much as we can. Like the child that asks for attention, knocking , asking, so he can share his love and his wisdom. We don’t give our children or loved ones, windows where they have to ask for our time, we want them around us and in a free and easy relationship where we are simply with each other the whole time.

Like any good relationship really. That’s it, all there is to it.

Amen

Who are we responsible for in the good samaritan?

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I’ve been fortunate in my life and met many good men (and women too by the way) that have for some reason gone out their way to help me, show me love and been there for me. Their blessings go on through many lifetimes, and I hope I share a little of what I have been given.

I hope if you think for a moment, you can think of a few.
and In simple terms

Today’s story at first glance is simply about a good man, doing what a good man does. Nothing more complicated than that really. A bloke needed help, and someone found someone like that and helped them.

Its also about a lawyer wanting to clarify what he was legalistically supposed to comply with to work out where his responsibility ended.
He was trying to understand what he needed to comply with to get the payoff!
The software I work with these days helps people understand what they sign up for in a contract. What are the clauses that might cause us pain if we sign on the dotted line and we don’t like what happens as a result? I’ve seen companies go under because a company discovered a loophole in the contract and we didn’t get the payoff.

But contracts that we don’t like are hideous if we sign them and that’s a fact.

Is it any wonder this is what the lawyer, the expert in the law, who would have looked at the world in a very similar way was looking, or trying to understand if he knew all clauses in the contract? Its basically what he says.

So what do I have to do to inherit eternal life? I love the lord god with all my heart etc and my neighbour as myself. Jesus affirms this as correct. But to make sure that this is enough to fulfil the law, and get him into heaven the lawyer checks.

29 so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”
What’s the contract regards who is my neighbour. What do I have to do to fulfil said contract and get the payoff of eternal life? Who am I responsible for?
Lets look at the story in jesus used in reply and then lets at the answer?

First off….
He could have just said “everyone” and left it at that.
Why didn’t he do that?

A man is stripped naked and beaten by robbers. So at this moment, he is an anonymous, vulnerable bloody mess. A man without tribe, country, or creed. Vulnerable and needing a neighbour he has no identity apart from human and male.. Like the tomb of the unknown soldier, his anonymity means this man represents us all, he could be any one or any one of us.

Then a levite priest, , passes by. Levites are those chosen by God to serve in his temple, so chosen in amongst Gods chosen people. Hes a levite, those who set and ensure others abide by the law. His law declares this man unclean, and anyone who touched him would be ritually unclean. This Levite priest hurried by the poor man leaving him lying naked in a bloody heap on the floor.

Then a Samaritan arrived . A Samaritan
The context of Samaritan mustn’t be lost on us.

Samaritans to Jesus audience did not belong on the land they occupied. They were of a strange culture, they dressed differently, probably sounded differently. They had occupied the land while the jews were in exile, and now they weren’t going back, in fact they had no back, they were 2nd, 3rd, 4th , generation. They practiced a strange version of the religion of the jews.
For all these reasons they were despised looked down on and considered unclean by the jews. They seen as taking resources, and land, and were disliked simply for being Samaritans . In another story the woman at the well who was a Samaritan was shocked that Jesus even spoke to her, both because she was a woman and a Samaritan.

So we have gone from one end of the scale to the other. From the lauded to the dregs. Those people we rather look down on and would rather not be around, those whom we blame when it goes wrong by default, those with less privilege and standing in our community, those we find very few of on a day-to-day basis, and don’t know how to talk with them when we do, where the culture gap is hard to bridge, the religion strange. The disliked, distrusted , unwanted, bottom of the pile. Mostly they are anonymous to us, invisible, when we think of them, very few kind thoughts might arise.

But this Samaritan He stops on the road from Jericho when he found the injured man.

and he stops on the road to Jericho….

The road to Jerusalem from Jericho was known as the way of Blood, because so much blood was shed by robbers. It’s a winding road with steep sided and lots of twisting turns as it drops a 1100 foot from above to below sea level.

In certain respects I can sort of relate to this. Like those estates in the 80’s that had so many perfect hiding places for muggers that the council like to give them in the 80’s.These were places that you had your ears and eyes open, you certainly never stopped and moved as fast as you could. When I used to catch the late train home in forest gate I always breathed a sigh of relief when I got past certain known mugger hotspots. I avoided the steel bridge at all costs., Rushed past places that had deep shadows where people could come from all of a sudden. So I sort of know that feeling.

But the Samaritan

He stops and shows real –

and the word I am going to use is Altruism,

The word Altruism is defined as when we act to promote someone else’s welfare, even at a risk or cost to ourselves.

He definitely shows more than pity, the priest showed him that but , pity demands no action. The Samaritan, journeys between pity and altruism and he acts, taking one more step into dangerous altruism on this fearful road.

Jesus making the man naked and anonymous means he has to show universal altruism. Altruism of a sort that goes beyond the boundaries of his own tribe.

Then he gets him safe at the inn, and pays his bills to get better. 2 denarii, about £50, at that time about 2 weeks wages on average, so costly in every way.

There’s no law here forcing this man to take a risk, no law forcing him to do this, indeed the priest who knew the law rushed by, not wanting to be made unclean, not wanting to be next, let alone give up 2 weeks wages.
This is Jesus defining who is our neighbour and who is worthy of altruism.

In this story Jesus has told us there is no clause in the contract t, no boundary to love, no end date to the contract, in fact don’t seek a contract.
Its just outrageous love we are asked for. Jesus tells us that example can be set by anyone from any culture, and also that can be asked from anyone from any culture.

By making the injured man vulnerable and stripping him of all associations with creed, tribe religion etc . Jesus makes him every and anyone in need, We are simply one race, the human race. Whether the refugee comes over on a dangerous boat ride, or from a war-torn place. We have to show altruism that may put us at risk. How can there be an illegal immigrant, if Jesus just threw away the contract ? When in Jesus example where this man came from , why etc is deemed unimportant, in fact its actually deliberately stripped from him. this story shows we are simply asked to stand up for, stand in for whatever human happens to be around.

They were going down that road…. That’s all we are shown. Then we are shown what love is. Its more than altruism, or dangerous altruism, its excessive, it costs us, to risk out lives, to travel more slowly with an injured man on our horse while we work, it costs. It takes time and trouble. Its excessive well beyond anything that could reasonably be asked of us and it’s given without question to whomever we meet that needs our love.

The joy of this story is that whoever we are and from whatever standing in our or any community, we can still shine and be lauded and laudable in Jesus’ eyes.

Also to answer my earlier question.
That’s why when he was asked who is my neighbour, Jesus didn’t just say everyone. Because Jesus wants active, not passive love, he certainly doesn’t want sympathy, but active dangerous outrageous altruism.

Bonhoeffer said the biggest mistake we make is to try and work out who we are responsible for.
This parable shows we are all responsible for each other, in the human race.

it was that realisation was one of the key moments for me, this is why it’s the only way the world works.

In simple terms, Jesus asks us to obey the unenforceable clause, go beyond reason, beyond risk, beyond culture creed and religion actively not passively.
To stand up for and stand-in for whoever needs our love, out active love.
That is what the kingdom of God is like. We have been given the task of showing what that sort of love is like, in our lives as Christians. That’s what we are asked to witness to others by our behaviour. It’s when we bear witness to the kind of love Jesus asks us to show when we see our neighbour as Jesus asks us to as simply human and nothing else? When we stop asking who are we responsible for. That our faith becomes powerful and stands out.

I really wish the Lawyer hadn’t asked that question, because now we can’t say we don’t know, But he did and now we know, all of us do, and now as Jesus’s followers of the way, we know the way. All of us.

Amen

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Easter – The birth of the good news.

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Easter
From this moment on we know these five things.
Jesus has a past
Jesus Died (past tense)
Jesus Lives (present tense)
and Jesus has a future. (Future tense)
and if we give him his proper place of Lord – so do we.

These Five things should colour every aspect of our lives.
Because on Friday we remembered Jesus’ death and the seeming hopelessness of that moment.
From today we can never be without hope because we share in his future.

We must always remember that Christ always had a future, but he wanted us his creation to also have a future.
So, for us also he did something else even more wonderful, he broke the sin of Adam that was laid on us all.

Our broken nature remains, But it is forgiven. As Paul says “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”
We are made alive, given new life, and propelled into the future certainty of a new world free from sin and death and illness and decay through him.

So we live in the now of God’s kingdom, with the assurance and a way to share in the not yet, the future of God’s kingdom to come. When Christ will rise again.

He had every single one of us in his mind on that cross, he has every single one of us in his mind right now. He knew you before you were born, he knows you now and he will know you when you rise again in a new bodily form with him on the blast of the horn.

These facts, for they are facts, in the truest sense of the word mean that we can never be without hope. We live the assurance of a present forgiven from sin, and a future free from its presence.

We live forgiven our compromised present nature, and a know we have a future made whole and perfect without compromise.

But what do we do with those things, these facts have to affect us
Those things have to affect us right now don’t they?

If you knew you had a future free from every worry, concern, disappointment ailment and negative thing this world has to offer. If you spend a moment and think about all the things you have had happen in your life that you wish hadn’t gone All the things you wish weren’t happening right now. Fixed,all the broken or tense family relationships, all the illnesses all the stress, and concern gone.

If you knew all that was to come, it would affect the way you behave now, wouldn’t it? Well, here’s the deal. It is to come, it is happening to you and to me, on the moment he rises again. We are but a short sleep away from such things.
That hope affects and colours everything we do, it’s like the certainty of winning the lottery.
This is why we are people of hope. Hope like that shouldn’t be parked until you are lying on your death bed waiting for your eyes to close. Hope like that should imbue our lives. We know we share in a perfect future, we know our present is embued with the perfect love of God. We have that past present and future love shared, and to share.

When we leave here today we should have a little spring in our step, because we are forgiven. Death is no more than a sleep, and all the worries of the world are transient, and small compared to eternity with our lord.

God has made us his friend today, friends never to be parted, friends love dearly enough to die for. The resurrection of jesus is the start of a new creation, we are part of that new creation free from the wounding, decaying, perverting outcome of sin. Free to be made whole, free to love knowing we are loved. Given value because the creator of all things values us enough to die for, and wants us with him forever.

Nobody ever, no matter who isn’t loved enough by god to die for, loved enough to die for right now, and nobody ever doesn’t have the choice to share in his future. We share God’s future.
Whoever you lay eyes on today and forever is precious enough to die for

That’s special isn’t it, there’s hope in that, that’s good news, isn’t it?

Why?

The world so needs that news, if they knew all the things they were fighting for would be Judged and set right regardless of whatever they do, why would they fight.

If they knew everyone was loved enough to die for, who would they kill, hurt, or call names? Because you are calling God precious things names.

If we all knew nothing can affect our inherent value, because they are gods special thing, how much anger and resentment, and sadness would that resolve, because nothing could ever make us feel worthless, do demean, or devalued. How differently would we behave if we really knew every soul was precious.

How much of the corrosive effects of shame would be lost, If we knew they were forgiven, how much could we forgive. If we knew in fact the object that needs forgiving in our eyes is forgiven. Why not forgive as well. You on your own

These are the changes gods love brings to our past present and future

This is the good news og Gods love for us, our friend,, our father,

This is the good news. It’s happened, happening today, and is yet to happen. We share in it.

So go out there and tell people, they don’t understand, they have forgotten. But they aren’t forgotten, they are loved. Its our job to remind them.

Because Christ is risen
He is risen indeed 😊

Alleluia

Good Friday – the day it all went wrong

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Its all gone wrong
His followers have scarpered
Apostles that ate, slept lived with him every day
Have run away
The world is calling him names
Today, Today
At this moment its certain that by any empirical logic this was a false promise
Nothing is pointing to him being anything other than dead.

You can logically see why they may run.
Messiahs don’t do this
They remove the oppressor
They bring victory
They restore honour
They restore the temple
They bring the world to the worship of God
They assume the role of Caesar
They don’t get nailed to some rough wood, paraded through town and then die the worst
In no version of the story one might logically predict or expect ends like this.

Now the world hates them, these Jesus followers.
Betrayed by one of their own
They are hunted men now
They have nowhere to go
Nowhere to run
Their own people despise them
Forced to deny him
His own mother had to watch him suffer on the cross
Hes let them down.
It’s all gone wrong

We look back at our lord and remember and give thanks
But for us, its not easy still to stand up and be counted
For us there are other tests.

If you speak up about your faith at best they wont know what to make of it
Or they make mock, or call you names.
Call him names
Call our church names
Tell you your dreaming
You have been and are mistaken for following him
So we have our own trials our own reasons for disowning him

It’s as easy for us as the people in scripture before the cock crows

However even here we must remember there is always light in the story
And Late in our story today, we find them.
Like in our story today some stick by him
It comes in the shapes of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea

While others hide.

They take the body down and enbalm a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds
Much more than in the mary and Martha story.
More than the three kings
They find him a new tomb
New tombs are rare and expensive ostentatious when everyone is hiding

They Place him in it. Embalm
This is embalming of a king, costing lots and lots.
A visible Act a futile act on the face of it brave and foolish when they are on the run
Joseph is a rich man,. Spoke out as the counsel boiled up to this moment
Nicodemus who had met jesus in secret, he was a voice of dissent in the council as they led up to this
Afterwards after their best efforts, when its all gone wrong

These two
They don’t know where the dawn comes from
Logic says hide, he let us down
But they are not only spending a fortune they are taking a great risk
The world hates the followers so they have to do these things In secret
So this is very brave when there’s no logical reason for it, he has failed, in ignominy
When he’s so badly let them down

Made them pariahs

There’s nothing left here but faith in him despite everything, in the face of everything

What about us today though
today for us we have lessons to learn from these two today today.
Lessons for all people of good Friday
How many times have we faced this moment in our own lives.
When it all seems like Jesus promises have not come true.
When hes let us down.

If he was real this wouldn’t have happened
If he was real the world wouldn’t do X or Y to us
The Psalms are full of people crying out
Saying how its all so unfair
Where if it had all been true he would have stopped this

None of us know what we will do in that moment until we face that moment.
Until our lives take a turn for the worse
Then we will know.

One day in our faith story we may find its all gone wrong.
And he hasn’t come to rescue us

for our church today?
Outside this church the world goes on
Our congregations shrink
shops are open
consumerism has slowed a little

It may seem our lord seems to have abandoned us
The world seems to have moved away from our lord
It may seem hard and even pointless to have faith in our lord.
The world has moved away from us
But we are still here
Then There are more mundane abandonments
On a mundane day to day basis we may have to defend our faith to those that are bemused
detached, angry, or who don’t have a high opinion of the followers of Jesus or anyone of any faith.
So in that respect we all live in good Friday.

Society lives on in ways that ever more resembles the hopelessness of Good Friday
Or in our lives or we may face our own good Friday moment when real and existential things happen to us
When hope seems silly illogical thing to have, when common sense says this is mad!
I think at that point we may have to simply find a way to carry on

Like Nicodemus and Joseph today.
Even when its all impossibly dark
Despite all logic they carry on
Certainly don’t waste a fortune on this failed escapade
Nothing logically says carry on
But here they are, they are present for the lord.
even when its at its worst
At its most illogical
This is what their actions in todays story asks us
Each of us here today

How we live, how we might react when everything points to it all being untrue?
This is what Good Friday asks us.
This is what we have to ponder today
When hard times hit
When our churches empty
When everyone thinks we are mad to follow a Jesus that is so clearly not a real messiah
When people laugh
Blame
What we will we do
what did we do
what should we do.

The hopelessness of good Friday, the seeming logical futility of faith when the world says everything points to it being wrong?
on those days when we struggle to follow a God we cant find, or see, or know, or pray to.
What is our church going to do
what are you going to do.
These are the questions Good Friday asks
These are the questions Jesus asks us on good friday
The only answer is yours.

John the Baptist, Gods value system and ours

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Sermon on Luke 3 7-18
In a reasonably high church I was dressed very scruffy and unshaven

This sermon has been on my mind since before I knew I had to write it. To the extent poor Sue got her Monday compline session gazumped by me doing John in compline when that was hers.  I was imagining doing this sermon before I had read this week’ readings.  Also originally I wasn’t doing this week for a sermon I was considering before I knew I had to write it.  I don’t believe in coincidences like that.

I think the reason why I am so attracted to it, is that it contains one the most important messages we can ever know about the love of God.

It begins with the reason I am dressed up like this.

John is dressed up in the most un priest like garb of all, unshaven, dressed in camel hair, eating locust and honey.  

This is Jesus cousin, the first person to know Jesus when he leapt inside his mothers womb, foretold by the angel Gabriel, prophesied by Isaiah and the man who baptised Jesus in the Jordan. The man Jesus called the greatest of all. Dressed in the clothes far removed from priestly garb. Baptising the outcasts, dressed in the most irregular garb.

And he’s baptising Tax collectors, and soldiers and they are asking him what should we do.

Meanwhile, those dressed appropriately that are in charge of tradition and the rites of religion are called  “a nest of vipers”.

Take note, no tradition, no rite, no dress, no social position, no respectable look, or dress is valued here.  What is held up as the path to righteousness is baptism, which leads to repentance that leads to change that leads to dealing with people fairly and as valued human beings.  Maling straight paths for Jesus.

Honestly, if you want to know the very kernel of what John is saying doing here, it is just that. Changing direction after coming into contact with the holy spirit and being baptised is what matters.  However, none of these things works on their own.  

The Pharisees who came to be baptised thought a quick dip and they are sorted.  John rather eloquently informed them that the axe was sat at the bottom of the tree for those who were the nest of vipers.

So that’s it, that’s why I am dressed like I am today, because being dressed in priestly garb may serve many purposes in clarity of what role we have, and in the liturgy of the church but it has zero effect on salvation.

Also what society thinks of us, again this is not important, he showed all of us how to be Christian.  John was not dressed in Garb liable to gain him top seats at the table.  What matters to John is being who he wants us to be.  He was helping the occupiers and their agents come before God, he was wiping their sins clean and setting them on the path through asking them to repent which isn’t some punitive thing, it’s simply changing direction. Not through the threat of the axe, but through being willing to do as the other outcasts do and ask what they need to do t follow  and then follow.

I sat in that pew a long time ago and said I’m doing it all wrong, I’m not worthy and I need help.  Throwing yourself at him and saying help me. 

when I did my studies I comforted myself that he called pagans (Abraham), persecutors (paul), Tax collectors, Matthew, and so on and so forth.   I used to use a saying when I felt unworthy of my calling to LLM. “If he can change Saul into Paul then there’s hope for us all. What we are, what we were, how we dress, how we sound like, what we think we could do, how valued we are in society etc etc all those labels we place value on and set store by and give people status.

They matter not one single bit, not one single bit. There cant be any clearer example of that than today’s reading, here’s a bloke dressed like a tramp, baptising people. People are called to his example, and he’s baptising the outcasts and castigating the pillars of society. Not because they are pillars but because of what that’s done to their ability to throw themselves at Jesus’ feet and ask how to change and then change.

That is the value system of God, I want you to think about in the next week, what does this reading where a tramp baptises outcasts and they ask what can I do? Where the pillars of society are as nothing, and those who feel they are nothing important are valued.  Again, not because they are pillars, but because the things they value are not the things God values, the two are not mutually exclusive but if we get them and hold them up internally as proof of being righteous. We missed the point.

That’s why a man dressed like a tramp can preach, a man that isn’t following tradition here today. But the point is as long as we all do what the outcasts in todays story do and ask the question “what do I have to do” and change direction we have got the point of today’s story. 

The great and good of societies and the value system of God is on display here.   We need to aim to be seen as followers of the love that is coming into the world of jesus, as opposed to anything else.


That’s so powerful by the way.  Because from that moment on there is nothing, and no one that can affect your self-worth in this world. Not a person, or an organisation, or a job, or a car or anything or anyone! Ever ever again.

You are precious, and righteous and valued in the eyes of God.  God sets your worth and he came into the world to share our mess and die for us. Not dressed a a lord, but as a child with nowhere to go, like a reviled refugee coming over on a boat, when the inn or the country was full.

what did he do?

He just tipped our world on its head.

So apologies for the garb or lack of it, but you see.

Albeit it serves some purposes, It actually doesn’t matter. None of it. My worth and yours is entirely, defined, owned by and shown by a god who died for me and for you. Nothing that happens in this world or the next can change that fact.

You, all of you, every single person ever born  can never be unworthy or less than loved to the extent you are precious enough to die for.

In advent we await that loves entry into the world, announced by John.

Amen