tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58468640495248461282024-03-14T00:43:13.488+13:00The Elves are Heading WestThoughts on Life and Faith as Everything ChangesUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger122125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-88142053776649170672013-01-06T20:00:00.000+13:002013-01-06T20:00:07.100+13:00Photos of New ZealandFor those who like photos - my photo blog - with occasional reflections on life in New Zealand can be found <a href="http://orionturnscartwheels.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">HERE</a> at 'Orion turns cartwheels'Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-31181501264320411302013-01-06T16:07:00.002+13:002013-01-06T16:07:20.899+13:00Through the bible in a yearAs it is still early in the year, it may be worth pointing out that I am encouraging my congregation to read through the Bible in 2013<br />
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There are some hints and tips for how to approach this, <a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/12/31/reading-through-the-bible-in-a-year/" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
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The scheme through to the end of February <a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2013/01/03/reading-through-the-bible-in-a-year-scheme/" target="_blank">HERE</a><br />
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And a daily reflection on one or more of the readings - the latest is <a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2013/01/05/through-the-bible-in-a-year-january-6/" target="_blank">HERE</a> - but if you follow the categories tab at the left hand side of the blog 'Through the Bible in a Year' It will take you to the most up to date reflection<br />
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Blessings in the LORD on your reading and Life in Him, this yearUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-48088093870809599762013-01-06T15:51:00.001+13:002013-01-06T15:51:30.235+13:00Sermon for January 6 - Epiphany 2013<div style="text-align: center;">
I have moved the blog to a new site - but realise that this one still gets quite a bit of traffic</div>
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For those looking for my more recent sermons then follow this link</div>
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<a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2013/01/06/sermon-for-epiphany-2013/" target="_blank">Sermon for Sunday January 6 - EPIPHANY 2013</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-88459732116179198222012-08-11T12:48:00.001+12:002012-08-11T12:48:08.375+12:00Sermon for Sunday August 12th - 2012. Eleven after Pentecost, Year B<div style="text-align: center;">
This blog is slowly moving home</div>
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This sermon can be found <a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/08/11/sermon-for-sunday-august-12th-2012-eleven-after-pentecost-year-b/" target="_blank">HERE</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-72917491442669265332012-08-02T13:24:00.000+12:002012-08-02T13:24:41.727+12:00Sermon for Sunday August 5th 2012 - Tenth after Pentecost, Year B - The Serving Heart<div style="text-align: center;">
This website has moved</div>
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<a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/08/02/sermon-for-sunday-august-5th-2012-10-after-pentecost-year-b-the-serving-heart/" target="_blank">Sermon for this week found here</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-50959036543009383922012-07-24T09:01:00.003+12:002012-07-24T09:02:42.578+12:00Bible Study notes for Sunday July 29th - 2 Samuel 11<br />
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Bible
Study notes for Sunday July 29th</div>
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Texts</div>
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2
Samuel 11:1-15</div>
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Ephesians
3:14-21</div>
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John
6:1-21 - Jesus feeds the 5000 and walks on the water</div>
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(You
might like to read all three passages first to get a feel for how they might
fit together)</div>
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For
the sake of time we’ll concentrate just on one of the passages for now, again
the passage from Second Samuel, but keep in mind the feeding of the 5000</div>
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Have
someone read it through slowly, whilst everyone else listens - (not following
in your own bibles) - asking ‘what catches your attention in this passage? Does
it leave you with questions?’</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">[At
whatever point you have but a few minutes left for Study, Make sure to leave
time at the end to read it through in this way at the end - ‘What is Christ
saying to his church in these verses?’ is there a message for us at St John’s?
Respond in prayer]</i></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u>Questions</u></b></div>
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1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>So
this week we return to the story of David, and the well known story of his
adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband, Uriah</div>
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1.1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>There are several fundamental principles of our
life under God operating here - take a moment to read Genesis 3:1-7 and bear it
in mind as you continue the study.</div>
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2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span> Last week David was at rest and looking around
for something to do. Remind one another of what came to David’s mind. </div>
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2.1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span> David’s
thought seems to be ‘what can I do for the LORD?’. Refresh your memory of the
LORD’s response to David (2 Sam 7.8-11)</div>
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2.2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span> Discuss
the question “Which more commands our attention and our actions, that which the
LORD has done for us, or that which we think we might do for the LORD?”</div>
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2.3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>What Does the LORD require of us?</div>
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3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>The
Old Testament narratives are not mere recounting of events. The writer
skillfully draws our attention to certain features [This is why retelling Bible
stories in a disconnected manner is unhelpful - we miss the deeper underlying
story which is being told. In this respect a more literal translation is also a
great help] In this weeks reading we note that David has not gone out with his
army to battle. He has remained in Jerusalem</div>
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3.1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Compare 2 Sam 11.1-2 with 2 Sam 7.1-2</div>
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3.1.1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>What are the differences?</div>
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3.1.2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>What are the commonalities?</div>
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4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>In
both cases David responded to what he ‘saw’</div>
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4.1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Read Jesus teaching from the sermon on the
mount, Matthew 6:19-24</div>
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4.1.1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Note that Jesus puts the teaching about our eyes
between a teaching on our treasures and our hearts, and about serving God and
Mammon. How does this correspond to David and Bathsheba?</div>
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4.1.2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>What does this suggest about the problem with
our ‘eyes’</div>
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4.1.3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>We talk about ‘setting our heart’ on something,
or on a course of action. In both cases his response was wrong, in the second
calamitously so - By what Sense is David ‘shown’ his errors? (2 Sam 7:4-5; 2
Sam 12:1)</div>
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4.1.4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>Reflect back on the primeval sin in Genesis 3 -
what is the fundamental conflict regarding the senses?</div>
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4.1.5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span>In 2 Sam 11:2-4, David ‘Saw’ and ‘took’
Bathsheba - Reflect once more on 2 Sam 7:8-11 - Here David is Told that it is
the LORD who has provided all that he needs and more. Next week as the story
unravels further and David’s sin comes home to roost, part of the Word of the LORD
to David is couched in the same terms <span style="font-family: Times;">if that had been too little, I would
have added as much more. </span><sup><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">9</span></sup><span style="font-family: Times;">Why have you
despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">2 Sam 12:8-9. </b></span>What is the
fundamental principle of faith underlying: the response of Eve in the garden;
David and Bathsheba and the provision of Bread for the 5000? (You may also like
to reflect further on the response of the Father to the Elder Son in the
parable of the Prodigal ‘Everything I have is yours’)</div>
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[Reading
the narrative of 2 Samuel, we may well miss the import of 2 Sam 7, so great is
David’s fall in 2 Sam 11, yet it seems clear that David’s heart was wandering
from Devotion to God, back in 2 Sam 7. His heart was not set to respond to
God’s command, rather he was already looking to be his own lord, casting around
for something he could do for God from his own instigation. Becoming the
creator of a new reality. Setting himself up as God]</div>
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5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>Read
the passage from Ephesians 3 - How does this Speak to all we have thought about
today? How well do we Hear this? Why does this magnify the significance of
‘praying continually’ as St Paul puts it?</div>
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6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span>Give
thanks to the LORD for is goodness to us. Pray for a heart to desire only to
respond to his living Word, the source of Life.</div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-82600591992862517362012-07-21T20:21:00.002+12:002012-07-21T20:21:20.980+12:00Sermon for Sunday July 22nd, 2012<div style="text-align: center;">
Sermons and longer pieces have followed the elves and now can be found at</div>
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theelvesareheadingwest.com</div>
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This week's is to be found <a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/07/21/sermon-for-sunday-july-22nd-2012-making-peace/">HERE</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-58777556830236800152012-07-17T12:05:00.001+12:002012-07-17T12:05:39.266+12:00Study notes for the Old Testament reading - Sunday July 22ndBible Study notes for Sunday July 22nd<br />
(Apologies for the formatting which doesn't seem to have transferred from the original)<br /><br />Texts<br />2 Samuel 7:1-16<br />Ephesians 2:11-22<br />Mark 6:30-34,53-56 (Note - the verses missing from this passage tell of the feeding of the five thousand - which is the set gospel reading in a couple of weeks time, but from John)<br /><br /><br />(You might like to read all three passages first to get a feel for how they might fit together)<br />For the sake of time we’ll concentrate just on one of the passages for now, from 2 Samuel <br /><br />The theme of our worship this week is ‘Making Peace’ - in this passage we see the beginnings of our misunderstanding of Peace, and how a false peace can lead us into deep trouble<br /><br />Have someone read it through slowly, whilst everyone else listens - (not following in your own bibles) - asking ‘what catches your attention in this passage? Does it leave you with questions?’<br /><br />[At whatever point you have but a few minutes left for Study, Make sure to leave time at the end to read it through in this way at the end - ‘What is Christ saying to his church in these verses?’ is there a message for us at St John’s? Respond in prayer]<br /><br /><br />Questions<br /><br />What is the context given to us in the text (vs 1) for this incident in David’s life?<br />
<br />Always it is worthwhile having the whole story in mind - look at 2 Samuel 11.1 - again David is ‘at rest’ - what is the outcome?<br />
<br />Both passages (chapter 7 and 11) speak of David with time on his hands and a wandering mind. He is musing - his intention to build a house for the LORD is not made explicit, but its seeds are in his heart. Is there some kind of warning here?<br />
<br />To come back to the passage for this week What is David’s concern (vs 2)?<br />Does this seem a reasonable concern to us?<br />What do you think might be David’s motivations - what feelings might he have which precipitate this incident? (vs 2)<br />
<br />Nathan responds positively to David vs 3 - but the LORD speaks to David through Nathan otherwise, in two parts vvs 5-7 beginning ‘Go and tell my servant David’ and 8-16<br />
<br />vs 5 - David has good intentions, but they are distorted by a poor understanding of the nature of God and his relationship to him. The LORD refers to ‘my servant David’ and then says “are you the one to build a house for me to live in” What does this suggest is the nature of David’s error?<br />
<br />Read verses 6-7 What do the LORD’s words suggest about the nature of God?<br />
<br />[Take a moment to read from Sunday’s Epistle - Ephesians 2-19-22 - what does this passage suggest about the nature of David’s error? (2 Sam 2:6-7)]<br />
<br />David has it in mind to do something for the LORD<br />Is that what it means to be ‘the servant of the LORD’?<br />
<br />Read Verses 8-16 - what is the highly repetitive element, emphasis of these verses cf David’s intention alluded to in verse 2?<br />
<br />David has set out with a desire to ‘do something for God’ (Like Martha in the story of Martha and Mary??) A desire perhaps coming from an inner restlessness, or ‘idle hands’?? Yet the whole emphasis of the passage is on what God has done and will do for David. Sit in the quiet with this for a few minutes perhaps - what is it saying to us?<br />
<br />Although we see a sort of fulfilment of the word of the LORD in the life and reign of Solomon, son of David - the critique of David’s intention still holds good. The Word of the LORD is actually fulfilled in Christ. In John 1:14 we read ‘And the Word became flesh, and dwelt amongst us’ - the word in the Greek which we render ‘dwelt’ is in fact Tabernacled. Take time to give thanks to God that he condescends to dwell amongst his people and build us into a dwelling place for his Name, revealed to us in Christ.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-70455094511369477942012-07-07T11:39:00.002+12:002012-07-07T11:39:31.932+12:00Sermon for Sunday July 8th - 2012<div style="text-align: center;">
'The Elves are Heading West' - has moved</div>
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This sermon can be found </div>
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<a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/07/07/sermon-for-sunday-8th-july-2012-weakness-and-life/">HERE</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-13746231417216520882012-06-30T13:42:00.000+12:002012-06-30T13:43:02.996+12:00Sermon for Sunday, July 1st - 5 after Pentecost - 2012<div style="text-align: center;">
The Elves are heading even further west</div>
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The Sermon can be found in their new home</div>
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<a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/06/30/sermon-for-sunday-july-1st-5-after-pentecost/">Here</a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-74669474465017010112012-06-23T13:55:00.003+12:002012-06-23T13:55:43.300+12:00Sermon for Sunday June 24th - St John the EvangelistSermon for Sunday June 24th<br /><br />(Patronal Festival, St John the Evangelist - Sermon)<br /><br />John 21:20-25<br />
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“Purity of heart is to will one thing” <br />
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Soren Kierkegaard</div>
<br /><br />This past week has seen the long planned ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro. Dame Barbara Stocking, the director of one of the world’s largest charitable organisations, Oxfam said this ahead of the summit : "This is urgent. As the people with the least struggle to survive, the consumption habits of the richest are stripping the Earth of its resources. The situation is dire. We cannot go on living beyond the Earth's boundaries. The people suffering are the poorest. These are issues that will affect us all for ever." This statement, no one in their right minds could possible have any issues with. The very future of the planet is at best on a cliff edge. There are some, and I have to say I tend to agree with them, who say we have already fallen off the edge and are accelerating rapidly towards a Very Messy endgame. <br /><br />Of course, given the extreme gravity of the situation all the worlds most powerful people were there. Of course? Well actually no. President Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel were all noticeable by their absence. Where were they?? In Mexico agonizing over the economic maelstrom. It reminds me of the story of the man who is having a heart attack, but doesn’t call the ambulance because he is too busy on the phone to his bank manager. Actually I made that story up - no-one would be that stupid or that distracted would they?? Just the other day Sam was reading the story of the first Arctic Explorers and how when their ships were crushed by the ice and they had to go on foot, they took along alll their fancy furniture - or there is the story of the Indian Mutiny when the English families fled with all their possessions - and the way we are told was littered with stuffed owls and the like. We are constantly reminded if a building is on fire - Do not go back for your possessions - yet we are Captivated and distracted by what is secondary<br /><br />We live in an age of distraction, of captivation by that which is of no value. One in which our attention is being continually dragged hither and thither. There are so many loud, yet thin voices clamouring for our attention that in the midst of it we have not the capacity to determine what really counts. The planet is dying but the worlds leaders are busy bean counting. Obviously we have decided that it is better to be rich on a dead planet or poor on a living one?? We may all starve but at least we’ll have our stuffed owls.<br /><br />But Distraction form that which really counts - the matters of Life and death is not a uniquely modern phenomenon. Our gospel reading today is prefaced by the words of Jesus to Peter - Follow me! - not just words - a Command of the one who declares “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life - How MOre significant can it be, the One who encompasses Eveything - Follow Me! - Imperative. But even Peter is distracted “Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, ‘Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?’ When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about him?’” Jesus is not even for a moment drawn in - ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’ That is None of your concern - and then the renewed command - ‘Follow me!’<br /><br />Today, in the depths of winter - the season of darkness, we celebrate the feast of our patron St John the Evangelist. The one who writes that the light shines in the darkness - “the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper” John of course is symbolised by the Eagle - he is the Evangelist who gives us a gospel of breathtaking scope. He soars HIgh above the perspective of the other three Evangelists. His gospel begins at the beginning of Everything, before Creation came to be. And leads us into the Life that is eternal. It is a breathtaking aerial vision, soaring as it were high not over the earth, but above everything.<br /><br />But why does the Eagle soar so high? Because he enjoys the view? No - he soars as high as he possibly can in order to give us the best possible view of his subject. Like any bird of prey the eagle only has eyes for that which will feed him - he soars high that he might find food, Life. John knows that Christ Alone can feed him, And for John that food is Christ himself. ‘Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life’. John’s Vision is utterly consumed by that which he feeds on, the very life of Christ. John the Baptist at the beginning of the gospel declares to us the purpose of the gospel “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” and anyone who knows about the Passover Lamb knows one thing - you have to eat the Lamb. <br /><br />John for all his transcendent perspective is by far the most imminent, the most intimate of all the gospels. Matthew, Mark and Luke all to a certain extent because they see Jesus and his life in temporal context present a Jesus who we follow as if it were through thick woods - we keep losing him - he hides - ‘who do you say that I am?’ is the question they ask. Not John. Soaring High above the story he Sees Christ clearly ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ Cries the Eagle. With John we are not struggling through the woods - continually losing sight of Jesus, no - we are up close - up too close for some <br /><br />“How can this man give us his flesh to eat? ‘This word is hard. Who can accept it . . . and many drew back from following him’ - ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ ‘ you shall never wash my feet’ Up close - and personal. Whoever eats me has life - whoever knows me has life. John refers to himself as ‘the disciple who had leant on the breast of Jesus’ - John is Intimate with Jesus - and of course he refers to himself as ‘the beloved disciple’. John loves Jesus. Jesus loves John.<br /><br />And we might say - ‘The Disciple whom Jesus Loved? Well that’s not fair! - Why does Jesus have a favourite?? Our gospel reading with Peter being distracted by the presence of John following Jesus and Peter, follows immediately on from Jesus telling Peter this Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) It is perhaps no surprise that Peter looks back and asks “but what about Him” Jesus words ‘If I will that he remain until I come . . .” Might suggest to us that the disciple whom Jesus loves will get off lightly. Of course this was the way in a sense the way it was read and so John corrects it and says - “Jesus did not say that he would not die, merely If I will that he remain til I come, what is that to you”<br /><br />Yet John does more - by never referring to himself by name - he leaves the door open. We may ask - How does John know that Jesus loves him . . . but of course that is it. John Knows he is loved by Jesus and thus he is always to be found with Jesus, close to Jesus - even when Jesus is in close conversation with Peter, John is following, John is at the Cross, John looks into the empty tomb and sees and believes, John reclines upon the breast of Jesus. John represents All who Know that Jesus Loves them, deep in their hearts.<br /><br />Peter, on the other hand is always a step removed - Peter is bold in his assertions about Jesus, but his actions belie him. I will lay down my life for you! he says. Jesus says that that is the mark of Love - to lay down one’s life. Peter makes out that he loves Jesus, but his actions reveal his heart. It is John (and of course the women) who go to the cross with Jesus - they are shown to be the ones who love him. <br /><br />John writes in his first epistle - we love because he first loved us. His love for Jesus comes from deep knowledge of Jesus love for him. John knows he is the beloved disciple. And that asks of us two questions. For Peter certainly in some sense knew. In his head he knew Jesus was the Christ. He knew in his head - but he had not yet been captured in the totality of his being by this love of God for him - it was as yet a concept. Do we know we are so loved? Is the love of Jesus for us a good doctrine, a comfortable doctrine even, one that gives us hope and strength - or do we KNOW he loves us, deep within our being. John leaves the door open - for those who come to KNOW that they are loved of Jesus, may love him well in return, may themselves recline upon the breast of Jesus.<br /><br />Peter as yet has but a weak love for Jesus - lord - you know that I love you he pleads three times . . . but not yet as you love me (in the Greek we see this plainly - Jesus asks do you agape me (love me with all you have and are) twice - and twice Peter responds I phileo you (love you as a friend) - finally Jesus says ‘do you phileo me’ and that is enough - but Peter is still not there. It is enough, it is a starting point, but as yet Peter doesn’t only have eyes for Jesus - he is too easily distracted by John - what about Him?? - if he loved Jesus with all he had and all he was, then he would never have asked about John.<br /><br />Jesus asks Peter, he asks us - do you agape me. Do you only have eyes for me? John the soaring eagle spies out the entire terrain, in the midst of history he spies out Jesus of NAzareth - but indeed as he surveys Everything - In the beginning was the Word - All things came into being through him - He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End - He is the Way, the Truth, the Life. John can say in a way no other lover can - He is my everything - he is Everything. The Eagle as he swoops over all of Creation can only see Christ. He consumes his vision. Behold the Lamb of God! he cries out to us, the Lamb that was slain from before the foundation of the Earth.<br /><br />Such a compelling vision of Christ - but one that is Utterly rooted in the materiality of our world. Some of the early church fathers thought of John as a Spiritual gospel. Love expressed as a sentiment - the eternal Life as something immaterial. Yet it is John who makes the very flesh of Jesus every bit as important as his words, as his message. We may listen to the institution of the eucharist in the other gospels - we may hear Jesus saying, This is my body, this is my blood - but we are required to make as it were a spiritual conceptual leap. John leaves us in no doubt - Eat my flesh - Drink my blood - the Word becomes Flesh. And this fleshly word encompasses Everything. <br /><br />We cannot read the gospel of John and end up with a faith that is purely about our personal salvation, his Vision is All encompassing, and throughout the gospel John portrays Christ as both the Source and the End of All of Creation, the Alpha and the Omega. And thus to beginning today thinking about the Earth Summit was not irrelevant. <br /><br /> At the heart of the problem the Earth faces as set out by Barbara Stocking were these words “As the people with the least struggle to survive, the consumption habits of the richest are stripping the Earth of its resources.” the consumption habits of the richest . . . those who take and take and take from the world.<br /><br />As we Love Christ as he loves us - we are hidden in him, as Moses is hidden in the Rock - we identify with Him and in Him we Become the way of Love - the way of Love, not to take and take and take, but to Give and Give and Give. The Earth Summit subtitle is ‘sustainable growth’ - yet the crying need is to contract, to become Less. The Human footprint on the earth is far beyond anything the planet can sustain - for it was created to sustain those who lived from God’s provision, not their rapacious greed. It was created to sustain those who although they had nowhere to lay their head - yet discovered the hospitality of God. It was created as a home for those who though they were poor discovered that in Christ they possessed all things. Christ reveals to us both the Living God and the True human being. He took nothing. He gave himself. That is Love. And John is Clear in his gospel and his other writings that we are to imitate Christ in the way of self giving love - as I have loved you, Love one another<br /><br />And again as the evangelist writes in his first epistle We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. <br />Behold the Lamb of God - Our Life, and the Salvation of the whole world - The one who calls us away from the distractions of the world to a life lived in, through, and for him alone.<br /><br /><br />AmenUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-81617439959738694912012-06-21T12:40:00.001+12:002012-06-21T12:40:09.963+12:00Course on John's gospel - Session 2<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://mp3.godzone.net.nz/roslyn/mp3/Light_in_the_Darkness_2.mp3">Audio link to recording of our second session in the series on John</a></div>
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<br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-68535742064557103512012-06-15T10:45:00.001+12:002012-06-15T10:45:18.575+12:00Moving homeThe Elves are heading West is heading to theelvesareheadingwest.com<br />
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Here is a link to my first serious blog on the new site<br />
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<a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/06/15/schism/">http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/06/15/schism/</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-70942233953120630742012-06-09T12:15:00.003+12:002012-06-21T15:43:03.138+12:00Course on John's Gospel - session 1<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://mp3.godzone.net.nz/roslyn/mp3/Light_in_the_Darkness.mp3">Link to 'Light in the darkness' Part 1</a></div>
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<a href="http://mp3.godzone.net.nz/roslyn/mp3/Light_in_the_Darkness.mp3" target="_blank">A study course on the Gospel of John</a><br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-46961984494402178742012-06-09T11:43:00.001+12:002012-06-10T12:31:07.016+12:00Sermon for Sunday June 10, 2012 - First after trinity Year B<div style="text-align: left;">
Sermon for Sunday June 10, 2013<br />
Samuel 8:1-20, 11:14-15<br />
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1<br />
Mark 3:20-35<br />
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<a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.com/2012/06/10/sermon-for-sunday-10th-june-2012-first-after-trinity/">Link to Audio file - with some significant differences to the text </a></div>
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<i>To another he said, ‘Follow me.’ </i></div>
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<i>But he said, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ </i></div>
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<i>But Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead;</i></div>
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<i> but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’</i></div>
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We don’t need to have been keeping company with Jesus very long before he says something which sounds either troubling, or confusing, or unintelligible. If Jesus’ words don’t at some time or other do serious damage to the way we see the world, then to be frank we haven’t being paying much attention. I have told the story elsewhere about a class I once held in which we told the parable of the Prodigal son. On the occasion in question someone was paying attention and exclaimed in a very angry voice - ‘That’s not fair!!’. And I was So happy :) Because it proved that she’d heard it. HOw many times had I told that story and no-one had heard it. It had shaken her that God’s Love is So extravagant, his forgiveness So encompassing, it was a Scandal in her ears<br />
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Yet those moments of enlightenment are few and far between. We often hear these discomforting words of Jesus and as if afflicted by a fly landing on our nose as we sleep, we rouse slightly, re-arrange the pillows and go back to the land of nod. It’s not often that the words of Jesus have us sitting up in a cold sweat wondering if the world is just about to end. Which only goes to show how little we understand what is going on, because that is precisely what Jesus is announcing. His death on the Cross is The End of the old order, the end of the World as we know it and he now invites us into a New way of Living, a New Life in which so much that is old and familiar and comforting is blown away, and shown to be a deception. Jesus in announcing the Kingdom of God announces the end of the world as we know it. He says of the coming of the New Age, when the Spirit Comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgement: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgement, because the ruler of this world has been condemned. the World is proved Wrong by the life death resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The End is upon us and thus, the urgency of the message, to repent and believe the good news.<br />
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Can I put off following Jesus til after my father’s funeral? No! This is desperately urgent! If we had a Tsunami warning or an Earthquake - would we be saying hang on a moment! I need to bury my father? Jesus announces The End of the World, the Old ways are dead. The Old certainties, the old securities are being revealed to be lies, false - Wake Up! <br />
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Jesus using this Scandalous language reveals that the Kingdom of God is not some version of what we know and are comfortable with, just a little bit better. Indeed that with which you are Comfortable he says is the problem! What makes you feel secure - your money, your career, your family even - this security is false. What you called security was in fact slavery, what you thought Life, was in fact Death. We sense our need of this security when we think say of our Pensions, or lack of them - will they be enough - we sense if they were we would be secure - or we think of our families, ‘will they be around to care for me when I am old?’ We long for the security family brings. But none of these things are at all secure. In Jesus declaration of the Kingdom of God, even the bonds of family are shown to be called radically into question. My Kingdom, he says, is not of this world. My Kingdom is Only to be discovered in letting go of our old securities and discovering our total security in God alone. <br />
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And there are clues in our past to this. Deep in our story there was something that happened which prefigured this Kingdom of God. The people were in Slavery in Egypt - they were oppressed by Pharaoh, the whole political order had them in subjugation, they were captive. They were as good as Dead. But God heard their groans and rescued them, brought them from death to life . . . and then took them out into the wilderness where in the words of perhaps my favourite poet Norman Nicholson, there were ‘Nobbut God’ NOthing - Just God and the work of the wilderness was to teach them to discover their Life in God and thus to be his people. -And all of a sudden the people started to yearn for the security of their old captivity. As if woken up - they just wanted to crawl back to sleep - Oh that we could be back in Egypt!! They began to imagine that life was really better in Egypt - they literally started to hallucinate a bout a land of wonderful food and comfort. God in his endless patience goes to work on this people - training them in learning to put their trust not in any rulers of men, but in Him and him alone - because he has a purpose for this people that they will be a light to the nations - that They will reveal his life in the world. Yet . . . they ache for another security, even though that security is oppressive. As we do when we lose sight of the Scandalous nature of the gospel, that does not baptise the world as we know it but declares it has come to an end.<br />
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And so as we come to the story, the prophet and judge of Israel, Samuel, is confronted by the people demanding to have a King. And their reason? ‘So that we might be like other nations’ Because everyone else has one. Having a proper King - a visible King - a real government - well it makes us feel secure. There is nothing perhaps more disturbing than the sense that no-one is in control - and here is something Scandalous to cosy views of God and our faith, God has lost patience with them. Put another way - he hands them over to the consequences of their desires, but warns them of what will happen. This is what a King is Like “He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; 12and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. 15He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. 16He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. 17He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” And Note - this is not a warning against some kind of bogeyman King - this is what all Kings do - all human rulers - establish their power by putting the people under some form of subjugation - they take people to be in their armies and then they employ vast numbers to run the system they have devised and then they take taxes from everyone to keep his system operating. In other words you will all be slaves again, just as you were in Egypt. You will have a sham security, but bought at the price of your obedience to the way of the world. Or to use the analogy we have been using for some time now - you will be back in the tomb. We all too readily shape our faith so that it conforms to the way of the world and doesn’t threaten or disrupt it.<br />
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And so comes the biggest threat to us all, the biggest threat to our securities, the one who will tell us to leave our father’s funeral and follow him - Jesus comes onto the scene - to be the Obedient Israel, that is Free - to be the one who only has eyes for the rule of God his Father. And immediately we are given a sense of Jesus stepping into this place of death, this tomb. We Know that Christ harrows Hell - he descended to the dead. And this is enacted before our eyes. - there is a sense of oppressiveness, of death in Mark’s account - Jesus has just appointed the twelve - to be with him, to be sent out to proclaim the message and to cast out demons, as it were to start the revolution of New Life breaking in and immediately the crowds come pressing in - there is almost a sense of Life being Squeezed out - we hear ‘the crowd came together again so that they could not eat’ Life is under attack - being squeezed out. His family, alarmed by reports that he is out of his mind cannot get in the door, to ‘restrain him’ to make him captive - and then in the midst of it it becomes clear that all hell really does break lose as the Scribes come with their accusations that Jesus is casting out demons by ‘Beelzebub’ - casting out demons by the ruler of demons. All the world it seems is crying out Stop Him!!<br />
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As I said - for some the tomb was quite comfortable - in particular the Scribes and Pharisees - they had made friends with the powers that be and exercised considerable power and influence. If we imaging them purely as religious figures, then we may well miss what is going on in all of the gospels - it is too easy to take our categories and imagine that the Scribes and Pharisees were purely religious figures, that Jesus is coming to sort out the religious dimension of our lives, that Christianity is what we call a spiritual message - but that is not to hear the gospel in its context where there were no easy divisions between Spiritual and physical, between religious and political. These are our categories - the categories of those who have made our accommodations with the way of the world. The Pharisees were the gate keepers on issues of ritual purity - thus the peasants who produced the food were dependent on the word of the Pharisees for whether there produce was allowable or not. Matters of religion and economics were interwoven - the Pharisees were as much part of the political as the religious elite. Mark paints them as conspiring with the Herodians. Jesus in his coming is not dealing with purely religious matters - his coming threatens the whole political order. It begs the question Who is king?? To whom will you pledge allegiance? To whom will you pay your dues? For whom willyou live your Life? Who is King? Whose servant are you? WHose servant are we?<br />
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And interestingly Jesus both here and later uses an economic metaphor for his Ministry - he is the one who will tie up the strong man and plunder his house - he is the thief who comes in the night.<br />
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Just briefly there will no doubt be folk who worry about the unforgiveable sin, blasphemy agaisnt the Holy Spirt - well it is Very clear here what it means - the Pharisees saw the work of the Holy Spirit - the work of God - in the casting out of demons and called it the work of the devil - that is the blasphemy against the holy spirit. It is utter spiritual blindness, it is a denial that He comes to change Everything.<br />
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Is that a call to political activism? And in the first place the answer is No. Because God’s answer to the World is his people. That was the original call of Israel, to be the people of God and in their common life to reveal the Life of God. In and amongst themselves to reveal the New Creation, the Life of CHrist who is the first fruits, in Our Common Life. You will remember that I have spoken a couple of times about Jubilee - that the Israelites were called to exercise amongst themselves an economic way of being that was in stark contrast to the political economies of their neighbours. They were a people saved by God for the Glory of God - to be a light to the nations and that light was, as life is, multi dimensional, it was moral, but it was also political and economic. And so it is that Jesus comes to form a New Israel. As he embodies obedient Israel, so he forms a new people of God, a people whose life is his life. A people who in their common life reveal the life of Jesus, because their Life is the life of Jesus. A people who embody the principles of Jubilee as they live the life of the one who fulfils the year of the Lord’s favour. In the beginning was the Word, through whom all things were made. That Life that was the Light of all people, embodied all of life. Such that there was no dimension of life left unchallenged, and that includes the family. As I try gently to tell parents, Baptisms are not what we like to think of of family occasions. A post baptism party shouldn’t be something that mum and dad go off and celebrate - no it is the inclusion of the person in the People of God, the church, the party is the churches party. And for many families that actually means a division. For we are baptised into Christ and thus separated from all those who are not in Christ, because we are set apart to be a light - to be different and thus to reveal the life of our risen Lord. It is only because we have failed to hear the radical call to repentance, to New Life, to a Life where all that we once held dear is seen for what it was, a form of Captivity, that we see how radical Baptism is. And I guess that for many we feel the Scandal of the gospel in those words as much in the call of Jesus to let the dead bury their own. Who are my brother and sister and mother? Here says Jesus are my brother and sister and mother? Who are our brothers and sisters and mothers??<br />
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Yet that is the nature of Life - the Life of God revealed in Christ - it disturbs us, but it is Life. It is Not Safe, in that everything in which we have learnt to trust has been shown to be false. Jesus calls us out - to share in His Life - a Life of Freedom, for as the Isrealites plundered their captives Jesus by his death and resurrection has bound the strong man and plundered his property, even his whole house - Everything now belongs to him, and in that we find the only true security.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-55030149491941274702012-04-14T16:58:00.001+12:002012-04-14T17:06:59.754+12:00Sermon for Sunday 15th April - John 21Sermon for Sunday 15th April 2012<br />
Evensong<br />
John 21<br />
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Well as its the last time for a few weeks I’ll be preaching I thought I might just indulge myself a little by choosing the New Testament lesson myself - this Wonderful story from the end of John’s gospel. I Had thought I might indulge myself a little further. When I was a curate in Pudsey at a large evangelical church where the musical tradition was heavily weighted to modern songs and musical accompaniment I began one sermon by playing a piece of music that was Most definitely Not in that Genre - the Dies Irae from Verdi’s requiem. If you know it you will be most aware that it most definitely does Not fall into the easy listening acoustic guitar category of a lot of contemporary church music. And I had thought to as it were balance things up at this evensong service by playing a loud Christian Rock piece which I love, based on this story, but perhaps one indulgence is enough for the evening :)<br />
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And in part I have to do this for this reading is not found elsewhere in the Sunday Eucharistic lectionary this year and in part that is because people aren’t entirely convinced that it was in the original version of John’s gospel. It is one of two parts of John’s gospel that seem a little suspect. Interestingly, both have the theme of forgiveness. There is the story of the woman caught in adultery from Chapter 8, which I tend to think might actually be Luke’s and then this story - the restoration of Peter.<br />
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I’m spending some time of late thinking about the relationship of John’s gospel to Mark’s. There is evidence in places that John is very conversant with Mark and on one or two points seeks to put the record straight :) But here there is a very interesting connection. Mark has a somewhat disturbingly spartan account of the resurrection. There is no sign of the risen Jesus. Just a young man who tells them ‘Go tell his disciples, and Peter, that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you’<br />
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It’s Very interesting that this extra story in Johns gospel seems to follow on from MArk’s bald ending <br />
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Go tell his disciples, and Peter - the message seems to put Peter outside the flock - there is a work of restoration as we all know to be done - Peter has denied Jesus three times - but Mark leaves it there<br />
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But this addition to John’s gospel seems to respond to this unfinished business. Once more the disciples are fishing in Galillee - the Sea of Tiberias is another name for Galilee - and there is Peter, seemingly at a loose end. When we have failed someone very badly and know it, it can feel just like that - Life stops. What seemed a future of promise becomes one of pointlessness - such is the nature of broken human relationships. So Peter, tries returning to his old ways - in a sense giving up on this whole business of following Jesus. ‘I am going fishing’ he declares and the others agree to come along. And they catch nothing. <br />
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Jesus comes to stand on the shore - but they do not know him. the post resurrection accounts of Jesus are not bold - there is doubt, there is uncertainty. These stories are not written as simplistic narratives. Faith in the risen Christ as I said this morning is of a different category. And so the gospel accounts are not ‘Scientifically clean’ Proofs. They are written ‘that we might believe’ - but not written to Compel us to believe, rather to invite us in And so it is a seeming stranger on the shore (to steal the lyric of the rock song :) ) - he Knows them but they do not yet fully Know him. They will only come to fully know him as they love him more dearly and follow him more nearly and Jesus comes to invite them once more to pick up the journey -the disciples, oh yes, and Peter.<br />
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Of course they’d been fishing all night before and had a similar experience - a stranger asking them to let down their nets of the other side - a miraculous catch. But still it is not Peter but the disciple whom Jesus loved who Sees - the one who had Seen and believed in the tomb. The one whom I suggested last Sunday stands for us all and Stands for the church, the bride of Christ, the beloved (to use John’s own imagery from the Apocalypse)<br />
It is the beloved disciple who declares ‘It is the Lord!’ - like the herald in the story of the wise and foolish bridesmaids. SImon Peter we are told - ‘heard it was the Lord’ he does not yet see the mysterious Stranger as Jesus - and so hearing he clothes himself, as our first parents did when they heard Him walking in the garden in the cool of the day, hiding, jumping into the sea ( a place of death - of chaos - a place which denies the God who makes the sea turn back and appoints it s bounds and at the last will declare ‘and there was no more sea’)<br />
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Yet as Jesus once more calls, Peter begins to respond - it is Peter who climbs out of the water to finally haul the net ashore - the invitation of Jesus continues to find a place in his heart. They share breakfast. Still their eyes are not open. Still he is a stranger - yet at once known also. They dared not ask him who he was, because they knew it was the Lord. Actually this continues a theme from before the resurrection, when Philip asked ‘Show us the father’ - ‘DO you not yet know me Philip,’ he asked them? Don’t you yet know who I am? NOw they know who he is but the reality is as yet veiled form their sight. <br />
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But the moment must come. There is a sense of them eating in silence - a waiting. To Peter all there is is fear of Judgement - of the anger of Jesus. He has Utterly failed. What more can he expect. Perhaps he too had heard the words of the young man, ‘tell his disciples, oh, and Peter’, perhaps the other disciples weren’t too comfortable with him either - oh yes, they too had abandoned Jesus in the garden, but they’d never been foolish enough to promise otherwise. Certainly the account of John places Peter to one side of the other disciples. Jesus has revealed himself, to deal with Peter.<br />
And here we see the Grace of God, this Life that is Not like ours - this way that is not like ours. Jesus does not confront Peter with his terrible sin, except in that his restoration is if you like the shadow side. He uses the fact of Peter’s sin to restore him - He had denied him three times? Then he must be thrice restored. Indeed Jesus invites him to restoration on the same bold terms. ‘Do you love me more than these?’ ANd of course the reality was that deep down in his heart he did - that was why he made such foolish claims - he Did love his Lord - he was desperate to Get it right for Jesus. that is why he was utterly bereft, for he had utterly failed the one he loved. And the one he loved, restored him.<br />
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Three times - do you love me, do you love me, do you love me? Peter finally is hurt for he knows that Jesus Knows his heart - “Lord, you know everything, you know that I love you” Jesus is So tender in his restoration. He sees beyond all the falsity and betrayal, he never even mentions it, he just gives a way to full restoration. three time you have denied - three times I will allow you to speak your true heart, to come to yourself.<br />
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And each time Jesus restores him to the work he has given him. Feed my flock. Like the Prodigal son, he is not welcomed back just to be the lowest of the low - he is restored to being the shepherd of the flock of the Great Shepherd. As I have just fed my flock at breakfast, now you feed them. As I have cared for them, now You care for them - and the greatest blessing, Jesus restores to him that which in his heart of hearts Peter desired to do but could not. ‘I will lay down my life for you’ he had boldly declared. It was what he wanted to do, but the flesh was weak. And the flesh still is. Peter is still frail flesh as Jesus gracious invitation makes clear.<br />
Jesus restores to him the grace of the ultimate witness - Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.‘There was a time Peter, when it was all about you, all about your need to be right, you fastened your own belt, you went wherever you wanted - it was all about you, Peter’ - that was why you could not lay down your life, because you wanted to preserve yourself. But when you grow old, (perhaps when finally Your strength is spent?) you will stretch out your hands, the belt will not now be a sign of your own self assertion, but of submission to others who lead you were you do not wish to go - as Christ himself had finally willingly been led, not turning down the final cup of the Passover.<br />
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Yes, Peter Loves Jesus, but at the last his death will not be as the willing lamb - you will not want it. Peter is restored, but he is still Peter. He now knows himself far better. He knows that he doesn’t want death, but in the grace of Christ grace he will finally go that way.<br />
What happens in forgiveness is not that we are restored to be Better than we were before, but we are Fully restored. And given the depths to which Peter in his denial had stooped, that was No small thing<br />
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Peter is Peter. the beloved disciple is the beloved disciple - what of him, Peter asks. If it is my will that he remain til I come, what is that to you? I have told you my will for you, that is all you need to know. Follow me . . . his call is at once particular to each of us. As I said on Easter Day we all need to hear the call - we all need this confrontation with the Stranger on the shore<br />
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Follow me - Peter heard the Lord and responded - Follow me - we all need that restoration that Peter knew, he is slow to anger and swift to forgive. Perhaps Peter like the res of us needed to hear Jesus say, ‘you shall not forgive the other seven times, but seventy seven times’. Peter knows who he is now - he is weak and fallible - bold and adventurous - an amazing mass of contradictions - his life one moment speaking one word and the next another word - Yet Christ, God’s true and Sure Word has drawn him to himself, lifted him up out of the waters of despair as he had once lifted him from the waters of the lake. Follow me - for there and there only will you find All that you need - a sure ground for faith, a firm support for hope, and the assurance of sins forgiven<br />
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As we may too if we hear his Word to us and follow - Grace abounding to the chief of sinners, as another errant St put it - bread for the journey and a Home at the last<br />
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AmenUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-12205482541206993432012-04-14T16:55:00.000+12:002012-04-14T17:05:58.959+12:00Sermon for Sunday 15th April - Easter 2 2012Sermon for Easter 2 Sunday 15th April 2012<br />
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This Extraordinary Life<br />
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<i>“Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, </i><br />
<i>and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, </i><br />
<i>but
everything they owned was held in common. And with Great power the
Apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus’</i></div>
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The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead defies all categories - it makes no sense in our world - it is totally Other. And the evidence for it is not to be found in anyway like the evidence for anything else in all of Creation. Despite the plethora of books arguing ‘from the evidence’ either for or against and both with Compelling certainty - it cannot be Proven. But that is Not to say that there is no evidence. Rather there is evidence which fits the Extraordinary nature of that to which it attests. As the Resurrection of Jesus is an event Like Nothing ever encountered, it produces communities of people who live in a way that defies any explanation, Except that Christ is Risen and his Life is flowing out into the world. <br />
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The idea of a group of people living together in such freedom as the Acts church, not grasping onto things but freely sharing all they had with one another is beyond our categories our understanding of how the world is supposed to work. We hear it and Have to dismiss it. What we as Christians have come to call stewardship is nothing of the kind in the light of God’s Light and life. The Acts church are true stewards of their possessions - they do not understand them as their own - they only exist for the benefit of others. No economic model will account for this - no theory of life together - only the resurrection of Christ - the one who does not grasp but lays down His life. <br />
The one who does not hold on but lets go<br />
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And if we truly believe in the Resurrection then we too should be set free to live likewise, in such a way that people have no choice but to consider the Extraordinary Truth which they see enacted. It is This Visible lif of the church which lends the preaching of the Apostles its ‘Great Power’<br />
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So we come to the second Sunday in Easter - as I said last week -it takes time for this Easter message to sink in - it seems just too vast for us to grasp and comprehend and in a sense that is Important. For it is not to be grasped - it is to be received! And lived out. Even He in his great humility does not grasp at equality with God - If we try to grasp, if we wait until we grasp this Resurrection of Jesus - we will Never Live in its light. Mary Magdalene in the garden wanted to grasp - to take hold of him, but He wouldn’t allow her. ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” there would come a time shortly when she would be Given this life as a gift but for now she had to learn not to grasp.<br />
I remember as a teenager talking long into the early hours with a friend about God and at some point came up with an utterly cast iron ‘Proof’ of his existence. We were utterly thrilled - we’d Got it! We’d Grasped it. The following morning we arose excitedly to tell all we could meet - but when asked, ‘What is your proof?’ - we couldn’t remember :) It had slipped through our fingers<br />
The Life of God is not a set of rational propositions which we can master, He is Light and Love and Life. Like the daily bread for which we pray - it is His Life which is Given and we are to receive and live out of it, not grasp it. The Israelites in the Wilderness were taught this lesson early on in the Manna - they were told ‘collect only that which you need for the day’ - which is freely provided, but they tried to grasp more and it turned to maggots in their hands. Not grasping.<br />
Strangely enough it is Thomas of all people shows us the way of faith - the so called doubter - yet the only one who believed far better the way of Christ than his companions - ‘Let us also go that we may die with him’. Thomas Knew that to follow Christ meant Death - unlike those who hoped it wouldn’t and like Peter were prepared to gamble on it not being the case and so promise never to leave him. Not Thomas. But Thomas Knowing where it must go. And thus Knowing Jesus was going to his death he is all the more to be surprised by Joy. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ For Thomas it was not enough that one should come back from the dead - no. After all in the days following his resurrection there had been tales of tombs opening and the dead walking around - no for Thomas he had to Know that it was Jesus - I need to Know it is the Crucified one - I must see - I must touch and then Jesus appears to him - and it is Enough. He knows he doesn’t have to grasp him.<br />
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And that perhaps is why faith at the end of the day is expressed in obedience to him and not in a set of beliefs - for we cannot grasp what this resurrection life means except through the obedience of faith we live into it. In a sense there is no other way to discover the truth of the Christian faith than to live it. As I said all through Lent - the more we live into it - the more we discover it is true, the More we want to enter deeper and deeper in.<br />
We have to live the Resurrection life - the Life that Jesus sets free and gives to us - we have to live His Life. And unless we understand that we don’t begin to get off first base in this Christian Life - for the Resurrection teaches us that the Christian life is the life of the Risen Lord. The Christian Life Is the Life of the Risen Lord - there is No other Life. <br />
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And Christ begins to share that life with his disciples in these weeks following the Resurrection. Do not cling onto Me, Mary. I have given my Life for you and so now you may receive it ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’<br />
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Some years ago - when I was just starting out in my first parishes - I led a course on the Lord’s prayer. I began one session by paralleling what we might call the old words - with its ‘thee’s and temptations and trespasses, with a more modern form, with its ‘you’s and trials and sins. One member of the group, a good man and very devout, said he could not agree with the new form - he said ‘As human’s we can forgive trespasses, but only God can forgive sins’. We then began a very interesting discussion as to what if anything was the difference. But it struck me that this in a sense was precisely how the Scribes criticised Jesus when he healed the paralysed man “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Who Can forgive sins but God alone?? Actually it is a Very good question if we properly understand the nature of Sin, that it is a breaking of the bonds of the Love of God that sustain the world - Sin is Always against God - we are in a sense Never sinned against - Sin is Always a rejection of the Love of God, if often we find ourselves on the receiving end of it, ultimately it s God’s Love that is Rejected. As David said after his murder of Uriah and adultery with Bathsheba - Against You, You only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight’ When we are sinned against we always lose sight of God - We are afronted, but in the end all sin is only ever against God, against Life and Love. Who CAN forgive sins but God alone?? Only God truly Can forgive - which brings us to the next step in this extraordinary Resurrection account. We are already left breathless by the fact of the Resurrection - our hearts and minds racing and struggling to catch up with the reality of the Crucified AND Risen Lord and then ‘Jesus came and stood amongst his disciples and breathed on them and said ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’<br />
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He breathed on them the Very life of God - and what work did he give them to do?? It is odd how we do not think this so very odd - ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and . . .Love people?’, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and . . . heal people?’ But no. ‘Receive the Holy Spirit and - forgive’ Everything else is secondary - the first need is forgiveness. The first work of the cross is Forgiveness - Restoration. Because Only when one is Forgiven and knows it can we be Restored and so set free to Love and Heal. God Creates his New Heaven and New Earth by forgiving Sins - by reweaving the broken tapestry of Creation, as it were remaking all the delicate connections through which Love and life can flow. <br />
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As anyone who has ever been forgiven much will tell you, it makes All the difference in the world. As Jesus said of the woman ‘She who has been forgiven much loves much’ Forgiveness precedes Love. Without Forgiveness Love cannot flow. We need First to forgive and we say - Ah this is so hard, but the point is this - it s not Our life - it is His life in Us - He forgives Through us. Receive the HOly Spirit - He gives us his life as a gift and it is like the manna to be freely used and spent on the undeserving, in unmerited acts of forgiveness like the prodigal Father does to the errant son. Does he ask forgiveness? Does he come crawling back in sorrowful repentance? No!! - He comes to the Father, that is all - he is forgiven. This is what God does. So he enters into the joy of his father.<br />
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You see we gasp at the extraordinary nature of the Resurrection - mocking our careful sense of decency and order and ‘how the world works’, as if we Knew. He is risen from the dead??<br />
But wonder of wonders - this Resurrection Life is then poured out on all who will be open to receive - on all who will become themselves forgivers, on all who would be children of their heavenly father. Who like their heavenly father do not hold on even to their own son. Even God does not seek to possess - He is the Great Giver. And so the early church Lived - not grasping or hoarding - just letting it flow through their fingers, out into the world.<br />
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The Christian Life is Pure Gift. We can never grasp it - we can only receive it and Live it. <br />
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Amen<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-7117868285058733192012-04-07T13:13:00.001+12:002012-04-07T13:13:51.882+12:00Sermon for Sunday 8th April - Easter Day - 2012Sermon for Easter Sunday 2012<br /><br />‘Early on the first day of the week, whilst it was yet dark’<br /><br />What can prepare us for Easter?<br /><br />Today we celebrate The Great Feast of the church’s year. Easter Day. Christ is Risen. He is risen indeed!! Alleluia -The church is Full of Glad triumphant shouts - we Celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ . . . but . . . today is just the first Day which the church in her wisdom gives to us for this celebration of Easter - this Season of Easter is six long weeks long - and it needs to be. For this message of Resurrection takes a long time to sink deep into our hearts and minds wherein it might ignite the fire of death defying faith. This is clearly revealed in the gospels as Jesus appears again and again and again to his disciples, teaching Rebuking, forgiving - it will be six weeks before he has prepared them to receive within themselves that concrete Assurance of the Resurrection, the Holy Spirit. We do not find Peter rushing from the tomb to declare ‘Christ is Risen and preaching boldly to all who will hear. No, bold Peter will not be seen until Pentecost. Today is Just the beginning? We are not yet ready.<br /><br />I know the church is more beautifully bedecked on this day than any other, yet there is a sense in which we actually need to build the flowers up gradually over six weeks, until this Resurrection message has sunk deep into us - that over the six weeks of Easter the church becomes brighter and brighter. The message is Too big - we cannot receive it ALL at one go. We are not yet ready or prepared. It is early on the first day of the week, it is yet dark. John in his gospel makes much of light and darkness, Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the dark - he doesn’t understand. ‘For as yet they did not understand’ Here John reveals that Easter Brightness is So bright that it blinds and dawns only slowly in the hearts and minds of Christ’s disciples as their hearts and minds are transformed by this Reality. While it was yet dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb<br /><br />Of course we have the benefit of having gone through Lent and Holy Week and Easter many many times - We might think we do not need time for the message to dawn in our hearts, we know the story. ‘Of course Christ is Risen!’ Yet are we Alive with indestructible life and faith? We look back to the early church that had taken those six weeks to absorb the message and see what became the most incredible missionary movement the world had ever known, empowered by the Truth of the Resurrection. We think of the many many martyrs of the church in those early years who went fearlessly to their deaths because the Knew that Christ was Risen, and a whole New Reality had been ushered in, in which one might live lives of Bold faith, Lives without fear. And now almost one in 4 of the population of the world in some sense other own the name of Christ. Will this day send us out to do likewise? Have we yet entered into the Deep Magic of this story, to use CS Lewis’s phrase - have we Particpated in it - or have we been mere observers? Has it become Our Reality?<br /><br />It was Maundy Thursday in 2001. As was my custom I went to the Diocesan Chrism Eucharist - but I went with a very heavy heart. 2001 was a Very bleak year for some of us in England - it was the year of the terrible foot and mouth epidemic. Our TV screens were full of scenes of burning mountains of cattle and sheep - and for me it was very personal. Just a couple of days before, a farm adjoining my uncle’s farm had had a case of Foot and Mouth found on it - we knew what this meant. In the policy enforced at the time, there had to be in the clinical language of death, a contiguous cull. In an effort to stop the disease spreading, not only the stock on the affected farm, but all stock on all adjoining farms had to be culled. As I went to church that MAundy Thursday, I knew that the stock wagons and the men from the Ministry with their rifles would be rounding up my uncles stock and shooting them. His prized wild fell cattle, the eldest of which was born the first summer they’d gone to the Lake district farm 31 years earlier, all of them were to be slaughtered in an effort to stop the spread of this terrible disease. So I was in tears as I left the mass that morning - barely able to shake the bishops hand as I walked out of church. <br /> Only to return home to hear of the cruelest of twists. My uncle’s farm is remote and the track up to it deeply rutted and overhung with ancient trees - the stock trucks hadn’t made it up to the farm that day in time to carry out the cull. They would return the following day, Good Friday. It was Appallingly bleak - and I was due to preach on Easter Day, to a church full of good and smiling folk, wanting to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ - How can you preach Life in the midst of Death? Humanly speaking?<br /><br /><br />What can prepare us for Easter? It is So outside our categories - the terrible reality of life often denies any sense of hope that we might know for ouselves. To have grieved with my family in that most terrible of days and then to preach resurrection? <br /><br />What can prepare us for Easter, I was speaking to someone earlier in the week who told me that they found joy on Easter Day all but impossible, for on Good Friday it felt to them like their best friend had died - ‘and now three days later He is Risen?? Excuse me, but it will take time’ - when someone in whom you have invested you life dies, very publicly and before your eyes - and then in the space of only 40 hours or so, you hear a whisper, a rumour of life, are you suddenly going to shout Aloud - He is Risen indeed Alleluia!! When you’ve gone through Hell, Rumours of Life can only first come as a whisper. And a shocking whisper at that. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; - but there isn’t widespread rejoicing. No, it is a total shock to the system - the gospel is silent about the reaction of the disciples - Shock - Silence - what can this mean?? How, humanly speaking could they have ever begun to speak of this? In the face of Death it is an Utterly shocking message - almost Mocking our senses - HOw Can this be!! It will take time and great gentleness - the Risen Christ does not burst onto the scene - compelling people to believe - Grief and darkness must be fully known, because this is not a message of life, but of New Life. The old life must die before the word can come that awakens to this New Life<br /><br />On Good Friday, the hope of the disciples did not merely die, it was put to death. He was their hope . . . their hope had died. Unlike in our liturgical cycle - Easter was not going to come around. He was their Life and their hope and He was dead. Their hope had to die, because it was inadequate, their faith had to die, for it was inadequate, their dreams had to be smashed, because they were inadequate. It was only those who lost their life whom he said would find it. Humanly speaking all the lights had gone out - ‘it was early on the morning of the first day of the week - whilst it was yet dark.’ And it was Thus He had prepared them for Easter. <br /> They had in their hearts and minds spent Holy Saturday in the tomb - he had died and in a real sense they had died with Him. And so they were as Ready. Ready to Hear the voice of the Risen one,for there were no other voices now. All was silent. But even so, ready as they were, it would be a a long six weeks of constant appearances and reassurance before they were ready to declare boldly and confidently ‘They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; 40but God raised him on the third day’ <br /><br />But, How does that Life come alive in us? <br />Two of the characters from our Gospel give us each give us a clue. Firstly there is the disciple whom Jesus loved - we tend to think this is John himself, but John uses this elusive term, the disciple whom Jesus loved. This disciple outruns Peter to the tomb, he sees the folded grave clothes but does not go in - then we can imagine Peter - still full of remorse and now terrible shock desperately pushing him out of the way - seeing - but perhaps his eyes blinded still by his weeping, John uses one word for See - When the beloved disciple then goes into the tomb, he Saw and believed - John uses a different word - he Sees beyond the empty tomb - he sees beyond the evidence to its meaning - but as yet they did not understand.<br /><br />The beloved disciple can stand here for the Church. In our failure to believe - in our slowness to understand, she leads us for six weeks through account after account of the resurrection, gently teaching us as Christ did his disciples the Reality of the Resurrection. When we as individuals struggle to come to terms with this all, it is the Church in faith which holds us, and leads us through the six weeks of Easter, from the darkness of this first morning into ever increasing light.<br /><br />How does this Life come alive in us?<br />. . . then there is Mary Magdalene - The first Apostle - the First witness to the resurrection. She sees the Lord but does not recognize him - no but she Hears him. As Lazarus had lain in the tomb and been awoken by The Voice - that called him by name, Lazarus - Come Out!, Mary too comes to life and faith by hearing one word - she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).<br /><br />How is this Easter Joy awoken in us? We diligently search the scriptures thinking that in them we may find life - we from our modern ever so well informed, and at times deeply skeptical viewpoint look at these ancient texts and think that this is just to incredible for words - we want a story we can make sense of - we want some neat proofs that we will believe - How can we believe? How did MAry believe??<br /> Why do so many millions now believe? ‘Mary!’- ‘Rabbouni!! Why do so many believe Because down through two thousand years, the Risen Lord has spoken their name, Mary, Simon, Cornelius, Saul, Irenaeus, Felicity, Monica, Augustine, Benedict, Clare, Francis, Theresa, Ignatius, Martin, John, Theresa, Dietrich, Dorothy, and millions upon millions more - like a Great Wave of Life and Faith - He has come out from the tomb - he has been calling us by name out from ours - Come out and Live!!<br /><br />Rabbouni! Teacher - Lord - I have seen the Lord - I was in the dust of death and he has called my name! He is Alive - Life HAs triumphed over death - Death is defeated My Lord Lives - Our Lord Lives!<br /><br />Christ is Risen - Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia <br />And the church responds in faith ‘He is risen indeed!’ Alleluia, Alleluia Alleluia<br /><br />May we by the Grace of God follow this journey through Easter with ever increasing Joy and Hope and Life and may we hear His voice ever and Ever louder - till it is as clear to us as it was to those first disciples - and now as with those first disciples on the road to Emmaus - may he be known to us in the breaking of the bread. Amen<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-40278389204682640602012-04-05T16:01:00.002+12:002012-04-05T16:02:33.280+12:00Sermon for Maundy Thursday - Participation in the Life of God<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? <br />
The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?</i></div>
<br />
<br />
One of the themes we have been developing in our journey together through Lent and now Holy Week has been that of participation. In Lent we explored Christian practices of Generosity and Hospitality, of Love and Forgiveness, of Truthfulness and Openness one to another, but what I was at pains to point out was not that we should sit around and come up with Our ideas of what these were - asking ‘how might We be hospitable or Generous?’ Rather that we were called to enter into the very Life of God’s Generosity and Hospitality. That Forgiveness can only be understood Christianly in terms of God’s forgiveness - and that to Live the Christian Life was no more and no less than to live ever more fully into and Participate in the Very life of God in the Life of God. This is the invitation of The Last Supper, an invitation to Participation<br />
<br />
As the disciples are gathered together, Jesus revealed the full extent of His Love. He shows them what Love is when it is Enacted. (there is no such thing as Love that is Not Performed). And he does it by washing the feet of his disciples and only then inviting them to participate. ‘So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.’ It is our Lord’s Gracious Invitation at His table to enter in, to Participate in His Life which He first reveals. To Simon Peter he says ‘You do not now understand what I am doing’ - he is a Stranger to Love at this point only having his own ideas to go on. And of course that footwashing is a reminder of forgiveness - Perhaps Peter does not understand, because he doesn’t yet understand how much he will need Jesus’ forgiveness. Perhaps this is why we all find it so hard to Participate in the lIfe of God, because we don’t yet understand how much we need it ourselves? That we need God’s hospitality before we can be hospitable and that that hospitality is expressed in forgiveness. If we would come in, we needs must accept his Love<br />
<br />
As it would be unthinkable for the guests to eat without their feet being washed - and so we see one part of this Participation, that we cannot approach the table of the Lord, unless we have been forgiven. Peter of course doesn’t get this - Poor Peter :) It seems to be his Role. ‘‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.’’ Jesus invites us into Participation by first serving us - be One with me is his invitation and He serves us. In so doing he reveals the Nature of the LIfe of His Life that we are called to participate in.<br />
<br />
Peter of course has a Big problem with Participating fully in the Life of JEsus. It is He who said ‘this shall never happen to you!’, and perhaps in a fit of remorse - in a very short while he will gird his loins and try to enter the Life for himself Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ Jesus answered, ‘Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterwards.’ Peter said to him, ‘Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.’ Jesus answered, ‘Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times. We are so quick thinking we can do things for HIm, not understanding that we cannot, unless we first encounter and accept his Hospitality. FAce up to our Utter Need of Him.<br />
<br />
Will You lay down Your Life for Me?? ‘No you will not - I Will lay down My Life for You!’ is Jesus unspoken response. Of course Peter was not alone in this bravado, It had been the same with those two Sons of Thunder, James and John. "You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said. "Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?". “You don’t know what you are asking? You will lay down your life for me??<br />
<br />
Can you drink the cup? Of course we have been thinking much over the last hour about cups, the four cups of the Jewish Passover. But there is something odd. Try as we might we cannot perfectly match the Jewish Passover meal with the Last Supper. It seems clear it Is a Passover meal - but . . . it seems to be strangely unfinished. We rehearse the story in our Eucharistic liturgy. ‘After Supper he took the cup and when he had given thanks he gave it to them’ The Cup after Supper is the third cup . . . we read that after drinking this they sang a hymn and went out to the Mount of Olives. ‘You do not yet understand what I am doing for you - this Passover is not yet complete’<br />
<br />
This is an unfinished Passover - there is as yet, no fourth cup . . .<br />
<br />
<i><b>Can you drink the cup?</b></i> our minds wander forwards an hour or so, into the Garden of Gethsemane, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.’ Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ Again he went away for the second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.’<br />
<br />
‘My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me’ There is yet another cup - and the lack of the fourth cup is not the only odd thing about this meal. A Passover meal is presided over by the Father of the house - He is the one who rehearses the story and blesses the cups - But the Father has not been visible in the story until now. Jesus is continuing the Passover meal out in the garden but now it is not Jesus with the disciples, it is Jesus with his Father. If this cannot pass unless I drink it . . .The Fourth Cup signifies the end of the meal, the Passover cannot be completed unless the fourth cup is drunk, and that lies ahead of Him.<br />
<br />
it was not permitted to drink wine between the third and fourth cups - it was not permitted to drink wine until the end. Jesus does not actually drink of the Third cup - for this is his self offering to his disciples - This is my blood of the New covenant - and he will not drink of the final Cup until the Father ends the PAssover meal. Jesus in the self offering to His Father waits in obedience until the end - <i>At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah.’ And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, . . . the final cup is drunk . . . Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.</i><br />
<br />
‘It is finished’ - Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. ‘You will lay down your life for me?’ Jesus asks Peter - No, I will lay down my life for You<br />
<br />
Yes there is a Passover meal, but it begins with the Last Supper and ends on the cross and in so doing the Whole focus is shifted , entirely away from remembering the Exodus, to Remembering Christ Himself - but it is no mere memorial. This is Participation in a Way that we could scarcely begin to imagine - a Huge new dimension is opened up - for the cup is not of wine, but of Blood. ‘drink this all of you, this is My blood of the New Covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins’. Do this as often a you drink it in remembrance of Me. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
This is My blood. Do this In remembrance of Me</div>
<br />
The Passover meal was meant to be a remembrance of the great saving act of God in bringing his people out of Egypt - Do this in Remembrance of Me? And as for drinking Blood!! Whatever else you did with the Passover Lamb - you did Not drink it’s blood, <i>For its Life was in its Blood</i><br />
<br />
Which begins to make sense of John’s Lack of a Last Supper - it's actually there in shocking clarity ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’ Drink the blood, the Life is in the blood. It is a great promise of Participation in the Life of God<br />
<br />
To participate in the Old Passover - it was imperative - you had to eat the lamb! Five times the scriptures commanded that the whole lamb Must be eaten - None was to be left. But you were Not to drink the blood for the Life was in the blood - To participate in the New Creation life of God - you must eat the Lamb, the Lamb of God - you must eat his flesh and drink his Blood - that His Life might be in you. <br />
<br />
Christ invites us into Participation in life - His Life - He gives his life For us - He washes us that we might have a part with him - and then gives his life TO us. His eternal life, in Bread and Wine.<br />
<br />
James and John - they thought they could drink the cup - they thought they were up to it. but they didn’t know what they were asking. They didn’t realise that the life they were called to was God’s Life to only do what they saw the Father doing. Peter, desperate to get it right Just once wanted to Go where Jesus went - but he couldn’t - he couldn’t - not yet. For this was God Work and Life For the PAssover was not complete - the eternal life of Christ that is His own self offering had not yet been made. The Life was not yet available - not set free and wild in the world - His Spirit not poured out on all flesh - No Peter, not yet - you will not lay down your life for me - but when at last the work was finished,when God’s Life was released into the world - he would say to him<br />
<br />
Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’<br />
<br />
If you drink the Third cup - the cup of my blood - when it is poured out - THEN Peter you can participate and drink the Fourth in costly self sacrifice - then it will be no act of bravado - no girding up the loins of our will is required for it is His life in us, to will and to act according to the impulses of the Love of the Father<br />
<br />
Eat my flesh, drink my blood - now you can follow for it is no longer you who live, but I who live in you - now you can participate in this Life of God - for when you eat the bread and drink the wine - my Life is in you<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><br />
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? <br />
The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?</i></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-56801751062808925792012-04-04T20:08:00.001+12:002012-04-04T20:08:46.194+12:00Holy Week Meditation - On the Margin (3)Reflection for Holy Week<br />
“On the Margins” (3)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Reflection for Holy Week<br />
“On the Margins” (3)<br />
<br />
<i>Now the Lord
is about to lay waste the earth and make it desolate, and he will
twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants. And it shall be, as with
the people, so with the priest; as with the slave, so with his
master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so
with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as
with the creditor, so with the debtor. The earth shall be utterly laid
waste and utterly despoiled; for the Lord has spoken this word.</i><br />
<i><br /> The
earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers; the
heavens languish together with the earth. The earth lies
polluted under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed
laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. </i><br />
<i><br /> Therefore
a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their
guilt; therefore the inhabitants of the earth dwindled, and few
people are left. The wine dries up, the vine languishes, all the
merry-hearted sigh. The mirth of the timbrels is stilled, the noise
of the jubilant has ceased, the mirth of the lyre is stilled. </i><br />
<i><br /> No
longer do they drink wine with singing; strong drink is bitter to
those who drink it. The city of chaos is broken down, every house is
shut up so that no one can enter. There is an outcry in the streets
for lack of wine; all joy has reached its eventide; the gladness
of the earth is banished. Desolation is left in the city, the gates
are battered into ruins. </i><br />
<i>For thus it shall be on the earth and among
the nations, as when an olive tree is beaten, </i><br />
<i>as at the gleaning
when the grape harvest is ended.</i><br />
Isaiah 24:1-13<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
As we have made
our way through Holy Week, we have been considering the Margins - the
place of boundaries and where we have come to. As we considered Jesus
entering into the Temple and then leaving we were reminded by the words
‘as it was already late’ that the darkness gathers - and so in the
gathering darkness we await the words ‘Early, on the first day of the
week’. Boundaries, Edges, Margins, times of great upheaval. And we have
expressed this as a sort of turning inside out - of the reality of the
Cave or the City which seems to have everything we need being revealed
as a place which actually rejects and denies life.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
We thought about
this at a personal level - our own need of Conversion - our own need to
be turned inside out, that God might be our Centre. And then yesterday,
being reminded we never think of the Scope of Salvation in large enough
terms, we thought of it in terms of the church - of a church on the
margins - of how we find ourselves to be outside, thought of as
irrelevant - do we try to be relevant and go back into the city - or do
we take the risk of being found on the outside - on the rubbish heap,
with our Crucified messiah? On the edge. In the place of Salvation.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
But
we still haven’t really begun to grasp the scope of this breathtaking
Salvation. All of which we have so far spoken has been about our
perception of where we are, the Centre or the Edge and how we mistake
the two, the place of Life being to our observation a place of death
(consummately in the Cross). Where are we? What is our Place?
Fundamentally that is the issue - it always has been - what is our place
as human beings. In the Beginning we were given a place - the crown of
God’s creation, but forgot it was God’s Creation - we lost our place. We
began to think of it as our home, and I guess that is perhaps why we
are so comfortable on the inside, in the City, in the Cave - because we
made it to suit ourselves - it became our servant, instead of we its
tender and keeper. The Creation became ‘the Environment’ - our
Environment. And now we stand on the edge, on the margin. Quite
literally the Cave, the City is revealed to be the true rubbish heap.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The
earth lies polluted under its inhabitants; </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>for they have
transgressed laws, </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>violated the statutes, </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>broken the everlasting
covenant.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
What was the Everlasting Covenant? Well it was the oldest
of all Biblical covenants - the covenant with Noah - where God promised,
Never again would he cover the earth with the floodwaters. And now, it
seems as icecaps melt and waters rise above the low lying pacific
islands, it seems we are doing it ourselves.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
In the beginning was a Garden with two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of knowledge. <br />
What
we do not realise is that the Tree of knowledge makes us Blind. So many
of Jesus’ healings are of the blind. We think we see well enough - but
we do not see at at all. Knoweldge, Facts. These reduce Everything to
objects. We become Observers rather than Participants. We thought a
little about this last night, when I suggested that perhaps we spoke to
glibly of the church, as if we could step away from it and observe it
and so declare ‘It is clearly in a bad state’ - but immediately we have
begun to use the language of ‘It’ we reveal that we have stepped away
from Life. We are out of Relationship. Our language has become
Impersonal - we do now Know that of which we speak. We are reduced to
knowing about it. We do not understand that We are the Church. The
Church is an It. And so it is even more so with The Environment. We
imagine It as It - A stage perhaps on which we play out life’s little
days. We do not understand that In the beginning we were actually woven
deep into the fabric of the Created order , that we Participate in it with our Very Being - that in a Real sense we are
One with Creation as we are with the Church. We have transgressed the
laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. We, being
blind never realised for a moment that How we lived with regard to God
would affect anyone but ourselves - it may affect the church, perhaps . .
. but the Very fabric of Creation?? </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
Having drunk deeply of the
fruit of the tree of Knowledge we now Know enough to realise what we
have done, or at least the damage we have caused but our perception that
we have done this because we were Part of Creation is dim at best, for
our knowing is impersonal. And there is the most Horrible irony in that
this Knowledge is coming to fruition, just when it seems to be too late.
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
The Temple had always been a profound symbol of the Creation - and
so at this very late hour one comes who enters the city and goes into
the temple; and when he has looked around at everything, as it was
already late, he leaves . . .’ It is Late - Very late - the darkness is
gathering hard and fierce.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
In the case of us as individuals - it is
very hard for us to see that we dwell in a cave of our own making, so
used we are to referencing everything to ourselves - with regard to the
church of which we are at once part and also observers it is perhaps
easier to see there is a problem, but difficult to know how to respond.
But in terms of the Creation there can be little or no doubt, we stand
on the edge - indeed we may well have crossed the boundary - which with
its dark theme actually brings us to Easter</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
However we try, we Always
underplay Easter -Nothing can convey the Wonder of the Resurrection -
so accustomed to the darkness of the cave have we become that the
brightness is itself like dark - blinding us. We talk of Easter in terms
of the great feast of the churches year, but it is Breathtakingly
beyond any description. Perhaps were we better to comprehend the
darkness in which we all too readily live, we might better comprehend
the Miracle of Easter and the scope of a Salvation which encompasses
quite literally Everything. We may at a personal level see Easter as the
transforming Hope of our Life -we may even hope that the Easter message
will transform the church also - but This Sacrifice is for the Sin of
the whole World. The first Christians understood the Sacrifice in these
truly Cosmic terms, Behold, A New Heaven and a New Earth.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We are left asking in the darkness - do we believe in Easter? </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And if so, just how big is our Easter Vision and Hope?</i></div>
</div>
<br /></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-60926173378854824732012-04-04T12:11:00.001+12:002012-04-04T12:12:32.755+12:00Holy Week Meditation - On the Margin (2)Reflection for Holy Week<br />
“On the Margins” (2)<br />
<br />
Now when Jesus
came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples,
‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say
John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of
the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon
Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ And
Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and
blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell
you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my <span class="il">church</span>,
and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the
keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be
bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in
heaven.’ Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that
he was the Messiah.<br />
From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to
Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and
chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be
raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘God
forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’ But he turned and said
to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block to me; for
you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’<br />
Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let
them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those
who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life
for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the
whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for
their life?<br />
<br />
Yesterday we left off thinking about this call to go with Jesus and
die with him - about how we needed to be Converted from a life which
however Christian it feels and indeed looks to the outsider, is actually
self centered. Not in the sense of the sort of crass selfishness that
is clear to others, but something far more subtle. That we are still the
centre of what we call Real. Indeed we may well look far from selfish
in the eyes of others - our lives may well appear to be sacrificial, and
yet still we can be self centered. In a sense this is perhaps why we so
resonate with the story of Martha and Mary. We think it is about the
Active OR the Contemplative life, but in reality it is not that. Martha
is self absorbed. Upset and worried about many things, She sees all that
needs to be done. Her perspective is central. ‘This is the way the
world is!’ She is self centered. It is eminently possible for us to be
like this. Yet it is also eminently possible that like Mary we might be
sat in quiet devotion before the Lord, but still be self centered, for
we have brought all that is on our mind, all our concerns , all our
worries - we can be in prayer at the feet of Jesus and still be upset
and worried about many things. Conversely we can be actively working,
but our heart and mind are with Christ and Him alone. We have learned
the First commandment - Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with
all your soul with all your mind and with all your strength and He is
our Centre. We have come to see that in truth, ‘our only real need is
God’ - we have learned what it means to only do what we see the Father
doing. We can be an Active Mary, or a Contemplative Martha<br />
<br />
What is our centre? As we walk through Holy Week with Jesus, we realise
that we are on the edge, not at the centre - most fundamentally, passing
from death to Life. But as we make this journey, something becomes
increasingly clear, that the Scope of this Life is Far more vast than we
had thought, for it is the Life of God into which we die and are born.
To use Ruth Burrows imagery again - we were in a Cave that seemed to
have it all, and our Christian life was to be found within its confines.
‘Our Christian life’ . . . ‘within its confines’. ‘Because of your
little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there”,
and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.’ <br />
<br />
A moments reflection tells us when we hear these words, that we are in a
Cave - our Faith is Us sized, within comfortable confines - we are
afraid of a faith that moves mountains.<br />
But it is not only the scope
of our faith that we discover to be confined - actually it is our whole
view of this whole business of Salvation. As we walk through Holy Week
and in the years after as the New People of God discover, the Work of
Jesus upon the Cross goes far far far wider than mere ‘personal
salvation’ - that is too small a thing<br />
<br />
So I wish to think for a moment about a larger object for the work of Christ. The <span class="il">Church</span>.
And the call is the same - to leave the Cave, where all seems well, yet
it is on a scale we can handle, to go out to the edge. And it seems
clear in these days especially, that the <span class="il">Church</span> is in that same Marginal position as we are as individuals, on the edge<br />
<br />
Like the person facing the boundary between life and death, Stood on the
banks of a river - a secure past - an uncertain future. My two former <span class="il">churches</span>
in a sense epitomised these two states. One was by at
least three hundred years the oldest building in the village. It had
always been there. It stood on a crossroads - probably the intersection
of two ancient droving roads and the village had grown up around it. It
was at the heart of the community and although there were many who only
came through the doors for a funeral or wedding, no one thought little
of it and many in the village would lend a hand in one way or another. The other, however was different. The village although it had
similarly historic roots, had not had a <span class="il">church</span>, there being an ancient <span class="il">church</span> only a mile away. So when the <span class="il">church</span>
was finally built it was not in the centre of the village, but on the
edge - outside the city walls, so to speak. What was plain in both cases
was how much <span class="il">church</span> folk wanted to be at the heart of the village. Our view of the <span class="il">church</span>
dominated by the longing to feel all was well and that we weren’t
marginal to the world’s story. For many this was all to do with the
traditional Patrician Vicar - who would chair all of the villages
important committees and generally bless and sanctify all that happened.
[I was, I fear to say a little bit of a disappointment in this regard]. We craved the safety of the Cave..<br />
<br />
Our fear of being with Jesus outside the city, on the margin of things,
as I said betrayed our false understanding of where life was to be found.
The idea of <span class="il">church</span> at the centre of things
leaves us with a great sense of security - the idea that we are
Marginal, nay even worse Irrelevant to the lives and concerns of those
amongst whom we live, Most disturbing. And it is all too easy for us as
the <span class="il">Church</span> to try to go back into the City - yet
it was the city that expelled Jesus. They declared Him Irrelevant - in
his nakedness and vulnerability he was thought worthy only of the
Rubbish tip of Golgotha. “I will build my <span class="il">church</span>” Jesus declares, here - Whoever would Be my <span class="il">church</span> - must come to where I am. Where I am, there my disciples will be also.<br />
<br />
I have spoken several times these past weeks of how we have disconnected Christ and the <span class="il">Church</span> - that we deny the Glory of the <span class="il">Church</span>,
that we are the Body of Christ. That in False humility and through bad
theology we stand apart saying ‘we are not worthy of that’ - well, how
humble do we have to be, to identify with This Glory? The Son of Man
lifted up upon the Cross - on the rubbish heap, outside the city walls.
Perhaps the problem is that his <span class="il">church</span> is not humble enough, not small enough, not sufficiently insignificant in the eyes of the world to associate with its Lord?<br />
<br />
That we too have now been declared irrelevant to the World’s idea of life, places the <span class="il">Church</span> on the bank of the river - on the margin - that we might cross over from death to life.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-57605645199315127422012-04-03T08:59:00.000+12:002012-04-03T09:02:06.323+12:00Holy Week Meditation - On the Margin (1)<i>Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.’ But when Jesus heard it, he said, ‘This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.’ Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.</i><i>Then after this he said to the disciples, ‘Let us go to Judea again.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them.’ After saying this, he told them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.’ The disciples said to him, ‘Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right.’ Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’ Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’</i><br />
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‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ </div>
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<i>Facing his impending death, Jesus goes back to the place where Resurrection has been foretold, to spend time perhaps with his friends</i></div>
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Yesterday we left Jesus, surveying the Temple and then leaving for Bethany, <br />
as it was already late . . .<br />
<br />
Holy Week is bookended by two phrases - ‘it was already late’ . . . and ‘Early, on the first day of the week’. It is clear that this is a time of transition, of change, of movement, on the edge of something, we are not in the thick of Life but on the edge of it, ‘On the Margins’.<br />
<br />
One of the privileges of priestly ministry is to accompany people through their own Holy weeks, the whole business of ‘Dying’. <br />
I had a very dear friend who was a priest and died from a brain tumour. In her last days as is so often the case on this Margin, we saw something very special. As she drifted in and out of consciousness it was clear that she knew where she was, on the bank of a river, and her priestly ministry continued as she was obviously helping others to make the transition.<br />
<br />
But this Dying is not necessarily physical, indeed the gracious invitation of Jesus is to die before we die, so to speak, to understand that our physical deaths are only the Secondary deaths, that there is a Far more significant death that Must happen. <br />
<br />
And the work of the priest is to accompany many in this regard. It is a work that must be done in all of us and that when we understand it, we might all participate in - we too might learn to stand at the shore and encourage others to cross over. In a Real sense, it is the work of accompanying someone through their Conversion, from a life where they are at the centre, to one where they are at the edge (and discover that Life had always been there and that that which they called life was no life at all.) <br />
<br />
Life is Always to be found at the edge. Paradoxically, Christ, although as he rides into Jerusalem appear to be the centre of everything, is in the hearts and minds of the people on the edge of - they will readily expel him into the wilderness from the edge of the camp. His Place, His Throne is beyond the City walls. The Temple is Not in the heart of the city, it is not in the city at all - this is a discovery we all need to make - it is the beginning of Our conversion<br />
<br />
The Carmelite nun Ruth Burrows speaks of this Conversion in her book, “to believe in Jesus” <br />
<br />
<i>“We live in a cave. The cave is so vast and we are so small that we cannot perceive it is a cave until we have grown in stature. It seems a limitless world, a most beautiful city full of good things, everything we need for our stimulation and growth. Here, it seems, is love and knowledge of god, here is wisdom, here true worship. The ensign of Jesus flies over its citadels. Christians recognise the ensign, they know the name of their king and wish to serve him. there is no need to question the raison d’être of this city; it seems to exist in its own right and needs no explanation apart from itself. How can there be anywhere else, except heaven when this mortal life is over?<br /><br />In reality the cave does not exist for itself but exclusively for another world, the kingdom of god where even in this life he truly reigns over human hearts. Were it not so, were there no way out of it, it would be nothing but a great trap, a hideous mockery; we would be trapped for ever in our own limitations, our innate yearning for God thwarted for ever. Redemption means there is a way out. Jesus has made the way. He is the gate through which we pass, the way on which we walk and the goal of our journey. Everything God has provided for us in this cave-city is for one purpose only, to fit us for passing through that gate, out of the natural mode of existence which is ‘death’, into the life of God.<br /><br />Although it does not seem like it, when we are in the cave, we are like Lazarus, dead in his tomb. Jesus calls us to come out. To be brought to life from this death is to begin to die mystically with Jesus, so as to rise with his life.” </i><br />
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<br />
Lent gets us ready for Easter, but actually that getting ready is just a preparation for the work of Holy week, it is a letting go of the little things in preparation for this work of dying. Having through Lent learned to deny ourselves through Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving we are truly ready to walk with Jesus to the Cross, unlike those first disciples - <a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/sermon-for-sunday-1st-april-palm-sunday.html" target="_blank">as I said yesterday</a> “they melt away. Perhaps because they had heard but never understood what he meant when he said - ‘no one can be my disciple unless he gives up Everything he has - lets go of the world - no-one can be my disciple unless he hates his father and his mother, yes indeed life itself - whoever would become my disciple must take up his cross - whoever would gain his life must lose it’. Like the crowd they had an image of Jesus that didn’t fit with his words, [they were still in the Cave-city] - [yet] now as they approach the end it becomes terrifyingly clear, he meant every word of it, to become obedient even unto the death of the cross.”<br />
<br />
We are his disciples - in Holy week we see them disappear from Jesus presence. We symbolise this in Not spending the whole night on Thursday in prayer and Watch, but departing. But we have One advantage over them - we know how the story ends - thus if we have faith we need not flee form going with him, through the narrow gate - crossing over the Margin - through death to lifeUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-26804487077791053682012-04-02T17:49:00.003+12:002012-04-02T17:52:10.346+12:00Lenten Meditation - Fasting (2)<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> ‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through
waterless regions looking for a resting-place, but it finds none.
Then it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” When it comes, it finds it empty, swept, and put in order.
Then it goes and brings along seven other spirits more evil than itself,
and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is
worse than the first." </i></div>
<br />
Amongst the sayings of Jesus , this one has always intrigued me - in part because it can be understood in so many ways. [Like all of Jesus' stories it is Universal, and thus meaning is continually opening up in it. We must beware of the Closure that says "this means . . .". Rather as we are open to the Spirit, it is perhaps better to say "God seems to be saying This to me through this story at present . . ."]<br />
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Amongst the sayings of the Wise there is one which seems apposite to this subject of fasting and especially, if you have been reading this series, my avoidance of the subject of Prayer. In the Philokalia we read that to fast with out praying is the work of the devil. In part this is because it is to see the Disciplines as Ends in themselves. It is to substitute our Spiritual Fortitude for the very Life of God. So we fastidiously Clean out our house by fasting - we ward off our sins by almsgiving, we deal with our Sloth by rigorous studies, we deal with pride by Finding some Lowly service, but we do not Pray. So there is nothing to replace what we have cleaned out, which leaves plenty of space for other spirits.<br />
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We are so determined to make ourselves better, to make ourselves Good - that we reject the Life of the Healer, the One who is Good. We clear out the house so it is fit for Our idea of the Perfect guest - but we do not come to prayer. To allow Him to reside there and now all we have is the Pride of our spiritual accomplishment, which is the Worst kind, for it most readily counterfeits Life in our understanding (although in reality there is No point of correspondence) <br />
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But of course, Our idea of the Perfect guest is of course Ourselves and of course the presence of Our Spiritual accomplishments is far more amenable to us than is the presence of the living God - indeed we all too readily confuse the two - we need to ask ourselves over and over - What do we Really want? Do we Really want Him? Will we Empty ourSelves to receive Him?<br />
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The Carmelite, Ruth Burrows in her book, 'to believe in Jesus' - puts this in terms of a fast.<br />
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<i>"Faith is a fast", </i>she says<i>, "it is a refusal to put anything in the place of God, and an acceptance of the consequent sense of deprivation. Faith refuses to seek sensible assurances our nature craves for, and insists on looking beyond, reaching out to Him who cannot be savoured in this life. For the one who had given his heart to the Lord there is a perennial fast whilst this life lasts"</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-48507032142651665932012-03-30T16:38:00.000+13:002012-04-01T12:51:16.291+12:00Sermon for Sunday 1st April - Palm Sunday 2012Sermon for Sunday April 1st - Palm Sunday 2012<br />
Isaiah 50:4-9a<br />
Philippians 2:5-11<br />
Mark 11:1-11<br />
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<a href="http://web.me.com/erickyte/Eric_Kytes_Sermons/2011_12_files/20120401%20112349.mp3" target="_blank">(AUDIO RECORDING OF THE SERMON) </a></div>
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“For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, <br />
but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”<br />
<br />
Our Struggle, our Conflict - as St Paul Has to remind the flock in Ephesus - we are Always getting this wrong, the Focus of the Conflict<br />
<br />
At the end of our Gospel we heard these words ‘Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.’ Mark in his Sparse way leads us into the sense of a gathering storm - Jesus has surveyed the battlefield - Conflict lowers on the horizon. And we are of course holding our breath, for we know what is coming - Actually even if we didn’t know, we could guess. <br />
The Theme of Conflict is inescapable in Mark’s gospel - from the very first, Everyone and Everything seems to be in conflict with Jesus - the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the teachers of the Law, the Herodians - everywhere we turn we find people at odds with Jesus and HIs message. And its very easy to turn things around - to say as I started to write in this sermon - that Jesus is in conflict with Everyone and Everything - especially everything and all those people who deny life. <br />
As if people can be easily split into neat categories - goodies and baddies. Those who are For Jesus and those who are against. Jesus we say is against the ‘Powers that be‘ - stripping that phrase of all of its power. ‘He’s against all those baddies, against all the people who are stopping what ‘We call justice’ we say. As if He has come to sort out the World on Our behalf. If only we could get rid of those people, those unjust structures, those diseases, THEN the world would be a better place. And So today, we cheer Jesus on in what we think is his Crusade to put things right for us. Just as they all cheered him on on that first Palm Sunday. As if we see straight and understand Him and are not ourselves in conflict with Him.<br />
Of course there was a very powerful and legitimate ‘Cry for Justice’ in the minds of many in the crowds. They wanted shot of the Romans, or at least they did if they weren’t benefitting from Roman rule. Funny how we always tend to see matters in such terms. The Roman reign of terror - putting down the freedom fighters with ill focussed precision, Or the Pax Romana, enabling Decent People to go about their everyday lives and business in Freedom, depending where you stood. Some wanted a King who would overthrow the powers that be and then ‘all would be well’, But as Jesus warned them and as he warns us as well, the devil returns, and finding the house clean and well swept invites some of his friends along and the last state of the man is worse than the first. We do Not understand what he is really about, and we are not alone.<br />
<br />
The Crowd didn’t understand what he was really about, nor did his disciples didn’t. We find Even them in COnflict with Jesus - they are Getting in the way, threatening to obstruct his path - we remember His Angry words to Peter - ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ - and there we may well find a clue - a clue to our own ignorance. For if Peter who has walked with Jesus and seen him heal so many, if Peter hasn’t got it - what makes us so sure we have. If Peter finds himself in conflict with Jesus - what makes us think We are not?<br />
<br />
We cannot hear the words of Mark with anything approaching a sense of Comfort - in Mark’s account of Jesus we see writ large the Servant of the Lord from Isaiah <br />
The Lord God helps me;<br />
therefore I have not been disgraced;<br />
therefore I have set my face like flint,<br />
and I know that I shall not be put to shame; <br />
he who vindicates me is near.<br />
Who will contend with me?<br />
Let us stand up together.<br />
Who are my adversaries?<br />
Let them confront me. <br />
It is the Lord God who helps me;<br />
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No-one sees what he is about and Ultimately Everyone at one level or another is in conflict with Him - He is alone in the crowds. They are worshipping and rejoicing - ‘Hosanna!<br />
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! <br />
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!<br />
Hosanna in the highest heaven!’- his face though is set like Flint - His adversaries are confronting him Even though Now some of them rejoice to see Him come, they will be the same ones who call out ‘Crucify’, the same ones who will Flee from his presence in the darkness of Gethsemane. Jesus is under no illusions - He is Alone. Everyone is revealed to be against Him - He Knows it - we don’t understand.<br />
<br />
And the lack of our understanding is revealed in the gospel text. ‘Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.’ We are given warning, that this is All about Worship. It is about the Temple. Last week we thought about Worship - about the mystery of Worship and earlier in Lent about Jesus declaring, destroy this Temple and I will rebuild it in three days.<br />
<br />
Last week when I was teaching the final session of our Lent course on Christian Practices, and in Worship in particular, I rather naughtily asked people in their minds to make a choice, along these lines ‘If I were to say to you that from now on you had to choose between Coming to Worship Sunday by Sunday and Going out into the World to ‘make it a better place’ - and you HAD to choose - which do you think you would do’. It was an unfair question perhaps, although it does perhaps reveal how much we think that we are in charge of our own lives that most if not all of us understand Sunday worship to be dispensible in a way that would have shocked many of our forebears in faith [I feel rather like a headmaster of my acquaintance, who week by week stood up at the beginning of assembly and berated the people who were late - except of course because they were late they never heard him :) ] But if you HAD to choose - I suggest that we are perhaps more of a view that we Know what is wrong in the world and so perhaps are safe to go out and fix it, without worship. In other words we see things in terms of fixing unjust structures or turning oppressors out of power - like the crowds. We don’t Understand that our whole way of being is under the judgement of the Cross - and that every Sunday we are re-oriented to See afresh the Way of Christ, to be Judged and Saved by it, and thus and ONLY thus set free to live for his Glory<br />
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Jesus ‘went into the Temple and looked around - he Sees. This is the place God’s Life is meant to burst into the World - the Symbol of God’s Presence and lIfe amongst his people, but it had become a place where Life was Taken - not a place where Life was ‘Given’. Where money was extracted from the poor in the name of ‘good business’ - where the Free Life of God had been made into yet another commodity to be bought or sold. We know there is a conflict coming at the Temple - a Conflict between Life Taken and Life GIven. Between Life Taken, and Life Given - the Two Ways And he Chooses the way of Giving His Life. Not an unwilling sacrifice - no one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. The Way of Kings in Israel had been take take take as the prophet Samuel had warned - it is the way of us all. But not the way of this Servant King. For this Conflict between Life taken and Life Given is The Conflict at the heart of it all, between the Way of Sacrificial Love and Everything Else. Between The Life of God and The Way of the World.<br />
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Which brings us to the second place in the text where we are shown that it is our Whole way of being under the radical Judgement of the flint faced servant of God , as the King comes into Jerusalem on a Donkey. <br />
Now of course Much is made of the Donkey, of the humility of Christ, but what we perhaps fail to recognise that this was precisely How the King of Israel was meant to be. The Donkey was the Royal Steed - Israel’s Kings, God’s King was supposed to Ride on Donkeys. When the Kingship is first instituted - Samuel goes out to find Saul - who is off in the wilderness - looking for three donkeys he has lost, and when Solomon - Solomon in All his Glory is made King what do we read? he priest Zadok, the prophet Nathan, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites and the Pelethites, went down and had Solomon ride on King David’s mule, and led him to Gihon. There the priest Zadok took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. They took Solomon and had him ride . . . on King David’s mule. He was Made to. To remind him what it meant to be God’s king.<br />
But the Kingship of Solomon was a Disaster, because although he rode on a donkey - in his heart and mind and in the hearts and minds of his people he rode on a majestic white charger. Because he Had to, because he was afraid of what it meant to be a King upon a Donkey. Do not be afraid says Jesus - over and over again - but we are terrified and most of all, we are afraid of the one who most truly represents us, the King who is meek and gentle - who comes to us meek and humble seated upon a donkey’s colt. The people See the King on a Donkey and so they Know he is the King because he is on a Donkey, but they do not see what the donkey signifies about Kingship. That here is a type of King who is utterly in Conflict with the Way of the World - Here is a King who is steely faced in his conflict with Everything - that this act of Salvation is first to Judge Everything, so that Everything might become that which is redeemed.<br />
What do We see in King Jesus? Do we also see the Donkey and fondly imagine the White Charger? Do we secretly hope that this way of vulnerability is really only a sleight of hand, that God isn’t really like this?<br />
<br />
Jesus in his Kingly humility is in Conflict with the Way of the World - The World revealed in the Kings it chooses for itself. And in his journey towards the cross - what becomes clear is that the illusions of everyone are swept away. We know the story of the Emperor who has no clothes - who is fooled and tricked by his Vanity into wearing the most incredible suit of clothes that only the wise can see, a suit that is no suit at all? And how the Crowd, not wishing to be fools all express their wonder at the clothes.Despite the fact that he is naked. <br />
This is just like this story, except here the King is not vain - he knows he goes Naked into this week, bearing no sword, riding on a humble mule - and as his nakedness and humility comes into sharper and sharper focus - gradually the crowd See that he is Not the Powerful Warrior King they had wanted, and they begin to drift away to come back and hurl at him al their rebukes for not being the King They Want - as he stands scourged and whipped before the crowds they see him as he really is - the King who made himself Nothing - the King who emptied himself, taking the form of a Slave = How can you support a King who is a Slave?? - who Meekly goes to his death - and they Mock - they laugh - they scorn, so terrified are they of the Truth - that it is only in utter weakness and vulnerability that the world can be redeemed. Jesus is the true Emperor with no clothes - naked and not ashamed - not hiding. Not afraid.<br />
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And it is not only the crowd, it is his disciples too - they melt away. Perhaps because they had heard but never understood what he meant when he said - ‘no one can be my disciple unless he gives up Everything he has - lets go of the world - no-one can be my disciple unless he hates his father and his mother, yes indeed life itself - whoever would become my disciple must take up his cross - whoever would gain his life must lose it’. Like the crowd they had an image of Jesus that didn’t fit with his words, and chosen the image - the idol Jesus for the naked reality - and now as they approach the end it becomes terrifyingly clear, he meant every word of it, to become obedient even unto the death of the cross. That True Power is revealed in letting go of all Power. That true worship is not in the sacrifice of others, it is in the laying down of one’s own life. And they flee, and now it is clear, he is utterly alone. For He is the True King, and as it is clear as he goes to His throne, He has No subjects. All the other Kings have taken and taken and taken - All Human Kings and rulers do - but this King Gives - Everything.<br />
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It is this terrifying self emptying of Christ, this Utter vulnerability that has led some theologians to speak not unreasonably of the weakness of God - for in our sin skewed vision the Way he Walks in in Holy week is the way of utter weakness - of putting himself in the hands of evil men and women - that they might do what they want to him. Yet in this Final Conflict the way of Death is Overcome, for He chooses to Give His Life - and so it Cannot be Taken. There is No Triumph for the World over the One who comes in humility and weakness and Gives His Life<br />
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Jesus in Holy Week stands utterly against all that is, all the world in its fearful pomp and show, in all its grasping and taking and clinging on - In His Self Giving he pronounces judgement on it all, and shows us the Way to Life.<br />
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To quote the disciple who perhaps didn’t doubt at all, Let us go with him, that we too may die, and so live<br />
<br />
AmenUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846864049524846128.post-56153334830849119912012-03-28T12:49:00.002+13:002012-03-28T12:49:49.419+13:00Lenten Disciplines - Fasting (1)<a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/lenten-disciplines-almsgiving-1.html" target="_blank">I began by suggesting that we might think that Almsgiving was the easiest of Lent disciplines</a> - after all one need merely set up a standing order to a charity and that, we think, is that. <a href="http://theelvesareheadingwest.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/lenten-disciplines-almsgiving-4.html" target="_blank">I went on to suggest that Almsgiving if pursued in the spirit in which it is intended is actually the hardest, such is the grip that money has on us</a><br />
<br />
On the other hand - we might suppose that fasting is the hardest of the three chief disciplines. Of all three, it most smacks of asceticism - a much maligned word in a culture that thinks that lack of Anything we desire as soon as we have the thought is Gross Deprivation!<br />
<br />
Yet, at the heart of all these disciplines is the stripping away to discern Reality. Through Self denial, we realise we have been living a Lie, we have been deceiving ourselves. All that is stripped away is revealed as a cloak under which we have hidden - the false security of Money, the Busyness which cannot allow time for Prayer, and we come to see how we have abused the Goodness of Food, and in so doing missed its real Gift.<br />
<br />
When we Fast we learn again the significance of food. And it is a significance we have forgotten and lost sight of, a Loss as significant as the Loss of Life we suffered when our First Parent Sinned, for it is inextricably linked to it. We fail to understand what we are involved in when we eat, and Most especially as we always should - (for 'it is not good that Man should be alone') - when we eat together.<br />
<br />
One of the first effects of the fall was a distorted relationship with food - 'by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread' - and we have reached a time in history where that distortion has reached what one can only call blasphemous proportions. We live in an age when many millions are dying from overeating and millions more from inadequate nutrition. This is played out before us through the media, yet nothing seems to change. That which was Good has become a Snare.<br />
<br />
In part this is revealed in our practice of fasting or, better, lack of practise. In an age when so many of us have so much food, fasting has died a death. Yet in previous times when food was more scarce and thus more precious, such self denial was a commonplace. We have as it were become addicted to food and our relationship to it more and more unhealthy. Many homes are full of cookbooks that are never read, TV shows draw in millions who rarely prepare a fresh meal to watch the experts, perhaps whilst also munching through a bag of potato crisps. Which draws attention to the paradox that we have also become increasingly inattentive to food. <b><i>We Watch it, look at it, read about it - but do not attend to it - we are not Present to the Gift.</i></b> We talk of Grazing - we Eat on the move - we have business lunches. Family mealtimes are more and more a thing of the past [One sad definition of a family I read was 'a small group of people who share a common refrigerator and microwave].<br />
<br />
And this last example brings me to my point - that Food is a Creative Vehicle of Reality - it has the Deep potential of Creating Life, if we understand what it is - God's Life giving Gift. And the Life is Shared. In the Fall we lose our relationship to Everything in losing our relationship with God - with Food and each other. (It is noticeable that the first murder denotes separation over matters of Food). We speak of Companionship as a deep level of Friendship - the word literally means 'With Bread' - Friendship - Relationship is Food oriented. And so in lent we strip away all the Lies and re-appropriate Food - by NOT eating for a time.<br />
<br />
Imagine you have not eaten for some time - you are hungry - you have been praying (Fasting should Always be accompanied by prayer). Now you come to sit and eat. Take time to contemplate what is before you - God has Provided - Give thanks (Saying Grace has also disappeared from our lives as we have lost touch with Food). <b><i>In a very real sense, the food is an expression of the presence of God </i></b>- He has provided it, without Him you have no food.<br />
<br />
Now imagine further - two people sat together sharing a meal - but a third is present, for God has provided. Something knew comes into being in the Deep web of reality if we will but see it. Eating and Drinking is a Sacramental Act. We remember one who came 'eating and drinking' - the Lord of Life is Present. In this simple act of sharing a meal Companionship is happening - in God's hospitable act of providing food - you are drawn closer together.<br />
<br />
Of course, as Christians we should never have forgotten this for central to our Faith is The Meal. God offering himself to us in Bread and Wine - the Life that enlivens Everything. In the early days of the church, the feast of the Eucharist was encompassed by a shared meal, just as the Institution of the Lord's Supper takes place in the context of a meal. Everything touched by this becomes Holy.<br />
<i><br /></i><br />
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<i>If we are alert to what we are doing - to the Gift, then Every shared meal becomes something Gloriously Other. As we say at the Eucharist 'The Lord is Here - his Spirit is with us!'. </i></div>
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<i>Might we not also say around the dinner table??</i></div>
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<b><i><br /></i></b></div>
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<b><i>If we fast we begin once more to encounter God, </i></b></div>
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<b><i>to strip away the excess and thus see everything in its true light - including Food.</i></b></div>
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<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1775256261">[For more Very wonderful thoughts on Food, and Sacrament, and Life,</a></div>
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<a href="http://atthetablewithannie.blogspot.co.nz/" target="_blank">I recommend the blog of a dear friend which you can find here.] </a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0